Those not in the know might not have heard about this new game ‘Rock Band‘ coming out in November.  It’s a video game where you have up to 4 people playing/singing along to music and being scored on your performance.

I was sitting there watching Hugo play the air drums the other day and thought to myself (and to Leah) – we need to get this game.  Leah could sing, I could play guitar, and Hugo could play the drums (all intruments included in the deluxe ($200) version of the game).  That would only leave the bass spot still open.

Luckily – Brody should be here by then, and 2 weeks old is more than enough to back me up on Wheezer’s Say it Ain’t So.

You all probably read Hugo’s blog (http://hugo.thelucks.org). You also all probably realize that sometimes it can take Hugo… a while… to get new photos uploaded to it. What you may NOT know, is that occasionally there is a somewhat not bad (I refuse to acknowledge it as good) reason for this.

Multiple laptops and locally stored photos.

You see, Hugo takes the photos from the camera and puts them on Leah’s home laptop and imports them into Picasa (http://google.com/picasa/). Once in Picasa they are stored locally on the laptop and must be uploaded to his blog for each post. The problem is that Hugo very rarely uses that laptop EXCEPT to export the photos from the camera into Picasa. Additionally once in Picasa, it is a fairly tedious process to find the right photo and get it uploaded to the blog and into a post. I’m actually pretty impressed a 2 year old can do it.

I’ve gotten pretty tired of waiting so long for his updates so this weekend I took it upon myself to find a better solution. One that will allow Hugo to post from any computer as well as make it an easier process.

The fruits of my labor have uncovered Flickr (http://flickr.com). Of course this is nothing new and most of you are probably familiar with it already. I hadn’t really investigated it however until yesterday.

Some key features:

• Unlimited storage
• Keeps Full-sized Images
• Community Features
• Easy Organization
• Easy Blog Integration

The above is for the ‘Pro’ plan, but at $25 a year, I’ve already found it to be well worth it.  The free service is a little more limited and good for getting your photos onto the web, but not as a full sharing/backup solution.

Google has a similar service (although it wasn’t as nice in my opinion) for Picasa, however $20 a year only got you 6GB of photo storage, and I already have over 6GB of photos, so the choice was pretty easy to make.

Google also only integrates with their own blog software (Blogger), but Flicker works with most popular blogging software (including those that you install on your own server, like Hugo has).

Hugo can now browse all his photos (once I finish uploading them) from any computer and can easily select any photo and send it to his blog with a few mouse clicks. He can also take a local photo and send it in an email and it will automatically be posted to the blog. Pretty fancy stuff Flickr.

So if you are looking for a place to not only backup your photos but to also have them easily accessible from the web, Flickr comes highly recommended.

For me, Instant Messaging (or IM henceforth) started during my high school years with a little program called ICQ.  Think of it as a much more powerful version of AOL’s AIM (at least AIM back during those days).  In fact, amongst those in ‘the know’, using AIM was one of the greatest sins that could be committed.  I still remember my ICQ number (4826971 – yes, you had numbers).

Then all the girls discovered AIM (sorry ICQ), so that became the de facto for IM’ing.  For the rest of high school and all through-out college I was constantly on AIM.  If I wasn’t I felt like I could be missing important conversations (or the all important reading of other peoples profiles/away messages).

But alas, all good things come to an end.  I graduated, moved up to Northern VA, started working, stopped chatting.  I probably hadn’t talked to anyone on IM in about 6 months prior to yesterday when I did some catching up with an old bud.  In the past 4 years I would say my number of IM conversations doesn’t even number above 30.  A number I might have had in a single (good) day of college.

I really couldn’t tell you why, other than I just didn’t see those people anymore.  Didn’t feel like I had anything to talk to them about.  It also seemed that none of the new friends I was making used IM (or at least it wasn’t like in college where you asked for their screen name before even getting a phone number).  Now that I’m back online I see that many others are still signed in (although the number has dropped significantly), probably conversing away.

So, dear reader, I ask you.  What made you stop/keep IM’ing these days?

The Colin McRae DiRT demo came out somewhat recently for the PS3 and I downloaded it to check it out. I’m only mildly into racing games, and while this was a pretty one it didn’t really do much for me. Two things from the demo DID strike me however.

The first was the awesome menu system they have implemented (see below). It really is first class.

The second (you can see at the end of the above video) is that during level loading they display current stats on your racing like how many races you have one, max speed, average speeds, etc. It actually gives you something to do while your level loads.This got me thinking… Why don’t more game designers do something along these lines? I grow tired on the ‘loading’ splash screen pretty quickly, even if it has a little tip or something. These just don’t stand up to the replayability of many games. Instead, how about a mini-game that loads very quickly and we can waste time on while the level loads. Another idea is to pull in some sort of news feed so I can read up on current events as I wait for the level to load. I don’t really read current events but this would be a good way to get kids today into reading the news etc. Its something I think the upcoming generation needs in lieu of getting all their news from say digg.com or something.

Anyways, just an idea I am tossing out there for you developers (who aren’t reading this surely).

About 4 years ago for my birthday my wonderful to-be-wife Leah went out and bought me a television. A large television. A HD television. I adore this television. Sure it’s not a fancy plasma or LCD (or even DLP) but it’s easy on the eyes nonetheless. Soon thereafter we purchased a progressive scan DVD player. Then an Xbox. Then I got component cable hook-ups for the Gamecube. Everything was going according to plan. Eventually we also got an HD cable box. Colors and resolution were glorious, life was bliss.

And then we got Tivo…

Tivo was a double edged sword. On one edge we were recording television, skipping ads, getting Tivo’s recommendations, and even Leah was loving it. On the other edge… Tivo had no HD outputs. None. S-video was as good as it got… Sweet jibblets – S-video… Maybe some HD televisions handle s-video input well. Heck, I’m SURE some do.

But not mine…

Instead I got a blocky, fuzzy, washed out image. It was painful. So bad for me in fact that I tried the HD cable box with DVR. I can sum that box up with one word. Unusable. If you have a DVR cable box I hope you never use a Tivo. You cannot go back. I don’t know who came up with the interface for Comcast (my then provider) but they should have been fired. Blacklisted. Shot. Words really cannot express the chasm that separated the usability of these products.

I digress.

Did I say Tivo was painful? Scratch that. It IS painful – we are still forced to use it. The gaming and movies have forged on in HD, moving from xbox and progressive scan to Playstation 3 and it’s Blu-Ray. But television. It lingers behind. Unable to complete the move so needed to make my TV life complete.

So I present to you my birthday wish. 4 years later it is time to come full circle into the HD era.

Tivo HD.

It’s not a Series 3. No, its affordable instead (What has become of technology when $300 is affordable?). Slightly downgraded but hey, I can live with compromise. Honey, are you listening? You’ll love it too – I promise!