FacebookTwitter

An Adobe Photoshop that doesn’t work with Photoshop documents?

By on Apr 1, 2008 in Blog Posts, Software | 0 comments

Adobe Photoshop Express blows. It doesn’t really allow you to do anything that Google’s Picasa doesn’t do better, and it won’t even allow you to upload PSD files (Photoshop Documents)! Way to go Adobe – any other good names you’d like to kill off? You’ve already buried Macromedia…P.S – You can’t edit GIF, PNG, or TIFF images either – only JPG’s are supported. Wow.

Obama for President!

By on Feb 13, 2008 in Blog Posts | 3 comments

I have decided to support Barack Obama for President! Check out my Obama blog here and join the movement! Unlike other candidates, Obama needs the support of each of us. He doesn’t accept donations from lobbyists or political action committees, and the campaign counts on grass roots efforts to get the word out. Finally, you can really make a difference in politics!

How TiVo Skews TV Ratings

By on Feb 12, 2008 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

Advertisers pay big bucks to place their products on popular television shows, and one of the primary ways to rate said popularity is by use of the Nielson ratings. TiVo has a software flaw that prevents these ratings from being accurate.Nielson uses a method of sampling households to gain a representative figure without knowing exactly what every viewer in the country is watching. Here is how they explain their method:Nielsen TV families are a cross-section of households from all over the United States. We carefully draw our samples in a way that offers every American household with a television an equal chance of being selected.When TiVo customers select a program to record, they do so one of two ways – by recording that individual airing or by selecting to record all of that shows episodes using a “Season Pass”. The latter method is what causes the problem with...

My first taste of the drug

By on Jan 10, 2008 in Blog Posts | 2 comments

Though I had spent time fiddling with an old Tandy and a Commodore 64, my first true personal computer was a Packard Bell 486 DX/2. This was apparently a very popular model (as seen in the picture to the left), as many people now look back on it with joy. Joy that they have moved on. That model was a nightmare – but it was my first. Many hours of Doom and Sim City 2000 were played. My first experience online using a 9,600 baud modem was had on this machine. It was the first machine I had to troubleshoot, which is pretty much how I’ve learned everything I know about technology. Unlike most customers, I’m grateful to Packard Bell for pushing such a dog of a machine on unsuspecting customers. Had it not been for the poor combination of hardware and software bundled with this machine I’m certain I wouldn’t be where I am today. The speakers, CD-ROM drive,...

Tabula Rasa – Still Not Ready

By on Dec 3, 2007 in Blog Posts, Games | 0 comments

(This is simply an extension of my Tabula Rasa review posted at IGN.com.)Tabula Rasa has been out for a whole month now, and a few days more that a month for those of us who pre-ordered. I have put around 170 hours into the game in the past five weeks (sadly, that’s about five hours per day on average), and I am now level 41 in the game. What this should tell you is that I know what I’m talking about, unlike most of the “professional” game reviewers who have given Tabula Rasa such high marks without even playing the game through to level 30.Anyone who has achieved level 30 or higher in Tabula Rasa can tell you that this game needs serious work, and should not have been released when it was. There are missions that can’t be completed, UI quarks, stability and lag issues, bugs galore and most importantly a serious lack of high level content.I discussed quite...

BETA Testers Piss Me Off

By on Sep 22, 2007 in Blog Posts, Games | 0 comments

For the uninitiated, a BETA tester refers to a gamers who tests a game in its BETA stages, meaning before the game is officially released. Game developers release their titles early for expanded testing to work out bugs and help balance the games.BETA testers are an even split of whining children and hard core gamers. Some BETAs, like pretty much all first person shooters have a larger amount of the former. Strategy games tend to have a greater number of the latter. Still, in every BETA there are the idiots who say the one thing no BETA tester should ever utter:”This is just a BETA, why are you complaining?”I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read some variation of that line in forums. Gamers have it all wrong these days. When a developer releases a game for testing, they are doing so because they need the game tested by as many people as possible. By this time...