Weekend confirmed?

This is the first Friday since fall 2005 that I didn't hear Garnett Lee say the memorable phrase "Weekend confirmed." And to think that I started listening to 1up yours almost by accident, after watching a video of Luke Smith interviewing David Jaffe, the creator of God of War. The scruffy looking dude with the beard, Mr. Smith, kept asking sharp question after sharp question. It was fascinating.

So after discovering that Luke was also host of a "podcast," I knew I wanted to listen more, and thus I became a fan of 1up yours. The years passed, people left: Luke, John. Other people joined: Brian, Mark, Shawn. And the two most controversial and unique hosts stayed: Garnett and Shane.

Now the 1up network is owned by UGO, half of the people working there were fired, and the most entertaining podcasts about video games are no more. It really feels strange coming home and not having those familiar voices go at it for two hours of pure fun. How could anyone forget Garnett saying "This is my god damned show!" or Shane "mangod" Bettenhausen defending everything PS3 related?

I just want to say Thank You to all the people of 1up for providing me with some the most memorable entertainment for the past three years.

PC gaming is not dead

Over the past two months I have been reacquainting myself with playing games on a computer. And so far, gaming on a pc, is the most fun I've had since playing games on a Sega Dreamcast.

Why do I think playing games on a computer is awesome?

• Lots and lots of games - A huge catalog of titles.
  
• Cheaper games - Usually $10 cheaper than the console version. Also, most big releases get a pc version, or eventually come out for with enhanced content and higher quality graphics; for example, Halo and Gears of War. Also the bargain bin is great with games like Age of Empires, Peggle, Call of Duty, Starcraft, Deus Ex for $20 or less.
  
• Better graphics - playing Bioshock with all setting crank up to high on a good monitor leaves the console version on an HDTV in the dust.
• Full versions of games - Team Fortress 2 is not limited to fewer players as in the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.
  
• Extra content - mods, fixes to errors, and free content from the developers themselves.
• Free multiplayer - no need to pay an annual fee to play with friends or other people with easy to use interfaces through services like Steam or GameSpy Arcade.
• You can use a controller - If you have a wired Xbox 360 controller, Windows will recognize it and all the games that have the "Games For Windows" label will change their interface to look almost like the Xbox version.
• Computers do more - A computer can do many more things than just playing games: programming, picture and video editing, keeping your life in order, manage your media library, etc.
  

The games I'm playing or have played so far are:

• The Orange Box - The best collection of games I have ever played. Nothing even comes close to Half-Life 2, and its episodes. Portal is amazing. Team Fortress 2 is suberb. And the short demo of peggle is the cherry on this amazing cake (No lie!). And the music...
  
• Bioshock - An extremely immersive experience with a great story. However, I completely disagree that it was voted as "Game of the year." Its good, but not as good as so many people claim.
• Civilization IV - What I imagine crack cocaine would be if it was a game. Do not play this game during your work days or if you have homework or a project to finish. The hours will pass and you will still want to play one more turn.

But as good as these past two months have been, there have been problems along the way. And this the only part where I can clearly see why most people prefer to play video games on consoles. First of all, you need a newer computer. Anything less than a multicore processor such a Core 2, an Nvida 8800GT, and 2 GB of RAM will not suffice to play the latest games.

And perhaps the most important thing you need to play games on a computer is an incredible amount of patience for unexpected problems. Searching for and installing the newest drivers for the different components takes time. Also, some games will simply not like your configuration no matter how powerful it is. In my case the Orange Box was the game with the least problems, but Bioshock did have issues with the sound card. Civilization IV was the worst in this respect as it crashed a few times.

Thus, if you spend a lot of time in front of your computer why not bring the games to you instead of you going to the games. If you have the computing power to handle pc games and don't mind troubleshooting every now and then, playing games on a computer is an excellent alternative to consoles.

Dover book

Its has certainly been a long time since my last post. But in the last few days I discovered a little book first published in 1963 called "Ordinary Differential Equations" that single-handedly gave me the inspiration for this post.

The book was re-published by Dover publications in 1985. Written by two professors Morris Tenenbaum from Cornell University and Harry Pollard from Purdue University, the book is the best reviewed about its subject on Amazon.com More than forty years old how can this be? And to top it all its price is less than $20.

When I took a course in differential equations a few years ago the textbook required for the course was definitely more than $100. So if you know what derivatives and integrals are, and want to learn about differential equations consider this book.

Pandora

Quick post for today. And it will probably be very old news to many of you but I just discovered Pandora Radio. It was recommended to me last year, but it was until yesterday that I finally decided to give it a try. And my first impressions are along the lines of why didn't I try it much sooner. Pandora is great!

Pandora is a music service supported through advertisement. It was described to me as the music equivalent of Tivo, but since I don't own a Tivo I don't know if the description fits. There is a subscription option, but most people stick with the free version. The interface is clean, clearly a web 2.0 service in the tradition of Facebook. Furthermore, in less than five minutes I had already figured out how to use it and it is evident this thing is something special.

There are a few things that still need to be fixed. There is no rewind button and you can't play specific songs. You can only skip six songs every hour if songs don't match your musical style. So in this respect it's more of a recommendation service. If you like a certain artist or a certain song, then next song to be played will have similar characteristics to the songs you have already approved by giving them a "thumbs up."

I can't remember being this excited about a new service like Pandora Radio in a long time. The most impressive thing is that it tries to learn what sounds are pleasant to the user. Every track comes with a description of why its being played. Who knew music had so much structure.

To look at the stars and wonder

This is perhaps the most interesting video I've seen about the challenges and opportunities in the current and future space programs.

A few surprising facts are that the average American contributes $.15/day for the space program. And that back in the Apollo program almost 4% of the country's national budget was spent in NASA. Now that figure is less that 1/16 of 1%.

Personally, I strongly disagree with Congressman Barney Frank views. While I understand there are a lot of important issues that need immediate attention, we must also not loose sight of the future. The future. And the future is indeed space. Hopefully a new generation will emerge that is fascinated with space, and than when looking at the night sky they will be captivated by the big question "If."

Google docs

What is the one thing that most computer users want to do with their computer? Well, there is surfing the internet, and e-mail. However, an essential component of the modern computing experience involves writing documents, making presentations, and at times dealing with spreadsheets. Until now these tasks have always been done through any of the office suites available, which include commercial offerings like Microsoft Office, or free ones such as Open Office, etc. More recently companies like Google have began offering key functionality through the so-called "cloud." That is, basic functionality like editing a text document, but with everything done through an internet browser, and as long as there is an internet connection present. Google has just announced that they will add the ability to work offline in Google docs. But even with this welcome addition, Google faces serious problems and challenges with their take on office products.

No one can deny that Google docs is an innovative approach to offer consumers this type of product. The user interface is clean and easy-to-use, the key functionality for an office suite is present, and the whole thing is free! For many people the thought of dropping a few hundred dollars for a product they will barely use is not an attractive proposition. And it is precisely here is where Google docs succeeds. Not to mention people on many countries simply cannot afford to buy Microsft Office. Google docs deals away with this problem.

However, as good as the word free sounds there are a few things that people should be aware when dealing with anything in the internet. Privacy and Security. When working on Google docs the documents are stored in Google's servers. And although the company is known for the quality of its products, one has to wonder what would happen if the wrong people got access to that data. For corporations, this is not even a point worth arguing - the risk is simply too great: corporate secrets, proprietary information, etc. For normal users this is just as important. What happens when I write a document that contains highly important personal information with Google docs? Social security numbers, tax data, etc. Do I trust Google enough to safeguard my information? And will Google use my own data to feed me advertisement? These are very important questions for anyone wanting to give Google docs a try.

Other office suits like Microsoft Office and Star Office come at a premium. But the benefit - or disadvantage for some people - is that the users are entrusted with the responsibility of protecting their own data. And by having an application installed locally the product can have a richer set of features, that could, otherwise, be seriously limited by an internet connection. It will be interesting to see how much of the consumer market that already owns a commercial office suite would give Google docs a try.

Google docs is a showcase of Web 2.0 technology. It innovates, and it answers one of the most essential needs of computer users. It is especially important for users that simply cannot afford, or those that don't want to pay for office software products. But the innovation and set of features can be a double-edged sword due to privacy and security concerns. And as Google starts offering more and more of the Google docs functionally offline one has to ask if the company ultimate goal is to take on Microsoft Office directly with a product that started online, but just begs to be made offline.

Windows XP Zune Theme

First, I have to say that I'm not a fan of the the default XP themes. The bright green and blue toy-like look of the theme called Luna an its two other variations. In fact, ever since I started using XP back when its was still code-named Whistler I have always used the Windows classic style.

A few weeks ago I finally decided it was time for a change. Thus, while searching for new themes for my XP machine I discovered that Microsoft created two really cool looking themes for XP. Yet, no one seems to know about them. The themes in question are named Royale Noir (never officially released) and Zune.

So what do I think after installing the Zune theme? I'm really impressed so far and it almost feels like I just got a new OS. Gone are the lame bright colors and now are replaced by a sophisticated black look. Also, there is no hit in performance which is really good news.

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If you are tired of the default XP look and you are planning to avoid Vista download the Zune Theme here.