So after having ‘lost’ my install disc for HalfLife2, I thought I had blown the $50 I’d spent on the game and would never get to play it on my our new Dell XPS machine. Well, in our ongoing nesting in preparation for the baby, I discovered the missing install disc in a CD case beside my bed. I’d literally torn my office (home and work) apart looking for this. Anyway, that let me install the game this morning. When I launched the game, I was expecting Valve’s Steam service to apply various patches, inform me what was new in them, etc. Read on to see the amazing set of realism enhancements they added to the game in the latest release.
Continue reading Half-Life2 Update Released
Category Archives: asides
Moblog & My New Treo 650
Yesterday, I became the proud owner of a Cingular Treo 650. This is an upgrade from my 2-year-old Sprint Treo 600. The biggest advantages of the new device is the muchly improved screen and backlit keyboard. The other advantage is that I’m on Cingular/AT&T’s network. The GPRS network from Cingular already seems to trump Sprint’s CDMA technology. And Cingular actually has an SMS system that works in timeframes of seconds, not hours. The other great feature is the higher-resolution camera. Shutterbug that I am, I had tried and failed to setup my old phone to transmit photos to my blog. But with the new phone, Versamail setup with my Trotz.com email, my account at Flickr.com, and good ol’ reliable Moveable Type, my mobile photo blog is now up and running. The picture quality won’t be great, but think of this as a modern take on Lomography. And it will probably be the first location we post pictures of Baby Trotz when that blessed event occurs!
Kudos to CNN
Nice to see my employer, CNN, getting a tip of the hat from USA Today. CNN has created the first regularly scheduled segment on the blogosphere. Seen weekdays during Judy’s Wooruff’s Inside Politics, the brainchild of new CNN head John Klein launched on February 14th. Klein is quoted:
“We want to demystify blogging,” Klein says. “We want to peel back all those layers and also do a reading of the blogs that our audience doesn’t have the time to do.”
I couldn’t agree more. Yeah, if you’re reading this blog you probably have already heard most of what they talk about each afternoon – but the segment goes a long way toward educating the other 99.999% of America what blogging is all about. PS – They are using a couple of spiffy Macs for the segment. What’s not to like! ;-).
Brothers in Arms out, Gets High Marks
The first review of the PC version of Brothers in Arms is out, and there are high marks all around. IGN.com offers up a 9.1 rating, and this closing paragraph sums up their take:
Like most of us here at IGN, I’m still a huge fan of Call of Duty and Battlefield 1942. While those games have their own unique strengths, Brothers in Arms takes some of the best features of each and adds an entirely new tactical dimension. Offering up engaging, squad-based battles and presenting it all in an authentic yet undeniably cinematic setting, Brothers in Arms is a game that, to borrow a phrase from General Patton, “grabs you by the nose and kicks you in the ass.”
Fedex.com reports that my copy arrived in the Atlanta sort facility last night, so there’s gonna be some Nazi-killing on the ol’ XPS 2nite!