I know the question you’re all asking. “Zarch, you live 1.3 miles from your job. You live in Utah, where all the streets are laid out as a numbered grid. You have two other means of GPS navigation. WTH?” To that, I answer, I am a gadget admirer, and I constantly seek the gadget that performs its function perfectly. Enter the Nuvi 360.
Let me begin by saying that the official branding from Garmin is n
Being the good little Valve fanboy that I am, I went out and picked up The Orange Box at Circuit City Wed evening after work (it’s currently on sale for $37.99 btw). Although I could have pre-ordered the bundle on Steam, I generally like to wait and pick up the discs. I’m not sure why this is, but I imagine it has something to do with the need to have some sort of physical reward for my purchase. Something that can sit on my shelf and collect dust instead of just a digital representation of the money I spent (or flushed down the toilet in my wifes opinion). As a fanboy though, I purchased this bundle with high hopes, and so far, I’m gleefully delighted.
Like many of the rest of you who rushed out to buy this bundle, I’ve already beaten Portal. My initial impressions… I NEED MORE!!! This was a very refreshing romp through a world with physics and graphics that we’re all used to, but with a new twist. Source still looks gorgeous after all these years and I found myself being blown away by this new space-bending aspect they’ve introduced. Like all truly great games, this one has begun to bleed over into my reality and I’ve found myself studying any white wall I encounter to judge whether or not a portal would fit there and where I might place the other end.
In short, Portal is one of the best PC games I’ve played in a good long while. In fact, it’s good enough to have torn me away from Phantom Hourglass these last few days. The only downside to the entire experience was how short it was. The gameplay mechanics, environment and generally humorous tone were all pretty much perfect. Incorporating the Portal gun into the final sequence proved to be a bit challenging and quite rewarding when finished. I don’t want to give anything away here, but the closing credits made it all worth it as well as making me hopeful for another installment. What we really need now are some good old fashioned mod community maps.
In closing, if you currently own the Orange Box and haven’t tried Portal yet… shame on you. Get your butt home (or wherever you happen to game) and give it try right now. You won’t be disappointed.
I’m picky about sunglasses. Being a nerdy sort, exposure to the sun causes severe anxiety, and I need some specs to keep the glare down.
Behold: the Smith Maverick specs. Why does this count as nerdy? One word: plastics. I mean, polarization. If you don’t wear polarized sunglasses, you’re a real Luddite. Also, you’re probably squinting a lot.
Silliness aside, the key things I look for are comfort, sturdiness, and great improvement to vision. These pretty much nail all three, and they don’t make me look too retarded.
This one’s been on my wrist for years now. I’ve had gadget watches that I wear for fun (I have a binary LED watch, and I had a Pimp Watch for a while too, and a couple of slick retro-looking Spoons), but this one is the old standby.
So what makes a great nerd watch also a great every day watch? I guess the key here is practical technology. Guys like me enjoy things that are solar powered, and this watch delivers there. A full charge gives the watch 11 months of battery life (in perfect darkness), and 5 or 10 minutes in the sun gives it a full charge (I read somewhere in the manual that it takes 8 hours under fluorescent light, which is more realistic if you’re a regular reader). The other fun bit of technology is the automatic time setting from the atomic clock in Colorado. We’ve got these atomic clocks all over my house; there’s something satisfying about having everything ticking exactly the same.
Another thing about this watch is that it’s very similar to the first real watch my parents got for me, a great old feature-packed Casio with a big black rubber wrist band. Very nostalgic. Plus the fact that it’s pretty much bulletproof, being a G-shock and all, just completed the package.
So there you have it, another post of Zarch’s every day gear. If interested, here’s the page from Casio with all the specs.
We’ve been through a few digital cameras here in the Zarch household, starting with a 1.3 megapixel Olympus I got way back when digital cameras were just a novelty. Since then, we’ve had a Fuji Finepix, a couple of Nikons, and my wife’s great Canon Powershot S70 (which gave up the ghost today, in a sad coincidence). The camera that rides with me in my gadget bag these days is the Lumix DMC-FX9, from Panasonic.
When I first went shopping for a camera of my very own (as opposed to a “family” camera), I had a few things I was looking for. I wanted it to be very small, to have good battery life, and to have some compensati on for my shaky hands, especially shooting landscapes. I have some terrible photos of the Seattle skyline that were making me think about some sort of image stabilization. Reviews I read got me thinking about these little Lumix compacts, and after some deliberation, I bought one.
I thought it might be of interest to post about the gadgets that accompany me in my day to day life. I’m a gadget whore, you might say, always looking for another fix of the latest crap that comes out. That’s why the stuff that sticks around might provide some interest: if a device survives my gadget churn for any length of time, there must be something pretty good about it. I might also mention the gear that didn’t pass, that got cycled out quickly, just for contrast. So watch for the new posts, starting with one later tonight.
So neither Rudeboy nor myself had any big plans to get a 360, so we had to rely on a mutual friend to pick up this slick Halo 3 edition. Our buddy is kind of funny, and I had to go ahead and break the seal for him so he wouldn’t be able to freak out and return the thing. So, it’s opened, and there’s no going back now. Right away I have to say the color scheme is very nice in person, much cooler than either a black or a white one. 
The green controller looks very nice as well. All the internal packaging was either green or orange; a nice touch. The power brick could be hollowed out and used for lodging in your average favela, so that’s a recycling option in a couple of years. My take on the Halo 3 version: probably right up there in cool with the black “sports” Dreamcast, but not quite as cool as a top-loading NES (with dog bone d-pad). Apologies for not quite matching the sexiness of the famous PSP licking shot. Look, I can’t help that I’m an ugly man.
Well… as I predicted, I’ve been somewhat of a failure at posting the DS game of the week on a weekly basis. But in my defense, my real job has been quite demanding the last month or so. To tell the truth, I actually have a whole list of stuff to post, I just need to find the time to actually do it. But anyway… on to this weeks DS game.
In a fit of boredom last week, I decided to try out a few DS games that I’ve had laying around for a while and have never taken the time to play. I can’t say for sure why I hadn’t tried this game until now, but I think it was mostly due to the fact that I didn’t have very high hopes. I realize that it got reviewed pretty well and I realize that most Nintendo games that revolve around first-party characters and themes are usually decent games. But every now and then, the touchscreen seems to “get in the way” a bit for me. For instance… Metroid Prime: Hunters reviewed pretty well and I know a few people who enjoy it, but I just couldn’t get into it. I’m just too much of a keyboard-mouse person when it comes to fps games I suppose. Anyway, I was a little worried that the touchscreen would just be gimmicky… boy was I wrong.
This weeks DS game of the week is a rather old title (as DS games go), but it’s still one that can suck up vast amounts of free time. For anyone who’s not really into puzzle games, just keep moving on to the next post. However, for anyone who can easily get sucked into a tetris marathon or who wastes away the hours at work playing bejeweled, Bust-A-Move is right up your alley.
To tell the truth, I’ve been a fan of Bust-A-Move ever since I first played it on a friends Sega Saturn “back in the day”. Even before that, I used to love a good session of Bubble Bobble on my old NES. My sister and I even spent an entire afternoon once and beat all 40 million levels (or however many there were) of that mind numbingly repetative game. Needless to say, those friendly little dragons hold a special place in my heart.
I just want to start this post by saying that I’m pretty enamored with my fun new little dual-screened friend. My DS is the first hand held game machine I’ve owned since my original monochrome Gameboy and I gotta say… I’m in love. So I thought I’d start a new feature here on ModStomp called the “DS Game Of The Week”. I’m not sure if it’ll actually be weekly, but basically, I’ll just be sharing my thoughts on a different Nintendo DS game each week. I’ve got quite a few so far so I shouldn’t have to worry about running out of games to talk about any time soon. I’m not really planning to make this an official “review” type of feature, but more just my random thoughts about how I like each game and how playable it feels to me. Ya’know… mostly useless opinionated blather.
Anyway, for our first installment, I thought I’d share my thoughts on a fun little game I happened to accidentally stumble upon called Touch Detective. I figured I’d start with this one because you probably don’t need to hear any more about Mario Kart and Pokemon. It was a total accident that I happened to try this game, but I have to say that it’s much more enjoyable than I first thought it would be. The basic story line is that you’re a young girl named Mackenzie who has inherited the family detective business and you get to help her solve her first few cases. The gameplay is nothing extraordinary (it’s basically just a point-n-click style adventure game), but the combination of colorful anime-style graphics, decent character development and a fun humorous approach to the story makes this game surprisingly enjoyable.
