Phil Nolan's blog

OnLive is finally live

Onlive Main Screen

 

OnLive launched last week and I signed up right away. It took almost a week but my account was finally activated. I was pleasantly surprised.

What is OnLive?
OnLive is a cloud based gaming service.  Something that has never been tried before.  Normally if you want a game you need to go to a store and buy it and bring it home.  Or you download it from the net which can take hours.  With OnLive you download a 500KB program and from then on there's no more downloading.  The high end games are run on servers at a data center somewhere far away, then the video is streamed to your computer over the internet and your control inputs are sent up to the cloud.  This all happens nearly instantaneously so you should feel no lag.  Currently there are 3 data centers in the USA.

 

What do I need to play? 
One of the great things about OnLive is that you don't need a high end computer to play high end games.  If you can play a 720p YouTube video you can play OnLive.  That means if you have a low end PC or an older laptop you can still play the latest games.  Even if you have a mac you can now play the latest games.  Also in the near future there will be a micro-console that allows you to play on your TV with an included controller. You also need a broadband internet connection.  For HD quality they recommend a 5Mbps connection or faster.  If you have a 1.5 Mbps connection you can still play but the quality will be brought down to SD level. A slow internet connection can also cause a slight lag in the controls.  My connection is 15Mbps FiOS.

How does it look?
The graphics quality seems to vary slightly from game to game and also seems to depend on your internet connection.  For me everything has looked utterly fantastic considering that it is only 720p, however I have seen a few other reviews that complained of muddy graphics.  Though it's also possible that some of these reviewers are either overly sensitive or biased.  The image below shows how it looks to me.

Dirt 2 in OnLive

You can also see an example video I made showing the basics of the service below.

OnLive demonstration

 

Isn't this the same as Steam?
I see a lot of people comparing OnLive to Steam.  Really the only thing that makes these two similar is that they allow you to buy games over the internet. Steam requires that you download the game and install it.  This could be a benefit or a disadvantage depending on your point of view.  They also charge you for downloadable content which OnLive does not, the DLC is either included with the game or automatically added to the game when it becomes available. OnLive also automatically adds any patches or updates to the games so you nevr have to worry about downloading and installing them.

How much does it cost?
Here's the big question everyone wants to know.  The service itself does come with price tag, though for anyone that signs up during the first month it is free for the first year and the second year is $4.95 a month.  For anyone who is late to the game it's $14.95 per month.  The games prices are set by the publishers but the range anywhere from $5 to $50.  Instead of using the word "buy" or "purchase" OnLive sells you a Playpass which gives you the right to play that game for at least 3 years as long as you still have the service.  These passes can also be sold for shorter amounts of time like 3 days or 5 days, which acts like a rental service. 

Some people complain that either the games or the service should be free, one person even suggested that the service should be $4.95 with free games.  That's cheaper than NetFlix and games cost a lot more than movies. Consider that the service cost goes to cover the data centers and bandwidth, while the games cost mostly goes to the games publishers just like any brick and mortar store.  So taking away one of those just would not work.

Over all my impression is that it's a fantastic service with a few small down sides.  The biggest being that you don't get a physical disc or even download of the game so if you stop using the service or if something happens to go south with the company then you're out of luck.  So therefore I might just end up using as a rental service for the most part.  Aside from that I think it's a great service, especially if you sign up now and get a free year.  I'm glad I did.  

Edit: Recently OnLive has announced that the service will be completely free, no longer just a free year for Founding Members.

 

I hate mac.

I never liked macs.  Mainly that was due to the extremely high price, pretentious attitude, lack of software, and ugly interface.  But I had never really used OS X, only a few times and only for a few minutes each time. 

As a fun project I thought it would be interesting to install OSx86, that is, OSX on a PC.  As much as I hate to admit it, there are a small number of programs that I may need to use some day that are only available for OSX.  So after much research, time, and effort.  OSX Leopard 10.5.7 is now running fairly well on my laptop.  A "Hackbook" if you will.

After using it quite a bit for the past few days I have to say I really, really, don't like it.  It is extremely frustrating to use the awful file system.

Programs:  In Windows if you have a program installed you will find it easily on the Start menu no matter what program it is, how old it is, or even if you've never used it before, it's easy to find, just one click away.  In a mac, you might have it on the Taskbar equivalent, if it's one you use a lot and you have purposely put it there.  If not you have to hunting for it in the mac equivelant of the Program Files folder.  Why can they not make programs easy to access??

Windows:  Not the Microsoft OS, but the actual programs and folders that are on the screen.  In MS Windows anything that is open on the screen will show very clearly on the task bar,  It has an icon and even a name in case of duplicates.  So if I have a bunch of windows piled up and I want one that's buried in the pile, no problem, I just go to the task bar and pick the one I want.  In a mac?  No sir!  It might show up down there and it might not.  Right now I have like 5 things open, one of them is down there.  Sure there's Expose, so I can scatter little tiny versions of my windows all over the screen which may well be too small to tell which is which.   Then there's spaces, so I can also scatter them onto different desktops where I would never think to look for them.

Zip files: In Windows  If I have a zip file and click on it it opens up like any other folder.  If I want to add or remove files from the zip file I just drag them in or out, again, just like any other folder.  What happens if you click a zip file on a mac?  Why it dumps the files all over. If you're lucky, it's a large zip file, then you get to wait and wait, while it takes it's time dumping the files all over.

Installers:  I don't understand why an installer needs to be mounted.  It's not a CD or DVD image like an ISO, it's an installer.  I laugh at many of them when they show me two icons and tell me to drag one onto the other.  What is this, kindergarten?  If all I have to do is drag one onto the other, why don't you do it for me?  One installer recommended that I have a certain amount of video memory, but saw that I had 0MB (obviously a glitch, I have 256MB).  So what did it do?  It stopped the install for me.  Why call it a recommendation if you're just going to deny me access anyway?  In Windows if you have less than the recommended amount of anything it will still install, it just might not work as expected.  Maybe I don't mind if it's a little slower, at least it's working. 

Interface: Why does everything have to be this solid, ugly, gray?  Look at this screenshot.  There's two programs here.  Can you tell me at a glance where to click if I want to move the one on top?

titlebars.jpg

Writing to Windows disks:  If I disc (hard drive, thumb drive, etc.) was created with Windows mac refuses to write files to it.  Windows could care less where it was created, a file is a file is a file.  Luckily I was able to find a hack to get around this.

I'm sure I'll think of more to add to this post, I may have had more but Vox deleted some amount of my text when I was trying to add that image.  Right now I'm making a wallpaper for my hackbook that will proudly display my hatred for it.

The kid and the old man

Strangest thing happened last night.  I was sitting here getting ready to watch Betelgeuse on TV at about 10:30pm when there a "bang bang bang" at my front door.  When I answer it there's a kid there, maybe about 15 or 16 years old.  He's bouncing around a little and says with a pleading look on his face "I really gotta use the bathroom!"  Now you must understand I live way out in the suburbs, about 20 mins outside Philadelphia, we don't even have street lights and across from my house is all woods, so it was a little strange to see this kid out at that time of night begging to use my bathroom.  Well, he seemed harmless enough, so I stepped aside and said he could come in.  He takes maybe one step forward, then stops.  He's looking around like he's freaking out and stutters out "well, uh I don't know, uh maybe-  maybe I better just run home."  And then he runs off.  Really weird, I'm guessing that he was tripping on acid and having a bad trip.  I've seen teens going into the woods across from my house around dusk so it's a pretty good guess that that's the kind of thing they're doing back there.  By the way, Betelgeuse holds up really well in HD.

As for the second part of this post.  I modeled and textured an old man in 3D Coat, then brought him into LightWave for rendering where I also added hair and eyes.  It's still a work in progress, but here's an HD turn around of him on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y0mg4jwUtI

Replacement mouse

My Logitech MX Revolution mouse was acting up, the LMB was not working right with click and drag.  Contacted Logitech and after a couple of emails back and forth they agreed it was a hardware issue and said they'd send out a replacement.  A few days later it arrived.  I was expecting a refurbished model, but no, they sent out a brand new replacement.  Pretty nice service if you ask me, especially considering my mouse is a year and a half old.  Even Apple didn't give me a brand new iPhone when I had to replace mine three times and I spent $400 on that, 4X what the mouse cost!  In fact it needs to be replaced again, but my warranty ran out after 1 yr.  The mouse had 3 years!

IMG_0253

How I quit smoking

The first time:
     First let me say I started smoking when I was 17 and I'm now 32.  I quit once in college around 1998 using the Nicoderm CQ patches.  The reason it worked was that I read on the box that you should not smoke while wearing it, due to a risk of heart attack.  That freaked me out so all I had to do was remember to put them on in the morning and have a lot of Life Savers handy.  Unfortunately almost exactly a year later I fell off the wagon and started up again.  I thought "No big deal, I'll just do the patch thing again." and was chatting with people about it.  Then my friends started telling me "I smoked on the patch all the time it didn't do anything to me".  So that ruined that the patch didn't work for me any more.

Nip the tip:
     So over the years I tried the patch a few more times anyway, I tried the lozenges (they taste awful), nothing was helping.  So around the spring of 2008 I had an idea, I would get a cigar cutter and cut off just the tip from each one, then after a week or so I would cut off a little more, and so forth.  That worked fine until I got to the half way point.  At that point any smaller felt like I wasn't smoking anything.  So I stuck to the halfway point and it really becomes part of the habit, you just automatically grab the cutter at the same time you pull one out and the cutter doesn't take up much space so you can just carry it with the pack.  So you get used to these half sized smokes pretty fast and I found that I was smoking the same number per day (about 20) but each was half as long, so it was better for me. This also proved that it was more of a mental thing than a physical thing (for me anyway).

     If you're going to do this I suggest spending a few bucks more ($11 for me) and getting a good metal cutter.  I started with a cheap $4 plastic one and it just fell apart after a month or so.

The end is nigh:
     So that was working out and I actually ended up doing that for some time.  Then around Christmas time of 2008 I was thinking "Ya know?  Maybe I should stop now."  So I had the idea that I would set a date in advance, instead of saying "I'll stop tomorrow" I said "I'll stop at the beginning of next month", which by pure coincidence was January 1st.  I just want to be clear that it was not a New Year's resolution.  So I continued what I was doing, all the time knowing that the end was coming soon.  So January 1st rolled around and on that morning it turned out I still had a full pack.  So I finished off that pack before the day was through and just didn't buy any more the next morning.  Instead I had most of a 2 Week Nicoderm (Step 2) package left from the last time I tried and I started putting them on.

Fin:
     For the next two weeks I used the patches, went through a 6.88oz bag of Tropical Life Savers, and a lot of thin pretzels.  I forgot to put the patch on for a couple of those days and each time I realized my mistake halfway through the day and honestly didn't think twice about it, just continued my day and put one on the next day.  Near the end of the 2 weeks I really felt like it was silly to put the patches on because I didn't feel like I needed it.  I did anyway until the end of the box.  I actually didn't have much money at the time, which is part of the reason I stopped, so I just didn't bother buying another box of them.  I actually remember going to the drug store and looking at the on sale price of them and thinking "I really don't think I need them.".  So I didn't buy them, I bought some more pretzels and another bag of Life Savers instead.  And that was it.  Over all I went through 3 bags of Life Savers and just a LOT of pretzels.

     One other thing is that I didn't tell anyone I was quitting.  My family still doesn't know after 3 months.  My reasoning for this was that first, in the event that it didn't work, nobody would be disappointed in me so I didn't have to worry about them all going "aww, better luck next time." and such.  Secondly I always hated everyone cheering me on like "you can do it!"  it made me feel like a little kid.  Of course I wouldn't lie if someone asked and some people would obviously figure it out, like the people that work at my favorite convenience store.  But I didn't go running around telling everyone.  I was doing it for me, not for them.  If I was doing it for them it would be the wrong reason.

     All of this may or may not work for you, it may have been all of the things that helped me or any combination of them.  I don't know, I just thought I would share what worked for me.  Sure I get urges every once in a while like when I see someone on TV doing it or actually as I'm typing this and thinking about it.  But it's not a big deal to just change my mind and think about something else.  If this does help one of you, please, leave a comment I'd love to hear it. 

Quick LW tutorial

Here's a quick tutorial on making a phone cord type, coiled tube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI9OqnSWj2Y

Ruined movies

Watchmen-happy-face-150x150

Something has been making me sad over the past few years.  Many movies have been coming out that look fantastic until I hear about one thing.  The amount of gore.  Maybe I'm not "manly" enough or something, but I'll admit I'm a bit squeamish.  "A bit" in the sense that I once passed out outside a Starbucks due to a gruesome war story an older veteran friend was telling me.  So why the gore?  It certainly isn't necessary to make the story any better.  There are plenty of great action movies, notably the Bourne series, that have very little. 

Then comes stuff like Kill Bill, I watched it but probably only saw about half of it with my head turned away half the time.  It would have been such a cool movie if Tarantino wasn't such a sicko.  Grind House looked really awesome, then I saw who was making it and I knew there would be red fountains all over the screen.  I had to stop watching Sin City half way through.  I was really excited for 300 because of all the LightWave work in it.  Another one ruined so I couldn't watch it.

The most recent travesty--  Watchmen.  I had never read the graphic novel but I heard a lot about it.  From the first trailer I saw, before it was even confirmed that the movie was coming out, I was ecstatic.  "Wow, I have to see that!" was my only thought.  Last week was my birthday and my dad offered to take me to see a movie.  Watchmen came out a little past my birthday, but that was fine.  Then I started hearing word from people who saw the premiere.  "It's 300 x 1000" was one description.   Ruined.

What kills me is that there's no way of knowing until you either see it yourself or hear it from people who have seen it.  But you can't go around asking people about every cool looking movie that comes out.  The rating system is a joke now-a-days.  "R" could mean anything from a few "f**k you's" to people being gruesomely raped to death and worse.  I hope this trend loses popularity soon so I can enjoy picking a movie to see again.

Weird dreams

I keep having these weird dreams lately.  In last night's I was sitting down to dinner with all these random women from TV, though the only ones I specifically remember are Amanda Tapping (as a blond, not the current brunette) and I think Rosie O'Donnell.  It was a really fancy restaurant with white table cloths, in fact a lot of white everything.  We were all seated at two long tables pushed together to make one long table. I was conversing with Ms. Tapping about something when someone hands her a letter from over my shoulder.  She reads it and starts crying, like really sobbing like a family member just died.  Then as I'm trying to ask what's wrong everyone gets up and leaves the table, leaving me following behind trying to figure out what's going on.  Then I woke up feeling really sad and wondering what's up with all these weird dreams.

Disk Defragmenter

What has happened to Windows included defrag tool?  With each version of Windows it's interface has disappeared more and more.  Currently the only indication that anything is happening at all is a blue circle spinning around, not even a percentage complete.  I'm afraid soon we won't even have the blue circle anymore anymore.  Sure there're lots of  third party tools out there, but sometimes you just need the built in one in a pinch.  Come on Microsoft, at least give us the GUI of one of the older ones. 

Wiped clean

C: drive is wiped completely clean and Vista Re-installed.I hope I didn't for get anything 'cause if I did it's gone now.  I'm sure I got it all.  Either way the computer is running smooth as silk now.  We'll see after Windows Update is finished installing 77 updates.