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Friday - December 30, 2005

Jiggly fun

As you may have seen on my Gamer Card, I picked up Dead or Alive 4 today. If you've ever played the previous DOA iterations, you'll feel right at home. The graphics are top notch as always, and of course the absurdly proportioned fighters make a return (not that I'm complaining). Online play is fun, but has a couple issues with lag if you opponent is on a poor connection. Maybe they'll work some of the kinks out soon, but it is still very enjoyable. I've already unlocked some pretty good achievements including 10 straight online wins, and completing story mode with Kasumi.

Posted by jcraven at 9:31 PM | Video Games

8th wonder of the world

Last night, we went to the movies to check out King Kong. Simply put, this is a phenomenal film. The special effects are better than any previous film, including Peter Jackson's other masterpiece, Lord of the Rings. The dinosaurs were especially impressive. They made Jurassic Park's lizards look like finger puppets. The storyline is equally impressive, and Naomi Watts should honestly be considered for an Oscar nomination. If you haven't seen it, GO NOW! Check out metacritic for more reviews.

Posted by jcraven at 3:26 PM | Movies & Music

Wednesday - December 28, 2005

xbox 360 impressions


Mom gave us a brand new xbox 360 for Christmas, along with Project Gotham Racing 3. I plugged it up at my parent's house, and wasn't exactly blown away, but when I got home that changed. The combination of an HDTV, and xbox live makes this system a blast. I've already logged 10 hours or so. You may have noticed I also added my Gamer Tag to my main website. This shows you my game achievements, and what I'm currently playing. PGR3 is on there, along with a couple games I've played on xbox live marketplace. So far, I don't have any major complaints about the system. It works great. The only minor complaint, is that it does not come with a digital optical cable, so I had to use one of my Best Buy gift certs to pick that up so I could get Dolby 5.1.

Also, my sister gave me Mario Kart DS. Lara loves it. She already completed the 50cc mode. I haven't gotten a chance to play it much, but it seems very fun. Unfortunately, I was less than impressed with the online play. First, I had to hard code an IP address, as it wouldn't talk to my DHCP server. Once online, I found it hard to find enough racers to fill up all the spots. Usually, I could only find a single opponent. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know.

Posted by jcraven at 9:16 AM | Comments (4) | Video Games

Monday - December 26, 2005

Merry "day after" Christmas

Full post to follow later this week.....

Posted by jcraven at 9:28 PM | Misc

Sunday - December 18, 2005

Game recaps

I'm not going to try to recap the game. I'll let the profesionals do that. Take your pick from the Winston-Salem Journal, Asheville Citizen-Times, Charlotte Observer, Raleigh N&O, or of course, the Watauga Democrat.

Posted by jcraven at 8:21 PM | Sports

We're back

We're back from Chattanooga. Unfortunately the camera's batteries died, so we didn't get many pictures. I do have a video and the following picture from my cell phone though. (Use Quicktime to view the video)

Posted by jcraven at 8:05 PM | Sports

Champs

I think this is one of the best photos from the game Friday. Courtesy USAToday/AP.

Posted by jcraven at 7:59 PM | Sports

Saturday - December 17, 2005

Wooooooooooooooooo

Appalachian won their first National Championship tonight. We had a great time, and will post pictures soon.....

Posted by jcraven at 2:31 AM | Sports

Friday - December 16, 2005

Headed to Chattanooga

We're heading out this morning to Chattanooga. Be sure to watch the game on ESPN2 at 8PM ET.

Posted by jcraven at 8:40 AM | Sports

Monday - December 12, 2005

A little souvenir

I guess you can now find anything on eBay. Check out this auction for one of the goal posts that were removed from Kidd Brewer after the ASU playoff game on Saturday. My favorite part of the description is "Buyer must pick up item, I will not ship." This piece of history can be yours for a small starting bid of $1.5 mil.

Posted by jcraven at 10:06 PM | Sports

Recent pictures

As promised, I have pictures from Boone here.

I also have new pictures of Kate here. My personal favorite is the next to last one. That was Dan's idea.

And finally, a new picture of Maggie and Blue here. As you can tell, they were very excited to see the camera.

Posted by jcraven at 10:52 AM | Misc

Saturday - December 10, 2005

On to Chattanooga

Today, ASU beat Furman in a 29-23 nail-biter. Unfortunately, Richie Williams is unlikely to see any game time during next week's Championship game. The full game summary can be found here. After the game, fans stormed the field and took both goal posts and paraded them across campus and up King Street. I'll post pictures soon.

Posted by jcraven at 8:43 PM | Comments (1) | Sports

Friday - December 9, 2005

Go Apps!

Tomorrow, we will be traveling to Boone to watch ASU battle Furman. The victor will advance to the 1-AA National Championship game. The game will be televised on ESPN2 at noon. (Unfortunately, I doubt it will be in HD.) Booneweather.com is predicting 40 degrees and sunny, so there will likely be a packed house for what is being dubbed 'The most important football game in ASU history'.....

Posted by jcraven at 12:25 PM | Sports

Thursday - December 8, 2005

Interview with Michael Cronan, designer and creator of the name "TiVo"

PVRblog has an interview with Michael Cronan. It has some interesting points. I personally think the TiVo name and mascot are nearly perfect. I couldn't imagine calling it a "Bongo" or "Lasso".....

Posted by jcraven at 4:14 PM | Television

Tuesday - December 6, 2005

USB Powered Air Darts

Now these are just too damn cool. I can't wait until a company starts exporting them to the US. If you're impatient you can get them on eBay, but they're going for a small fortune.

Posted by jcraven at 12:10 PM | Tech

Worst Cafe Mocha ever

On a whim, I bought a pack of International Coffees Cappuccino mix. Wow is this stuff bad. It has almost zero coffee flavor, and has a weird artificial after-taste. Run away..... run away.....

You would be much better off with whatever sludge happens to be brewing in your breakroom at work.

Posted by jcraven at 11:36 AM | Food

Saturday - December 3, 2005

We survived

We made it through the rain, sleet, and snow and so did ASU. Appalachian stomped Southern Illinois in a 38-24 win. ESPN has the recap here. Next Saturday, ASU will have a rematch against Furman who beat the Mountaineers earlier in the season. Hopefully the weather will cooperate a little better.

Posted by jcraven at 9:46 PM | Sports

Thursday - December 1, 2005

Firefox 1.5 released

FYI, Firefox 1.5 was released yesterday. Get it here.

All of my extensions continue to work fine. I did have to manually update a couple that were created by Jeremy Gillick. Although, I did lose my custom search plugins. The new version has the user's plugins in the profile folder.

Posted by jcraven at 11:52 AM | Tech