Digital Dave

I ended up picking up one of the new NVIDIA 8800GT cards that were just released recently.  The card is bad-ass, and I wish I had more time to tinker around with it.  But I hope to play around with it a little more over thanksgiving break. I played the demo to Crysis, and the effects were really neat.  Motion blur when you turn, or while you’re sky diving. The water effects… The lighting… *drools*

I also got a new project in my networking class… It’ll be pretty easy so I’ll end up being able to take full advantage of the time for my multiplayer game.  All I need to do is to program an e-mail client to send an e-mail.  Should take about an hour or so.

And on a side note, I’ve never been following so many games that ended up having a release date all on the same week…  Next week: Super Mario Galaxy, Crysis, Simcity Societies,  and Need for Speed: Pro Street is coming out.

School starts Monday!  Thank goodness.  I’m about ready to get back into motion.  I love breaks away from school, but I also enjoy learning new things and being around the academic atmosphere.  I’m taking some interesting courses this semester.   One being a networking course that will utilize Java and maybe some C++.  I could use a Java course right about now, I haven’t touched Java for a while.   Another course deals with business programming that will be pretty easy.  I’ll get to come away with having experience programming in COBAL.  Not sure when I’ll ever use it after college, but it never hurts to pick up a new language.  Other than that I’ll be taking a philosophy course (business ethics), a finance course (equity securities and markets), and a biology course (which will finish my 14 hour science requirement, thank goodness).

So, not a bad line up.  I was going to take a Game  Programming course that utilizes  DX9, but I ended up having to drop it to save myself the pain of taking 3 programming courses next fall.  It’s only offered during the fall semester, so I may be out of luck with that course.

I didn’t do a whole heck of a lot today.  I noticed that the federal reserve cut the discount rate.  Which doesn’t mean a whole lot to individual investors, as it deals with the rate at which businesses loan each other money.  I’m still hoping for that interest rate cut next month.

Spent some time fixing my moms computer.  Picked up a copy of Windows Vista from newegg (sys builders copy), and installed that beast.  She rarely uses the computer, so I doubt the flaws will mess with her.

Have you seen the game Bioshock?!  It doesn’t release until the 21st, but the game is getting incredible reviews.  A few:

• Games Radar = 10
• Eurogamer = 10
• 1UP = 10
• Game Informer = 10
• IGN = 9.7
• PC Zone = 9.6
• PC Gamer = 9.5

This game had not been on my radar until just a few days ago when I noticed all of these reviews pouring out.  I’ve rarely ever seen so many 10′s for a game and my first thought was, “Ok… These people could not find a single thing wrong with this game?”  I started looking into the game via pictures, movies, websites, etc, and I’ve got to say ‘whoah.’  It has a LOT of hype, but it looks like it could possibly live up to it all.  Everything I have seen is making me want to play it.  I don’t own a 360, so I’ll be waiting to grab it for my PC.

It looks like Jack Thompson is already gunning for this game to be off the shelf and out of your kids hands.  If you don’t know who Jack is, he is a very outspoken critic of video game violence.  As unrealistic as this game looks, he’s still going after it.  I wrote a research paper on video game violence that included some information about him. I may be post it in the future, but I’ll leave it up to you to Google him if you are unaware of who this man is.

The girl and I are heading out to see Superbad tonight.  Movie looks hilarious.