theJANG.net
Bamidele O. Shangobunmi

JANG Speaks!: January 2008

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Moar powar! Less powar :(

So here's a funny story.  Last night my PS3 arrived, so naturally I was anxious to set that up.  I got it all going, got the controller charging, and tried out some demos.  I don't have my memory card adapter yet so I can't yet port my PS2 stuff over, and anyhow my PS2 was busy playing through the last 24hr race in Gran Turismo 4 (B-spec mode).  It was up to hour 23.

Okay, so I had two Playstations running.  Then a friend said he might come on XBox Live to do some Halo, and I hadn't yet been able to hook up with him, so I turned the 360 on too in case he showed up.  So that's 3 consoles.

Really nothing was happening so I switched to TV.  Three consoles + TV.

During commercials, turned on my computer.  Three consoles + TV + PC.

All this stuff going on right? So what happened?  The power went out.  No, I didn't blow a fuse, the whole neighborhood was out. So, I went to call the electric company to report the outage, but my cel phone was almost dead and wasn't gonna make it through the wait time.  However, I couldn't exactly put it on a charger with the power out, right?! I didn't have a car charger either!

I thought for awhile, and remembered my laptop.  I pulled it out, powered it on, and grabbed the USB cable from my PS3 to use as a charge cord.  Just my luck, the laptop had less than 8% charge remaining... I forgot to charge it last time I used it.  So, I turned it down to the absolute minimum power consumption possible and milk it down to 2% before shutting it off.  That gave me just enough power to make my electric company call.  It turns out, about ~4000 people are out of power, and there's no ETA.

I decided to head to Target to hang out there until they closed (which would be in less than an hour) and hopefully pick up a car charger for my phone, which I did.

So I get home, and I kid you not, AS I PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY, the power came back on.

The end.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Rant: Star Wars... in EVERYthing?

Ok here's the deal. I'm a fan of Star Wars. Well, at least the original trilogy, and select segments of the prequels. However, the Lucas camp has been inserting the franchise into too, too many places that in my opinion, it does. not. belong.

My biggest beef is with the Star Wars Transformers. Also a Transformers fan! But you don't make a Transformers Chewbacca, nor a Transformers Han Solo! And you especially don't make a Transformers Chewbacca and a Transformers Han Solo that combine together Voltron-style to make a Transformers Millennium Falcon! That's just all bad in all ways!

Oh but there's more. Games. There have been some truly great Star Wars games, right? Heck, the original arcade. X-Wing. Tie Fighter. X-Wing: Alliance. Rogue Squadron. Battlefront & 2. Then came the Lego mashup. Well I'm a big Lego fan too! Well guess what? That mashup worked, and worked well!

I mentioned there was more. Yep. Here it is:

http://www.gamestop.com/productmerch.asp?groupid=935

Watch it.

Just watch it.

All the way through.

Do I see what I think I see? That's a video for the latest installment in the Soul Caliber, the first blade-based fighting game to break through in the years when graphics power was going exponential. But wait. Is that freakin' Darth Vader's breathing I hear? Oh no. Yoda?!?!

What's next? Obi Wan Tennis for Wii? Ki Adi Mundi as an unlockable character in DDR?