< Home

teewee and liu picked this up first, and so finally I caved and went ahead and picked it up (via iPhone no less) for $8 on iTunes. All but one of the songs are live versions of songs from her two normal albums and it’s made up of 8 tracks.

PSEUDO-TECHNICAL
Sounds great on the home system, as well as these Sony MDR-7506 cans. Clear, typical reverbed concert sound. Sound stage is spaced out a bit for that binaural feeling. The Sound of Silence stands up above the rest, which might be biased, since it’s also probably my favourite track. In it, the two guitars are quite spaced, so you can really differentiate and pinpoint the different guitars. Brooke’s voice is great as usual, and the recording clarity is pristine enough that you can hear all the annunciations and when she opens and closes her mouth hah. The bass is also quite prominent throughout the album. +1!

ENJOYABILITY
Most of the songs have a little bit of a different intro. You can hear someone yell something at the start of Arithmetic and Brooke chuckling. C.S. Lewis was the start of the set and so has a 2 minute extended intro with the instruments coming in one at a time with a pretty cool guitar/bass riff combo. Definitely one of the highlights of the album. I have a soft spot for well covered classics, and the fact that it’s a “new” track from Brooke, The Sound of Silence probably stands out as my favourite track. It’s very simple, starts out with two guitars and Brooke, then some really deep bass comes in with some keys. It’s a really warm rendition and comfortable to listen to.

Overall, very easy to listen to, mellow and warm throughout.

I will rate it.. arbitrarily 5 out of 5 TProlls.

The perfect game for wasting a few (read: many) hours on a lazy Sunday. So yesterday I spent the whole afternoon/evening sleeping and playing Fallout 3 (picked up used at Rogers, also got Ocean’s 13 and The Kingdom for $2 each). It’s a really cool game, I’m not sure if anyone else in TPX would really take to it, but it’s pretty amazing and quite a lot of fun.

I played the original, or more accurately, watched my brother play the original. Fallout? No.. the original on which Fallout was based was Interplay’s 1988 computer game, Wasteland.

Anyhow, the graphics are great, and can’t complain about the surround sound. Also re: 360 over the PC version, I figure if I’m going to spend hours on an adventure game, I’d rather do it in a blanket on my couch than sitting at a desk. I’m not usually a fan of the free-roaming-do-anything-you-want games like Oblivion etc. due to the aimlessness feeling, but Fallout 3’s starting story is really interesting and so far has kept me in it.

That being said, out of the 8 hours I played it yesterday, after maybe the first hour and a half of the story, I spent the other 7 hours doing side quests from the starting town. The degree of freedom (or at least perceived freedom) has really impressed me. For reference, the game is post-apocalyptic so everything is poor and run down. The starting town, Megaton, and is shantytown built around an atomic bomb which didn’t go off but was still armed. Once you’ve talked to some people, you get some quests, and so it’s all typical so far and follows the typical rpg recipe:

1. Starting town.
2. Get quests.
3. Complete quests.
4. Do story quest.

For reference, it’s post-apocalypse and everything is run-down, poor and dirty.

One of the quests I picked up from the sheriff/mayor was to disarm the a-bomb in the middle of town, sounds pretty typical so far right? I fix the BIG problem in town and then voila, story progresses. Anyhow, I walked into the bar and picked up another sidequest, deliver some message to family in another town, go strongarm some druggie girl for money etc. etc. Then I talked to some suspicious, well dressed character in the corner. This is where the game REALLY turned it upside down for me (and I will admit, caused me to have to reload a prior save).

The sketchy guy said he worked for some powerful people.. who wanted to basically get rid of the town.. wouldn’t give many details, just said that it paid really well. The quest was basically to detonate the a-bomb in the center of town. I turned it down because I’m inherently good :p and I had picked up all these other quests.. what would happen to all of those? I said I’d think about it and headed back out. I talked to the sheriff again as I was walking past to leave the town, and a new dialogue option had appeared to tell him about the guy who’s offering money for someone to blow up the town. The sheriff told me to follow him.

He ran up to the bar and confronted the guy with his rifle. After some initial questioning at gunpoint, to which the guy denied anything of the sort, the sheriff told him he was going to put him in jail for questioning. The sheriff tells sketchy guy to follow him and he leads him out of the bar. As he was leading him out of the bar.. sketchy guy pulls out a silenced 10mm and blows away the sheriff and then starts attacking me for ratting him out! This left me gah.. now BOTH disarm and explode the abomb quests are gone!

So I had to reload.. but due to autosave the sheriff is already confronting the guy.. so I had to shoot the sketchy guy to save the sheriff. Anyhow.. now I’m just doing some other sidequests which are pretty fun so far and leveling up some and gain some skills. Of course there are so many skills, that you have to specialize, I’m kinda specialized in small guns, sneaking, and hacking.. but yeah.. not sure If I really need the “big guns” skill later or what.

Really a cool game so far.

So, went to FS on saturday.
To my surprise, FS offered me the SX10IS right off the bat.
Dunno if it’s mistake on their part or not, cuz the dude there that was from the camera section is the guy that tells the manager which one I “should” get replaced with. And he said for my “S5IS” I should get replaced with the SX10IS. Could be that he just said it wrong…or just read it wrong all together….S2/S5 looks somewhat similar…in the lettering…
After being offered the SX10IS, I asked the staff if I can get the store credit for its worth, but she said no, I can only replace it with another thing.
Being stuck having to find a replaceable camera, my choices are the SX10IS or the G10.
After listening to Terry and Jon about all the glories of the G10, I paid the difference and got the G10 ($23 difference, tax incl.).

Though, after thinking about it some more…with the some $429 worth of the SX10IS, technically I could have replaced it with ANY other thing.
So technically…I could have been able to get $429 worth of wii system plus accessories…
But I didn’t think about that at the time…and got the G10…oh well…if it’s that great of a camera, it should last me a long time with awesome pictures.

On to the G10. so it does have the lens adapter tube thingy like my S2IS. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit the same tube as the S2IS. And the filters that it takes are 58mm, not 52mm. So all my lens filters and stuff for my S2IS can’t be used with the G10…
Probably when I’m in HK, go buy some cheap adapter tube and some basic filters if they’re cheap. The camera though doesn’t really need the tube and UV filter to kinda protect it as with my S2IS. Cuz the G10 does have a lens shutter cover thingy when it’s off. So it’s more protected in a sense than the S2IS. But having such an awesome camera…not having filters for it is kinda wasting it…somewhat…
Anyhoo…I shall see how it goes.

Terry’s new lens.. circa 1950. The box looks like its older than me. I have to run out so here’s a few photos I got in the supermarket before I had too much in my basket to take photos.. and the looks I got toting a 5D in No Frills.

As you can see, DOF is hard to come by.. in the 2nd shot.. f6.3 and still not as much in focus as I’d like.

So I was digging through my crap cleaning out stuff yesterday, and I found something incredible!
If you remember from my earlier post, my S2 IS pretty much dead, or became useless due to the fact that the iris gets stuck, and doesn’t seem to open up when you turn on the camera. Or if it does, and I take a shot, the iris “blinks”, and stays shut afterwards…sometimes.
Looking through my crap, I found a receipt for my camera, costed me around $450 before tax back then. Then I looked a bit more into it, and found….PSP!
Product Service Plan..that lasts till 2010!
I’m actually very surprised by this…why?…because it costed $130 for the plan. No matter how much I think, I can’t figure out how I would possibly be talked into buying the plan.
Anyhoo, I’ll take the camera (hopefully it’ll still malfunction as it should, cuz it kinda slowly goes away with frequent use), to Future Shop this weekend and see what they’ll do about it. Says they’ll try to fix it, and if that’s not possible..then replace…but since they don’t have S2IS anymore…..S5IS??…..
We’ll see……
Even if the problem doesn’t happen all the time if I bring it to FS, the PSP says they’ll get the product to operate as the manufacturer’s spec says it should…
Maybe I can bundle this with buying TV?…or maybe I should separate the two cases….else I might get pwned with the sales focusing my “jackso” on fixing the camera and not giving me deal on the TV….what do you guys think?