I haven’t posted here in a while. I should do something about that…

Last month, both the Xbox One and the Playstation 4 were released. I can’t say I’ve been too impressed yet; there hasn’t been anything released on Playstation 4 that I want, and the only game that drew my eye on the Xbox One was the new Killer Instinct game. While I loved the first two Killer Instinct games, I’m not sold on the new one, especially as it’s not even a complete game yet and has no story mode to speak of. Until a killer game comes out for either console, I really don’t see the need to buy either one yet. As a result, as I’ve said in previous posts, my next generation console will likely be my PC.

As it stands, I’ve already got a few games in my “to play” queue for the PC. For example, while I donated on the Kickstarter, I haven’t yet finished Shadowrun Returns. I’m also eligible to get the first expansion, Dragonfall, because I did take part in said Kickstarter. I’ve also managed to get myself into the beta programs for two upcoming games: Infinite Crisis, which is a MOBA based on DC Comics characters, and Hearthstone, which is an online collectible card game based on the WarCraft universe. Unfortunately, while I’ve played both games, I haven’t gotten into them as much as I would like.

The problem I have with Infinite Crisis is two-fold. The first problem is that I’m new to MOBA games, and as it’s a beta without a tutorial Infinite Crisis has something of a learning curve. I’ve played some online, but I always feel like I’m useless and don’t know what I’m doing. I feel better having watched some of the demonstrations the developers have done on live stream events, but I’m still a bit uncertain. The second problem is that my system isn’t keeping up with the game. My main PC has a budget video card, and the demands for recent games on it have been a bit too much. It’s not just Infinite Crisis, either; Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition runs slowly on it as well. I need to buy a more decent non-budget card, but that will have to wait until after Christmas. Until then, there’s not much point playing when my system lags all to hell.

Hearthstone is fun, but like Infinite Crisis I have two problems. The first problem is the fact that I’m trying to get back into the mindset of playing collectible card games. It’s been twenty years since I last played one; I used to play Magic: The Gathering and Jyhad (the precursor to Vampire: The Eternal Struggle) with my friends Chris and George. Even then, we never bothered learning how to create specialized battle decks. We would just take all of our cards, put them in a big pile, and play using those. With Hearthstone, on the other hand, I’m going to need to learn to create battle decks if I plan on playing online. I’m also having to get used to playing that kind of game again; while people on the unofficial Hearthstone IRC channel I’m on seem to find the tutorials/practice enemies easy, I’m struggling.

The other issue I have with Hearthstone is that as a casual game, I would probably play more often if there was a tablet version available. Fortunately, Blizzard has announced that there is an iPad version coming out fairly soon, with iPhone and Android versions coming out late next year. As far as gaming on the go goes, hopefully by then I’ll have replaced my currently-struggling iPhone 4 with an iPhone 5S.

I should also point out that the PC is not the only place I will be gaming. For my birthday last month, Jennifer, her mom, and my mom got together and got me an iPad Air. I’ve already loaded all of the games I had on the iPhone onto the iPad, and even added a couple like Injustice: Gods Among Us, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Doctor Who: Legacy. When the Hearthstone client comes out for iPad, I’ll definitely pick that up as well. Once I’ve cut some of my “to play” queue down a bit, I’ll pick up some of the longer games like Final Fantasy IV and possibly Final Fantasy VI (should it come out).

In any event, I should be okay for gaming even without a console. Most of the games I play on console right now have PC versions; the only downside would be that for games from NetherRealm Studios (and possibly others), the console versions come out several months before the PC ports do. Still, it’s a smaller price to pay than having to pay $300-400 for a new system that doesn’t have the games I want, and I can be fairly patient. :-)

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was thinking of sitting out this upcoming generation of console gaming, as neither the Xbox One, the Playstation 4, or the Wii U really showed much appeal to me at all. My attitude was that I would probably do what I did during the Playstation 1/Nintendo 64 generation, and stick to PC gaming. I already had a PC, and there was nothing that really grabbed me for console that wasn’t coming out for PC as well. I saw the same thing happening with this generation. My only concern was that my consoles are connected to a 32″ HDTV, which is obviously a better display than my 24″ PC monitor.

As it turns out, those concerns have been assuaged.

On Monday, Valve introduced SteamOS, a specialized Linux distribution designed for gaming on PCs connected to televisions. There were two specific traits about SteamOS that drew my interest. The first was that as SteamOS was a software platform and not a combined platform, it opened the way for PC developers such as Lenovo and Asus to produce their own SteamOS consoles, while not having to worry about the actual software portion of the console development process. They would just need to abide by Valve’s quality certification.

More interesting, however, was the fact that SteamOS could stream games playing from a Windows Steam client. As SteamOS is a Linux distribution, it cannot natively run Windows programs. Valve had released Steam for Linux some time ago, and a number of games are available for it now (including most/all of Valve’s own library). Those games will be available on SteamOS, but the streaming feature will be needed in order to play Windows Steam games on the SteamOS box. As I have a number of Steam titles under Windows already, that will make playing them a bit more convenient. :-)

Earlier today, Valve announced that they are beginning a beta test of the Steam Machines, which will be their reference machines for other hardware manufacturers to build from. Three hundred people will be chosen from the applicant pool; I’m not naive enough to think I actually have anything but an extreme long shot to get into the beta, but I’m entering anyway. The only step I can’t yet fulfill in their list of requirements is playing a game using a gamepad in Steam’s “Big Picture” mode, and that’s because I’m at work right now.

In any event, it should be interesting to see if game developers will be making SteamOS ports of their games once SteamOS (and its development software) is actually released. I already have one friend tell me he plans on building his own SteamOS box once the software is released, and I’m honestly torn on whether I would build my own SteamOS box or (more likely) buy a pre-built Steam Machine via Newegg. It’s still early, as the platform won’t be going into full-swing until early next year, but the rate things are going I think the console I’ll be playing on in a year’s time will be a Steam Machine.

The other day, I was removing apps on my tablet for maintenance purposes, as many of the apps that were on there were ones I no longer used. While I was doing so, Jennifer idly remarked that the UNO app was no longer working. I attempted to launch it, and it errored out with a message saying the hardware configuration was not supported, and that I should request a refund. I was much less annoyed than puzzled, as I had installed the app about a year and a half previously and it should have complained well before now.

My tablet is a 32 GB HP TouchPad. It had originally been purchased as a wedding gift for me and Jennifer by her mom, and it’s served us very well. However, shortly after we purchased it, we realized that the app selection was very limited. The TouchPad had been discontinued almost as quickly as it had been announced, and as a result developers did not flock to HP’s mobile OS, webOS. It was a shame, really, because webOS was a decent operating system. Fortunately, I was introduced to a TouchPad port of CyanogenMod, an after-market Android distribution, and quickly got it installed. After I got CyanogenMod 7 installed, webOS fell by the wayside and was almost never used again. I’ve since upgraded the tablet to CyanogenMod 9, and it works very well for what I use it for.

The thing that really nags at me, though, is the application support. Granted, I have no issue trying out free apps like Pitfall!, Angry Birds, and the like on the tablet because I’m not out any particular investment. The problem is when I see games that I actually want to try like Final Fantasy IV, and I don’t know if the tablet will be supported or not. The UNO app isn’t the first time I’ve encountered a problem. The best example I could think of a problem with an app on my tablet is the Flixster app, which is the official player for Ultraviolet digital copy playback. Any attempt to play any of my Ultraviolet copies fails, as the app considers my tablet “rooted” and as such ineligible for media playback. (Funny enough, Netflix has no such qualms about my tablet streaming movies.) I really don’t want to be spending money (especially not $16 in the case of Square-Enix’s games) when there’s a risk of the app not working properly, or at all.

The obvious solution is to get another tablet, but to be honest I can’t justify the cost of one right now. If I were to get a new tablet, I would likely want an iPad Mini, simply because it’s relatively inexpensive as far as iPads go and it would sync to my existing iOS app library (my cell phone is an iPhone 4). In addition, I want to start buying tables for Pinball Arcade, and as near as I can tell I can only avoid multiple purchases of the same table for different devices if they’re on the same platform (in this case, iOS). On the other hand, before I get myself a new tablet I’ll likely get Jennifer her own tablet, with the most likely candidate being a Kindle Fire.

Ah, well. While it’s annoying me right now, I can live with the frustrations. Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to justify the purchase a new tablet, but until then, I’ll make do with what I have.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post talking about how I was going to improve the backup systems at home. In short, for my server, I was switching from physical backup tapes to virtual tapes replicated offsite. For my main PC, I started using Windows 7’s Backup & Restore to back up my system to a TrueCrypt file container on a hard drive I would store at the office. For the most part, it has worked pretty well.

Unfortunately, the friend who was hosting my offsite server backups suddenly found himself unable to do so any longer. I needed to find a new place to host my server backups, and I resigned myself to the fact that if I wanted to make sure my offsite backups were securely stored offsite and available on a 24/7/365 basis, I would likely have to pay a service to do so. After checking several online backup services, I decided to give Amazon S3 a try. I set up an account with it, configured my backup replication scripts to work with it, and then initiated a test run.

Unfortunately, something like thirty-six hours later, the upload was still proceeding and showed no signs of being anywhere close to being finished. I grudgingly terminated the upload script and wrote off S3 as a viable solution. Fortunately, after doing some searching for a online backup service provider that had Linux support (and didn’t require a GUI), I found EVBackup, a provider that had decent pricing and full support for Linux servers. I quickly set up an account, reconfigured my backup replication script to use it, and fired off an upload. The backups were replicated quickly and efficiently, and within twenty-four hours all of my server backups were uploaded. Fortunately, future replications will only upload those files that have been changed. That’s one weight off my shoulder.

While I was searching for an online backup provider for my server, though, I became interested in some of the options for Windows. Not only was bringing home the hard drive weekly for my main system becoming something of a chore, I wanted to put something together for my wife’s PC. Of the several choices presented, I ended up going with Backblaze. Backblaze allows for unlimited storage per PC and backs up continuously, and costs at most $5 a month per computer. I tested using my own PC, and so far it’s worked fine; considering the size of my iTunes library, it’s no surprise that even after a few days the backup is only just now over halfway done. Once that initial backup is completed Backblaze will only transfer the changed files, so I shouldn’t expect to need to upload a full backup once this is done. Also, Backblaze does a good job of automatically throttling upload speed so that I don’t notice any latency at all (unlike when my main server is uploading a full backup offsite). Once the initial backup is completed on my PC, I’ll set Jennifer’s PC up on Backblaze and get it backed up. :-)

All in all, I think the backup systems now are more improved, especially on the workstation end where I don’t have to worry about manually bringing home a hard drive once a week. It’s also made me make some changes to my data retention (with some prodding from Jennifer), where I’ve deleted a LOT of data I no longer use in order to save space on backups. Time will tell how much better it’ll work out, but for now I’m content with the changes, and happy that my data is just a bit more secure.

The next generation of gaming consoles have been revealed. Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s Playstation 4 will be coming out this fall, and Nintendo’s Wii U has been out for a while.

… and honestly, nothing about any of them grabs me.

The last couple of generations have had games come out close to launch that have made one console a system seller for me. Last generation, it was Gears of War for the Xbox 360. The generation before that, it was Metroid Prime for the Nintendo GameCube. This time around, however, there isn’t a game that really sells me on either console. There also isn’t a feature that grabs me on either console. I say “either” because right now, the choices are between the Xbox One and the Playstation 4; if we get a Wii U, it’ll very likely be Jennifer’s console as the Wii we have now is primarily used by her.

I think that with this generation, my choice may end up being the same one as my choice during the Sony Playstation/Nintendo 64 generation: the PC.

Fortunately I don’t think I’ll need to buy anything in the way of new hardware. The video card in my main PC is up to snuff for gaming, and I made sure a while ago my system has more than enough RAM. The one exception may be the hard drive, and that’s because it’s a Western Digital WD Green drive. I’d likely move to a WD Black or something similar from another manufacturer.

As far as upcoming games go, pretty much all of the ones I want are coming out for PC as well. I had funded Kickstarters for Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded and Shadowrun Returns, so I’ll automatically get PC versions of those. In addition, Infinite Crisis will apparently be a PC exclusive. I’m on the fence regarding two other games; I’m not sure whether I’ll get them for the PC or the Xbox 360. Those games are Diablo 3 and Batman: Arkham Origins. While the Xbox 360 is hooked up to a bigger screen, I may get more life out of the PC. Then again, with the possible exception of my Super Nintendo, all of my old consoles are still in working order.

That leads me to another point. I still have a Pile of Shame that needs to be cleared out, and it goes back quite a way. Among the games I have that I still need to complete:

• Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 for PC
• Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines for PC
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for GameCube
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for Game Boy Advance
• Final Fantasy VII for Playstation
• Final Fantasy VI for Super Nintendo

I’m sure there are some other games I’m missing. The point, though, is that even without the current generation and next generation of games, I’ve got enough games waiting to be played that I can keep busy without having to worry about the new stuff. As it stands, if this generation runs about the same as the last one did, the only problem I might have with going PC-only is that there is only one game series that I play that didn’t get a close-to-simultaneous release to PC, and that’s Mortal Kombat. If WB Games does what they did for the last MK, my worst case scenario is that I may have to wait two years after the console release to play the next MK game. That’s assuming, of course, that I don’t buy a console between now and then…

In any event, I’m staying out and going with PC not because I think it’s the “savior of gaming” (last I checked it’s in last place behind console), but because it’s what I have, and it seems to me to be the least worst option. Microsoft has earned its console’s nickname of “Xbone”, and I don’t trust Sony after their PR fiascos of the last decade (though my friend Patrick McCarron made a good defense of Sony in a discussion we had over IM). I’m taking a “wait and see” approach, and if it turns out I miss this generation, well… I’ve done it before.

I can do it again. :-)

Several months ago, Microsoft released a consumer preview of Windows 8. Curious, I decided to load it into a virtual machine using VMware Player. To say I wasn’t impressed would be putting it mildly. After a couple of days, I deleted the virtual machine and gave up on it. Now that Windows 8 has been officially released, I decided I should at least make myself somewhat familiar with it. I didn’t want to spend money on software I wasn’t sure I wanted, even if some places had the upgrade for $40. So, I grabbed the consumer preview ISO, loaded it into a new virtual, and loaded it with the software I normally use on a daily basis. The plan was to run Windows 8 as my primary OS for a few days and get used to it. Perhaps I had been too hard on it.

After a couple of days, I can safely say that I still don’t like it at all.

The thing I hate the most is Metro/Windows 8 UI. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Metro was designed with a touchscreen interface in mind. The problem is that while it works great on a touchscreen (as I’ve seen when using it on a phone running Windows Phone 7), it’s terrible to use on a keyboard/mouse interface. It’s not intuitive and awkward to use. Worse, there is no way to turn it off and return to a classic Start menu. Even if you want to use the classic desktop (which is still available, albeit without a Start menu), you still have to go through Metro to get to it. The only thing that’s made it tolerable has been installing a third-party utility called ClassicShell, which provides a Start menu for me to use.

The user/pass convention has been a right pain in the rear, too. When you set up your system for the first time, you’re asked to tie it to a Microsoft account/Windows Live ID, which would allow you to purchase apps off of the Windows Store and sync your settings between PCs. It also forces your account to authenticate using the Microsoft account’s password. Personally, I wouldn’t MIND having my local account linked to a Microsoft account, but I would also like to be able to give my account its own username and password. As it stood, I ended up having to look in Computer Management to see what username to use to log into the machine via Remote Desktop Connection. Disabling it as a whole apparently requires a copy of Windows 8 Professional or Ultimate, as the local security policy needs to be edited.

For everything else, though, the install isn’t very different from Windows 7 for what I use it for. There’s nothing in Metro that makes me want to use it, and the desktop is a downgrade from Windows 7 without the Start menu. In fact, the release version is even more of a downgrade than the consumer preview I’m running, because the consumer preview has the Windows Aero desktop while the release version does not. There is simply nothing that makes me want to use this version of Windows.

At the end of the day today, I’ll likely go ahead and delete the virtual running Windows 8, and go back to running Windows 7 full-time. I now have an idea of what to expect should the time come when I’m forced to purchase machines with Windows 8 for work and not be able to downgrade to Windows 7. Until then, I’ll be digging in my heels and sparing myself (and my coworkers) the annoyance of dealing with it.