The Recycle Bin

Check out these screenshots from THE US PITS’s upcoming North America GT Mod for rFactor featuring the Caddy CTS-V and Pontiac GTO

Vanderbilt received more top 25 votes than Oklahoma in the most recent USA Today Top 25 poll.

I have been stuck with the default 32MB PRO Duo Memory Stick that was included with my PSP. It has not been a big deal � I have no need to put media on my PSP, and there has been ample room for my game saves.

I have been doing the various internet hacks to go on the web, but I finally decided to upgrade to the 2.0 firmware so I could get the built in browser and the various assortment of other upgrades included in the 2.0 firmware. Too bad I could not upgrade because I had to have 20MB free for the download. That was sort of a major ouch.

Yesterday I almost purchased a 512MB stick, but decided I did not want to spend the requested $79.99. Lucky for me Target has SanDisk 512MB Pro Duo memory sticks on sale for $57.77. Very nice. They only had one left at the local Target this morning; not sure if there was a run on these puppies or if Target did not have very many in stock prior to today’s sale.

At this point, I do not have much in the way of comments on the browser. More to later after I have some time to dig around with it to check out the included features. It looks pretty decent � bookmarks are included as are options to manage cookies and temporary files (I could be mistaken on the last two … need to investigate).

This week should be pretty good – Madden is on the way, and I am going to pick up Namco’s recent collection of classics. I also need to pick up an extra battery – I am going to be in Scotland for 10+ days in three weeks, so I should have plenty of time to dig into Madden and some of my other neglected PSP games.

To be honest my PSP has not been getting any love, but neither have GC or PS2 except for NCAA Football 2006. This is more a function of lack of free time vs. the quality of the PSP, but it is not as if the PSP has a killer lineup.

My oh my it’s a wonderful day for hunters in World of Warcraft! The hunter talent trees were completely re-done and pets were finally given a set of skills that will make them quite formidable in the later stages of the game. I spent the last two evenings playing around with the talent trees and decided to make Fwa (my lvl 52 Tauren hunter) a beast master.

For those not immersed in the game, hunters generally spec themselves as marksmen (MM), beast masters (BM) or survival hunters. This means that a large portion of your talent points emphasize one of the three talent trees. I’d been a MM hunter up until this point. There are just too many neat changes to the beast talent tree in 1.7, so my wolf “Pepper” is getting a nice damage per second boost and a lot of health/armor.

There’s a Chromehounds preview at Gamespot. Nothing like a good mech game to pass a few hours, and the visuals in Chromehounds look very, very nice.

Well, I am man enough to admit when I am wrong. And folks, I was wrong about the iPod. Two key events in the past few weeks caused me to start copying my CD collection this weekend using the Apple lossless codec. Once that is finished, I’ll be purchasing a 60 GB iPod Photo.

What caused such a transformation? My parents purchased an iPod 1GB Shuffle for my oldest daughter (birthday present) and I was very impressed with the design. Sure, it feels like a memory stick with audio controls, but the little device looks nice. I visited my local Best Buy and re-examined the iPod (after my many month use of the Creative Zen XTRA) to find that I really liked how the device worked and felt compared to the Zen.

The second and final nail in my Zen XTRA’s coffin came when I discovered that the geniuses at Creative decided than the Zen would not work with any lossless codec except for WAV files. The sound quality, even at 320 Kb realaudio AAC, just isn’t up to my standards for compressed audio files. I can particularly tell the difference on any bass heavy tunes. I thought I would just re-record my CDs in lossless format, suffer with my Zen’s poor design, and life would be good. No such luck.

It’s off to Best Buy in a couple of weeks with my hat in hand to eat a big old plate of crow and join the iPod revolution. Very late, but late is better than never in this instance.

Oh man, what a heck of a weekend for college football. First, the Dawgs survived a tough game against the fighting chickens from South Carolina. And then my Long Horns just managed took out Ohio State 25-22.

Where to begin? I think I am too drunk off of football euphoria to do much with this one tonight. Let’s just say that I told several people that the Dawgs may be in for a fight because too many people were worrying about revenge vs. the Old Ball Coach. I do not have huge expectations for the Dawgs this year, but surely this one could be attributed to over confidence. Then again, maybe Shockley just sucks.

What about Texas? I think I predicted something like a 22-17 victory for the Horns. The key was always going to be if Vince could have some success in the air, and he did throw around the ball enough to keep things interesting. Of course the Longhorn’s defense also managed to do the “bend, but don’t break thing” the entire game. Hell of a game, and Vince Young is truly the man. This is one of the best games I have seen in recent memory. I am sure Kevin is suffering, but gosh darn it, what a heck of a game.

Even my adopted team (North Texas) came through with a 14-7 victory over Middle Tennessee state to continue the Mean Green’s dominance of the Sun Belt conference.

Enough for tonight. Hook ’em; sick ’em! What a night!

Holy crap; Ohio just beat Pitt on an INT returned for a TD in overtime! Just another reason why college football rules.

Needless to say, Hook ’em, and Go Dawgs, Go!

I think I have only seen two complete episodes of Battlestar Galactica; maybe 3-5 parts of a few other episodes. Even so, it is obvious that BSG is about the best thing to happen to TV since the Braves won the World Series.

Seriously, I never get to see BSG on the SciFi network (Friday nights suck for TV watching), but tonight I did get to watch what I would have to consider great TV. Not just good TV, but *great* TV. BSG is that rare breed of show that completely sucks you in and has you begging for the next week’s episode. It is that good.

I did not watch the mini-series or the first few episodes of Season One because I did not really appreciate the concept of someone screwing around with a series that I grew up loving. Forget the fact that the original series is pretty cheesy by today’s standards; I am the type of fan that pre-ordered the Cyclon boxed set when the original series was announced. Sure, call me a purist, but I did not like the idea of an updated version of Battlestar. It would never work. How could it?

Slowly, but surely they hype stared. The good word spread. Trusted bloggers like Chris called BSG sliced bread. Now here I am pre-ordering BSG Season One (complete with the mini-series no less) because the few minutes I have enjoyed of the new BSG have been so unbelievably f’ing awesome. I cannot wait until September 20!

There’s a clueless rFactor noob guide available for folks like me that need an actual manual to figure out the game. First Out of the Park Baseball ships with no manual, and now rFactor. These games evolve so much that I guess I can understand this, but if World of Warcraft can ship with a manual, every game should. WoW has changed so much since launch that much of the info in the manual is useless.

I tried driving on the race track in the wrong direction and was promptly fined 100 credits for the stunt. Have to start a new driver now…

Here is a list with the leagues included in FIFA Manager 06. MLS 1st and 2nd Division are present.

It appears that the MLS will be in FIFA Manager 06. A post by the developers in the EA Sports forum contained a link to a site with a picture from the full version of the game. An option to select the USA was on the screen. In the demo, I could choose an MLS team as my favorite and there was news from the MLS about transfers, etc.

Yet another must have game for the PC.

I’ll post more demo impressions later, but other than some oddities with the 3-D match engine, I’m liking what I see. Why can’t we make this kind of stuff for American baseball? I really enjoyed being able to talk to the press before and after the fixture. My team (Chelsea) gave up a late goal after leading 2-0 for most of the game. Sure enough, the press wanted to know what I thought about my boys giving up the goal. I had three response options (soft, hard, and harder), so I let my team know through the press that this sort of unfocused play would not be tolerated during the Johnson tenure.

The good thing about not following European football too closely is that I’m not biased one way or the other as far as realism goes. But check out the feature-rich demo and take a look for yourself.

The game is scheduled for release October 5th. I imagine this will not be released in the US, so it will have to be shipped from overseas.

It’s out at Gamespot and probably other sites.

Some of you may be scratching your heads, but Total Control Manager is now “FIFA Manager” and there is a new demo available. TCM is sort of the Madden of European football sims. Sort of. It takes all sorts of abuse from the 2-D Football Manager crowd for not being realistic, but I do enjoy watching actual player animations as opposed to little circles in match view.

There’s a lot more to do in FIFA Manager and there will probably be an MLS patch for this version as there has been for every previous TCM. Head over to the official web site for more info and the 670+ MB demo.

I hate being an EA Sports defender, but enough is enough. I am just as picky as the next hardcore fan when it comes to realism in sports games. I just don�t really apply that standard to Madden. Compared to what Madden started out as, it is much, much improved over the years. People seem to forget that at one point there was no adequate running game or defensive back coverage in Madden. So on the field, I like the improvements. I am a passing cone fan both conceptually and because it allows me (the defender) to see where the QB is looking. Since my 42 year-old eyesight can�t exactly pinpoint the little QB eyeballs on my LCD panel, I like seeing the cone move around the field.

But forget about the franchise and �Superstar� modes.

I should state up front that I am not a big fan of football simulations. The seasons are too short and unless you include a full blown collegiate model, there�s just not that much going on compared to other sports like baseball, soccer, and even hockey. So I never purchase a football game with the idea that I am going to play through seasons, unless it�s a text game. And I find all current text-based football games just as boring as arcade products as far as franchise modes go.

Madden shines on the field. This year punt returns are a problem, but compared to the problems in other versions, I can live with this. Madden also shines as an IP to IP game. I enjoy football games against other human beings much in the same way that text-games are much more fun against live opponents.

Both of these are worth $39 in my book. Will I spend countless hours with Madden NFL 06? Nope, I certainly won�t. Will I fire it up to play other gamers that I know? Yes, I certainly will.

Besides there are too many other good PC games out right now (World Of Warcraft, Out of the Park Baseball, and rFactor to name a few), so I don�t need another major distraction. But if anybody wants to come down to Reliant Stadium and get a good old fashioned Bayou City beating, I�ll be ready.