Sargonas | April 3, 2012
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I Just Rediscovered iTunes U!

I have to admit, I am emphatically floored by not only the iTunes U app on my iPad, but also the way in which schools like Stanford have embraced it. Previously, iTunes U modules were simply videos, usually in a bundled series, that were lumped into your standard video player app. Recently however Apple has moved it all into its own standalone app, and some schools are taking it far beyond “a few videos” and doing something awesome.

A great example is one school right here in my back yard, Standord. They have started to provide a decent number of courses, for free, some of them I find quite interesting. For example, their CS106A, CS106B, and CS107 courses are listed. CS106A is “Programming Methodology”, their introductory CS course. 106B is the more advanced course building off of that, and CS107 is their general Object Oriented Programming primer.

With each of these courses, they don’t just give you a bundle of lecture videos and turn you loose, they actual provide the entire course module as they would to any other student. There is a fairly handy UI involved that breaks each course down to its various sections, and within each section you are walked through it as you would be if you were in the class. It starts off with a video presentation of the lecture, and from there you are walked through a series of PDF docs and various on hands exercises. At the end, in lieu of having the ability  to turn in your work for review, an answer sheet helps guide you through your work to determine how accurate it really is.

I can definitely see where a lot of my free time is about to go now, considering between those 3 classes and their iOS development course that builds off of them, I can essentially take the entire suite of CS courses Stanford offers for iOS development, for free. I haven’t even gotten into some of the Astronomy and Quantum Mechanics classes I have found either… A worthy investment of my free time if you ask me!

Category: Geekness, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Sargonas | April 2, 2012
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Forced to Pirate Media at Sword Point

I’m sitting here struggling to figure out who to blame. Who do I blame for my pirating? All I know, for sure, is that it’s not my fault. I will sit and argue for hours about the rights and wrongs of pirating content. There was a day where I was a beast at it, then after a few years of working in the realm of entertainment media for a fortune 500 company my perspective changed. I genuinely took a dim view of it and my habits shifted, but now here I am backed into a corner.

I want to watch Game of Thrones: Season 2. I WANT to give HBO my money for it. I have it in hand, ready to give… but they wont take it. They have crafted some exceptional content that I wish to consume and reward them their just dues. However, I live in a house with 3 house mates where we all split the cable evenly (and the cable internet). We only have basic cable, as no one wishes to pay for any extras due to the fact we are rely on Netflix and Hulu for 90% of our programming. To be honest we mostly only have it for food network, and because Comcast requires it in order to have cable internet. Anyways… so here we have basic cable. No one but myself wants to pay for the extras like HBO, so we can’t just add the package and split it, so that option is out. I don’t own or manage the account myself, so I can’t take matters into my own hands and just add it in and eat the cost, so there goes that route. I’d pay for all of HBO gladly, but the account owner “doesn’t want to deal with it” o there goes that. HBO has the amazing HBO Go service that lets you stream their content… but ONLY with a valid Cable package. There is no option to sign up for it for a flat fee due to their contractual obligations to the cable providers. Hulu doesn’t have it, again for more or less the same reasons, and same with Netflix. Now obviously, some of the hurdles are due to external influences like my house mates and not HBO but the gist is the fact that I feel like in today’s day and age there should be other avenues available to us aside from JUST ONE narrow channel to get this content. This is 2012 for fucks sake, and really you would think there would be more avenues to deliver what is inarguably HBO’s flagship content. So here I sit as we speak, torrenting last night’s episode, not because I want to but because I *have* to. I am TRYING to give these people my money, and they wont take it. :(

Way to fucking go HBO.

Category: Geekness, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sargonas | March 20, 2012
9 comments

My Shepard had a choice

Mass Effect 3Let’s talk Mass Effect 3. I finally beat it last night, and was finaly able to look at all the internet rage under a microscope. I have been avoiding so many gaming sites for a week because of all the rage, and now that I am caught up, I am flabbergasted. (WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Let me be clear, my ending, was amazing. I was left in awe.

First of all, the Mass Effect universe is a grand opus Bioware has crafted over 5 years. It is one of the deepest, richest, most engaging Sci-Fi universes I have ever seen. To have given it a sunshine and rainbows ending where everyone lives and all the world is at peace would do it great injustice. It would also be illogical and impractical.

My ending, I learned after the fact, was the best you could have. Presumably most everyone came out of it intact, and even Shepard was hinted at being alive at the last second. (more on that later).

First off there is the complaint of it being “too short”, I think this is ignorance. The “ending” did not start after your conversation with the Citadel’s entity and as you made your choice. At the very least the ending was as you stepped into the beam, or alternatively could even have arguable been when you landed on Earth and began the assault. If you really want to take it a step further, you could arguably claim that the end of the story started at the very beginning of ME3, and that the entire game was the unfolding of the end.

Along the same vein, there is the “that last cut-scene that matters most, and it isn’t good enough or different enough between the choices.” Folks, the resolution of the story is far more than a simple 4 minute cut scene. If you NEED to rely on a carefully scripted video that spells out every little detail for you in order to get closure on the story and are unable to think for yourself and use your imagination to fill in the blanks, then an RPG is not the right kind of game for you.

Next up is the whole “all choices were the same” bullshit. I don’t think so. You have three options available to you, that indelibly burn the future of the galaxy into your own personal cannon. In all cases, yes, the mass relays are destroyed and everyone loses their easy to access travel around the galaxy… technology created BY the reapers and the citadel entity for the sheer purpose of guiding organic life to its own whims. But you know what? So what. The choice you make DOES matter. In your own personal Shepard story the future is entirely decided by you. Do the reapers get wiped out? Do you seize control of them and make them work along side life in the galaxy to help nurture it? Or do you merge organic and synthetic life into a new form of intergalactic DNA? These are SERIOUSLY major differences that affect the future of the galaxy.

The “deus ex machina” complaint is silly as well. From the very opening cut scene, the stage is set for this. It’s hard to accuse Bioware of taking the easy way out and dropping this in as an ending, when they presenting to you the beginning of this in the first 20 minutes!!

Lastly, the whole “if you get the best ending, Shep wakes up in the rubble of London, this is proof the whole thing was a dream”. No it’s not. The citadel is a sentient being, you were beamed up to it using its own inherent technology, what is to stop it from choosing to beam you back down to save you at the last second? Attaching the crucible, according to it, opened up a world of new possibilities it was not prepared to expect. Along with that, when breaking the cycle you may have very well also opened its eyes to other things it could do, such as save you.

In the end I think everyone needs to sit back and take a deep breath. The people of Bioware chose to tell us a deep and engaging story, one of life, death, and consequences. One of you cant always get what you want, but where if you try to make a difference you can. You might not win, but those you sacrifice for will benefit. If you don’t like that story, that’s fine. But you wouldn’t demand someone retcon the end of a movie and re-release it, you don’t demand a republication of a good book because you thought the ending sucked. You take what the artist gave you for face value and either enjoy it and walk away entertained, or you just say “nah that wasnt for me”.

You don’t rage like a 10 year old and threaten to take your ball and go home…

Category: Gaming, Geekness, Personal | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Sargonas | March 7, 2012
3 comments

Want a free copy of Mass Effect 3?

Mass Effect 3

No, no, my blog hasn’t been taken over by some spam bot! ;) This Sunday, March 11th at 5pm PST I’m going to be giving away a few free copies of Mass Effect 3 for PC and 360! If you are on the fence about getting it (and really why that would be is beyond me), and want to see what all the hype is about, I plan to stream my online multi-player session this sunday for a few hours! Come check it out on Twitch.tv, hang out with a bunch of other cool folks, and watch me roll around in some MP with friends.

A few (read 3 or more) lucky people will even get a PC code for the game, that they can digitally download via Origin! I’ve also got a few 360 copies as well! So come hang out, chat with others and myself, check out the fun, and maybe win a copy. I’ll gladly be taking requests to play as certain class combos with specific weapons if you guys want to see various things in action as well. I’ll also swap between PC and console periodically so you guys can see the 360 version in action too!

You can check out my feed at http://twitch.tv/sargonas and follow me on twitter at @sargonas for updates leading up to it!

(Also if you are *really* lucky I might play a little Skrillex as some back ground music! hehe)

For full disclosure/disclaimer: While I am an EA employee (common internet knowledge), this is not an officially sanctioned EA/Bioware “thing”. It’s just something I am doing because I can, and because I have a few codes left over that I wanted to be creative with distributing. If you have any comments/complaints on this little event I will gladly listen/help but please know it’s all me and EA/Bioware can’t help if you go to them. Also, I am of course glad to talk all about the game, but cannot discuss anything that would obviously be confidential company info. Nor can I give you FemShep’s phone number!

Category: Gaming, Geekness |
Sargonas | November 28, 2011
2 comments

My “Big Project” for 2012

 

I had a lot of fun building my SC2 Battlecruiser. When I was 5-12 ish in age, as much time as I spend now playing video games, I spent then building with Legos. Now with the advent of the various Lego creation software, it’s even quicker and easier to prototype things as well!

I’ve come up with a project that I am really digging the idea for, I just need to flesh it out more. Here is the deal. I really want to build a 3 to 4 foot model of the USG Ishimura from Deadspace. The problem is, a model of that size will cost roughly $800 to $1200 in Lego parts alone. So I have decided to take it a step further.

What if I was to setup a KickStarter fund? Crowd source the money, and then turn around and build it. The entire process I would document and record, making an amazing time lapse of the project as it’s built over (presumably) a week or two. When completed, I hope to have an awesome video that I can then post it on youtube and set it up for ad revenue. I would then throw the model up on auction, taking the proceeds from it, the video, and any left over KickStarter money and donate it all to the Child’s Play charity for the 2012 season. What do you guys think?

Before *anything* happens though, I need to roll up my sleeves and flesh out a solid design plan in one of the common lego design tools. My goal is to have something up by time I return from the UK at the end of Jan so I can start raising the funding then!

Category: Geekness, Personal |
Sargonas | November 22, 2011
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StarCraft 2 Battlecruiser Construction In Time Lapse

 

So I made a little project this past Saturday. I came up with the idea at Blizzcon when I picked up the Limited Edition MegaBlocks Battlecruiser kit, but have been putting it off since I got back. I finally had the time to sit down and work on it this weekend, and got everything in place for what I thought was going to be a 2-3 hour project. 6 hours later at 1:30 am in the morning I was finally done however. Feast your eyes on the fruits of my labor, my best time lapse project yet!

Category: Geekness, Personal, Photography | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Sargonas | November 15, 2011
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Adventures in Dragon Hunting, Skyrim Edition, Vol. I

So Skyrim. Wow. I won’t go into a lengthy expose into why it is so amazing right now, I’ll save that for another post when I have more time to gush like a rabid fanboy.

Let’s talk Dragons. There are specific dragons throughout the game in certain locations, some even have names. Then there is an infinite number of randomly generated ones that will just drop out of no where and jump you from the clouds… and I seem to see them a lot. I’ve decided to start fraps-ing the encounters because sometimes they end up a bit humorous. Case in point, the video I just uploaded to youtube, check it out!

Floating mammoths, basejumping into dragon lairs, nearly dying from my own stupidity and more! Watch as I get jumped by a dragon while minding my own business in a field, and when I tackle a Blood Dragon to learn the power word he is guarding! Also be sure to check out the outtake at the end, where I learned how risky friendly-fire can be when I recruit a pack of Mammoths to help me fight a Dragon!

(If you are wondering why you almost never see me change gear/spells and it “just happens”, I leveraged the smooth fluidity of the UI flow and edited out the menu selection screens to make the video shorter and more cinematic.)

Category: Gaming | Tags: , , ,
Sargonas | October 5, 2011
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Steve Jobs 1955-2011

This is important enough of an event today that I want to earmark it to look back on and remember where I was. Often famous people die, and most of the time I shrug and go about my life dealing with far more important issues. This one is far more important to me though, both due to the significant impact he has had on the tech world, my world. Also because I got the chance to meet him (even if only for seconds) once.

Category: Gadgets, Geekness |
Sargonas | April 21, 2011
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A trilogy is only in 3 parts.

This year two eagerly awaited games will come to the gamers: Mass Effect 3 and Gears of War 3. Notice what they have in common? For years now some of our best loved and most powerful franchises have run their course with many of them being touted as “intended to be a trilogy” in some sound byte or talking point when interviewing their designers. Now this is not the case of them all, but this is the predominant theme in some of the top franchises. Others have greater ambitions and are still chugging along nicely (I’m looking at you Elder Scrolls and Fable), and don’t bring up Halo, thats a whole different breed of creature on its own right, spread across multiple platforms and developers.

At the core though, some of our beloved games and franchises that started their trek on current gen consoles are now reaching their peak, so to speak. After these two titles some other well loved friends of ours are due, having recently passed their Sequel milestone in the last year or so. It kind of makes you sit back and think… what’s next? I mean new games and new hits pop up all the time, but some of the core titles in the current gen world are entering their twilight, soon to have their swan song. Maybe they will branch out into offshoots, spinoff, prequels, who knows. As long, though, as they are not owned by Activision it is safe to assume however that their core story arcs are tying off before they move on to new things, if any at all. That makes me a bit sad and nostalgic, like when I watch a series finale of a beloved TV show.

Category: Personal |
Sargonas | April 3, 2011
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My 3DS StreetPasses its first convention!

So this weekend is wondercon, the San Francisco branch of Comic Con. The one thing I was more excited about than anything else (even hot girls in spandex outfits!) was the chance to really put my 3DS’s StreetPass through its paces. I suspected there would be a healthy dose of 3DS owners there, and I was right!

I have to say, Nintendo really improved on the whole peer to peer encounter thing that they first tried with the original DS. I really liked it on the old system, but it was fairly impractical. You had to have the game you wanted to enable it on loaded up, at a specific screen, and then put to sleep in that mode. A lot of finagling had to take place to get things ready and you can only enact it with one game at a time. With the 3DS the biggest improvement, to me at least, was that you can enable streetpass for multiple games simultaneously even if the game isn’t even in your unit at the time. It’s always on all the time, whether your system is sleeping or actively gaming.

I threw my 3DS in my messenger bag on sleep mode with both SSFIV and the normal Mii StreetPass enabled, and headed down to the event. I learned a few things from this little experiment. Firstly, if you are out at an event where you expect a LOT of activity, like Wondercon or PAX or E3, check your system often. Each type of StreetPass (Mii, SSFIV, etc) seems to have a 10-encounter limit per title. Once you max out, it stops accepting any new encounters until you clear our your queue. If you don’t load it up and clean it out, you might miss out on a lot of activity. Secondly, you can only use Miis you have encountered for the mini RPG or the Puzzle game if no one new has arrived yet to “push them off” the list. In my case, I acknowledged the 10 new visitors, and then closed the unit and went about my business, completely missing out on the puzzle pieces they had and the fights they could have done for me. Both of these issues I am sure have perfectly logical technical design reasons/limitations behind their implementation, and I am ok with them now that I understand them, just wish I had known it sooner. (Then again I never bothered to thumb through that massive King James Bible sized manual so the fault is my own really.) Finally, in the case of Super Street Fighter IV, those mini figure battles have to be processed in the Log in order to accumulate the points earned. Sadly there is no way to speed through it, and sitting down and watching through all those battles is fairly time consuming and annoying. Fortunately though you can let up to 20 of them sit in your log before it fills up and you need to clear some out.

All in all, this weekend totally made owning a 3DS right out the gate all the more enjoyable. I was thinking all week how awesome StreetPass would be come E3 or PAX, not at all thinking about Wondercon. I’m glad I got to experience this now, as to get a better idea for how I plan to approach those other events this year once I have a fair amount of various games loaded up for StreetPassing, so as not to miss out on anything awesome. Most importantly, I want to point out that at the end of the day, after logging 30 or so SSFIV matches (and watching them all) and about 50 Mii exchanges (and clearing that queue 4 or 5 times) I ended the day with about 50% battery life. Considering how fast this thing drains, and how comparatively crappy its over all battery life is, thats fairly reassuring.

Category: Gadgets, Gaming, Geekness, Personal |
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