MLB.TV Mosaic Now in Beta
I finally got the email I was waiting for today -- no it wasn't for OOTP -- it was the release of MLB.TV Mosaic. It shows six games at once on your screen. Sounds good, but it's in beta and becuase it's in beta:
You get a good solid 3 fps on each game -- the stream I'm getting is under 500K and that times six (or even three) isn't great.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't.
The Mosaic is a separate program which you have to download before running it.
I love this idea, but I see why it was delayed. I still don't think it's ready..but it is day one and you know me 
.
Quickie OOTP Notes
Okay, I spent my lunch hour with OOTP. Here is what I've learned: If you move very quickly, you might be able to read all of the league creation options available to you. Not change them. Not understand them all. Just observe them all and go, "Uh. Wow that's a lot a stuff and, er... stuff, man."
It's simply overwhelming. Hopefully all this stuff works. A few other observations:
On Importing Leagues:
- Importing a leage takes just a minute or two, at least to get it to show in the league creation screen. Actual league creation once you clicke the "Start Game" (ie - create new league) takes a few minutes (less than 5 on my underpowered laptop).
- Logos don't appear to import
- Fielding stats don't import, but hitting and pitching stats do.
- Year-end player awards (gold glove, MVP, etc.) import
- Team histories (including League Champions) don't appear to import (that seems odd to me)
- Because you import leagues into the league creation screen first, it's actually possible to make your existing OOTP league a separate minor or world league within a larger world baseball framework. For instance I could replace the AAA baseball setup for a conventional Major League Baseball scenario with the New City Baseball League that Bill ran and I was in. (I'm not sure why you'd want to do this, but it's cool that you can.)
One special note for Vista users: If you try to run this game in Windows Vista Beta 2, you must select to run the program as an Administrator. If you don't, nothing happens when you activiate the game's icon. (To do this, right-click the game's icon and select Run as Administrator. You can also permanently set this option from its Properties dialog box.) I expect that at best, this will apply to maybe one of you reading the blog, but hey, it's worth noting. (Btw - I really, really, like the Beta 2 build of Vista. Very stable.)
More to come!
OOTP Day
I am downloading the OOTP 2006 review copy as I type this; I'll try to get some thoughts posted on it ASAP. I can't wait to import my league into this sucker.
Out of the Park Baseball Manager 2006 – Release Day
Today is the big day for Out of the Park fanatics. The 2006 edition of the game, unquestionably the biggest revision to it the series has yet seen, is due for release today. In fact, those of us who pre-ordered started receiving emails today with download information and product keys. I just got mine a few minutes ago and I'm downloading my copy now. I'll post back with some initial impressions when I can.
(I would post the download link locations here, but SI specifically requested that we not do that so as to allow pre-order customers to get first crack at it. And I can confirm that it is downloading *very* slowly at the moment. My Windows Vista installation is saying that it'll take more than an hour.)
C’mon C’mon
As you know if you've been reading the blog, my 'real job' has been rather difficult of late. Thankfully I can escape reality with MLB.TV and Tivo. Tonight the new season of Rescue Me started and my god, just when you think you have it bad, you can relate to the character by Denis Leary who's father just wet the bed, his uncle is now in jail for murdering Leary's son and his wife just left him again. But other than that, things are good.
Yes, it's said when I relate my life to a fictional New York City firefighter.
Tuesday..
Well thanks for the tips about my wife's car. We took it to the local VW dealership and I shit you not, there were 4 (four) other cars towed there this weekend with the exact same problem. It was the fuel pump. After some investigating, it turns out that all 5 cars also had a fuel pump problem and they were all filled at the same gas station (hint: begins with a G). Apparently they now use an ethanol blend, except, it seems they used too much ethanol...at least that seems to be the inital argument. Luckily, our car is under warranty, but I wonder about the other 4. It's shocking that shit like this can happen, but I will I guess take away my VW rant.
In regards to the online reputation, I have 100% positive but yet 4 1/3 stars. I will keep playing Uno and making HOTD 2 comments as I play -- ie "Seems like my advice has no effect".....always fun.
In the meantime, check out this MSNBC video with David Hasselhoff crying during American Idol and an interview with the Clay Aiken wannabe. Good times.
Monday Musings
Yay! An off day for the Orioles! No way they can lose!
Anyway, I see that YMU now has the American Idol season 5 album, which of course I promptly downloaded into my Sansa 4GB player while mowing the lawn. Taylor sounds great. Melissa McGee still sounds like crap.
I picked up some $49.99 Philips Noise Cancelling headphones from Best Buy. They are the rubber in-ear variety. If you sweat they still fall out, guess I should have gone with the over the ear ones, oh well. I will saw they do wonders cancelling out the lawn mower. I mean you can still hear the mower, but you can also hear the music which is great.
My wife's car died today. I have no idea what's wrong with it, it just won't turn over. Checked the battery, jumped it, checked the oil, added a quart, checked the fuses, still no dice. 2003 VW Jetta Wagon. Thankfully it's still under warranty, but shit like this shouldn't happen with a car that's less than 3 years old, ya know? So it's at the garage, we're down to one car and it should be a fun couple of days.
I did sneak in some Xbox Live today, playing Uno (of course). My friend from Japan kept saying to play, but he never accepted the invite. You know who you are and just admit that you fear playing me.
Does anyone know how feedback works? I'm dying to get to 5 stars -- I complement everyone that plays well vs. me and report losers, but I'm still not at 5 stars (as you can tell from my GamerCard below). If Todd ever gives me permission, I'd post his up there as well. Bill..well, let's just say Bill is still enjoying his PS1 and can't upgrade to the 360 yet. Maybe he'll sell his Saturn at some point. Heh.
So that's about all I got for now..ttyl.
One other thing
I'll second what Bill said about Blink. Only problem is that we have to play it incessantly.
Sunday Music Question
My 1 yr subscription to Yahoo Music Unlimited is winding down and since the price went up from $59.88 to $119.88, I was wondering if any of you subscribe to Rhapsody to Go or Napster to Go and what your thoughts are. I do like Yahoo, but who knows if they'll jack up the prices again.
Finally a nice weather weekend, so I haven't been online/playing games much. Yesterday was open the pool day. Hopefully it will be good to go by Monday, at least that's the hope.
The Orioles continue to suck, so I am relieved that football season isn't that far away.
I still have 3 hours of Lost catch up to do then I'm all caught up, just in time for the new season of Rescue Me which starts Tuesday.
Congrats to the Edmonton Oilers who beat the Mighty Ducks and are in the Stanley Cup final. Always happy to see a Canadian team make it, as long as it isn't Montreal .
Cool Card Game
Looking for a quick, easy, and witty game to play with your kids? Try Blink. I bought this for $10 at a hobby store and Ashley just loves it. I took the game to her final Pre-school day (game day) and the kids lined up to play it. Each game takes like 2 mins so it moves very fast. It says for ages 7 and up but Ashley's only 5 1/2 and it's perfect for that age.
Taking a Break (Sort of)
Well, I'm glad Dan's keeping the home fires burning this week. I'm not sure what Bill's up to, but anytime you move into a new house there's a lot to do so I'm guessing that's got a lot to do with it.
As for me? I'm swamped. My job is the type where it can go dead for a month or two at a time (like March and April) and then, overnight, turn into a monsoon of work to do. Which is exactly what's happened, as I unexpectedly picked up three "get it done right now" books in a span of four days. Basically, I'm developing a book a week for three straight weeks, with a quickie review of a fourth also on the hopper. (I'm half-way home at this point.) Anyway, it leaves very little time for gaming or blogging.
Not that there's much with gaming to talk about. Sports gaming is basically a great big wasteland right now, in terms of new stuff. Eventually, I'll get Ping Pong from Gamefly, but that's not all that sporty. More of a sports novelty than anything. Next week, however, Out of the Park Baseball Manager 2006 finally arrives, so I hope to get some quality time with that.
Earlier in the week I spent a while with the new Tomb Raider game. I've gotta admit, it's a fun title. I've put in about four hours on it and digital jumbly-bumblies aside, it's a lot of fun guiding Lara through the act of actually raiding tombs. (As I understand it, the "Tomb" has been missing from "Tomb" raider for quite a while now. I haven't played one of these games since the first one, though.) My only big gripe? At what point can somebody come up with a camera view in a 3rd person game that doesn't leave me fighting the controller? There are times the camera makes certain fairly standard jumps or spins or what have you nigh impossible. And thanks the long load times after you, say, fall off a building or something, every time you take a dirt nap you're left to sit around for a good 30 - 60 seconds twiddling your thumbs. That's not bad for an initial load, but if you get stuck at a certain point (which can happen quite often) and are dying a lot, you'll spend as much time loading as you will playing (at least until you get past it). That's not much fun. Moving on...
The Pistons gave me a scare last night, as they let a big lead and some horrendously bad officiating allow the Heat back into a game in which they should've been dead in the water. How many times can they call an offensive foul on Detroit when the Miami player has a foot inside the circle? Yeah, Miami gets there share of offensive calls to, but honestly, I've not seen one called on Miami that didn't look legit to me. (And I'm not so much a homer that I can't keep perspective on that sort of thing.)
I about busted a gasket at the end when Tayshaun Prince called a timeout (while trying to inboud the ball) and the official flat out ignored him. Oh, he can say he didn't hear him, but look at the tape. They're looking straight at each other and even from the camera view I can read Tayshaun's lips, "Time out!" Evidently the official said something nasty to Tay-Tay as well, that Prince was too classy to repeat in an on-court interview following the game. My bet is that dirty old bastard official (EDIT: it was Dick Bavetta; emphasis on his first name) said somethig pretty inappropriate, tough. (Nevermind that the wanker completely ignored the fact that Chauncey Billups got tackled not once, but twice, while the Pistons were trying to indbound the ball.)
The league ought to fine that chump of an official and not put him on the floor for the rest of the series, but somehow I doubt that'll happen. (I'm not complaining about the whole game, mind you. But the last two minutes were a joke. The only thing I give them credit for is not calling a foul on Lindsey for his clean strip of the ball on Miami's final possession.)
Then there's the Tigers. Winners of 13 of 14 games and still owners of the best record in baseball. They're nearly 20 games over .500 now and are winning in every way you can imagine. Back to back shutouts? Check? Come from behind victories? Check. High-scoring and low-scoring wins? Check. Granted, a four-game sweep of the Royals isn't that much to crow about. That team may be worse than the 2003 Tigers (2nd worst record of all-time). So, the big test comes over the next couple weeks as they face all of the AL East's top teams, plus more action against the White Sox and Indians. But as a Detroit columnist pointed out this morning, the Tigers could play .500 ball for the rest of the season and still win 90 games. For a team that hasn't sniffed a record north of .500 in over a decade, that's an amazing feat. The roar, at long last, is restored!
Have a happy and safe Memorial Day, everybody! (I'll get back to regular posting as soon as I can.)
The Bill Report
Been a long week. I just didn't feel much like talking about the whole Barbaro thing. It sucked. Not much more I want to say about that other than it's great to see him doing well, even though he is by no means out of the woods yet.
OK game stuff:
My HoMM5 review is up.
I'm also waiting on review code for NFL Head Coach (PC) for review at CGM and I'm just now starting to play Gallop Racer 2006 (PS2). I'll be doing a review of Rise of Legends (PC) for GameShark, despite the fact that it's been out for a bit. I still want to play that. OOTP 2006 (PC) is literally right around the corner and I'll be doing that review for CGM as well. Finally, GameSpy has assigned me Spellforce 2 (PC) ...so I certainly do not have a lack of stuff to do right now...which for a freelancer is a good thing.
I also have to say that I am jonesing for a good arcade football game and I hope NCAA fits that bill. I feel like it's been ages since I played one that had any teeth and I hope I am not being off base in thinking that NCAA 07 will be a lot better than the last two editions.
Life stuff:
Don Pablos is buying us a new 61" Samsung. Yeah, I'm still big screen HDTV-less, but not for much longer. As you may remember, my wife was assaulted in a Don Pablos parking lot a few months ago. Our medical bills, after insurance, was around 2K. So Don is sending us a check to cover our costs, which we have already paid. So Mary wants to use the $2,500 check to buy the TV. Not sure how I feel about that...watching the Sopranos on a new 61" DLP and thinking that my wife had to take a pounding for me to sit there and watch it. Still, she's adament about it.
I'm also in the middle of my first neighbor dispute. People that live outside the city will certainly be able to relate to this: we're debating over the rerouting of field tile. Our neighbor's tile is linked to ours, an it's linked to his downspouts which will undoubtedly conatins leaves and other debris which is then routed to our curtain drain, which can get backed up which will then ruin our leech bed and run us about 6K to fix down the road. The debate is actually over I think because we're cutting the line off at our property because this dope won't fix it himself even though we offered to run the tile to our back lot if he chipped in, which he refused. Ah well. Maybe I can sooth this 50 year olf roofer with a free copy of Madden? Doubtful.
Soul Patrol!!
Well, in a finale that shocked no one, Taylor won. I have to say although it was a 30 second announcement, the 2 hours was mostly fun to watch. The Kellie Pickler segments were pretty funny, although the group songs were kinda lame. One of the 23 outfits that Katharine wore was um, form fitting and J-Lo esque. Thankfully the HD cameras did their whole start down low and pan up on a side view routine which made for great eye candy, if you know what I mean...
Chris got to sang with Live, which was a little weird becuase Chris looked so much like Ed. Chris may be a great singer, but he always sounds the same to me. Even Katharine has some range.
During the Taylor/Toni Braxton duet of "In The Ghetto", Toni took a song with such meaning and gave Taylor the equivalent of a lap dance. Damn, that is one lucky guy. Oh yeah, the whole dancing thing was tough when put up against the lyrics...
Hearing Elliot butcher U2's One had me hoping and praying that there would be no duet with Bono...because if he endorsed this, I would not be happy. Instead, we got Mary J Blige who had done the song with U2 on tour (still wasn't a fan anyway).
Prince wins the random moment award -- just comes out with no intro, does 2 songs and leaves. Note the lack of idol duets with Prince. Oops.
Speaking of music, have you heard that Nelly Furtado song "Promiscuious"? I know the music is sampled but I can't put my finger on the song. I know I've heard it before. Internet search doesn't help me. I think the music was on old WWF 'when we come back from the break' snippets. I know I've heard it.
I heard that the finale of Lost was impressive -- I need to catch up on that and House this weekend...
Always wonderful to see the Orioles do their usual flop (even more than before) while out on the west coast. I don't know why I stay up to watch those games when you already know they are going to lose. Today's game is a 4pm start so that makes it a little easier....
Many of you have asked what's going on with the other two guys on here. I haven't heard anything either. I assume everyone is still alive. I do know that May is usually a tough month in videogame land as you are under deadline to write about E3 and so forth. Still, I wanted to hear about the horsies too...and even Detroit.
C'mon guys, post something.
Oh my..
Let's see the Table Tennis review..."It's one hell of a table tennis game. " Yes. Look at the SKUs run out the door. We were dying for this.
Uno > Table Tennis.
24 and Idol
Well tonight is the one hour American Idol followed by tomorrow's 14 hour elimination show. Heh. I'm just kidding, it's only 2 hours but you know what I mean.
How about that 24? Hey, could they have made the final part any more scripted? I mean the whole "I love you" to Audrey only made you sure that something would happen to Jack. And WTF? Kim calls and it was 'transferred to a land line" inside a random building? As soon as I heard that (mind you this is a guy that gets everything delivered to his PDA) I was like, well something is going to happen. And it did.
I heard lots of people died on Alias but I gave up on that show. It got so goofy at the end. On the bright side, apparently Jack will now be a lawyer on a FOX show next year so that's cool. I'll watch that.
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