Wednesday, December 31, 2003

Webcam in the near future.

Date: 12/31/03 at 4:30AM



Yesterday I went over to Best Buy with Bob and his friend, Mike. I was going to buy a webcam so I can do video with people over the Internet. I was planning to spend 60 dollars on it, but they are only 1 MEGAPIXEL. I had my eye on a certain webcam called EZCAM PRO III at Tigerdirect.com. It’s only 30 bucks, and it has all the features and high resolution of any 60 dollar deals at Best Buy. If I had a high speed connection, my webcam would be on all the time. I was going to buy some Gamecube games at BestBuy and didn’t. The game I want most is Beyond Good and Evil for consoles, it looks like a AAA class game! I almost got Project Gotham Racing 2 for Xbox. I own Project Gotham and it was good, but I don’t play it very often. Although it is an unfair comparison, Project Gotham looks better then Gran Turismo 3.



I saw Gothic II at Gamestop too, and was going to get that, but I heard the battle system is weird and not as good as Neverwinter Nights. So I didn’t. I know Grand Thief Auto 3 is a great game, but I already have it for PS2 so I don’t need to re-buy it. Bob is going to copy Vampire the Masquerades for me. I take any copied game I can get. Except I think Bob has a virus on his PC so I hope it doesn't affect the copy. I also saw Half-life Value Package for 30 dollars which included Half-life, and 4 expansion packs including the very popular Counter Strike. I never played Counter Strike. Mike is going to download it of the Internet, and give me a copy. Half-life is Bobs all time favorite game.



When we got to my house, I was disappointed to hear that they had to leave right away. I was hoping that I could host a LAN party for an hour. He is going to a party on New Years and I was invited but I'll be around many people I don't know and they'll be drinking so I may just stay home.



Today I woke up at about 3:30AM and I’m working on Xenosaga Episode 1. This game is the prequel of Xenogears. Unlike Xenogears, Xenosaga is about the human race at war with the Gnosis, these aliens kill humans just by touching one. The year is set about 2450, and we have warp speed, mech warriors, and KOS-MOS, a super hybrid android capable of destroying Gnosis. So far I’m 4 hours in the game. It’s fun. Sometimes I feel that there isn’t enough gnosis around to fight: [No fighting, no leveling up, no experience, no damage.] I don’t know about most people. I like watching the games cut-scenes. On the case, it says that this game is an 80-hour adventure; I plan to beat it in under 60 hours. The game has over 2 hours of cut-scenes. We know that Namco is making 5 sequels, all dated centuries before Xenogears. We know that the technology is lost and human kind is thrown back 600 years of technical achievement. It’s weird in the game Xenogears when you get “ancient technology” in form of giant mech machines. Was this game inspired by Gundam Wing? I like futuristic sci-fi games. They are cool. Who agrees with me?



Monday, December 29, 2003

Couldn't wait until 2004 to buy some games

Date: 12/29/03 at 2:15AM



This will be my last entry of the year 2003. I will always remember 2003 as the year I took two college courses and passed, and then re-took them over again just to make sure I was good at it. These courses included Intro to DOS, and my favorite, Intro to Linux. We where trained on Redhat Linux Professional 7.1. Both classes are required courses for someone wanting to be an industrial network specialist. I joined WITC 3 months after I graduated from HS. I got immediately transferred after high school to another college. College is cool, but I have too few of friends. I feel that people going to my classes aren’t really my type. That’s not bad though since Bob and I hang out once every too weeks. I also remember this being the year I bought 3 videogame systems this year, a ps2, a psone, and xbox and one handheld. I bought countless games. Much more then I should of. I just got today – a Game Boy Advance SP. The unit is really small and that alone amazes me. I had a GBA since 2000, which I barely played, except in high school. Now that I’m a ‘mature’ adult, I have places to go, people to see, no time for Gameboy Advance. I am a bit wiser then I was in high school. I plan ahead, and budget my money, although it is mostly spent on gas and videogames. I also mentioned what else I spent money on if you spent close attention to my blog.  I do now because I’m on Christmas Break. I don’t work. Gameboy Advance SP cost me 100 bucks. I’m broke as of now. I was going to get an Atari 2600 because its old school. I could have such “immortal” classic games like Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Pacman, Defender, Pitfall Harry, and Tron. Then the NES has improved graphics with the same ports. Improved sound for that matter. I almost forgot about my own GBA because I hardly even play it. GBA games are more expensive that’s what kept throwing me off. It was suppose to be awesome in the early 80s until the NES kicked it in the arse. The NES ruled from 1985 - 1991. I have a friend who owns a NES. With “immortal” classics like Super Mario Bros, I thought I going to own a NES. Then I soon realized at an early age, why spend money on outdated NES or SNES when I can have a “3D game machine.” (I wanted my own copy of Super Mario 64 really badly partly because I was only 12 at the time, and I thought N64 was cool.) Everyone else in the grade seemed to have either a Playstation or N64. Back when I was 12, I thought N64 was a huge gift for a Christmas present. I remember being over joyd at the site of owning it. My first two games where Star Fox 64 and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire.) Games I want for NES are Super Mario Bros. 1&3, Final Fantasy, Spy Hunter, Mega Man 1,3,4,6. It seems like a used NES will always be available if I eventually get one, but it stopped me because the graphics are so bad now, and I can play it on the PC through emulation anyway. After getting the latest GBA handheld, I don’t think I need a NES. I can go to a game specialist store any time, and buy any used GBA game I want. I realize that GBA games are somewhat more expensive then the old NES. Having the controller makes the experience more real. I can buy most of those games for GBA anyway. Plus GBA out sells PS2 3 to 1, I was beginning to wonder why. I disbelieve that Pokemon does all that!



Today I installed Unreal Tournament 2003 on all three of my computers. I can still kick ass in the skilled experience level. I have a small local area network (LAN) up and running. I was going to get the Xbox version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for Christmas. I originally wanted the PC version because IGN.com said it not only looked better, it had more stuff, and was longer. The two versions both had a 9.2/10 rating. The game was rated the Best Xbox RPG and Xbox Game of the Year by IGN.com, and Best Xbox RPG by Game Informer Magazine. It will be nice playing it on a fast Pentium 4 with a ATI RADEON 9800 and 1 GByte RAM :D. The game is made by the makers of Neverwinter Nights, Bioware.
Published on 11/29/03 | http://ian1984.Modblog.com



Today I am feeling good. I went to Bloogz.com where I found my name, ian1984, already listed under the Playstation 2 category. This was my first entry at Modblog.com, and I did not want a bot to list my page on Bloogz.com. It seems to me that this site has some trade offs. I don't care. That's not so important as what I found at a website called MoveableType.com. Moveable Type.com is an open source blog template that lets you search, categorize, autolink visitors, autoping visitors, and trace his/her route – exactly what Modblog does. I want to upload Moveable Type (MT 2.64) to http://geocities.com/nightwalkers101/ , but I haven't quite figured out how to make a template I could write on. I know how to load everything, that's not the problem. I'll figure it out sooner or later. I believe it uses php or xml, very unfamiliar territory. If it works in Dreamweaver, I can more then likely figure this one out.



So far I pulled in 14 hits with-in the first 4 hours of my page online. I love this place, I never had this much visitors through Geocities. Just could be the fact that everyone now knows I'm an Eagle Scout. Yep. I camped at temperatures below 32°F without any signs of frostbite. How did I do it? I was taught that you take everything off except for my underwear, climb in my sleepingbag with a winterjacket over me. And stay away from the Fire, I hate getting close to the fire because I always will get cold again when I'm away from it. That way I was slightly more cold then warm, but not sweating in my bag. Cold sweat is the worst. Every scout knows this because it comes right out the hand book.



It was June, two years ago, I also took swimming and life saving merit badges with Life Rank. (I was Patrol Leader that time.) Life saving merit badge was by far the worst. I had to go down 9 feet, save a dummy with team work while doggie pattling (dead man's float vertically) the whole time. You were down there for about 15 – 25 seconds moving around holding your breath. The water up there was about 50 degrees, and I felt numb when I got out. I remember that final weekend up at TrollHaugn Scout Reversation near Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Kayaking and the sailing were fun. Haven't done ither since then.

Sunday, December 28, 2003

PS2 makes me focased, but it makes school less ent

http://ian1984.Modblog.com | Date: 12/8/03 at 2:15AM



Sorry about the lack of updates. Playstation 2 makes me more focased, but makes school less interesting. I been working on homework. I was noglecting my webpage a bit. Semester is almost over at WITC. I dropped a few classes so it wouldn't go on my record. I have struggled through the electricity aspect of school. With computers, I also need to know how to use electricity, being there are many regulations on numbers of pcs, power sources, servers, that can be in one room. Everything has to come off the IEEE standard. As for my pesonal life ....



I finally got Kingdom Hearts for the PS2. I haven't played it yet. Kingdom Hearts combines Final Fantasy 7, 8, 10 and Disney characters in one game in a role playing game type fashion. What I should of done was buy Kingdom Hearts new, but I paid used, and got a game disk but no manel. The game is made by Squaresoft, and it got good reviews from some of Bob's friends. I'll review it here at this website soon. I'm going to return it tomorrow, and see if I can't get it new. I'm not going to play it until I finish Final Fantasy X-2. I'm almost done with Chapter 1. There are a lot of side quests in FF X-2, but I see it as I can play it straight through.



I went over to my friend Bob's place. His parents just bought him a Playstation 2 a week ago and the only game he got was ATV offroad racing. It's as I thought, newer Playstations have a newer version of drivers. I didn't know that the new PS2s have a modem adapter on them. Not that it was any different then mine. He likes Mature games. I asked him if he likes Summoner or Baldur's Gate Deadly Alliance. He came over 2 days ago where we went to a Game Store. I said buy Final Fantasy X, because it was a really cool game. He didn't want Stuntman, Spiderman or Rune. He ended up buying Baldur's Gate. It so happened that I owned it for Xbox and we played Baldur's Gate, he liked it too. Bob said he's getting the GTA Double Pack for X-mas. I let him barrow GTA Vice City, Madden 2002, and Devil May Cry for a week. I don't get a lot of time to play games with other people so it was great playing Madden with a friend. I was rusty. I lost to the Packers 21 Vikings 20. He owned Madden 64 so he knew Madden more then I. In 2000, I bought NFL 2K on Dreamcast, but that's 3 years ago already! However we played NFL-Europe teams .... and the Dragons (Me) won against the Claymores (him) 7 -5. We got even!



Bob has a speaker system that he hooks up to his computer that had Dolby Digital Pro Logic II and the surround speakers and it sounded great. I wasn't heart pumping, but it did sould better then two generic pc speakers. I then thought, hmm, I could get a tv tuner for my computer and play Playstation 2 on it. Higher resolution display makes it worth it to him. I'm getting my other pc fixed, installing a new motherboard. I was either going to get a new harddrive or tv tune. and I don't know which one is better. I don'tneed the space right

now. I bought a 100 Gigabyte harddrive and the I aleady have a slightly slower one installed.



The day before I had nothing to do so I drove over to Randy's house. He and I know each other. He was installing a sub speaker in his truck, but needed a board in cased with fiberglass to support the speakers. He wanted the richest sound he could possibly get without putting a lot of money in it. The sawing noise was *beeping* loud!

Thursday, December 25, 2003

Merry Christmas 2003

Date: 12/25/03 at 1:47PM



Merry Christmas to all bloggers! Well, I liked this Christmas okay, and it is much better then last year. Last year, my parents gave me money to build my own computer. The one that I fried a couple times over. I woke up at 2am in the morning, worked on the website some. Then I played Gran Transimo 3 for a couple hours until my parents woke up. We have a nice tree this year. I didn’t tell you about it. Well, it’s a spur (native to that of Wisconsin) with a lot of ornaments and lights. I only got one Christmas present under the tree, but that’s okay because I also got a third computer. This one is a Dell so I don’t know how well it’ll hold up. I’ll tell you that it’s one of those high end gaming machines. The specs are my secret for now Dad got a 4 year warranty so I better not touch it. I want too, but I will force myself to avoid the goodies if it comes at a cost. We had a bad time with Thunderstorms in the Summer. That time cost me 800 dollars, and that doesn’t count the time mother short circuited both because she had to shut off the electricity. That and the fact that I fied one computer using my hands. All my computers now have surge protectors. They like pay for themselves the first time something goes wrong.



In the past I couldn’t keep my hands out of the PC. I know how to install most everything, except for the processor, which I’m always afraid I’ll crack. If the PC doesn’t turn on, there is a 75% chance I fried the motherboard. In the future, I’m going to build cheap computers, that way I can afford to buy a new motherboard if I screw up. Everything else I can handle. I know where all the wires / cables go. I can flash the bios, and load the OS. Pretty soon I’ll build PCs for my friends for free once I’m 100% sure I can without damaging it.



Actually I have a lot of extra PC hardware lying around. I have extra parts to make one including two 128 MB SDRAM DRR Sticks. One Extra 40 GByte hard drive. One NIC card, one winmodem, one 128 MB XFX Geforce 4 slightly used! (There is a long story about that) One sound card. And a slightly used Athlon XP 1800. The stuff I don’t have is a 160 Volt power box, a Socket A motherboard, and a case (defiantly need one of those.)



Now, I bet you were wondering about how I have a perfectly good graphics card unused? For my Birthday, Dad got me a 256MB Geforce 4 and I didn’t need that Geforce4 anymore. The slowest computer that I have right now can only support up to 64 MB of video ram.

Monday, December 22, 2003

WinXP

Date: 12/22/03 at 3:18PM



Mood: Tired and lazy



In my opinion, Windows XP is a great operating system to have, but isn’t Microsoft charging to much for it? I have Windows XP Home on one PC and Windows XP Pro on the other. Windows 98 was also the ideal operating system to pirate because you didn’t need a crack to install it on multiple computers unlike that latest version of Windows. WinXP Home isn’t that much, only 100 bucks. WinXP Professional makes you cash out 200. Is that fair? Microsoft also has its XBOX bundle for 170 dollars, and that’ll cost meless then their Windows XP PRO. It’s near insanity how much Microsoft charges for their OS. But I already own a Xbox so that problem doesn't concern me any. Most of you must agree with me on this. The big question I always asked myslef is, Windows worth as much as it is? All the consumer gets is a upgrade disk. The full Windows Pro runs even more. The faulty deal consumers get when they buy Compaq or HP is that they don’t get an upgrade installation disc with their PC. What happens if you want to reformat your hard drive? Even worst, what happens if you don't even own Windows 98? And if you want Windows 2000, which is actually an earlier version of Windows, you will have to cash out an extra 300 dollars. Sure there are cracks on the Internet that will allow you to bypass the activation code, but doing so is wrong. I haven’t seen much difference between Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I play with Windows 2000 at school. I know there are some differences. Both both have NT file system. Windows 2000 has a better firewall, but I just use the Norton Firewall. Lucky for me, my dad had an extra Windows XP PRO lying around our house.



So, you forget Microsoft all together and run Linux *open source* OS with the latest free version of Winex, a program allowing you to run Windows Games on Linux by emulating the Windows kernel on Linux much like MS-DOS is emulated. WineX Website >> http://www.transgami...g.com/subhilites.php << There is not much you can do with Linux except surf the Internet and play MP3s. All the cool software is available for Windows. I hope one day WineX can emulate all Windows programs (and games), and one day make Microsoft lower it’s price on Windows because then everybody would soon realize Linux would be better. I take it that not all PC owners know that Linux exsists. Now, Wine can only emulate 33% of my Windows Programs, and still does a crappy job on emulating Diablo 2, but I can see that it does work. I wanted to see if Unreal Tournament runs good on it. I run Suse Linux 8.2 at home. I wonder what Project Greenhorn will be like? This is next generation Windows. This was why I did a Google search on it.



As for the rest of the day, it’s gotten very boring. None of my friends had the day off today, so I downloaded a few desktop themes mainly Final Fantasy VII, one Counter Strike desktop theme and one Legend of Dragoon desktop theme. I change desktop themes every month. Stayed home most of the day. Worked on the mod some. It's coming along. I wish I had feedback on it.

Action Replay Max is the way to go if you own PS2

Orginal entry date 12/1/03



I am 100% British. My name is Ian isn't it. I knew I had some Brit in me, Yot. I wonder how many Brits play PS2. What would be interesting, is if they played Xbox (which all of you should know is made here in US) What do the Brits like to do? Drink Tea? I hear Coca-Cola is big over there. Jolly Good! Take the quiz.









Jolly good, wot! Anyone for tennis? That'll be ten ponies, guv. You're the epitome of everything that is english. Yey :) Hoist that Union Jack!

How British are you?



this quiz was made by alanna




All of you may of noticed the Devil May Cry banner on my page. Although I have that game, it isn't one of my favorites. I thought that Devil May Cry, the first one was very successful, would appeal to the hardcore gaming community. Dante was a good idea which appeals to the hardcore gaming person. People who look at Rob Zombie videos would like this game. You'll never catch me watching Rob Zombie, System of the Down or Marilyn Manson videos on MTV. DMC2 wasn't so good. The first one had better graphics, better gameplay. I read a head, and didn't buy DMC2. A good site is http://www.gamerankings.com/.



If you want to cheat for your Playstation 2. I advise getting a Action Replay MAX. I bought a ordinary Action Replay for PS2, and while the codes where OK, it didn't include games like Final Fantasy or .hack part 1, or some other codes that you can only get off Codejunkies. Codejunkies.com, the official Action Replay website,only accepts AR MAX codes, which have three sets of code separated by two (-) instead of one. The $19.99 price tag with PSone Action Replay disc and the memory card included is just the older version of the game enhancer. I wanted to complete such games like FFX, FFX2, Jak 2 and Castlevania in record time. Bottom line, don't make the same mistake I did, and get an Action Replay MAX for your next PS2 game enhancer. Don't buy a gameshark. Action replay max wil read gameshark 2 (ver. 1, 2, 3) code saves! Gamecube owners don't have to worry about this. It's all the same with GCN.



I think that X-Port or Shark-port is a waste of my money with the exception of XBOX game enhancer, which can not use codes. If you want to get a game anyway for PS2 such as Metal Gear Solid 2, always get the PS2 version. I was thinking of getting MGS2 for Xbox, but I thought nah, it's not worth 20 dollars. Why? First of all, you can cheat on PS2 only. Second the bulky Xbox controller is worst then the Duel Shock 2. It's still good since I play xbox at home.



Horizons is suppose to be out today. It's a new massive multiplayer online role playing game for Windows. Game of the Year quality. I had a friend who played the demo and immensly enjoyed it. He said it was a lot like the game Dungeon Siege. I think that any RPG fan should own this game because it could be long, and packed with features.