Graffiti or Art?

So I vote for art (I think Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde would agree with me). Let's face it- it's an ugly storage container on the side of a hill- painted in drab and rust; or, it is a source of a smile everyday for me and others as we walk to work.

See I knew I was in the right field...

Man, science really does go hand in hand with video games:

Awesome

~Chris

Follow me, I'm trained to survive this

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8206280.stm

So the good news is my years of video game training have made me fully prepared for the inevitable future.

Lamentations

Yeah we were so busy on Saturday night that we didn't even take any pictures. The tournament was a success, the stage was rockstar-worthy, the crowd was singing along. It was AWESOME. Too bad about the pictures. My hope is to secure some from some of the "official" cameras, or at least someone else. I also plan to draw up the awesomeness that was the stage. Oh, well. Hopefully there will be other chances to do something similar.

It's time to Rockband Tourney!

So tomorrow night is tourney time. We're helping out with a huge YSA activity (think LA and south) y helping host a HUGE rockband tourney. We'll be sure to take lots of photos and try to get some posted up to the blog. In a worst case secenario we may just do another Picasa album. Anyway I have successfully found the best prizes EVER for our contenders.

How about these:

Amazon

Video in action at:

Gearlog

Yeah they're about the best thing in the whole world. Perfect for the 18-30 year old dedicated enough to win Rockband.

If you guys have any other ideas of things to include in the tourney I'd love to know.

Oh yeah before I forget I got one of THESE to help with the "effect"

Check out the video here.

Btw- for future reference Fog juice is able to be purchased Year Round at Party City (yeah I really had to find Fog Juice).

Cheers

~Chris

Time to Re-Rock

Yup so 2 bands that we'll be seeing later this fall have released packs of songs on Rockband this week, and it looks to be some must haves for the Larsons. blink-182 and Weezer have both released packs...which makes me wonder: Would these be good songs to have for the YSA conference we're helping with next weekend? Thoughts from the peanut gallery (BTW- YSA=Young Single Adult church group). The songs are:

Weezer- Pork and Beans

My Name is Jonas

Undone (The Sweater Song)

blink-182- Down

Feeling This

The Rock Show

My 2 cents:

My Name is Jonas is my favorite weezer song, but not exactly the rock-a-thon that I come to look for in a good RB song. Down is a kinda slow blink song too. The Rock Show is about as basic pop-punk as you can get which always lends itself to a great play... who knows!?!

I Forgot how much I LOVE Red Alert

Woooooo! That's all I can say.

alphaBETA

So I got an invite to a very exciting Beta to a game I am not officially allowed to mention but is of the same family as R6. I'm very excited as I always love being in betas, but more importantly I LOVE TC games. I'll be sure to post some generic notes about the game- we'll call it something entirely different... sorry I have to be semi-mysterious- I had to sign an NDA (yeah already, I know!). I'll, umm, communicate more as I get to start. I don't even get the game till the 15th, but still...guess I know what I'll be doing that week.
-Chris

Why I hate the Nintendo DS

So the irony of this post is that I don't really hate the DS- per se. (I'm not even allowed to hate the DS b/c A) I play games on Alicia's sometimes and B) Oh yeah, I bought Alicia's for her for her birthday)What I hate is what it's doing to certain video games... allow me to explain: See I'm not the guy who thinks that if it's not "HardCore," it's crap. That's not me at all. In fact some of my favorite games are deffinetly not hardcore, but see this is where I have a problem. The following is a quote from Ubisoft UK managing director Rob Cooper:
"Sony needs to show us a bit more about what its plans are to convince the publisher to invest lots more money into it. Especially when you've got the DS selling at such a tremendous pace.

"I suppose it's almost too technical for the casual person, those that are buying the DS at the moment, who want a few buttons and not a lot more. It's so simple what [Nintendo] has done. That's where I think Sony has gone a little bit too complicated, they've over-specced it, the price is too high and they need to go back to the drawing board and start again," he added. (From Gameindustry.biz)

See my problem is this- I don't want less buttons. I don't care! I can handle the fact that my current controllers have...(let's see... 1,2,3,4,5...13 plus 3 joysticks)13 plus 3 directional pads of some sort. Heck, I play PC games they have...(let's see...1,2,3,4...100+) something like 104 or so keys- WHY do I need less!?! Furthermore, I love my PSP- part of the reason I own it is b/c it is technologically superior, heck I can use it to wacth a Movie, and TV show, play several games, and listen to music, all with out having to carry anything more than the PSP itself (yes I can do all of those off a single Memory stick that I load into the side of it, no movies, no game discs, nothing but the PSP alone). Most of the reason we bought our PS3 was b/c the Blu-Ray looks so nice on our TV, heck the Wii didn't even offer the ability to listen to a CD or DVD on it. So what this guy is saying is that the rest of the industry should do just like Nintendo did with both the DS and the Wii (like I said here's the irony, cause you guessed it- we own a Wii too) but what if we don't always want the kind of garbage that is put out on the Wii and DS (Case in point: Petz series from the fool who opined this to begin with- I'd like to add that I think it is a travesty that we are teaching an entire generation of kidz that it's OK to spell using Z as the letter to indicate plurality... oh yeah and that whole Dogz Fashion...ughhh shoot me now!). So where am I going with this? Easy.

While I don't mind the collection of games that inhabit the Wii and DS and I really like the idea that more people are "in to" games and all things that go along with video games, I really wish that certain publishers would stop saying that we are all the same and that the games that might appeal to my niece, Madison, or to my parents (proud Wii owners, I might add), should be the games that I want to own. Cause so help me if all I can buy 2 years from now is Petz and stinking Raving Rabbids I'm gonna sell all my video games and take up a new hobby like cross-stitching.

I have my own abilities and sometimes I like the complex and harder games, sometimes I like technology that is forward thinking not just two palm pilots merged together. Ah well what a world we live in when the white boy in SoCal has to cry out that he too is an individual and can think and act apart from everyone around him.

-Chriz

WaHoo for Map Packs!

Yes we've been AWOL for a week. Yes there has been crazy amounts of stuff going on, yes we'll try to get it all posted this weekend. But in the mean time. Call of Duty 4- my absolute vice in the world right now has just released their expansion map pack!!! Sweet there goes another week of my life!
-Chris