New Toys

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Christmas time means cheap electronics.  It’s actually the only time I buy electronics since the discounts are so big and I can “suffer” through the old stuff for quite a while.

My current 5.1 all in one sound system is lacking any HDMI and doesn’t upscale.  This meant I needed to use component cables for everything and with a lack of inputs, I needed a switch.  After 6 years, it’s time to upgrade.  Pioneer – VSX 1020k 3D ready, 7 channels, 6 HDMI inputs, upscales to 1080p, Ipod connector, multi room capable as well.  Basically all the bells and whistles I need for quite some time.  Given that all my gear now works with HDMI, I need a better projector too!

Well actually, I just need a projector.  The Blue Hue isn’t getting bigger but it is getting stronger.  Given that it’s near impossible to find any projector with component, I needed one with HDMI.  Since I have blue ray, I figured might as well go 1080p/3D ready as well.  Here comes the Epson 3850.  Optical zoom, better contrast, great luminosity and most importantly, a larger throwing area.  It was the cheapest 1080p I could find that would throw 118″ over a 15 foot gap.

The receiver should be here in a few days, which will have me rewire quite a few things.  Projector next week and that will be that.  Oh, I need a new HDMI cable too.  Found a 16 footer for 10$.  More expensive than I’d like but eh.  People who spend anything above 20$ for digital cables are getting ripped off.  Monster makes amazing speaker cables but they make digital cables with a 1000% markup.

WoW: Cataclysm

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, with no TV and no internet, you know that World of Warcraft is launching its newest expansion, Cataclysm.  The game celebrated 6 years this week and let’s face it, the game needed some tweaking to the areas that were 6 years old!  So, they unleash a dragon, destroys the world and they rebuild then entire game from levels 1-60 (max will be 85), which covers every zone that was over 4 years old.  Pretty impressive and ballsy.

Did I mentioned 12 million players play the game?

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New Toy

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I love gadgets but it takes me a long time to mull the decision to buy one.  A really long time.  It took me 3 years to buy a PS3, 6 months to get a hockey net and pad and way too long for insurance.

So, the other day I picked up an e-reader.  Specifically the Sony PRS-650.  It’s third generation, 6 inches, e-ink and supports the epub format.  Third generation means a stable and fast platform.  Damn it looks nice.  6 inches is the size of a decent paperback.  It’s really comfortable in the hand.  E-ink means it takes a battery charges to change the page but not to keep the page.  So when it displays something, it’s not taking any power, which is different from an LCD screen (Nook Color, Galaxy Tab, IPad).  2 week battery life on a single charge is nice!  Also, since e-ink doesn’t use a light source, it’s very easy on the eyes.

Epub is the industry standard for ebooks.  Nearly all readers support it, except the Kindle.  You can borrow books from the library in that format and they come out great.  Oh, it’s also touch screen, which works amazingly well.  The only thing lacking is wireless but why do you need wireless in the middle of a book?  It also takes SD cards up to 32 gigs and has an internal memory of 2gigs.  A book is about 500k or less, so even the stock memory is good for 4000 books.  If you were to put audio books (yes, that’s supported too) or huge PDF files, then I guess you would need more space.

They’re on sale at Future Shop right now, so if you can find another store that stocks them and does price matching (Best Buy is where I got mine), you can get an even better deal.  If you do a lot of reading, then it might actually be worth your while.

New Toys

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You know me, always with the big boy toys. Mind you, they tend to be practical rather than superfluous! No different here. Hockey toys. All of em from www.hockeyshot.ca

First up, a hockey net. Not just any net but a foldable net.  2 inch pipes, regulation size, full net mesh and hecka solid.  The beauty of it all is that it folds up to about 4 inches wide.   I can set it up in about 30 seconds, alone and then store against the wall in the garage and it takes up as much space as a shovel.  Best part, about 100$ and the quality of a 400$ net.  Great.  And yes, it does come with the corner pockets.  Great for target practice.  I need more pucks though!

Next up, a shooting pad.  You’ve probably seen these before.  A white plastic pad to take shots on as it mimics ice surface.  Well, I saw one that was 2 feet by 4 and really, all you can do is shoot on it.  I wanted something to practice stickhandling, so I opted for the larger size.  4 feet by 8 feet.  Yes, that big.  I can use a stick (minus tape on the bottom), regular pucks and the thing slides great.  A stick with tape drags a bit much though.  I need to practice with a slightly smaller stick as well, since on skates I’m a good 3 inches higher off the ground.  Still trying to figure that part out.  The good news is it works great.  Bad news is that my arms are not made for stickhandling.  After 15 minutes, my left arm was dead.

Lastly, I picked up some stickhandling toys.  First, Sweedish Wooden Balls.  Stop laughing.  They were like 3$.  They are lighter, so I use them for quick movements and repetitions.  2-3 minutes of it before a game warms up the arms.  Second, I picked up a Green Biscuit.  These things are wicked.  A tad lighter than a regular puck but they work on cement and don’t stick.  They glide like crazy on the shooting mat and exagerate any stickhandling you do, so you have to be more careful with your hands.  Looking forward to trying it out in the spring/summer outside.  For now, the mat will do!

So far, really happy with the purchases.  I’ll try and get 15-30 minutes a day on it and see what happens.  I know it will help my hands out, we’ll just have to see how much.

The Walking Dead

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Zombie TV Show Review!

First, it’s by AMC. They make Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Rubiconn and a pile of other stuff. They make amazing television. The story and character progression is their bread and butter.

So, The Walking Dead appropriately premiered last night. Like the comic book of the same name, it follows a deputy sheriff waking up in a hospital after what appears to be a zombie breakout. Romero zombies, the ones that are slow and dumb. The first 30-45 minutes are about him dealing with the world changing and the latter are about him finding his way through the small town to the big city. Naturally, the big city is infested.

A few standouts. The zombies look amazing – movie quality makeup. Hats off! The main character can act. This isn’t a zombie slasher flick. This is a realistic (hmm) look at how regular people act in extraordinary circumstances. Good exposition. The scenes are well laid out and well shot. Character progression is solid to boot. Emmy winner, maybe not but I will keep watching.

An interesting thought occurred to me while watching. In most movies, there’s an adversary. Man vs self or Man vs Man. In zombie movies, since the zombies are the opposite of characters, I think they represent the basic self. Take away the humanity of a person and you get a zombie. So in essence, a zombie movie deals with characters vs. their basic selves and striving to stay human – figuratively and literally. Don’t know why I didn’t see that before!

Looking forward to the next one.

What's You Playin'?

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Civilization V.

You know that feeling you had when you first tasted apple pie and you were like “damn, this is the best thing ever”?  Then you had an even better apple pie with ice cream?  Imagine they made ice cream out of apple pie, distilled down to its greatness in an easy to eat package.  That’s Civ V.

Everything* has been improved upon.  Hex tiles for better movement.  More land improvements, better politics, better research, more culture, happiness means something, terrain combat means something, military unit improvements, no more stacking 1000 hopplites against a single tank.  (*)The only thing that seems to be worse is the computer AI but I am guessing that will come with a patch.

I picked this up on Tuesday night and put in 6 hours after I downloaded it from Steam.  Time just flies by and all you can think is “I can play another turn”.  That other turn means an extra 50 turns.  This game is crack.

On a side-ish note, you should be using Steam for game purchases.  They have every game you can think of, a log of the games you have so you can reinstall it on another computer (laptop and desktop for me!), many games save their files on the Steam network so you can continue from one PC to the next. Not to mention the games are always cheaper and often come on sale.  Try it out!