Ashes Memorabilia

Yesterday we set out to visit the rocks market. Actually... it was Pancakes on the Rocks we were hoping to visit but the line up was simply outrages! It spanned a good 100m long just to get in the door! So that idea was quickly knocked on the head and we settled on a German style feast instead at the Rocks famous Lowenbrau. After a round of German Hotdogs we headed to the street markets which are located right in the middle of one of the tracks used in Project Gotham Racing 2 (Xbox).

As soon as we arrived the very first stand you notice a sculptures stand selling spoons, knives and forks bent and sculptures into Australian animals. It's simply amazing and at first we figured we had stumbled upon the find of the weekend. However, after gazing at that my brother dragged me away from that to point out a stand selling stamps. At first I figured I'd skip it. Stamps. Seriously. How exciting could stamps be? Well these were no ordinary stamps. The stand owner explained how these 3D stamps were formed. She painstakingly collects numerous stamps of the same kind and cuts out layers of which she re-lays on top of one another. This then gives the stamps a real third dimensional aspect with the main objects of the picture within the stamps standing out. These are then later re-framed by her husband and sold.

The very first stamp that stood out for me was the Ashes 2006 commemorative stamp featuring three stamps that were issued last year showing the Aussies celebrating on the field after a Shane Warne wicket, the Ashes urn and last a stamp showing the post win photo with the urn. It's fixed in a extremely well produced frame that is in traditional display cabinet colours and looks like something channel 9 would have Ritchie Benaud flogging off during a live broadcast!

Yutang also purchased 2 stamp frames. One of an Australian Tree Frog and the other was of a blue bird. They were not cheap. I would normally not even consider these within my reach. But we figured the Ashes one would perhaps one day increase in value as its limited to just 200. But it's a new addition to the house and will definitely be a conversation starter for years to come!

Shiney & New – PC Not Maddona

After three years running my Dell Dimension 2400 without a reformat the time had finally taken it's toll. Installing, removing, re-booting (sometimes without shutting down) and other register killing activities had slowed the PC down to a crawl. So what inspired me to take the plunge into my first re-format? Buying Norton 360. I know alot of folks see Norton branded items and cringe. But it's easy. Just add water style software that I've come to appreciate from the bigger software houses. Basically I could get to study into how to clean my registry manually. How to maintain the PC and keep it running smooth. But quite simply I can't be arsed! I free up more time by buying these style of programs to do it all for me.

 

Just like my car. I could change the oil myself. I could even change the brakes myself. But I'd rather just give the keys over to someone who does it for a living and free up time for other tasks. Such as gathering up achievement points in 360 games!

 

So how did the reformat go? Sweet! I've backed up all my docs to a portable hard drive. It's only a 40G drive but partitioned into 2 x 20G drives so room was somewhat limited. However I was able to send the photo's to DVD (2 DVD's in fact) and after some stumbling I managed to figure out how to re-install XP. First major challenge was how to re-install the drivers for the video, sound and other primary functions. So I installed the wireless adapter (D-link DWL-6510) driver. The great thing about having a wireless router (D-Link DSL-G604T) is that all the internet ISP settings are saved in the router/ modem itself so no need to dig it all up and enter it all in. Once I got past this hurdle it was just a matter of digging in and installing away. XP SP2 was the first big installation. That took some time to download as I couldn't find the discs I have for that. Then there was Internet Explorer 7 to deal with. Only hassle there was that Norton 360 failed to re-install my Favourites. Damn. All my cool sites gone. I do have the fav's saved via Google Bar but that is such a pain to use I don't bother relying on it.

 

After installing Google Desktop, MS Office 2007 and some other minor stuff it was all a matter of housekeeping the PC. I still have to install a fair bit of software but the main thing that where I once only had 10G left in the tank I now have 50G. Soon I'll add a 2^nd hard drive to the equation to back up files (320G should do the trick!) and I'll be hunky dory! Heck… I may even install MAME again!

New Pics Uploaded...

Just a brief entry (as I am up past my bedtime now with a morning shift on tomorrow) to let y'all know that I have uploaded a sprinkle of photos from our recent trip to QLD (Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Townsville & Cairns) and I'll blow my own trumpet by saying that I think some of the pics are damn great. But... you judge for yourself!

 

 

More Video Blogs to Come

I'm about to start posting more video blogs soon on my Gamespot page. Just struggling to come up with material to blog about. My first three blogs were somewhat satisfactory but now I'm just at a loss as to what to chat on about. Maybe I'll take a camera down to a pinball arcade and do an article on the death of arcades. Any ideas folks?

 

...and no... not an article on arcades in strip joints!

Crickeys! Tilt! Crocodile Hunter Pinball Machine!

I'm itching to buy a pinball machine. So while scrounging around the net I saw this little baby! Seems as though the Crocodile Hunter Pinball machine will be out soon. Shame no one carrys pinny machines anymore. I'd really want a crack at this table!

Click Here --> Steve Irwin Pinball Machine

Pinball FX (360) - Review

Photo grabbed from http://www.flickr.com/photos/rhoran/291278554/ 

 

"Pinball FX fills the gap currently in the 360 lineup with a good solid graphics engine. Live Cam support is a plus!"

 

Well this was a surprise. I dove into the Xbox Live menu and with no previous announcements the word Pinball lit up. Well I just had to give that a try. With a couple of plays I was hooked and just new I had to part with the hard earnt (800pts) to get this!

First off the presentation to the game is pretty standard stuff with all the Arcade releases so far. You get the choice of three tables:

SPEED MACHINE: A full auto themed table with ramps being the main feature. A fast paced table with in game missions such as dB challenge (you have to crank your sub woofers) and Tune Up. The most popular table of the three on offer. You'll spend most of your time here!

EXTREME: I'm a little lost on the exact theme but it seems to be mostly eXtreme sports. The most disappointing of the three tables. The layout is too cramped with it's split level design restricting the action to two half layouts. The music is a real lamo Prodigy wannabe. Not much fun here.

AGENTS: 007 rip off with a perhaps more modern edge feel to it then James himself. But the famous licenced to kill agent need not worry. This is a mediocre table with loads of wide open space allowing a fast paced game. Features some great flash light effects that add to that "I'm playing this at the milkbar" atmosphere!

A couple of interesting non traditional features are included with Pinball FX. Firstly there's the interaction of the Live Cam. Not only do you get to see other players on their cam's in the Multiplayer option (I'll touch on that in a moment) but you can choose to play the game with the camera in a Eye Toy style game of pinball. To be honest I failed to get any real joy out of that style of play as the nature of pinball is sharp reflex reactions to be in the game. The camera (despite much fine tuning with the in game options) failed to deliver. Although there were some scores online that made me wonder just how the heck they managed!

The main pulling feature I've found lies in the multiplayer online play. Here you can either set up a game or join a lobby. The main aim of multiplayer is a "first across the line" style of game where you pick a finish line score and a penalty (either 0%, 10%, 25%, 50% or Take Everything) for a loss of ball. This is where Pinball FX shows it's reason to download. You get to see the players up top with the camera feeds displayed and a line marking out live score progress. It's great to see the opponents marker slide down after a lost ball. But if they trigger off a special feature of the game then it could be Game Over real quick!

A couple things I didn't like were some of the table designs are a bit wonky. One of the ramps in Speed Machine tend to just chuck the ball down the side chute every time. Hardly the reward you'd want to get for making the ramp! Also the multplayer would need a better ranking system.

But for a measly 800pts this is one download that is worth the effort. The overall feel of the game just works. The rumble motions mimic the actions of a real table. A big plus here is the promise of new tables to come. Here's to hoping for a Halo themed table! Give Pinball FX a try!

Lots of Xbox Stuff Coming Soon

I'm very pleased to see MS and Bungie announcing all this stuff over the last week or so. This makes me one very happy game head. For a while there I figured maybe this whole PS3 thing would take over the spot light too much and us Xbox 360 owners were forgotten about. But some real promising announcements have been revealed this week:

 

Xbox Live will now join the Windows Live network.

This means you could be playing a game or watching a DVD and all your Messenger buddies can now see what game your playing and send you a message. If you don't want to be disturbed (as the most common reaction to this has been "I don't wan't people nagging me while I'm watching a movie") you will be able to switch it off or there maybe a DND mode.

A new Joypad keyboard coming soon

The photo's of this puppy make it look like one really smick peice of hardware. It sits neatly in the under part of your controller and is so slick looking it'll have even Apple thinking "that's neat". I also just found out that any USB keyboard works in the 360. Something I previously didn't know. So where's the X360 browser Bill? I'll be picking one of these babies up.

Halo 2 Maps Launched Next Week

Some re-worked Halo 1 maps to be launched via the Extra Contents menu screen (not the Xbox Marketplace) for about the price of a coffee (to quote a stupid TV commercial shown here in Sydney).  My only gripe is that they didn't release the original Ice map. That map went off and is sorely missed. In fact why not just re-work all the original maps? Shame.

Regardless... I'll be downloading this down ASAP and so will my online Xbox mates.

Halo 3 Beta

In May the Beta is sent WIDE OPEN. But for a LIMITED TIME ONLY. So as soon as this is made available you should hop onto it as it's gonna be closed in June sometime and you'll have to wait for the finished product to play anymore. The Halo 3 preview video released this week looks wicked and has us all pumped up waiting to frag once again.

Dashboard Update

Next month also sees a big reworking of the dashboard. Well... little things but nice touches. Such as seeing what game is sitting in your CD tray without having to play it. Seeing how many Achievement Points you just earnt without needing to pause the game and a re-working of the Market Place. It will have it's own blade now. Sweet.

So that's about it. I'll be fanging out for H3 but till then... I've gotta drag out and play all these games I already own. Oh... and that's in between study time and everything else. Sheesh. Wish I was a kid again!