Day Two Hundred Thirty-three: Evening of March 25th 2010

Today was pretty much another 'tower defense' day with The Creeps! iPhone app. I’m fascinated by overlapping fields of fire. Some of the paths that the creatures advance through are spiral like, and it’s interesting to watch the way the various weapons follow the villainous spawn around the unfolding path. I wonder about a sound track that might match the rhythm of the firing of the game’s guns.

I took some time to set up Mass Effect 2 on my other Xbox 360. I think that I’m going to try the ’Insanity’ setting for the personal challenge. But, truth be told, I’m going to go back to Bioshock 2 on that machine before I return to ME 2.

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-two: Evening of March 24th 2010

Today was Tower Defense Day.

Basically, the player, you or me, tries to stop waves of ever more stronger enemies from reaching or destroying a goal. In your defense, as you kill off the villains you are rewarded with funds to improve upon and/or build more weapons to be used against your foes. There are various scenarios to play through, like survival, or endurance or portal destruction.

Survival requires you beating back a prescribed number of attack. At certain points, a big boss moves through your defenses. Usually it places a heavy demand on every aspect of the weapons in your defense. If it reaches the target that you are trying to keep it from, it usually does more damage than a regular foe.

Endurance is similar to survival, except there is no limit to the number of waves and the strength of the enemy. You play until you can’t stop the hordes of villains the sweep through you defenses.

Finally, portal destruction requires that you attack the source of your foes until it is destroyed while preventing your home base from being destroyed. In essence you have to balance your offense and defense in order to build a strong attack upon the enemy’s home. This scenario is more of a challenge for me, but I’ll get there.

By the way and more specifically, it was The Creeps! Day.

It is an app for the iPhone, and an entrancing one at that. I drained the battery in the iPhone. It has some of the ‘good game qualities’ of easy to learn, but difficult to master. Luckily, my daughter has a copy of Ninjatown for the Nintendo DS, which is a tower defense game, but the battery life on the DS is much longer that the iPhones, so I may be shifting over to that in the near future. Hopefully it is as hypnotic as The Creeps!

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you is can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty-one: Evening of March 23rd 2010

I was watching X-play yesterday, and listened to an announcement regarding some new downloadable content for Mass Effect 2. I like the fact that Bioware continues to expand the game. The new DLC will add a new character, which is great because I just started my third run through. The only thing that was missing was the release date, so I loaded up the game and found out that it hadn’t been release yet, but there were some other DLCs available. One was a vehicle, which makes me wonder what it will be used for. I played through the mission, found it’s armed with a cannon of some sorts, but the initial mission was a search and discover to recover some resources. According to the description it adds some new side missions. The other DLC contained some new character outfits. I didn’t pay attention and confirmed the download before I realize there was a small charge for it. It wasn’t much, I guess I was excited by the fact the meatier download was free, and I didn’t pay attention as I accepted the charge.

I’ve got chores tomorrow, so I’m not sure what kind of adventure I’ll select.

We shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you can afford.

Day Two Hundred Thirty: Evening of March 22nd 2010

I last night I printed out the manual for the Mac/PC version of Dragon Age: Origins, and wondered why I didn’t check out the console manual as much as I did this version. I know that one reason was that the is greater access to controls on the PC version. I think that the description of the characters and related information is about the same. In the PC/Mac version there are two pages devoted to the keyboard and mouse control. I fooled around a bit with the Mac version before I quit - 20 minutes at most.

I don’t why I was so exhausted today. The only thing that I added to yesterday’s activities was washing the dog. Granted, it required a bit more energy, but not so much to require almost a full day’s worth of recuperation (naps). But that is what happened, about five hours of on again off again resting. It wasn’t until about four o’clock (16:00) that I finally leveled out and started playing Dragon Age: Origins on the Xbox 360 Pro in the living room. I had forgotten that I was playing as an elf magi - interesting as I actually talked my way through a number of situation (a Coercion Skill). After about an hour and before I quit, I selected my set of battle skills. It was interesting to see how many spell can generate friendly fire damage. Luckily for me this is activated in the normal and higher levels of difficulty, so I didn’t have to worry about it, because I was playing on easy.

Later in the evening, as I was checking for updates, I discovered that the Razer Orochi Bluetooth mouse finally had the driver for the Mac, so I downloaded it and tried to install it. I had a bit of a problem activating the Bluetooth link, but discovered that I needed to set up the mouse with it hooked up through the USB port (that information was on the Orochi control in the OS System prefs). It took me about ten minutes. Not bad, considering it would have been faster if I had opened the control for the device first. Next, replacing that Bluetooth mouse with it with another Bluetooth mouse. I wish I had remembered the procedure for doing this, but I remembered to remove the old drivers and firmware updates. Overall it took about twenty minutes to do this. Luckily, Toshiba had a set of applications help set this kind of operation up. My problem materialized when I tried working through the standard search procedure. After fooling around for awhile I remembered the application and five minutes later things seem to be working - a small success.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you can afford.

Day Two Hundred twenty-nine: Evening of March 21st 2010

Wow, the yesterday’s entry, “As usual The weekend is long on chores and short on game play,” was as valid today as it was yesterday. As a matter of fact, I had even less free time today than yesterday, but I managed to experiment with the Mac Book Pro.

I wanted to see how the movies and Dragon Age: Origins looked the 40 inch flat screen.

I knew it wouldn’t take long. I’ve been experimenting with hooking up Mac laptops to a variety of output devices, and never had any kind of problems. I didn’t have to hit a function key (I think F5) like I had to on some of the PCs I’ve had to use. I set up the cable on the display, both my Mac Book Pro and the flat screen were on, plugged it into the laptop, opened the display’s menu, and selected the PC option for receiving the computer’s signal. The computer screen popped up on the display, without any distortion. I activated Dragon Age and it appeared on the screen and looked great. If I had had time I would have loaded up Dragon Age on the Xbox 360 and switched back and forth to see how close or different the versions were. I played for about fifteen minutes and quit. Then I activated tunes to check out a movie. I had to stop watching The Fearless Vampire Killers, so that I could put the dishes in the washer and work on this entry. The images on the screen looked great. I’ll have to try comparing some of the films that I have both DVD and iTune copy in the future. It’s nice to know how easy it is to pump out the screen contents on laptop and see it look so good on the display.

I’ll have to see what happens tomorrow, and what I work on.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you can afford.

Day Two Hundred twenty-eight: Evening of March 20th 2010

As usual The weekend is long on chores and short on game play.

I did manage to play about three hours of Dragon Age: Origins this afternoon, while I waited for the dryer to finish its cycle.

Even on the casual I’ve run into some serious boss battles, One was so tough, I actually deviated from my ‘good guy’ philosophical guidelines and went pragmatic. It paid off, but now I wonder what repercussions will appear later on. I think I could have figured out how to get through the troublesome scenario, but I’ve spent so much time on this game, I wanted to see if I could get on with the game (When I quit the program shows that I have played a few minutes more than forty hours and I considerably less than half way) It was funny as I finished the scenario, I actually received a trophy for being a pragmatist.

Well, I’ll see what I feel like playing tomorrow in between laundry loads.

Right now Dragon Age seems to have the inside track, but we shall see.

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you can afford.

Day Two Hundred twenty-seven: Evening of March 19th 2010

I didn’t sleep much last night, minor sinus headache again - March is the month for that for me. Some times it’s weather related - weather fronts moving through. Other times is house cleaning related - heavy duty dusting. I did some dusting during the day. Enough said!

So Dragons Age: Origins (Xbox 360) became the focus of my attention for about three hours in the early morning and then again in the afternoon I it played on the Mac Book Pro for a few hours. I decided to play on the easy setting. I just felt like I needed a ‘hack and slash’ adventure and I want to see how the game finishes. Call me curious (and frustrated). Both platforms work for me, although I noticed a slow down in the Mac, which bothered me - to many horses under the hood for that to happen. (I wonder if I change some settings, or Time Machine’s auto backup kicked in while the game was active).

Another change, I got tired of retyping my sign-in info whenever I shifted from the Xbox 360 Pro to the Elite. I remembered a tip fro the Xbox live crew about moving the info to a memory unit and shifting the piece between the machines. I worked and I’ll try it for a few days to see if it is better. Right now it a solid procedural change.

We shall see

For as long as it‘s needed, I’ll keep closing this way, please check out a good organization that’s providing aid in Haiti and make what ever kind of contribution that you can afford.