Talisman was an old board game from Games Workshop. It was kind of a board game, and kind of a role playing game. A board game in the fact that there was a board, some dice to be rolled to see how many spaces on the board you moved, and game pieces. But it was a role playing game also in the fact that your game piece represented a character that had abilities, equipment, and even magic. These abilities increased and decreased over time depending how many battles you won or lost. It was a really fun game and me and a few friends literally spent an entire summer playing it when we were back in middle school. They announced awhile back that a company would be developing an Xbox Live version of the second edition of the game (Which was easily the best edition!) Up till now all I had was a "Fall of 2007" type of release date. Well, I have been checking around maybe once or twice a week to make see if any more updates about the game or it's release date. Well today I struck proverbial gold on the matter!!! Here are some more links about the game (stolen right from the Wikipedia page!):

1. ^ Talisman Expansion at BoardGameGeek
2. ^ Talisman The Adventure at BoardGameGeek
3. ^ Talisman Dungeon at BoardGameGeek
4. ^ Talisman Timescape at BoardGameGeek
5. ^ Talisman City at BoardGameGeek
6. ^ Talisman Dragons at BoardGameGeek
7. ^ Talisman 4th Edition Press Release. www.blackindustries.com. Black Industries. Retrieved on 2007-01-08.
8. ^ Games Day & Golden Demon 2007 event announcement, with announcement of pre-release sales of the 4th Edition of Talisman
9. ^ Talisman, 4th Edition at BoardGameGeek
10. ^ Talisman for the Sinclair Spectrum information from TalismanIsland.com
11. ^ IGN: Capcom Wields Talisman. IGN (2007-04-13).

My plan to have the perfect (in my eyes anyway) home theatre system

Today I have decided I will reveal my plan to move from a 32" regular TV to an HD digital projector with quality surround sound and an entire room dedicated to movies and video games. I have a vision of sitting in a small re-creation of an actual movie theatre. Right now my current vision is of a converted garage or full basement with three rows of four seats from an actual theatre with drink holders in the arm rests and each row of seats about six inches higher than the row in front of them so as to be recreate real stadium seating. The walls are painted a dark color and are soundproofed so we can have the surround sound turned WAY up. Enough of my fantasies for now though, lets look at some real life hardware that i'm seriously considering:

THE PROJECTOR: Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 1080

THE HD-DVD PLAYER: Xbox 360 Elite with accompanying HD-DVD Drive

THE SOUND SYSTEM: Still as of yet undecided, but I think i'm gonna go with something from Panasonic or JVC

     Well, that is the basic foundation of my home theatre system. I think it's a pretty solid foundation. But, this foundation is gonna run about $5000.00 or so to put together so it's also gonna take some time. The projector is the 1st priority followed by the Xbox and HD-DVD Drive as I already have a Sony 5.1 surround sound system.

     As for why I chose those specific components, I have what I think are pretty good reasons:

• The projector has the best ratings in it's class/price range
• The Xbox allows video games AND HD-DVD playback so it's dual purpose
• The sound system will rival that of GOD

     Now, let's get back to a very important aspect of this whole deal. How the hell is a schlubb who makes $13.75/hr going to afford all of this? Well, let's use bullets again, that was cool:

• My wife just graduated from nursing school
• MyCokeRewards - i've been submitting points for a Xbox360
• TransformYourSummer - i've been submitting points for a sound system
• $1,500.00 Dell Credit limit (That will hopefully be raised when I ask!)
• A possible $5,000 bank loan (This is just an idea I haven't ran past the wife yet)

     Two of those are pipe dreams (The soda contests), the first one is just a joke, the loan is most likely also a pipe dream. So the credit limit from Dell is the only thing that is a realistic possibility for me right now. I got that initially so I could buy a nicer widescreen LCD monitor for my computer. Now that I have paid that off though I am going to ask for a credit increase. I don't think they will double it, but i'll take as much as they can give me. Realistically speaking I honestly think i'll have to take a lot of time and build good credit with Dell. The Xbox is more within reach than the projector OR the surround sound system to someone who works a day job and currently supports a family and pays all the bills. That burden will be lightened significantly though as soon as my wife takes up regular work at the local hospital's ER as an RN though.

So that's the plan for now. Once I begin getting regular feedback from all of you who read this changes and revisions will likely be made. I certainly look forward to getting things going on all of this. I feel like it gives me a meaningful (well, meaningful to me anyway) purpose to work towards.

After I watched LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring on my brother in law's digital projector setup I have abandoned the idea of TV's to view movies on. They simply can't reproduce the experience of an HD projector. I have decided that after I pay off my current balance on my DELL credit account, I will ask for a credit increase so that I might be able to purchase this. Digital projectors are the way to go for movie buffs such as myself. The sheer size of the viewable area is mind blowing. Sure a 60" HDTV is fine and all, but this projector can shoot a picture up on the wall that is 25 FEET! Coupled with a high quality surround sound system it's actually BETTER than a movie theatre. Unless you experience it for yourself (and if I have anything to say about it, you will!) you simply can't understand how awesome it really is. Hopefully this will be something I can accomplish in the next year or so.

This is very good news for fans of the LOTR movies.

Wow. Of the 10 million 360 owners out there, 7 million are not aware of the HD graphic potential of the machine. Seems that the remaining 3 million are what people refer to as the "hardcore" gamers. Seems the rest are soccer moms and kids who bought the machine simply to tell their friends "Hey, look what I have!" Pretty much the same goes for the PS3, only the percentages are a bit higher. Only 50% of PS3 users aware of its Blu-ray player and HD potential. But that's because the number of PS3's is so much smaller than the 360's. Either way, a startling number of "HD gamers" don't know about -- or don't care about -- HD. But what IS made blatantly clear by it's exclusion from this article...EVERYONE knows why they purchase a Wii. Nintendo owns Microsoft and Sony..AGAIN!!!

Out of curiosity I downloaded and watched a demo of Heavenly Sword for the PS3. It was captured from someone actually playing the game on their PS3. Graphically it looked great. The sound effects and the music were cool as well. Story-wise it's another "Bad guy invades fantasy kingdom and takes over. Princess/Prince type character must save their kingdom and avenge their dead parent(s)." Been done before certainly more than once. That's a cookie-cutter type game plot though. Their are TONS of those out there that I have enjoyed. The play style was also very much "been done before". It plays like most early to mid 90's type brawler games such as Streets of Rage and Final Fight. Again, that's fine, I have played and liked a good many of those types of games as well.

I guess what i'm getting at here is that I feel that I have already played and beaten this game a billion times before. It has a VERY strong 'been there, done that' feel to it. This is why Sony is gonna continue to suffer with the PS3. Their developers aren't doing anything new or innovative at all. And the dev's they do have that are wanting to do new stuff are leaving for other platforms. Everything on the PS3 is (thus far) simply a rehash of older games with super-duper graphics. That's fine for a few games out of the mix, but when that comprises the whole of your game catalogue I don't think you will sustain a following of anything other than fanboys. No one wants that.

Well, I bought a decent web cam. It's a Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000. It's the middle model of three. The top model was I think $80. A bit much for a web cam I thought so I settled for the $50 cam. It's pretty cool. It can track the movement of your face to keep you centered in the frame automatically. It has auto and manual focusing. It can add visual effects on the fly. It has a built in microphone and finally it has 640x480 video resolution at 30fps. All in all this is by far the BEST cam I have EVER owned. Now mind you I have only had three total including this one, but it by far outshines the other two $20 POS's I had in the past.