Category Archives: Technology

Dec 27 2008
Technology

Television

At the urging of my brother, I ‘ve decided that maybe I should join the Digital Television Revolution.

I know.

We went out and got an antenna today, but then remembered that I don’t actually have an HD tuner in my HD Television.  I did purchase it right on the cusp of the announcing of the move to digital broadcast, so that means I’ll need a tuner.  I’ll at least give it a shot, but right now I’m in the research phase, looking for a decent tuner.

So I watched regular, SD television tonight.  I managed to watch the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics on a rebroadcast.  It was very impressive, although watching it just reminded me just how much I hate commercials.

I hate them.

One of the announcers even had the gall to say, “You were out during commercials during the transition to this scene, but let me tell you, it was amazing!”

Fucking.  Ridiculous.

However, the actual ceremony was really impressive.  It’s incredible what you can accomplish when you have so many, “volunteers.”

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Dec 22 2008
2 Comments
Technology

LazerTag: Remember this!

I am a big fan of the Lazer Tag subculture.  I can’t really do an explanation of the game justice, so I’ll just defer to one of the community experts.  I’m not quite as an enthusiast as some, but still enough of a fan to purchase equipment in the hopes that one day, I’ll have a large enough area to hold a large scale game.

Whether or not I’ll actually have players is another issue altogether, but hope springs eternal in the human breast.

I love the new commercials. Continue reading →

Dec 18 2008
Technology

Electronic Scarecrow

I still don’t see how this is recommended for me. 

Really, what does this say about my buying habits?

Video games, and uh, video games?  Is this the best you can come up with, Amazon? Really?

Is that all you got, Bezos?  Really?  An Electronic Scarecrow?!

Let’s see here.  Well, it is a humane way to scare off rodents and such from your garden.  And you don’t use pesticides or whatnot.

Hrm.  Well, I guess it is kind of neat.

And well. . .  Not too expensive.

Dammit.

Dec 10 2008
Technology

We'll turn this team around 360 degrees

I really do enjoy the xbox 360.  To be honest, it’s one of the better things to come out of Redmond, Washington. When given the choice, it’s my console of choice when it comes to titles that appear on more than one console.  Mainly for multiplayer, but sometimes because I am an achievement whore seeker.

It does online gameplay correctly.  (I’m pointing at you, Sony.)

Netflix is “in the box.”  It’s how I watched, Lust, Caution.

What they did not do well was the actual physical hardware.  You may recall I had the infamous Red Rings of Death failure on my xbox 360 last year.  This year, it’s a different failure. Continue reading →

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Dec 09 2008
Games, Technology

Ruined Techno for me, forever

The Nintendo DS is not considered a musical instrument.

There are music games, yes, and there was the brilliant in concept but flawed in execution Jam Sessions guitar simulator for the DS.  (Full disclosure:  I spent about two weeks just trying to play Jonathan Coulton’s RE: Your Brains.  It’s just too unwieldy on a directional control pad and a strum bar on the touch screen.)

The KORG DS-10 Synthesizer for the Nintendo DS is exactly what it says it is.  It is not a title for a KORG Synthesizer based game for the DS.  It is, in fact, a synthesizer and sequencer for the DS.

I’m going to let that sink in for a second.

It’s not a musical instrument simulator of any sort, it’s actually a synthesizer and a sequencer.  And on top of that, it uses the DS screen like a poor man’s KAOSSilator.  Which is a lot of fun.  Here’s a video showing what four of them together can do.

They wirelessly synchronize for beat matching and playback.  Of course, you’ll need a mixer to take full advantage of that, but who doesn’t have one laying around?

In short, it’s awesome.

Review based on doodling in the sequencer window and editing note lengths and values, and then adjusting the drum kit sequencer so that it repeats doom-tch-doom-tch-doom-tch while panning speakers from left to right and repeating for several measures before using the kaoss pad function to adjust peak and cutoff values for synth 1, while synth 2’s track is all doomp-doompdoomdoom-doomp and synth 1 and 2 mixed through the flanger FX at the end with the knob turned all the way wet and mixed so that the bass line on synth 2 isn’t overpowering the entire song at 142bpm.

I did not get to try the multiplayer mixing aspect of this program but god help me if I get another copy.

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