96.242.154.6:27015 – CS:S

96.242.154.6:27017 – Obsidian

Please update accordingly! Thank you

We will find a solution for this in case this happens again!

We have a dyndns address now too, so no matter what you can use this address if you want to connect.

chenzen.dyndns.org:27015 – CS:S

chenzen.dyndns.org:27017 – Obsidian

By now you would’ve heard about the earthquake which left Haiti devastated on Tuesday, leaving thousands dead and even more injured. These high-res satellite photos show the damage the earthquake, measuring 7.3, had on the capital Port-au-Prince.

The photos were taken by the GeoEye-1 satellite which has a resolution of 0.5 meters per pixel, from 423 miles in space, on the morning of January 13th. [GeoEye Satellite Images via Discovery News via Reillymj on Twitter]

You can help out those affected by the Haiti earthquake at Unicef here

High-Res Satellite Images of Haiti Capital Show Devastation From 423 Miles In Space [Image Cache]
[Content via Gizmodo]

A pleasant surprise though – Vodaphone and Verizon are jumping onboard with the Nexus one and will have plans available sometime spring 2010.  AWESOME.  <3 google.  Also, with Vodaphone – it seems pretty obvious that they’re planning on taking their market globally.

Some other awesome tidbits:

• Does have snapdragon 1 ghz
• Coming with google earth app
• voice recognition for every text field on the phone
• Sync with picasa
• You get all the recognized droid apps with it
• Comes with droid 2.1
• and more…

Follow the live blogging to find out more!

[Content via Gizmodo Liveblog]
[Google Nexus One]

Thanks – hope everyone has a good one.

Taiga: Akemashite Omedetougozaimasu. (Happy New Years)

1. Kampfer (ecchi/gender-bender/harem)
2. NyanKoi! (talking cats/comedy/harem)
3. Seitokai no Ichizon (ecchi/heavy parody/harem)
4. White Album S2 (romance/heavy drama)
5. To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (spinoff/comedy/superpower/yuri)
6. 11eyes (sci-fi/fantasy/harem?)
7. Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu Purezza (ecchi/romance/comedy)

I think that’s all of them…as you can see, there are way too many harems and not enough of anything else.  To be quite honest, I’m probably only going to watch 1 or 2 of these throughout the entire season (luckily I still have FMA, and Cross Game to keep watching as well).  Here are some very brief first impressions I have of all of these series.

Kampfer

Senou Natsuru is a high school boy who suddenly gets picked to become a Kampfer (means fighter in German).  Through some twist of events, Senou finds himself in a battle where Kampfers have to fight other Kampfers that wear different colored wrist band things.  The whole premise is a little bizarre and the story seems to materialize with no background whatsoever.  I have little hope for this anime other than fanservice shots and a ton of girls.  Oh yeah, and the girl who Senou likes falls in love with his female self.  Yuri yuri yuri yuri yuri.

NyanKoi!

Nyan Koi! might actually have some hope for it.  While it is another harem anime, it doesn’t seem like that will be the main focus of it (hopefully).  Kousaka (the main character) has cursed himself by beheading a cat jizou statue.  An effect of the curse is that he can now hear cats speak.  In order to repel the curse and prevent himself from turning into a cat himself is to do 100 good deeds for cats.  Unfortunately Kousaka is allergic to cats and keeps finding himself in comedic situations when dealing with the cats.  Overall, a pretty lighthearted and leisurely anime.

Seitokai no Ichizon

The entire anime takes place in one room almost entirely, which is kind of interesting I guess.  Other than that, well, this is packed full of parodies and has some unnecessary fanservice.  That’s about it.  I have nothing else to say about this anime other than that if you aren’t seasoned in anime-watcher, definitely don’t watch it cause you won’t get any of the jokes.

White Album S2

Touya is still really dumb, Yuki should’ve moved on a long time ago and left him in the dust, and the rest of the characters are over dramatic and easy to read.  The story isn’t even that good – I’m not sure why I’m still watching; I guess for sake of completeness since the first season ended without any closure whatsoever.  I just want to see Touya get run over by a car and everyone move on with their goddamned lives and professions.  Oh yeah – don’t watch if you haven’t seen season 1.  And uh, don’t watch if you’ve seen season 1 anyway cause you should’ve stopped.  Like me.

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

If you’ve watched To Aru Majutsu no Index, then you know who this character is.  This is Misaka Mikoto, one of the few level 5’s in Academy City.  I guess this is the story of Misaka.  Not very often is there an entire series of anime for a side-character.  I guess she’s just THAT popular.  It seemingly also takes place at the same time during the events of To Aru Majutsu no Index (as you can see from the beginning of the second episode).  Anyway, seems mostly like a slice-of-life anime that revolves around Misaka, Shirai Kuroko (who is a pervert in love with Misaka), Uihara Kazari, and Saten Ruiko.  I liked To Aru Majutsu no Index a lot, so I hope that this will deliver just as well.  (Hopefully with a season 2 of Majutsu no Index in store later!)

11eyes

So Kakeru and Yuka seem to be the main characters in this one.  I’m not actually sure what it’s about yet, but they apparently grew up at the same orphanage together.  Kakeru’s only family member, his older sister, killed herself.  The intro of the anime also hints that Yuka’s family was involved in an incident of internal killings or suicide.  That aside, the two of them are now in high school together and are close because of the time they spent at the orphanage.  This anime quickly turns from a high school setting to a sci-fi with Kakeru and Yuka being dragged into another dimension of sorts while getting attacked by strange (cheesy) monsters.  I predict that Kakeru and Yuka will eventually awaken to some hidden roles they each have.  Kakeru will gain some secret power and Yuka will always be in danger because of something she has or can do.  End prediction.  Regardless, I’ll at least watch for another episode or two to see where this is going.  Production values seem a little shoddy, but who knows.

Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu Purezza

If you liked the first season, this one will be the same exact thing – it’s pretty easy to tell.  I actually don’t want to keep watching this.  It’s romance (not good romance either), with fanservice, and lame comedy.  The art also isn’t great either.  Anyway, for those not in the know, it’s about a girl named Haruka who is secretly an otaku, but doesn’t want anyone else to know.  Ayase Yuuto, the male lead, knows Haruka’s secret and over the course of season 1, they get very close.  This series will probably just play on their relationship more while showing lots of fanservice.  Harems harems harems…no more please.

That’s about it for now.  I’ll probably end up watching a few more first episodes, because the ones I’ve seen so far have been pretty poor.  Looking through what has been released so far though, I can’t really hope for anything much better from what the descriptions say.  Hopefully something will come up and if it does, I’ll try to keep you informed.  Until then, it’s basically a crap-shoot.  It might actually be time to pick up something old that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while!  That would probably be worth it a lot more in retrospect.  Oh well – until next time.

Note: If you really need to watch something, try To Aru Kagaku no Railgun and Nyan Koi! if they sound appealing.  Otherwise stay away from most of the others, except maybe 11eyes, which could turn out decent or really bad.

None of the manufacturers of the said phones were named, but this picture offers some insight on what they could possibly be.

If you check the original picture link here though, you can clearly see an HTC logo on the bottom of the phone that Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) is holding.  On the right is what I expect to be whatever Motorola phone will be rolling out.  As a Verizon user, I am hugely excited over this news.  It may finally be time to get a new phone!

On a last note, when McAdam was questioned whether or not Google Voice would be allowed on their Android devices, he replied positively.  With this, AT&T is the only major carrier that doesn’t have any Android phones.

[Content via The New York Times]
[Image via Verizon Wireless]

So some things I have been planning to do are videos and LOTS of them.  To accomplish this, I have purchased a Hauppauge HD PVR.  This baby is an external capture card that does all the encoding in the device itself.  This means absolutely no overhead for your CPU as you’re busy playing the game.  Previously, I would use FRAPS to record game footage, while this worked for older titles such as Half-Life, Starcraft, and Quake, new titles won’t cut it.  Fraps would virtually make the game unplayable frame rate wise.  This of course can be avoided with a quad core processor but I don’t have the money for that.

I purchased the HD PVR for 200 dollars (some places have deals for $150) and I can say it was a great purchase.  Not only can it record your game console, it can also record your PC.

Here is a basic overview of the device:

• Built-in hardware H.264 high definition encoder, for high performance, high quality TV recordings
• Component video input from most high definition cable TV and satellite TV receivers. Optical or stereo audio inputs.
• Record high definition video at up to 1080i resolution, 720p or VGA/D1
• Record at datarates from 1Mbs to 13.5Mbs, constant and Variable Bit Rate
• Make Blu-ray format AVCHD recordings, so you can burn your TV recordings onto a standard DVD disk (up to 2 hours of video at 5MBits/sec) and playback on Blu-ray DVD players
• Includes HD software video player, so you can playback recordings to your PC screen
• Audio / Video component video loop through to allow HD recording and viewing at the same time
• High Performance Noise Reduction Function
• NTSC,PAL and SECAM Support
• IR receiver for remote control
• IR Blaster to change the TV channels in your set top box

It fits all my needs of a recording device, recording at 1080i up to 13.5Mbs, is very good in my book.  My Geforce GTX 260 has a HDTV out and with that I have a HDTV to component cable adapter so it is compatible with the HD PVR.

My setup is like this, I have the video card route to the HD PVR, then I have a audio splitter that splits audio from my sound card two ways, in one port I have a stereo to RCA splitter that then routes to the HD PVR audio in. Finally, the USB connection from my HD PVR connects to my MacBook where it stores the video information.

So with this, I am currently recording every game I play, making tutorials on PCSX2 and Dolphin and other things I have not though of yet, the possibilities are endless!

Stay tuned for forthcoming videos and another post about the Sanyo Xacti CG10 I bought as well.

Today, it was confirmed that Final Fantasy XIII will be released on that day according to the people at Kotaku.  Well, as you may have guessed, this is only for the Japanese release of the game.  Western fans (myself) will probably have to wait for some time before seeing it in 2010.

[Contents via Kotaku]

But enough of my thoughts – what do you think?

As expected, the graphics look sharper and cleaner than on the DS, other improvements have not yet been announced, but this will be exciting for iPhone users.

A new expansion has been announced for World of Warcraft entitled Cataclysm.  This expansion will introduce two new races, Goblins for Horde side and Worgen for the Alliance side. The level cap will also be raised to 85 and there will finally be more race combos, so you can play as a gnome priest, a blood elf warrior and more.

What is also nice is that classic zones have been remade due to the change in the story line, for instance the Barrens have now been sundered into two pieces. Below is list of the changes from the official FAQ.

• Two New Playable Races: Adventure as one of two new races–the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.
• Level Cap Increased to 85: Earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to improve characters.
• Classic Zones Remade: Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens, which has been sundered in two.
• New High-Level Zones: Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great Sunken City of Vashj’ir beneath the sea.
• More Raid Content than Ever Before: Enjoy more high-level raid content than previous expansions, with optional more challenging versions of all encounters.
• New Race and Class Combinations: Explore Azeroth as a gnome priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never-before-available race and class combinations.
• Guild Advancement: Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.
• New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds: Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds.
• Archaeology: Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.
• Flying Mounts in Azeroth: Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like never before.

This expansion is slated for a 2010 release.

Cataclysm [World of Warcraft]

So last night I was able to grab the new Wolfenstein by id software and published by Activision.  I sat down and played straight on through with maybe a 20 minute break in the middle, so I’m going to try to put everything I thought about this game now while it’s still fresh.

I guess I’ll open up with some of the story of the game, but people who have played any of the Wolfenstein series should know at least something about it already.  Every Wolfenstein iteration has the Nazis who are doing experiments on people and are producing evil zombies in an attempt to take over the world somehow.  This version of Wolfenstein is pretty faithful to that aspect.  You play as William “B.J” Blazkowitcz, an American spy who is sent to Isenstadt to help deal with the Nazis there.  From there, you meet with two groups: the Kreisau Circle and the Golden Dawn.  The Kreisau Circle is a group who is trying to liberate Isenstadt from the Nazi threat while the Golden Dawn is a group of scholars who is researching some ancient technology that the Nazis want their hands on.  Anyway, you end up doing a bunch of missions for these groups and you kill Nazis, zombies, Nazi zombies, and the like.

Now for some gameplay aspects.  As you begin the game, you’ll quickly realize that “Hey!  This is a first-person shooter.”  So yeah, no surprises on how this game plays for now.  I felt that the controls actually felt very much “Return to Castle Wolfenstein”-esque, meaning it just felt very similar.  What I did immediately notice though, is that I picked up a few more guns, buttons 1-4 didn’t change my weapons.  Buttons 5-0 were reserved for that.  So what do buttons 1-4 do?  They’re used to access your special abilities that you gain pretty early on.  You first get to use “The Veil,” which is kind of like a rip in your dimension into “the Black Sun” dimension.  With it, you can move slightly faster, see hidden objects and passages, and find an enemy’s weakpoint.

Along the course of the game, you gain even more abilities that you can use with the veil device.  You get three: The ability to slow time, a shield, and shield-penetrating bullets.  You end up using all three of these abilities to solve easy puzzles or just wreck enemies.  Something that was kind of annoying though, was that even though I was playing on normal, unless I abused all of my veil abilities, it was hard to not die.  Maybe I just suck, but with veil energy pools every 10 feet away, there didn’t seem like any reason to not constantly use your powers.  One of the drawbacks of this though, is that you have watch your screen become green and blurry all the time.  Which sucks.  It’s unappealing and detracts much from the game’s graphics.

I mean, when you aren’t in the veil, the game looks pretty decent.  Obviously not Crysis level, but what you would expect from a 2009 PC game.  My GTX 260 was able to play this on high settings fine and I did not have any points in time when the game would be bogged down by anything.  I’d say if you toned down the settings a bit too, you could probably play this pretty well even on older machines.  It’s not the most beautiful game, but I think the environment fit well for Wolfenstein.  I enjoyed not using the veil whenever I could, but it turned out that I had to use it often.

What seems to be more common in FPS’s now is some sort of easy to access map with quests point system on it.  Wolfenstein isn’t any different.  I guess they tried to make the game more RPG like by giving it a journal where you see the entire map, view your objectives, intel you’ve collected, upgrades, and stats.  It’s simple, but it works – they make it easy to plot courses to any of the safe houses or the black market arms dealer.  It also lets you choose what mission you want to make active, so your marker will point to it.  If you just roam the town, you can pick up side-objectives by just talking to people too.  This gives the opportunity to earn a little extra gold and discover more intel.

There are a decent amount of weapons in Wolfenstein; from the classic MP40 and Kar98 to tesla guns and particle canons, you’ll find something you like and stick with it.  What’s nice is that you can upgrade your weapons too.  That means if you particularly like one of them, you can pretty much stick with it for the entire game.  I ended up using the MP43 a lot just because there was tons of ammo around for it.  If you want to use one of the more powerful weapons though, you might end up spending a lot of your gold on buying ammo.  The amount of gold is limited too, so choose your upgrades wisely.  You can even upgrade your veil abilities at an expense.  Remember though, not all weapons are created equal.  You will end up burning through your more powerful ones’ ammo when the need arises as normal weaponry just won’t cut it.  Oh, and one more thing – in order to upgrade your weapons you must collect intel.  Without certain intel, your upgrades will stay locked.

As you play through Wolfenstein and happen upon more supernatural enemies, you’ll realize that there actually aren’t too many types of them.  There are overpowered flaming zombie things that can kill you quickly, these other zombies that run around on all fours to try to eat you, some ninja-like zombies that are quick and dodge bullets, and the annoying zombies that produce shields for enemies or shoot plasma at you.  Of course, you also have the Nazis, but they’re relatively easy to kill when the others aren’t present.  Oh yeah, the Nazis also have these supersoldiers that wear something that looks like a tesla-armor from Fallout 3, but they only come out rarely and are pretty easy to kill.  Other than that, and the bosses, it’s pretty much it.  The entire game is one long fight though.  When you finish more story-important objectives, the town of Isenstadt becomes more dangerous as Nazis and the Kreisau Circle start openly fighting.  More parts of the town become destroyed and you end up using a lot of ammo just traveling in between objectives.

The missions are pretty much all the same, but it doesn’t really matter since you’re playing this to shoot a bunch of Nazis; not to explore and think a lot.  You go to your mission start point, get carted off to a new map, “infiltrate” (walk in the front door using your abilities while blowing shit up), kill people, and leave.  You’re pretty much alone all of the time against a ton of enemies, but hey – would you rather have it any other way?

Overall, I’d have to say that this was an enjoyable 6-8 hours of gameplay.  I basically skipped all the little side-quests and whatever, but I don’t think they would’ve offered too much – just more killing and some money.  The story is typical Wolfenstein and so is the gameplay, with the addition of the veil abilities.  For an end of summer release, I would have to say that id software did a pretty good job since there isn’t much else at this time.  Gaming season is right around the corner though, so maybe this would be good to get back into the swing of things guys.  It might be worth the 60 bucks as long as you play it and return it within a week.  If not, wait till all the blockbuster games are released later and buy this off the used shelf for cheap while you’re waiting for your favorites to drop in price.  In any case, it’s fun and will keep you occupied, so I’d have to say it’s recommended.  Nothing special, but fun nonetheless.

Here’s some screens!

The slim will boast a significantly smaller form factor which is over 30 percent smaller, lighter and more power efficient than its old bulky version.  Not only that, but it will include a 120GB hard drive.

This makes a PS3 a very attractive buy for me now, I mean $299 with 120GB hard drive? I am sold.

Here are some pictures of this sexy beast.

Full Story [Joystiq]

Following Valve’s classless update for Team Fortress 2, Valve continues to offer value with this weekend’s killer Steam deal.  Everything Half-Life is 66 PERCENT off this weekend folks.

To celebrate, I am randomly selecting 2 people from the comments for a FREE copy of Half-Life Complete paid by ChenZen.

Winners will be announced later this weekend.

Update: Two Winners have been selected to receive HL Complete (jung_chan and meowN).

But it doesn’t stop there, we will also be giving 4 5 other people a pack or game of their choice from the following list:

Half-Life 1 Anthology (Pack)
Half-Life Episode Pack
Half-Life
Half-Life: Opposing Force
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Half-Life: Source
Half-Life Deathmatch: Source
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch

Mails sent out, please reply promptly before sale ends!

Half-Life Complete Pack:
jung_chan (Redeemed)
meowN (Redeemed)

A game of their choice from the list:
Pearly (no response yet)
gumpest (Redeemed)
rekenner (no response yet)
Huntacular (Redeemed)
shopingcarthero (Redeemed)

Please get in contact with us via webmaster@chenzen.org

Some people did not redeem, email us at webmaster@chenzen.org to get a game of your choice from the list!

Hurry before it hits 12:00PM EST. STEAM SALE OVER, sorry for the people that didn’t redeem them O_O.

Steam Store [Valve]

So we’ve been experiencing almost 12 hours of downtime since we last saw many of you, if you’re actually still with us.  First, our webhost was having trouble their SQL servers last night, which prompted us to just wait for it to fix and come back up.  Then, this morning – after confirming that the site had been down ALL FUCKING NIGHT, we immediately went back to support to figure out the problem.  Right now, we actually have our database running on the same server with a different account at the moment, which is why I can bring this post to you now, but we’re working on getting this fully resolved.  We WILL announce the winners shortly and we WILL get back to updating content, but with our space on the fritz – we have other things to worry about.  Anyway, hope you guys stick with us for the time being.  Ugh – shit like this has been happening all week ever since we finally went live. =(

Edit: Our thumbnails script isn’t working cause of this temporary fix.

QuakeCon is live and in full effect, some major news has already been coming out from the convention.  Following Kotaku’s liveblog converage of John Carmack’s keynote, I was able to gather some juicy details.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Wolf3d & Doom Resurrection dropping to 99 cents and $2.99 respectively through Sunday.
• Wolfenstein RPG now released on iPhone App Store.
• Quake Live coming to Mac and Linux.
• Hiring more development teams to work on 3 projects in parallel.
• 3 Lines of development for iPhone, Classics (Doom, Wolf3d, Quake Series), RPG and ID Tech 5 Line (Built ground up – possible Rage themed).
• Plans to make ID Tech 4 Open Source when Rage ships.

Included along with this was a new trailer for Rage courtesy of Gametrailers.

Brian recounts his whole tale of getting in contact with his source, ‘[redacted],’ and what [redacted] says, but here are the details you probably want to hear the most:

• The Tablet will have a 10″ screen
• Probably gonna look like a giant iPhone/iTouch
• Same black resin back, same home button as iPhone/iTouch
• Two Editions: 1. Webcam 2. Mysterious Education Use
• Device can act as a secondary screen for iMacs/MacBooks
• Cost: $700-$900
• Tentative Release: Holiday Season ’09

My impressions?  This is going to be another overly expensive apple ‘toy’ that will come out for everyone that can afford it.  The cost absolutely irks me, but I guess it’s nothing new from Apple.  Oh well – no Apple products for me still.

[Contents via Gizmodo]

Frankly this doesn’t surprise me all that much, I am sure Microsoft still has software that violates many patents but none of course which have been banned from sales.  Microsoft have appealed and a higher court will probably overrule this.

More details about what custom xml here [ZDNet]

If you ever played the ‘Bells’ game with the jumping bunny [Orisinal Bells], it is quite similar to it.  Doodle Jump, however, puts their own twist on it with different boost items and creative usage of the iPhone’s capiblities.

Doodle Jump uses the accelerometer to control the doodle’s direction.  In action, it works quite well without any noticeable delay.  When playing through the game, you will encounter different types of platforms; for instance the brown platform will break once you land on it and blue platforms move side to side.  Some platforms even have springs that will boost you higher and faster.

There are also several item pickups you can get like the flying cap or jetpacks that will boost your doodle as well. As you progress further up, there are even more obstacles to avoid such as holes and monsters.

The game uses ‘Facebook Connect’ as a way to track high scores.  Additionally, what is great about the way they implemented it is that you can see people’s high scores as you play through the game.  A small dash on the right side of the screen with the players name will display as you jump your way higher.

Overall I would highly recommend this game – when I first started playing it, I couldn’t put it down.  A simple concept with excellent execution and only at a price of 99 cents!

[$0.99- iTunes Link]

As you can see, they have an In The Groove 2 machine.  This is basically the American version of DDR.  I actually think the songs and modes on this are a bit harder than DDR extreme used to offer me.  Haven’t really played any of the newer versions of DDR though since I stopped playing a lot after my sophomore year of high school.

They also have old Initial D3 machines.  I actually used to play this a bunch with my friends.  I even still had the old card that you could buy with my car and everything on it.  You were able to buy these cards straight from the machine by paying an extra dollar, pick a car and whatever, and save your status from I guess the campaign mode.

And as any good arcade should have, 8 on the Break has its fair share of pinball machines.  I, myself, have never been a big fan of pinball, but I know that a lot of people love to play them, whether just for fun when the opportunity arises or a little more seriously.

And I guess I’d have to say last, but not least is that they had Tekken 6 set up to play.  (Sorry about the random guy in the picture)  They even had custom controller ports ready for people who wanted to bring PS2 controllers!  This picture is actually pretty terrible, so here you are with equally terrible video that I took with my digital camera.

I don’t know who the two people playing are, but they at least seemed to know how to play the game well enough.  Also, sorry about the sound quality, it’s terrible I know.  Maybe one day I’ll get a really nice camera to carry around with me.  I really don’t know too much about Tekken 6, but it seems like everyone knows what Tekken itself is.  I’ve played some Tekken 5 before and it can be pretty fun.  Never took the time to get into it seriously.

And I finally bring you Misfire (left) and Kaisuri (right) playing Tatsunoko vs Capcom.  They’re pretty bad. This game came out not too long ago itself.  Basically like all the other “franchise vs Capcom” series, you get to pick characters you  know and love from each one and use them in tag team style of play.  Also the sheer amount of specials and everything else you can use is ridiculous as your special meter fills up absurdly fast.

And that about concludes the trip to the arcade.  We went for Taco Bell afterwards, but I think you can read more about that experience from Kaisuri’s ‘There’s spicy, there’s hot, and there’s volcano hot.‘ review.

The application for now has been pulled off the app store due to the developers having problems with their server.  It seems as if they didn’t even know their application got approved, however they are now working on getting their servers back in working shape to be re-released on the app store (no re-approval required).

iTunes Link
Tiverias Apps

We had a pretty flat surface already made for us by one of my cousins, so all we had to do today was lay down a matte that would go over the wood and keep it dry.  This will hopefully keep the wood from rotting for a number of years.  We actually put together another shed before and found out that it was a lot of trouble putting it up because the ground we were on was not perfectly level.

The matte had adhesive on the bottom, so there was no need to nail it or anything.  It was pretty painless to put it down except at the very end when my dad accidentally let the adhesive side stick to itself.  Getting it apart again was a pain.

Next we laid out all the parts for the shed.  This came in 4 big boxes that was a pain to move.  The entire shed weighs about 600 lbs (272 kg), so that was where most of the heavy lifting came in.  Laying out the pieces and separating them into similar piles makes the construction process a lot easier.  Even when I have to put together things that are small, I like to lay out all the pieces before putting it together.  I used to do that when I built gundam models.

After everything was completely laid out, came the flooring.  Building from the bottom up is probably the only way to construct something.

And a short while later, where there was nothing before, is now something that resembles a roofless, empty shack!  The walls were actually really easy to put up, but were kind of annoying since they were able to give so easily having no support on top.

About half the roof is done already.  We added doors, steal beams on top for support, and a few other things that aren’t very clear from this shot.  You can see two step stools and a ladder here.  Despite only 2 people involved in this construction, I had to get the ladder out cause I was too short to reach some things even with the step stools.  I’m only about 5’5″ tall…maybe 5’6″ – haven’t checked in a really long time.

A shot from inside.  You can see the nice foliage off to the right.  There are a lot of trees in my backyard – it’s really pretty when it’s Autumn.

We didn’t actually finish making the shed today cause my dad had to leave since he, my mom, my sister, and my sister’s boyfriend were meeting some family friends in New York City for dinner.  I got stuck at home eating takeout with my younger brother.  Oh well – there isn’t really too much left to do though; we actually only have one part of the roof left and that’s about it.  This shed was nice since you didn’t need many tools and everything is provided for you.  10′ x 10′ is actually pretty spacious, despite how small it looks.

Kojima Productions site still has two hours on the reveal countdown where we should expect to see even more details about this new game.