Mostly Harmless

Mostly about my amusement

Month: February 2011 (page 1 of 1)

February 21, 2011

Yep, F.E.A.R. 2 really is creepy

Okay memory, my bad. F.E.A.R. 2 really is creepy. I remembered it differently and the updated UI, graphics, etc. really make the game more playable.

After I completed the first game again, I instead replayed the DLC add-on F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn. That went quickly and I then started F.E.A.R. 2 from scratch. The key bindings are a little different from before (F is flashlight, E is use) but the game play really flows.

Just like the first game, playing the game late into the night and in the dark can freak me out a little. I’ll still complete the game quickly but I really can’t wait to get the third game once it comes out.

February 18, 2011

Finished F.E.A.R. again

Once again I have completed F.E.A.R. and even played it in the dark. According to STEAM, it took me 9 hours. I must be out of practice because I had to quick save the game a lot. Due to the graphic violence and language I couldn’t play around the kids. The final scenes still gave me goose bumps.

Now to move on to F.E.A.R. 2. Project Origin. This game came out in 2009 and has updated graphics. The first time I completed this game, I rushed through the game a little quickly, this time I’ll take my time.

February 13, 2011

Over 5 years later and it’s still scary

Since I have the F.E.A.R. games all on STEAM, I’m playing them over again from scratch. Between the music and sudden appearance of creepy bad guys, the game still is frightening.

This game was released in 2005. The graphics are definitely dated but the play is still very good. The next installment is supposed to have a more random appearance of bad guys but the original still feels like you are starring in a gruesome horror movie.

February 13, 2011

Reeder for the Mac

I have a 90 minute commute to work and about an hour of that is on the train. To make my ride more entertaining, I use my iPhone to listen to music, browse the web, and read up on my RSS feeds with Google Reader.

Google Reader is OK but it’s a web page based app. Frequent page reloads, jumping to a new page in another browser window is not the best experience. So I downloaded and installed Reeder for the iPhone and have not been sorry. It’s $3 that was well spent.

I generally do not like RSS feed clients. The one’s I’ve used on Windows were just wrappers for Internet Explorer (ugh!) and felt like crude hacks. But on a whim I installed the beta Reeder for the Mac and have been playing with it.

It’s a clean app and so far I like it. Since it’s a beta it is not-quite as filled out on the Mac as it is on the iPhone, but that’s probably because I’ve not found all the shortcuts.

The best feature I like is that when I get an excerpt in my RSS feed, I click on Readability and the full post comes up. It doesn’t work on all feeds such as Gizmodo but clicking the link will bring up the post within the app. The articles are all well laid out and the view is easy to read.

The only thing that I can see is missing is easy navigation to the next article; it supports swiping but haven’t figured out how to do that with a magic mouse. I’ll keep playing with it, this beta is definitely worth the time.

Update: Ha! Read the funny manual. Keyboard shortcuts work fine.

February 6, 2011

Upcoming 2011 video games

I’ve been waiting for the next installment of Crysis to come out but have recently gone back to playing some F.E.A.R. via Steam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KpKc-i43p8

Looks like F.E.A.R. 3 will be a worthwhile game. When the first game came out, the horror factor was so well done that some scenes scared the jeebies out of me. Even now, playing that game in the dark can be startling.

Compared to recent games the original game shows how much FPS games have evolved. The second game was more refined although the story line was much less creepy.

This trailer shows that the 3rd game will have a good storyline and the I’m counting on the graphics being up-to-date as well. I doubt they’ll be on par with this trailer but here you can see what the game play should be like.

With Crysis 2 and F.E.A.R 3 both arriving in 2011, I’m expecting lots of good game play.

February 5, 2011

Opensource is still the best

As part of my ongoing home IT challenges I have set up a basement server running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. My normal method of managing my servers is to do everything by ssh.

That’s geeky, but not much fun. So I looked for a free X server and came across Xming. It’s a not GPL’ed but is it freely available and the license is not burdensome.

Using XLaunch, I setup the parameters I want and saved that to a file. That .xlaunch file extension is registered to Xming so I just need to double-click the icon and it starts my desktop remotely using X windows.I’ve got the desktop in a neat 1280×1024 window using “-screen 0 1280 1024” as an Xming command line argument.

The only problem I am having is that I am launching gnome-session and it’s not exiting cleanly at then of my session. Most likely that’s not quiet the right program to initiate an X session but for now it’s acceptable.

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Jan Dembowski

Jan Dembowski

I am a software enthusiast who is easily amused and definitely mostly harmless.

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