One of the Christmas presents I got was the Logitech iFeel MouseMan. Since I’m such a late adopter of optical mice, it’s cool that I’m a relatively early adopter of force feedback mice. Unlike previous efforts (effort, actually), rather than trying to emulate the force feedback found existing in some games for joysticks, it uses proprietary methods. Consequently, games must be programmed to take advantage of it. MDK 2 does it quite well, I’m told, but Soldier of Fortune disappoints. Someone tinkered with the Quake (1) source code and made it compatible, and mods for games that use .DLL’s (like Half-Life) are available as well. Additionally, it vibrates over hyperlinks and Windows items as per “schemes” (like “spongy” and “steel drum”) I’m going to have to tinker around to see what schemata I enjoy best.

I’m taping the Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi Channel – all 42 hours of it. Always did like that show. It’ll take 7 tapes to do it, but compared to the 20 it took to get Star Trek‘s 80 episodes (like 4-5 months of dedicated nightly tapings) it’s a breeze.

I assembled a page of Quake 3 ramblings. Also, I updated my Sister’s…erm…sister site with info concerning a public singing appearance she’ll be making in January.

I’m working on a forum and a page with columns and general ramblings.

Tired now. More later. Happy new year.

Oh, and there is a God… Wayne Brady is getting his own show next year. Maybe now people will remember his name.

Okay, to update: I have graduated. I did get that much done. Also, I got SSX for the PlayStation 2. Pretty cool. I don’t think it’s gonna change the world (Metal Gear Solid 2 will do that). One of these days I’ll break down and buy a memory card.

For graduation, my wife got me a Handspring Visor, which was downright eerie, since I got her the exact same thing for Christmas. We exchanged Christmas presents yesterday (yeah, we were a little early) and she was thrilled to get hers (though she already knew what it was since it shared the same box size as the one she got me). Now I need to figure out the proper way to use the damn thing. First thing I did was to sync it with Outlook, and it filled my 2MB of memory with 800+ email messages. Looks like I’ll need to get into better email deleting habits. However, it took me no time to fire up DREADling, a freaking FPS on PalmOS! Granted, it did lock my Visor up once, but there’s three different types of reset, so no biggie. Not too practical, though. I prefer ChessGenius, though it means I’ll actually have to learn how to play Chess.

For Christmas, my wife got me The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. This one game in the one hour I got to play it, has more or less renewed my faith in Nintendo as a game developer, if not as a console manufacturer. Mask was developed by a team at Nintendo that did not have Shigeru Miyamoto in tow, and yet it completely kicks ass. My wife even got me the hard wrapped package that had the Collector’s Edition in the Gold Cartridge and the cool but headache inducing lenticular label, and the strategy guide which I will try my damndest to use sparingly. I’ll elaborate more on this game later, once I get a ways into it.

Finally, and this is the most important part of today’s posting, I have made a special sub-page of sorts. This page is to showcase the singing talents of my sister, Amy Kidd. At http://amykidd.schnapple.com/, I have a brief description and the MP3 files of a demo tape put together by my sister this past summer. She has one hell of a singing voice, so do yourself a favor and check it out.

Emulation news site Zophar’s Domain has posted a news story that, suspiciously, I haven’t found anywhere else (though I did just submit it to Slashdot. Apparently some ambitious (or bored) individual has ported Linux (not sure which distribution) to the Dreamcast. Screenshots (taken with a digital camera) can be seen here, here, here and here. You can download the kernel from this FTP site. Oh, and if you’re ambitious enough to want to attempt to create a DC CD-R to run this, you’ll need to follow the instructions on this page. Now, I haven’t tested anything to check the validity of this so this could be all an elaborate hoax (these screenshots don’t give any real indication that the Dreamcast in the shot actually has anything to do with what is on the TV). Imagine – the console famous for emblazoning the Windows CE logo running Linux! Granted, I’m not sure – outside of the tech demo nature of it all – how useful this is, but it’s still neat in theory. Perhaps if someone out there could check it out to see if it’s real or not…

Got the PlayStation 2. Got no games still. Until I get a job after I graduate from College (~1.5 weeks) I really can’t say for certain when I’ll have the “money to spare” since new jobs have this nasty habit of not kicking in money-wise for a few weeks. Joy.

At any rate, when I can buy a game, SSX is the one I’m gonna get. Not that I’m hugely big on Snowboarding Games or anything, but it looks cool, plus I don’t care about football.

In the meantime, here’s my impressions. The DVD playback is lots better than my APEX AD600-A, but it’s still not as good as my DVD Encore from Creative Labs is. Oh well. Haven’t tried any “problem” DVD’s (Terminator 2: Ultimate Edition, The Abyss Special Edition) but I’ll probably rent one soon. I might use it as my primary DVD player, except for that whole “Macrovision” thing. I don’t know what I’ll do about working around that – I’ll probably just rig a second switch on the way to the TV, but man it’s a pain. Can’t gripe, though – were it not for Macrovision I surely would copy these things.

I could attest to the “texture smoothing” bit the PS2 does if I had ever played PSX games extensively – don’t expect Bleem! though – these games are still elegantly crappy looking (the two demo discs I have, that is).

Ironically, what I really find myself wanting to do is get Intellevision Classics and fire that up (or even better – the Atari 2600 disc) – now that’s an abuse of technology!

Aesthetically, I was surprised – this thing is a lot smaller than I thought it would be. It’s like 12-13 inches long (wide, whatever). It’s smaller than my Sony VCR. Somehow I thought this thing would be standard DVD/CD player/component width (which would make sense – it’s skinny, it’s black, it turns off in the back – it’s a piece of stereo equipment!) but nope – it looks pretty small on top of my APEX player (its temporary home).

There’s a piece of equipment calling itself the “horizontal stand”. There’s a “vertical stand” – a blue wedge dealie which holds the thing up and keeps it from falling over when it’s on it’s edge, but this “horizontal stand” is for looks only – it has no chance of falling over in its normal position. But I get the thing out of the box and all hooked up and I realize – it looks naked without the stand – kinda like a “racing stripe”. So I’ll probably get one. Yep – I’m a sucker.

Remember back in the Nintendo 64’s heyday (yes, it did have one) when people griped about games costing $60 and $70, due to the cartridge format? Well when I buy SSX, I’ll pay $50 or less. That’s all. Nothing else. Unless, of course, I want to save my game. In which case I’ll have to fork over $35. That brings the TCO of this game to $85. Progress!

“But you can use the card for multiple games!” true – so over the long term I will save money. Except for those game that take up the whole card (NFL 2K on the Dreamcast comes to mind). Plus, the PS2 DVD cases have a slot for a card, so they’re encouraging you to get a lot of memory cards. It’s akin to the “our console is cheaper!*” *but it doesn’t come with a game notion that became the norm a while back.

All I know is to hell with the parents – I want a damn demo disc, not a flier to send in for one (which is what I got). When the parents of America griped to Sony that anything they put on the PSX demo disc was too violent, Sony decided to wash their hands of the demo disc pack-in idea. Bastards.

Anywho, something else with the PS2 bit I think is funny is the whole memory card management concept. I don’t remember how many bytes was on a PSX memory card, but let’s say it was 30K. Well, Sony divided this up into 2K “blocks” (15 per card) so that they could just say how many blocks a game took up, and save the user from having to do math or worry with base 2 numbers. On the back of a PS2 game, however, is a measurement in kilobytes. So now you have to just figure out or remember how much memory you have left. Can’t decide if this is good or bad…

No time to update. Been busy with school and job hunting and yadda yadda yadda.

At any rate, barring a major incident, today is the day I finally get a PlayStation 2. I would have had one on launch day (had it pre ordered and all) but finances prohibited me. Actually, I wouldn’t even be able to get one now had it not been for the fact that my parents kicked me a graduation wad (yes, I am spoiled). I guess I had better graduate, then.

As for availability – it helps that when you quit a retail software store you don’t sever ties. Tee hee.

Having said all that, I don’t plan to get any games for the system just yet. Main reason is that I have a ton of homework to do (next week is the last week of school, and then finals) and I don’t need the distractions. Just the idea of my PS2 with its blue LED humming and playing all the DVD’s that my APEX AD-600A can’t play too well (like anything from Total Movie magazine – plays fine just with bad artifacts, or anything with Seamless Branching) and maybe popping in a PSX demo disc. The PS2 comes with no demo disc, and why is that? I mean, it could. Of course, I guess I just answered my own question. You place a demo disc in a system to help sell it. Sony’s not trying to sell the PS2 – the PS2 sells itself.

Yep, Sony did everything they could to bung this one up. They scaled back the shipment. They had no first party launch titles. They even lost developers (like Oddworld Inhabitants) and exclusive properties (like Crash Bandicoot). To top it off they launched what was essentially a DVD player with PSX/PS2 capabilities built in (but so that you don’t forget that it’s a game machine they make you control the DVD’s with a Dual Shock controller or make remotes unintuitive). And yet they had a better launch day than Dreamcast did – 500,000 units sold (all of them) as opposed to 9/9/99’s 400,000 units.

I guess they figured it might look bad to have a million units out there and not all one million sell. It’s a kick to Sega’s groin that Sony had a better launch day despite scaled back production. Actually, I don’t know what the real reason is – I really believe it might be as simple as difficulties producing the Emotion Engine chip – but it does all seem suspicious and convenient.

There’s a guy at the office who said “hey man, have you seen the PlayStation 2? Madden 2001 looks awesome!” Looks awesome. Nevermind that NFL2K1 has better play (or so I am told – not a football guy myself). Nevermind that the graphics are only marginally better than Dreamcast. Nevermind that Dreamcast has been around for over a year, and has lots more titles, and is actually available this Christmas. Madden 2001 looks awesome. That’s the reason the Dreamcast will go down – Sony has the masses going for it.

Granted, I’m fueling the fire. I’m part of the reason that that particular unnamed software store will be out of PS2’s by the end of the day (I stiffed someone out of getting their pre-ordered unit today, no doubt). I have a slew of Dreamcast games, but I’ll probably play the hell out of SSX (the only game I see worth buying immediately). Hell, I’ll probably plop down for a PSX (PSOne) game or two.

Am I addicted? Perhaps. No, definitely. But anyway, I never owned a Saturn or a PSX and I’m getting a PS2 today. I’m gonna fire it up, play a few games (next week) and sit back to watch the console wars. Me and the other 700,000 people who were lucky enough to get their paws on a PS2.