To be Wild Blue user! | Saved up $140 toward purchase of Playstation Portable

Only 2 months until my place gets Wild Blue! Wild Blue is a state-of-the-art two-way satellite service supporting up to 2 mbps downlink costing 70 dollars whereas it’d be a lot more money with DirecWay. We’re getting either 1 Mbps or 1.5 Mbps service plan. Wild Blue is bringing the price down further than previously thought possible. Two way satellites use IPv4 Multicasting.

The Satellite

The Modem

Benefits of Multicasting:

• Multicasting can dramatically reduce network traffic by sending a single copy of the data.

• Hosts can be configured for multicasting without hardware upgrades.

• Because newer routers already support multicast forwarding and multicast routing protocols, enabling multicasting on a network is practical and cost-effective.

Multicasting is useful for many types of one-to-many applications, such as the following:

• Multimedia, such as video conferencing and collaborative computing.

• Automatic discovery of resources in an internetwork (in Windows Server 2003 for example, TCP/IP router discovery uses multicasting by default, and WINS uses multicasting during automatic discovery of replication partners).

• Datacasting such as file distribution or database synchronization.

• Mobile computer support such as remote address book updating.

• Distribution of organizational publications.

Satellite looks exactly like this and will go on top of our house next to our DirecTV satellite.

It’s faster than 3G broadband cellular services too which max out at around 386 kbps. The uplink is either 200 kbps or 300 kbps though. Since it’s a straight access internet, one person can use all the speed, and there isn’t a worry about cut ground wire. To my fortune, my father needs broadband at home for his business. The house is already wired for a second satellite dish. We’re asking for the 802.11G (54 Mbps) Wild Blue external modem which will be in my room mounted on a wall. There is no room on my desk for one and plenty of wall space in here. As a backup feature, RJ-45 is installed throughout our basement just in case. RJ-45 is dirt cheap. Wild Blue will be like WiMax countless ways.

After some thought and money to back it up, I am certainly going to buy a Playstation Portable when it launches. The PSP is more powerful than my NES, SNES, Genesis, Saturn, N64, GBA, Playstation, or Dreamcast. Yes, something that’s more powerful than Playstation 2 only handheld size! Though it’s in some ways more powerful than PS2. Once I said I had over 200 dollars saved up for PSP about four weeks ago when I went ahead and purchased both a PStwo and Xenosaga Episode 2…..now I have 140 dollars saved up for PSP again. PSP costs $250. By the time PSP is launched I’m taking out a maximum of $100. For showing off pictures or watching movies, some portable DVD player’s liquid crystal display won’t look as nice as PSP’s screen. Yes, PSP recognizes JPG, PNG or GIF on a SD card and will resize according to Engadget. I’m trying to be conservative with my saving account as much as possible and this problem where my savings account can’t pass $2000.

I’ve already read Engadget’s hands-on review of the Playstation Portable. Engadget suggests it easily feels like a 400 dollar electronic with a good weight and casing to it. The price tag for one of these in USA is now $200. They’ve brought up the issue concerning the long loading times with games and the noisy UMD drive. I suppose I can deal with these small annoyances. I needn’t to worry about dead pixels on the LCD screen, I’ve checked already. These turn color to red or black in pitch darkness. I’ve tried out my Dual Screen in the darkness to make sure there weren’t dead pixels. PSP will launch on March 24th. The shipping day is March 23rd. I won’t get mine until March 25th.

Playstation Portable Specs

• Widescreen, backlit 4.5-inch TFT LCD monitor with 16:9 aspect ratio and 480x272 resolution

• MIPS R4000-based 333-MHz CPU

• Graphics sub-system running at 166 MHz on a 512-bit bus with 2 MB of DRAM, rendering 664 million pixels per second and 35 million polygons per second

• Graphics engine supporting directional 16- or 32-bit color, lighting, clipping, environment projection and texture mapping, fogging, alpha blending, depth and stencil tests, vertex blending for morphing-style effects, and dithering

(Source: Hot Chips conference at Stanford University)

• Media processor using another 2 MB of DRAM

• 3-D graphics processing using NURBS (Nonuniform Rational B-Splines) as well as conventional polygon rendering

• USB 2.0 port, Memory Stick port, Universal Media Disc slot, stereo headphone jack and WiFi wireless LAN port

• Built-in stereo speakers

• Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries

• Weight: 280 grams (9.9 ounces)

• Dimensions: 17 x 7.4 x 2.3 cm (6.7 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches)

I’ve installed Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction and leveled my Barbarian to level 5 in the catacombs before I quit. I’ve had this problem with no music playing during the game. Winamp would actually stop making sound after Diablo 2 boots up, but I am getting sound effects in the game. To solve this tiny problem, I booted up my other computer which had Winamp installed and a DVD full of all the music I wanted and had my earphones connected to it so I could listen to music during the game. I haven’t played Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction for 5 whole months. I’ve had retreated from melee fighting many times into my teleportal to safety. I may be a yellow coward, but I’m coward who won’t loose his gold. There are plenty of looters around here. You know what happens to shed no fear players? They die and then they leave the game because no one will send a “TP” to them or they leave because they keep dieing when a horde of monsters are guarding their corpse. I don’t love this game any less from then I did then. It may have low-res graphics, but because it’s a fun multiplayer game which even works over a modem, I’m more than satisfied. There are plenty to do in this game to play all night. Thankfully, I rebooted the PC and the sound problem went a way. I leveled my barb to level 7.

Yesterday, I was playing were Super Mario Bros. 3 on Super Nintendo for the heck of it. That game was most interesting. A lot of classic platform memories here. It is said SMB 3 is the most beloved NES game. It also comes with Super Mario Advance 4, but I doubt I’ll get that. There’s no point is there? So I got pass the easiest boss. I’ve played SMB 3 twice in the pass 4 days. I am lazy thus I’d been posting reply messages on Carthaton Electronica because I find it fun. Someone gave me minus karma for not being nice to him. What’s the subject? Working at a game store, and thinking that’s great. I knew who gave me bad karma so instant messaged him asking him why? At first he didn’t answer than he asked if he and I were cool. In situations like these you’re either right or wrong so I told him go shove it! Yes, I made someone feel bad. I would have felt guilty except he gave me -1 karma why shall I apologize? That karma stained my perfect +114 karma. I’ve more karma than everyone put together on Carthaton because I’ve had posted about 35 game reviews and am the only other person besides the administrator with a 5 star rating. This particular guy lives in Ireland where games cost a pretty penny.

Devil May Cry 3 plays better than any one in the trilogy not because IGN gave it a high score, but since it truly does a remarkable job at balancing AI with Dante maneuvers. No one is getting cheated out of their money here. There are plenty of challenges ahead to seek in DMC3 #1 being staying alive when it would seem impossible to do so. In fact, I haven’t made it very far at all. It has heavy rock music so I was bothered by first, but what bothers me more is the unseemly difficult game play. I admit my skill level best when it comes to racing. This makes some other games I thought were difficult look like a pussy cat compared to this. At least the graphics and cut scenes were great and saw Dante get pierced with a sword each time he gains skills. Nothing I haven’t seen before in the first game although more frequent in DMC3. It’s been so long since I played DMC. The game looks gothic, but I’ve suspected this (reviews told me about it). This game is more consistent than DMC and I’d be died if I were unfortunate to backup against a wall. The best thing to do is to go berserk 95% of the time (keep moving & pressing the action button). I’ve picked gunslinger as my skill choice. Pretty good game all and all. I’ve heard Devil May Cry 2 was not up to par in graphics, game play or sound, so I’d skipped that game entirely. Okay, so what if it’s only $20! No sense buying a bad sequel, right?

I’ve at least earned 1 credit from the Visual Basic class. All I had to do in the first few chapters was follow the books instructions and copy files to new folders via the program. I missed a couple steps so I had to retrace my steps and got it right the second or third time. I’ve haven’t uploaded a RAR archive to the school in three weeks so I did that yesterday as well. Sometime doesn’t feel right though. Either I haven’t been reading enough or not retaining the information or both.

I wish there was something more to do than set in front of a computer or videogame all day doing homework or blogging or playing games. I will have to figure something to do tomorrow. I hardly watch local TV anymore.

[extension to original entry ]

Today (03/12), I did extensive reading online and was pondering about which games I wanted again. I bought 5 games today (only 1 used) including Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne made by Atlus I found at Toyriffic (last copy), and bought Full Specrium Warrior (a military shooter) and Burnout 3 (looked fun and it was on the top 5 most wanted games for Ps2), Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga for GBA.

This is Ian signing out.