Friday, May 31, 2002

Check out this site. It's the secret diaries of the characters from the Fellowship of the Ring. Read everyone's except Frodo's first, then read his... it's way too funny.

Yeesh... I haven't updated for a few days.

What's new?

DVD's this week: Metropolis (the anime version), Harry Potter (Widescreen) and I ordered Shaolin Soccer from Hong Kong... go me!

Also picked up the Neverwinter Nights toolset CD that came free w/ my NWN pre-order. I get to DM again. Yay!

Otherwise, just worked a bunch, played around on the PC and watched anime.

Oh, and I watched the Leafs lose Game 6 and get booted out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, thus obviating my need to watch hockey till this time next year (if the Leafs are in the playoffs that is) and... hmm... that's about it.

Monday, May 27, 2002

Well, I've restarted Morrowind again. Evil game.

I have made a new guy up who is more of a mage but has some thief and combat tendencies... granted, he's pretty much just wandered around picking mushrooms and killing crabs, but he'll get better... I'm sure of it!

Check out his new armour though. I've almost got the entire chitin set (just need the pants)... I absolutely love the helmet though. I am sure I'll find a better one, stat-wise, but I don't know if anything can compete with this one for the coolness factor.

Saturday, May 25, 2002

All RIGHT!

I've finally been able to get my video card working. It turns out it was in the wrong IRQ. I had to re-format my system, manually monkey around with the BIOS settings and reset other things, but I was able to spend most of yesterday (Friday) playing Jedi Knight 2 with nary a hitch.

It's so nice to know my system is working again :)

Thursday, May 23, 2002

Ok. I just saw Episode 2 on a Digital Screen... oooo baby... I don't know if I can see it on a standard analog projector anymore :)

Soooo crisp and just down-home good!

Oh, my video card still isn't working. I'm getting closer to either fixing it or giving up and getting a replacement :P

Sunday, May 19, 2002

Going to see Episode 2 again tomorrow. Whee!
Did you watch the last X-Files ep?

Glorified clip show for the most part. It almost wrapped up stuff, but the big mystery thing they were hinting at all episode was something they showed right at the beginning anyway and they never got any more indepth than what they showed at the beginning. Ah well. At least it's over and TV can either sink to new lows or something new can take the 9pm slot over on Fox.
Well, it looks like I'm going to have to do a nice ol' Format of my C drive and reinstall XP. From the people on the boards that I've talked to, the error I'm getting is most likely due to XP being finicky and so a re-install with all of the changes in hardware fresh will probably fix everything.

If you don't hear from me for a day or two, that's why :)

Saturday, May 18, 2002

Still fighting with my computer. One of these days I'll get it to work properly. I think I might be on the cusp of getting it to work though. I've finally had some error messages that I can discern as making sense and if I'm lucky, I'll get the system working just fine today or tomorrow.

Thursday, May 16, 2002

Saw Episode 2 tonight. Amazing. Total eye candy and lots of humour and thankfully very little Jar Jar.

Only problem we had was that there was a problem with the sound for the voices and sound effects. NO bass whatsoever and it seemed to only come out of the front two speakers (this is in a Silver City, which has THX sound...) The music was excellent, but the dialogue sounded like it was being radioed in.

Well, i'm off to bed. Toodles!

Oh, and Yoda rocks.

Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Go Leafs Go!
Well, the saga of Spig's Geforce looks to be drawing to a close, faithful viewers...

I installed the new 350W power supply tonight and man, everything seems to be running smoother, or at least faster... or maybe that's just me.

I played Medal of Honor for about an hour and a half or so, on the Normandy level, and there was nary a problem. I'll try out Morrowind and a couple other games first thing tomorrow just to make sure, but it looks like my problems are solved!

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

I'm not sure if this posted before or not. Blogger is kind of acting up today.
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Kingdom Hearts Actors Revealed - digitaltaco
You may be wondering exactly why it takes so long for Square's RPGs to make their way to other territories after being released in Japan. Among other various things, the translation process is what really takes some time. Along with the translation comes voice acting, at least when referencing modern RPGs. This is where Kingdom Hearts fits in. The game has recently had a successful launch in Japan, but we won't see it until just before this year's holiday season.

Luckily, Square has enlisted some top shelf voice talent for Kingdom Hearts. A recent story from Xen Gamers gives insight into exactly who'll we'll be hearing when we play the game later this year. First and foremost is the main character Sora, who will be voice by Haley Joel Osment of A.I. and the Sixth Sense fame. Here's a brief list of some of the other actors involved with the game:

Haley Joel Osment - A.I., The Sixth Sense as Sora
David Gallagher - �Seventh Heaven� as Riku
Hayden Panettiere - �Ally McBeal,� The Panic Room as Kairi
Sean Astin - The Lord of the Rings, the Goonies
David Boreanaz - �Angel,� �Buffy the Vampire Slayer�
Christy Romano - �Even Stevens,� �Kim Possible�

This group will hopefully work hard to make sure the game sounds natural and not forced... The big winner, in my estimation, is Sean Astin. The Goonies is one of the coolest movies ever and that one about rings wasn't too bad either. But honestly, I have high hopes for this game, and now for the way it sounds. Hopefully Square will get those camera problems fixed and then maybe we'll have a real winner on our hands.

Monday, May 13, 2002

Ah ha... I think I've figured out what is wrong with my system.

Turns out I'm running using a 235 Watt power supply. Pentium 4's should be run with 250 minimum, preferably 300-350's... And the GeForce just sucks the juice out of it and causes the system to crash all the time because of the lack of power when I'm running 3D games.

I'm going to go in and yell at the computer shop people tomorrow and get a better power supply. Best case scenario, free 300+ Watt Power Supply. Worst case, I have to pay for one, but they're pretty cheap.

Saturday, May 11, 2002

Here's another shot of Mr. Spigot out for a walk in the rolling hills near Balmora city in the game Morrowind. I'm busy looking for mushrooms during a rainstorm. See that river in the background? The water was actually rippling in realtime when I was playing.

Friday, May 10, 2002

Check out my character from Morrowind. Don't you just love the banana hat?

There's a little story to go with that hat. I was walking down the road and this guy plummeted, screaming, out of the air. Turns out he was a mage who developed a spell that let him jump REALLY high but unfortunately he didn't invest in a parachute and had a bit of a bumpy landing.

I love my GeForce 4. Got a ti4400 version. It's pretty sweet. Morrowind rocks with it.

Thursday, May 09, 2002

Woohoo! Check out this news release. Looks like Konami is going to release a couple cool new games in the next while. ZOE 2, MGS Substance and Silent Hill 3 (which was announced yesterday)... I can't wait.
Yee haw! I'm getting my new video card tomorrow! YES!

Of course, in order to get it, I have to go to Kitchener with my wife on Saturday, which is depicted here (artist's rendition).

I hate Kitchener/Waterloo. But I love new video cards :)

Monday, May 06, 2002

Just put a couple links up at the top of my page. One is to Penny Arcade, THE best game related comic on the net. The other is to CFRB, which is a talk radio station out of Toronto. I like listening to Jim Richard's show on my way home from work. Great stuff.
Ok. Got that website done. Not done done, since no site is ever static, but it's more or less finished from the basics point of view.

Now, to get back to games! Woo! Maybe I'll go play some Maximo or Xenogears or something... or go to bed and get some sleep. I dunno.

Saturday, May 04, 2002

ag. Spent the night coding a site for some friends of ours who just had a baby.

check it out here. Let me know if it hurts your eyes or not. There's not much in the way of text because I have to wait till I hear from them re: what they want on it, but I've got a bunch of pics to throw up there in the meantime.
That's the worst thing about this system. I've got a P4 1.6 GHz w/ 256 MB of DDR ram... and it still chugs... why? It's the Voodoo... sigh. Oh well. I just feel bad about getting rid of it because it cost me $500 2 years ago. Oh well.
Ok. I was finally able to get Morrowind to work on the Voodoo 5... but while it looks ok, I know it will look just jaw-dropping whenever i get the GeForce...

Sigh.

At least I've satisfied my curiosity about the game and can wait now. No mad rush to get a Geforce tomorrow or anything :)
Grr. I picked up Morrowind yesterday but I can't play it. I need to save up $450 to get a GeForce 4 (or close to that much for the Radeon 8500)... sigh.

I'm almost tempted to take back most of my PS2 games and whatever else isn't nailed down around here... but I also am going to try to... gasp... save and wait... we ARE moving soon, so I probably should just keep my money in a jar or something till we've settled in at our new place.

But part of me wants to sell my old system on Ebay right now and get enough cash to pay for the new video card.
Go see Spiderman now. Amazing movie. I can't think of a single thing wrong with it, except that it ended. If you do go see it, make sure you stay till the end of the credits.

Thursday, May 02, 2002

I just finished the VERY good Freedom Force. It's a great superhero RPG/Tactical Strategy game... if that's the right genre.

Great characters (poor Man-Bot), awesome physics engine (you can destroy almost everything) and a fun tribute to the old Silver Age comic era. I thoroughly enjoyed Freedom Force. YOU SHOULD TOO!

hee hee.

Now, that's 2 games finished in 2 days. What's next?! If I'm really lucky, Morrowind will be on my local EB's shelf come tomorrow or Friday at the latest. After that, who knows if I'll resurface.