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Starcraft 2 gameplay footage ready for download

Here is a downloadable version of the Starcraft 2 footage at what I believe to be an acceptable compromise between video/audio quality and file size. I’m providing Quicktime, DivX and WMV files, so everyone should be able to view it. If you want it in some other format, feel free to convert it yourself.

Quicktime - 87.3 MB (640×480)
DivX - 59.2 MB (640×480)
Windows Media - 75.1 MB (640×480)
MP4 iPod - 37.7 MB (320×240)

This video is also available on YouTube.

This work by Matthew Mayers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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Gen Con 2007 Photos

For anyone who cares to see it, here is my Flickr photoset from Gen Con. None of the people in these photos is me.

http://flickr.com/photos/mmayers/sets/72157601573561185/

Posted in Culture, Games, Movies, Tech | 1 Comment »

Starcraft 2 In-game footage

Update: This video can now be downloaded in several different formats here.

As I mentioned before, I spent a lot of time hovering around the Blizzard booth. I also managed to get some footage of Starcraft 2 in action. I could tell you about it, but I’ll bet the Blizzard Employee in the video does a better job.

Video after the jump…

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World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

I’ll admit, the big Blizzard fan that I am, I spent a lot of my time hovering around their booth at Gen Con this year. I got a chance, briefly to run a pre-made 70 warlock around the areas of Northrend that exist so far. While the expansion is obviously far from done, it does look like it will add some interesting stuff. I was bummed that only part of the Howling Fjord a small section of Utgarde Keep were playable, but it was interesting to catch a glimpse of them anyhow. This demo was the exact same as what was shown at Blizzcon, so there was still no Death Knight available and I was unable to locate any of the destructible buildings… Anyway, hit the jump for a video of rogue-stealthing through Utgarde.

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Gen Con Indy

I'll be heading to Gen Con in Indianapolis this weekend. This will be my second year attending this convention and maybe next year I'll actually take the initiative to sign up for some of the gaming tournaments. But I'll take plenty of pictures of all the nerdy things and post them on flickr/this blog for everyone to enjoy.

Hit the jump for a relevant video clip…

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OMFG! iPhone super-mega mania week!

Holy effing crap! The iPhone is almost here and a new review of the damned thing hits my feed reader every five fucking minutes. Here are some relevant links…

• Professional Apple Fanboy Walt Mossberg apparently really likes it (big surprise).
• I think David Pogue likes it, but it seems like he put all of his effort into doing a humorous video in order to avoid actually reviewing it.
• Even non-geek cartoonists are getting in on the iPhone week excitement.
• The first guy in line for the damned thing at Apple Store NYC isn't exactly the kind of guy you want as a poster-boy for geeks.
• …and, most importantly, Engadget gives us a list of iPhone facts that have been taken from the various reviewers in the past day or two. This list is handy, as it gives you (mostly) reasons why it would be a waste of your god-damned money.

Yeah, the thing looks cool in its tiny form factor, has about the best-looking UI of any smartphone to date and (as Mr. Jobs would say) "scrolls like butter," but it doesn't have a lot of the most important features you would want in a pda/phone/audio device: Bluetooth support but no A2DP? Web browser with full HTML rendering but no Flash support? MP3 support but no MP3 ringtones? Hi-res (for a phone) camera and video playback but no support for video recording?

…WTF Apple?

Maybe one day in the distant future when I can break free of the bounds of my T-mobile contract and the second or third gen iPhone has been released with a lot of the above issues fixed, I'll buy one. But, not on friday. I have a cell-phone and I have an iPod. I don't need both in one device badly enough.

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Media Temple, here I come

Update: I've got everything migrated to Media Temple. It's pretty sweet so far, but it's only been a day. ;-)

So, this weekend I'm making a transition from my current host, Site5, to Media Temple. I've been looking into them for a while now, and I'm really intrigued by what they have to offer. It's a little bit more pricey than my current hosting plan, but the extra money is definitely worth it. As I've heard from others that use it, it's an amazing service and great for hosting Rails projects. I'll write about it again once I've had some time to assess it. For now, though, this blog will probably be unreachable for a few days while I make the transition… Not that it matters, since no one reads this anyway.

In the mean time, I suggest checking out Media Temple.

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Moving to Movable Type

Update: As you can see, I successfully wrote a little script and got my Typo entries into a format that Movable Type can import.

I'm fed up with Typo.

Don't get me wrong, I love Ruby on Rails and I do all of my web development with it. It's just that Typo has pissed me off for the last time. It craps out on me all the time with little indication as to what went wrong.

So, here is my brand new Moveable Type blog. It's empty because I haven't found a solid way to import Typo entries into MT yet, but I hope to. Of course, if I don't, I might just write my own migration script. So, it's MT for me unless I figure out what the hell is wrong with my Typo install.

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Review: Rocketfish Twister Mouse

Over the past week or so, I was given the opportunity to try out Rocketfish’s new portable wireless mouse called the Twister Mouse. For anyone who doesn’t know, Rocketfish is an in-house brand of electronics from Best Buy.

First of all, it works great with both Mac and Windows and it’s got a neat little touch-sensetive scroller instead of a wheel. Other than that, I was able to find little else good to say about this product. It’s uncomfortable to hold and doesn’t move across surfaces as smoothly as most laser mice. The shape of the device is far from ergonomically correct and after about 15-20 minutes of continued use, my hand started to get sore and I had to take a break.

In addition to the comfort issues, I also had problems with the mouse’s sub-par accuracy and bluetooth. The accuracy issue was made slightly better by bringing down the mouse tracking speed on my system, but really showed when I tried playing both WoW and Doom 3 with the mouse. Also, since it isn’t bluetooth enabled, I was forced to occupy one of my precious USB ports (I have a MacBook Pro) to attach the dongle.

I would say this mouse would be an excellent cheap solution for mobile computing if it were actually cheap, but at $44.99 it’s hardly worth the price. If your machine has the capability, you’re much better off spending the money on a bluetooth-enabled mouse. Otherwise, you might as well just spend the $10 on a cheap wired mouse.

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Cyber-riot: The day after

The madness over at digg has died down and the users have triumphed. Yesterday, the site was taken over by folks upset at digg’s attempt to remove stories that violated a C&D order. It was the goal of this C&D to stop the spread of a particular key that can be used to encrypt next-gen DVD’s for use on any platform. In defeat, found Kevin Rose, posted this on the official digg blog. He says:

…after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

Well, I’ve got one thing to say to the community: Most of you would have acted just the same as digg originally did if it was your ass on the line. By bending to your whim, digg is putting itself at a tremendous risk. One unfortunate lawsuit from the MPAA could kill digg for good and it would be your fault. The only reason most of the community is capable of ignoring this C&D outright is because they have nothing to lose. I don’t blame the digg staff for their original decision to attempt to take-down these posts and I feel sort of bad that they are forced to go against their will simply because the community that drives their site can’t grasp just how big this problem could potentially be. I can think of just one group to blame if digg goes down in flames because of this, and that is the digg users themselves.

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