The past week was rather busy in preparing for a trip to Australia. Yep, I’m going to Australai for a few week’s vacation next month (May). Last week I was working on the initial paperwork, so this week I’m gonna be working on the plane tickets.
So basically, I didn’t have time for much else. I will mention some stuff I did last week:
- worked mostly on Guild Wars to get my Paragon “Kapitan Tiago” to the last two missions
- played some Warcraft III
- fixed some stuff on the blog
- tried to tweak the URL redirection for this blog (and failed, Blogger, [please fix this soon)
- watched Gray Matters, not my type of movie, but objectively not all that bad
- watched The Philippine Madrigal Signers at CCP with my SO (they were very good)
Want to know what cards will be in Future Sight? Wizards of the Coast has already updated Gatherer (the official card database) with entries of the cards that will be in Future Sight.
If the Future Sight Mini-site has been teasing you this long, perhaps you can take a look at what’s actually gonna be there.
Tags: MtG
I went to a nearby local comic/magazine/hobby to look for some back issues of Inquest when I noticed “Hobbycraft Magazine”. It was a local publication from PSICOM, was cheap, was new (1st issue just this April), and it seemed to include stuff about Magic: The Gathering. Being on the lookout for good local stuff, I got myself a copy.
“Hobbycraft Magazine” focuses on various on various “hobbies” in the Western geek context, mainly toys, card games, and collectibles. It appears to be InQuest Gamer, Toyfare, and some Magic: The Gathering website articles put together in local (Philippine) context. I don’t read Toyfare, so I can’t comment on how similar the toy related content is, but I have been reading InQuest regularly for a while, and I can see some similarities, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Budget decks, top cards, and playtests of featured decks are some things you’ll find familiar.
What i did like was the local context of it all. Card prices are in Philippine Peso, the lists don’t appear to be taken from other mags but based on local usage (though I don’t know how they come-up with their lists), and the decklists are based on local competitions. They also give you the who’s who on the various tournaments around.
I also give them credit for the general writing quality. I have been reading a local magazine that delves almost exclusively on online games, and though the news is updated, the writing leaves a lot to be desired in terms of content. Needless to say, I stopped reading that mag. The writing in Hobbycraft, however, generally has a good amount of meat per paragraph, which allows the reader to take in quite a bit of information considering the short write-ups. The quips on their pictures are also pretty good.
Issue #1 focused on Transformers, so it isn’t a surprise that most of the mag revolved around everything Autobot and Decepticon (plug: Transformers fans might want to check this out). Their toy reviews are pretty comprehensive, which is quite impressive. I wasn’t too hot on their “Prime rating” (i.e. using Optimus Prime instead of stars), but otherwise, they covered a lot of ground for each item reviewed. The price is also very reasonable, even compared to the new local price for InQuest.
It ain’t all perfect, tho, there are hiccups. For one, I saw some headings that slipped through editing. Also, I can’t seem to tell who wrote which article. Regarding the writing, as much as I praised the density of information, that style is a sort of double edged sword. There were parts where you’d have to be in the know to understand what the author is trying to say. For the most part, this was fine with me, but it may deter some real newbies to the genre.
Given focus, the local flavor, the price, and how much information they provide for your peso, I think “Hobbycraft Magazine” is off to a good start. Aside from the editorial slips (which I hopte won’t be there next time), I don’t have much qualms. I don’t really mind the jargon, but I hope they know which articles are for the newbies and which articles can handle the geek speak. It’s the debut issue, so we’ll have to see how things will be in the future. So far, though, I’m very glad I found something to read aside from InQuest.
If you’re interested in Magic: The Gathering, Word of Warcraft TCG, and toys in the Philippine context, grab a copy of “Hobbycraft Magazine”.
PS:
Given that the issue is about Transformers, if you’re interested in what “alternative Transformers” might be like should check this out.
Tags: MtG, picsIt’s so mind boggling that I just have to mention it before I get some sleep.
My SO requested me to get her either some corn or a watermelon on my way back from the province. I got her a watermelon and went to her place to give it to her before I went home. She opened the door cradling Hanachi-e (her cat). My SO was happy to see the watermelon, but Hanachi-e seemed to flinch. She snickered that maybe Hanachi-e was afraid of the watermelon, which was funny, so I lifted the watermelon a bit to check for a reaction…
… then Hanachi-e bolted away hissing!
It might make a lot of sense to Hanachi-e but it was so perplexing to me and my SO. I set the watermelon on her table and placed Hanachi-e beside it to confirm. Hanachi-e slowly crept toward it, gave it 2 sniffs, then hissed as she backed away!
Conclusion, the watermelon is eeeeevilllll!
Regular visitors might notice that I’m significantly more quiet this week than last. So, what have I been up to?
Basically, this turned out to be an errand, gaming backlog, and investigation week. I’ve been busy doing errands and various maintenance stuff for myself and my home Related to these, I’ve also been preparing some paperwork (heh, for someone who ain’t workin’, I got a ton of paperwork on my backlog). All of these are mundane, no need to get into details.
As for the stuff I’ve been investigating, they are, briefly, the following:
- Xfire IM client
- PlayLinc IM client
- Great Games Experiment and MobyGames
- how to best track the books I own/read
- how to automatically add multiple social bookmarks in every post
For now, I’ll just talk about Xfire and PlayLinc.
Remembering a previous post, my thoughts wandered around the possibility of the standardized “gamertag”. After looking around in related topics, I eventually ran into the Xfire IM, and I quickly realized that 1) I should have found this sooner, and 2) this is how those people at various gaming forums are posting gamertag-like signatures.
For my current state, the main issue I have with Xfire is that, well, I don’t have any online pals that’ll use it. I typically play with a random set of people, and I don’t have a set of people who I regularly play with yet. Given this, it’s not very useful for me in the IM sense.
It is, however, almost exactly the kind of time-tracker I’ve been looking for. In my previous office, the management has been trying out various software to track your application usage, for productivity purposes. Well, I’m not too keen on that, but something to track my gameplay would be super! Xfire does track how long you’ve been playing your games, and allows you to display your stats in a banner. Unfortunately, the games I play don’t support stats, but other games (particularly shooters) have other stats that can be displayed.
Of course, Xfire has other features like being a game server/lobby, auto-joining on going games in games that support it, and in-game chatting with Xfire buddies. All great features. I won’t be using these features soon, though. For now, the game-time tracking feature is enough reason for me to keep using Xfire. Besides, I get to contribute to the stats that tally which games are most played.
In line with Xfire, I also ran into PlayLinc. Boasting some additional features and enhancements, I thought I should try it out. I ran into several disappointments in the onset, however.
For one, you choose among two (for now) installers, each with a different “theme” (aka, corporate sponsor?). Although annoying, this is quite superficial, so I let this slide. After installation, I learned that it’s tied with AOL and ICQ, so it appeared that I could use my old ICQ account (and that it uses AOL/ICQ as its messaging platform). I logged in, and there were several hiccups regarding not being able to access certain servers, but I did somehow got in the app. These, I’ll let slide too, as I don’t use a lot of features related to server hosting, searching, etc.
What did annoy me was that, it only detected only 2 games of mine (Warcraft III and Frozen Throne). In fairness, Xfire wasn’t able to detect some games of mine too (like Puzzle Pirates, Bang! Howdy, and Bookworm Adventures), but the games it didn’t find were somewhat understandable (Bang! Howdy should’ve been found IMHO, Puzzle Pirates is heavily Java, so it probably doesn’t detect Java based stuff, and Bookworm Adventures is probably under their bias). PlayLinc, however, wasn’t able to detect anything except for Warcraft. Hell, it didn’t even detect Guild Wars!
To add insult to injury, I played a few Warcraft games to see what it can do, and I wasn’t even able to detect me playing the game, not to mention track how long I played it! Given that that’s the only reason why I actually need this type of software, I decided that yes, the negative comments about PlayLinc that I read had a solid basis, and yes, I can’t make use of it. I gave it some more runs in Warcraft to try and detect, but I eventually removed the app in frustration.
For now, Xfire has my support, even if I don’t maximize it.
PS:
More on the other items I’ve been investigating at a later post.
If a Gameboy, an XBox 360, or My Little Pony were Autobots… what would they look like?
The people at Something Awful thought of that too, but they decided to take it further making a lot of hilarious mock-ups!
They just have to be seen to believe! View them here. Don’t forget to read the text/captions in each one.
No tags for this post.Love Street Fighter? I do. Capcom has been re-releasing and rehashing the old game for the past decade, which is somewhat fine with me given that they were pretty much perfect already. What annoys me is that they never seem to have upgraded the sprites at all! The last sprite upgrade came from Street Fighter III, but all newer games would use sprites from older releases. A 16 frame, relatively well detailed Chun-Li is kinda annoying to be fighting with an 8 frame Guile.
Now, we have some re-releases of “Super Street Fighter II Turbo” and “Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo” for the Xbox Live (XBL) and the Playstation Network (PSN). Both games were great, and online play is what I’ve been waiting for all my life. These re-releases, however will ahve something more than just adding online play:
- updated sprites
- modified gameplay
Although I’m quite excited about the modified gameplay, Capcom has already released a lot of games that mix and match “game mechanics”. For now, I’m more excited to see the new sprites! The new sprites will be made by UDON (the guys who drew the Street Fighter comics in the US), whose are is pretty good.
If the online function plays well in the Philippines, it might be the excuse I’ve been waiting for to get myself an Xbox 360.
Tags: Street FighterThere was been a recall of pet foods recently in the US and Canada due to the presence of “wheat gluten”. The issue is with “melamine”, an ingredient in wheat gluten, which is currently under investigation for causing several dogs and cats to die. Melamine is also used in plastics and has some levels of toxicity. Although some argue that melamine has a very high tolerance level, current investigations are still following that lead in the recent pet deaths, so several manufacturers of cat and dog food (wet and dry) have begun recalls of their products which contain wheat gluten.
When my SO got wind of this, she immediately asked me to check what we’ve been feeding Hanachi-e (as well as other stuff I might feed Hanachi-e when she hangs out at my place). Fortunately, there were no problems. Wheat gluten is not everywhere and anywhere in cat food, so I guess we just have to read the labels before purchasing new catfood for Hanachi-e.
Until the investigation gets done, it is perhaps prudent to check what you feed your pet for wheat gluten or melamine.
ASPCA press release | About Melamine and Wheat Gluten Toxicity
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