For the first time in my Texas life, I was able to shoot off fireworks instead of only watching them. Andrew and I bought a modest bundle (spending around $130) and along with a couple of pals who were over, the whole family had fun setting them off. No photos of the action, but here’s one of our supply before we got started.
Author: bruce
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Fireworks in Ellis County
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The Projector Arrived
Dying to try out the new projector, I quickly threw together this makeshift screen: blackout cloth thumb-tacked to a 10-foot 1×6 which was balanced on top of an upturned bed frame. Components (A/V receiver, satellite receiver, etc.) are just scattered on the floor. Boy was I was impatient! The projector picture had ripples because of the loose screen material, but it was still the best picture I had ever seen. Gotta build my real screen soon. -
A Moving Story
We are really digging the new house. So much work to do still, though. For a while, I was almost dead (I added yet another “Person most likely to be mistaken for a corpse” award to my huge collection.)
Thank God we had tons of help, or we would have never gotten done. Since Monday, everyone who has come to the new house has stopped at the old house to pick up a load. We had countless Rodeo, CRV, Caravan, Highlander, Tacoma, and Ram loads brought down. By Tuesday night, we had moved an impressive amount of boxes and such. At one point I started thinking that we wouldn’t need a very large U-Haul to get the remainder. Boy was I wrong!
On Wednesday, I picked up the 26-foot “Super Mover” at 8am. The worst part about moving during the week is that lots of the crew wasn’t available to help until the evening. So Michelle and I start loading up the U-Haul by ourselves, and as I predicted, we started thinking $1500 for movers sounded better and better. Luckily, my firefighter pal Joe (Amanda’s husband) was able to start helping in the early afternoon and we had that “Super Mover” packed to the top, from the front to the back. (Photos later, after I can find my CF card reader in whatever box it’s in.) Joe had a prior engagement, so he couldn’t help me unload once I drove that behemoth down here (The truck was so big I couldn’t get it into my new driveway — I had to drive it on the so-called lawn). Surprisingly, one of Michelle’s cousins whom I barely know was waiting to help me unload. We had gotten it about half unloaded when a huge caravan of packed vehicles and workers showed up. The remainder of the unloading went quickly, but chaotically. Due to haphazard stacking, the garage was full way earlier than it should have been. We had to stop unloading at one point and rearrange the garage so we get everything else to fit.
The next morning, we went to the old house with the plan of picking up what I expected to be the “few” remaining items. I thought with how much stuff the 5 additional vehicles had brought down Wednesday night, surely the house and garage must nearly be empty. I was nearly floored when I saw how much remained. I quickly determined that we needed another U-Haul. This time we got a 17-foot “Easy Loading Mover” (much easier to drive with its automatic transmission) and started filling it up. Joe showed up again and we packed that whole truck full and again, Joe had to leave. (He’s worked harder than most anyone and has yet to see the new house). Joey came down and he and I unloaded the 17-footer (after more garage rearranging) and finally I was able to sit down and have a beer.
We’ve been sleeping on beds without frames and my computer desk right now is a file cabinet. We’ve got tons of work still to do, but at least the time pressure is off, and we can unpack and settle in at our leisure.
On a fun note, the proper home theater is really gonna happen. I have ordered the Sony VPL-HS20 Front Projector and it should be arriving early next week. Then I will get to determine the best placement for it, build the screen, and finally pick out some cool seating. We’re thinking something like the red seats near the middle of this page: http://www.palliser.com/?action=view_catalog&Join_ID=335234&template=living_home_theatre_group.htm7
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Ordered the Projector
I order the Sony VPL-HS20 Projector from bhphotovideo.com. They had one of the best prices on the Web, and I knew them to be reputable. Because I had just moved, my shipping address didn’t match the address on my credit card. To make sure I was really the one using the card, and that I wanted the projector shipped to the right place, they insisted on speaking to me on the phone. This caused a couple of days delay before shipping. -
Closed on the New House
One way Michelle convinced me to move out to the sticks was by promising that I would finally have a dedicated theater room. The house we bought has a 19×17 foot room upstairs that should work out just fine. Even though the ceiling is partially slanted, we’ll be able to make this work.
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Rad New Designs with my Nephew Cameron
My sister Chris and her 14 year-old son Cameron came down from Oklahoma for a visit this past weekend since they had Monday off for Martin Luther King Day. Lots of our time was spent making boomerangs with Cameron. This kid came up with some crazy new designs, and even though they may look like weapons of some sort, I’m happy to say that at the end of his visit, they were flying great. In case you’re thinking the 3-blader’s paint job looks too good to be true, you’re right. We scanned in the boomerang and then used Photoshop to try out paint jobs until we found one we liked. I forgot to get photos of the finished products, but next time I see Cameron, I’ll be sure to do so.
It was cold and rainy most of the weekend and to get to the workshop, we practically had to wade through a pond in my back yard. After a couple of days of this, we were dying to try out these new designs. Luckily Monday (the last day of Cameron’s stay) was a reasonably nice day. It was cold and windy, but at least the sun was out. I took the kids up to the field for a while and we were pleased to see that these radical new untested designs flew like champs. Thank goodness we didn’t have to work on them after testing, because due to time considerations, we had already painted them. Soon Holly was ready to go home, but Andrew and Cameron wanted to stay. I left them at the field alone for a while and they made great use of that practice time. Cameron has only thrown a few times, but he has caught on quickly, and later on Monday he was competing quite respectably in a few rounds of GLORP with Andrew and I.
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2003 USBA National Boomerang Expo in Houston
Though I flipped and flopped about whether to actually attend this thing, boy am I glad we went! We had planned to merely spectate, take part in workshops, and help out wherever we could, but on the night we arrived, I ran into tournament director Tony Brazelton, and he convinced Andrew, Holly, and me to sign up for the actual competitions. Andrew, or “Ace” as he was known by the other boomerangers, is now the National Champion of the both the Novice and Junior divisions. Holly won several silver medals, and I even managed to score a few medals myself in the Intermediate division. Check back soon for a longer write-up on this super-fun event, but for now enjoy the photo galleries. You may also be interested in these articles from the local Houston papers:
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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Review
Score 9.6/10
Graphics: 9 Sound: 10 Gameplay: 9 Value: 10 Tilt: 10 (Using Gamespot’s rating system (Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, Value, Reviewer’s Tilt)
This is simply the greatest video game ever created. There’s still room for improvement, but so far, this is the best.
I loved GTA3 on the PC, and often while playing Vice City on the PS2, I’ll find myself wishing that it, too was on the PC. I had gotten totally spoiled by 1280×1024 resolution on a 19″ monitor in GTA3. ~640×480 on a 50 inch screen is comparatively fuzzy. Maybe this is the incentive I need to finally go HDTV.
Even though I’d rather be playing it on a PC, that won’t happen for several months yet. So right now for GTA:VC, the PS2 is the only way to play. And play I have! I’m almost embarrassed about the number of hours I’ve logged playing this thing. (Probably more than my top 2 Xbox games combined.) It is the epitome of addictive. The open-ended, non-linear gameplay means that if you’re having trouble with a certain mission, you don’t put the game down and come back to it later, you just avoid that particular mission for a while and go do some jobs for a different scumbag boss, or play any of the myriad of side-missions like Vigilante Mode, Taxi Driver, Stunt Driving, the Rampages, or just explore for Hidden Packages, or Unique Jumps. The things to do are nearly endless. I am truly amazed at the scope of this game. The number of characters, vehicles, weapons, missions, and just the size of the city are staggering.
Is this really that much better than GTA3? Oh yes. The motorcycles are a blast to ride and are probably my favorite improvement. The airplanes and helicopters, both real ones and bomb-dropping, remote-controlled toys are super-cool. You can while away quite a bit of playing time just flying over the city and taking it all in. Indoor locations (and being able to hold them up) add an interesting variation. You also have the ability to buy property and after completing the location’s required missions, have it generate more income for you. Finally something to spend your hard-earned fake money on.
I don’t have DTS on my receiver to enjoy the surround sound that this game offers, but the voice acting and 80s music soundtrack are so excellent that I have to rate the sound a “10”. There’s nothing wrong with the engine, weapon, and ambient sound effects in normal stereo, but I’d sure like to experience them on DTS someday.
As far as controlling the game goes, I got used to it pretty quickly, but that “spoiled by GTA3 on the PC” syndrome really kicks in when I get in a gunfight with multiple assailants or when I want to do some zooming and sniping. The mouse control on the PC is pretty much perfect. I was really used to switching between my Wingman Rumblepad while driving and my mouse/keyboard controls while on the street. I don’t really know how they could improve the control much when using the PS2 controller, so I can’t complain too much, but maybe the developers could take some notes on how Halo does it on the Xbox.
What about the adult-ness of the game? Well, If GTA3 was the equivalent of PG-13 movie, this one is almost rated R. I don’t mean you should expect to see full frontal nudity, cartoon sex, or anything like that (though a strip club and an adult movie studio are featured), but the humor is more “adult” and some of the missions involve worse things than just driving dancing girls to the policeman’s ball or picking up girlie-mags from the street. Even the radio DJs use more “blue” language, and the pedestrians and drivers you deal with curse much worse. Honestly, it’s nothing you wouldn’t hear in a PG-13 movie, but I personally preferred GTA3’s clever, suggestive style over VC’s let-it-all-hang-out “adult” language and situations. I think it takes more creativity to be funny without 4-letter words, and that it’s lazy writing to just toss them in. It may be more realistic for people you’re terrorizing in the streets to let the expletives fly, but I sure preferred GTA3’s way of doing things in that area.
I recently told a friend who had just purchased an Xbox that he had made the right choice in picking it over the PS2. Knowing him to be a fan of GTA3 on the PC, I said that GTA:VC was excellent, but not worth $250 (console+game). I’m nearly tempted to go back on that. If a game’s worth is measured by how much time you spend enjoying it, $50 for the game is one of the world’s best entertainment bargains. Is it worth buying a PS2 just to play this one game? Well, for normal working-class Joes like me, that’d be awfully tough to justify, but as I’ve said previously, if you can afford both an Xbox and a PS2, I highly recommend it. If you can wait a few months for it to come out on the PC (and your PC is powerful enough), that’s another fine way to go, but whatever you do, you’ve got to play this game.
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The Sport of the 21st Century Immortalized in Verse
All the kids in Andrew’s school (K-6) were tasked with writing poems for the “DBU Lab School Book of Poetry”. One the styles that they had a choice of using was a “Name Poem”, where you take something you’re interested in, and write a poem using the first letters of that word to begin each line of the poem. There were name poems on “BASEBALL”, “CHEERLEADER”, “SOCCER” and the like, but check out my young son’s entry:
The ball is flying
Really, really fast!!!
A raging battle goes on
Comes down to this…
Blasting the ball
And making it curve.
Life saving shots,
Look at the ball, and how it swerves.
Anyone who has never played the Sport of the 21st Century, or at least seen “Tron”, would probably consider it nonsensical at best, but reading this was one of my proudest moments as a father!
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Digital Camera Fun
Well, we’ve taken tons of photos with the new digital camera. By the camera’s reckoning, over 330 so far! But how many of those would people actually be interested in seeing? Not many, I’d bet. A select few are on the Newest Stuff page.
More interesting than just basic photos of the family are the fun tricks we’re learning to do with the digital camera. I don’t expect many people happen to have 3D glasses lying around, but if you do, check this out.Basic fake photos are much easier to do with the digital camera. Here is a preliminary experiment, but I’ll have a much better version up soon.
We’ve also been experimenting with bluescreen techniques for making fake photos. At first we were using our television with a pure blue picture as the bluescreen, but then we found out that Andrew’s bedroom wall is fairly decent for this when we use a little extra lighting. Plus it’s way bigger than that 50″ TV. We’ve done just a couple of composite photos so far, but the real fun begins when we start using the bluescreen for video!
And on a totally unrelated note, I threw together a fun little Java applet to help you really annoy your chat buddies. Click here to visit the Chat-SHOUT page.
