The evil “UMD”

Those, my friends are UMD’s, the media format used in the PSP.

That would be where the UMD slides into the PSP, where it is then read like a CD.

And THIS is what happens to every fucking UMD I BUY!!!!!!

I am really frustrated. Because of the garbage architecture of the UMD, they always fall apart. I also blame this on my poorly designed Gamestop PSP case. The UMD started splitting at the window seam, then it popped out, rendering the game useless. I glue it back together, and after making sure the integrity is good, I bring it to Gamestop to trade in. It breaks in two when the cashier pulls it out of the box.

So, I’m down 40 bucks.

Fuck you Sony, and fuck Gamestop for not testing their PSP cases.

My Crazy Weekend

My weekend was a freaking blast.  It was just great.

I started out on Thursday night, kicking off my 3 day weekend.  I went and saw “The Departed” (fantastic movie by the way, but very rough language, absolutely earns its R rating.  Review coming soon), with my friends Chris and Alely.  Alelys friend ended up showing up, she was nice.  Overall the night was great, and Chris ended up coming back to my place, so he could go see his girlfriend the next morning.

Well, it turned out that Me, Chris, and Alely (Chris’ Girlfriend) all headed for Zachs house (another of Chris’ friends), and stopped at the mall in Portland along the way.  We annoyed everyone at the Brookwood Store, the Apple Store, and Victorias Secret.  It was freakin awsome.

We had planned to get to Zachs house by 11, got there at 2.  Oh well.  Had a great time dancing and streaking in broad daylight, and stuff.  Im gonna leave it at that.  Was gonna stay the night and go to a party, but Zachs mom said no.

Got home, went to my grandmas, and got into a great debate with my grandpa on the “social redeming value” of video games.  I ended up giving up, realizing there was no redeeming value, they are just fun as hell.

Back home, and that is that.  Looking forward to seeing my friends tommorow at school.

Dex

My computer

I decided that I am going to add a tech section to this blog, to keep my friends up to date on what I am doing in the Computing world.

First off, I should state my computer.

Aspire XQ-Pack case
Power Master 500 Watt PS
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor
ECS RS-482M Motherboard w/ ATI Radeon 200 Xpress graphics
512mb Corsair RAM
WD 40 GB HD (Soon to be repleaced with Seagate Barracuda)
And a few more odds and ends.

Anyways, I am looking for help on a few things, if anyone can help me, that would be great. First off, I am looking for a way to quiet down my Fans and HD using software. The other situation is Overclocking. I have never OC’ed, and may need better cooling. I just don’t know.

Also, I am beginning to realize that CSS (Counterstrike Source) isn’t much fun, unless lan. People are rude, and unless you are one of those “No life outside the internet” gamers, you probably suck. So, I suck.

Dex

Oct 5, 06 – Dear Diary

Today was an interesting one. The cold I have had for a few days is starting to tide over (probably in part to the fact that I went to school and did’nt dwell on it), and I am in a general good mood.

Economics was fun, I love that class. I really like questioning the teacher on how things make absolutely no sense, then being enlightened and being better off for it. Its pretty sweet.

Marine Biology, was, as always, interesting. My SOCOM UMD disk litterally broke in two (the case), but with the help of ol Elmers Glue, it’s in one piece, for the time being at least. We also made little floating things, that was pretty sweet.

And then Programming, where we are learning scheme, which has absolutely no practical use (as far as I can tell), and is boring as hell to learn the way the teacher teaches it. It, was not very sweet.

Anyways, Im home now, settling down for some Counterstrike, gonna see what happens from here. Catch you all tommorow, or perhaps later tonight.

Take me by the hand.

“As of July 24, 2008, Ken Kutaragi announced the new PS3 peripheral, a guidance system, to lead gamers though the games they play. The press release went as follows. We… realize gamers are complete wimps and cannot handle the… stresses of modern gaming. To combat this growing epidemic, we have developed the R.O.P.E, which stands for absolutely nothing, but capital letters are cool these days. When the motorized system (which plugs into the PS3 controllers expansion port) is placed over a users hands, small suction pads will stick the the players nails, and guide his or her fingers across the controller, to ensure a victory every time.

When questioned about the resemblance of this product to Nintendo’s Crane, (a sling that goes around a players arm to help guide his or her movements with the Wii controller) Sony replied by simply stating that “The designing for our guidance systems has been around since the launch of the PS3, and we have only been perfecting the technology for all this time.” With that, the crazy representative spat on our camera, and ran off screaming.”

Okay, so this story is not real, but it could be a vision of things to come. I have played a few games lately, and surprisingly beaten them, which really shocked me based on the fact that I completely suck at games. This could only mean one thing: Games are becoming easier. My recent play through of X-men Legends 2 was like reading a book, as it required no thought, and although it had great graphics and storytelling, I think I completed the game by only pressing the A button repeatedly on my Game cube controller.

This truly saddens me, because I just don’t feel challenged by games anymore. There was a time when beating a game was a great accomplishment, but now when I beat a game, I sit thought the credits thinking: that’s it? And companies can’t resort to insanely hard difficulty either, they need to create content that�??s not redundant, too easy, too hard, and IS fun, engrossing, and worth every penny you spend on it. This is not impossible, some examples of best selling games using this formula include Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, Final Fantasy 10, and Oblivion, just to name a few.

Sure, these are big name, epic games, but personally, I would rather see fewer games of higher quality than many games of shoddy quality. Without an initiative to create quality products for the game industry, we could be seeing the start of the game industries Game Over, and that folks, will be it.

Oh, sweet senior year.

My year has sucked thus far.

My grades are plummeting, the girl I asked out (politely) declined, and I lost my best friend.

College is coming up, I am looking into begining to program. I am starting to learn Python as of tommorow, as well as the useless garbage I am learning in my “Program Design” class. The knowledge, Im sure, will be usefull.

PS: To the trib readers, YES, Issue 6 and the site are going to be up soon, patience please. In addition, we have a few suprises in store for you….

Love and best wishes,
Dex