August 2007 Archives

This is my first post about any game on this blog so I hope it's worthwhile.

I had been following a new game for quite a while now and it finally came out yesterday and I had the opportunity to pick up a copy. This game is known as Bioshock (as if you couldn't tell that from the title of this post). This has been labeled as a "shooter" game but it's really so much more than that.

Bioshock comes from the creators of System Shock 2 which has somewhat of a cult following and it was definitely a very very creepy game. Super atmosphere etc. Bioshock delivers on all of that so far. The setting is in an underwater city built by a man that didn't fit in any current society of the 40s and 50s. He built a city that wasn't constrained by such trivial things such as morality or ethics. When you arrive to the city you can tell right away that something terrible has happened and now your caught in it too. I won't reveal any of the actual story I've learned so far but I can tell you that you will have to make "moral" choices at some point and this will begin to take you down certain roads whichever way you go.

The sound in Bioshock is perfect. If you stand in a safe place and crank up your sound you can hear the creaking of the water pressure, the running water somewhere off in the distance and maybe some electricity sparking nearby. It's fantastic. Voice work is also top notch from what I've heard and you also find these really cool little voice recordings all over the place which help reveal little bits of the story as you adventure forth.

Graphically the game is quite impressive. I'm running it on the Xbox 360 in High Definition since my gaming PC is not quite up to par anymore so that's what my system is right now. :) Anyway the whole things looks great. When the game first started I sat a couple minutes in the water before I realized I wasn't watching a cinematic anymore and that I could control the camera! :)

There are many what some would call RPG elements in the game, similar to SS2 and games such as Deus Ex. You can upgrade your character, your weapons and some physical abilities. Weaponry is a mix between "Plasmids" which are genetic alterations so you can do things like Telekinesis, fire from your fingers, electricity etc. You'll find these and more scattered about the city and can be changed out and such at various places on the levels. Conventional weapons are standard 1940s and 50s era weaponry. Pistol, "Tommy Gun" Machinegun and shotguns. I find myself switching between plasmids and weapons often as you can do things sort of like combos. Shock a bad guy then whack him with a wrench etc.

I have really enjoyed the time spent in the game thus far. Lets put it this way, I wrote this small post during my lunch and I can't wait to get off work today so I can immerse myself in the city of Rapture once again.

Link!

Here is a link to another blog that lists several very nice applications for Linux with instructions specifically for Ubuntu. Some of the applications are easier installed through Automatix but you can do it this way too. Some of the apps are not really what I'd recommend installing either but it's still worth checking out. I really should compile my own list soon. I'll add that to my to do list. :)

***UNFINISHED***

OK, third product. I will warn you now though. I haven't finished a good review of the product yet, only been able to review the local LAN backups and such. Once I get a friend to be a guinea pig for me I will update this with my results there.
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CrashPlan is a product that allows you to do on-site and off-site backups to location you trust. The problem some people have with many online backup services is they can't walk over to that company's data center and say "That's my backup". CrashPlan tries to fix this by allowing you to backup your data to a friend's computer at their house. This also helps with getting your data back faster in the case of an emergency so you don't have to wait for your internet connection to download stuff. This also solves the problem with privacy because any data sent to a backup is scrambled and encrypted before it leaves your computer so your best friend can't paruse any pr0n you're backing up nor look at your bank information. :)

In turn, you can become a backup buddy for your friend. He can backup his stuff to your computer. Sounds like a great system to me. My local network backups to/from some of my PCs and Macs have worked fine. I haven't yet been able to test backups to a real off-site location but if it works like FolderShare it should be a snap.

You can try the software fully featured free for 30 Days and after that you must buy the software. It's a one time license of $20 per PC you are backing up FROM. It would cost your backup friend NOTHING to keep accepting your backups. It would only cost them $20 if they want to backup also.

Check the site, watch the tour and see what you think. Sounds good and with backing up to friends you don't have to worry about size limitations and cost per month. You only have to be concerned with how much space you're taking up on your friends hard drive :)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. You can back up to as many friends as you can talk into installing the software. Redundancy!

I will update this post once I can test out this friend stuff and get some results.

***UNFINISHED***

OK, 2nd cool product.

FolderShare.

This is a very very cool program and service that allows you to basically sync folders on multiple PCs. Here is a direct quote from their website:

Why FolderShare?
Keep important files at your fingertips - anywhere. All file changes are automatically synchronized between linked computers, so you are always accessing the latest documents, photos, and files.

Sounds nice eh? It is. It's also multiplatform so you can install it on Windows and Macs and syncronize any files and folders between them. For instance, you can setup and automatic syncronization of all the "My Documents" folders on ALL your PCs so that no matter which PC you're working on/from the data will be the same. You can also syncronize Pictures, Videos, Music whatever. The software doesn't care.

Have a bunch of stuff you want so share with a friend? You can do that too. Specify a folder on your system, invite your friend and after he installs the software he will get your files automatically. You can also specify that your friend is just a "Reviewer, Editor, Contributor" etc which gives you various security options. A reviewer can't send you new files or changed files. An Editor can change files and you'll get those updates but not any new files. Contributor gives all those rights.

In my testing this software has synced through firewalls and NAT so it should work for most people. There is a support section that helps with port forwarding and such if it becomes necessary.

I've installed this on all 5 of my PCs and am happily syncronized with all my important data. Ah ha, I know what you're thinking. "Why can't I use this to create off-site backups of all my important data with my friends or something?" Well you could, but then your friends would also be able to browse through all your files. And do you really want them looking at your bank data?

See my next post about CrashPlan for a solution to this.

I try to find good stuff to share but sometimes it's hard. I have recently come across not one, but three great products. The first of which I'll explain here. It's a company called Mozy and they do online backup. Sounds good right? Even better is they give you 2 GB for free, you'll get an additional 256MB on top of that if you use my link I've provided and it works from Windows and Macintosh. The Mac version is still considered Beta but I haven't run into any adverse effects from using it yet.

Just like any other online backup solution it will take a while depending on your upload speed on your ISP connection to get all your initial data backed up, but after that it simply sends changes and small incremental updates to the server so it's much quicker. To restore you can use the client and restore different versions even. If you have to get lots of data back in a hurry and you can't wait for downloads they will FedEx you a restore disk for a fee. It was expensive but for mission critical data it could be worth it.

The service itself is pretty flawless and only takes a few minutes to install and start your first backup. Someday everybody will use something to keep OFF site backups in case your home/business is destroyed you can still get your data back from somewhere else. If you need more than the free 2 GB you can sign up for an "Unlimited" plan for $4.95 per month for each PC you are backing up. Three PCs? $4.95 x 3 per month. Not too bad considering peace of mind.

Here is the link to sign up:
https://mozy.com/?ref=887SQM