As you all know, I recently moved in with my liek, rad bf. We had to sacrafice a few things already, just so two people could comfortably live in the same room together. We bought this little desk, and modified it to our needs. With that said, I now have dual monitors instead of just the one, and I also have a new Radeon X1900 video card.

I have to say having dual monitors is a really REALLY nice thing. It’s much easier to organize and multitask. I can watch a  movie on fullscreen and browse the web at the same time, or play a video game and chat in IRC side by side. The only downfall- video’s run best on the primary monitor than the secondary, and if you want to go dual- get the same kind of monitors. One of mine isn’t as bright as the other. It’s also a bit blurred which is a little bothersome…

After reformatting my computer, deleting a bunch of crap, and upgrading to this new hardware plus some new software… My computer is FINALLY running like new. I’ve been able to install all my games at the highest resolution and they run beautifully, without any rips or tears in the maps. I can’t wait to get my pwnage on!

Yay!  Another game review!  So I’ve been playing a really cute game called Pokemon Ranger on DS.  For all of you that are going lol n00b, I pwn you on UT…  well, I play fps too, but at the moment, my computer doesn’t have a video card inside it.  So I’m going down the line of hundreds of DS games I have and playin them all.

Pokemon Ranger DS is about your quest to become a great pokemon ranger.  You travel from village to village and are given missions from the senior rangers to help citizens and get to a higher level.  These bad guys called the Go-Rock Squad end up stealing special equipment from the good guy pokemon rangers team, and they use this to capture pokemon for their evil deeds.

The world you play PR in is pretty small.  You get to choose between a male or female character and name them as you want.  My characters name was Snubs (go figure).  Capturing pokemon is fun.  Now, you don’t throw them in a Pokeball and battle other characters.  You capture wild pokemon, they follow you around as you travel, then you use them once and they are freed.  Of course, you can capture them again if you want.  You can talk to all the characters in the game, and their conversations give me the idea this game is made for children and teens.

Leveling up is probably the main reason I’m still playing this.  I was able to get through the game in about 3-4 days, and every time I leveled up, I wanted to get to the next level.  :P  You also can get up to a Rank 10 in the game as a pokemone ranger.

My least favorite part about the game is the cut scenes.  The chat bubbles are slow (even on the fastest speed), and if something is happening that requires a part of the plot, you dont have the choice to skip.  This is annoying if you fail a mission and have to restart.  You have to sit through all the information again…

I’d give this game a 7 / 10.  All around a fun, cute game.  It’s easy to pass the time with Pokemon Ranger DS, and it’s a bit different from other pokemon games.  I wish I could skip cut scenes and I wish the game was longer. 

Mario Kart Wii

It’s a really fun game.  I definetly spent a good afternoon playing Mario Kart Wii with DK while he was visiting.  It’s the perfect game to just play circuit after circuit with a friend and pass the controller back and forth.  I think the races are a little easy.  We were able to unlock all the circuits in no time, getting first place in all but… I think 3 races.  Of course, the feeling of acheivement was great!  Everytime we unlocked a new car/character/racetrack, I got so excited!!  I wanted to keep playing all night!

Mario Kart Wii comes with a new nifty little wheel that you can set your Wiimote in, to ‘drive’ during the game.  We found the wheel to be incredibly stupid, and I tried various ways of playing.  Because the game is on Wii, you have the choice of playing with the wheel, wiimote, classic controller, etc.  I chose the classic controller and found it to be the easiest by far.  It’s just like playing the old school games from the old consoles.

The graphics are well done.  The edges around some characters and tracks are rough, but the coloring and scenery of racetracks from old games is pure awesomeness.  Nintendo kept some of the older racetracks!!  There are also quite a few new racetracks too, and I have to say, I love the new Rainbow Road.  It’s so colorful and pretty and ghey! lol

The music kicks ass.  Whenever you change menues, the music follows you.  It doesnt change songs, but changes the mood of the same track by just a bit.  It’s really cool! Hey! Listen!

The only issue I had with gameplay was that anytime you get hit by something, it seems like things pile up on you.  For example, if I got hit with a red shell, as soon as I get hit, I also get hit with a blue shell, a squid, a green shell, and I get run over by Bowser.  It happened to computer characters as well.  I’d hit them, and they’d get hit a few more times by other people.  It’s annoying!

All in all, great video game.  It’s perfect for families, parties, etc.  There isn’t any violence at all. It’s so fun!!  Even Molly Wood likes it. 

So I recently got a Palm Centro on AT&T and decided to write up a little review of my own on my new cell phone.

First off, the phone itself: My phone costed $200 with a $100 mail in rebate thru AT&T. Does anyone else hate mail in rebates? They’re somewhat retarded in my opinion. Obviously, I’m giving AT&T tons of money as it is already, seeing that I just renewed my contract with them. Hopefully my world will still be delivered when I move to Williamsburg Virginia, and I won’t have dropped calls that they insist do not happen often. The Centro is a pretty cheap phone for all of the amazing gadgets that come along with it. This is my first smart phone, so I was a little lost at first… I decided to do the geeky thing and actually go through the tutorial and read the handbook. Everything seemed pretty easy to do.

Although, I did have a rough time at first. I started out with a different palm centro. With my first one, I had downloaded hotsync and synced my phone with my computer. Luckily, all my contacts were saved onto my computer after I moved them to my phone from my sim card. A day later, my Centro continuously tried to HotSync even though my comp wasn’t hooked up to it. Weird, eh? After Darren did some very helpful research, I discovered this was very rare, but it’s happened before. I simply went in the next day and traded it in for one that works. This time, I didn’t set up HotSync. In fact, I didn’t even unwrap the USB cable for the phone. Evilness. So now all my contacts are gone, but still saved on my computer. I’m adding them in as I need them.

Buttons: I love the buttons on this phone. Once I started to do some SMS on the new Qwerty keyboard, I got used to it pretty fast. The buttons on the keyboard are a little small, but perfect for a girl with nails, like me. You can personalize the keys as much as you want! I took Darren’s advice and stuck the camera to the side button, and changed my main buttons to whatever I use the most. The camera looks great.. It takes about 3-4 seconds to run the camera.

One of my favorite parts of this phone is the ringer/vibrate switch. Since I have classes, I love the fact I can just switch a button to turn off the ringer. It’s easy.

Centro’s also can take micro-SD cards. Luckily, I had one from my handy dandy mod chip for DS, so I simply stuck some songs/pix on there, stuck it in the phone… oh yea, this was the aggrivating part. It took FOREVER to figure out how to copy those songs/pix onto my phone to use as ringtones/wallpapers, respectively. You have to go into the Web app, and link to the file, then save it as a ringtone, image, etc… It takes way too long to add pictures and songs to the phone…

I love the firmware. Palm is so user friendly. Everything you need is at your fingertips. Each menu item has a cute lil picture to help you figure out what it is. Each application has information available, and each menu page has helpful tools to guide you through your first time with the system.

I love the schedule/calendar. It’s so helpful. I found an easy way to set alarms by setting a calendar event and telling the phone how soon I want an customizable alarm to go off. All in all, great operating system, and great hardware. It’s so cute. Everyone I’ve shown my new phone to loves it. It just looks techy and geeky, and perfect

But one of the downfalls is the battery life. I read some reviews online before buying my phone and everyone said battery life isn’t that great. I can usually have mine last about 3 days, then I have to charge it. My old phone could run 5-6 days without a charge, so this is a little annoying for me…

All in all, I’d give the Palm an 8/10. I LOVE IT! It’s not perfect, it has flaws, and it takes some getting used to, specially if it’s your first smart phone. But the device is very user friendly and incredibly customizable. And I love it

P.S. I’m on twitter!  Follow me!

I dont recall ever being in an earthquake, but some of my friends up in St. Louis experienced one on friday.  The New Madrid Seismic Zone let loose a 5.2 earthquake at the early hours…  Kind of weird, in the midwest we aren’t used to hearing about earthquakes!!  The last big one was in 1812!

Here’s the Wiki link about the April 18, 2008 earthquake (Weird coincidence that it’s on the same day -different year- as the San Fransisco earthquake!).

On another note…

I got a Palm Centro!!!  Finally!  Great phone I must say.  It’s my very first smart phone, so I’m finally breaking my way into things a bit more tech savvy.  Yay for stuff I can afford!!  I’ll post a review of it once I get the feel for the phone/apps/etc…  I’ve just had it two days, so I don’t know if it’s the perfect phone or not quite yet.  I’ll keep ya posted!

I don’t know whether net neutrality is getting serious right now or not, but I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about it.  It’s kind of confusing to me…  From what I understand, net neutrality basically means consumers (thats me and you) are free to use the internet as we wish through whatever service provider we decide to use.  If we go for the same package, we get the same speed for the same webpages, no matter whether we use it for BitTorrent, youtube, or just email.  It’s freedom at it’s best.

Those that are against neutrality are those big communication companies who have tons of supporters and people that give them big money.  Those people that give them lots of money get fast websites, fast connections… fast everything.  Those that don’t give them lots of money get slow connections and websites.

Now, seeing that I’m a ultra geek who likes to watch videos, download tons of stuff, write blogs (duh) and whatnot, obviously I’m for net neutrality and internet freedom.  I don’t want to have to pay some big company who already has too much money, some of my cash that I need to save because Im a poor ass college student.  I don’t want my favorite podcasters having to pay a larger fee for their internet connection so they can keep their current bandwidths.

The internet started free, and it should remain free (once you’ve payed your monthly bill, of course).

Check out Amber Mac’s video blog about her view on net neutrality in Canada.

And here’s 90 day Tania and her friends talking about net neutrality in Europe.

I’ll admit it, Adobe Photoshop is intimidating. You first open it and you think, wtf do allthese buttons mean? After playing for a lil bit, I found the filter button at the top.

This is how Glamour shots do all those spiffy effects that you pay hundreds of dollars for. So here ya go, if you’ve just downloaded Photoshop and wanna do something to impress your grandma:

I like the Diffuse Glow filter. So, all you have to do to create this effect is make your background color white

if you want a white glow. Make it pink for a pink glow, etc. Your foreground color can be any color, it doens’t really matter at this point. Both the foreground

and background buttons are on the side bar.

Then, once you have your desired color, select Filter–>Distort–>Diffuse Glow. You can also play with other filters using the filter gallery located under the filter menu.

Try it out!

This is one of the first things you can discover using photoshop. Open it up, toy with the features, and start developing your own pretty art

Zomg Cali Lewis totally used my soon-to-be new room on her Geek Brief #334! haha! She’s talking about a new site called Journey2Work. Darren stole my camera to take a picture of his journey to his home office

Awesome!

I thought I’d write a little opionated review of this new game, since I recently played it a few weekends ago.

Smash Brothers Brawl had a huge cult following and almost all my friends were excited about the new game for Nintendo Wii.  Darren reserved his copy and we waited in line while playing Tetris DS (and I pwned him, btw) while chilling inside the mall.  I’ve never been a big Smash Brothers gamer, but I’ve played my fair share of each of the games.

The first thing I noticed was the graphics.  The graphics kick ass, and I love the special effects whenever you use your final attack during a battle.  The characters are beautiful, and the cut scenes are made so well.  Nintendo is really starting to show off what the Wii can do as far as graphics go with this game, as well as with Mario Galaxy.

When you first play the game, I suggest playing with various controllers to figure out which one you would want to use.  I personally like the Wiimote + nunchuck, but Darren used the Classic controller.  It really just depends on your style.

There’s SO MUCH to do in this game.  When you play Brawl (playing against up to 4 people without an internet connection), you can unlock new characters and basically try out each of the available characters and maps to find your favorite.  I did not play any of the other battle modes, but I did take some time to check out the trophies, stickers, and maps you can make.  I really have no clue why there are stickers and trophies in this game other than to raise your e-peen, but  they are interesting to look at non-the-less.  There are a few minigames which are fun, but didn’t peek my interest that much.  My favorite thing to do, other than playing Brawl tourneys, was creating my own maps.  Really cool!  There’s lots of different ways you can create a map, and you can even choose your favorite music.

Apparently you can play this game online with other people, but since my Wii isn’t hooked up, I wasn’t able to do this.  O wells

All in all, it’s a great game and I suggest it to anyone who likes old school style battle zone type games.

I was introduced to the My Maps function in Google Maps last night and was quite gleeful. I know I’m totally behind the times but Mom, if you read this, check it out. I found my old houses in Indiana, where I lived when I was 6 years old. Amazing! My old friend still has her swimming pool. There are new houses popping up everywhere. I have to give props to Google Maps. It’s more reliable than Mapquest- specially if you’ve ever used mapquest for a road trip. It gets you lost, really. One time, I went on a trip with my family to NC, and my parents printed Mapquest directions. TOTALLY not reliable. And thats just one example, but I’m going on a tangent.

Here’s my Indiana Map

And this is my FLW Map

Obviously, this is just for my fun and enjoyment.

If you ever wanna use the My Maps function, it’s pretty easy. Go to Google, go to Google Maps, then choose the tab on the left that says My Maps. You have to sign up (I already have a gmail account so I could skip this). Then you start making an untitled map. You can put little tabs on places on interest, then save after you are finished. But you can go back and edit, if you miss something.

Pretty sweet, eh? Definetly helps if you are planning a long road trip, like I am.