Stew Blog

I completely forgot I had a blog… So this is me attempting to revive this clanky old thing.

I had a job over the summer! Had. I lost it, and I’m still not 100% sure why. But meh, working on game projects now, and I’ll find something new

Been gaming heaps, obviously. But retro gaming, catching up on all the games I missed out on. I have a red PSP, which I’ve been playing heaps of FFVII and VIII on. Been getting into the PS3 much more too, even got my copy of Bioshock 2 on it. Speaking of which, I’ll do a quick review in the next week. Came with a freaking vinyl record

I’ll be needing to update the computer soon, Win7 RC is going to run out soon. But I need a new HDD to install it on, so that I have something I can fit all my Steam games on. Speaking of Steam, the new UI update is slick. Some improvements could be made, but I really like it anyway.

Pokémon HearGold and SoulSilver next month, as well as FFXIII. I’m going to be busy with JRPGs this March… Really looking forward to Pokémon, though. I still remember when I got Gold, I played it all night, when my parents dragged me along to a friends place for dinner and games. I just laid down on their couch and got… 3 gym badges. Still my favourite in the series, really looking forward to replaying the game

My Nerf collection has just exploded. I have, in order of size, the Reflex, Nightfinder, 2 Mavericks, FuryFire, Recon, Raider and Vulcan. Looking forward to actually finding a Longshot for myself, and I’m excited for the Longstrike coming out soon. Will finally be able to use my Nerf guns in a real fight next week, for Humans vs. Zombies! Expect photos.

That’s about it, really. I’ll try get some more stuff to post soon, but in the meantime…

Came across a lucky find today- Nerf ‘Mission’ kits! All 3 of them at Myer, only got the two though. The reflex sight, and the scope. Going to do a quick review on both!

First off is the reflex sight, or the ‘pinpoint sight’ as they call it. It’s damn cool, but I have to admit, not exactly useful… considering Nerf isn’t good for pinpoint accuracy in the first place. But it does make it easier to line up your gun to a target, it made the Recon more accurate on a horizontal line, vertical always seems to depend on power behind the gun.

Recon with the reflex sight

This is the actual sight, the dot...

Verdict: I like it, but more for style.

Other one is the scope. Disclaimer – no magnification. Though, I do hope I can figure out how to modify it so it does. Otherwise, this is just another thing to add style to the Nerf gun.

Scope put on the Recon, with the front flap open

Just a shot of the entire Recon with the scope.

The one I didn’t get was the night light, which is really just a green LED, so not terribly useful, might get it for a review anyway. But otherwise, these two additions are great for giving your Nerf gun some character!

Just wanted to ramble about all the crap in my mind, rather than keeping it in my head and letting it swirl…

Mostly just feeling insignificant in the universe… which is fair enough, I really am. You know the whole ‘why does anything matter, I’m like a speck of dust on the shelf that is the universe, I have no effect on anything’ sort of mindset. And don’t worry, I’m not feeling like that now, just throwing it out there. When really, that statement is true… with context. The context of viewing the entire universe at once, that is. In that context, sure… you can’t change anything significant. But how about, in the eyes of family and friends? Yes, you can change everything. Our perception can pretty much be summed up as a field of vision… you can only take in so much at once, anything more is left to the imagination, or you just don’t even realise it enough to care.

But say, you can change the universe… how would you? Most of the time, we only think of, say, changing physics, or destroying the universe… (on a seperate, but somewhat related point, if you _did_ destroy the universe, can you really say, scientifically, that you changed the universe, if you also destroyed everything capable of observing a change?). We can’t really fathom how we’d change the universe any other way, because we don’t understand it… what we do understand is everything right in front of us, that constantly changes. People, society… environments, colours. Even when something is constant, we can suddenly notice it by a change in focus within ourselves (see what I did there?). This all gets into time, which is not a point I want to get into… right now.

But basically, we’re creatures of society. We used to be creatures of survival… taking care of ourselves primarily. Now, we’re evolving together, through society and technology. I want to focus more on society in this post, though. We define ourselves based on clichés and terms we made ourselves. We categorise, that’s how we understand things easier. We’re successful, or losers, based on common terms made by people. But more importantly, we feel we need to be judged by those who are close to us… friends, family. Because it’s trust that can’t be commonly defined… where we find trust can’t really be categorised, or clichéd.. trust comes from places we don’t expect it. We’re social creatures, and we’re only human… we live our lives in our own heads, sharing it with other people, people that we trust. Getting all existential doesn’t really matter, because in the end, we’re aiming too high in what we expect to comprehend… what we’re supposed to understand is right in front of us. Trust, love, hunger, fear, anger, happiness… emotion, basically. Emotion is the driver, humanity is just the vessel. Our destination? Well, that’s another can of worms.

If you read the whole thing, please comment… there are only a few people I actually expect to read this, but I’d like more thoughts on all this

So yeah, Xbox red ringed, so I got an Xbox 360 Elite. Loving it. Might do a mini-review when I’m not so knackered… Might ramble about the chatpad too

Beatles : Rock Band vocal harmonies are really fun. Especially because I can switch what I’m singing – lead vocals to harmonies. Just a shame my drum kit for Rock Band is on it’s way out too…

That’s about it, still going to do Nerf reviews soon, I guess I’ll start with the Vulcan. Anyway, good night internet.

Well, today, I got a second wireless mic for the Xbox 360 (need a mic stand ;_;) and a Nerf Vulcan.

Thinking of doing some reviews on my Nerf gun collection, which would be – Nite Finder, Maverick x2, Recon, Hornet and as of today, the Nerf Vulcan. Let me know in comments what you want to happen first!

Need to get Fiona over to test out the second mic and harmonies in Beatles RB . Will post the verdict on here too.

Been a tiny bit busy lately, but I thought I’d just post on things I’ve been doing lately.

Got The Beatles : Rock Band recently, and it’s amazing. Was never a huge Beatles fan (always liked their music, just never got into them), but this game alone has made me appreciate their music even more. The game is same old Rock Band, but with a strong Beatles influence, with art and, obviously, music, making the game fun and fresh. I’ll be getting another wireless mic for the Xbox 360 tomorrow, and I’ll post about how the vocal harmonies play out.

And that brings me to my next point; the Xbox 360 wireless microphone. Looks awesome, 18 hour battery life (apparently, haven’t used it enough to tell), and the LEDs on it just look pretty. Major gripe? The fact it has ‘works with Rock Band 2!’ on it, but in actuality, it doesn’t. The patch is still unreleased, so I wasted a good 10 minutes trying to make it work… Hopefully that patch will come out soon.

That’s about it for now, might do a review of ‘AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard for Gravity’ soon, though.

New website, new theme (which I intend to tweak the hell out of), and hopefully, new content

Thanks to Jaeryl for the new (sub)domain, and I hope to do more with it all soon! Expect a showcase of my stuff soon.

Lastly, if there’s any links I’ve missed, tell me, I’ll add them as I go.

Well, I couldn’t wait for iPhone 3.0 any longer… I jailbroke my iPhone. But, it’s not all bad. I installed a few themes, with the Team Fortress 2 RED theme being my fave so far.

All my games, with the TF2 RED logo and theme.

You can also see the new ‘OPTUS’ service logo, and the weather in the top bar. Also, the obvious 5 columned SpringBoard, which I quite like, even if it is a little cramped.

This is quite cool too

The RED logo there too, and the Control Point capture indicator as the battery charge. I’d love if I could change the font to the TF2 font…

The things I installed through the Cydia App Store

Here’s where I had a lot of fun; unofficial 3rd party apps. So I have the ability to tether my phone to my laptop via wifi, so I can use the iPhone as a 3G modem. I can turn apps on/off, finally removing that pesky stocks app I never use. And bluetooth file sharing, which didn’t work too well, yet. And, as already demonstrated, WinterBoard, a theme customiser for the SpringBoard (see the pun? ha).

I’m actually glad I jailbroke my iPhone, but I only see this as temporary for now. I like having a cherry iPhone, even if that means the system is closed off.

A random conversation with my Mum on MSN the other day made me realise… a lot of things we take for granted today, things we use without probably realising it, are converging to be based around the internet. These days, we can have push email to be a substitute for SMS (though, I have to admit, I just managed to set this up on my iPhone, it’s not perfect yet), VoIP for phones, with Skype being on some of the major smartphone platforms. Youtube, and other internet video sites (I think it’s called Hulu, but Australia doesn’t have it yet… if ever) are replacing TV slowly, but surely. You can even rent movies on iTunes and other places. Steam lets consumers buy games and download them through the internet. Hell, I even ordered pizza from Dominos online the other day.

Is it a good thing? I’m not sure, it makes everything convenient, and it’s not like the internet can easily go down in one big hit. If that were to happen, I doubt we’d be worrying about how to order pizza, or which movie to rent over iTunes, but rather, finding a place to stay safe from the nuclear fallout. But we all know, the services I listed are mostly for entertainment and communication. What about the other stuff? Like financial, or business? They’d be screwed.

But maybe I’m looking at this way too superficially. Maybe the internet isn’t something that’s a phase that’ll pass with time. Who knows though. Phones are becoming more and more obsolete as technology advances. But seeing as we’re drifting towards a digital future, I think the internet is almost certainly going to be something that will never disappear, at least not completely.

Personally, I love it. I use the internet quite extensively. It’s interesting drawing comparisons to older technology though. Like, my Google Reader is like a newspaper, but I choose the content (and unlike a newspaper, I read it everyday). iTunes is my media library, instead of having lots of CDs and DVDs cluttering my room. Steam is my collection of games, that lets me track achievements and friends. And when I’m out and about, my iPhone becomes a personal assistant, giving me internet, email and IM anywhere (as long as Optus allows it =.=).

http://stewpenguin.alumnaie.net

There’s my website, showing off all the current consoles on the market, sorted by company. I used notepad for the HTML and CSS, using resources on the internet, either asking friends or looking up tags on google. I tried to use CSS for formatting as much as possible, but ended up using a table for aligning text where I wanted to. The colours worked on the browsers I tried, except for IE, which messed up spacing and colours a little. But it still worked on Firefox and Safari for me, I forgot to test in Chrome, but seeing as it uses a similar renderer to Safari, I’d assume it works there too. Obviously, in a much more professional project, I’d test thoroughly on all browsers, but this is a casual topic, and decided to cater for browsers I think that my target audience would use.

Video games are a knowledgeable  topic for me, and as much as I would’ve liked to do all the consoles in existence, I wanted to keep the site minimalistic. Using plain colours for the website, with brighter colours making important bits of data stand out, and using a very standard layout for the data, with a banner, navigation bar and a tiny footer with more information, like links to more sites, or just more information on the generation and why I chose the topic.

I chose to cater more towards Firefox and Safari for my target audience, assuming they only use IE for downloading a new browser. Instead of having a huge, comprehensive site filled with data on video games, I chose to have something that would just be interesting to look at; more of a concept website than a useful one. I took the time to make things line up, and tried for a subtle way for a person educated in video games to know which brand they’re looking at. I wanted to avoid nitty gritty data, like which console has which CPU, how many SKUs each console has. I only went into detail about major hardware revisions, such as the DSi, and the latest update for the PSP.

I built a template for the website first, getting the layout just right. I decided to use images in the nav bar instead of text, to force the user to see the 8-bit-esque font, and to help with the spacing. The background images came about asa way of making the website feel a little more inhabited. Orange is a personal favourite colour of mine, and it contrasts well with grey, which may be overdone in websites, but I find it handy for making a website have my own personal touch. Also, orange and grey don’t have a direct connection with any consoles on the market, with them being either black or white.

More than anything, I used this assignment to learn more about CSS, and to brush up on my HTML. I was rather surprised with the quality of the result, as well as the amount of HTML I remembered.