SuBmArU's Space

Ipod Touch ... Love at first sight ... I've always thought that the Apple products are too much "Fanboys oriented", but recently I had to give up and buy an 80Gb Ipod Classic, simply because there's no other portable media player with that capacity and size, apart from the Zune by Microsoft, that is not sold in Italy; after one day of use I started to love the clickwheel, the shiny look, the personal laser writing I requested on the back of the Ipod, buying the Ipod on line at the Apple Store ... And I started to hate the quite obliged use of Itunes, the missing of "power user" personalization of use, the lack of instructions ...

Last week I've entered for the first time in my life an Apple Store, the one in the "Roma Est" Shopping Center ...  I've spent 1 hour inside the Store, enjoying the "Bar style" of the store, and the possibility to try every single apple product. I felt in love with the Ipod Touch, first of all because in my opinion it's the most similar thing to a real paper photo album to have in one's pocket, and to give to someone to have a look at! It's interface it's incredible ... comparable to what is the Wii controller in the console world.

So my 16 Gb Ipod now it's always in my pocket ... I've spent one minute to familiarize with the interface, but one week to use the Touch the way I wanted to!

I wanted to:

1) Sort the photos album in the order I decide

2) Read comics in digital format

I discovered that:

1) The Touch sorts the photos alphabetically by the name of the file

2) Transferring the photos to the Touch through iTunes, automatically converts them to a convenient pre-defined resolution, and you can't decide the final conversion resolution; this is perfect for the normal use of a photo, like showing them to friends ... but if you transfer the jpeg pages of a digital comic, when you zoom them to read it, the resolution is too much low to read the baloons of the comic!

I solved this way:

1) I used 2 programs to manage my photos before the tranfer to the Touch, "PowerExif Editor" and "Bulk Rename Utility"; they're incredibly powerful, allowing to modify exif data of photos (useful for example when you have photos of the same event coming from different cameras with different time set ... quite common!) and to sort, rename, power modify the name of the photos.

2) I had to unlock my Touch, and to install iComic, a wonderful program for comic reading on Touch, at native jpeg resolution ... and you have to really trick the wifi connection of the Touch to your pc to transfer the jpgs to you touch ...

I will edit this post later with links to guides and infos!

With Christmas, a self gifted Wii has entered the door of my house :) ... So I've added "wiifanboy" to my daily visited web sites.

In this post, I've discovered a wonderful PC game, whose conversion to the Wii is in progress: The Blob ! In the game you're a big fat color changing smiling ball :-) Absorbing colors from poor colored living people running away from you, to give back colors to a gray themed city! You move, bounce and paint in a full 3d environment, with jumps, fans, tricks and black cops hunting for you :)

As always Wikipedia, can give an help, and quoting directly from the "Wikipedia De Blob Game Page":

History

de Blob was originally developed as a free downloadable game for the PC by eight students studying Game Design & Development at the Utrecht School of the Arts and one student studying Game and Media Technology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. THQ noticed the game and was very impressed with the team's work, and acquired the rights to the game from the original team and handed over the game to Blue Tongue and Helixe and they've been developing their own versions for their respective consoles ever since.

Synopsis

de Blob is an action puzzle title that allows players to explore and liberate an alien city from the evil, monochromatic I.N.K.T. Corporation that has taken over the city and outlawed all color and fun from daily life. Playing as de Blob, gamers will embark on a quest to re-animate the city of Chroma, and bring spunk and character back to the oppressed, by splattering buildings, landmarks, and citizens with color. de Blob features an intricate single player campaign as well as a multiplayer experience that supports up to four competitors via split screen. The game was conceived for the Windows PC by a team of eight students studying Game Design & Development at the Utrecht School of the Arts and one student studying Game and Media Technology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. At the time of conception, sections of Utrecht were being rebuilt and the principal task in creating the game was to convey how the railroad station area of Utrecht would look in 10 years. The city of Utrecht has since adopted the character of de Blob to be its mascot.

The PC game is absolutely FREEWARE! And a must download (97Mb, English Version), because it's a great and fun idea, running also on old specs PCs and laptops!

LOVELY WORK! Happy painting!

A new gaming  Rig, and a lot of hardware issues, kept me away from posting, but right now my new creature is up and running fast and steady :-) ...

A lot of new stuff arrived ( a laser carved 80gig Ipod, a Wii ... and so on ...), but this is another story! First of All, I wish you a wonderful and happy 2008!

(Courtesy of Google)

Hype is a bad thing ... being a fanboy is even worse.

I do not like soccer, I've never been a football fan ... but strangely I've always loved to play soccer on a console. PES 6 for my 360 has been a wonderful experience: while criticized from PES series fans, because of the lack of other version (PS2, PSP) features, for me (a casual PES gamer) has been, first of all, a perfect online experience.

The Hype about PES 2008 has been big ... the PC Demo, and the 360 Demo have been just a taste of what has finally arrived: average graphics, strange playing feeling ... but PES is PES :D ! Everything will change with the final release.

FIFA 2008 has arrived: but PES is PES ... Ok, very nice graphics, interface and playing, but I do not want "not to feel at home" ...

Like other millions of people in the world, I've bought the game as soon has the package has arrived to my favorite games seller .... and like other millions of people in the world I am seriously thinking in giving the game away.

Horrible interface, ridiculous replay graphics, strange look of playing field grass ... incredible fast playing game speed, pinball effect for the ball ...

OK OK it's PES it's PES ... I have to resist ...

BUT ... NO WAY TO PLAY ON LINE ... enough is enough ...: there's no way to make a decent match with people even living the next building ... lag is the king: the ball and the players are ghosts.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND how this is possible! How a game, so famous, built by a rock steady team, can be sold with this so big problems! Konami, have you ever tried just one online match through Xbox Live ? Have you ever seen just one ridiculous action replay .... ? Have you ever noticed how the ball jumps away as being in a pinball ?!??!

KONAMI says they're working on it ... they do not even say WHEN a patch will be available, and they say sorry! For quite 70€, the price paid for the game, this is absolutely scandalous.

Like the Italian average person :D ... I have 3 SIMs and 2 phones ;-) ! So there's one spare SIM with no phone as house :). I've recently red of the total compatibility of the SIMORE DUALSIM Card G1 with my HTC Tytn so I decided to give it a try.

The package arrived yesterday from Switzerland by mail, and I've soon noticed the excellent quality of the whole stuff (dualsim card, accessories, packaging, goodies) ... what has negatively surprised me is that I've discovered that, while perfectly recognised by my Tytn, the SIMORE DUAL SIM G1 card is NOT COMPATIBLE with Italian SIMS from "TREE" operator.

I've found the same complaint in forum posts like THIS; I've already asked SIMORE to put an advice on their site, and I hope they will listen to me.

For Italian people, beware also that to the already high purchase cost you have to add the "custom taxes", even if SIMORE claims that the price is "delivery included".

For more technical infos, I have to add, because it's not SO CLEAR on SIMORE web page, that the Tytn need no additional sofware installed to manage the dualsim card, but there's an autoinstalling software that appears in the programs folder, as soon as the Tytn recognise the dualsim card.

Due to the incompatibility with the THREE Sim, I've not been able to check the effective use of the dualsim card, 'cause I don't want to cut another Sim.