I’t looks like the Crysis demo has been pushed back, originally it was going to be released on Halo 3 day, but looking this morning for any info on the demo I found this in the EA Forums.
I’m waiting for this game, looks like it will hit stores November 16th, 2007.
Check out my previous post about Crysis vs Reality
A week or so ago, we went on a trip to Death Valley, yes you read this right. In the midst of the summer with 122 degree weather during the day and prob 90-100 at night. The first day was a drive down from the San Francisco Bay area though some various small towns stopping on the way at Happy Burger in Mariposa. I have to say by that time I we where all pretty hungry and well lets just say Happy Burger made our stomachs very happy 
After Mariposa we headed though to Yosemite National Park, took some candid tourist shots and headed to our hotel in Bishop, CA for a good nights rest before heading into Death Valley (Saline Valley). The next day we headed into the desert, 2 jeeps and one truck with 15 gallons of water and more of gas. Our first stop was at some random location to check out these odd looking tree’s which my friend quickly pointed out they where Joshua tree’s.
Ok enough of these tree’s onto our next stop Eureka Dunes which is quite an oddity to see in this area of the world. Its almost like the Sahara desert but in the middle of Saline Valley. A big sand dune was created over thousands and thousands of years in this middle of this valley.
After what seems like thousands of miles driving in the warm 122 Fahrenheit weather, we came across this oddity the Saline Warm Springs which is pictured above. After stepping into this hot tub and realizing it was cooler in the hot tub than outside we decided to make this our camping spot for the rest of the day and the evening…. Did we ever make it out of Death Valley? Tune in next time to see what happens to 5 guys, 2 jeeps and one truck.
I ran into Greedo this weekend and we had a little chat about who fired first in Star Wars. It seems that Han is a bit fat liar and made George (the man behind the curtain - think wiz of oz) change history.
Greedo feels like he has a bad rap now and can’t seem to get any jobs else were after Star Wars revised edition went out. So as you can see now he has a job in Sci-Fi museum, where he spends the rest of his life encased in glass.
Poor guy, gets a bad wrap and not cant get any decent jobs. You can visit him at the Seattle Sci-Fi Museum. Feel free to read more about this conspiracy here.
I have been on the long quest for a great gps logger to carry around on my hikes and travels. I am a shutter bug by nature and on my last trip to Europe Took over 700+ photos and I would of taken more but my 8 gig memory card took a dive 2 day into the trip. Over the past 6 months I have tried out my combination of hardware and software solutions (original post) before finally buying a GiSTEQ logger to take on my trip to Europe with me. I originally saw a link on Engadget a few days before my trip and quickly contacted the company and ordered one.
My experiences with the GiSTEQ device was pretty positive over all but I did find one annoying factor and that was the time it takes to sync up with satellites and start logging data. Every day of our trip, I had to stand outside for what seemed like a few minutes for it to finally sync up, some times this was faster and im sure it was the various locations I was standing at that didn’t help. This is probably due to a lot of the tourist places are in locations where a lot of buildings tower over you. Now I don’t know that much about satellites but I’m guessing that was one of the issues.
The software that comes with the logger is still what I call it in the early stages, while it works most of the time it lacks a lot of the features that I use (Google earth/maps exporter). I have been in contact with them and they assure me they are working on versions to add some of the features that I use and as of the June 7th a new version is out but I haven’t had time to check it out yet.
Never fret though, You can export your gps logs to .nmea format and use software such as RoboGeo to take advantage of more features for geo tagging your photos such as export to Google Earth/Maps, Shape file, DXF file, Mapoint and many other options.
Their is a new gps logger in town I’m trying to get my hands on as well QSTARZ BT-Q1000 GPS which incorporates also bluetooth technology. The GiSTEQ is just a logger but the QSTARZ is both a logger and can be used with other mapping software for trip/route planning.
Over all i pretty happy with the GiSTEQ and as they improve the software I might use it more and more, but for $99 you cant beat the combo of hardware and software that comes at that price.
Last weekend I took a quick unexpected trip to Seattle to visit some friends and do a surprise visit to my biz partners. This was my second trip to Seattle and I do have to say I really like the area how ever I don’t think I could deal with the weather so much. Out of the 4 days I was there the sun only came out for 2 and boy it was like a celebration for everyone.
I guess living in sunny California we take the nice sun for granted, when the sun comes out in Seattle its as some miracle has happened. While on my visit I was able to swing by Valve Software, take a small tour and play test a bit of Team Fortress 2 which I had a blast playing.
I’m headed back up that way at the end of June so if anyone has any recommendations of things to check out, bars to visit, hidden Seattle gems or anything else hit me up or leave a comment in the blog.
This photo was taken from my buddies balcony during one of those rare sunny days in Seattle.
Lair fan boys get ready to drive down to Sunnyvale, CA on June 2. Factor 5 in conjunction with Cogswell Polytechnical College will be showing off concept art from the PS3 video game Lair which is due out any time now. Members from Factor 5 will be presenting concept art and also talk about the making of Lair. It all kicks off on June 2, starting at 12:30 at the Open House.
Current Schedule:
The exhibit will continue from June 2 till July 27 at Cogswell but if you want to hear members from Factor 5 talk about the making I suggest you head down June 2nd. I know most of these guys personally and this is something not to be missed, especially if your looking for a career in videos games.
One of my buddies Pat’s work will be shown at this exhibit so stop by his blog and give him a shout here.
While looking though my trip photos (all 700 of them) I came upon this one that actually turned out really nice giving the circumstances of light, distance and lack of a tripod. This is the Parliament Building in Budapest and we are standing across the Danube river in the Buda Castle district. Here is a snippet from wiki about this building.
“The Hungarian Parliament Building (Hungarian: Országház) is the seat of the National Assembly of Hungary, one of the world’s greatest legislative buildings, a notable landmark of Hungary and a popular tourist destination of Budapest. It lies in Kossuth Lajos Square, right on the bank of the Danube, at Budapest”
I was surprised as to how this photo came out and most of the night photos of buildings usually turned out blury but I remembered a trick to do when you don’t have a tripod handy.
Most point and shoot cameras have a timer function which counts down a number of seconds and takes the photo. So finding a good stable place to set my camera i used the 10 second function, which as you can tell worked out nicely. Just a friendly photography trick to keep in mind.
