sony at e3

Sony had their big press conference last night and boy did they show a lot of racing footage. I love racing games. Seriously. But watching a CG race demo gets old real fast. They did show of some other neatness and since I know Cheezwhiz is THE destination for E3 news let's get this ball a-rollin'!

1. The PS3 motion-sensing remote. This was this biggest surprise for me. Very cool. Sure, they're just trying to steal Nintendo's thunder, but I can see the PS3 remote being great for racing games, while the Nintendo's Wii remote will be better for sword fighting and first person shooters. The motion sensing replaces the shock feature, which kind of sucks because rumbling remotes are fun. It will be interesting to see how Nintendo responds.

2. PSOne emulation on the PSP. Not sure why they flew through this one so fast since so many people are excited about it. They showed off the first Ridge Racer. Weak choice! They should have shown a game that's not already available for the PSP. If they can't do that they should at least have chosen a game that was a PS1 exclusive. I already have Ridge Racer – in an updated PSP-specific version. And – Ridge Racer 1 was available for N64, of which the ROM and N64 emulator are available all over the internet for free. (ROM legality issues aside, even most straight-up gamers see ROMs of current games as illegal and ROMs of old games a gray area).

There is a very slight possibility that I would want to A) pay money and -more importantly- B) upgrade my firmware, for the ability to play Ridge Racer 1 on my PSP. Not too exciting.

If the PSP N64 emulators get up to decent speed it will be a major kink in Sony's plans.

3. Blu-ray built in. Long known but now it's official. It's been said many times that the PS3 is a trojan horse to get Sony into the living room. It worked well when the PS2 featured a DVD player and it will probably work well here. I imagine a lot of non-gamers in the market for a high-def disc player will probably just buy the PS3.

4. Pricing. $599 with a built in 60GB drive, $499 with a 20 GB and without HDMI, Wifi and a memory card reader. I think the pricing is great considering the blu-ray aspect. Take away blu-ray and it's extremely overpriced. For people not interested in high-def video playback the price may turn them off, but for what you get I think the pricing is incredible.

original trilogy coming to dvd

Wow. Lucasfilms announced they will be releasing the original theatrical cuts of Star Wars, Empire and Jedi on DVD. The films will be available individually in two disc sets with both the 2004 theatrical versions and original, unaltered films. I see this as a win/lose deal for Lucas himself. He wanted to bury the original versions (with their dated special effects) forever, but I guess the dollar potential of releasing yet another version of the same series was too much to resist.

"See the title crawl to Star Wars before it was known as Episode IV; see the pioneering, if dated, motion control model work on the attack on the Death Star; groove to Lapti Nek or the Ewok Celebration song like you did when you were a kid; and yes, see Han Solo shoot first."

As a tattooed Star Wars fanboy, I gotta say I'm pretty stoked about this. But so stoked to go to Wal-Mart at a midnight launch? I don't know. On one hand I already own the trilogy in current DVD form, and as such do I really need another version of Star Wars? (Actually two more versions?)

And what's up with official Star Wars shirts saying "Han Shoots First?" There's something inherently wrong with taking an anti-Lucas shirt and officially endorsing it, even if it is a little tongue in cheek.

I'll probably pick up Star Wars, but leave Empire and Jedi alone.

LINK

psp robot

Yeah it's another PSP post and don't worry, there are more to come. This time someone's loaded up a homebrew app that lets you use your PSP to control your robot. It's about damned time.

VIDEO LINK

lawn care

Part of the joy, I’ve learned, of owning a house, is lawn care. But not just the lawn. The trees, the bushes, the garden areas and the mudholes. We’ve been doing quite a bit of yard work lately. It all started when the city said one of our trees was covering the speed limit sign. Considering the cops park in front of our house all the time trying to catch speeders (they’re sitting there as I write this), we figured we’d contributed enough to the city’s ticket revenue. But no. We had to hack our tree to pieces as well. (In all fairness it’s got plenty of other branches and isn’t hurting any).

Then it came time to prune up some ugly ass cedar trees lining one side of the house. Three days and twenty bags of cedar tree later we have three bonsai-looking things sprouting up from some newly laid woodchips (to cover the huge patch of dirt that was previously hidden by the trees).

This week we attacked the other dirt patches, of which there are many, by turning them all into gardens. That means laying peet moss and/or compost, mixing up the ground, outlining each “garden” with rocks and of course planting seeds, bulbs and ground cover. Holy crap.

In addition to these sporadic flower gardens popping up everywhere, we have an actual 250(?) square-foot garden that’s outlined by a garden fence. This is where we’ve been throwing branches and limbs when we don’t want to deal with them in the moment. But lo, it is springtime. And as long as we’re planting everywhere else we might as well make use of the garden as well. So yesterday we cleaned it out and found strawberries, garlic and mint growing under the rubble. We’ll add watermelon, carrots and tomatoes by the end of the week.

And finally there are those yellow patches of grass. After reading all about what chemicals and treatment will restore the yard to full green glory, we found this stuff called Instant Green at Lowe’s. It’s basically spray paint in a squirt bottle. And I can tell you that it works, sort of. Yes, I painted my grass. And if you look real close you can tell. But at dusk, dawn or from far away it looks like I have one sweet yard. I also got it on my hands, which are green too.