Game Over

Last night ended my interest in playing video games, though that interest had been waning for some months now. The catalyst was being harassed by a condescending nut case during a run in Star Trek Online, my go to game for relaxation. Details of the incident are unimportant, suffice it to say I became the angriest I've been in a solid decade.

Disregarding the hostile party, part of the anger was towards my caring about it at all. Dissatisfaction with gaming has been growing due to the realization that the whole endeavor is a substitute for achievement in life. One plays games to wear the costume of a hero, be a creator of farms or empires, and achieve victory along with renown in the case of multiplayer games.

All of these things are lies we are sold to make us feel accomplished and fulfilled, but not too fulfilled since there is always future content to sell by the game makers.

As I get older, these illusions ring more and more hollow. While most people like or are  comfortable with pretty little lies, the lure will continuously be effective. However, I'm not categorizable as "most people" so last night's ugliness was the last proverbial straw that broke this gamer's back.

Uninstallation of ninety percent of the games on my PC followed with the remaining not likely to be played or are games played socially with real life friends. It isn't even bittersweet with the predominant feeling being... relief.

My time will be better spent on just about anything else.

Rambling Rather than Ranting

Once again, it has been more than a month since last posting. I wish this was due to being really busy having summer fun, however it is solely due to not being up to my normal levels of subhuman energy. Every day has been a tightrope walk managing health versus activity ever since spring arrived.

Adding to the misery has been chronic problems with the new silicone hydrogel contacts and trying to figure out just what is triggering allergic reactions that make me look like Christopher Lee as Dracula. What is mystifying is how one or the other eye acts up, but rarely both at the same time. Maybe a trip to an allergist is needed since I’ve used every kind of solution and cleaning regime out there.

Games People Play

With the year approaching its ending, I’ve found myself looking back at more than the past twelve months. For some reason, nostalgia has been hitting me harder than I’m used to.

It has been twenty years since DOOM from Id Software was released. I remember waiting for the shareware first episode to download over the glacially slow dialup connection I had through America Online.  Eager anticipation led to mild disappointment after firing up the game only to find I had to run it in a reduced box to get acceptable frame rates on my Packard Bell 486SX-25. That disappointment dissipated once actually running and gunning through the eerie atmosphere of darkened base on a moon orbiting Mars.

My first PC games were Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat, Dune, and Orel Hershiser’s Strike Zone. They weren’t graphically intensive, though Dune was one of the most lovely 256 color games every put out. Having played Castle Wolfenstein 3D, I couldn’t wait to play Id’s next game.

Two decades later and I’m playing games that look like this. How things have changed!

Defeat and Victory

If there is one thing that can be said about high technology is that when it works it is like magic and when it doesn’t it feels like a curse – or cursing. So I’ve been dealing with an ugly side effect of upgrading to the GeForce 650 TI this week. Every game I’ve thrown at it has run faster and looked prettier with two exceptions. They would be Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.

Neither will run. The best I can get out of them is a slideshow after the intro movies. Neither can connect with EA’s servers and the moment 3D graphics are used they run about 1 frame every 2-5 seconds.

Normally I can solve such a problem on my own or by browsing gaming forums. Not this time. Every trick and tweak known has been tried including:

• Reinstalling the games.
• Installing Nvidia’s latest beta driver.
• Reinstalling DirectX 9.0c.
• Reinstalling PhysX.
• Setting processor affinity via task manager.
• Setting processor affinity via a utility.
• Running windowed.
• Running with the resolution low and all the pretty settings at lowest.
• Glaring balefully in the direction of the games.
• Deleting save games and imported settings from previous installments.

My suspicions lean toward bad PhysX coding in the game, but from all the complaints online about something having changed for the worst in recent months one has to wonder.

What’s really ironic is the more temperamental first Mass Effect runs beautifully. Of course it is on Steam…

I give up. It is rare to be defeated this way and it is very disappointing. Time to remove the games from my drive and gain a huge amount of space back since I have all the DLCs.

Some of the aggression I felt after that went into tearing my PC apart to install an intake fan Gateway never bothered to. It involved snipping rivets (and using a Dremel on two) to remove rails for hard drives plus unplugging just about everything that could be unplugged. Nearly three hours of fighting and fuming later the new fan is working nicely.

The air flow has always been suspect in the case and now it should be just dandy. Now to test how gaming temps go, though the cold front threatening snow make it a little harder to verify.

The Week That Was

It is hard to believe it is General Conference time again – time does fly. The past week itself went by rather quickly thanks to a road trip on Wednesday.

Monday I accompanied my father on a pair of repair jobs and ended up not helping at all due to not being needed. However, it was good to get out of the house. Having the car out of action again has been frustrating. Anyway, the second call was at a friend’s place where the dishwasher pump isn’t working properly. While I was there, his son suggested watching his new Yellow Submarine Blu-ray which looked great even if the animation was pretty bad.

Also, in retrospect it made Magical Mystery Tour look sensical (this isn’t a word, but should be) by comparison in my opinion. This opinion will be shared by exactly zero other people in the world.

Better to Burn Out than Fade Away?

I’ve been suffering burn out lately in one area and have had a very hard time overcoming it. Fortunately for me, the area is not what anyone should consider an important one. What I’m talking about is gaming – especially video games.

When I went through the month plus of fighting that infection starting in February, I played a lot of video games while being unable to do much else. By the time March rolled around, I was getting more sick of gaming than I’d been ill from the infection. Looking at the back log of Steam sale purchases generates no interest whatsoever. I’ve also stopped playing League of Legends.

Other than a brief period of playing the last DLC for Mass Effect 3 (which is more like a visual novel most of the time), only Audiosurf has had any appeal. That’s most likely due to its simple graphics and use of my personal music collection. Going from that, I’ve purchased Beat Hazard Ultra on sale for ridiculously cheap from Steam since it also uses one’s own music.

Will it break the burn out? I’m beginning to wonder since I’ve been suffering from it for a month.

Finally a Half-Life Movie?

From J.J. Abrams of the Star Trek reboot and director of the next Star Wars movie to boot. Or it could be a Portal movie, though that wouldn’t take a big budget director in my opinion. I’ve waited so long for a movie based on Half-Life that I’m having trouble generating any enthusiasm now that it may happen. That may be because I’m ill right now, but I’d be more interested in Valve finishing the dangling storyline from Half-Life: Episode 2 before all the voice actors die of old age.

More Torchlight II Observations

Now that I have a character approaching level 30 in the Second Act and have had some multiplayer time in, I feel like I can make some more comments.

First, FIX THE BUGS! I have had the disappearing stash and shared stash bug hit with me unable to access my gear online or offline. Mysteriously, it all reappeared late last night and so far I can use the rare and unique gear. We’ll see if that lasts. Saved game synchronizing to Steam’s cloud has been hit or miss for me. This is frustrating.

Second, this is a remake of Diablo II as far as the plot line goes and the settings. I do not view this as a bad thing, in fact I was happy to see the desert again. Enough has been changed to avoid lawsuits, but if you are a big Diablo II fan this is your game to play.

The performance of the game engine has been a pleasant surprise, with the only slowdowns I’ve encountered being in online play. Playing with others is a blast and incredibly fast moving due to people triggering fights left and right. The graphics are pretty with the cartoony/anime style of Torchlight looking better than ever.

Sound is well done and my pet cat purrs after he kills something. It reminds me of the best cat ever, my late pet Sid. So I have named the critter in my solo embermage build after him.

Loot is ridiculously plentiful. While there is an option to turn off seeing normal items, I cannot get that to work in solo games. It works fine in multiplayer. Inventory management is sleeker than ever, but it gets a constant workout due to all the goodies you find. Trading with others in your party is very easy.

Remember how frustrating it was to get your first complete set in Diablo II or Torchlight? Expect to have at least one by level 10 in my experience. I actually had two complete sets on my mage by level 12.

I really like the game, but advise people to wait for a couple of patches before completely committing. If you are willing to deal with bugs, buy it now if your are an old school Diablo fan.

Getting Old and Slow, Plus Torchlight II Impressions

Forget having to get bifocals, it is getting slower in video games that is getting to me. A couple of things have proven this to me the past week. While never one of the best, I could at least game on the hardest or second hardest settings the first time I played a game. With the release of Black Mesa, a remake of most of the original Half Life, I find myself having to continuously lower the difficulty in order to progress.

I did fine until the Marines showed up. Then it became a ridiculous exercise in getting killed twenty or thirty times just to clear one area and limping out of it with under ten health. And getting killed with one shot in the next area.

I used to waltz through Half Life at its hardest settings, so this is a body blow for me. Older games were harder than the current ones,yes --  but this is painful.

The second thing was talking to one of my younger friends I game with. He can’t understand why he beats me handily in PvP when I can run through single player games on difficulty levels he can’t handle. That is simple to answer: twitch reflexes will always dominate in PvP with tactics being a secondary factor. Guile and tactics often compensate against AI opponents who follow predictable paths. Humans are a lot more random.

Watching him play at his house, I was amazed at how fast he could flip through screens, type, and fight without missing a beat. That is simply beyond my ability these days.

At least Torchlight II is something I can still play at veteran level and not die very often, in fact only once so far and that was due to stupidity on my part. So far it is much more like Diablo II than the first game and the graphics look great with no slow downs on max settings despite amazing waves of enemies. The changes all work to the better from what I have tested through level 11 casual and level 7 veteran ember mage builds.

But…

It is buggy. Horrifically buggy. I have a friend who can’t launch it without completely locking up his computer. One side quest I accepted couldn’t be done because the entrance to it refused to trigger. Then there is the multiplayer which was not functioning because Runic Games could not handle the traffic. I could not even create an account last night.

It is as bad as the Diablo III rollout, which is incredibly ironic.

Odds and Ends 9-15-2012

It baffles me that certain movies are not out on Blu-ray or took many years to get issued, such as Lawrence of Arabia. Having obtained a minty used copy of the special edition DVD set of The Right Stuff and watching it last night, I can’t understand why there is no Blu-ray of it. It is a stupendously beautiful looking and sounding movie that deserves the full high definition treatment. It also is the shortest over three hour movie I have ever watched. By watched, I mean repeatedly over the years.

While I like my Iview Cypad 7” Android based tablet, I do need more horsepower. The Google Nexus was a disappointment in my view, since it has no HDMI out or memory card slot. The new Kindle Fire HD 7” looks terrific, but still lacks the slot and leaves you tied to Amazon’s proprietary store. Even with that, it is the current top candidate for a replacement. Ainol, a Chinese manufacturer, has a new tablet, the Novo 7 Fire, that has everything I want, but there are some early technical problems involving overheating. Its specs beat both the Nexus and Fire HD, so if they work out the difficulties, that is the one I would like to get.

After many years, Black Mesa rolled out yesterday. Black Mesa is a mod for the Source engine that recreates much of the original Half Life with all the bells and whistles of newer technology. I did a short run as far as the highly annoying jumping the crates level and have to say the wait was worth it. The attention to detail is simply amazing and the voice acting isn’t bad at all. There is a possibility they may do the Xen levels later, but hardly anybody liked those. I can’t wait to get into the fire fights and see how they are executed.

Life or Something Approximating It

The past week was busy by my standards and this week looks to begin that way. Saturday and Sunday combined to make for a marathon run of events, so I am not feeling terribly good today. Two D&D sessions in a row contributed mightily to that, but at least we had one TPW (Total Party Wipeout). I did try to get the party killed in the first session, but the level five party managed to survive a mummy lord thanks to me and defeat a young adult green dragon that I attacked. He did have it coming after torturing my character, I must say.

I was rather surprised to be given the Diablo III Book of Cain hardcover by my friends hosting the second session. While I cannot yet afford the game, I always enjoyed the lore and storyline contained in the series which this book covers. It looks like it will be a fun read.

This, That, and the Other Thing

Things have been what I would classify as eventful since the weekend. Though in at least one case, more like eventful stalled – but more on that later. This is going to be a long post since I want to record the happenings for posterity. Hopefully it will not be too boring for other to read!

It all started with the celebration of a five year old’s birthday party. One of the families I home teach (explained here) is a young family with small children. The oldest one is a boy who has taken a shine to me for some inexplicable reason and is something of a problem child. Being very big and strong for his age, he is also very willful. He is also a miracle baby who should not exist according to doctors, for his mother was not supposed to be able to have children.

I have a code I live by that goes something like this: If a person who is not a moocher or leech attaches themselves to me, I feel an obligation to be as good a friend I can be to them. Now this is not a reluctant, foot dragging kind of “I have to do this” kind of feeling. Rather it is a sign to me that I need to make an effort and that the likelihood that God set this up is high.

So in this case, I have a little kid doing it and that is a first for me. It is also terrifying for a hopeless bachelor such as myself. While I am told I am good with children, my lack of experience with them makes it a very scary experience indeed. Maybe one day I will get past that, but not today.

If It Is Tuesday, Why Does It Feel Like Monday?

All day has felt like an extended case of déjà vu, but not in a good sense. Some of the symptoms of the possible case of Lyme Disease have come back and besides that it just feels like a Monday. Tomorrow being Independence Day is not going to help with the weekday confusion, is it?

Maybe it is the headache that is making me feel off, since it certainly messed me up in one of the League of Legends matches I played today. Good thing it was only a bot match.  I had planned to start playing PVP matches this week, but the health has not been up to it so far. My hands were shaking so badly I wondered if I was going to make it through the second match. Getting killed four times while playing Sona against beginner bots was atrocious.

Not that it was a bad day, there were good things including playing the afore mentioned game with real life friends. Also, I got to preorder Fractale on Blu-ray over at RightStuf. Though I could have saved money with free shipping from Amazon, I live close enough to RightStuf to get the set faster. Though Amazon did succeed in luring me into getting some classics on sale that were in my wish list.

A Passage to India on Blu-ray, Bad Day at Black Rock (truly awesome film) and No Time for Sergeants on DVD were too much to pass up. The last selection was inspired by the need to get free shipping and the fact that Andy Griffith died. It was either that or A Face in the Crowd, but it was the very funny No Time that made him a star.

It looks like my big plans to get a pair of reviews up by the 17th may not work out. The pain is making writing with any signs of intelligence very difficult. Oh well, we will see. I may see the new Spiderman, but I have to say I will go into it with some hostility after watching clips from it. That’s a pity since the Lizard was always my favorite foe of Spidey. I even had the Mego action figure of him when I was a kid.

And suddenly I cannot think of anything more to type. With no clue how to even end the post, I will just end it with a period.

Odds and Ends 6-16-2012

I have spent some time going back through old review posts and have done some minor editing to improve layout and add needed tags. Tagging is still underway, because I had previously thought of it in a master index way instead of how people actually use tags. If a tag is used to look up other posts, it is off of the post, not the side bar and I finally got that through my thick skull. New genre categories of science fiction, fantasy, comedy, and classics have been introduced to help with that.

One consequence of looking over the older reviews is finding the need to rewrite or update seven of them. In one case, that will require a newer and better DVD, but fortunately that will be under ten dollars to do.

Health 6-13-2012

Rain, rain, go away!

Being a human barometer is annoying, for every time a significant front goes through the pain index shoots up like mercury in a thermometer on an August day. Last night featured quite a drop in temperature, so sleep was fitful at best.

At least I got my Civilization V strategy testing over with yesterday afternoon. That was a pain of a different kind, one of playing a game you do not like to find a way to beat it and yes, it cost me hours of sleep the past week.

Why do I mention it in a post on health? Because the Civilization series is the most dangerously addictive games I have ever played. In fact, I removed Civilization IV from my computer due to becoming addicted to it.

The good news is that I am burned out on gaming other than with friends online, which is sporadic. Other than that, it is time to take a break from it. After all, summer is nearly here.

Mass Effect 3, Entitlement Culture, and Endings

Over at Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 forums there is a considerable uprising in protest of the grim ending to the game. Without going into the merits of the how the ending was written and presented (there is very legitimate and not legitimate criticisms), what strikes me is the rage at not having a happy ending possible. There is sloppy writing involved and the ending was rushed along with other parts of the game, no doubt about that. But it is a cohesive and logical ending despite what those who are angry are writing.

Part of what I like about the Mass Effect series is that it does not shy away from hard choices and painful outcomes.  The idea of sacrifice runs through the entire series, starting with the Virmire mission in the first game where you have to choose which one of two main companions dies. At the beginning of the second game, the death of your character, Shepherd,  was a red flag that you would probably die when all is said and done, despite the resurrection after the opening titles. I took it as meaning Shepherd was on borrowed time from then on out.

But a lot of people reject that concept and are demanding a new ending be made and released. Thanks to the afore mentioned sloppy writing, there is an accidental out for Bioware and EA if they choose to use it. Yet I find it amazing that gamers believe they have a right to a happy ending. Long have gamers clamored that games be taken seriously as art, alongside movies and novels. So when a game takes an artistic chance and reaches for that brass ring, this happens. Sigh.

There is additional anger that the vaunted choices imported from the previous games do not effect the ending. My reply to this is that Mass Effect 3 is a final act in a larger story and those choices are shown to have large repercussions for the galaxy. Entire races can live or die depending on the choices you have made. Conflicts between races can be ended and paths for their cultures changed. That is not small in scale, is it? So a great deal of the reward for past choices is delivered well before the ending sequence and I consider that argument a nonstarter.

It speaks a great deal about how well written the characters are when players get this emotionally wrapped up with them. A lot of this ire has to do with failing to get a happy ending and seeing your Shepherd happy with his or her love interest as a reward. Life is messier than that and these games have always reflected that.

Currently, the people in most industrialized/Westernized nations have come to believe that happiness is a right to be guaranteed by their governments. Usually that takes the form of a welfare or socialist system of some variant. Expectations are high that failure will always have a safety net. Economics and demographics are starting to assert their terrible and unstoppable refutation of such systems being sustainable in the long term. Watching the riots and demonstrations in Greece has been informative as to how people will react when such nets begin to unravel.

By the way, “happiness” is not guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States of America. The word is not even found in it or the Bill of Rights. So where does that mistaken belief come from? It comes from the Declaration of Independence. To make things even clearer, that statement of intent (which is not legally binding) had “the pursuit of happiness” as a right. Last I checked, pursuit is not a guarantee you will catch the thing chased after.

But back on topic. So what does that have to do with a silly video game, you ask? (Or at least I ask for you.)

Well, people had the expectation of getting their way at the end and when that was dashed, they became disenchanted, bitter, and often furious. So now petitions have begun and an organized movement to force Bioware to release a free happy ending patch or DLC is well underway. This is not too different from protests seen in Greece and soon to be seen in other parts of Europe.

Somewhere along the way, great swathes of people began to believe happiness could be guaranteed. Reality and history say otherwise, but we have so much that we have become spoiled rotten. Thanks to the melodrama playing out over Mass Effect 3, some things I have been pondering have come into better focus. Too many people are utterly unprepared for worst case scenarios, at least emotionally. This is not good, given what is coming.

Odd that a PR disaster for a game is giving me a better grasp of some societal mechanics, but hey, I take my inspirations whenever and wherever I get them.

I wish to note that this is not meant as a full blown apologia for Mass Effect 3’s ending. There are plenty of flaws to it and to the series in general. I cannot present the trilogy as a paragon of storytelling or game making, for it does have plenty of warts. While I do not like how it became a gay rights propaganda platform, a player had the choice to avoid it for the most part – until this installment when it was rammed through with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Still, it is an entertaining and interesting science fiction property that might be best served in other media than games in the future.

Something occurred to me while playing through it the first time. The sensation was much like when I saw Return of the King and it can be described as a feeling that nothing will top what I just viewed. For me, Mass Effect 3 is the last video game I will ever get excited about, much like the conclusion of The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy affected my movie viewing. Oh I will get the DLC’s and play out all the bargain games I have gotten on Steam over the years. But it feels like the end of an era in my life and the enthusiasm will never be the same, not due to disappointment but completion.

For me, that is the biggest and perhaps best ending.

Odds and Ends 3-13-2012

It was a nice day out today and tomorrow promises to be even better. While I was dead tired today after a tiring, but interesting Sunday, it turned out to be a day to get things done.

After much wrangling, ranting, research, trial and error, I managed to get a Sylvania 7” Android tablet working again for a friend. It was a Christmas present for his oldest boy and locked up when they first used it. I count that as a victory.

The upgrade to Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich on my Iview CyTab went relatively smoothly last week. While slightly slower in some ways, the stability is an immense improvement. So far I like it a lot and the various Web browsers seem to be happier than on Gingerbread. The keyboard is a huge improvement and nearly worth the upgrade alone.

It is hard to believe that Sunday was the one year anniversary of the tsunami that hit Japan. Their economy is still affected by it and I read that a lot of a manufacturing that had not already left is now going to China. It is a strange thing to watch because I remember when all the cheap knockoffs had “Made in Japan” stamped on them.

We had a township election today and for the second time in a row it came down to a tied vote decided by drawing cards from a deck. Yucatan Township is an interesting place to live, that is for sure.

The massacre in Afghanistan by a renegade soldier may turn out to be an even bigger tragedy than reported. There has been a report that he had suffered a brain injury while serving in Iraq in 2010. It used to be that was an automatic discharge, but he was sent back into combat duty. If true, careers need to end for the officers involved in the decision.

I finished Mass Effect 3 and found the ending to be interesting. Other people are incensed by it, but a happy ending never seemed to be in the cards to me. This series is gritty and serious science fiction, not Star Wars or Star Trek. In fact, it felt a lot like how Babylon 5 ended in some ways. Come to think of it, the Reapers remind me of a cross between the Shadows and the Borg.

Another Year Older, Another Year Wiser?

My birthday was a low key affair, which has become the norm for many years now. While we all get older, the real trick is becoming wiser as the years go by. In a culture devoted to perpetual adolescence, wisdom is dwindling. Not that we ever had enough of that valuable resource, but it is becoming even rarer.

So I hope I have learned a few things in the past year and that they have or in the future will benefit others. It does not seem I learn much for my own gain as time goes by. Since I believe we are here to serve others, it is probably for the best in the eternal scheme of things.

This week I decided to take for myself though. Using my birthday as an excuse, I have focused on me and entertaining myself instead of being productive. This is something someone healthy cannot do and probably does not need to do, but being disabled means you live a life most cannot understand. While I rant against being in a culture of “mass distraction,” it has been a deliberate exercise in it this week.

Being distracted was made easy by the release of Mass Effect 3, the conclusion of the Commander Shepherd trilogy and my present to myself. Some of the content I do not like, but the finale is a worthy ending to the epic story and the conclusion that angered a lot of fans is fine with me. Especially since it appears to be more open ended than they perceive to allow for DLC packs to come. It is a grim story, with the destruction of worlds making that unavoidable. Fortunately, that sense of friendship and personal intimacy with other characters is still intact. Hate the new cover system, it got me killed more times than I can count.

As is tradition, my dad and I went out for crab legs on my birthday. Back when my mother was alive, our birthdays were slightly more than a week apart so we would celebrate that way between them. Amazingly, I did not overstuff myself this year.

Thanks to my sister, I have the Blu-ray of my all time favorite movie coming. Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is a true masterpiece and, in my eyes, superior to Seven Samurai. My first DVD purchase was of this movie, more than a year before I had a DVD-ROM player to view it with. It cost a pretty penny back then, around $35.00 and looked like it was lifted from a VHS tape. No anamorphic widescreen here, just a letterboxed scan wedged into 4:3 ratio. I tried watching it on the new 40” HDTV and it looked awful. So it will be nice to see it in high definition glory.

After we succeeded in out quest for snow crab legs, we went to Blaine’s Farm and Fleet for more wood pellets. There I ran into the deluxe two disc DVD edition of Lawrence of Arabia, the one with the cloth cover on the case. It was in the surplus rack of discount DVDs and was on sale at an additional discount. Paying four dollars to replace my no frills bargain DVD was a no brainer and capped off a nice birthday.

Recovering from the Weekend

I suppose that most Americans would look at the title and assume copious amounts of partying and alcohol were involved, but since I am a devout Latter-day Saint the latter is not possible. The former can happen, but in this case did not. Still, after two weeks of being ill with a virus on top of my normal CFS, it was a bit more strenuous than normal.

It started with a normal D&D session that got very loopy and not due to the story. When a group of friends have not been together for several weeks, it is very hard to get them to focus on gameplay. At least that is been my experience and it was particularly chaotic this time around.

Stayed over at a friend’s house and went in with his carpool to church, so that meant being there three hours before sacrament meeting started. A light snow had deposited enough flakes to be slippery, so we shoveled the walks. Normally, that would be too draining for me, but the snow was so light it was more like scraping the walks.

However, I am feeling it today. The pain is not muscular, because there was nothing to lift. But when I get too tired and the weather changes, it becomes a double whammy of pain in the joints and back. A rough night led to sleeping in and I am still a little fuzzy headed.

Still, it was worth it.

I see Rush Limbaugh has lost seven sponsors over his extremely foolish insults toward the female students that the Democrats setup to cause a big ruckus. Rush fell for obvious bait and I am continually amazed at how naïve conservatives are in regards to the Left’s tactics. The whole contraception controversy has been a very carefully calculated and laid out plan between the Democrats and the media to divert attention from the economy by reigniting the culture wars. Both Santorum and Limbaugh have shown themselves to be rather stupid in doing exactly what the Left wanted them to do.

It is only the beginning of what I predict will be the dirtiest and ugliest election season since Abraham Lincoln was elected. The political Right have no clue just how bad it is going to get and have busied themselves with self destructive internecine warfare, much to the media’s glee. The phrase “Stuck on stupid” keeps coming to mind.Failing to keep the eye on the ball due to ego is not forgivable.

With global freight shipping declining, durable goods orders down, and inventories growing, the real story will be the economic collapse happening. The media will avoid that as long as possible to keep Obama in power, but I think things will hit a critical point before the election. The fact he has told the House and Senate Democrats there will be no money coming from him and his PACs is a big warning sign that there are money problems. They act surprised by it, but it has been clear that the only person Barack cares about is Barack for a very long time now.

Over in Russia, Putin has shown how it is done with massive fraud and a lot of media blitzing. Reports from observers indicate it was not a fair election, but does anyone really expect it to be overturned? At the rate things are going, America will end up like this.

At least I will have a distraction for awhile. Mass Effect 3 unlocks around midnight and I am eager to see how the trilogy ends. Forget Star Wars and Star Trek, the Mass Effect universe is the most exciting science fiction setting currently out there. The ability to turn a game into something more akin to being inside an epic film or novel series has been the great achievement of the franchise.

I had better get to work on another review before I start playing, or there will not be one posted any time soon!

Odds and Ends–Tech Edition

The Iview Cypad 760TPC I purchased earlier this month has been a lot of fun to monkey with. Being new to tablets and the Android OS, I have to say the stability leaves something to be desired. It appears to be app related and I did go in forewarned about the crash rates of mobile operating systems.

Battery life has been good since I disabled the telephone related drivers on it. I get better than five hours doing a mix of things including playing games, web browsing, reading, and watching videos. Performance has been fast, but with occasional slowdowns that seem to come from my monkeying with app installations too much. The temptation to play with new software is severe due to the plethora of freebies available.

One of the apps I really like is the Gospel Library one from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not only are scriptures available, but class manuals, conference talks, and magazines. All of them can be highlighted and annotated with that synced up to your Church account online. This week I matched up all of that from my hard copy of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. This week I will get the Holy Bible synched up as well.

Another app I have gone nuts with is the Kindle for Android one. Yes, I now have the equivalent of a Kindle Fire in many ways. The sheer volume of public domain books they have up had me downloading like mad while watching a movie Saturday night. Being able to watch something and multitask on the Net is an unexpected bonus for me. The IMDB app makes it a handy “look up the actor” tool, too.

I purchased one book and read it, The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. It was nice to find a straight forward translation, since the one I had dated back to the 1980’s and was aimed a business men. There are some formatting errors, but nothing egregious and it was a quick read. Reading on the Cypad is easier on the eyes than expected and the ability to look up archaic words is very handy.

After testing multiple browsers on the tablet, I have kept three on it: the included Android one, Firefox, and Opera. If a page does not render correctly in one, one of the others usually can handle it. Opera is my main one due to its much better controls and rendering. I am disappointed that embedded videos do not work well, if at all, on the browsers. Dedicated apps appear to be the only way to go since websites are detecting mobile devices and do not act normally as a result.

With a new mini HDMI to HDMI cable, I finally was able to test out the video output of the Cypad and was stunned by how well it upscales to 1080p. With only limited space to play with until I get a new microSD card, I can’t test a full length movie yet. I can see using this to teach Sunday school lessons with downloaded Church videos and one of our new flat screens.

On the PC end of things, VLC 2.0 is finally out and it looks like I will be going back to it for my video playing needs. So far it has rectified all my problems with VLC, but further tests await. Besides the improved performance and compatibility, a lot of little things have been added and tweaked. The ability to jump chapters in ripped videos means I will be able to do screen captures more efficiently for my Blu-ray reviews. Anything that speeds that up is good with me, because I resent having those huge MKV files taking up room on my hard drives.

I have been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic with a friend online and have some issues with lagging despite a 100-105 MS. It may be my old video card cannot handle some of the areas with only 512mb of memory or it may be the fact I live in the middle of nowhere. More playing should give some clues. The game is good and if you liked Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic you will love this.