Impressions of Windows7

I don’t know much about the inner workings of operating systems. Benchmarks? Kernals? Threads? Hamsters? They all sound like crap you’d find at a crime scene.

What I do know is doodads… and along with the enhanced stability, W7 promised great things. SO, did it deliver? I’m only going over a few things (my key neats and not so’s) since the list seems to grow every time I click something.

Let’s begin at Start! Read more

Instant Media

So you say you like videocasts and podcasts. Chances are, then, you’re using currently using iTunes. A good choice, yes. It’s got a built in mp3 player (ie its Raison D’être) and the nify capability to download more mp3s. It also has, in recent months, been able to download as the lastest Daily Show and Lost episodes (for a price). And sure, it has a bevy of free podcasts and vidcasts to search though.

Sounds like a dream. Except for one thing… it’s clunky! Sometime having the world at your fingertips can be a bad thing. Everyone and their dog can add their podcast to iTunes and as a result you go into the search and theres thousands of dead or dying listings.

Instant Media (you remember Instant Media, this is a review about Instant Media) is a much nicer and sleeker program when it comes to this sort of thing.

The interface is easy to use. Videocasts and Audiocasts are easily marked, and within each a nice navigation side bar with a more detailed subject list than iTunes as well as the number of casts that are in each category).

As for the content, the folks at IM are a bit more picky when it comes to who gets to use their system to broadcast. Despite this, IM has more featured Videocasts now than iTunes. The audiocasts are building, but at least you can sift though them easier. Most of these you can get at iTunes too, but there are some exclusives to IM… which depending on your tastes can be a good or bad thing.

The listed content is also all free, which is a good thing (especially if you’ve ever clicked buy in iTunes by mistake).

And, unlike iTunes, if your favorite casts aren’t listed, IM has an add feed function where you provide the RSS URL of whatever it is you’re currently watching. The feed for NWOt radio is http://www.newworldotter.com/radio/wp-rss2.php by the way.

Now for a bit of the techno-babble. Once subscribed to your media, IM has a wide array of things to fiddle with. You can set filters to allow or exclude content by keywords; set how often you want to grab new stuff; and set how long you want your downloads to hang around before deletion. You can of course, opt to save the shows to other folders once downloaded.

The download engine is a bit torrent system which makes downloading much quicker. That is to say, instead of d/l just from the originating website, you also get from other users.

Another 1-up on iTunes is the news aggregator. You can subscribe to the headlines of all sorts of news organizations. The only drawback to this is the Add RSS function doesn’t work here, so you’re limited to the (so far) 57 news agencies listed.

IM has a versitile media player cabable of HD and can run the gamut of codecs and formats. It also includes the capability to index your mp3 collection, but that’s meh. It doesn’t keep any of the statistics or meta data that iTunes boasts. Nor can you get more music on a whim.

On to some downsides. When browsing the listings, there is no way to see info on individual episodes; you’ll have to subscribe first and this can lead to a lot of unwanted downloads. There is also no built-in method to get your downloads to your iPod or other miscellaneous devices.

All in all though, I say keep the iTunes for your music, but use Instant Media for everything else. Unless you’re on a Mac… they’re still working on that.

Total War: Medieval and Viking Expansions

Overview and Ostentation

The team at TotalWar.com are back, this time taking war, pillaging, and assassination to the Dark Ages of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

In Medieval Total War you get the choice of playing one of 12 different warring nations including the Alomahads of Morocco, the Danish of Scandinavia, and the “People of Novgorod” known more contemporarily as the Russians. At first the game might seem like a larger and more pale faced version of Shogun Total War, however there are a few key differences.

First of all, there’s the issue of princesses and your queen will continue to squirt them out as she does princes. Princesses can be used to make new alliances to foreigners by marrying them off to their royal families. They can be married to your own generals, to help keep their loyalty up. This is an especially important feature, since if your generals’ loyalty gets to low, you’ll have a revolt on your hands. A secondary feature not in step with the oriental version is the unending problem the Pope is. If you get a little to attack happy and start winning, the pope will tell you to cease hostilities with your Christian enemies with in two years (2 turns) or you will be excommunicated. And that’s when you’re Christian brothers start going on crusade… against you.

In the game I’m currently playing, I, as the French (I know, I know. It wasn’t my idea) have obliterated the British, the Aragonese, and have rather large chunks of Germany and Italy. My biggest problems right now seem to be the Polish and Hungarians who lie on my eastern borders.

Viking Invasion takes a step back in time from Medieval Times, back to the formation of and unification of England. In this game you have your choice of one of eight Anglo-Celtic tribes all vying for supremacy of the modern day UK as well as the Vikings who emanate out of Norway. The only real difference between Viking Invasion and Medieval Total War is that there is no Pope in Viking Invasion to muddle up your imperialistic devastation of your fellow Christian brothers.

I started a game as the Scots, which is harder than normal and places you your a tenuous hold on the coast of Scotland and Ulster country in Ireland. You are surrounded pretty much on all sides by threats and rivals. So far I’ve managed to take all of Northern Ireland, a ton of Coastline and am slowly destroying the North Umbrians.

Ratings and Rantings

Both games are highly interesting, entertaining and will make you think on how to decimate your electronic enemies. Graphics, as you can see from the screen shots, are fantastic and the battles are highly graphic. Thus, in my happy little tradition of continuously violating the NWOt rating scale and flaunting it for all to see, I’ve elected to take this time to rate the games. They each get a 6 out of 6.

All screen shots courtesy of TotalWar.com.

…Come back soon for Rome Total War…

Sun 80’s .com

Direct from Dublin is the streaming net station called Sun 80′s.com. This is a great station for all you dedicated 80′s fans. But like all things there’s pros and cons.

Pros -

• The stream itself is pure new wave and 80′s pop with few commercial interruptions.
• Great variety – not just the hits.
• The website is full of everything 80′s including games, nostalgic top ten lists and lyrics.
• They take requests via email… and play them!

Cons –

• As I said it’s for extreme 80′s fans- there’s neither a playlist
  nor really any announcement of songs. You either know it or you don’t.
• The stream is only for Window’s Media Player. It wont play in any other music app., and if you don’t have Windows Media Player integrated with your browser, it’s buried in the station guide for Widows MP.
• No forums or chats. People this dedicated deserve to talk to each other.

Despite its slight drawbacks, it’s still a great station. With only a 28k stream just about everyone can enjoy it so I recommend you visit it at:

www.sun80s.com or get to it via the 80′s menu in your Windows Media Player radio station guide.

Shogun: Total War

For Christmas this year I got a new strategy game, which I find to be quite the addictive little waste of time. The name of the game is Shogun: Total War and it’s a happy little jaunt through 15th Century Feudal Japan. Your objectives are simple, through select a clan and take over all of Japan.

It is like Age of Empires in that you must build up your farm and mining territories, as well as employ an intelligent building strategy for each province, allowing you to build up a massive army and decimate your opponents. When you invade or are invaded by another player, you are given the option of tactically commanding the battle. Or, if you so wish, you can leave it up to the computer’s discretion to resolve the hostilities.

The only two disadvantages I have found in playing this game, is firstly, you must have an heir (male child) or better yet a whole line of them, or when your warlord dies, you lose the game and all your lands go to your ally(ies) and of course your heirs are given out at the preference of the game. Secondly, should you tactically decide to command a battle, and your general is killed, even if you obliterate your enemies and take the field, you still lose the battle and will have to go in again and attempt to wrest power from your opponent.

And now in the fine tradition of humiliatingly undermining the integrity of the NWOt rating wheel of justice, I give Shogun: Total War 5 dead bleeding Tokagowan No-Dachi Samurai on a silver rich battlefield of doom…odd that I would finish that off with a battlefield of doom….

Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Battle

Waterloo is a real-time strategy game put of by BreakAway Games, Ltd. It provides several historical battles between the dying French Empire and Great Britain and the Allies. It also gives a five or six-part tutorial to help the novice better adapt him or herself to the game. These tutorials begin by showing you how to utilize the artillery and end with a building-to-building war simulation.

I found the graphics to be pretty decent, and as with many games, you can zoom in and out considerably. As soon as I figure out how to make screen shots, I’ll provide some each of these game reviews. I can make no comment on sound as my sound card has joined the choir invisible and money’s tight around here.

As for the game itself, I found it to be difficult to control the course of battle, after all you’re fighting usually on a multi-front with many armies and the maps are what we like to call "frickin’ huge." One map might be around 20-30 miles (that’s scaled down miles) and your troops move (even when on a forced march) slow enough to give you reason to concentrate elsewhere while they go forth, but fast enough to get into trouble while you’re busy fighting the French over yonder. And as I mentioned before, this is a real-time game. Unlike a turn-based game, the fight continues even though you are no longer concentrating on a certain area of the game. This, in and of itself does do well to lend to the quality of challenging oneself.

My grievance with it is the profound de-emphasize of the use of artillery. The greatest emphasis is on the cavalry, which can attack from one portion of the screen to the other. Artillery, on the other hand, is more like background noise with this game, fairly ironic, since Napoleon himself was an artilleryman.

On the whole, the game can be entertaining, and cost is not prohibitive ($3.24). For the ratings, I give it 3 1/2 dead Frenchmen.

Steel Panthers

Before I start I want to emphasize the fact that I’m not drunk; slightly impaired perhaps by a certain percentage of alcoholic toxins flowing through by blood stream, but not drunk. Anyhow, on to the review…

I’ve been playing Steel Panthers almost constantly since my last software review, The Age of Rifles. Not that it’s my favorite game mind you, and I have many a game to review before I’m done, but it is one which I tend to enjoy the most prowess in.

Steel Panthers is a World War II strategy game, which has scenarios and campaigns for both theaters (European and Pacific) of warfare, with the familiar capture-the-flag type control points. The scenarios allow one to play U.S./British against German, or, for the connoisseur of conflicts, the more obscure Russo-Finnish, "Winter War" battles as well as a whole slew of other campaigns and scenarios.

On top of the standard invasions and battles that history owns, you can create your own battles between two opponents whose armies never would have seen each other in combat in the 1940s. One such battle, my first, was between elements of the Chinese Army (which I controlled) and Greek Army (computer controlled). The map was a fairly urban environment, which meant I was able to take advantages of paved roads and streets. The end result was that, although the Greek Army had tanks which were eons better than the tanks used by China (both used U.S. weapons in the game) the computer poorly positioned them, and, although they were able to do considerable damage, by the time the got them working against me, it was too late. All victory points seized, one army in ruins the other, victorious.

Steel Panthers has similar graphics to that of The Age of Rifles and similarly runs on MS-DOS. And why not? After all, the same company, SSI, puts them both out. Unlike Rifles, however, sound did work on my computer (that is it did before my sound card ceased to exist). Therefore I rate it 4 1/2 victorious Finnish Armies during the "Winter War" out of the possible 6 who-is-whats-ises I could have given it.

Napoleon In Russia

Yes, this is another turn-based strategy game put out by the good people at TalenSoft, and it comes along just in time for me to figure out how to make screen shots. In this game, cavalry is limited, so it’s best to use them wisely. Artillery is probably the real nuts and bolts of the operation, and who knows more about artillery than the Russians? And along with out gunning the French Empire with cannons, they also have some of the best troops. Unlike certain Dutch and Belgian regiments on the French side, the Russians don’t route, they fight until one side or the other dies.

The graphics are good in my book, and you can zoom in and out as you see fit. Although you can judge for yourselves what you think of the graphics with these screen shots I made (one of them is zoomed out, the rest are zoomed in).

The game I’ve been playing against the computer (of course you can play against yourself or some other human opponent) is called "Kutzuov Strikes!" and it’s a hypothetical scenario about the Russians hitting back at the French.

All in all, I’ve been rather pleased with the game, although the various phases (movement – melee) can be on the long side. And thus I’m going to give it 4 crossed, dead Frenchmen.

   

The Age Of Rifles

One of the greatest things in life is a hand bilk pack of new CD-Rs. The other thing of course would be games that don’t have incription on them to prevent bootleggers from… borrowing the information on one CD and placing it on another. Not saying that I, your humble, wholesome reviewer, cartoonist, extraordinaire would ever do something like that… just that that’s what I’ve been told. But let’s skip the legal schmutz and get to the game, a game of strategy and wit.

Every (if not most) major battle from 1845 up to 1905 can be played on The Age of Rifles from SSI. You can play a scenario, such as “203 Meter Hill” from the Russo-Japanese War with you friend or against the computer (here’s a hint: go with Japan). Or play a campaign, such as “The Soldier Queen” and expand the British Empire to its limits starting with the Sepoy Revolution (or lose it all and never get anywhere, depending on how good or bad your strategy is). It runs on DOS, but has been know to jam up if the computer runs too fast. I personally have been running it on MS-DOS without any problems, other than I can’t seem to get the sound to work.

What time is it? That right kiddies! It’s time for me to Drag out the NWOt’s Rating Scale’O'Rama, and take it down another peg. Because the sound doesn’t work and the graphics could be better: I bring forth to you the rating of: 4 Sepoy Revolutionaries routed by and ever advancing British offensive line.