Netbook Remix:Smooth Sailing

I haven’t updated in a while. Mostly, this has been due to some real-world activities unrelated to this blog’s topics of linux/gamig/other general geekery.

However, I’ve hit a drought in terms of content, primarily because I haven’t run into any issues. My Mini 9 has been running beautifully with UNR 9.04 on EXT4. flawlessly, in fact.

That being said, I’m hoping that 9.10 brings some exciting features. I hear that boot times are greatly improved, although it’s pretty fast on my SSD already. I hear that Pidgin is being dropped for Empathy. we’ll see how that goes…

I have ubuntuone installed,  but I haven’t tried it ouch much. I’ll try to take it for a spin repoirt back.

In other news, I’ve digging into my backlog of 360 games.

Baby 2.0, Warcraft III & other adventures

So I haven’t been as active as I’ve historically been. My Ubuntu systems have been running flawlessly, and Baby 2.0 has arrived, albeit with a rocky start.

As I’ve been in a new job, I didn’t plan on taking much time off for the baby, just the day itself followed by the weekend, actually. However, she arrived with lung problems that required an extended stay in the NICU, including a transfer to another hospital for advanced care.

Without going to further detail, after a week, Baby 2.0 arrived home safe, sound and fully healthy. All is well, so what follows is the official record:

After 39 weeks of compiling, Baby 2.0 was RTMed. However, there was an egregious read error while untarring the archive. After forcible extraction, a cycle of dependency hell ensued, with core components of the binaries refusing to unzip due to unmet depencies, ehich could not be met without the aforementioned components unzipping. Argh.

Eventually, new apt updates resolved the dependency issues, and all processes resumed normal functions. However, this scenario was the source of much woe and gnashing of teeth. Hope I never see these errors again.

Once this was resolved, I set out to try Warcraft III, including the Frozen Throne expansion, running under Wine, including the single-player campaign movies. After a bit of research I found the solution, and the games appears to run very well under wine. Next, I’m going to try to replicate it on th Mini 9.

NXE: Encouraging used games?

OK, I’ve installed the  NXE for my Xbox 360 Elite. While the new navigation system and Marketplace layout is nice, and the Avatars are , well, Mii-like, my favorite new feature by far is the ability to install games to the hard drive. Some of the benefits include:
improved load times (in most cases)
less heat generated (arguably)
much quieter operation without the DVD drive spinning.

I’ve installed several games to my 120gig drive, making me really appreciate my choosing the Elite when I bought it last year. Recently I had been wondering if dropping the extra cash was worth it, since I don’t plan on buying stuff from the Marketplace (too much DRM, thanks), making the extra $100 or so essentially cosmetic for the black case.

So, when the new hard drive installation became an option, I was overjoyed. I have a softmodded Xbox with a 120gig drive that I load all of my (legally purchased) games on, in addition to streaming all of my movies that I rip from the DVD to xvid from my linux server to XBMC. So suffice it to say I’m not fond of digging my discs out to use the content, but I digress…

The new feature works great. Insert disc, select it from the Dashboard and select Install to Hard drive. This essentially rips an ISO of th game disc to the hard drive to be read during play. After this, you select the game, and it prompts you to insert the original disc for authentication. You didn’t think MS would allow disc-free play, did you?
In any event, I find this acceptable as the disc drive screeches for about 1 second, then goes absolutely silent, and the game loads.
And loads well. In fact, I never hear the fans kick in at all during gameplay, so the system obviously does stay cooler to some extent.

Now, to the point of this post.
While shopping for gifts this past week, I saw a few games I would like to have myself, but not enough to pay full retail price. Now when I see these games, I would normally just think, “I’ll wait a few months and pick them up new after the price drop”. I don’t normally participate in th used games market, as it’s essentially a ripoff:
Gamestop is selling Force Unleashed used for $55 in my neck of the woods. That’s a whole $5 less than retail. For a used disc. For a used disc that who knows whats been done to it, and what condition it’s in, specifically. Not to mention the developer sees none of that money, but thats another post I’m not going to get into now. ( Yes, 1st right of sale, I agree that’s a good right, etc)

However, I saw another game thats maybe a year old, still selling for $40 retail that I saw in the bin for $15 used. Now that’s a bargain. And I thought, “hmm, used. It only needs 1 really good rip to the hard drive, and then a validation check at load time.”

I don’t know if I’m the only weirdo that thinks this way, but in a strange way it seems to me that loading to drive and the less intensive verification check would be an encouragement to buy used, as it takes some of the fear out of getting an abused game disc.
I’m personally going to continue to buy new when possible, but I think it will be interesting to see what kinds of changes to the used game market will be seen now that the consoles allow hard drive-based play.

Lost in the Oddyssey

Picked up Lost Oddyssey yesterday from the local Target. I’ve been looking for a traditional JRPG for some time, and Blue Dragon just wasn;t doing it for me. I may get back into that one later though.

I’m barely 2.5 hours in, and I must say I’m pleased so far with what I’m seeing. Impressive graphics, and the cut-scenes  are blended well with the ingame engine. I even don’t mind the traditional turn-based action, which I grew *really* tired of in the past.

I’m resisting the urge to read up on whats going to happen, wanting to be engrossed by the story. This game is designed by the original creator of Final Fantasy, and it shows, with fairly impressive results. Upon opening the case, I found no less than 4 game discs, with the last being included in a paper disc sleeve. Apparently standard game (DVD) boxes can only fit 3 discs on the little disc-nob that holds them in place.

Wonder how long this’ll take to complete… I don’t remember the last game I’ve finished, aside from Gears of War & Lego Star Wars II. My collection of unfinished games is growing

Conan: By Cron!

I picked up Conan over the weekend, and took it for a spin in the 360. Boy, between this and Assassin’s Creed, I’ve played more in the last week than I have in months. It’s been nice to get back into gaming a bit.

I’ve found the game highly enjoyable, being able to progress through the story at a nice pace, with just enough challenge to keep me from getting too frustrated throughout. I believe I’m about 1/2 way through, and I can see going through it again to get more secrets I’ve missed along the way. at $20 nwe, it’s a great buy.

On a side note, I did manage to complete my 1st contract in Asasin’s Creed by the way. That’s a fun game too.

Oh, the title isn’t a typo. I was being clever, what with my penchant for linux experimenting. (Obligatory lol)

Enjoy.

Assassin’s Creed

Yeah, I know I’m late to the party on this one. Just picked it up this weekend for $30. I must say, I’m impressed. I was a huge fan of Splinter Cell on Xbox, and this is beginning to get me excited as well.

If only I can get this Eavesdropping thing down….

I’ll give more details later if something truly cool pops up, but so far I’m loving th graphics & sound on the 360 version. I’m finding myself wishing it was on PSP, too. Weird that it has a DS version, but no PSP love

Xbox Live thoughts

I received a 12+1 month subscription card to Xbox Live as a part of my Father’s Day gifts. It’s something I’ve been wanting, as I haven’t played against anyone else yet. After entering the card info, and turning my Silver Live account Gold, I’ve played a bit of Gears of War online the past few days.

My, I must say its quite a different game online than off. On Live, the matches are short & brutal. I must’ve played well over an hour spread across 2 nights before I won my 1st kill, and it certainly carried a sense of accomplishment, knowing that this was against another player, rather than the game AI.

Of course, I expected the standard trash talking and adolescent bravado: what else do you expect from gamers with (relative) anonymity? Although, I must admit the high-pitched kid nearly crying because his kill was stolen was a bit more funny than pathetic.

I’ve decided I need to pick up a few more bargain priced online games to try out, maybe GRAW 2, who knows? What I do know, however, is that playing against real people is much more rewarding, and its something I look forward to.

Maybe I’m beginning to understand the appeal of those things people refer to as sports…

work-obsessed slacker = old-school gamer

I realize I haven’t been active the last couple of weeks. Been bogged down at the office lately.

However, in the midst of that I have found myself playing old(er) games, rather than my shiny Falcon Elite. In fact, She has found me playing Neverwinter Nights natively on my linux box. I’d forgotten how much fun it was, and she was interested in it as well. I may have to pick up another copy to install on her Inspiron so we can play together. Of course, then I’d need to set up my own NWN server

In other news, I’ve found myself playing old-school emulated games on one of my modded xboxes, notably MAME roms, but a few Sega Genesis games as well. My infatuation with Sega goes back to the 16bit era, having owned a Genesis (we played that thing constantly early in our marriage as cheap fun), SegaCD, then Saturn. She is still bitter about the Shining Force III disc ONE cliffhanger Fiasco, and refuses to play any other Shining Force games (except SF CD) until she can someday play the completed discs TWO and THREE. I may have to look into Saturn emulation again…

Kubuntu On The Rainslick Precipice Of Darkness

Yup, a new proprietary RPG released multiplatform. On Windows. On Mac. On Linux. Even on the Xbox 360. Demos available for all platforms
Tycho & Gabe, along with PlayGreenhouse, have released the 1st Episode of On The Rainslick Precipice Of Darkness. For those unfamiliar, you should spend some time reading Tycho’s editorials and Gabe’s comic strips. I love Penny Arcade, and read it every update (Mon/Wed/Fri). I personally find it hysterical myself.

I’ve tried the Linux demo, as well as the 360 version. They both play well, and capture the feel of PA perfectly. Surprisingly, it ran as flawlessly on my Kubuntu box as well as my 360, so I have no complaints. I feel the urge to pick this up for Linux to show my support. At $20 per episode, it seems reasonable. I hear each episode should provide between 8-12 hours of play. Not too shabby, I guess. I’m just excited they threw in a native client. There’s also a thread on the Ubuntu Forums.

Kubuntu Hardy Final Thoughts = Linux Done Right

Alright folks,

After some tweaking, I must say I think I’ve gotten Hardy to be pretty rock solid for my needs.
Restricted Drivers, check
XMMS/streamtuner, check
Liquidweather++, check
Moto4lin, check
Creative Zen V Plus, check (yes, I had a bit of trouble, but I didn’t see much use in posting the fix. Maybe another day)

Most of my daily uses are working great now, either after minimal fuss, or straight out of the box. Since I’m running Kubuntu, it didn’t come with Firefox 3 (or any other flavor), so I use 2.0.0.14, as I know all of my extensions work correctly, and I’m not real impressed by some of the GUI changes in Beta 3 yet.

Now with the summer approaching, I’m considering getting a new laptop for myself (go one for Her for Christmas, running Gutsy). I’ve been pretty impressed by the Inspiron 1420 she’s running, so I’ll likely get one for myself as well.