WRX Wet Pan Madness

Last Wednesday was awesome. My work place is not exactly famous for being kind to it's workers. So when the news came in that we were to be attending a Subaru driving session at Eastern Creek I took to it with open arms.

 

Had the honour of being driven around the wet pan at Eastern Creek Raceway in a Subaru WRX with one of Australia's premier rally drivers. This was the same guy that freaked big Chief Harrigan on the Footy Show in the Dare Devils segment in Canberra. I can see why he got scared. This guy is awesome... I mean nuts!

 

Got some photo's up on Flickr at the moment and click here to see the video of my ride with the WRX on You Tube.

 

 

Everyone... EVERYONE! Meet Jedda

Yutang has long wanted to meet up with the new puppy at my parents place. Since our long time family dog, Snoopy, died, Patch has been a bit lonely. It took a lot of convincing but my dad finally decided to get a new puppy for the "change of guards" so to speak. So introducing "Jedda"!

Jedda is a great cross breed. Part Kelpie and part Blue Cattle Dog. Perfect dog for the country and extremely smart breed. Perhaps one of the smartest dogs you could hope to find.

Kinda funny how my mum would go about calling the new puppy Jedda. I had just finished explaining to my wife that Jedda would make a good name for a dog. Jedda comes from the first Australian movie to be shot in colour. The movie was a cultural hit. A sad love story about a half aboriginal/ white girl who ends up in a love triangle that leads to trouble.

Yutang loved the story behind the name and named one of her Nintendog puppies, Jedda.

Forward on 2 months later and we get news that a new puppy was entering the family and my mum had called the pup... Jedda! How this coincidence came about I simply don't know but the name is a great one and suits this great little girl!

Hooters Makes Rashid Happy

Long term rivals at our indoor cricket centre, "Grumpy Old Men", have gone and upstaged everyone by getting the ultimate in sponsorship deals. Grumpy Old Men have now grabbed an exclusive deal with Hooters Restaraunt (Parramatta), famous for their great looking staff and food!

 

Very hard to focus when two fine looking models are staring down the barrel. Not sure how the fulltime photographers do it!

Oops... Been a While

Well it's been yonks since I last dropped a blog into the Gamespot community. I'll be picking up on that hopefully soon. Need to get myself a laptop to render that. But in the meantime a quick re-cap on what's been keeping this little gamer happy since my last video blog entry.

In a word, Achievement Points. I knew that they sounded like a pretty neat idea but I had NO IDEA how addictive it would be to build up points, compare yours to your online buddies and taunt the heck out of them when they drop their game.

I've gone and made ammends with my NHL 07 Xbox purchase and bought the 360 one instead. Despite the graphics being oh so brilliant on it... I have to say that it's somewhat repetetive. Shame that EA always fail to acknowledge the Dynasty mode players and their need to have the season change with big events throughout the season. Shock news items to affect star players or something to track more individual stats as the season wears on.

Also just yesterday I picked up Advance Wars: Duel Strike for the DS. Just getting into it now and I gotta say... it was cool on the GBA but the extra effects and sound just add so much more to the experience. But more importantly from a gameplay point of view. The STYLUS just rocks! Being able to point to everything on the screen simply speeds up the game and makes it less of a chore to do what you need to get your moves out. The best news was that I picked it up for only $25! Bargain! Toys R Us has always been a good hunting ground for clearance titles that are way underpriced.

So to finish up. Sorry for the lapse. Too much... other stuff getting in the way and gaming itself has been a distraction as well. But I'll be adding more stuff soon. I may even get the urge to finish off those old reviews that I was suppose to carry out over a year ago!

Obivion. A real pain in the Ass

Just had to put this on the site. Hunting around for a screen shot for Oblivion and just had to save this one!

New Video Blog READY for Viewing

Quick update to point you folks to my 3rd Video Blog. This time it's a surprising look at Xbox 360's "backward compatibility". You'll be surprised at how many titles in my collection didn't make the cut!

Click here to watch it!

My First 24 Hours with My Xbox 360

After handing out the hard earnt and then parting off from the shop with my newly prized 360 my first impression was "damn this beeyach is heavy!" as it broke the plastic bag it came in! After carting it home I got to the task of unpacking it. Gotta say it's the biggest console packaging I've seen since I bought a Mega CD back in the day. I was impressed with the fact that Microsoft have included most items needed to get play underway. Remote, wireless controller, one big mutha of a power pack and plenty of other gizmos. The fact that they include Energizer battery's instead of some hack Taiwan bootleg power cells didn't go unnoticed.

Being able to plug the optic 5.1 straight into the 360 via the AV plug was something of a bonus that was a sore point with me last time round. Xbox was always advertised as a 5.1 unit and to find you needed to outlay a further $60 was a slap in the nether region when all you wanted was out of the box in your face action. But it seems enough of us complained to make M$ get it right this time. So after having all the jacks in place I power up. No more bang bang bang start up screen. A nice simple bing and I'm faced with setting screens. I had to fiddle about with my wireless adapter (DWL-G820) but a simple power cycle sniped that problem in the butt.

So I'm now up and running and connecting to Xbox Live, my favourite single most thing about the whole Xbox eXperience. Getting my profile ported over was a sinch. Rather than the dicky Credit Card verification method I simply needed to use my Windows Live sign in. Cool. Since I use that often I knew the password's etc off by heart. Once I signed in everything fell into place.

I then hooked in my webcam which I purchased as a headset came with it (but not with the 360 itself tsk tsk). Once I plugged that in the dashboard changed ever so slightly. My image was in a watery mess in the background as a nice touch. Well done R & D. Subtle but slick utilisation of the cam. After sorting that I now wanted to get online with Halo 2 (afterall we did refer to the Xbox as "that Halo machine"!). Downloading the maps was gonna be a bother so I remembered I bought the Map Pack DVD and got that installed. Got into my first game and found that the voice with the 360 headset was a little more rough on my end but other users stated I sounded clearer. Strange indeed. I also had probs with the forementioned wireless adapeter. Seems the 360 is a little more greedier with data traffic so I had to stop and re-config to speed the DWL-G820 up in "Turbo G" mode.

Right so that's the Live side sorted out. Lets play Kameo. Yawn. Eject. Maybe I gotta give it time but it seemed like a chore to play this right now. So I leave it for another day. I then hop back in to see what this new console of mine can do. I head to market place. Buy some M points or whatever they're called and buy Bejewelled 2. Yeah I know Streetfighter 2 was there but I'm hooked on this puzzle thing! Played that but didn't earn any gamer points.

So sussed all that out but what about this streaming music thing? So I head to the Windows Media section... follow the prompts and although I don't have Windows Media Centre I still manage to send music from my Wi-Fi to my Hi-Fi thanks to my wireless router network I have in my house. Looks like that Logitech Music Anywhere bluetooth music streamer is out of a job! I couldn't believe how easy it was to get the music from my PC to the 360. The visualiser looks fantastic with the webcam throwing in a surprise or two with some creepy effects when I moved. But the lack of a shuffle or random feature is a bit of a concern unless I have plain missed it.

I also watched some video's streamed to my telly and it all looked good in widescreen. Photo's come up surprisingly clear as well! So overall they score highly for the media aspect of this machine which goes way beyond expectations in music management. Even simply displaying music titles despite not being online was a big surprise to me.

So after some Red vs Blue on Marketplace, getting my first accomplishment points and watching a DVD that wrapped up my first day with the 360. Overall I am keen to see what other surprises Microsoft have in stall for what promises to be a great console for years to come. I'm stoked.

Of course I'll be updating this blog with any new problems or good surprises that come my way so keep an eye out for that!