A new, refreshing and dyna­mic intro­duc­tion to FPS shoo­ters is Valve’s “Por­tal Gun”. They revo­lu­tio­ni­sed Half Life with the “Gra­vity Gun”, now they are set to do it again.

In brief, this should sway you from ever thin­king of purcha­sing a Dell machine.

Woe betide my Dell, (Renata’s Blog)

Some quo­tes:
Tech: When you go around the web — yes? On your brow­ser pro­gram. You can run into bad pro­grams called viru­ses. And these viru­ses can cause all the pro­blems you are tal­king about.
Me: I know what a virus is. I don’t have a virus.
Tech: But viru­ses cause all your pro­blems. You have a virus — yes?
Me: I do not have a virus. I have a hard­ware fire­wall on the rou­ter. I have a soft­ware fire­wall on the com­pu­ter. I have up to date com­mer­cial virus pro­tec­tion that upda­tes its defi­ni­tions on the fly and I have sche­du­led full sys­tem virus scans that run every night at 3 AM. I do not have a virus.
Tech: Well, you know, too much secu­rity can cause pro­blems too.

…

The first tech was ada­mant that the pro­blem was not rela­ted to memory, and that there were only three cau­ses for bluesc­reens: a bad mother­board, a bad hard drive, or soft­ware con­flicts. She explai­ned, again, that she had just repla­ced the mother­board and hard drive. “Must be soft­ware,” the tech said. Exas­pe­ra­ted now, my tech explai­ned that she had just repla­ced the hard drive, so there was no soft­ware on the machine. He still insis­ted it was a soft­ware pro­blem and refu­sed to send memory. In fact, he sug­ges­ted something that I will be wri­ting to Dell about. He actually sug­ges­ted that she ins­tall only one of the four memory modu­les, close the box, deter­mine quickly if that module was okay, and then leave, telling me to con­ti­nue ins­ta­lling Win­dows and call tech sup­port if I had any more pro­blems! He actually sug­ges­ted to her that she LEAVE OUT 1.5 GB of my memory, memory I paid for, pre­su­mably without telling me what had been done.

Engad­get: Dell Lap­tops Exploding…

Dell knew dozens of their lap­tops had sus­tai­ned exten­sive heat damage at least two years before ini­tia­ting any kind of recall. The source, who is clai­med to be someone “close to the com­pany,” has said that Dell execs were pro­vi­ded with docu­ments and pho­to­graphs in 2003 and 2004 sho­wing lap­pies desc­ri­bed as “bur­ned,” “mel­ted” and even “scorched.”

Wow it’s a hot July day here in Bris­tol, England. Chan­ces are today will be the hot­test July day we have seen for thirty years or so. I have just com­ple­ted my pre­viously post­po­ned phone inter­view (which went well) and cut the garden’s grass. It’s now time to chill out at the PC with a cold beer; time to write something for this blog!

Let’s see, I have a few topics to dis­cuss. Firstly my Vero­nica Mars Sea­son 1 DVD box set arri­ved in the post, hoo­rah. I deci­ded to import it from Ame­rica rather than wait for a toned down fea­tu­re­less region 2 release (“Ame­rica, Ame­rica…” – Styx are sin­ging, as if it’s some sort of holy land). Well it arri­ved today, via Ger­many. My dilemma came in the fact that the DVDs are region 1, NTSC; gene­rally incom­pa­ti­ble with all region 2 DVD pla­yers, such is my unders­tan­ding. Well I deci­ded to test them out, plan­ning to rip some region free bac­kups to use with my PC. Upon PC inser­tion the DVD loa­ded and pla­yed, no region bloc­king pro­blems. That’s odd, so I tried it on the region 2 PAL but NTSC com­pa­ti­ble DVD pla­yer downs­tairs, this also wor­ked beau­ti­fully. The final and most impor­tant test, does it play on the overly secure *will not play copied DVDs* Plays­ta­tion 2. And yes it did, admit­tedly it fai­led on pic­ture qua­lity because it is not NTSC com­pa­ti­ble but ove­rall my expe­ri­ments were a suc­cess. So is this Vero­nica Mars box set meant to be region free? Did they kindly rea­lize that a LOT of Euro­peans will be impor­ting this after down­loa­ding it on the inter­net? Is it a per­fect loo­king pirate copy? I think and hope not. Such reve­la­tions make me a hap­pier boy.

Lot num­ber 2 is a Sony Plays­ta­tion Por­ta­ble (PSP). Joys­tiq is run­ning an article on the PSP and how the DS is seriously killing it. It seems there are no solid PSP tit­les I really want, poten­tials yes, but nothing solid. And I hate pla­ying the ones I do have, mainly because I get so impa­tient wai­ting for them to load (e.g. GTA, Bur­nout). The one game I do play and often is Pro Evo­lu­tion Soc­cer 2005. The PSP has the poten­tial to be bri­lliant but Sony has sti­fled it. These days I only use my PSP for watching movies and TV epi­so­des on the train. Long ago are the days I dreamt of owning a PSP so I could play GTA on the move anywhere any­time, play Sonic 2 emu­la­ted on the bus, lis­ten to radio streams using the WiFi on cam­pus et al. Yes I can do all of these things but it takes so long to start them up it’s just not worth it, most of the time I can’t be bothe­red. A quick 5 minute game turns into 2 minu­tes of wai­ting and then it’s point­less. I’d rather read my book or lis­ten to my iPod.

Some com­plaints of mine:

1. VERY few games sup­port online play! What’s the point in Bom­ber­man PSP if it won’t play online? I only know one other per­son with a PSP so the chan­ces of me pla­ying its bri­lliantly sublime mul­ti­pla­yer are slim.

2. Where are the sim­ple fun games? I want to play Crash Ban­di­coot on the move (not a shit racer), I want a new 2D sonic game (not a shit 3D racing one), where are the ori­gi­nal tit­les? What’s with all the shit racing games?

3. Why does the screen stay on when pla­ying Music!? (Seriously that’s just dumb… and they make the album art tiny also). Why can’t I play my music during my games? Cus­tom sound­tracks are not a new thing — the games that do sup­port them don’t even allow mp3s… you have to rip them from your owned CDs. The headpho­nes that Sony pro­vide you with are also shit.

4. Open up some sort of deve­lop­ment APIs so that we can use the PSP with the appli­ca­tions we want! Why all this Ges­tapo crap when it comes to firm­ware secu­rity? What’s the big deal? Tigh­ten UMD secu­rity and open up the firm­ware a little for us. Pro­vide some sort of offi­cial line which deve­lo­pers can take to pro­vide their own legit PSP appli­ca­tions, for free.

5. The screen is so reflec­tive and shiny I can never see anything on it, even on the highest bright­ness set­ting. Only when in the dark does pla­ying become com­for­ta­ble. When spee­ding along in a train on a sunny day all I can see is the reflec­tion of my green T-shirt.

Maybe down­loa­da­ble PS1 games will be its redee­mer, yet I am sure they will be cou­pled with crazy load times. I’d give anything for a cheap oppor­tu­nity to play FFVII on the move… but I’m sure I will be let down once more. Maybe I should purchase a DS Lite. My main gripe with the DS was its ugli­ness, size, ina­bi­lity to play videos and the touch screen sty­lus; thusly I bought a PSP. Howe­ver the Lite has addres­sed many of these issues and now I find myself env­ying those that have the new Mario, Mario Kart, Sonic DS and all the other great and fun por­ta­ble games which do not suf­fer appa­lling load times. PSP = Poten­tial, that is all. Rant Over.

Lot num­ber 3 con­cerns Holly­wood action movies. (“Woo” – Devin Townsend’s Idom roars). Two fan­tas­ti­cal disap­point­ments I have watched in the past few days. “Pira­tes of the Carib­bean: Curse of the ill fated poorly thought out over the top sequel” and “I, Robot”. Admit­tedly it is impos­si­ble for Depp and co. to live up to the phe­no­me­nal amount of hype surroun­ding this ine­vi­ta­ble block­bus­ter but this sequel just doesn’t cut it as a good movie, yet alone a great one. The plot is messy; the sce­nes attempt to court a slaps­tick aura with witty dia­lo­gue in a fan­tas­ti­cal action pac­ked super­na­tu­ral pirate world, a la the ori­gi­nal. But it fails, at least in my opi­nion. The sto­ries are unin­te­res­ting; Jack Spa­rrow is cri­mi­nally unde­ru­sed; there is no sense of voyage – we can go from a to b just like this which in essence defies the point (it’s very much all over the place); the great musi­cian yet unde­rap­pre­cia­ted genius of anthem pro­du­cer extraor­di­naire Klaus Badelt has been sac­ri­fi­ced for the big name orches­tral star Hans Zim­mer. Admit­tedly Hans is great in most of his films but he really didn’t suit the Pira­tes sub­ject, he pilla­ged the ori­gi­nal theme and overly orches­tra­ted the entire movie to gene­rate some sort of pseudo-epic. I doubt the third film will be a threat to the ori­gi­nal either, though of course, it will make millions.

Alex Pro­yas’ “I,Robot” is a tiny little gold nug­get surroun­ded by mul­ti­ple layers of crap. The gold nug­get lies in the minia­ture phi­lo­sophi­cal ele­ments that make up the film, clearly lif­ted from the novel, these tid­bits are bri­lliant though of course should not be acc­re­di­ted to the film­ma­kers. Two films run side by side in I, Robot. The well thought out, phi­lo­sophi­cal and inte­res­ting world of Asi­mov and the poorly con­cei­ved, dreary com­pu­ter graphics fest that is Pro­yas’ vision. It’s almost as if the film alter­na­ted bet­ween sce­nes from a butche­red Asi­mov script and sce­nes from an unbe­lie­va­ble Pro­yas action plot; at times you can almost see the phy­si­cal divide bet­ween the two con­flic­ting thought pro­ces­ses. Like oil and water; oil is power and action, water is refreshing and invi­go­ra­ting, upon mixing you yield an unmi­xa­ble mess that is no use to anyone. The only redee­ming fea­ture for I, Robot is Will Smith who somehow makes the film a watch-able and enjo­ya­ble expe­rience. He makes Pro­yas’ mess look good, I loved him, he was great – without Smith this would just be one giant waste of time.

Now all I have to watch is Super­man Returns!
Over and out.

This is an inc­re­di­ble feat of artis­tic ori­gi­na­lity. A human stop motion video game in action.
Offi­cial Site
The mas­ter­work of Gui­llaume Rey­mond is a result of 4 hours of moving 67 par­ti­ci­pants around and cap­tu­ring 390 ima­ges to create a 3-minute video that one has to see to believe.

Also this is a great food/video game remix::

The Pres­tige is Chris­topher Nolan’s (Memento, Bat­man Begins) latest effort sta­rring Hugh Jack­man, Chris­tian Bale, Scar­lett Johans­son, David Bowie and Michael Caine.

Plot Out­line: Based on Chris­topher Priest’s 1996 novel, Bale and Jack­man play rival magi­cians in turn-of-the-century Lon­don who battle each other for trade sec­rets. The rivalry is so intense that it turns them into murderers.