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Goatmoose

“What the french, toast?”

January 6, 2011 SomaFM – A Different Kind of Radio

I’ve always found myself to be a person of many musical tastes.  It’s not uncommon to hear me listen to Marilyn Manson followed by Patsy Cline followed by Jay Z followed by Joss Stone.  One of my biggest peeves is modern commercial radio, which plays mostly garbage and perforates it with endless advertisements for nonsense.

Like millions, I’ve turned to listening to internet radio almost exclusively.  In the car, it’s all NPR and local public stations, but everywhere else, SomaFM is the place for me.  I first discovered it a few months ago when one of their stations was playing at a Second Life art installation I attended.  I’m not going to type a huge load about Soma, but I felt like giving the site a shout as it’s something I’ve truly grown to enjoy.  Streaming out of a warehouse in San Francisco, SomaFM is a listener-supported collection of 22 varied, eclectic radio stations.  The music they play is truly unique and original.  Describing their goals, their website states “We have always believed that there are plenty of people out there who would really get into the music we play once they discovered us.”

My favorite is Lush.  Ultimate chill-out music, great for keeping level if you work in an office cubicle farm and have two laser printers on either side of your cube running constantly 9 hours per day like I do.  Check it out.

January 5, 2011 Kinect – Your Shape: Fitness Evolved Review

I’ve never been much for exercise.  Unless, of course, you mean exercising my gamerscore.  Fortunately, with Kinect, I now have a product that will allow me to exercise my body and my gamerscore at the same time.  Your Shape: Fitness Evolved is one of the most advanced fitness videogames ever designed, and arguably the best title so far when it comes to utilizing the Kinect sensor in the most accurate way.

From customized personal training to fitness games, dance workouts and demonstrations, Your Shape does everything it can to tailor a routine to your personal needs and get you on track to a healthier lifestyle.  The game features workout routines designed by Men’s and Women’s Health Magazines, and if you’re a fairly sedentary person like myself who is in terrible need of a workout, it’s certain to be kicking your ass from day one.

Let’s take a quick look at the game and its potential for delivering real fitness results…

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January 4, 2011 Review: Kinect Adventures

Ahhh, Kinect Adventures.  The flagship title.  The Wii Sports of the Kinect peripheral.  It’s the game that everyone with a Kinect will have – by default the most popular title for the device.  What’s it like?  Let’s take a look…

I’ve already mentioned how well the Kinect performs on the whole.  Obviously, part of Kinect’s functionality depends on the game and its success in programming.  Titles like Game Party and Deca Sports Freedom have become famous launch titles for how poorly they respond to your movement.  Fortunately, Kinect Adventures doesn’t fall victim to that problem.  As one would hope for the game that comes bundled with the hardware and serves double purpose as a demonstration tool, Kinect Adventures works very well.

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January 3, 2011 Xbox 360 Reviews – Recent Rentals

Every now and then I like to quickly review some recent rentals I acquired through GameFly.  I often end up reviewing games that are years old, but sometimes things slip through the cracks and people forget about stuff.  Also, it partly allows me to examine how certain games have held up over time.  Something that was decent a few years ago might be terrible now that we’ve seen how things can progress.  So here we go…

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January 3, 2011 Hooray For Kinect

Apparently I was a good boy in 2010.  After all other present opening had been completed, the parental Santa units bestowed me with one final gift.  The box was rectangular and not terribly heavy, and before it hit my hands I knew that inside was a Kinect.  I ravished its wrapping and instantly told my wife “thank you” for buying me some clean underwear for Christmas.

Since, I have accrued four of the Kinect’s launch titles in addition to Kinect Adventures, the game that comes bundled with the peripheral.  Over the next few days I’ll be doing some short, to-the-point reviews of each title individually.  The overall verdict: so far so good.

I had never used a Kinect or even seen one in person prior to receiving mine.  Overall, the device performs even better than I had hoped it would.  It is fine-tuned to my room, detects every movement, knows the difference between me and my wife when we step in front of it in any lighting, and has rendered me nearly incapacitated with tons of much-needed muscular soreness for the past week.  My play space gives me the ability to stand up to 15 feet away from it with about six feet of room on the sides – a perfect amount of room for two people to play easily, and for one person to have tons of gaming space.

Setup was simple, original configuration was very straightforward and the thing was functioning like aces within minutes of coming out of the box.

But enough about the Kinect itself – stick around for upcoming reviews of Kinect Adventures, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, Dance Central, Kinectimals and Kinect Sports.

December 24, 2010 Rap City in Blue

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Some things ought to be real... (click to enlarge)

December 24, 2010 Fallout New Vegas – Dead Money DLC Achievement Guide & Walkthrough Tips (Spoilers)

DLC: Dead Money
Cost: 800 MSP
Achievements: 5
Total Points: 140

It is somewhat disappointing that this DLC only ponies up 140 possible points.  For $10, the price of an average XBLA title, I expect to be able to add 200 points to my score.  Regardless, Dead Money’s achievements aren’t terribly hard to get if you just play through the story.  You don’t need to pointlessly hunt down 100 steel ingots or alien recordings, or particularly go out of your way at all.  Just flow through the DLC and you can acquire them all.

But just in case, here are some tips…

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December 24, 2010 Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money DLC Review

So, we’re doing this again.

Back starting in 2008, Fallout 3 ended up reaming its millions of avid fans for another $10 every couple months as its five DLC packs were released with completely satisfying gaps between them.  An ample length passed between the last Fallout 3 DLC and the launch of New Vegas to get us all riled up and stiff for another Fallout title.  It came, we conquered, and now we’ve seen the release of the first New Vegas DLC, Dead Money, on December 21.  Let the process start again.

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December 1, 2010 Another Month…

Sadly, an entire month has passed since anything was updated on this site.  It started out a busy month, as the NaNoWriMo competition was occupying all my free after-work time.  I was making solid progress and by the second week I was nearing 20,000 words.  Then, after a few days of being busy with other things, my grandmother passed away.  That took up a few days’ time and now I’ve found myself at the end, November 30th, having no more words than I did on November 15th.  The contest officially ends here in Pittsburgh in 4.5 hours, and I’m 30,000 words short.

Fortunately, I don’t feel like a loser.

The point of NaNoWriMo isn’t to create the perfect novel in 30 days.  As the pep-talks from published authors and contest organizers constantly remind us, it’s not even about writing a good book in 30 days.  In fact, writing a good book in 30 days is nearly impossible.  The purpose of the contest is to get words on “paper,” out of our minds and into a place where they can be worked with and altered.  It’s about the community that helps motivate people to write, and to keep writing.  It’s about getting people started doing something that is so easy to procrastinate with and put off.  Trust me, I’ve been putting off seriously working on a novel since I was ten.

The fact that I got as far into my story in 15 days as I did was a great accomplishment for me.  It changed tone and altered its plot several times from when I started, and I still have no idea where it’ll end up.  NaNoWriMo got me started, and being as far into the story as I am, I have a great deal of motivation to finish.  People know I started the book.  I told them.  They were interested.  To stop now would be failure.  Not finishing by November 30th has nothing to do with it.

So, while I would have loved to have hit that golden 50,000 word mark within the next four hours – it simply won’t happen this year.  Perhaps next year things will be different.  Either way, I’ve got a solid start, and I thank the competition for the boost.  Now I can set a personal goal of finishing by Christmas.

October 28, 2010 NaNoWriMo

November starts in three days.  For a few thousand people, that means they’re about to attempt to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of the month’s 30 days.  I count myself in that class.

NaNoWriMo is “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon! “  Are you up for it?

Now if I only knew what to write about…

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