A very very happy birthday to my best friend who no longer has time to talk to me anymore! Rafael, I hope you had a very wonderful birthday. Here’s to another year of eliteness and codez hacking skills!
Love Morgan xoxoxo
Someone posted a link to the Google Chrome OS on Twitter this afternoon. Since it was for either VMWare or VirtualBox, I thought why not give it a go? The download itself is about 300MBs and was really quick. However, the VirtualBox image from GDGT didn’t work for me, so I ended up snagging this image instead. This one did work. You should note that these builds weren’t compiled by me or people at Google by but someone else. You may wish to make yourself an extra Gmail/Google account to try this out.
Please note, if you’re getting the “No Network Connection, Offline Login Failed” you might want to try restarting the virtual machine or even your computer. Restarting my computer seemed to fix the issue, I believe that VirtualBox doesn’t complete it’s network (virtual adapters) setup until your computer is restarted but I could be wrong. Once you’ve actually gotten the image to boot you’re prompted to login. use your GMail account info, or if you have a normal Google account (@Google.com) this will work as well.
Upon logging into the system, you’re basically presented with the Google Chrome web browser. This is pretty much it. There’s a Google Short links, which I assume will basically give you short cuts to all the Google Apps (Docs, Sites, Calendar, Gmail, etc…), but yeah that’s pretty much it. Seeing as how this is probably pre-alpha, I guess it’s a start in the right direction. I am not sure what the final goal for the Chrome OS is, whether it be simply a portal to your Google applications or a bit more of a fully featured OS. It may indeed simply be something you toss on a netbook, boot into and have almost instant access to your calendars, emails, documents from Google, but I am not sure.
Apparently you also cannot change the resolution, so you’re stuck at the awful 800×600 for the moment. There’s not much tweaking you can do to the system, you can see the battery status (which makes me think this is geared to netbooks/notebooks, and you can check on the network status (see if WiFi/Ethernet is connected or not). You can also play with the settings of the web browser (which is essentially the only thing on the system haha). That said, it’s a neat idea and I certainly wouldn’t mind tossing this on one of my netbooks when it goes final. When I use my netbook I’m never usually doing anything outside of my web browser, unless it’s in a terminal so this would work quite well. I’m definitely excited to see it develop and mature!
Before you proceed, this post is very very NSFW.
I’m not obsessed. I don’t have hard drives and terabytes of porn laying around, in fact, the only porn I own was sent by a friend. Porn is certainly a taboo subject and this post contains lots of my personal thoughts about it. If you’re uncomfortable with it, simply leave, it’s okay. Porn is not a subject for everyone. I myself actually had to think about this post and wonder if it would even see the light of day, but as you can see it did.
Porn is personal thing, at least for me it is. I don’t tend to go around explaining to people about the last video I watched on YouPorn, or rarely do I ever share images I’ve found or video clips. I tend to keep it all to myself. I don’t watch it very often or collect images and save galleries to my computer. I tend to be very picky with what I watch and where I watch or look for new stuff. There’s really only a couple sites I check out from time to time. Porn is something I feel like everyone has seen at least once if not many times willingly. By normal society standards it’s definitely a private sort of activity. Each person has his or her own favorite type or style. Each person has their own varying degree of how often they view it. But this posting isn’t about everyone else, it’s about me.
Porn for me is simply something that shows me how other every day people do something that’s just a natural part of the human life. It’s really nothing more and nothing less. That said, you can usually find me watching the amateur, home made, camcorder porn. I do not like porn with a story line, I do not like porn with porn stars and muscled built-up men. It’s just not my thing. I prefer watching normal every day people have sex. I don’t care of your hairs all messed up, and your shirt on backwards or if your rooms a mess, it’s much more natural, and it reminds me of my own sex life. I’d rather see some random boyfriend having sex with his girlfriend outside behind a shed, then some setup, fake looking scene with some girl being paid to orgasm. I’d rather see a girl who doesn’t have a perfect body having sex with a guy over some big boobed girl getting fucked by some guy who’s 30 years older then her. Real world sex just turns me on a lot more. I want to watch something I can emulate myself, or have the desire to do on my own.
First before I jump into anything, this post is simply meant to be silly. I don’t recommend following any of the advice or taking anything said too seriously.
Being a girl on the Internet has it’s up and downs. Everyone either wants to be your boyfriend or they want nothing to do with you. When people find out I’m a girl, I’ve either just made 50 new friends or 10 new enemies…I guess I should be more specific as to where on the Internet I speak of. I’m talking about the underground, not your MySpace, or your Facebook and Twitter, we’re talking about hidden away IRC channels, secret websites and forums, top sites and private game servers. By normal standards you’d never get into these places unless you’re able to hack the planet in your sleep or be able to provide the community with multiple 100mbit lines for various activities. However, being a girl changes everything…
I stepped into “the scene” around 2004, just when Windows Longhorn was coming around and people were all excited about it. It was also a pretty big time for the P2P scene and new networks and applications were growing exponentially. Broadband was becoming bigger and bigger and communities were really starting to take shape and build foundations to what they are today. I made hundreds of new friends, and of course a few enemies. Some of the guys just didn’t like seeing a girl who knew a few things about computers, for what reason I do not know. As a girl, and even to this day, you definitely have certain privileges that would never ever be given to anyone else.
At its peak, I had access to sites with the latest everything, I knew people in release groups like RAZOR1911, developers of the largest P2P networks, operators of the largest beta software channels and champions of DEFCON tournaments. I even dated a well known Microsoft Windows blogger for awhile. It was basically being like on top of the world. With a simple request you could pretty much get anything you wanted. The boys respected me for whatever computer skills I had and were more then willing to teach me more, and they were there to grant me wishes only one could dream of.
The boys seemed to be one of two types of people. Either you were to become their girlfriend instantly or they wanted nothing to do with you. I would say, 95% of the boys I’ve encountered were like this. However, they were a select few who wanted to be your honest to God friend. These people actually treated me like a someone, respected my thoughts and opinions and really were true friends. They didn’t care if I couldn’t memorize my name in binary or play the latest Half-Life game blindfolded, they just cared that I was interested in technology and shared a similar passion as them. Of course, there’s always creepy people on the Internet. At least on the Internet you’ve got the computer between yourself and them. I’ve certainly had my fair share, and being a girl, I found if you just ignore them, they’ll just come and go. They generally mean no harm, but some of them can be beyond ridiculous. It’s best just to put those ones on block!
Unfortunately over time even the select few boys who seemingly cared moved on. They wanted more out of me then I was able to provide. Something about a geeky girl really gets the guys. Romantically I wasn’t there for them, so they gave up and left. So much for just wanting to be friends…The few connections I had with some really great people were put on the shelf or ended all together. 99.999% of the boys I’ve met online have either lost interest either right away because I will not date them or if we actually manage to become and stay friends, they will tend to fall for me (and yes, I admittedly have fallen for a couple of them) and when I say I’d rather the friendship over the relationship, we stop communicating within a month if not less. As bad as this sounds, it’s something I’ve gotten used too, but whenever it happens, I feel horrible and tend to mope around for months on end. Being a girl on the Internet means you will come across the relationship factor no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
My life in the computer world is slowly coming to an end. I am currently going on my 6th year and it’s certainly showing. Long gone are my days where I can snap my fingers and have the latest DVDRiPs sitting in my inbox or be able to access the fastest servers. I have a feeling half of this is because of the way things have changed. People have grown up, the guys have real jobs and real lives now, and I certainly have my own as well. It’s been years since I’ve talked to some of the boys, we’ve just grown apart and moved on with our lives. This of course doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten anyone and I am certainly able to swing a few deals here and there (ones that still wouldn’t be as easy to close if I wasn’t a girl).
Being a girl on the Internet clearly has it perks whether you wish to recognize them or not. I will admit I have taken advantage of it a few times. It’s honestly hard not too, but you must never willingly do so. The boys will almost literally do anything for you, and you must respect them if they’re respectful of you. They’re no different then non-geeky people, they have normal feelings and needs/wants just like everyone else. I have always tried to be as respectful as possible and have always been thankful to the people who have taught me things or provided me with the tools and knowledge to learn more. If there’s one thing to understand if you’re a female in the boys territory, it’s to appreciate what lengths they will go to for you. I will never forget the people, the boys who have touched my life in one way or another. I will never forget late nights of gaming with the gang, or solving random code issues, or reading cyberpunk novels with friends, or trying out the latest beta software, or even just chatting about random technology tidbits on Skype for hours on end. Being a girl on the Internet is awesome…but the most important thing is just be who you are and appreciate the people who will do anything for you.
I’m calling it right now. Modern Warfare 2 is the game of the year. Hands down, it’s the most fun I’ve had since Resident Evil 5 which was released this previous spring. I understand I said I didn’t even want to bother with this game and that it was going to suck. I was of course basing this all off a video and a few screenshots I had seen of the game. The feeling that I got was that this game wasn’t going to be military based at all, and was going to be more like an “Army of Two/renegade/mercenary” type game. Nope, not at all. I think there’s one level where it sort of felt like that, but with the voicing in the level you remember that you’re there as a squad. The game plays pretty much how I was wishing they would have done it, except they did do it! I want to take back every bad thing I ever said about this game. The trailer I saw did not do this game enough justice, however, after seeing the multiplayer video they posted a month ago or so, I at least knew the multiplayer was going to be awesome. After getting my hands on the game and playing through the entire single player campaign I know a lot of people are really going to enjoy this game, single and multiplayer!
When you first get into the game, you’re run through a few tests, similar to when you first start Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I suppose this is for people who’ve never played the previous game, just get them acquainted with the controls and such. Right off the bat, I was qualified to play the game on Hardcore mode, er rather Hardened mode. I opted for Regular since I just wanted to jump right in, and actually I’m quite happy I did pick Regular mode since I had a few good trouble spots which took at least 10 tries to get right. Right after the training course, you’re dropped right into the action and they’ve got you pumping off rounds on your M203! After that you’re put in a Humvee with a mounted .50cal. Needless to say, it only get better!
Modern Warfare 2 has far exceeded my expectations, although maybe that’s what I get for having relatively low expectations in the first place. The controls are pretty much the same as the previous game, and since my life basically revolved around it, I had no issues with this game at all. There were a couple moments when they wanted you to do a few things with the triggers which I managed to mess up, but after a few tries I got it down. At one point, during the end of the game, I wasn’t sure what they were asking me to do with the ‘x’ button, but I guess whatever I was doing was right because I managed to knife someone in the face.
The level design in the game is fantastic. One of my favorite levels was the White House. It was actually a bit difficult to get into and take command of the first floor but with a couple flash bangs and grenades, it was mine! One of my least favorite levels was the one in Brazil where you basically had to find your way through a maze of crappy houses to make it to the top of the hill they were all on. I found myself getting my ass kicked by snipers and shooters on the roof tops or they would hide in these houses. Each level in the game was unique and something fresh and new each time, whether it be caves, a log cabin house in the mountains, a freezing cold air base or atop an oil rig, this game keeps it new and fun with each level. You can definitely tell a lot of time was put into each level with tons of interactive items, enemies in spots that make it a good challenge to overtake an area and graphics that definitely keep you wondering if this is real or not.
I thought the graphics in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare were amazing. Well they’ve just stepped up their game and they’re even better in Modern Warfare 2. I managed to find myself just staring at guns to see how detailed the were. They’ve got it down real good, even to the serial numbers on some guns. It’s ridiculous. Each and every item in the game is carefully given some amount of detail to make it look as real as possible. Shooting boxes of paper sends sheets flying all over the place, and in one scene, you can see the blood vessels in a foes eye just before you stab him in the neck. Infinity Ward definitely went all out on this game, and it shows. While there are a few points where you can tell more work could have been done, I really am impressed with the graphics.
The biggest thing that I enjoy about this game? The new variety of guns. Weapons from the previous game are included, but they’ve included tons of new weapons and “addons”. The Desert Eagle and .50cal make appearances throughout the game, but one of my favorites, the SCAR is now part of the lineup! The guns also come with a few new attachments, one, a thermal sensor which really helps with seeing enemies through smoke screens and another a heartbeat sensor which alerts you to people within the nearby vicinity via an LCD monitor attached to your weapon. I also noticed there’s a fully automatic pistol included which will definitely be considered in my load outs along with the Desert Eagle and M1911!
Something new about Modern Warfare 2 is the ability to control vehicles in a few levels. In one level you get to man a boat, rather more like a raft with a motor, but you get to drive it down a crazy winding river while trying to avoid other enemy boats and helicopters. In another level you need to make an escape on a snowmobile and at one point you jump over what must be at least a 200ft gap. I have honestly no idea how that was even possible, but it happens! One thing I did miss was taking control f one of those .150mm canons on the planes, however, you do get to take control of a Predator to bomb areas.
At this point in time I have not tried the multiplayer or SPEC OPs potion of Modern Warfare 2. I plan to play some SPEC OPs either tonight or tomorrow, I’ll create a new article for that. Multiplayer modes are going to have to wait for a couple days, but I am definitely psyched about getting some time in. I guess my days of playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare are over. I certainly had a good 2 years with the game, but now that the Modern Warfare 2 is out, it’s time to put that game to rest (at least for a couple months). I am unsure as to how many levels or prestige levels are included in this new game, but I certainly can’t wait to start killing some friends, completing challenges and learning some new multiplayer levels layouts. I am also excited to see how well the CTF mode plays.
All in all, I can give this game no less then a 11/10 rating — which I just realized is the release date of the game, so it’s certainly fitting! It went well above what I thought the game was going to be, and even after beating the single player campaign, I want more of it. I know I knocked the game and said how crappy it was going to be. I hope Infinity Ward can forgive me! I promise you, if you loved Modern Warfare 1, you will, without a doubt love this game too. In a few days, when the game is released to the masses, I will join you all in a game of CTF or some Team Deathmatch! Make sure you add me on Xbox LIVE (vtequine)!
Finally the Left 4 Dead 2 demo was made available to all (okay maybe just gold and pre-order people) Xbox LIVE gamers the other day. I hastily downloaded it and I have to say, I like it! I’d been hearing a lot of complaints on Twitter and Facebook, about how crappy it was (no reasons given), but after watching the intro video and playing the 2 stages I came away wanting some more! The game plays very similar to the first so I suppose that’s a good thing, however it can be bad, especially when you’re dropping $60 into something that could have been an addon. However if you really enjoyed the original game and really got a lot of re-play value out of it, I can certainly see you picking up the second one. The demo download clocks in around 1.7GBs which seems to be the going size of new demos these days. Heck, I downloaded a trailer to a video the other day and it was 350MBs! That said, grab your controller and get ready to blast away hordes of zombies!
The demo drops you in a small town with a couple new types of zombies. One of them requires you to shoot them in the back since they’re armored. However, I found it to be easy to take out your machete or knock them around with your gun/melee and then shoot them down. The Witch, normal zombies, Smokers, and Boomers all make re-appearances and will do anything to stop you. As for weapons, my all time favorite M16 assault rifle returns along with the AK47! There’s also 2 shotguns (combat and tactical), an automatic machine gun, pistols, pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails! There’s also a wide variety of melee weapons like frying pans which certainly makes for some fun killing.
The two levels included in the demos are pretty similar to what you’d find in the first game, and there’s really nothing new about the game play except for at one point you need to deactivate an alarm system (wooohoo?!). Basically the levels consist of making your way through them while terminating any zombies and foes that get in your way. This is certainly a lot of fun, however need it really cost $60? I personally think these could have been included as addons to the original game, or heck sell me the 5-6 stages for $30 and if I want multiplayer I could purchase that for an additional $30. I just don’t feel like this game is worth what they’re selling it for, it really doesn’t feel like an entirely new game, more like a few new stages. Don’t get me wrong, the new graphics and everything look awesome, but still…I also have one gripe, the control scheme for this game is not that great, it never has been. I guess after a couple stages you start to get used to it, but I keep finding myself pulling on the left trigger to get a “zoomed” in view with my gun…however this is not the case and I end up flailing around with melee moves.
That said, I think the final product will provide me with a good 5-6 hours of entertainment. I’m not so much into the multiplayer modes (nor do I really have time for them — COD4/MW2 will end all free time as I know it), I just like going around the towns killing zombies and being done with it. As much as I love zombie killing I can only last that long. I am really interested to see how it’s going to sell, seeing as how it comes out a few days after Modern Warfare 2.
After hearing about all the goodies like Twitter, Facebook and Last.FM integration within the Xbox 360 dashboard, I was quite excited. Of course my friend said, I was already on Twitter and Facebook enough as it was so he didn’t quite like how now I could also access both of them when using my Xbox! When these features where announced, I had expected them to released quite shortly thereafter. Of course they weren’t…one Xbox LIVE Preview came and went with no Twitter/Facebook. I was pretty disappointed that they could announce that and not even put the features in one of their betas. They even mentioned that it wouldn’t make it into the dashboard until December or so.
Finally just the other week, Major Nelson announced a new Xbox LIVE Preview and that it would include Twitter/Facebook features. Quite surprised and happy, I quickly signed up and a few days later I received an email letting me know I had been accepted! Been a semi-relatively busy girl, I wasn’t able to log in to LIVE and download the update until a few days later.
Well worth the wait though! I must say, I did have a bit of course finding the actual applications once I had installed the dashboard update. I could be completely wrong on this, but it looks like there’s a new “My Community” section which includes the Twitter and Facebook applications. In fact, I am not sure what to call them, is applications okay, or simply extra panels?
Anyways…the Twitter application is pretty straight forward, login with your Twitter username and password. One thing I didn’t like about this is it brings up that ugly Microsoft entry screen. Although I guess this is necessary for people who don’t have the chatpad or a keyboard connected to their Xbox. Once logged in you’ll see a timeline of your tweets along with your friends’ tweets. You can search through tweets and even show the trending topics. You can also see your @replies as well as Direct Messages. These are pretty much the features I look for in a decent twitter client, so I am pretty happy with the progress so far. As long as I can see my friends, @replies and Direct Messages, I am happy!
The Facebook application is also pretty well built. When you login you have the options to display your Xbox LIVE information on your Facebook as well as have the application automatically login. The Home panel basically is your news feed showing you latest status updates, your status, recent photos and your friends lists. The Facebook application is broken down into essentially 4 areas, Home, Profile, Friends and Photos.
The Profile area lets you review your profile and update your status if you’d like. You can also see any photos you’ve uploaded. In the Friends section you can browse through all your friends and even the friends lists you’ve created. Xbox even added a list which shows you your friends from Facebook who are also on Xbox LIVE. You can click into friends and view their photos and their profile information. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like you can write on their wall, leave comments on wall postings or like any status updates from here. You can however comment and like status updates from the News Feed on the Home panel. I’ll assume they’ll be building these features in so you can do it when viewing someone profile in the final update.
Overall, I am pretty impressed with the Facebook application. It definitely feels a bit odd navigating through Facebook via the panes, but once you understand where each item is and what you can do in each panel, it’s not so bad. I think it’s needs a bit more polishing, then I have a feeling it’ll be much better.
There was one more application added, which was Last.FM. However to be honest I didn’t really play around with it much since I am not a subscribed member of their service. This results in ads being shown every time I switched stations and such. You can pretty much listen to stations you’ve created, recommended ones and popular stations from the website. The application also supports scrobbling so it’ll report back to the Last.fm website with anything you’ve listened too. Minus the subscription issue, it’s a decent application.
So…new applications, awesome, right?! Yeah, pretty much! Biggest gripe…they don’t run in the background…so each time you want to access one you need to quit whatever you’re doing to access them. I think it’d be awesome to set up hot keys for both Twitter and Facebook. How awesome would it be to update your status while sniping someone in Call of Duty 4 with that amazing Barrett .50cal?! Of course you better be quick about your status updates. That’s definitely something Chris would fear and likely hate me for…updating my statuses while playing CoD4 rounds! :P It’d also be nice to have a radio station from Last.fm playing in the background while you’re gaming. I guess one can dream right?! Microsoft is definitely off to a great start with these new Xbox LIVE applications. If you haven’t been able to get into the latest Preview which includes these, I’m afraid you may need to wait until December when they’re rolled out for everyone. Don’t worry though it’ll come soon enough!
Just recently Major Nelson took to his blog and Twitter to warn Xbox 360 users that Microsoft is going to start banning un-authorized storage devices. Now, as many of you may know I along with a couple friends spent a weekend getting our own 120GB drives installed on our Xboxes, rather then paying the ridiculous fee for an “OFFICIAL” Microsoft drive…which is actually just a normal Western Digital drive. After trying to figure out if this is what Major Nelson was referring too, I couldn’t find a definitive answer. Most of the comments on his blog seemed to point to the Datel Memory cards which had me a little calmer.
After a few days of looking around on the web, it does appear the devices being blocked aren’t the home made 120GB drives, but rather those Datel cards. So what do I think about that? Well, to be honest, I don’t like it regardless of me not even having one of those cards. I do not see what logic, what reasoning, Microsoft has to ban these devices, beyond the fact that instead of allowing 3rd parties to develop and sell these may cut into their profits on similar devices. I believe right now Microsoft is selling their official AUTHORIZED memory cards for $30. That’s right, $30 for 512MBs of space. Ridiculous, of course. The Datel card sells for $39 and is 2GBs. Still a steep price, but you get a lot more bang for your buck! Plus you can use your own MiniSD card and get up to 16GBs of storage, sure blows that over-priced Microsoft card out of the water.
What I fail to see is WHY Microsoft is banning such devices. I guess if someone could provide sound reasoning I may not dislike Microsoft for doing this so much. An online petition has been formed and it currently has a whopping 71 signatures, so if you’re a Datel Memory card owner, I certainly recommend adding your signature to the bunch.
That said, I’m glad they’re not (or hopefully not) going to mess with the hard drives (home made and otherwise). My good friend Raf (WithinRafael.com) outright asked Major Nelson if our home made drives would be affect but to this date, I don’t think he’s received a response. If he does get one I shall update this post with that information.
So what do you guys think about this banning of un-authorized devices? Is it a smart move on Microsoft part, or just another instance of them being stupid?
Ever since I heard about Google Wave back in the Spring, I was super excited to get my hands on it to play with. Finally last week I got my invite and I started playing with it right away. Unfortunately, the playing with lasted only about 20 minutes. I honestly cannot figure out what to use Google Wave for. Currently I have 5 or 6 Waves which really seem to be conversations about, what wave is and how we should be using it.
At this time, I guess I am not really sure what to think of Google Wave. The issue could simply be that there’s not enough people that I know on Wave, so using it at the moment, or at least using it to its full potential is just not possible. I can certainly see how one can use Google Wave under the right circumstances, and it sure looks like it might be a great tool for collaborating on projects. I am hoping that within the next 6 months, I am able to actually use the product. I feel quite let down at the moment, so I am really hoping Google comes through on this! Lots of big hype but nothing super fantastic yet :(
