StarCraft: Ghost postponed indefinitely…

D'Arque Bishop

http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/starcraft-ghost/698419p1.html

Blizzard Entertainment Inc. today announced plans to focus the company’s console-development efforts on the next generation of console platforms. The biggest news to come with this announcement is the indefinite postponement of production on StarCraft: Ghost, the console title first revealed to the gaming media back in 2003.

“Like many in the industry, we’ve been impressed with the potential of the new consoles, and we’re looking forward to exploring that potential further,” stated Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “In addition to allowing us to determine the best course for StarCraft: Ghost, this review period will help us lay the groundwork for our future console games.”

While this doesn’t surprise me, it does disappoint me. I had been looking forward to this game, as I really enjoyed the original StarCraft and this would have made an interesting followup. Oh, well… maybe we’ll see a book instead, like what happened to WarCraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans.

The answers to the music lyric meme…

D'Arque Bishop

I had actually expected more people to play this, but I guess not. As it stands, Tygerlander wins with one answer, and Jenn gets second place for getting #15 half-right (she had the song title wrong). The sad thing is… I expected her to get #8, and for Foxie to get #18. If anyone had gotten #3, though, it would have shocked me as I can count on one hand how many people have even heard of the artist. All in all, though, this meme illustrates beautifully how varied my musical tastes are. That said… the answers:

1) All around me, I see what weakness has made — Collective Soul – Needs

2) The sun rises to another day — Creed – Illusion

3) When the big boys meet on the Sunset Strip, yeah — Steve Stevens – Atomic Playboys

4) From the coast of gold across the seven seas — Iron Maiden – Wasted Years

5) With the sun right through, departed into darkness, I need someone too — Clannad – Now is Here

6) You better watch what you say — Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – You Got Lucky

7) Strange shapes light up the night — Blue Oyster Cult – Take Me Away

8) In the jungle I run tonight — Journey – Only Solutions

9) I know that your powers of retention — Jeremy Irons, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, & Jim Cummings – Be Prepared

10) Ya better come inside when you’re ready to — Def Leppard – Armageddon It

11) At first I didn’t have the will to carry on — Seal – Bring It On

12) Broken lines, broken strings — Kenny Wayne Shepherd – Everything is Broken

13) Upon a darkened night the flame of love was burning in my breast — Loreena McKennitt – The Dark Night of the Soul

14) Sad suffering, I knew you when, farewell thee friend of mine — Alice in Chains – Get Born Again

15) All that you touch, all that you see — Pink Floyd – Eclipse

16) I hear your heartbeat but you’re never there — Pat Benatar – Painted Desert

17) I hear a voice in the room next to mine — Stevie Nicks – If Anyone Falls

18) Confusion in her eyes that says it all — Joy Division – She’s Lost Control

19) Playground schoolbell rings, again — Evanescence – Hello

20) Well someone told me yesterday — The Police – So Lonely

Nintendo Revolution’s backwards compatibility just got a whole lot nicer…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6146528.html

SAN JOSE, Calif.–Everything old is new again. You only have to look at the success of Xbox Live Arcade to know that while gamers are demanding the hottest graphics and the latest innovations from their next-gen hardware, they also relish the opportunity to travel down memory lane–and they’re willing to pay for that chance.

Nintendo knows this. The company announced at E3 last year that its forthcoming Revolution would help scratch the nostalgic itch with a “virtual console” that will let users download and play potentially hundreds of games from the company’s back catalog, spanning all of its older systems–the Nintendo 64, SNES, and the hallowed NES.

At its GDC keynote this morning, Nintendo unveiled plans to flesh out the Revolution’s classic-game library even beyond its own storied library. Today during his keynote speech at the 2006 Game Developers Conference, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced that two former hardware rivals–Sega and Hudson–will make sizable chunks of their own back catalog available for download on the Revolution.

According to Nintendo, over 1,000 games for Sega’s Genesis console, released in 1989, will be added to the Revolution’s library. Joining them will be an undisclosed number of titles from the Hudson’s TurboGrafx console, also released in 1989 and codeveloped by electronics giant NEC. Though no specific titles were mentioned, Nintendo said it is taking a “best of” approach in selecting which games will come to the Revolution.

This makes the Revolution that much more compelling to me. There were several Genesis titles I wouldn’t mind having, and Galaga 90 (a TG16 port of Galaga 88) was always of interest to me. I know Louie would find this development extremely interesting as well, as he had a Genesis and was big on some of its games as well.

Looks like my first next-gen console has been decided…

One of those weeks…

D'Arque Bishop

Hrm. I think I’m going to have to post the answers to my music quiz tomorrow night. I was kinda hoping there’d be more of a response to it, but only having one answered by now is kinda disappointing. (Though, Jenn DOES get half-credit for one of them…)

Oh, and I saw the season premiere of South Park tonight. All I’ll say about it is… Hayes and Scientology: 0. Parker and Stone: 2.

Anyway, it turns out that I will be going to Rock Springs next week. I’ll be flying out to Salt Lake City on Monday, and from there renting a car and driving over to Rock Springs. On Wednesday afternoon I’ll drive back to Salt Lake City, and then on Thursday morning I’ll be flying back to Houston. I had hoped to meet Missy for dinner Wednesday night, but due to circumstances beyond her control that won’t be possible. Oh, well… granted, the work I’m going over there to do should only take me a day at the most, but I wanted to have extra time in case something went catastrophically wrong. At the very least it gets me out of town for a bit.

Otherwise, it’s been relatively quiet around these parts outside of work, where I’m being hit by support requests right and left. I’m getting by, though. For now, though… I just need to go to bed early. I had more I wanted to say, but it can wait until tomorrow. Until then…

Stolen from Jenn…

D'Arque Bishop

Rules:
Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 2a: When the title is in the first line of the song, post the next one….
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!

(I should mention that it was rather time-consuming to do this, as I didn’t want any repeat artists plus I have a lot of instrumental tracks. That said… good luck!)

1) All around me, I see what weakness has made.

2) The sun rises to another day

3) When the big boys meet on the Sunset Strip, yeah

4) From the coast of gold across the seven seas

5) With the sun right through, departed into darkness, I need someone too

6) You better watch what you say

7) Strange shapes light up the night

8) In the jungle I run tonight

9) I know that your powers of retention

10) Ya better come inside when you’re ready to

11) At first I didn’t have the will to carry on

12) Broken lines, broken strings

13) Upon a darkened night the flame of love was burning in my breast

14) Sad suffering, I knew you when, farewell thee friend of mine

15) All that you touch, all that you see

16) I hear your heartbeat but you’re never there

17) I hear a voice in the room next to mine

18) Confusion in her eyes that says it all

19) Playground schoolbell rings, again – Evanescence – Hello

20) Well someone told me yesterday

At weekend’s end… we have a terrified cat.

D'Arque Bishop

Gah. I was about to start this entry with a discussion of everything that I did this weekend, but then I heard Star give one of her combination roars and growls, and then I heard the sound of something hitting the wooden gate at the bottom of the steps with full force. My guess was that one of the cats had gone halfway down the stairs (they’re at a 90 degree angle and a closed off staircase, so someone coming downstairs would have to be halfway down and at the corner before anyone in the living room could see them), and gotten chased back upstairs when Star noticed their presence. I went downstairs to double check, and the truth was a bit more of a close call. Apparently Gus had managed to go downstairs unnoticed and was hiding under the bench in the living room. Unfortunately for him, Star finally noticed him there, and charged. Gus barely got through the gate in time. I finally found him in the room that doubles as a guest bedroom and Mom’s office. Gus was hiding under the bed, terrified as all hell. I do wish Star was cat friendly, but in the meantime… I hope this cures Gus of any curiosity regarding the downstairs in the meantime.

This weekend was a relatively uneventful one, for the most part. I met Robin for dinner at Cheesecake Factory on Friday evening. She had never been, and it was rather amusing watching her be overwhelmed by the book they have for menus there. Afterwards, we went over to Barnes and Noble to browse around. One thing they had there that was interesting was a book called Star Wars: Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn, who is probably the best of the Star Wars novelists out there. In fact, one could easily argue that Zahn was the one who brought about the long series of Star Wars novels beginning in 1991, with the novel Heir to the Empire. I digress, however… once we got finished at B&N, it was time for her to head home as she had to be up at 6 AM. From there I headed home, and actually went to bed early.

The next morning, I got up at a decent hour for a Saturday (9 AM), had breakfast and my requisite two cups of coffee, and then went to Louie’s to see if I could straighten out the mess that his Windows XP install had become. I ended up electing to copy his My Documents, MAME, and Idents (station identifications he had gotten from all over the world) folders over to the 500 GB external drive hooked up to his Powerbook, and then wiped the machine… only to find that I had left the XP license key back at my house. (He’s using an extra legal copy I have.) So, that necessitated a return trip, which I’ll discuss later. Anyway, while the file copy was going on, Dave came around with his laptop, and seeing as he FINALLY got himself net access, I went ahead and did him a favor by patching his laptop up to SP2 and the latest updates. Then, we all went to the Richmond Arms (a British pub local to Louie’s apartment) for dinner and drinks (and some good old-fashioned football between Birmingham and Tottingham). After the Richmond Arms, we went to the Slick Willies at Westheimer and Fountainview for some pool. After playing that (and with me actually winning a game for once!), we headed back to the apartment, and from there Dave and I headed home (after I finished as much as I could on Dave’s laptop and Louie’s PC).

I woke up at the usual Sunday time (9:30 AM) this morning, had breakfast and my requisite two cups of coffee, and then left the house at about noon to get to Louie’s with the XP license key (which I ended up leaving there). I finished installing Windows, installed the necessary drivers and apps, and began copying the files back from the Powerbook over to the PC. Of course, neither he nor I wanted me to be there all afternoon, so after the file copy began, I showed him what he needed to do to copy all of the other files back over, and headed back home. I’ve spent most of the rest of the day here relaxing.

Oh, well… this week is looking to be a relatively mild week, though next week I’ll have to go out to Rock Springs to finalize some work to get the new company location there completely onto our network. I’ll just need to figure out how I want to get there: take a flight to Denver and from there to Rock Springs and back, or fly out to Salt Lake City and drive to Rock Springs. I’ll likely do the latter. Either way, it should be a quiet few days other than the work that needs doing. Rock Springs is a relatively small town, so it should be a quiet few days doing work. Oh, well…

In any event, I have stuff here that needs looking at right now, so I better get that taken care of. Fun fun…

Stolen from Tygerlander… again.

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Choose a band / artist then answer ONLY in titles of their songs . . .

Choose a band / artist: Jethro Tull

Are you male or female?: “Journeyman”

Describe yourself: “Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die”

How do some people feel about you: “Dot Com”

Describe your x boyfriend/girlfriend: “Fallen On Hard Times”

Describe your current crush: “Grace”

Describe how you love: “Love Story”

Where you want to be right now: “Baker St. Muse”

What would you ask for if you had one wish: “Nothing at All”

Share a few words of wisdom: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”

Where do you live: “Farm on the Freeway”

Now say goodbye: “Cheerio”

I actually had tried to do this with Pink Floyd as the band, but couldn’t find enough song titles that fit. Some of the song titles/answers might sound a little odd to those who know me, but I’ll be willing to answer anyone who has questions. :-)

Discussion of the Day…

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

DArqueBishop: [17:06] (@Scott-Howell) Heya
[17:06] (@Scott-Howell) I updated my Myspace layout :-D
[17:07] (@Scott-Howell) http://www.myspace.com/scotters83
[17:07] (@Scott-Howell) Check it.
[17:07] (@DArqueBishop) Is it like other MySpace sites and causes one’s eyeballs to melt out of their sockets?
CCShadow: looks that way
CCShadow: yeesh
CCShadow: only two things do that
CCShadow: MySpace pages and the ark of the covenent
CCShadow: since the ark is from God, we can deduce who sent MySpace

Interesting… someone got a Mactel to dualboot OS X and WinXP.

D'Arque Bishop

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/16/1329206

niemassacre writes “According to winxponmac.com, the contest has been won – nearly $14k to narf2006 for submitting a working solution to dual-booting Windows XP and Mac OS X on an Intel-Powered mac. A thread on osx86project.org has confirmations from several testers that the procedure works on the 17″ iMac, the Mac mini, and the MacBook Pro. Many sets of pictures and videos (such as this installation video) are floating around (and mentioned in the thread). The solution itself should be posted soon.” Poit! Congratulations to narf.

The thread at osx86project.org appears to be Slashdotted, but even so this is a very interesting development. I know at least one person who would get a MacBook Pro if he could dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows XP Professional on it. It’s certainly something I would end up doing sooner or later once I get an Intel-based Mac laptop. Congratulations to narf2006 for figuring it out!

A real life War of the Roses?

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/world/3721051.html

MEXICO CITY – A Mexican couple were recovering separately after a marital spat got out of control and saw them firing guns, throwing knives and hurling homemade bombs, Mexican daily Milenio said Monday.

In scenes taken straight out of hit romantic action comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Juan Espinosa and Irma Contreras fought until their house blew up in a homemade gasoline bomb explosion, Milenio said.

Police called to the home in the indigenous Maya Indian town of Oxkutzcab in the southeastern state of Yucatan arrested Espinosa. Contreras was taken to hospital with third-degree burns.

A local police official confirmed the report but declined to provide further information.