Rorschach.net

• Vacation begins. Not going anywhere since I live in a vacation destination. Family are coming to me this time. Parental ETA 2 hours. #
• Parents made it despite the blowout in Barstow. Everyone is fine. Sidewalls shredded, tread intact. Was John Travolta hiding in the bushes? #
• Vacation continues. Midway and beach today, shopping tomorrow. Comic-con on Friday. Already finished one book, starting on the second. #
• My parents are going to be disappointed if they don't see enough cosplay/weirdos at Comic-Con on Friday. #
• Vacation continues. Tonight I brave the airport to pick up more family. #
• Today is #sdcc day. If you don't hear from me by the end of the day, send in GI-Joe. #
• #sdcc was fun. The whole family enjoyed it. Now we're done. #
• If you haven't seen it yet. Here's the trailer for Tron Legacy: http://www.flynnlives.com/media/video/0xendgame.aspx #

Here’s four videos providing an introduction to the hardware, interface and software of the phone I’m looking to acquire. I wish they’d announce the availability or lack thereof for my carrier. If this isn’t coming to Sprint I’ll probably get a Palm Pre.

While the six of us were wandering the exhibition hall at Comic-Con on Friday my brother got accosted by a small woman with a microphone and attending cameraman. The wife and I were playing with our nephew. Fast foward to 2:04 to see the results.

http://www.thewb.com/shows/comic-con/comiccon-09-clip-7/4c1b9d4b-dc1d-4f2e-b410-e2f2ae3d3f7b

Google Wave extending 100,000 invites | Google Android Blog

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If you’ve been paying attention I’ve returned to posting on this blog on a semi-regular basis since the beginning of May. Well now I get to let you all know why I thought I’d dust off the Interweb soapbox.

I’d like to (finally) publically announce my impending fatherhood. Some time right around the new year the wife and I will welcome a new human into the world that we made ourselves. We’re very excited and a little scared. Everything is going well with the pregancy so far. More updates as news warrants. Stay tuned!

• Comiccon looms large. Only going one day but taking wife, parents, brother, his wife and <1yr. nephew. Also taking whole week off. #
• Leverage is back. It's a damn fine show. #
• Rock Band Network announced: http://bit.ly/10NunO #

This is pretty huge. Billboard has the details on the outsourcing of Rock Band tracks to any music copyright holders called Rock Band Network. In the next two months a service will be starting up that allows bands, studios, and labels to get their tracks into Rock Band without having to wait for the programmers at Harmonix to get you onto the schedule. Right now you get up to 10 tracks a week (every week since RB1 came out which means over 700 tracks!) but with RBN it could potentially go up to hundreds.

The copyright holders can take it all the way through the process if they’re willing to do some programming and become “certified” in creating RB note highways. If not you can outsource it to a certified community group and only worry about the music not the game. Quality Assurance of the track is done in a community as well, then once it’s approved it on the RBN marketplace for anywhere from $0.50 to $3. You get your cut of every download.

Looks great for indie bands but it also allows studios and labels to fast track their music into the game. Sub-Pop has committed to getting all their popular music from the last two years onto RBN.

So by the end of August we could be seeing an explosion of music in Rock Band, like iTunes or Amazon Music amounts and varieties of tracks. I can’t wait.

I love to see the ways technology democratizes the ability to create. A busker out on the street with an amp and a suitcase full of footpedals hooked to digital loopers and synths can create a live performace that sounds a lot like high-end studio work. Beautiful.

Dub FX ‘Love Someone’ from Ben Dowden on Vimeo.

• Windows 7 install begins. Throw the switch Igor. THROW THE SWITCH! #
• I do believe this will be my next phone. Hopefully out on Sprint by the end of the year. http://www.htc.com/www/product/hero/overview.html #
• After a few false starts the 5lb. sledgehammer worked. Win7 Upgrade begins! (WHAM WHAM CRACK!) #
• Need to stock up on Rock Band DLC songs. Party tomorrow. #
• Win7 install FAIL. Some mobo driver incompatibility. Locks up right when it's booting to the new OS. Gracefully reverts back to Vista though #

Wow, that’s pretty bad when the last two posts on this blog are the weekly Twitter summaries and only one tweet each. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say I’m just too lazy to type it up sometimes.

Anyway, I’m a sucker for the Warhammer universe. Add a little fatalism to your fantasy setting where the good guys are fascist and the bad guys will eat your soul. It got me to become that which has no life (i.e. joined an MMO) and the sci-fi Warhammer setting happens to be the best RTS out this year.

Warhammer didn’t start out with video games. As my brother can tell you it started out as a miniatures wargame. Well one of the little side games came about when some guys thought it would be fun to have the elves fight the orcs in a game of footbal and Blood Bowl was born.

Blood Bowl is a little more like rugby or Australian rules football than American. There’s no downs, you just run until you get to the endzone or fumble, or get killed. There’s a lot of violence when your center is a troll and your linebacker is a rat-man with spiked gloves. I find sports much more interesting when a legitimate tactic is to decimate the other team in order to score.

So a team in Europe took the board game with miniatures, squares, dice, and all and translated it to a videogame. This is my kind of Madden. Team budgets and management, seasons, divisions, tournaments, bribery, it’s all there. And the online leagues are a great way to get together a group of people for weekly trash talking and games.