That's the sound my wife heard as the garage door was closing when she got home yesterday. Upon inspection from me, the spring over the door that helps pull the door up broke right in the middle. Just snapped off. Called and got a friend to come over and help lift the door. One side came off the track and almost hit the car. Luckily it was up high enough so I got in the car and backed it out.
So at some point today I'll be heading home when the guy comes out to look at it.
On a gaming stand point, helped Wade Thompson finish off Zombie Apocolypse. I can't believe he played through it all by himself. It was a blast with 4 players running through it. At least now he has it done.
Next is Yu-Gi-Oh Tag Duels.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Crazy Busy
I haven't posted in a while but for good reason.
Mighty Mango's house caught on fire and then one week later a friend of mine in town caught on fire as well. I spent 2 days with him going through the house trying to find anything we could.
Was exhausted by Friday which I took off and ended up taking my daughter to the doctor's office. She finally got some stout drugs to help knock out her month long cough.
I've got to put together a post on 4 games I've bought for the iPad. It's a mix that covers the whole family.
I also need to post up on the iPod Touch we now own as we sold 2 Zune's to buy it for the wife.
I'll try to do those sometime in the near future.
Past that, just been working on Blur and a little Gran Tursimo 5.
Mighty Mango's house caught on fire and then one week later a friend of mine in town caught on fire as well. I spent 2 days with him going through the house trying to find anything we could.
Was exhausted by Friday which I took off and ended up taking my daughter to the doctor's office. She finally got some stout drugs to help knock out her month long cough.
I've got to put together a post on 4 games I've bought for the iPad. It's a mix that covers the whole family.
I also need to post up on the iPod Touch we now own as we sold 2 Zune's to buy it for the wife.
I'll try to do those sometime in the near future.
Past that, just been working on Blur and a little Gran Tursimo 5.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Redid Computer in Bedroom
Well last weekend was really busy. We decided to sell the computer desk and I hooked everything up to the TV in the bedroom.
It was a good little bit of work getting the desk cleared off to sell but it sold really quick.
I'm surprised I didn't have too much trouble getting it all hooked back up. I moved the TV forward and my speakers are behind the TV. I added a picture of the desk and the new layout for the TV below for you to see the change.
It definitely opened up our bedroom for some more room. We like it a lot better this way.
I used the money from the desk and selling the white TV I used as a second monitor to help purchase a wireless keyboard and mouse. Me and the wife are really happy with it. I'm just curious if the batteries will last as long as they say.
Check out the Logitech keyboard and mouse combo I got:
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/keyboards/keyboard-mice-combos/devices/6541
It was a good little bit of work getting the desk cleared off to sell but it sold really quick.
I'm surprised I didn't have too much trouble getting it all hooked back up. I moved the TV forward and my speakers are behind the TV. I added a picture of the desk and the new layout for the TV below for you to see the change.
It definitely opened up our bedroom for some more room. We like it a lot better this way.
I used the money from the desk and selling the white TV I used as a second monitor to help purchase a wireless keyboard and mouse. Me and the wife are really happy with it. I'm just curious if the batteries will last as long as they say.
Check out the Logitech keyboard and mouse combo I got:
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/keyboards/keyboard-mice-combos/devices/6541
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Zombie Trailer Park
I was browsing around the apps on the iPad this last weekend and figured I'd just type in zombie and see what showed up. Quite a few things up there but Zombie Trailer Park caught my eye. Mainly because it was a stragety based zombie game. Don't see too many of those.
The small story is a zombie outbreak happened and consumed a city. Now they want to leave the city and take over your trailer park but you're not going to have it.
Now that you've got the story down, the board is laid out with your trailer park on the left and the city on the right. They both have a health meter that you have to take completely down to win. All the fighting happens on the road between the two locations.
This game straight copied Left 4 Dead on the characters. Basic zombies that keep coming in waves, big ole fat guy that smashes the ground with his hands (so he's a mixed boomer and tank), the hunter which looks exactly the same (which he does jump), and then witch that comes out running like hell killing everything in her path. The did add a catapult that catapults zombies across the screen to get them closer to your trailer park but that's about it.
Your defense and the stragety part lays here.
You have the basic redneck with a shovel that comes out to fight that costs $50 to buy. Then you can buy the redneck farmer with a shotgun for $200. After that you can buy moltov guy that is drinking the booze while carrying a cart behing him to throw the moltov for $350. Then you can buy a pickup truck loaded with a gatlin gun on top of it for $900. Finally but not least, you can buy the preacher who converts the zombies to attack themselves for $1500.
The stragety part involves what you buy when on being able to build those guys. The redneck is obviously what you start out with and you earn money after so much time goes buy. Now you can increase the time the amount of money comes in by spending $500. After about 4 of those the limit is hit and you get $50 about every 3-5 seconds I think. You'll be amazed how fast you use it though.
You can only have 5 guys on the screen when you start out so you have to buy trailers to increase it by 5. That will run your $250 each time. I've ran it up to 55 at one time and their doesn't seem to be an end to it.
You can buy the runned down old house for $1000 which lets you buy the redneck farmer with the shotgun. Which you have to buy if you want to bulid the moltov and armed truck. $1200 will net you the moltov guy and $1400 will get you the armed truck. $1500 will let you build the church, however to build the church you have to have all the others unlocked first.
Now for the special weapons or as the game refers to them, YEE-HAW points. You earn points everytime you kill a zombie. Once you get to 3000 points you can unlock a mob which brings out a bunch of rednecks and farmers to take on the zombies. If you wait until you get to 4000 points you can use the harvestor which is a huge farm vehicle that cuts them up and spews the blood out the back. It will run all the way across the screen and destroy anything it touches. It can't be killed. When you get to 5000 points, you can call in the air strike which lays down bombs from one end of the road to the other destroying all the zombies on the road outside of your own of course.
There are only 4 levels to this game and the difficulity increases dramaticly by level 4. I've only beat level 4 once after a couple hours of play. Level 3 took me some time to beat as well.
What I'm thankful for is they have the gamecenter on the iPad now. This adds achievements into the game. They have added some pretty rough achievements in this game which makes me want to play this game more to try to get them. It lets you take it beyond just beating the game which is why achievements are created most of the time.
So definitely a fun little game that can soak up your time if you're not watching the clock.
The small story is a zombie outbreak happened and consumed a city. Now they want to leave the city and take over your trailer park but you're not going to have it.
Now that you've got the story down, the board is laid out with your trailer park on the left and the city on the right. They both have a health meter that you have to take completely down to win. All the fighting happens on the road between the two locations.
This game straight copied Left 4 Dead on the characters. Basic zombies that keep coming in waves, big ole fat guy that smashes the ground with his hands (so he's a mixed boomer and tank), the hunter which looks exactly the same (which he does jump), and then witch that comes out running like hell killing everything in her path. The did add a catapult that catapults zombies across the screen to get them closer to your trailer park but that's about it.
Your defense and the stragety part lays here.
You have the basic redneck with a shovel that comes out to fight that costs $50 to buy. Then you can buy the redneck farmer with a shotgun for $200. After that you can buy moltov guy that is drinking the booze while carrying a cart behing him to throw the moltov for $350. Then you can buy a pickup truck loaded with a gatlin gun on top of it for $900. Finally but not least, you can buy the preacher who converts the zombies to attack themselves for $1500.
The stragety part involves what you buy when on being able to build those guys. The redneck is obviously what you start out with and you earn money after so much time goes buy. Now you can increase the time the amount of money comes in by spending $500. After about 4 of those the limit is hit and you get $50 about every 3-5 seconds I think. You'll be amazed how fast you use it though.
You can only have 5 guys on the screen when you start out so you have to buy trailers to increase it by 5. That will run your $250 each time. I've ran it up to 55 at one time and their doesn't seem to be an end to it.
You can buy the runned down old house for $1000 which lets you buy the redneck farmer with the shotgun. Which you have to buy if you want to bulid the moltov and armed truck. $1200 will net you the moltov guy and $1400 will get you the armed truck. $1500 will let you build the church, however to build the church you have to have all the others unlocked first.
Now for the special weapons or as the game refers to them, YEE-HAW points. You earn points everytime you kill a zombie. Once you get to 3000 points you can unlock a mob which brings out a bunch of rednecks and farmers to take on the zombies. If you wait until you get to 4000 points you can use the harvestor which is a huge farm vehicle that cuts them up and spews the blood out the back. It will run all the way across the screen and destroy anything it touches. It can't be killed. When you get to 5000 points, you can call in the air strike which lays down bombs from one end of the road to the other destroying all the zombies on the road outside of your own of course.
There are only 4 levels to this game and the difficulity increases dramaticly by level 4. I've only beat level 4 once after a couple hours of play. Level 3 took me some time to beat as well.
What I'm thankful for is they have the gamecenter on the iPad now. This adds achievements into the game. They have added some pretty rough achievements in this game which makes me want to play this game more to try to get them. It lets you take it beyond just beating the game which is why achievements are created most of the time.
So definitely a fun little game that can soak up your time if you're not watching the clock.
Dead Nation
I went and got some Playtion points last Saturday and bought Dead Nation. I've been wanting this game since the day it came out and I'm so glad I picked it up.
If you're curious to how this game is, take Zombie Apocolypse and make it 5 times better.
I can't help but reference everything to Left 4 Dead as that is what really pulled me into the zombie phase I'm in and everything copies this game in one form or another.
The graphics and details in the game are very good. They use the lights in the game very well as you run around with a flashlight. It gets hard to see what's around you and I get hit without knowing someone is even there all the time.
I've got to cover the enemies though as they did a good job on how they are portraide. For starters you have the basic human zombies walking around that are slow. You also have some fat ones that slowly pick up speed and start to run. Throughout the game, you'll run into more like fire fighter zombies, army men zombies (yes, they are carring guns but can't aim worth a flip), and mutated zombies that look horried.
Tthe first major guy I'm going to talk about is the Boomer. They did an excellent job with him as he literally is a huge fat zombie and his head is head is so small. When he sees you, he starts running and you can hear the flub a bouncing up and down. When you finally kill him, he will explode and anything around him gets blown away. That includes damaging, killing, and shooting anything that go any direction that way. Always cool to see the bodies go way up in the air and land off somewhere else. It can get pretty rough though when you have like 8 or more of those guys trying to get you at one time.
The tank is, well a tank. The main difference is he jumps and he can jump far. He literally jumps to where you are standing and if you're not moving, you're pretty much dead when he lands on top of you. He can't run very fast so that's your main advantage agaist him.
The next zombie is new and unlike the tank that walks on all fours. This guy stands up, is a little bigger than the tank and has huge blades on both his hands. Plus he's extremely FAST. Plan to get sliced up because if you don't kill him before he gets to you, it's over. He's rough to get away from and I'm constantly trying to use something in the street to block his path to me to slow him down.
I didn't realize how much of a pain this next one could be until the 9th board. The Screecher can be your worst enemy in the game if you let it. To me, it's literally a big mouth on two legs and no, it doesn't eat you. It screams or screeshes this awful noise. You can't miss knowing one is around when you hear it. Besides being an blood curling screech you don't like to hear, what it really does is call tons of smaller zombies to come get you. Now this isn't to bad but when there are 4 or more on the screen, you're confined to an area and they are behind walls you have to blow up just to get to them. Things can get a little rough. I definitely take them out as soon as possible otherwise I'll be trying to defend of zombies while they keep calling more and you'll never make it to them.
You will also run into these small little zombies with short stubby legs, round belly and a big sized brain. They shoot poison out their mouth at you. They usually come in a big pack so keep your distance.
The story line of the game is no different from any other you've heard. This guy is immune, doctor wants his blood but needs another as well. You go collect and you become experiment as well. Only difference is you have a pill to kill yourself, you do, the mutation has mutated and made you more powerful. So it ends with you killing everyone. Yea, spoiled that story for ya huh.
The other neat thing on this game is you can play online with another player in co-op which I plan to do as I imagine the next 2 difficulites are going to be rough considering I only played it on normal.
Along with playing you get to submit your kills and scores on the boards online to help kill the infection off. It compares all the countries to see who is killing the most off. It's pretty cool to see the rank of all the different countries up against each other.
If you have a Playstation 3, you can't let this game go by without buying it. You're so going to miss out on a great game. At least as long as you like the top down, shooting zombie type games that is.
If you're curious to how this game is, take Zombie Apocolypse and make it 5 times better.
I can't help but reference everything to Left 4 Dead as that is what really pulled me into the zombie phase I'm in and everything copies this game in one form or another.
The graphics and details in the game are very good. They use the lights in the game very well as you run around with a flashlight. It gets hard to see what's around you and I get hit without knowing someone is even there all the time.
I've got to cover the enemies though as they did a good job on how they are portraide. For starters you have the basic human zombies walking around that are slow. You also have some fat ones that slowly pick up speed and start to run. Throughout the game, you'll run into more like fire fighter zombies, army men zombies (yes, they are carring guns but can't aim worth a flip), and mutated zombies that look horried.
Tthe first major guy I'm going to talk about is the Boomer. They did an excellent job with him as he literally is a huge fat zombie and his head is head is so small. When he sees you, he starts running and you can hear the flub a bouncing up and down. When you finally kill him, he will explode and anything around him gets blown away. That includes damaging, killing, and shooting anything that go any direction that way. Always cool to see the bodies go way up in the air and land off somewhere else. It can get pretty rough though when you have like 8 or more of those guys trying to get you at one time.
The tank is, well a tank. The main difference is he jumps and he can jump far. He literally jumps to where you are standing and if you're not moving, you're pretty much dead when he lands on top of you. He can't run very fast so that's your main advantage agaist him.
The next zombie is new and unlike the tank that walks on all fours. This guy stands up, is a little bigger than the tank and has huge blades on both his hands. Plus he's extremely FAST. Plan to get sliced up because if you don't kill him before he gets to you, it's over. He's rough to get away from and I'm constantly trying to use something in the street to block his path to me to slow him down.
I didn't realize how much of a pain this next one could be until the 9th board. The Screecher can be your worst enemy in the game if you let it. To me, it's literally a big mouth on two legs and no, it doesn't eat you. It screams or screeshes this awful noise. You can't miss knowing one is around when you hear it. Besides being an blood curling screech you don't like to hear, what it really does is call tons of smaller zombies to come get you. Now this isn't to bad but when there are 4 or more on the screen, you're confined to an area and they are behind walls you have to blow up just to get to them. Things can get a little rough. I definitely take them out as soon as possible otherwise I'll be trying to defend of zombies while they keep calling more and you'll never make it to them.
You will also run into these small little zombies with short stubby legs, round belly and a big sized brain. They shoot poison out their mouth at you. They usually come in a big pack so keep your distance.
The story line of the game is no different from any other you've heard. This guy is immune, doctor wants his blood but needs another as well. You go collect and you become experiment as well. Only difference is you have a pill to kill yourself, you do, the mutation has mutated and made you more powerful. So it ends with you killing everyone. Yea, spoiled that story for ya huh.
The other neat thing on this game is you can play online with another player in co-op which I plan to do as I imagine the next 2 difficulites are going to be rough considering I only played it on normal.
Along with playing you get to submit your kills and scores on the boards online to help kill the infection off. It compares all the countries to see who is killing the most off. It's pretty cool to see the rank of all the different countries up against each other.
If you have a Playstation 3, you can't let this game go by without buying it. You're so going to miss out on a great game. At least as long as you like the top down, shooting zombie type games that is.
Robin Hood
Took me two days to watch this but I enjoyed the movie. I liked how the end gives you the time frame of before all the other Robin Hood stories take place. They always start out at a certain point but this one is clearly what led to him becoming Robin Hood and how it happened. Shows it how things would truely have been back in the day.
If you got the time and can sit for two and half hours. Definitely worth picking up to watch.
If you got the time and can sit for two and half hours. Definitely worth picking up to watch.
Monday, February 7, 2011
iPad
I've been running my iPad for about a week now so I need to say something on it right?
I got the 32 gig wi-fi only version.
Out of the box you have to install iTunes to setup your iPad. I hate iTunes and I thought it was going to break my computer it took so long to load up after I had to reboot it. You put a lot of info in and you'll eventually get your iPad registered.
Right off the bat they have this mobileme program they want you to sign up for. So if you're iPad gets lost and comes online, you can go to a website and see where it via GPS and track it down. That's pretty snassy and could be very helpful if I lose my iPad. Not sure how it will work if it gets stolen though since it needs to be online for the GPS part to work.
The smoothness of the iPad is going to win you over hands down. The way everything flows from one screen to the next just makes it inviting. It's setup to very easy to use and figure out.
The resolution looks great and it's really crisp. You won't be disappointed with quality. Already watched some netflix movies through it with no problems.
It's very light weight and easy to carry around. I've been looking for a case and if you want a case that's going to protect it, plan to spend $40-$60+ to get something worth having. If not, all you're doing is putting a shell for looks, a sleeve that can still be pushed in to crack the screen, and all they will do is stop it from being scratched. You definitely want to see a case in person before you buy. This is the case I will be buying when Best Buy fixes their inventory and gets it back in stock. That or find the 8 they say they have but don't.
I've been downloading a bunch of different applications. Mostly looking for the ones that everyone seems to use and looking on my own for some as well. You will find that unless you know what you're looking for, just browseing for a app on the iPad is not easy. It's actually a pain really. They need to revamp how you search for stuff across the board on the iPad. From the app store to the ebook store. It's way to difficult to find something at random. You litereally need to know what you want and search for it.
Something to keep in mind, everything you download, if you use the settings app from the first screen on the iPad. It list everything on the iPad and all apps you download. So if they add any additional settings to the apps you download, you need to check that out as you might want to make changes to it right off the bat. Kinda like the Flipboard app having turn the read option on for your RSS feeds otherwise you'll be playing clean up after the fact when you look at your actual reader program.
An issue I've ran into, which seems my friends that have the iPad have the same issue, is that when you launch an application, it will just close itself back out once it gets fully loaded up. Some apps do it way more than others. I don't know if it's an app glitch, ipad glitch or what, so I'll be researching this one in the near future.
All the apps I've gotten from bibles, games, tools, etc... all seem to work very well though. I've seen some lag in some HD games that have been put out but not much outside of that.
I setup my mail client on it through Cox and Gmail. The Cox email though would not delete the emails once I deleted them from the iPad. So you can imagine how much mail I had to download after going for days on the iPad without pulling down any mail from my Cox account. So what I've done now is I've setup my Gmail to recieve all my Cox emails. So now when I delete, they are gone. I'll start managing all my emails through Gmail now and forget using the Cox email. Guess I'm done using Outlook at home now.
Which by integrating my mail into Gmail, it opens up new doors and simplifies other issues. The iPad automatically pulled in the Google Calendar, so anything I make and change will show up there. So no worries on my Outlook calendar only being viewable on my home computer now. Plus I plan to get an Android phone and with Gmail being my base email, no matter where I look at my email at, I will see my mail, calendar, contacts, etc all via Google now. My next goal is to actually create a real contact list.
Since a tablet is smaller than a laptop it's so much easier to use for following a guide like Lego Star Wars right now. Makes it easy to put on your lap, setting it on the arm of your couch without getting in the way or bending to see that laptop screen. It's definitely more convient for sure.
Overall, there are some quirks with the iPad but everything else out weights the quirks. You won't be disappointed at all if you get one. Only problem now is Xoom from Android is fixing to come out followed by the iPad 2. So I'll be behind as we didn't wait for the new stuff but I like what I have without a doubt. We can't always be current in this world.
I got the 32 gig wi-fi only version.
Out of the box you have to install iTunes to setup your iPad. I hate iTunes and I thought it was going to break my computer it took so long to load up after I had to reboot it. You put a lot of info in and you'll eventually get your iPad registered.
Right off the bat they have this mobileme program they want you to sign up for. So if you're iPad gets lost and comes online, you can go to a website and see where it via GPS and track it down. That's pretty snassy and could be very helpful if I lose my iPad. Not sure how it will work if it gets stolen though since it needs to be online for the GPS part to work.
The smoothness of the iPad is going to win you over hands down. The way everything flows from one screen to the next just makes it inviting. It's setup to very easy to use and figure out.
The resolution looks great and it's really crisp. You won't be disappointed with quality. Already watched some netflix movies through it with no problems.
It's very light weight and easy to carry around. I've been looking for a case and if you want a case that's going to protect it, plan to spend $40-$60+ to get something worth having. If not, all you're doing is putting a shell for looks, a sleeve that can still be pushed in to crack the screen, and all they will do is stop it from being scratched. You definitely want to see a case in person before you buy. This is the case I will be buying when Best Buy fixes their inventory and gets it back in stock. That or find the 8 they say they have but don't.
I've been downloading a bunch of different applications. Mostly looking for the ones that everyone seems to use and looking on my own for some as well. You will find that unless you know what you're looking for, just browseing for a app on the iPad is not easy. It's actually a pain really. They need to revamp how you search for stuff across the board on the iPad. From the app store to the ebook store. It's way to difficult to find something at random. You litereally need to know what you want and search for it.
Something to keep in mind, everything you download, if you use the settings app from the first screen on the iPad. It list everything on the iPad and all apps you download. So if they add any additional settings to the apps you download, you need to check that out as you might want to make changes to it right off the bat. Kinda like the Flipboard app having turn the read option on for your RSS feeds otherwise you'll be playing clean up after the fact when you look at your actual reader program.
An issue I've ran into, which seems my friends that have the iPad have the same issue, is that when you launch an application, it will just close itself back out once it gets fully loaded up. Some apps do it way more than others. I don't know if it's an app glitch, ipad glitch or what, so I'll be researching this one in the near future.
All the apps I've gotten from bibles, games, tools, etc... all seem to work very well though. I've seen some lag in some HD games that have been put out but not much outside of that.
I setup my mail client on it through Cox and Gmail. The Cox email though would not delete the emails once I deleted them from the iPad. So you can imagine how much mail I had to download after going for days on the iPad without pulling down any mail from my Cox account. So what I've done now is I've setup my Gmail to recieve all my Cox emails. So now when I delete, they are gone. I'll start managing all my emails through Gmail now and forget using the Cox email. Guess I'm done using Outlook at home now.
Which by integrating my mail into Gmail, it opens up new doors and simplifies other issues. The iPad automatically pulled in the Google Calendar, so anything I make and change will show up there. So no worries on my Outlook calendar only being viewable on my home computer now. Plus I plan to get an Android phone and with Gmail being my base email, no matter where I look at my email at, I will see my mail, calendar, contacts, etc all via Google now. My next goal is to actually create a real contact list.
Since a tablet is smaller than a laptop it's so much easier to use for following a guide like Lego Star Wars right now. Makes it easy to put on your lap, setting it on the arm of your couch without getting in the way or bending to see that laptop screen. It's definitely more convient for sure.
Overall, there are some quirks with the iPad but everything else out weights the quirks. You won't be disappointed at all if you get one. Only problem now is Xoom from Android is fixing to come out followed by the iPad 2. So I'll be behind as we didn't wait for the new stuff but I like what I have without a doubt. We can't always be current in this world.
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