Greetings, Shadow Warriors!

There’s an old saying where I come from, and it goes something like this:

“If you can’t come up with a Spwug article for the week, just make something up.”

How anyone in my home town even knew there would ever be a web site called Spwug some day in the future is a riddle that we may never solve (radiation spill).  Be that as it may, today it just happens to be good advice.  I’m having a frazzleweek (not to be confused with a Fraggle Rock) this week, and it’s making it tough to come up with anything substantial to offer.  So instead, I once again break out the odds and ends that I have come across over the past couple of days, plop them all into a stew pot, add some seasonings, stir, and serve it to you with some blue milk, courtesy of the charred corpse of Aunt Beru.

What?  It’s not like the Lars family was going to be drinking it anymore.  It was just sitting there on the table.

Megaman 10 is out.  Rockman continues to cry at the injustice.

For those of us still clinging to the nostalgia of our 80s roots (and who really isn’t these days?) and were feeling a little like we got repeatedly crotch-punched by the last fanboy-pleasing offering, Capcom once again gives us the retro-NES-looking goodness of Megaman 10.  While the last installment offered Proto as DLC, this time he comes ready-to-play, with Bass being the DLC character this time around.  All of the graphic and gameplay charm of 9 returns, but this time you can save yourself a cranial bruising from beating your head against the wall – Megaman 10 includes an “easy mode”.  Meanwhile, the Japanese continue to laugh at us while they exist in their superior universe.

Final Fantasy XIII also came out this week.  World buckles at the contradiction.

I stopped playing this series a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away…), sometime after X or XI or XVIC or whatever that one was with the different characters (stupid Roman numerals).  I’ve read that there have been a few changes, one of which is that the battle system is set up similar to Advent Children.  I’ve heard mixed feedback.  A few of my friends seem to enjoy it, while a few others do not.  And still a few other others are still wondering how there are thirteen of them when it’s the “Final Fantasy” (and even more when you count the spin-offs).  I still maintain that three six is the best one Square has ever done, and they will never be able to top just how well that game is.

The new Tron Legacy trailer is online.

Some of you may be a wee bit too young to remember the movie that put CG animation on the map and laid the groundwork for what Spielberg, Cameron, and Pixar are doing today in film.  Tron didn’t pull in a very large box office when it opened back in 1982, but it has since gained a cult following – enough of one that Disney finally greenlit a sequel last year.  Jumping on the viral marketing bandwagon, Disney has kept the details scarce on this new movie, but has made discovering the details rather fun and exciting.  Most recently, people around the world had the opportunity to go on hide-and-seek missions to find an individual wearing a “Flynn Lives” t-shirt in several major cities around the globe.  The reward?  Exclusive swag, and the ability to unlock an online page that featured dates and locations for a “secret” showing of the new trailer for Tron Legacy.  For those who could stand to wait a few extra days, the trailer went online for everyone this week.  And it is badass.

Speaking of movie trailers…

I’ve got two words for you: “briefcase armor”:

One of these things is not like the other…

Word has it that John Krasinski has landed the role of Captain America for the new Marvel film.  You may know him from the American version of “The Office”.  The rest of you may know him as the guy completely wrong for the part.

And that concludes this broadcast day!  I know I said before that I would be making stuff up, but I decided not to… or, at least not entirely.  One of the things I mentioned above is not at all true (or is close to the truth but not true).  Can you figure out which one?  Ooohh!  Puzzles!  I’m guessing that this one won’t be enough of a challenge to keep you busy until next Thursday, will it?

Probably not.

There’s nothing special about The Don.  He’s just an ordinary program.

…hooboy!  Look at the time!  Sorry, lads and lasses.  There will not be a full “Office” install this week.  Partly because I’m in the process of backing everything up so I can do a full install of Windows 7 on my lappy (See what I did there?  Tied it all together with cleverity!).

I also had another project come up that needed done ASAP.  And in another clever, M. Night Shamalamadingdong twist, I can use this moment to shill that project to all you fellow Spwugnerians in this space:

I’m currently working for my film friends at Darkstone Entertainment writing episode blurbs for director John Johnson’s new Choose-Your-Own Adventure web series called “Spade”.  Episodes air every other Thursday, with the first episode airing two weeks ago.

That means the second episode is online now!  At the end of each episode, viewers are given a choice as to how they want the plot and/or characters to proceed.  All they have to do is make with the clicky on the choices that are presented.  Then, two weeks later, the option that won the most votes will appear as the next episode.

I give you your first taste with episode 1:

And here’s the newest episode!  Vote and choose what you would like to see happen next!

See you next week with a regular installment!

Welcome to this week’s post!

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First up, a couple movies I caught earlier this afternoon:

First was The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s latest animated feature. This film went back to Disney’s roots, using a traditional hand-drawn animation style and incorporating multiple character-sung songs. It also introduces Disney’s first African-American princess, Tiana. Overall, I think the movie was great; it was definitely following in the footsteps of their previous animated musicals, like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. I’m even thinking about picking up the soundtrack.

After Princess was the just-released Avatar. Being James Cameron’s first non-documentary film in twelve years (since 1997’s Titanic), there has been a major amount of hype generated which I believe it lives up to. I enjoyed it greatly. There were no parts that appeared to drag on to me. The CG was probably some of the best I’ve ever seen. The Na’vi looked so realistic that at times I was thinking that they had painted the actors blue and digitally manipulated their performances instead of them being full-CG creations. This film takes what was done for Davy Jones and his crew in Pirates of the Caribbean and raised it to a whole new level. Now since these were only humanoid alien characters, the movie easily managed to keep out of the uncanny valley, so I’m really curious about what the technology will be able to do when it comes to rendering regular human characters.

I will definitely be picking up both of these when they’re released on Blu-ray.

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I finally got around to ordering a copy of the full version of Windows 7 Professional. I hope to get it installed sometime after the holidays. Meanwhile, the RC is still going strong on both of my systems.

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We’re full-on into the holidays, and Christmas is only a week away. I’m sure some people will be doing the long-distance traveling thing to see family, and I just want to tell you to be sure to travel safely. Make sure your vehicle is good to go, especially if you’re traveling to locations where you might experience winter weather. Tires (proper pressure, good tread), make sure your windshield washer fluid is topped off, don’t let your fuel get to too low of a level, etc. Be aware of road conditions, watch out for other drivers that think they need to be wherever they’re going faster than you; there has also been reports of newer LED traffic signals getting covered up due to them not generating as much heat. Get there and come back safely.

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That’s it for this week’s post. Enjoy whatever your holiday of choice is!

Welcome to this week’s post of my Geek Journal!

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Sorry for the last of a post last week, I was following the standard holiday herd mentality and visiting family for Thanksgiving. I hope everyone reading this had a good Thanksgiving as well.

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While I was visiting said family, I was able to go see Mannheim Steamroller in concert again thanks to them having a show in Detroit on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I had managed to see them in my local area last year, but they chose not to come back this year (my bet it was the area’s traffic that did this). I had my mom join me for the concert and she enjoyed it as well.

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Gotten from an IRC chat that I spend time in, I give to you 25 Hilarious WiFi Network Names. Note that this may not be safe for work. It gave me the idea to set up an access point with the name “The Black Hole” and have it constantly dump all traffic sent to it.

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That’s all for this week’s post!

Welcome to this week’s post of my Geek Journal!

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Sorry about the lack of a post last week, I was quite busy helping the Tech Crew of Nekocon’s Main Events room. It was very tiring, but I’m happy to say that most things went off without a hitch.

I almost missed making this post as well; between almost getting swept away by the nor’easter that came out of the remnants of Ida (ok, not really, but I did see quite a bit of flooding), and keeping myself busy with some coding I had been meaning to do (when my power wasn’t out due to the former), I’ve been busy these past few days.

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Still running the release candidate of Windows 7; I’m hoping to be able to hold off changing over the release version until I get my new system built sometime early next year. Speaking of my new system, I decided that I’m going to try to go for one of the new six-core i7 processors instead of the current quad-core versions. Yeah, I currently don’t know what I’d do with all of them (with HyperThreading, it makes a total of 12 virtual cores), but I’m sure I’ll find something.

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I’m a fan of the TV series Numb3rs, and while the producers try to do their research, they don’t always get things right. Take, for instance, last week’s episode: The FBI is trying to find a couple of hackers and one of the characters suggests that they keep an eye out on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for them. Now IRC is real, but some of the things mentioned about it in the episode aren’t completely true. The episode makes it seem like there’s only one IRC server on the internet (there are hundreds of different IRC networks, if not thousands), that it’s totally anonymous (not true on most networks), nothing is tracked (again, not true, some channels on IRC have bot programs whose purpose is to track stats of the channel), and that all users speak leet (yet again, not true; a lot of users just chat normally in their language of choice). Just remember that this is a TV show and sometimes (or most of the time) the facts are stretched to keep things interesting. Not to say that there aren’t IRC networks out there where this stuff isn’t true, but it is usually not the norm.

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That’s it for this week’s post!

Welcome to this week’s post of my Geek Journal!

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Ah, Hallowe’en Eve, otherwise known as Devil’s Night in the metro Detroit area where I grew up. Not that I did anything bad, but I did always look forward to the local cable company’s attempt to limit the chaos by making all of the pay-TV channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc.) free to view for that one evening. I wonder if they still do that…

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted about components I’d like to upgrade my computer to when the time comes, one of which was the monitor. I forgot to mention a couple of additional aspects I’d like to see in the next monitor I get: LED backlit (like I mentioned for the next TV I’d like) and multi-touch support (got to make the most of Windows 7 whenever I get it ^^). You hear that Dell? Make me proud!

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It appears that the wave that Nintendo has been riding since the release of the Wii may have finally crashed upon the shore: It was recently posted that their profits weren’t as high as expected. A local news anchor commented that it may be due to the Wii’s popularity: Everyone already has one.

Nintendo also announced the DSi XL, which is exactly what its name implies: It’s an enlarged version of the DSi. Besides having larger screens (still having the same resolution as the DS and DSi, meaning the pixels will be VERY BIG), it comes with a larger stylus. This may be mainly to make it more accessible to older people who have a hard time seeing the smaller screens and holding the standard (and quite thin) stylus.

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There are indications that Sony is at work on the PSP 4000, which will continue to support UMDs. I guess many people didn’t like the PSPgo’s lack of it. Sony may make the 4000 more go-like, to include built-in storage.

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Netflix also announced the near-future availability of their Watch Instantly service on the PS3. At the start, a special Blu-ray disc will be used to access it (free via the link), but it appears that Sony will add built-in support in a future (sometime in 2010) firmware update. I (and others) wonder if this will force Microsoft to remove the X-box Live Gold requirement on the 360’s version. There are also indications that the service may become available on the Wii as well.

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The next Final Fantasy XI update is close, with a release date of Monday, November 9th. This is also when the third mini-expansion, “A Shantotto Ascension”, goes live (it became available for pre-order earlier this week). SquareEnix did a pre-update update yesterday, downloading around 1700 files totaling 30MB in size.

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That’s it for this week!

Welcome to this week’s posting of my Geek Journal!

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Apologies that this is being put up so late; I just got back from Busch Gardens.

Howl-O-Scream was good, though Don and I found that the Scare Zones were kind of lacking compared to what we remember from previous years. We did manage to make it through all of the Mazes, but had to pass on the Shows (I may try to make it back this or next weekend to catch them on my own). We’re still disappointed that BG has continued to not do the haunted train ride.

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Windows 7 has finally been released. I haven’t yet gotten around to ordering a release copy for myself, as the RC is doing quite well for me and I want to wait a little while before doing the actual switch. I’m also hoping that I might be able to find a copy of the full version (not upgrade) for less that was the current retail price is (I want to get Pro, which is currently $300).

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That’s it for now, as I’m really worn out from BG. ^^

Another Friday is upon us, so that means it’s time for another post to my Geek Journal!

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First, I would like to give congratulations to Richard and Katy for their marriage to one another this past Saturday. I’m glad I was able to be a part of the craziness that ensued that night.

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It appears that Sony has decided to let the US have access to the 250GB PS3 Slim… I may have to jump at that since I’ve been having so many issues with my 60GB model. Too bad that means I’ll have to give up PS2 support.

There are rumors starting to surface concerning the possibility of Nintendo releasing an HD version of the Wii sometime in the future. They may finally started feeling pressure from their HD-supporting rivals. Of course, who knows (besides Nintendo) if this is true or not?

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Being a computer geek (among other geeky things), I’m always on the lookout for newer things I can use to upgrade my system and then forcing myself to not buy them (so hard to resist at times!). I usually try to do a major system upgrade every three years or so, and this coming May happens to the three year anniversary of when I upgraded my system last. Current plans:

CPU – An Intel Core i7 processor, most likely the 920, as that appears to give the best bang for the buck: It runs at 2.66GHz, but there have been reports of it being overclocked quite high without the need of expensive cooling.

Motherboard – This is still up in the air right now, but I’m hoping to be able to hold out for one that has native support for USB 3.0 and third-gen SATA (eight ports at least).

Memory – Right now, 4GB has been doing quite well for me, but for my next system, I’m planning on pushing that to either 6GB or 12GB.

GPU – I already upgraded my video card from an ATI 1950 to an ATI 4870 1GB, so I’ll probably not worry about changing this anytime soon.

Storage – I’m already good on HDD storage (4.75 TB and counting; someone has to make backups of the Internet ^^), but I’m thinking that I may finally look into getting a Blu-ray drive. Still not sure if I’ll get one that can burn them.

Monitor – Ah, Dell 2405FPW, you have served me well these 4.5 years I have had you, and you currently show no signs of giving up on me. I have thought about getting one of your younger siblings (the 2408), but for now I think I’ll stick with you. Now that I think of it, getting the newer one would be nice, allowing a side-by-side setup… *drool*… Must… resist!

TV – Ok, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Why would he include a TV in a computer upgrade?” Well, right now I’m using my TV as a second monitor (great for multimedia stuff). I did just upgrade it earlier this year, but I figure that it wouldn’t hurt to include what it’d take for me to consider getting a newer one: 3D support (hopefully one standard will prevail out of the multiple that have been mentioned lately by Sony, Panasonic, etc.), and the display itself using OLEDs (awesome contrast ratios, but right now still too small, way too expensive, and the life is not yet good enough) or an LCD back-lit with LEDs (better contrast than cold-cathode lit LCDs due to the ability to locally dim single or groups of LEDs).

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That’s it for this week’s post!

…congratulations to Richard and Katy, the supreme rulers of the Spwugniverse!!!!!

They are the essence of everything that is Spwug.  Without either of them, this site wouldn’t be here to bring you a daily dose of all things geek.

It was an honor and a privilege to witness the joining of these two forces of good.  They are my friends.  They are my family.  I am proud to be the head writer of something they envisioned, and I am proud to be a part of their lives.

My best wishes to both of you, Pocky Rich and Katy.  Here’s to bigger and greater things.  With your powers combined, anything is possible.

Welcome to this week’s entry of my Geek Journal!

It looks like all the leaked ads and rumors were true: Nintendo announced the $50 price drop on the Wii yesterday, and it’ll take place this Sunday. It remains to be seen if this will help them take back the top spot among the current generation consoles.

Also yesterday, SquareEnix announced that the next update for FFXI will be coming in November. This will most likely also be when the final (at least for now) mini-expansion, “A Shantotto Ascension“, will be released. Like the first two mini-expansions, it’ll probably be available for purchase sometime in October, but won’t be activated until the November update. It’ll be interesting to see what else is included in this coming update.

While on the subject of Final Fantasy, go check out the trailer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers from Tokyo Game Show. It’ll be released on the Wii sometime this December.

Being my friends’ (and Spwug’s?) usual go-to geek when it comes to computers, I try to keep up with software updates for my and my friends’ computers. This allowed me to notice that the version WordPress used on Spwug’s site was fairly out of date and thus spring into action to remedy this. I worked with site owner and good friend Richard Kim to get the latest version of WP installed, which closed several vulnerabilities and exploits, and also got the database backed up to boot. Readers won’t notice any real changes to the way the site is presented, but now it’s better protected from the “bad people” out in cyberspace. My recommendation to anyone else making use of any blogging or forum software: Keep things up to date and do backups!

That’s it for this week’s post!