Marktopia

Lots of stuff has been going on in my life, some good, some bad.  First off the bad, I am sick.  Not just kinda sick, more like go to the ER and get 3 liters of fluids sick.  Also bad is that Rebekah has this same sick.  Today we are both feeling better, but we still need to eat something before really turning the corner.  I am hoping that I can make the Tech Forum tomorrow, but I also don’t want to push myself hard with very little food in my system.

On the good news side, for my birthday I bought myself a Nintendo DS.  I am pretty impressed with it so far, the two screens are used pretty neat and the games I got are all lots of fun.  They are Mario Kart, Metroid Prime Hunters and Advance Wars.  I am playing Advance Wars the most right now, it reminds me of a more advanced version of Rampart with some Civ and Command & Conquer thrown in.

I mentioned last time that I would post more on my tornado experience, I just havn’t gotten around to it.  It is going to be lengthy and with everything else going on (a trip to Chicago to see my parents and the illness) I havn’t had a chance to, but it is coming.  I also have some more pics on my camera that I will post soon.

Finally, I have gotten a bit of the web design kick again.  I like the Marktopia design, but reading up on some web design tips, I realize it could be improved.  I am using Inkscape to design the site first, then work on building the CSS around it.  This is the first real attempt at designing something, then putting the CSS around it, so we will see how it goes.

After doing the initial MizCD stuff and then updating to WP2, I got a little burned out on some of the web stuff.? That and I found an N64 emulator and have been playing Paper Mario, that is a kick ass game.? I want to finish it, then get the one for Gamecube as well.? I also feel a little burned out on the WordPress stuff.? There are lots of cool plugins for it, but I don’t know how to design the page without adding too much clutter.? I am open to ideas, but I also don’t want to do something, just to do something.? I am also at the point with the MizCD stuff that I almost have the authentication part done, but I am a bit weary about the AJAX adding of stuff, so I am hestitant to keep plowing forward on that without feeling really motivated to.? Who knows, maybe this weekend will strike me to get moving on some of this stuff.? Or maybe I will play more Paper Mario and keep watching Olympics.

With Ben getting his new computer pretty soon here, it sounds like he plunked down a fair amount of change for a pretty high end machine.? I got to wondering what he would be doing on the machine and quickly realized it was probably gaming and maybe some AV stuff.? Assuming that most of it will be gaming, I am curious why people will spend over a thousand dollars or more to build a “gaming rig” as folks like to call it, when a PS2 can be bought for one hundred and fifty dollars.? This all leads to my question, what is the advantage over consoles that PC gamers see that causes them to spend so much more money?? In my limited experience, computer games take time to install and tend to be buggier than console games, so why pay more for a more difficult experience?? I am setting myself up here, I am aware, so flame away if you like, but I would like a reasonable answer that makes sense to a logical person.?

On Wednesday evening, on my third time trying to beat Metroid Prime (the boss), it died at the hands of Samus Aran. After playing through most of the game once and then having to do it again after the theft, Metroid Prime is finally beat. Unfortunately I missed some missile upgrades so I only had a 89% completion rate, however it is nice to have the game beaten finally. Now I have to decide which game to move onto for the Gamecube.

I will admit to not being the video game nut that I used to be, but it is still good to know that I can finish off a Zelda game. I got Wind Waker when I picked up my Gamecube back at the beginning of December. I intially played it for about 11 hours the first weekend, but after that things died down. I used sometime last weekend to get much of the tedious stuff out of the way and almost beat it then, however I died at Ganon and got quite frustrated. That leads into today when I decided that it was time for me to finish what I had started so I could move onto Metroid Prime. So instead of watching the first half of the Atlanta/Philly game, I turned the Cube on and finally finished Ganon off.

Looking back, the game was one of the best I have ever played, I wasn’t sure about the cartoon graphics at first, but they were perfect for this game. I have played few games that have looked this pretty and also had the perfect controls that this game has. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that there is a second quest that I can play. I now have to decide, start the second quest or start Metroid. I think Metroid will win as my favorite game of all time is Super Metroid for the SNES and I have been forcing myself to wait until Zelda was done to start it. I have also come to the conclusion that as long as Nintendo keeps putting out Zelda games of this quality, they will have a fan base that will buy their products. I will pick up the next gen Nintendo console if they make a Zelda game for it, there is no question about it. I will let you all know when Metroid finishes up and the second quest for Zelda begins.