Blog'n the night away...

Updated the photo galleries. For now, I'm just having it point to the photo archives I've created with gthumb. Eventually, I'd like to code something so it doesn't take you out of the site. Just a minor todo. While I was in there, I added the pictures we took on our little vacation to Bayfield, WI. I rather enjoyed that trip. Just what the doctor ordered. The sailboat we rented was the highlight of the trip. While out on Lake Superior I learned a bit more about how to sail. Tacking is hard. The cabin we rented was about 2 miles out of Bayfield itself. There was a scenic trail through the woods that took us into town. It takes a good hour to walk the trail when you goof around as often as Karen and I. Some good shots of the goofing came out of it. On the way back from town, we ended up with quite a scare. Right in the middle of the trail, not 50 feet away from us, was a black bear! Needless to say, we waited a bit for him to disappear into the forest. You don't hear about many bear maulings in that area. Still, the rest of the walk was quite a nervous one. No point ending up as bear goo. Overall, I'd do a trip like this again. Note to self, outdoors is not ALL bad.

A few weeks ago I picked up a X-Arcade joystick. This really satisfies the retro hunger pains. Digging through my MAME collection has never been so delicious. I now get get a full course meal of Street Fighter 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and X-men. Then for desert there is Joust, Elevator Action, Q-bert and Tron. Ahh, now I'm satiated. If you like retrogaming as much as I do, then put it on your menu. *BURP*

Garfield 1.0 R.I.P.

I had to replace the mobo in one of my PCs this weekend. Garfield has had a hairball for the last few weeks. It would not run stable for more than 10 minutes at a time. I tried pulling/swapping various components to no satisfaction. So in frustration I went out and picked up a new mobo, CPU, RAM, and power supply. I couldn't just get the cheapest thing out there, nor could I afford something top of the line. Since I was going to get a new mobo, I might as well up the juice a bit for Moonshine. I then took the old mobo from Moon and put it in Garfield. Got all that? Thought so. Good news is that my FPS in Doom III and CS: Source is better than ever. Bad news is, no toys for the next two months. With Christmas coming, I better not get anything else for the rest of the year. Damn. With the new Nintendo DS hitting shelves next month, it'll be rough.

Whew! I did it. I chained myself to my desk and added my Game Collection database to the website. It didn't hurt that my wife was throwing a baby shower for a friend. I wanted to be as far from that as possible. I also reorganized the site a bit. I moved what was in the About/Geek Central section the the My Stuff section. I also removed the sections that won't be added to the site anytime soon. Lastly, I did a rough cut of the links page. Far from complete, but it fills the void for now. The Game Collection is still fairly barren. It originated from a MS Access DB that I had created years ago. I had always wanted to put it up on the site, but I never got around to it. It has been converted to a MySQL db with my ported PHP interface wrapped around it. Now, I just need to organize and update the actual data. Expect that to be complete sometime around... never!

Just beat Thief: Deadly Shadows. Not a bad game. It was nice to finish a game were you don't need to defeat some impossible end boss.

On weight loss. I've been a big fat ass for as long as I can remember. Being fat does not bother me all that much. What bothers me is the lack of energy. Most days I feel like a tranquilized bear. *GWOAR* About 6 weeks go Karen and I started a new diet. So far I've lost close to 20 lbs. I'm already feeling much more energized and best of all the bear is frisky. My blood pressure is down. I got a scare with my blood pressure about 6 months ago when I went to donate blood at the Red Cross. They would not let me donate as my pressure was over their limit. Consider that a wake up call. One too many pizzas. This diet, if you want to take a look is Seatle Suttons Healthy Eating. It is a simple diet. They make all the food. You pick it up twice a week. It's real food, nothing processed or frozen. I'm on the 2000 calorie diet. Karen is on the 1200 calorie diet. We eat the same things every meal, she just gets less. The menus are predefined. So everyone on this diet eats the same thing. Easy. My goal is to loose about 100 lbs. That would take me down to about 180. To tell the truth, I'll be happy when I just break that 200 lb mark.

They opened an Ikea store in the area recently. Not a bad store. It's crazy to shopping there right now. The store is completely packed all the time. Almost like people here have never beheld furniture before. Our house has already begun an Ikea-ized transmogrification. Just last night I picked up some new speaker stands for my rear channel computer speakers. It seems to help a bit having them up off the floor. Karen also picked me up a corner shelf to put above my monitor. Now I have a place to put all my inaction figures. There has been more purchases but I'll spare all the bloody details.

Counterstike: Source beta was released on Steam a few days ago. If you've never heard of Counterstike or the Half-Life engine, you can stop reading now. My impressions are few, but what I can tell you is that I find it to be a nice evolution of Counterstike. There has been much ado about the new Havok physics engine in Source. In my opinion, it does add to the game. It makes the game arenas feel that much more alive. Various debris scattered about, blowing in the wind, getting in the way of your aim. Chaos theory at its finest. Now, if only there was a tad less ass-hats online out to ruin others enjoyment. If I end up on a server ripe with those of the ass-hat persuasion, I log off and find a new server. No point in getting upset, no point in trying to make them pay. Just shun them and leave them to their shallow little rabble.

They bear further examination.

Take my wife for example. I was showing her Doom 3 the other night and asked her what she thought. Her comment, "Those graphics look aweful." "Wha.. Huh!?", I remarked back dumbfoundedly. She, coming from a graphic design background couldn't help but notice how "pointy" the in-game characters heads looked. For her, this ruined the whole illusion of the game. Gamers, all we can notice is how far our little art has come. But, from her point of view, it sill has a way to go.

See what I mean, interesting.

Doom 3. I've been sucked in. GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER!

In preparation for Doom 3 I made some rather incremental upgrades to Moonshine (my gaming PC). I've had a SBLive! in Moonshine since... well.. since there was SBLive!s available. In other words, a friggen long time. The SBLive only supports 4.1 surround sound. This won't do! Out with the old, in with the SB Audigy 2 ZS. Now we have 5.1 sound. "It's just better", I tell Karen. Now, I should mention, that I've only been using 2.1 sound since we bought the house. There wasn't a need to hook up the rear channels until now. That reason Doom 3. With my new Logitech 5.1 surround setup I can finally hear what I've been missing. The sound of a pinky demon breathing (and drooling) over my left shoulder. This is gaming as it was meant to be.

I did make one other upgrade to my system. This was an upgrade gone wrong. If you are thinking of using an LCD for gaming... DON'T! I learned this, the hard way. It all started when I saw a 24" 16x9 LCD at CompUSA. Speaking of drool, in this case it was me. I could not bring myself to spend $2200 buckazoids on it, so I opted for a very nice 19" Samsung LCD instead. It was rated with a 20ms refresh. Nope, not nearly enough. I played Far Cry on it, and it made me bust to tears. Let's not talk for a moment about motion blur. Instead, lets beat our fists against the desk in frustration as you can't see the Merc busting a cap in your juicy rump roast. In my humble, now bitter opinion: "Don't use LCD's for gaming until they are less than 10ms refresh." The LCD ended up, or rather upstairs, on Karen's G4. Not a bad home for it. I still went for a new monitor. A Samsung again, but in a Sith-like fashion, return of the CRT. Lesson learned. just cause it makes you drool, doesn't mean you won't slip on it later.

Updated the "My Computers" section with the new additions. Updated pictures forthcoming.

Converted the webserver over to Debian. Hasta la Vista Red Hat. Next bit of free time I get I will finish writing the rest of the content for this site. Updated the specs of my computers in the My Stuff section of the site. I noticed that by redoing my website, I dropped off the first page of matches for a Google search for "Jeremy Newman". Not sure if that bruised my ego. Added a Q & A page as some sort of ego topical cream. Maybe if I repeat Jeremy Newman a couple of more times on this page I will move up in the Google rankings. That will teach all those other Jeremy Newman named individuals out there. Ha!

At one time I had a team of malnourished lemurs working around the clock to keep this site up to date. That is, until they left for careers in Vegas.