Protocol Snow

I just found out that GameDaily ran a pictorial last week on Lara Croft visiting the office for a day. I don’t know if she is the official Lara Croft model or just a cosplayer, but still, check it out!

Like many internet-savvy gamers, I have free subscriptions to several videogame magazines. I used to read these religiously, never missing a word. Nowadays, I flip through an issue for fifteen minutes and then toss it. I said previously that gaming doesn’t play as big a role for me now. Is playing video games merely a momentary phase in life, like studying dinosaurs or collecting basketball cards? Do you think you’ll be a big videogame aficionado one, two decades from now?

Readers perhaps might be surprised to know that my previous blog (updated continuously for about three years) was exclusively about gaming. It’s been quite some time since I’ve written about games informally, let alone for a published article on GameDaily. I guess that’s representative of the diminished role that games are playing in my life currently. Good/bad?

One reason for that is because last year I decided to leave my consoles behind at home instead of lugging them back and forth cross country every time I had a college break. But while I’ve been largely gaming-free at school, my house is always gaming central whenever I come back. So when everybody else is complaining about the summer gaming drought, I’m having a blast catching up on old releases!

God of War (PlayStation 2)

I’m a couple years late on this one, and I was actually debating whether to just skip it and try the sequel (which I’ve heard is more combat heavy with less emphasis on puzzles). Yeah, I’m not too big a fan of puzzles in my action games. Nevertheless, I don’t have much to complain about here. The combat largely consists of button mashing and isn’t too deep, but the incredible atmosphere provided by the Greek mythos and orchestrated soundtrack make this game quite memorable. I’m looking forward to playing the sequel, and God of War 3 on PlayStation 3 might be the killer app that finally makes me get the system.

Crackdown (Xbox 360)

I’m usually not a fan of these sandbox games because I feel overwhelmed by the sheer freedom and numerous number of objectives to accomplish, but I enjoyed the demo and went on to pick up the full game. Leveling up my character’s abilities so that he can jump on top of buildings and leap from one block to another is pure fun. The main “plot” of the game, which involves destroying the hideouts of gang members and cleaning up the city, is very shallow and repetitive, but I’m enjoying progressing through the campaign nonetheless. Be warned that the full version of the game is merely an extension of the demo, except with the time limit taken away and access granted to the other islands of the city. Well, cynics will see it that way, but it’s true.

Tomb Raider: Legend (Xbox 360)

Other than a demo of Tomb Raider 2 with my old Voodoo Banshee video card, I can’t remember ever playing a Tomb Raider game. Tomb Raider: Legend makes me want to try TR 1 and 2 though (which I hear are the only worthwhile installments of the series). Legend features some of the best 3D platforming action this side of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and, other than some dull vehicular sequences, is a joy to play throughout. I loved this short eight hour adventure, braving through breathtaking locales such as South American jungles and icy cliffs. There’s an especially memorable scene in the game where Lara Croft climbs up a cliff overlooking an enormous waterfall spread out in front of her that fills the entire screen. I just love quiet yet moving moments of discovery like this, and there are quite a few in this game.

Tomb Raider has been largely an industry joke for the better part of a decade thanks to many subpar sequels in a once heralded series, but it’s very fair to say that Lara Croft is finally back in true form. Think of Tomb Raider as Indiana Jones with a sassy and sexy British female lead… the spirit of adventuring is very strong with TR: Legend.

I just remembered, there is one great thing about Boston: tax free shopping! I believe the no-tax policy applies only to clothing, which is unfortunate for an electronics maniac like I am. However, I did pick up about half a dozen of those Nike Golf Dri-Fit shirts at an outlet. I love these shirts since the fabric wicks away sweat and are so much better in hot weather compared to cotton or other materials. This will be very, very useful when I leave for hot and humid Taiwan and Japan in a couple weeks…

I just got back from several days in Boston. It was my first time in the city and it’s not a bad place to visit, though I don’t think I would like living there very much, whether for work or for college. Boston’s kind of a sprawling mess with schools all over the place. I’m sure the college atmosphere is much more alive there (something that was quite lacking at my school), but now that I’ve visited Boston, I can appreciate the quiet, self-enclosed entity that is Johns Hopkins.

So yeah, I visited Harvard and MIT while I was there. My brother’s dorm room at Harvard is quite small and pitifully run down. I understand officials wanting to preserve the history and legacy of the buildings by not upgrading, but yeck, now I feel quite spoiled with the rooms I had. Call me unappreciative of art and history, and you would be quite correct.

Harvard Medical School

I’m not 100% sure of this statistic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Harvard was the #1 most toured school in the country. There’s always groups of giant tour buses parked around the school with all the tourists curious to check out the students to see if they’re any “different”. Surely it must be distracting to go to school there and feel like you’re the exhibit!

The famous MIT “Great Dome”

MIT felt empty in comparison. Not much fun looking at nerds and geeks right? I kid, I kid.

If my life were a Xbox 360 game, an achievement would have just unlocked because I am now finished with college! All that’s left for me is the graduation ceremony itself. In the meantime, I’m busy packing up my things and getting ready to move out.

My itinerary for the next couple months: after my graduation ceremony, I’m headed up to Cambridge, MA to visit Harvard University and to help my brother move out of his dorm. Following that, I’m headed to Taiwan for a month. While I’m in Asia, I’ll be going on a tour of Hokkaido, Japan, which should be pretty neat, but my personal highlight of the whole trip is a self-guided, 4 day stop in Tokyo. I’m currently busy planning out what places I want to see and shops I want to visit. From what I hear, Tokyo should be pretty English friendly but somehow I don’t believe that and have a feeling there’ll be many times when I’m going to be completely lost with no English speakers around. It’ll be interesting to see how much I’ve actually learned after 2.5 years of Japanese classes…

I was planning on typing up a review of the iRiver Clix 2, but the one at Pocketables.net is so good I’m not even going to bother. It’s a fantastic review for a phenomenal product with tons of photos, so go read it.

Today was my last day of classes in my last year at college. Ironically, the only class I had today was General Physics II, a course usually taken by freshmen. Why I’m taking the course now is a long story about AP Physics credit and medical school admissions, but half the time I couldn’t/didn’t go to the lectures while the other half I sat in the auditorium grinning about the absurdity of the situation. It could potentially have been problematic though. I never fully understood electricity and magnetism (cue the question: why are you an engineering major again?), but luckily the several years I have over my classmates apparently gave me some additional intuition. On the first midterm I scored two standard deviations above the mean and I nearly aced the second midterm. Not too bad for someone who flinches whenever he sees the word “magnetic field”.

Yesterday was the really killer day though. I had a project due and two presentations to deliver for some senior engineering classes (though a hottie told me later that she liked my presentation, so it wasn’t entirely too bad a day). I’ve been working on the project 24/7 for basically the entire week. It was for a class called “Statistical methods in imaging” and my project idea was to track highways using something called the particle filtering algorithm. This class is out of my league and I would have dropped it in the first week if I could, but unfortunately I needed this to fulfill some graduation requirements. The good news is that some of the students in the class are in the same boat so we’re all sinking together. But while my project isn’t as refined or as advanced compared to one from someone who actually knows what he’s doing with statistics, I gotta say I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

Here’s a sample image of my program: the user clicks on the image to specify a starting point and a direction, and the program tries to trace the highway. It’s clearly not very precise, but I think it’s cool nonetheless.

I’m not completely done with college yet though. Two finals, two more papers, and one more project in the next two weeks. But those will be more low stress so I’m over the hump. Start the countdown to graduation!

I’ve had my eye on the iRiver clix 2 ever since it was shown at CES 2007 this past January. My beloved iRiver H320 had conked out in the fall, and I’ve been using an Olympus voice recorder (WS-300M) for my music needs while biding my time and waiting for the next killer mp3 player. That moment has finally arrived with the U.S. launch of the iRiver clix 2 last week.

I just placed my order ten minutes ago, but in the meantime here’s a couple pics from an unboxing gallery by Jenn K. Lee at Pocketables.net (which by the way is one of my new favorite sites). I should be holding my very own clix2 next week, check for my thoughts sometime around then.