All posts by K3

I am a mechanical and structural engineer by training. My interests are anime, manga, consumer electronics, cooking and gardening.

Preview of the XBox Live Experience

Here’s blog entry from CNET about the new XBox Live experience.  This is supposed to be the UI big update from the XBox360 this is coming sometime for Christmas.  They are planning to add avatars and to include some community building aspects to the XBox 360 in an effort to attract more casual gamers.  I don’t know if this going to make those folks that may be casual gamers buy the XBox360 because the platform already has a solid reputation of being hard-core gaming platform.  Perhaps it may hook the non-gamers in a gamer household — the household gamer already has an XBox360.  It isn’t like the Wii, which was designed for casual gaming in the first place.  Well, I suppose the message here is that the software is the experience rather than the hardware.  I think in this case, though, the ease of use of the wii-mote complements the wii interface and facilitates casual gaming.  I can’t say that about the multi-button 360 controller.

As a hard-core gamer, I’m not sure I care about the XBox360 UI update.  For the most part when I want to play a video game, I want to get to the game as quickly as possible.  When I want to play with an avatar, then I sit down with that intention.  Now I have used the Wii for non-gaming purposes.  The Wii has some functionality that facilitates curiousity like news, weather, and the Wii vote channel.  This is in the context of the wii, though, which feels exceeding friendly and gives me warm fuzzies.  I’m not sure if I want warm-fuzzies before sitting down to a typical game I’d play on the XBox360 like “Devil May Cry 4” or “Dead or Alive.”  Sigh … well, I am looking forward to the community aspects.  I am greatly enjoying the community within “Warhammer Online” and it would be nice to play and chat with some of the people I meet within a game on XBox360 too.

Patient Empowerment Through Social Networking

Here’s an interesting story from CNN about how medical patients can find support and help through patient social networking sites.  Here’s a link.  There are several links within the article to some of the websites that link patients to patients.  This is wonderful!  It’s difficult to go through serious illness.  It’s difficult even to go through a non-threatening illness.  Not only is support needed, but getting advice about the best doctors and navigating the healthcare system are key and indispencable.

Giyosephina The Fashionable

Yep, I’ve earned the title the Fashionable … sigh … I hate to be so typical, but a the same time, I can’t help myself.  It’s important that my character look cool.  Anyhow, here she is:

I finally managed to get a hat tonight.  I won some legendary bracers for my Sword Master too.  They alone provide 216 armor.  I was positively giddy over these bracers.  Anyhow, my Sword Master is dressed in all white with gold, pink, and blue accents.  She looks shiny and regal like a sword wielding princess — so pretty!.  I’ve made a nice tank to guard my husband’s squishy fire mage (kinda reminds of the battle concept behind “Shizuka” from “Angelic Layer” — lots of armor and lots of strength).  It’s quite a contrast to my Witch Hunter.  My witch hunter looks like a stylish pilgrim.  I wonder if there’s some black dye out there.  I would love to clad my witch hunter in all black or maybe black and red or orange.   I’ve been concentrating on strength and ballistics for her.  What’s funny to me is the way I’ve built my characters and clad them are all different reflections of my personality.  For the most part I like melee battle, but I like to be able to stand back from the battle and plink away with my gun or ax when I’m too injured to be in the middle of the fray.  I’ve never been good as a supporting character like a healer.  My husband laughs because I always end up making characters with so much strength they chunk other characters in battle.  I haven’t seen any chunkage yet in Warhammer, but I will be aiming for that result.