themeltons.net

If you haven’t noticed by my Gamercard above, I’ve been playing quite a bit of Rock Band lately (pitiful Gamerscore notwithstanding). It’s a great party game because you can have one person playing guitar, one playing bass (provided you have an extra guitar), one singing, and one playing drums. Good fun!

One major issue with Rock Band is that the drums are incredibly loud. As such, there are several mods floating around teh intarnets to help remediate this issue. Below are some of the ones that seem to be most accepted amongst the geek culture.

http://www.generationgamerz.com/v2/insight/time-for-rock-band-arts-crafts.php

http://www.metafluence.com/rock-band-drum-pedal-problem-turned-mod

http://www.metafluence.com/rock-band-drum-mod-round-up

There is an article at Boston.com about the imcompatibility between the PS3 Guitar Hero III controller and the Rock Band game. The long and the short of it is that Harmonix has a patch to make the GH III guitar compatible with Rock Band, but Activision wants…uh…compensation. It really is a great big crock of steaming BS, because the only people who are suffering are PS3 gamers.

In other news, Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank because the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band works with the GH III controller. This is because, in order to get certified to work on the 360, Microsoft forces developers to make their controllers conform to a standard. That way, I can use my GH II controller to play Project Gotham Racing 3, if I choose (not that I have). On the surface, it seemed like a way for M$ to strongarm developers, but now, it seems like a brilliant move.

Running

Good question. Things have changed a bit since the Chicago Marathon and the Indianapolis Marathon last month. We have several months before we run the Indy Mini in May 2008. So, where do we go from here?

Dawn decided she wanted to train for a 10K until the first part of next year. We’re not sure where we’ll find a 10K to run in, but she wants to get Preferred Seeding for the Mini, so she needs to find somewhere to get a time that will put her there. She JUST missed Preferred Seeding with her time in the Indianapolis Marathon by 9 seconds.

Me, I’m training for a 5K. My goal is to be able to keep up with Braden some. I’ve got a long way to go, but if I work hard, maybe I’ll actually be able to keep up with the Bellmont High girls (one of them ran a 20:33!).

I’ve got my run times posted on the Run Log page. I’m not happy with the way things look, but at least it’s something. I’m actually running 5 days per week totaling over 30 miles per week most weeks. That’s a huge change from the 3 days per week I was running and a much bigger commitment; it’s cold and rainy this time of year. Oh well…I’ll live…maybe.

Gaming

So, what I have been doing when I’m not working or running? Playing a multitude of games! This fall/winter has been the gaming equivalent of the The Perfect Storm. There are sooooo many great games out there, I don’t think I have enough time or money to play them all!

Where does one start feasting on all the gaming goodness? The best place…nay, the mandatory place MUST be Orange Box. Hands down, this is the absolute best value in the history of gaming. The total package of gaming, Orange Box includes Half Life 2, Half Life 2: Episode One, Half Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, Portal, and, if you pre-ordered the PC version from Steam, Peggle Extreme. All of this for $50 on the PC and $60 on the Xbox 360! Portal is probably worth the price of Orange Box on its own.

I’m currently knee deep in Hellgate: London. Hellgate is the creation of Flagship Studios…essentially the dev team that created Diablo and Diablo II for Blizzard Entertainment. HGL is a pretty good game; it’s Diablo with a few new innovations. Unfortunately, there are a ton of other games just waiting to absorb my time. We’ll see how long I’ll be in London.

So, what am I looking forward to? To name a few, there is Crysis, Mass Effect, Guitar Hero III, Rock Band, and Assassin’s Creed. There is even more that I can’t think of off the top of my head.

Ahhhh, the Perfect Storm…

I’ll have a big post this weekend (hopefully), but while I was cruising teh internets, I ran across this young man rockin’ Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360. The song is a My Chemical Romance song called Dead!.

BTW - The kid is only 8 and if you look closely at the end of the song, he’s playing it on Expert Mode! My jaw damn near hit the floor. Enjoy!

I’ve made a few site updates to the Utilities and Playlist pages.  They are far from complete, but at least I’ve got a start.  I’ll update more as soon as I can, but I have some house contruction to get hot on.