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Halo 3 launch with photos from Redmond, Microsoft Company Store and the Halo dioramaHere we go. Millions are blogging about Halo 3 as I write ths. Sony Defense Force put out a less than entertaining review. I hoped for a bit more, but it was short and sorta boring. For the real reviews, check out metacritic.com, or just go out and buy a copy.
Now for the photos. I went to Redmond Town Center (RTC) last night for the Halo 3 midnight launch. My photos aren't that great. I really suck these days at night shots. I slept and then got up early to catch the launch at the Microsoft Company Store. I love playing games, but there's something about a launch night that gets me stoked.
Bonus: The Microsoft Company Store had two sections of the big diorama you've been seeing in videos on display. Check out those photos for a glimpse.
Enjoy. Have fun. Play safe. Don't forget to reload. Is Sony Home? Not until 2008.
From Wired Blogs by an American expat in Japan:
Fine print: The above article is a farse and for entertainment value only. However, the DarkZero writeup is true. Here but not here.Hey there. I'm still here, I've just been absent from posting on my blog. Now with Halo 3 coming out next week, I'll be even less here. I'm taking Tuesday off work, as it's a national holiday. :) I'm in the Simpsons
It's the latest in "create your ____ avatar" flash tools following South Park, M&Ms and countless others. The Simpsons Movie web site has a flash tool to create yourself in the Simpsons world. Give it a try. I had to tweak mine in post-production after creating the initial model on the site.
What do you think? Stringer speaks about the PS3
Howard Stringer was interview by the Financial Times and spoke about the PS3. According to Howard, people have bought fewer PlayStation 3s than it looks, and they’re happy with what little they’re getting out of the system! :) At least he's no longer calling it a Mercedes.
“I think PlayStation 3 is following a particular trend of 1 and 2, and if you looked at the history of it, it’s a very similar history. It takes a long time for producers, and more time because of the cost factor, to embrace the full bandwidth of PlayStation 3. It’s only using 20% of it right now. And producers will always wait to see how it’s going, and once they use the full bandwidth the games experience is stunning. And while people have not bought as many PlayStation 3s as it looks, it is no different from PS2 and PS1 in terms of percentage of sales, and it is an experience that is dazzling. People who play it, using only 20% of the bandwidth, are perfectly happy playing it and their games will get better. Most of the games are not third-party games yet; they’re mostly our own games and we’ve got Home coming out; we’ve got some exciting games coming out in the summer, 20 or 30 of them. So I don’t worry about that at all. I think that the public would like the cost to be lower, there’s no question about that, but meanwhile…” For the full interview, visit the Financial Times. Sony, where's your Forza competitor?
Now Dave Karraker in Sony Corporate Communications is saying in the Playstation blog, “SPUs are not ‘normal’ processors like the PPU. There is a trade-off between performance and versatility. A Ferrari is not the best car for a visit to Home Depot…” What's with Sony? They couldn’t get Gran Turismo out the door for the new console. (Other than a free demo.) With all this obsession with high end automobiles, you’d think they would have led with an amazing car game. Forza pawns. P.S. Dave also said that porting a game from the 360 to the PS3 is more difficult than beginning development on the PS3. So, why are developers that he's hearing from starting on the 360 in the first place? Hmm... And about issues with games that rely on heavy online use? Ahhh.. yeah, you guys forgot online, even though your flagship launch title was an online game. Phil tried to make up for it by coining the 3rd age at GDC and introducing Home. But you're definately playing catchup, and there's definately a difference. Paris Hilton and George BushI have an opinion and it's not too kind. I think Paris Hilton skirted justice and the time coming to her for a legitimate crime.. and so did George Bush. I guess they have one more thing in common now.
Earth's true ancient pokemon revealed! 
Have you ever wondered if "they" were real? You know, some fantastic creature in your imagination. Many of us have seen photographs of beautiful and scary sea creatures and have said, WOW. Artists have drawn on the mysterious creatures of the deep for inspiration when creating fantastic aliens. The characters of Bikini Bottom in Spongebob Squarepants come from the sea. But what about Pokemon? The creature on the right is an actual ocean creature affectionately named the Dumbo Octopus. The creature on the right is also affectionately named, Pkachu from Pokemon. "Welcome to the deep Pikachu." My sister pointed out this book to me, and I'm ordering a copy. What a great coffee table book for the kids inspiration and nightmares. "The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss" by Claire Nouvian. Go check it out. They're not all cute and adorable like the guy above. HDR ExperimentationI decided to dable in some HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. It's been all the rage for a while now. It's time for me to catch up. It's a technique that is effective when taking photos of scenes or objects that have a great variance in lighting. A standard photograph would over expose some of the scene, and under expose others. By shooting a series of photographs at different exposures, you can use the computer to combine the photos into one taking the best portion of each image into the final product. There are a few ways to do this. Many require using Photoshop to manually tweak the image. For me, I've chosen a piece of software called Photomatix. Its custom designed for HDR photography, and simplifies the task. Since I'm just experimenting yet, I only have the trial version of the software. If I find the technique useful, then I'll purchase the full version.
If you want to learn HDR for yourself, see this tutorial. The software I used, Photomatix, is here.
The professional examples are much better than mine. I've chosen to tweak my final photo a lot and bring up the saturation to pronounce the colors in my [messy] office, below. The church and the skyline are some other people's examples.
Original - Note how the image on the monitor is over exposed and the room is dark and underexposed. This is the middle exposure image from the set of 9 raw shots. 
HDR Tone Mapped - Notice how a variety of light sources have been leveled so most of the image is neither too dark or too light. This is the blending of 9 braketed RAW images at different exposures. 
In a situation like the one above, a flash might be practical for illuminating the room more evenly. In some cases, a flash is not practical. (i.e. a very large space, or outdoors with lights and shadows) or would remove some of the more interesting aspects of the lighting in the image. When tone mapping an HDR image, you can over-saturate it to bring out the colors which may be washed out by bright lighting.
See some good examples (not mine) below.
Jose Maria Cuellar's "The prayers" 
Altus' Tokyo Nightscape  Minneapolis now on Live maps arial view!
Update: I neglected to provide a link to the Live Maps tool in my post. My apologies. It's http://maps.live.com/ Once on a map, click on the "switch to bird's eye view" button" as shown below. You have to be zoomed in far enough for that button to be active.
Welcome to the Halo betaToday marks the first day of the Halo 3 beta. To celebrate, I'm posting a Mac vs. PC parody comic that I made. It's based on frames of artwork that someone else originally made. (Source is offline.) I got some blurbs from a couple contributors that I used for the Mac guy and added my own little story twist. Voila. A Mac vs. Halo parody comic. Enjoy. (Or not!) Heavy Weapons GuyNew Team Fortress 2 video. Brilliant.
Halo 3 Zune
She's a beauty. :) See Cesar's unboxing video in his blog. I love FPS
I have a confession to make. I suck at FPS games. But I still love them. In a fair fight, I get my @$$ kicked. At the same time, when I get killed, I'm usually laughing like a fool. I do get in the groove sometimes. I do better at team games where people are working together. I think it's usually because it forces me to plan better and not just rush in.
Here's my profile, including the Halo 3 beta. (What is public, at any rate.) Vancouver Trip
I have some of the photos up already, and more are on their way tonight.
Aka HazumiAlso known as Eric Havir's space.
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