“Playing” Alan Wake

“Playing” Alan Wake

Just finished watching a playthrough of the new horror game Alan Wake.  I’ve switched from playing a lot of games that I’m just curious about to watching them played on YouTube.  There are tons of people that are playing through a game and recording it as they go.  You can then watch the game played from beginning to end without having to lift a finger; or spend tons of time trying to fight through puzzles/monsters/etc.

“That seems stupid”, you say.  “Isn’t the point of a game to be played?”  Well, I don’t have tons of time to invest in all the great games out there; and I more recently found myself never getting through a good number of games that I bought.  I find this method to be a great compromise because I likely would never have bought this game.  I was curious about it for sure, but knew I was not interested enough to invest the money or the ~20 hours of time to play it.  Its a great way to ‘play’ a games to see what the state of the art is – but not have to spend the amount of time it takes.

I’ve now moved on to Final Fantasy XIII.  That’s a monstrosity estimated at 50-60 hours of gameplay.  I’ve watched the first half of a complete playthrough; and have more recently switched to a playthrough that cuts/edits out the minor battles that pop up every 30 seconds or so.  Makes for a much faster viewing of the worlds and story.  If they release a PC version of FF XIII, I’ll buy it for sure.

Offset project at Intel is no more

Offset project at Intel is no more

Despite some great fun working with these guys; but because we’re no longer delivering Larrabee – Project Offset has closed up shop at Intel.  I’m still in touch with a few of the original guys that have moved on to other pastures – and wish them the best.  A really great group of smart folks.

Here’s a link to some of the videos that were publicly released.  I worked a long time using that big, ugly giant doing animation optimizations/rewrites – I’ll sure miss him. 🙂

27:12

27:12

I ran the annual Intel 5k here at work one afternoon and this was my time (albeit the actual course was 3.22 miles instead of 3.10).  8:30/mile pace.   Not bad considering this was my first timed 5k race since I was in high school (and I was just running it at my normal nightly pace – not racing it); but honestly, my worst times as a freshman in high school were like this.  I think I regularly ran 22-ish minute 5k’s with a few ventures down to the upper 20-minute range.

I still keenly remember the very end of my senior year track season.  I was standing on the hill above the track at my high school with my good friend Jason Wortman after having just run a 5:02 mile and saying, “You know, this might be the fastest/best shape we’ll be in for the rest of our lives”.  Maybe I should prove that statement wrong… 🙂

Even God didn’t like it…

Even God didn’t like it…

Wow, wow, wow.  You can’t even come close to making this stuff up.

The giant ‘King of King’s’ Jesus statue in the midwest (Monroe, Ohio) that had been drawing flack for years received it’s ‘divine’ critique last night when it got HIT BY LIGHTNING and BURNED TO THE GROUND.

News article of the fire with ample pictures:
http://www.wlwt.com/news/23900484/detail.html?hpt=C2

Song by Heywood Banks from the local Indiana Bob and Tom radio station:

Goonies 25th Anniversary at Astoria

Goonies 25th Anniversary at Astoria

I went out to Astoria with some friends for the Goonies 25th Anniversary festival.  Goonies was filmed in Astoria and a few scenes down the road at Ecola State Park.  You can still visit the original house:
 

The Goon-docks were the festival headquarters – where I picked up an exceptional hoodie to commemorate the event:

I missed it in the morning, but the actual actor who played Sloth was there in costume at the opening of the new film museum. The ‘museum’ just happens to be the old jail that one of the Fratelli brother’s escapes from at the opening of the movie.  Just the same as it looked in the movie 25 years ago.

Also on hand, “Chunk” Jeff Cohen, Goonies director Richard Donner, Sean Astin who played the lead character Mikey, and Corey Feldman “Mouth”.  While I didn’t see any of the actors due to the fact each of them showed up at different events over the long weekend – it was great fun seeing all the fans dressed up and living the dream.  In all, about 2500 fans showed up.

Details and a really active forum with pictures/etc here:
http://goonies25thanniversary.com