My silence lately is actually because I’m absorbed in Dragon Age: Origins. I haven’t quite finished my first playthrough, but I’m getting pretty close so I figured I might as well put some thoughts out there.
Naturally, when Bioware makes an RPG, expectations run pretty high. With Baldur’s Gate, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights, and Mass Effect in their pedigree, it’s hard not to get excited about their latest title. Even adjusting for that, though, I do wonder if it’s living up to the hype.
I’m a big believer in the notion that literature reflects the values of the society that produces it. Just because I don’t like something, doesn’t mean it has no intrinsic cultural value. But every so often, IÂ respond emotionally to the way the flavour of the month is compared to the great works of our time.
Case in point, look at the best seller list I took off the Borders Australia website. A Twilight novel in the same list as Catcher in the Rye and Animal Farm. Topping them in fact. Blows my head.
On the one hand, I think it’s great that there are books that get young people reading. I guess I just wish they weren’t about encouraging young girls to take the wrong expectation of men in relationships. Or accepting as historical fact, debunked conspiracy theories about a religious organisation.
Reading for entertainment is great, but I wish I could see it translating into broadened horizons instead of just passing fads.
I did more research on whether PlayTV would suit my needs, and it looks like there are a couple stumbling blocks:
This is sufficient dealbreaker for me, so I’m going back to building my own PVR. So far, I’ve built up an pretty impressive machine which will cost around $600. I still haven’t added in the tuner or remote control, but still not a bad deal.
I’m also mucking around with MythBuntu in a VM to see what it’s like (lack of tuner notwithstanding).
I’ve been watching The Art of Photography podcast, which recently featured a great piece of software called Sofortbild to tether my Nikon D60 to the Mac. I was able to use it to put together this short sunset timelapse video, which is pretty cool:
I’ve been contemplating a PVR for a while. Lack of funds and partner buy-in have sort of left me dead in the water, but P. recently saw a friend’s TiVo and was intrigued enough to suggest getting one (eventually).
Things have gone quiet on that front, but have since done some digging. Basic TiVo is cheap enough, but extra features (like playback on your PC via ethernet) are $100+ addons, and when I totted up the cost, it looked like I could build my own for the same price and get complete flexibility.
And now Sony’s gone and thrown a spanner in my works by announcing the PlayTV is coming to Australia. I still need to check the full feature set (can it record while gaming, network playback, etc), this would kill two birds with one stone: I was also looking to get a PS3 this Christmas.
At full retail price, the PS3/PlayTV combo comes to $670. If I were to build my PVR, I’d be looking at $1200 for the hardware (many hours of making it work just right) plus $500 for the PS3. This could save me potentially $1000, so I’m definitely going to check it out.
This may do what nobody has been failing to achieve for at least a year now: get me to buy a PS3 😉