Living With a Nerd

For some inexplicable reason, I’ve REALLY gotten into desk/workstation setups in the past week or so.  I’ve read through this entire forum thread on [H]ard|OCP, as well as a few others from different websites.  Doing so inspired me to change my own setup around a little bit.  I had replaced my Dell 2005FPW a month or so ago, but for some reason didn’t try to set it up as a second monitor until now.  My desk went from this:

To this:

The only thing that really changed was that I lowered the shelf, moved my Storm Scout case off to the side, and set up my Dell as a secondary monitor…yet it has made a huge difference.  The room isn’t all that big in the first place, and making this change has really opened things up.  I also have a lot more usable desktop space now, which will really come in handy when I’m rockin’ my Dell Mini 9 and my PC at the same time.  I plan on going to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to pick up a couple of nice kitchen cabinet knobs; I’ll drill them into the front of the hutch and use them as headphone holders.  I would go with just a plain ol’ banana holder, but I like having the clear desk space.

I’ve used a dual monitor setup at work for a while now, so it’s nice to finally have the same thing at home.  Torchlight on the one screen +Netflix streaming on the other = an awesome evening.

I also changed the way Brittnie’s desk is set up, so she now has full use of it instead of sharing it with a three-slot mail thing and a small flatscreen.  Our configurations will probably remain like this until we move.  Once that happens, I will hopefully put together a large U-shaped desk setup using the Galant series from Ikea (thanks, Mr. Bixby!)  My goal is to have both of our setups close to each other, a small flatscreen (with a wide viewing angle, naturally) between us so we can watch netflix/movies, play PC games, and/or work together at the same time.  Then, each of us would have a return, giving myself extra room for audio work and Brittnie extra room for school work.  See below for an example of what I’m talking about:

Not sure what we would do with the desks we use now, but one would likely be set up with an extra system for LANing it up with friends, while the other will (hopefully) get a Windows 98 box for our older PC games.

It’s mundane, I know…but I’m excited about it

Taken at 3 PM with 7 hours of snow left. By the time it was over, both of those cars were completely encased in snow.

The big snowstorm this past weekend here in Maryland wasn’t the only major event…Brittnie got me a PS3!  I was planning on picking one up around the time that God of War III came out, but this works just fine for me.  Haven’t really decided where I’m going to start, but it will likely come down between Resistance 1 & 2 or Uncharted 1 & 2.  I’ve found that when used for streaming purposes, the PS3 is superior to the 360; easier to setup, built in wireless…oh, and being able to copy entire folders of videos from my computer onto the PS3 over the network plus more extensive codec support help to seal the deal.  It will be interesting to see how the exclusives compare to the 360 exclusives…although the 360 controller is still far more comfortable.  I’ve never been a big fan of the Dual Shock design, and even though the modified L2/R2 buttons are a good step in the right direction, it still has a long way to go.  This sounds lame, but the Dual Shock is part of the reason why I don’t have as much time /played on my PS2 as I do with my other gaming systems.

Speaking of other gaming systems, the addition of the PS3 brings our full list to the following: Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, SNES (two of them), Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Xbox, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS Lite (3 of them), PSP-1000 (aka the first-gen PSP), Game Boy, GBA (one original, one GBA SP), Game Gear, and a relatively up-to-date gaming PC.

I’ve put a couple of hours into Torchlight.  The resemblance to Diablo is nearly overwhelming.  I know that many of the Diablo team members worked on Torchlight (including the composer and sound designer for Diablo), and it shows.  If Titan Quest was Diablo 2.5, Torchlight is Diablo 2.7.  With no attempt to hide the similarities, Torchlight feels more like a trip down memory lane rather than a new single-player experience (but in a good way.)  The graphics are a bit jagged, but for an independently produced game, it looks damn nice.  Oh, and did I mention that it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play?

Brittnie left to go visit her sister for the holidays, so I decided to take a couple of days off from Living With a Nerd.  The next article (which will be a review of Torchlight) will post on Christmas Day.

Mix equal parts four-player New Super Mario Wii, a small Big Bang Theory marathon, a Revolutionary War audio lecture marathon (just for fun, not for school), a cat killing chipmunks with eye lasers, and a full-blown top to bottom house cleaning.  What do you end up with?  A crazy fun weekend.

Fizzgigg preparing to fire off an eye laser salvo at a chipmunk

New Super Mario Bros. Wii continues to surprise me.  While it is a crazy game on its own, adding three other players to the equation turns it into a Smash Bros “the craziest thing that could happen is going to happen” style of game.  Whether on purpose or not, people will be bonked into bottomless pits, knocked off ledges, be denied access to powerups, or shoved into that fish just up ahead.  My buddy Mike observed that not only is the unpredictability of New Mario Wii similar to Smash Bros, but the lack of being upset at death is similar as well; sometimes, the circumstances surrounding your character’s death are so insanely over the top, you can’t do anything but laugh about it.

I also started Muramasa over the weekend.  I haven’t put much time into it, but what I have seen so far is amazing.  The art direction is great, the fighting system reminds me of Third Strike (air juggles ahoy), the music is great, and the weapon forging system is rewarding.  It’s the first opportunity I’ve had to use my Wavebird since I happened across it at a Gamestop for only $15 a couple months ago…the control scheme is obviously geared towards using a Wii Remote/Nunchuck, but the Wavebird still works great.  I really, REALLY wish that the jump command wasn’t mapped to “up” on the analog stick, but excluding this one issue, the control scheme is simplistic and works well.  The fighting system itself is extremely intuitive, functioning like a more simple version of Ninja Gaiden Black.  The direction you hold the control stick in combined with how long you hold the attack button and how many times you hit it determine which combo you put out there.  While you don’t gain any new moves as the game goes on, the number of moves available to you is more than adequate.

We recently got the second season of Big Bang Theory on DVD, and I feel that it is funnier and better than the first season.  The character development feels very organic and realistic, while the scripts seem to be getting tighter and the story lines are becoming more creative.  I highly recommend you check it out if you have never watched it…it is without a doubt one of the best sitcoms in the past decade.

Oh, and a little hint for all of you: if you buy a Swiffer Duster (which works great, so I recommend that you do), don’t try to put the attachment point on the handle THROUGH the duster…there is a little pocket on the backside that it slides right into.  Yes, I was ridiculed.

Our trip down to Hendersonville, North Carolina last weekend to visit my parents was a ton of fun.  We saw the sights (a couple of waterfalls, a couple of mountain peaks as evidenced by the picture above of Brittnie at Jump Off Rock, elevation 3100 feet), took in the local cuisine (the best hot dog stand I have ever been to and a steakhouse that served steak RARE), and caught up on our manga (We both finished the Basilisk series, I finished the Azumangah Daioh omnibus, and Brittnie got halfway through the Samurai Champloo manga series.)  Traffic going down was nonexistent, although we hit some insanity halfway up I-81 on the way back home.

My new mouse and monitor came in.  The review for the mouse can be found here, and the review for the monitor is forthcoming.  I like it a lot…it is barely satisfactory for tooling around on the desktop or browsing the internet, but it is damn near perfect for gaming.  A nearly non-existent response time and excellent contrast really keep things looking awesome, and 23″is a perfect compromise between size and desktop footprint.  It is taking some time to adjust, coming from a Dell 2005FPW, but I think I will manage

My new Asus VH236

Modern Warfare 2 was definitely a lot of fun (review here.)  It was definitely intense, but wasn’t as good as the first one IMO.  I don’t know what it was, it just didn’t hit me like CoD4 did.

This weekend is going to be a big gaming weekend.  I just recently got GTA Chinatown Wars for the PSP…I thought the DS version was fun and it was awesome going back to the overhead view of the first two GTA games, but the stylus use felt tacked on and unnecessary.  I’m looking forward to the bigger screen, better visuals, and control-only input.  I’ve also got Darkest of Days for the PC.  I know it got terrible reviews and that the graphics look really dated, but I enjoyed the demo.  It seems like it could have some really intense sequences, and bad graphics don’t really bother me all that much.  Besides, what with the new Zelda game being released in a few days, Mass Effect 2 coming out soon, and some other non-shooter stuff on the way, I figured after going through Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2 I should get in one more FPS before getting into Torchlight and the RPGs that will be released shortly thereafter.

I do think I’m going to pick up Serious Sam HD if some crazy Steam sale happens during the holidays, though…I LOVED that game when it was first released, and while graphics aren’t that important to me, being able to play a nostalgic game like that with updated visuals would be awesome.