Maine Tech Geeks

Has it really been nearly 7 months since I last posted here? Looking at the calendar…Yes, it really has. I have a good reason, two of them, to explain why I haven’t been here, and they’re both teething a lot and keeping us up at night. Since I last posted here, my wife and I have been blessed with the arrival of twins. On January 25th, Nicholas and Isabelle joined the fray and I can truly say that my life hasn’t been the same, nor will it ever be again.

That’s not to say that I’ve completely reformed my game-playing ways. No sir! I still sneak in gaming when I can, it’s just changed forms. Prior to the kids’ arrival, I wisely invested in both a PSP and a DS, which now look far better than they did at the time. The 360 is no longer, residing with my brother back home. He’s in college, which basically means he has all the time in the world to get use out of it. My gaming is now accomplished in fits and starts, usually just before I fall asleep, because that means the kids are down too. Even though my gaming time and means have changed, I have had some opportunity to mess around with a pretty varied assortment of titles, which I’ll run down (by system), including my impressions of each one. Most of these were acquired by trading in other games that I didn’t want or play anymore, aided with some fortuitous Gamestop promos (like get 50% extra on our trade-ins, get 20% off used games, things of that sort), and some were downloaded from the Playstation Store on the web. In another post I’ll document the DS experiences I’ve had. But for now, without further ado, check out the list of PSP titles I’ve dabbled with (in no particular order) after the jump.

(My version of editor’s note: As I am writing this entry, I am indulging in, for me at least, a copious amount of beverages of the adult variety, so I feel the need to include a disclaimer that if anything seems badly worded or just sounds stupid, blame it on the Caribbean rum and cokes I’m consuming, not on my general grasp of the English language. It just so happens that I’ve been given the night off from child duty, so I’m taking the opportunity to indulge. It doesn’t happen often, so the alcohol affects me more than it used to. You have been warned.)

Continue reading "Handheld Gaming and the New Dad" »

Posted by Jon at 12:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

OK, so I know it seems that all I use this blog for any more is to announce that Tweak and Geek is released. Sadly, most of my creative energy is taken by the podcast. However, MTG is not going to be forgotten. At some point I plan to move this away from movable type, although I'm not sure how to do that at this point.

This version of MT has a terrible post editor (no rich text or anything like that) and is extremely difficult to style. The plugins don't work and it's really difficult to get things going the way I want.

Anyway, here is Tweak and Geek #9 - Enjoy!!!

Posted by Craig at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, y'all - T&G#7 has been released. This MONTH, Pat and I talk about Gravatars (ooh...), laptop recommendations, a conference Pat went to... and then we have a debate on the pros and cons of Hungarian notation.

You can find the mp3 here.

Very fun, and I hope you enjoy!

Posted by Craig at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I feel a little like a hypocrite today. Why? Because I've discovered hulu (http://www.hulu.com) and like it. Hulu is a website where you can watch a bunch of TV shows (ad supported) for free legally. It's only been available to the public for a while, but it definitely is cool. The reason I feel like a traitor is that at one point I decided that I would never watch it.

Why? Because NBC took most/all of their TV shows out of the iTunes store (BSG! Waah) and decided that they'd have them on hulu instead. As you may know, I am an Apple (more specifically iPod) fanboy, and any organization that would dis iTunes/Apple was officially dead to me.

However, BSG season 4 starts Friday and I really wanted to watch last season's finale. And of course, I couldn't get it on iTunes. So I thought, where could I watch it legally (illegally is to hard to find for a naive country boy like me)? Hulu came to mind.

I found my BSG episode, and saw they have a gigantic selection of shows. Right now, I am between episodes of "Son of the Beach", one I haven't seen in years (but is really funny).

Only a couple of issues though. One is that to view anything with mature content (not porn, you perverts!), you need to create an account and log in. They ask for your age and zip code, so if you're really into privacy, this may not appeal to you.

The second thing is that there are about three 30-second commercials interspersed in the show. That's fine. The show is streamed, but never seems to skip. However, the commercials ALWAYS seem to pause (using up the buffer?), causing them to last about one to two minutes. Therefore, even though they say "Your show will return in 30 seconds", it really is more like 2 minutes. So they are able to sneak in extra commercial time. The commercials are pretty innocuous, though, so for free, I can overlook the sinister "extra long" commercial phenomenon.

Well, back to another episode of "Son of the Beach" before bed.

Posted by Craig at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I am doing a little voice recording, and I just have to tout the wonder that is Audacity. It's a pretty nice sound recorder, and it make modifying the waveforms pretty simple. It's pretty cool that I can create a project, and then import multiple sound files and mix them as necessary. You can drag and drop and mix and match and all that jazz.

The only issue is... I'm too dumb to use it. Not really, but there are a lot of features in it that I just don't know what they do! Plus, some of the simple tasks I'd like to do (i.e. export at a certain rate, as mono, etc etc) are more complicated than I want them to be. But I'm sure that's just because there is more to it than I even realize. There's a whole science to good sound mixing... and I am not sure how much into it I'm going to get, but it's a lot of fun.

Plus I need to learn so that I can gain podcast self-sufficiency. Pat is really good at mixing shows, so I need to get up to speed so that my natural competitive nature can be sated!

Plus Battlestar Galactica starts this Friday! That has nothing to do with Audacity, but I am excited anyway...

Posted by Craig at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just to let anyone who is interested know, there are some changes coming to Maine Tech Geeks. First of all, I decommissioned the "www.mainetechgeeks.com" website. We weren't using it any more, and all of our content will be here. Also, I am working on a logo for the site... we'll be branded now.

You may have also noticed the "Kevin's Entries" on the right. Well, there is a new MTG in town, and he will be one of our contributers.

There is also a top secret project being worked on right now. It will really change what is offered by Maine Tech Geeks. But I don't want to say anything yet as to ruin the surprise.

That's all for now. I need to get back to work on the project............ see you soon!

Posted by Craig at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Hurray, Tweak and Geek #6 has been released!

OK, so it actually was released a week ago, but who's counting? In this episode, Pat and I discuss some tech rumors, how we do our podcast, and Guam.

Also, we now have a Grand Central telephone number: (678) 999-6321. You can leave voicemail for the show there, and we'll put it on the air (net?).

You can download the podcast here.

Posted by Craig at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)