GeeksPodcast.com

Gaming

Nintendo Patents a New DS-Like Cartridge Design – via Destructoid

How to Score Your Red Dead Redemption Preorder Bonus – via Kotaku

Xbox Live Code of Conduct Revised via Videogame Geek

An Insider’s Guide to Portal 2

Technology

Foot-Controlled Power Strip – via Lifehacker

Commercial Jetpack Hitting The Market for $75,000 – via Geekologie

Google Respones to Apple Lawsuit Against HTC – via TUAW

Miscellaneous Geekery

Not Necessary: Cat Hammock Coffee Table - via Geekologie

In case you’re all wondering, the lack of updates, again, it’s all Jon’s fault as my obsession with Magic has reached an all time high.  On a side note though, expect some more regularity next week!

Yesterday Valve released six teaser photos of five PC games that look like they’re coming to the Mac: Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, Portal, and Steam. I’ve played Left 4 Dead vigorously, trying to eat up all of the achievements, and I’ve had an interest in trying Half-Life and Portal since I’ve known about them, so this news is rather exciting. Plus any company that wants to release games for the Mac (including you, Blizzard <3) is on my A-list. You can see all of the photos here.

I ran across this the other day when I was out at a restaurant and even without being able to hear the audio I knew I had to see this.  Mainly because Clark Duke’s in it, but I’ve always been a John Cusack fan as well. Seriously, watch this trailer!

There is no doubt in my mind that Borderlands was the best game of 2009, and that it is one of the first games I recommend to customers when I’m at work. Last week the newest wave of DLC for it came out (The Secret Armory of General Knoxx) and I have heard nothing but wonderful things about it, as expected. It’s incredibly hard (like, makes you want to throw the controller through a sliding glass door hard), develops the games’ characters more (and brings some back!), raises the level cap, adds new weapons/vehicles/enemies, and of course, gives you more delightful achievement/trophy opportunities. This is well and good, and because I’m poor at self-control, I will buy it. But is this game wearing anyone else out? You just know they’re going to come out with some kind of special package/GotY edition that includes all three DLC packages, and buy the time I get around to buying General Knoxx, like a week later that special package will come out. The first DLC, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, came out on 11/24, a month after the game was released. The second, Mad Moxxie’s Underdome Riot, 12/29. And now, Secret Armory of General Knoxx, 2/23.

So I’m officially calling a boycott on Borderlands DLC. If you’re with me, stand strong and be patient for the inevitable package! The struggle is always easier to survive if you’re doing it with a friend, so make sure you find your anti-DLC buddy soon. If you cave, it will cost you 800 MS points/$9.99 from the PlayStation store. And then I will unfriend you.

Since the Nintendo DSi’s debut last April, not much has been made to accommodate the camera they so heavily marketed. Up until now it was just another electronic object that had a camera on it – and what doesn’t in our day and age? But finally, Good-Feel, the same developer who gave us Wario Land: Shake It!, released Rittai Kakushi e Attakoreda,a downloadable game in Japan for the DSi that makes excellent use of the goofy, wannabe camera. The game’s objective is to find the hidden objects and somehow form letters by moving the DSi around. When the player rotates the DSi, they are in turn rotating the room they’re searching. Very cool. Check it out!

via Kotaku

Hello. You have not yet been formally introduced with our cockatiel, Ms. Eleanor Rigby-Lamb Bloodwing. She is approximately a year old and we’ve had her for about 20 days now. I like to refer to her as my baby, since Joshua doesn’t seem to like her.

Reasons why she’s better than any other bird:

She’s quiet.

She talks to herself, and her chirp is cute.

She’s beautiful and she knows it – she will stare at herself for hours in front of a mirror.

She snuggles with towels and blankets.

She gives me kisses.

She dances.

Just thought I’d inform you officially of the newest geek living in the Geekspodcast household!

Was not by choice.  Not at all.  As a matter of fact, the entire idea of playing Magic again spurred from my friend, Jon, who’s having a TCG weekend at his house starting today.  In preparation, he swung by to pick up Nicole and I last night to hit up The Guard Tower to pick up supplies (boosters, counters, etc.).  I was staunchly opposed to this, but the promise of Cane’s chicken and Nicole’s rabid desire to buy more Pokemon cards made it difficult to ignore.

So what happened?  Well, the picture pretty much says it all.  I ended up buying a pre-made black and a few boosters to expand what is a fairly meager collection compared to Jon’s and decided to build a black deck for the first time (I’ve always been partial to the trickery and conservation afforded by blue).  It was primarily steeped in vampirism, but it was great fun to play.To make matters worse I woke up this morning and began compulsively re-organizing all of my cards and optimally building my black and blue decks in anticipation for tonight and Nicole’s already hitting me up about going out to get more cards.

So thanks Jon.  Thank you for unapologetically dragging me back down into that foulness which I narrowly escaped only a few short years ago and know this: My Butcher of Malakir is going to put his foot in your ass tonight.

I just wanted to share this as I ran across it yesterday.  I never gave much thought to an alternative browser on the iPhone.  Safari’s kind of right there and it just never occurred to me how unhappy I was with it.  But then a few things came to mind.  Things like:

• There’s no tabbed browsing
• When switching between open windows the entire page will annoyingly refresh, even if you don’t want it to
• There’s no way to download files and store them on the iPhone

Incredibly, it turns out there’s been a an App Store approved browser, Vanilla Surf (iTunes link) that boasts all of these features and more such as:

• Full-screen browsing
• De-activate loading of pictures
• Ad-blocker

I’ve only spent a  little bit of time with it so far, but it seems like a winner.  I will say I did have it crash on me once, but that may be due to my iPhone being jailbroken and eating up more memory than it ought to rather than a problem with the app.  My understanding is that all 3rd party browsers in the App Store are required to be built upon the Safari framework, but with a boatload of features that probably should have been in Safari, it’s easy to recommend Vanilla Surf so far.  I mean, we no longer have to be forced to use an operating system’s browser on a PC, so why should we tolerate it on a mobile platform?  So enjoy your tab-switching, non-forced-refreshy goodness!

For all of you switchers out there or if you’re just new to OS X environment entirely.  You may have run into a pesky problem when using tab to navigate through forms as you’ll notice OS X, by default, will only tab to text fields and list boxes.  This is fairly retarded as it forces you to reach for the mouse over and over again if you’re navigating a large number of UI elements.  So, in an effort to keep you informed and hopefully keep you from smashing your skull into the keyboard frustratedly, below are the steps needed to enable tabbing between all controls and not just text fields and list boxes.

1. Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard

2. Make sure that the All Controls radiobox is checked (which, again you can’t tab to until this is turned on) under the ‘Full Keyboard Access: In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move keyboard focus between:‘ section.

Why, you’ll be a tabbing fool with this little tidbit!  So go on, go file your taxes or something and make sure you think of me in gratitude every time you don’t have to reach for the mouse.

I’m going to break down the following sequence of events in time line format.  You see, my friend, Jacob, claimed I could finish Bioshock 2 on hard with vita-chambers turned off by noon the next day.  What followed was one man’s epic battle against machine.

10:00 PM, Friday – Nicole and a group of our friends go out for dinner and subsequent bowling happiness. While dinner was most delicious, to our dismay, the wait time for bowling is over an hour.  This is unacceptable. To satisfy our insatiable lust for parlor games and booze we hit a local pool hall.

11:30 PM, Friday – It turns out Karaoke is in full effect, prompting Nicole to sing ‘Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked’ and ‘Suddenly I See’.

11:45 PM, Friday – In a drunken stupor, I explain to Jake, that I can’t stop thinking about Bioshock 2.  I then go on to boast that I’ll probably beat it later on in the night.  Jake cordially calls bullsh*t, and claims that the manner in which I’m playing (hard difficulty, vita chambers off) combined with my being relatively early in the game makes that impossible.  I then demand retribution and Jake (being the gentleman that he is) promises to buy me a burrito from Chipotle should I man up and complete the game by noon the next day.  I drink something with a vaguely grape-ish flavor as my vision blurs further and tell him the game is on!

Read the rest of this entry »