Ian's Quintessential Blog Opens Today

Hello again. I spent 12 hours searching for a new backup blog when I finally got one. I modified it heavily into a blog template which became known as Ian’s Quintessential Blog v1.0. I got the word ‘quintessential’ from Quintessential Player. I thought the word was cool. Anyways, this webpage wasn’t going to be on my Geocities site since the upload manager sent me invalid html responses. I had this problem before with them. So I joined 0catch.com today, and I got 100 MB server space free! I find only 1 thing wrong with it….the host webpage doesn’t believe in putting adds on the bottom of the webpage. The ad banners makes my webpage look out-of-line!



Here’s how the webpage is suppose to look (snapshot taken from my HD)







• Full entry backup of Modblog

• New photos up later today or Monday

• Link to Guest book and forum

• 100% new material!

• Image loading screen (nice!)



I finally got a guest book post from Sega Slayer, owner of http://segasucks.com. I visited his page back in 2003. He’s an anti-Sega propagandist! He was very mean. He says he hates my webpage for he couldn’t figure out what it was for, and even my blog. I have no idea how me found my post about him in October 2003? Did I send him a full link?



New Playstation 3 Info



Sony, one of the Blu-Ray founders, is rumored to incorporate a BD-ROM into Playstation 3. This will transform 10s of millions of gamers into Blu-ray users. Single layer Blu-Ray discs can carry 25 Gigabytes of data. This is perhaps the most exciting part of the Playstation 3. DVDs can only carry 4.7 GB, and HD-DVDs (AKA DVD9) can carry twice that much. The first generation of BD-RWs for PCs are out already, but it won’t be practical for home use until next year. 1x BD-RWs can burn approx. 36MB per second to disc. 2x BD-RW can burn approx. 72 MB per second. The discs must cost 10 dollars each! They will probably read CDs and DVDs. Currently, some DVD burners will only yet you burn 4.5 GB of data on DVDR. Games don’t need that kind of space unless it were for going to put several PS2 games on one BD disc, then it would be practical. Blu-Ray discs could hold a higher resolution of video. A good resource for BD-ROMS are at http://blu-ray.com. Four of those 23 GB discs would be more than my external hard drive! That’s amazing! The successor of the DVD is in question right now. Both will be available next year, but only one will be a universal format for home video. Even the HD-DVD9 will be enough for a 2 hour movie, and with MPEG 4 video compression, you’ll think it’s the greatest thing that ever came to your television! I’m going with Blu-ray because it holds twice as much data. I’m sure someone will figure out that they can incorporate both blu-ray and HD-DVD into the same drive. If I don’t get an Xbox Next for Xmas next year – it’s got to be a blu-ray drive!



This morning I've read Game Informer Magazine’s August issue had one review in it talking about blu-ray discs. I know where they got their information. It was from E-week.com. I had fun reading the Japanese port of Star Ocean: Til the Ends of Time. That games finally out in Japan after 2 years of delay! I own Star Ocean II yet haven’t played it yet. For one the old game (released in 1999) is just that – it’s outdated and still looks like the SNES game, Star Ocean! Yay! Another Xenogears clone! Anyways, the game is rumored to be two DVDs! The largest game ever! It’s being shipped on August 30th. I have to get my priories straight. For one, I’m not done with Final Fantasy X-2 yet. I have yet to start other RPGs like Grandia Xtreme and Suioken III. The first PS2 I bought, Xenosaga, I got lost in 6 months ago so I stop playing it all together. It wasn’t that the game was really bad. I kept going into places where I was stuck going nowhere. I had my walk-through-doors action replay cheat on so I could access restricted areas so it would speed up this game (it was going on forever!). However, in Xenosaga, going through some doors makes the game go back to previous scenes. In short, if this happened without a recent game save, I was screwed. I like the game for what it was and not because it was perfect. It was heavily story based. I play for 5 minutes and another cut-scene activates. After 10 of them in 1 hour, I came to except a cut scene every 10 minutes, and if I didn’t get one, something wrong happened. Xenosaga is a cross between Robotech, Final Fantasy VIII, and Macross. I remember Robotech appearing on Cartoon Network. The game has no FMV, and all the games cut-scenes are in real-time. This is fine, but I rather have FMV mixed in. And, yes, I was reading Playstation 1 and 2 reader reviews off IGN.com for several hours this morning.



Here is a list of new games on my list



1. Doom 3 (PC) Genre - FPS

2. Star Ocean 3 – ‘Til the Ends of Time (PS2) Genre – Action RPG

3. Splinter Cell 2 (PC) – FPS / Stealth

4. Metriod Prime 2 Echoes (Gamecube) - FPS

5. Halo 2 – (Xbox) FPS

6. Tales of Symphonia (Gamecube) Turn Based RPG

7. Conker Live and Uncut – Action Platformer



That’s enough games for now. I probably will get Doom 3, and the rest have to be waited in line for I have to get a PDA so I can play roms! Games or Pocket PC? Pocket PC! TechTV, err…G4-TechTV’s Fresh Gear showed how excited they were about the Zire 78 Palm Based PDA. It has a 1 mega-pixel digital camera in it. I would say wow except I have a 3.3 mega-pixel Sony digital camera, and it’s starting to get a little old, 2 years this November. The image quality is questionable. It doesn’t take very good pictures in dim lighting without the flash. Sometimes the flash doesn’t go off. The D-pad’s center is hard to press down sometimes. I am missing 1 64-meg flash card. I really need to find it. I hate taking 8 pictures, and have to upload them to my PC! I’ll be 15 years until a Giga-pixel camera comes out. Anyhow, anymore then 5 Mega pixels will not look any better on the Internet, unless it’s a very high quality JPEG at 1600x1200. I have a feeling I keep using the one I have for another 5 years or until it breaks.



Enjoy