Happy New Year!

My Humble Apologies for the tardiness of the new year post! I've had a rather hectic time over the past few weeks and blogging has been taking a back seat to work and parting with friends and family!

Overclockers Australia

Hurry back OCAU

http://www.overclockers.com.au/

Drag Racing is for idiots!

This is without a doubt some of the best car control since the last time I watched Ken Block's rally training. The japanese call this a reverse entry drift. Check out the in car angle on the video! The back of the car gets to the corner before the front, epic car control.

The best part though, are the commentators! I wonder if these guys also call the soccer?

Dear Good Game

Saw your review of GT for the PSP. The lack of a career mode was a bit of a concern, but its GT on the PSP!

Gran Turismo for PSP

Remember when the psp first launched? There were promises of ps2 quality graphics and gameplay. There were multiple pictures on the web of sony's new mega portable showing a very Gran Turismo style screenshot with a supra on it? The promise of sony's driving master-peice was enough to get millions of people, myself included to drop $499 on the system. Little did us racing fans know that it would be literally YEARS until GT for the PSP was to emerge with nothing to tide us over except for Ridge Racer and a coupe of Burnout games.

Being to lazy to drive to the store, I decided to try out the game store on the PSN. Game all paid for and the download began. After a seemingly endless installation my game was ready to play. This has been my first online purchase/download of a psp title and I must say that playing the game from memory stick seems to load very quickly.

The Graphics on this game are absolutley stunning. the Car models in particular are to die for. Its a familiar mix of cars and tracks and anyone who has played any of the previous GT games should feel quite at home here. The License test are gone, been replaced with some challenges which are a good way to build up initial bank to buy some cars with.

On the cars, the way the car dealer works is kinda strange. With different makes/models being available whenever you go to the car dealer. you can usually only choose from 4/5 makes and about 10-15 different models in each at a time. Go do a race and come back to different makes models. Kinda weird but it did keep me visiting the car dealer over and over to see if there was any new desirable metal that wasn't there last time.

Driving feels great considering the controls of the portable console. Mega realism if you want it, but with enough driving aids to make the game enjoyable to GT n00bs. The rally and snow stages are awesome and the Nurburgring is there in all its glory. The Drift trials are kinda fun, anyone who has played GT5 Prologue will be immediatly familiar.

My only critisism of the game is that there is no real carreer mode. As it stands though it the perfect "pick up and play for 5 minutes" type of game.

If you have a psp and like cars then you definatly need this game!

The Final Red ring of Death

I've love the Xbox 360 since its launch. Aweosme graphics and sound. Kickass exclusive titles like Project Gotham, Forza and some shooty game beginning with the letter H. Comfortable controllers that allow you to play for hours on end. Lets not forget about the joyous XBOXLIVE service. Hours of mulitplayer fun right there....

If only they could have made the thing reliable.

I've been through four of the things. 3 of them were red ring issues which MS fixed under warranty. I was never without the thing for more than a few weeks but its just not good enough. One of the failures was beyond a red ring with the thing just refusing to turn on!

I'm over it, my overclocked gaming PC is 100% reliable, as has been every other gaming console I've ever owned. This leaves me with an interesting conumdrum. Do I embrace the love that dare not speak its name?? That bluray playing 9 core beast from sony. I must admit since the launch of the smaller ps3 I have been tempted to buy one, if for nothing else than for bluray and perhaps some GT5 if it ever comes out. Seems as though the untimely death of mt LAST xbox 360 has come at a good time. With XMAS on the horison there are bound to be some good bundles coming out.

Terrible sorry Microsoft but I'm voting with my feet and walking to the competition.

For all you gamers out there that own a (working) PAL Xbox360 then a comprehensive list of games and a few accessories is on ebay http://shop.ebay.com.au/pswatosch79/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=25 Items end in about a week of this post.

Peace

Welcome to New Zealand

I retract my previous rants..... The service at brisbane international airport was excellent! Check-in and customs were a breeze! I guess the fact that we arrived the the airport very early may have had something to do with it though. Was a little cramped on the airplane though, but thats to be expected when you're tall and fly economy! I could rant about what impatient douchebags brisbane drivers are but lets not go there.

Anyhoo its fantastic to be in Queenstown again. We've had some miserable rainy weather the past few days, but that just means more snow on the mountains! Took a trip to Milford Sound yesterday. All in all it was a fun day out. Very pretty scenery the whole way. I feel like the fiord boat cruise after the 5 hour drive was a bit of an anticlimax though. As beautiful as the fiord is, the drive there took us through some spectacular scenery!

Planning to hit the slopes tomorrow (ski reference, not racial slur). Can't wait!

Almost forgot

Almost forgot to mention the trip. Headed on a ski adventure to
Queenstown in New Zealand. Trip will be 99% skiing, but there will be
a few scenic tours and such involved. Can't wait. Stay Tuned for pics
and updates.

international air travel

So I'm about to go on a jumbo jet to another country. Just to be certain that I'm not a terrorist, I have to arrive at the airport 2 hours before my flight departs. Maybe that should read "due to incompetent/lazy airport staff"?? Whatever the case may be it means I have to be at the airport frikken early! The issue with this? Well I live over 100km from the airport...... so what you say? They have trains and stuff....

Well the earliest train I can catch arrives at the airport at half past frikken early. Not early enough for me to cue up for hours dealing with dopey check-in attendants and some not-so-dopey customs officers. Well done Queensland public transport.

So I'm left with a dilema. Pay over a hundred dollars for a taxi, then the same when we get back. Alternately I could park my pride and joy at the airport carpark and have it end up costing me about the same. Me choice??

Well I'm thinking of my return journey. After 2 weeks of skiing, followed by a 4 hour flight home couples with all the customs BS. Well I'd rather jump in my car and enjoy a leisurely cruise home than take a cab. Not to mention a train full of strangers eyeing off my luggage.

The Dark side : Update

Well its been a week or so since I posted about life on the mac so I thought I'd post a breif update about how I'm adjusting to osX.

The minor frustrations are pretty much gone now, learning how to use the multi-touch pad has been a massive help. I've also had a bit of a play with spaces. I'm not 100% convinced on this one yet. I never really found a use for virtual desktop systems on linux either. Expose is just frekking awesome though! Just drag 4 fingers down the pad and its multitasking heaven!

I bought a copy of VMware Fusion, which has remained in its box to date. I've felt no real need to run and windows software to this point. Would I recommend a Mac over a PC to my friends and/or family. Well that really depends. If they've never had a computer before (providing they have electricity) then I'd say mac all the way. I think for the less tech savvy then the switch may not be the easiest thing in the universe. Plus the gaming crowd will prefer a windows box (hugs quad core monster desktop).

At the end of the day, for anything other than gaming, the mac is awesome. Could I live with this as my only computing device??? Well seeing as I own an XBOX360 the answer is a definate yes!

Ahh how time flies!

My winter/spring ski trip seems to have snuck up on me! I'm leaving for Queenstown NZ in 2 weeks WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Dark side

Its taken me over twenty years of computing to turn to the dark side, but its finally happened. I've gone and purchased an Apple Mac. Its a funky little 13” MacBook Pro unibody with a core2 duo and 4gb of ram. I'd have to say that so far i'm really loving the form factor and the keyboard is fantastic to type on. Due to the fact that i'm in a semi dark room the backlit keyboard is really making life easy! The battery life is amazing for a full power laptop and I just love the feel of the thing.

I'm having a few minor frustrations with the macOS interface. I few things seem to be really counter-intuitive, but I'm slowly getting used to it. If not for a lifetime of windows use I'd probably not even notice these little niggles.

Overall the hardware is of the highest quality and the bundled applications are powerful and easy to use. It's really suprising that apple don't do some kind of deal with the folks at OpenOffice.org to bundle the package with every new mac and make them 100% usable right out of the box!