Friday, June 09, 2006

Moving to Mountain View

I have accepted a job offer at Google and will be moving to Mountain View in the very near future. I am saddened to leave Santa Barbara, but equally excited about what's to come ahead, which hopefully will consist of challenging and good times. If anyone has any advice on good neighborhoods, places to live, feel free to post.

Carpe Diem

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Windows Vista Beta 2, Free to Download and Use

Windows Vista Beta 2 is officially free to download and use. This is a smart move on Microsoft's part. Vista has bugs. As people start using their new operating system, error reports will be submitted to Microsoft. A big user base is priceless during beta testing. Way to go common sense. Another word on common sense - it appears that the Windows server farms are being overloaded because everyone is trying to download the new OS. Well, a few people who do have common sense put up this website, which is a torrent of the Vista Beta 2 ISO. Sigh.

Monday, June 05, 2006

New Games, Old Games, Imagination

I have always been a fan of game playability/fun factor/games that make you use your imagination - similar to a book. IMHO complicated graphics, sound, and movies inside games seem like they tend to take away from the fun of the game. If I wanted to play a game that looked absolutely like real life, I guess I woulnd't use a game console and go play real tennis. The 256 colors and the 8-bit sound had a magic to it.

There used to be a game by Lucasfilms called Indiana Jones 3, Last crusade, on the PC, around 1990 or so, in the game you could go anywhere you wanted, and solve puzzles not necessarily in the order that they need to be solved. Graphics were VGA, 256 colors, but now that I think about it, the fact that I used my imagination more might have made the game a bit more fun; the fact that the boss didn't look picture perfect helped him out a bit, similar to reading a book and visualizing the characters.

It's hard to pin down what I'm really trying to say here, but I loved the Sierra games of the 80s, but maybe it's beause I'm older, but today's games just don't do it for me anymore. The other day I played mario kart and super mario world (is that what it was called) on the super nintendo, and had tons of fun, despite how old it is. Seems like the Wii is trying appeal to this kind of demand.