You're only making this harder, you know...

David and I sat and played the Bioshock demo Saturday. Well, David played, I sat. Actually, now that I think about it, jumped around like a child with sugar candy might be closer. His tower has the bare minimum ATI gpu required. And I have to say, this game's bare minimum is not too shabby. One of the things I certainly noticed was textures. Even running with reduced settings, as I said - minimum, when you get close to a surface you don't have those blocky, muddy textures you're used to. The lighting and water looks awesome, but I expected that.

And if there's one thing I can say to sell this game, its this. Before we fired it up, I got the distinct impression David was humoring me. He does that a lot, knowing my enthusiasm for a game can often get the better of me. By the end of about 20 minutes of play, he was making plans to swing by "Big Box o Electronics" to pick up a copy, and possibly a second x1600 to go in his other crossfire slot.

Download the demo. I suggest Steam. Or Torrent, but make sure you have your anti-virus turned on and up to date.

RFQ

Official Request For Quote: I'm looking for parts.

The upgrade hunt is on. So if you know a guy who knows a guy, no names, tell him I need an SLI mobo what supports a quad intel, an 8800 GTX (SLI ready), about 2gb of pc6400 (4-4-4-12 latency would be good), a 19 LCD (prefer wide and glossy with a high refresh) and a power supply. I got the rest.

Pixel Shader Model 3.0

I'm boned. Bioshock has been out for almost 12 hours now, and I can't even look at it. Larry doesn't support Pixel Shader Model 3. Using the latest valVe hardware survey as a source, almost half of the machines out there do, so I can see why you wouldn't hesitate if you had to make a choice. Of course, slightly more than 1/3 of respondents are in a similar boat as me.

Oh, well except of course that Larry is a desktop replacement. He can't be upgraded. He can only be replaced. And I'm not going to do it. Yes, I will now see more games come to market which will be unplayable on Larry (and yes, Bioshock is unplayable - it renders most of the scene as black). And it will build to a critical mass. But I'm not going to replace a $4000 desktop replacement because of one game.

Even if it is going to be the game of the year. Which is going to get spoiled for me. Because I won't get to play it before somebody spoils it.

the one where I go on about TV (1.1)

Over the weekend (a 3 day weekend here in Canada, btw) I put down some serious volume of TV watching. I finally got around to watching the last 4 episodes of series 3 of the new Doctor Who. Over all, not bad. The episode entitled "Blink", a POV piece is very good. The finale (of the season, not the Blink episode - the Blink episode was solid) was a bit of a let down Imho. I won't say why, if you haven't seen it I don't want to spoil it, but I didn't like some of the story choices and thought the antagonist was a bit too corn ball. It fits well with a David Tennant Dr. Who.

I also watched the first 5 episodes of Heros. 1) If you like mutants/super heros meets xFiles meets 24 (I shouldn't say that - I've never watched a whole episode of 24. I only presume what it's like.) you should watch this show. The writing is top shelf, as are the visuals. The cliff hanger per episode gets a bit tiring, but the long story is a refreshing change for somebody who usually watches pure episodic content.

I keep trying to watch more Boston Legal, which is a very well written show, but never seem to get to it. Maybe it's not as good as I want it to be.

New Header Bar

Yup. I drew it myself. Really.

No, I didn't. And 20th Century Fox will probably sue my butt off. But you can make your own Simpsons Avatar by going to the Simpson's Movie web.

Hey, they gave me the tool. That's, like, an invitation to abuse it. And it does look alarmingly like me.