Rorschach.net

Well it’s hard out there for an independent game studio. SotS was supposed to be released this week, but currently the only people with the game are those who got it online through direct download, and a handful of people who were lucky enough to have their direct-order-from-the-publisher copies show up. That’s what happens when you’re not EA or some other behemoth of the gaming industry. For the rest of us it looks like SotS will be in the big box stores (Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Fry’s) next week, probably Tuesday or later. The couldn’t cut a deal with the niche stores like Gamestop or EB. PC gaming is pretty much dead there anyway.

There’s a patch coming soon as well that tweaks a lot of the interface issues that were brought up in the demo so I’m cool with waiting another weekend. In the mean time the community is filling in a lot of information on the wiki, so that’s worth browsing for a bit.

Yeah the title reads like a spam subject. Head’s up to all my friends who have an X360. You can download the texas hold’em poker game from the Marketplace service today and tomorrow for free. You get the full game, no timers or anything. After Thrusday it’s $10.

Kind of interesting game, you have multiplayer and single player bankrolls that are kept across games so there’s a little tracking taking place to keep people from going all in every round. I’ll have to see how things are going online tonight, never really got into the online poker thing, but I did enjoy the weekly poker games back in the day and playing poker with family when we get together.

My Mom and nephew Avri made the flight to visit us a few weeks ago (prior to the new carry-on policy). I’ve finally posted pictures in the gallery of our time together. It was nice to spend several days relaxing and catching up with both my Mom and Avri. As you can see, hours were spent in the water. I am pretty sure Avri permenently wrinkled by the time he left. Paul’s shirts are now un-wrinkled thanks to Mom’s ironing addiction. Mom de-wrinkled all of Paul’s 36 dress shirts. We had to buy her more startch to support her ironing habit.

We also made the trek up to LA on the Coaster to go to Disneyland on Thursday. I’ve been told the train was the way to travel to LA and I see now why. The majority of the trip was full of beautiful beach scenes, the time was an hour and a half (by car I’ve never heard of it taking less than 2 hours on a good day) and you can nap on the way back when you’re exausted from a day of walking.

Avri mastered amusement park navigation and we were fortunate to arrive so early at the park that there was almost no one else on Tom Sawyer’s Island so Avri got to play in the caves and treehouses with his Uncle Paul and Aunt Amy which made it feel like the whole Island was his. We rode on the Pirates of the Carribian, went on the Amazon jungle safari, climbed Tarzan’s treehouse, rode the start wars ride, Indiana Jones and more – all before lunch. They started to blur together at that point.

I think the highlight for Avri was the experience on Tom Sawyer’s Isalnd and meeting Goofy – right after getting a Goofy hat from his Uncle Paul. For Mom, it was probably Indiana Jones – even though the ride stopped and we got stuck in the dark for a while. I was shocked that she liked such a crazy ride. She’d getting braver these days The Buzz Light Year Ride was one of my favorite. They give you a lazer gun and control over your spaceship so you shoot at things as you go through and see your points tallied up. It was very fun – especially because I had the high score. After you get done, they let you plub in your email and it sends you a photo of yourself and your co-piolet with your scores. No more paying for – or carrying around photos. I was impressed. In the “Ants” 3D show, they dropped giant spider’s from the ceiling and ran crawly things along your back to feel like bugs. The interaction was cool and a suprise to everyone.

There was little line at the Pirates ride and we used the fast pass system to avoid most others. The fast pass made our longest line a 20 minute wait – and usually considerably less at otehr places. I was impressed at how clean – and intricate each details of the buildinggs and landscapign were. It was very well thought out. In contract, Disey’s California Theme Park was less ornate – less imaginative in it’s detail and less thourough in creating teh experience. It felt like the plans drawn up were for a place to look like Disnelyland – but all the great details were value engineered in the constrcution process.

We slept in Saturday morning and then Paul and Avri made pasta from scratch, we took a nap (or tried), swam some more and then after teaching Avri how to make Alfredo from scratch, we all ate the culinary masterpiece. Sunday was for more swimming and intense lago construction – but with some friends who brought their 7-year-old for Avri to play with. We had a lovely bar-b-que and then Monday it was off to the airport.

Thanks for coming. We’ve still got all kinds of un-touched adventures out here. There’s sea world, legoland, 6 Flags, ocean cave canoe trips, the wilderness safari so we need you to come back next summer and we’ll try something else.

Dead Rising is a new X360 game that is basically Dawn of the Dead. You play a photojournalist who’s covered wars and other dangerous places. You recieve a tip that the small town of Willamette, CO has gone off the map. No information is getting in or out of the town and all the roads are blocked. You hire a helicopter and as you’re hovering over the town realize that it’s infested with zombies. YOu convince the pilot to set you down at the main feature of the town a large mall and promise to pick you up in 72 hours right before he’s chased off by the military. Thus begins Dead Rising.

The great part about the game is all the zombies are slow and stupid, anything can be used as a weapon, and there’s over 59,000 zombies to kill. I’m about 24 hours into the game with over 1,000 zombies back in their graves. Too much fun.

AOL released search records for over 600k users through a 3 month period. Although they randomized the user ID you can still get a good picture of who they are and worse off what they do by linking together all of their searches.

This is the exact type of data that Google went to court for a few months ago to prevent it from being released to the government. So, what have you typed into a search engine lately?

Last week, my Mom and Avri (nephew) came to visit for 5 days. Among other adventures, we finally made the trek up to LA to visit the famous mouse’s house. I will write more on the trip later, but for now, I am tired the good tired of someone who’s had a busy weekend but a happy one. Roe’s been imobilized since last night when the sheer volume of affection rained on him by our company (Avri of course – not Mom) came to be somewhat overwheling. I never realized someone could talk that much and still breath (again Avri – not Mom) and I also have come to see how much more I miss my family after seing them than before.

Thanks for making the trip! Pictures and excellent stories to follow once I get caught up at work.