Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock!

A nice little b-day gift from my family. Now I have an excuse to throw a party with the guys...It's Guitar Hero III for the Xbox 360!

One of the hottest games to come out this year, the GH3 is a game that allows you to play a very stupefied simplified guitar to some of the hottest hits of the 70's, through today. Basically you have a mini-plastic/play guitar that has several colored buttons on the neck that you press as soon as you see them on the screen/game; those notes are supposed to represent the notes played during a song (After playing it, the 'notes' are a combination of the drum beats, bass lines rhythm or lead guitar parts). In addition to hitting the correct buttons (in-time with the song), you have to hit this 'toggle switch' with your other hand which represents you strumming the strings at the right time.

I've played a few hours of this bad boy and its a blast! I've been playing easy just going through some of the levels and its really fun. I like it because alot of the songs I've actually played on guitar or bass in real life so I know the songs, its just a matter of getting a rhythm and following the screen. I can't wait to bust this out at a party! Overall a solid game.

PS: The real cool thing about it is you can go online and download new songs/albums; there is a small fee but a cool option for down the road!

12/21/07 2:00pm - I just finished the game on the Easy level. Time to pick it up a notch!

Podcast Pick: Joe's Podhole

Here's another one of my top podcasts pick. It one that I have been listening to for well over a year now. It called Joes Podhole and it put out by Joe Barnes, a regular guy like myself who lives in the greater Chicago suburban area.

I like his show because he a guy about my age and is very relateable. Joe holds a normal 9 to 5 job, has a wife and kid and likes his music. He is the self proclaimed 'defender of all music that doesn't suck' so he's plays stuff that I like; mostly rock or metal music. I first heard about JPH through a link from a favorite band of mine, Anthrax. He was interviewing them while they had a show in the Chicago area. Since that point, I listened to all his old podcasts which range from him interviewing some of the biggest rock bands in the world to simply talking to his mom, wife or friends.

This show is uncensored and is not for people whom are easily offended by burping, farting or the occasional swearing.

Hulu

So with alot of TV show content moving to the web these days, I thought I would share with you a new site to view TV shows online. It's called Hulu. Right now its in 'beta' which means its not open to everyone. I was lucky enough to get invited to the beta process which was pretty exciting.

Hulu is a video on-demand type site which allows you to login and watch many different TV shows put out by FOX, NBC and perhaps a few others. The online, streaming videos are of decent quality. You have a capability of 'popping-out' the video to a small, individual player/window which will allow you to position the window wherever you'd like.

Overall I am impressed with the variety of shows and quality of the video. With the ease of use, I can see this becoming pretty popular. The only downsides that I see is you can't download the video to your pc - you have to stream it from their site. The other downside is you have to endure a few 30 sec advertisement video clips scattered throughout the show (basically the places where you would normally take a commercial break).

I think I'll continue to use this but ultimately I'd like the ability to download the files. I think the future of TV is in downloaded content which in turn will allow you to play the programming whenever you'd like...kind of like tivo.

Halo 3 - Finished!

That's right. I finally finished a game. Its been since 1997 since I've finished a console game. I think the last game I finished was "Streets of Rage" back in college with my roommate.

Anyway, I finished Halo 3 yesterday while I was on lunch break* while I was working from home yesterday. It took me this long be cause I accidentally deleted my game profile while I was about half way through it about a month or 2 ago. I wasn't playing on "heroic" level either (If I had done that I will be playing well into the next year).

Overall a cool game. Alot of stages were hard but the more I played, the better I got with aim, etc. Check this out: Halo 3 is up for one of the top games of 2007 via Game Informer Magazine!

Back to reality

I am finally getting bac into the swing of things such as computers, cell phones and work. After being home for 3 days, I am finally getting around to telling you a bit about my trip to Jamaica for a much needed 8 daya vacation for me and my wife.

It didn't start out very well. I set th alarm the night before to haveus up and ready to go by 4:15am, however due to my over excitement or giddiness, I set the alarm for PM instead of AM. I happened to be up at 3:15 but just wanted to close my eyes for a few minutes to only awaken when it was 5:00am!! Needless to say we bolted out the door and ditchedour plas of dropping off our car and taking the LRT in to the airport.

We dd catch our flight. Thank goodness there was no-one that early! Our flight was a good one except for the fat that I think my wife sat next to a guy that was being deported for the first leg; he spoke no english and seemed to have a talk, marschall-type guys sitting directly behind him and then next to a younger lady whom was getting airsick.

Jamaica was awesome, we landed in the afternoon and were greeted with smiles and Red Stripe Beer but only after sitting in line for an hour to go through customs/immigration. Our shuttle took us to Negril to stay at the Sandals Negril resort. The 1.5 ride was't too bad as it gave us an opportunity to look at the real-sideof Jamaica; not the nice, fancy and clean resort we are accustomed to.

We stayed in Negril for 4 days. We enjoyed the awesome beach, great water and excellent scuba diving. Although we did have to pay to get a 'refresher course' for our diving, we enjoyed the underwater life very much. We ran into the young lady whom was on the airsick on the plane and got know her and her newlywedded husband; we ended up hangin out with them on a few occasions. The couple Shaun and Wayne Hoffner were from the Fargo, ND area.

On the 4th day we took the long shuttle back to Montego Bay to stay at the Sandals Royal Carribbean resort. While there we did muc of the same. We hung hung out more at the pool as the shoreline was not as nice as Negril. While there we met some old friends who work in the dive dept; we had a great time with these guys last time as well as this time round.We met up with a couple from London, Andrew and Jo. We spent alot of time at the pool with the and even went out to dinner with them a few times. They were great. By the last day weather was picking up and the seas were making up 10-12ft swells; I am glad were not able to dive because the previous days dives had us sitting in a 20ft boat enduring 5-6ft swells. That was enough for me.

Needless to say our vacation time was short. We wish we could have stayed but we also missed our kids. The flight home was long as we would expect. We were lucky enough to get home a little bit early due to some weather issues in Detroit; we ended up taking a flight to Memphis them back home. Needless to say I thin I lost my tan during my 2 minute sprint from the LRT to the car; my lungs went into shock I think.