I wasn’t happy with the previous wallpaper I made for the Sens schedule, as it was a rush job. I’m definitely happier with this new one. This is a wallpaper that includes the October schedule only. I’ll be releasing one for every month of the 2008-2009 hockey season (with time permitting). Doubleclick on the thumbnails below, then right-click and select save as.
Over the last week, 3 games that I’ve been looking forward to were finally released. I’ve managed to play all 3, but that also means that I haven’t been able to dedicate a whole lot of time to 1 specific game. This is the reason why I’m going to give 3 quick reviews of what I think of the games so far.
Spore. The mention of this game has had gamers salivating for years since the game was first announced. DRM notwithstanding, Spore has been worth the wait.
The game itself is separated into 4 stages, and each stage is a completely different game from the last. In the first stage, you start off as a single cell organism swimming in a proverbial primordial ooze. Depending on whether you selected herbivore or carnivore, you go around eating the appropriate food and search for tokens that will give you various abilities, such as tendrils to swim faster and offensive and defensive mechanisms. As you eat and grow, you finally make it to a multi cell organism that turns into a mammal.
The second phase of the game starts off by your creature moving from a water based creature to a land based one. There you hunt, eat and mate. When attacking other species or befriending them, you can gain parts of their DNA which allows you to evolve different aspects; how you look, more offensive and defensive capabilities, etc… Playing this stage is more fun than I’m making it sound. You do this until you evolve into the next stage of the game.
After evolving in the 2nd phase, you finally get to the tribal stage. Your species has developed language and culture and has formed a tribe. This stage of the game plays more like an RTS (Real Time Strategy game), where you have to gather food and supplies. You also attack other tribes or befriend them. Once you’ve conquered and/or befriended the continent you move to being a more advanced civilization, where you create cities, vehicles and weapons. Your goal is similar, as you have to befriend or invade other cities on the planet, until you control it all.
The space stage of the game is completely different from the previous 3 stages. As an intergalactic traveller, you are given quests to follow. You have to befriend other intergalactic species, mine for spice, set up colonies and of course defend yourself against enemies. This part of the game plays like a combination of an RTS and RPG.
Spore is very fun to play and slightly addictive. You can spend hours in the creator portion of the game, creating the look of your creatures, different vehicles and housing. Time also flies by as you set out to first grow your creature, then grow your civilisation. Its been worth the long wait for this game to come out.
I give Spore an 8 out of 10.
Last week also saw the release of 2 of the yearly NHL games, EA’s NHL09 and TakeTwo’s NHL2K9. After trying both demos that had been released a few weeks earlier, I decided on EA’s NHL 09 as my game of choice.
This year’s version of EA’s NHL game includes some new features that intrigued me and the reasons I chose this game over NHL2K9. As a player, you can now lift your opponent’s stick, and as a defensive move you can also sweep your stick in an arc on the ice to try and poke the puck away.
Though those new features are interesting, the one that intrigued me the most was Be A Pro. You start off creating your player and join an AHL team. Game after game, you evolve as a player in the American Hockey League. Once you’ve become good enough, you get the call from the associated NHL team.
I will admit that for me, learning the new controls has been a steep learning curve. I’ve been playing NHL2K7 for the last couple of years, and previous to that I played NHL04 and NHL05 on the original X-Box. All these games use the A/B/X/Y buttons to shoot and pass, whereas NHL09 uses the right thumbstick and the triggers/bumpers to do the same. This feature was first introduced in NHL07, so for those who have been playing the Electronic Arts version for the last couple of years will be familiar with the controls. Regardless, I’m having a great time playing this game.
I give NHL09 a 7 out of 10
This passed Sunday saw the release of the much anticipated sequel to Rock Band. This is not just a disc of new songs (84 of ’em), Rock Band 2 includes features that fans have been asking for. The Band World Tour now allows players to use downloaded songs instead of being limited to songs on the game disc. It also allows users to form a band over X-Box Live instead of being limited to local players. A drum trainer now allows fans of the peripheral to hone in their drumming skills. A new Battle of the Bands feature allows you to compete against other bands. Gamers with families will enjoy the new “no fail” mode, where a player and song will not fail. This is great for gamers with small children and/or significant others who aren’t gamers. It allows families to have fun together without having to worry about failing a song in the middle of it.
I give Rock Band 2 an 8 out of 10
Earlier this week, the leaders of the Conservative Party, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois shut out the Green Party of Canada from any televised leader debates for the upcoming elections. They stated that if the current leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May, participated in the debate that they would withdraw from it. Only the Liberals endorsed May’s quest to participate in the televised debate.
I find this absolutely appalling. The Green Party has grown leaps and bounds over the last decade. In the 2006 elections, they received over 664,000 votes from Canadian voters. What are these leaders afraid of? The Green Party is no longer just a fringe party ran by pot smoking hippies. Their policies reflect the growing concerns that most people have regarding the environment. This topic has become a very important one to Canadians and boycotting a party that is deeply rooted in preserving our environment speaks volumes about these leaders. When 664,000 of eligible voters believe in the party’s values and causes, shutting them out of an anticipated public debate makes little sense. Its not an issue of having too many people in on the debate. There were 5 leaders that participated in these debates before the PC party and Alliance merged. You have to wonder what these leaders’ agenda is.
(Note: I am not a supporter of the Green Party, but I do believe that they have the right to participate in the televised debate as this political party has moved from being a fringe party to a a popular one).
I’ve recently had to deal with a clogged central vacuum hose. I didn’t peak under the bed before passing the vacuum and sucked up a facecloth. As soon as I had heard something big being sucked up I turned off the vacuum but it was too late. The cloth had jammed itself in real tight inside the hose and there was next to no suction making it all the way through. At least I had managed to vacuum most of the house before guests came over, with only our bedroom still showing the odd signs of cat hair.
There’s a few things that I knew to try that would clear up a clogged central vac hose. The first thing I did was stick an unbent wire hanger at each end to see if the clog was close to one of the plugs. Unfortunately I couldn’t reach the blockage with the hanger so this meant the cloth was at least 3 feet into the tube. I slid in a screwdriver and the sound it made sliding inside the tube allowed me to discover that the clog was about 7 feet in. I shook the hose with the screwdriver still inside to see if I could dislodge the cloth. This had worked once in the past when the hose had gotten clogged with cat hair, but this time this trick wouldn’t work. After trying to dislodge it with the screwdriver for an hour, I had managed to move it by at most 6 inches. I couldn’t use a broom handle or anything that was solid as the clog was 7 feet in where the curved handle is. With a 40 foot hose, I had nothing at my disposal that was at least 35 feet long, so there was no way to attack the problem from the other end. My central vac isn’t equipped with a reverse switch, so that was not an option that I could try.
I made a quick trip to the local Home Depot and bought myself a 40 foot long fish tape. Fish tape is a metal wire that is normally used to fish wire through walls, ceilings and in between floors. I had to bend the end a little, fashioning it to something resembling a hook. I inserted the metal fish tape into the opening closest to the clog and stopped when I felt the cloth. It took a few jabs to move the wire past the blockage .
Being careful, I then proceeded to pull the wire back, but it would not snag the cloth at first. It took quite a few tries to snag the cloth inside the hose. The trick was to pull the wire in quick, small pulls. This allowed me to pull the cloth without damaging the tube or the electrical wiring. After 45 minutes or so, I finally managed to pull out the cloth. The vacuum was then tested to insure that the tube had not been pierced or that the electrical wiring had not been damaged.
In brief, here are some things you can try in order to try and unclog a central vac hose.
Finally, the lesson learned here is to always look when vacuuming an area, and that includes looking under the beds to make sure that you don’t clog up your hose to begin with.
Last night my wife and I joined some friends for a showing of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. As a huge Star Wars fanatic, I was looking forward to seeing this stylized animated flick. Regardless of the bad reviews, I took them with a grain of salt and hoped that it wasn’t as bad as most people made the movie to be. I wish I had heeded their warning and had not seen The Clone Wars. It was that bad.
Our first clue should have been the amount of people in the theater. A 9pm Saturday night showing of the movie, in its 2nd week of release, and there were a whopping 5-6 other people in the theater with us. It was only 5 minutes into the movie before I looked at my watch to see how much more I would have to endure of this crapfest.
The story takes place between Episode II and Episode III of the prequels. The Republic is in the middle of an all out war with the Separatists. While fighting the Battle droid army, Anakin Skywalker is given a Padawan learner, the highly annoying Ahsoka. The main plot of the movie revolves around crime lord Jabba The Hutt’s kidnapped larva errr child Rotta aka Stinky. Both the Jedis and the Separatists attempt to save and bring back Rotta to Jabba, and whomever does will be given safe passage in the Hutt controlled Outer Rim shipping lanes.
Throughout the entire movie I felt like I was watching a 90 minute long videogame cutscene. The animation itself, especially the humanoid animation, was very bad. Characters looked like they were floating/gliding when walking, the speech movements were way off and the walking movement was awkward. However, the rendering was well done, the backgrounds were for the most part beautiful, and the chalk like textures were very well done for a computer animated flick.
This being a Star Wars movie, I expected the dialogue to be cheesy, but Clone Wars takes it to a whole new dimension of cheesiness. The dialogue is infinitely worse than the Jake Lloyd/ Jar Jar scenes of the prequels. Heck, the prequels seem Shakespearean compared the the Crap Clone Wars. Suffering through Ahsoka and the Battle Droid dialogues I didn’t think things could get any worse. But oh god did they ever. Ziro the Hutt, Jabba’s gay queen uncle, has to be the absolute worse character in the Star Wars movies, far worse than Jar Jar and the young Anakin. Decked out in makeup and tattoos, the very effeminate speaking and acting slug was just jaw droppingly awful.
My friend had a theory regarding the prequels and Clone Wars. He theorizes that George Lucas is purposely out to destroy Star Wars so that no one will even want to touch that universe once he retires from filmmaking. After seeing Clone Wars that theory seems more and more probable. What was also frustrating is that parts of the movie showed tiny twinkles of potential, but every time that happened some very cheesy dialogue or plot point would rear its ugly head and totally annihilate it.
While watching the prequels, as bad as one of them was, I could at least find some entertaining aspects to them and I could see what Lucas was trying to acheive. With Clone Wars there is absolutely no redeeming qualities and entertainment value. I don’t even think this could have succeeded as a Saturday morning cartoon. I feel like good ol’ uncle George has destroyed a part of my childhood. After seeing Clone Wars, I’m not sure that I can spend any of my hard earned cash on anything Star Wars related (and that includes the upcoming Force Unleashed videogame that I was looking forward to). When leaving the theater I felt like I needed a very hot shower to get the stink off of me, and a few shots of tequilla to take away the bad taste that the movie left in my mouth.
If you’re at all a Star Wars fan to any degree, do yourself a favour and don’t watch this movie. It will ruin everything Star Wars for you and there’s no way to ignore or erase this. I give Clone Wars a 1 out of 10 stars.
