Apparently the "new" feature on http://maps.google.com is the satellite view, but I'm still reeling from how you can scroll around the map without reloading the web page. ZOMG!

And it is in fact nice to switch from map to satellite, especially for me to better understand my own local road layout, as my apartment complex's extended parking lot doesn't show up as "roads."  12:24:23 PM  (comments [])   

Ding 60!

(That's brother Chris's rogue in the shot; I'd leveled up my druid a few minutes earlier. The significance? It's the level cap in WoW, which means that now we mostly just wander around the landscape like masterless samurai, looking for trouble to start or stop.)

That is all.  9:25:28 AM  (comments [])   

The new Splinter Cell game has two player co-op play, and it's a lot lot lot of fun. Psu and I spent an hour last night crawling around an embassy, totally being ninjas, and found the game pleasantly tolerant of our screwups. Instead of feeling like "grrrr, I messed up, now I feel guilty because both of us have to start over," we could (a) save anywhere, and (b) usually didn't have to resort to that, because between the two of us we could clean up any... messes. The only problem is that the frame rate goes to a crawl when a big melee erupts, which is surprising and disappointing. You could choose to interpret this positively, though, and say there's a "bullet time" effect going on when the action gets hairy :).

2v2 multiplay is pretty much just like in the last game, including using the old engine. Given the frame rate issues with the co-op engine (the co-op and single player game appear to use the same engine), this is probably wise. I'm told, however, that the Hospital map didn't get pulled over. *sob*.

I also played through the first single player map. Did I mention how pleased I am that they finally capitulated to reason and added save-anywhere? This increased the fun for me 10x.  9:15:58 AM  (comments [])   

After a flight to and from California, and heavy usage while there, I feel pretty good about the PSP having a five hour battery life across a wide range of games. That's pretty impressive.

It's also very cool that, with a standard USB cable (well, mostly standard, the end that plugs into the PSP is "mini" type), the PSP just mounts like a hard drive, and you can just drag over regular image, sound, and movie files (OK, the movies have to be converted to MPEG4 first).

It is a little weird that you actually have to make the media directories (PSP/MUSIC, PSP/PHOTO, and MP_ROOT, for what it's worth), and the PSP only knows to look in those directories for the appropriate media type. If you don't wanna screw around with that, there's plenty of software to automate it (engadget's been following this).

Also, after multiple hours of gameplay, I am starting to notice that the shoulder buttons start to get a little wiggly, so I have some small concerns about the long-term ruggedness of what seems like it should be a pretty brick-like device. We'll see.

I noticed EB actually has some PSP movie discs for pre-order; I still don't understand who will buy them. I guess I'll go check out a movie rental store later this month and see if anyone actually carries them.

Overall, though, still very pleased with the purchase.  9:10:06 AM  (comments [])