A look back and a look forward

If you remember, it was about a year ago to the day that I was wrapping up the decision making process on what was then called the ps360 fund. Back then I was wavering between the then mighty Xbox 360 and the adolescent PS3 who, while still had loads of potential, would have probably only gotten the job done then if you put a paper bag over her... er.. it.

Yadda yadda fast forward to now and things are looking pretty stellar on the PS3 front. Rather than moaning on and on about frame rates and streaming-this-and-that, I'll go the youtube vid way to demonstrate my point. Because everyone knows reading is a dying art:

Fat Princess - A PS3 exclusive capture the flag type PSN (Playstation Network) game that looks about as fun as it does cute. Nothing like a quick mindless game of capture the flag without all of the stress that comes with Killzone 2 or such.

One of my favorite things to do in the old NCAA series was create my own school, whether it be ole' PHS, Dayton, or even the Sharonville Eagles. There is just something that is neat about creating your own tradition from scratch, especially in a sport like college football. Create-a-School mysteriously disappeared in this generation of games, but it's back in NCAA 10.... oh is it ever back. This has potential to be my favorite game of all time if this works out well. In two parts:

More NCAA Football 10 Info

More NCAA Football 10 News & Previews

Slightly skeptical on how well this will work still, but a game from the creators of SOCOM with 256 players all playing on the same map (assuming it is the size of Rhode Island, at a minimum) intrigues me. Also a PS3 exclusive. Since pre-rendered vids are for sucks, find some in-game footage here.

Pixeljunks new game (currently titled 1-4). I know that means nothing to anyone reading this so let me just summarize by saying they are really really good at making sure 2D has a place on HD screens still. Their games are absolutely stunning to watch

That's good for now. Needless to say, I'm pretty stoked. Then there is also that whole Beatles Rock Band thing too.... which you know... is a must buy.

Beautiful Music my ass

It's been a project a few months in the making and (combined with being in front of a computer about 8 hours a day at work already) a large reason of my dropoff in blog content, but I can finally say I have made some progress on the vinyl to digital conversion.

I can officially put Barry Manilow Live in the done pile and move on to something I actually enjoy. After two straight days of hearing him, I feel like I deserve it.

I remember casually talking to a certain chemistry teacher in high school about the possibility of doing something like this. Knowing that I dabbled in audio engineering at school, he asked me about how complicated it would be to transfer albums to CD. I believe at the time I said I couldn't imagine it being much harder than plugging the "out" of the record player into a line in and using something like Audacity (a wonderful free program, by the way) to record it digitally.

Well, I was half right. Turns out 99% of record players need to have a separate pre-amp to get any kind of clean sound out of them. After a quick google search I came across this bad boy and as of yet have absolutely no complaints. It works exactly as it should. /shameless plug

Moving onward. Once I was getting sound into the computer I dabbled within my slightly more complicated sound editing program to get a layout that would be best suited for this venture, as opposed to, you know, recording a band. After getting all my EQs and other plugins tuned, then it was a simple hit record type of process that I initially thought it would be.

So overall, more complicated than I first thought, but still not too terrible. And yes, I know that there are USB record players out there now that basically take away the need for all this fancy shmancy doo-hickie-ing and whatnot, but going about it the one-stop-shopping way has never really quite been my thing. And, once I get done with all the vinyl, this whole setup is just a switch of plugs away from working for cassette to digital. Talk about flexibility...

If anyone has (or still is) considering this - or wants to offer some monetary compensation in exchange for my best effort at a "digitally remastered" copy of your favs - leave a comment. That is if anyone even reads this anymore...


Helloooo out there.....