Tag Archives: Retro

We’re Back!

Posted by on July 16, 2012 No comments

This was the start of our London Journey

Hey all!

We are now back from London!  We had a total blast the whole time out there and I took a metric F-Ton of pictures! (They use the metric system over there.)  Most of them are the touristy style pics, you know, because that’s what we were.  I did manage to set up and take some good solid pictures that will require some post processing and tweaking.  Those will be trickling out over the coming days.  Sarah actually as a very good day by day accounting of our trip over on her website.

 

Sarah got a few snaps of me taking snaps

I did want to touch on a few things that really made the trip though. (from a Gadget/Tech/Game perspective, that is.)  For my photography stuff I brought the whole backpack of gear, but rarely used all of it.  For general city travels I used my messenger bag and typically just the camera and my 18-270mm lens.  It was great for all around shooting.  On a few days I brought my 35mm with me, but rarely needed to swap it out.  I found that carrying around my full 15-20lb bag of gear would wear me out fast.  Also, I am not ashamed to say that a lot of shots were done in AUTO.  I was there as a tourist, I liked some of what I saw so I wanted a picture.  These were for memories, not art.  I know there are some photogs out there that claim they would never use the AUTO setting on their camera……they are full of crap.  It’s there for a reason.  To get the memory you want at a good quality.

Setting up for a shot of the London Eye

That said, I also set up a number of shots specifically to be processed and done in an artistic way.  These were set in M and bracketed.  The downside being that 1: I have a large number of photos to go through, and 2: Sometimes I would forget I was bracketed and ended up with some shots all over the place in exposure. (what, I was tired!)  All of my Touristy shots are in my gallery on the site here.  My Artistic shots will be trickling out as I work on them and probably uploaded to Flickr.  Keep an eye out!

 

Actually, we had good Signal everywhere

We had a very fun experience with Cell phones while in the UK as well.  My friend loaned me an old iPhone 3G for the trip and my wife as using her unlocked Motorola Razr Maxx.  First thing at the airport I tried one of the kiosks to grab a sim that we could at least use to call our driver. It was an O2 card that was 10£. Sadly, I didn’t use it at all, it had no data and we found our driver before needing it.  Next, while out we hit up a local shop that dealt in various phone stuff. I picked up a 3 sim that had the low end of texts and min, but unlimited data for 15£. Since we were only using data while here it would be perfect. It worked perfect in the old iPhone but in the wife’s Motorola it wouldn’t get any data. The guy said to go to the 3 store in westfields and they would fix it.

Had I realized (or not been tired from the plane) there was a mall right next to me, I would have just gone there.  The 3 store was shit for help. Their on staff folks were clueless and their phone support couldn’t figure out the Android APN settings.  We decided to hit the O2 store and got a sim that had 500mb data topped up to 1.5gb. The Guru was enamored with the Motorola and set up the APN very quickly. Everything worked great! Again, had I been more aware of my mental state, I would have just had them top up the card I bought at Heathrow.

As a side note, while out and about we noticed that O2 had better service with better coverage, but 3 had that unlimited data factor for cheap.  The final score board was 1 O2 Sim from the airport never used. 10£ 1 3 Sim from random store, never used 15£ 1 3 Sim from random store, used in iPhone 15£ 1 O2 sim from O2 store, used in Motorola, 20£

Yeah, that’s a game.

From the gaming side of things, we had a great meetup with some of the RetroNickRadio fans out in the UK!  You can find the details of that over at the RetroNick site.  We were also clued in to a little hole in the all Arcade located right near the London Eye.  I got very few pictures and didn’t have enough time to really explore, but it was a great find.

 

 

I know this post is starting to drag on so I will cut out here.  Expect some more excerpts from the trip in the coming weeks!

The new Retro (Wait what?): Braid

Posted by on March 22, 2012 No comments

Also featured at http://www.retronick.com

You got Retro in my Next Gen!  Well you got Next Gen in my Retro!!

Stop stop, you’re both right!  I want to talk a moment about a current gen game that brings the classic retro style that we all know and love.  This one is about….Braid.

Braid is a side scrolling game created as an indi project by a developer named Jonathan Blow.  JB took the initiative on himself and solely funded the Braid project with the idea of creating a classic style game with high artistic value.  Using $200,000 of his own money, he did just that.
In Aug of 2008, Braid was released on the Xbox Live Arcade platform.  Since then it has taken off on all platforms now.  It’s even been featured on the Humble Indie Bundle a few times.

But what is it?

Braid tells the story of a young man working to rescue his girlfriend from a horrible monster.  To do this he uses various skills and tools to master the art of time and space.  He can rewind time to fix mistakes and move objects to solve puzzles.  Each world he visits presents new challenges that he may or may not need tools from a different world to solve.  To your average player, this may seem like a copy of many other classic games like Prince of Persia, or even the various Mario games.  (Yes, your princess IS in another castle)

What sets Braid apart from these other games is really in the artistic presentation.  The artwork is very stylized and beautiful.  Even more so than the visuals, the music was outstanding.  I almost found myself using Braid as a way to relax because the music was so soothing.  I am not even kidding about that.  If you doubt me, listen to yourself. (link to Magnatune, embeds below)

Personally, I enjoyed the hell out of Braid.  I bought it on XBLA and couldn’t stop playing it.  I picked up the Humble Bundle and now I play it on my PC.  I highly suggest it to any gamer who appreciates the art of the game as well as the art of the world.

You can find a demo version of Braid at http://www.playgreenhouse.com/

Of Websites and Podcasts And things

Posted by on March 14, 2012 No comments

For the past few weeks I have been helping a friend work on his website.  He was using an old Blogger site to post some incredible works and I knew that WordPress would help him get some better exposure and have a better design.  So, having done some work on mine, and Sarah’s site, I thought I would lend a hand.  So now I present to you, RetroNick.com!  It’s a retro style gaming site where Nick talks about his collection of classic games and even some discussion on current games.

You may notice that in honor of the site relaunch, there is an inaugural podcast along with it!  That’s right, the gang here decided to start up a podcast!  The podcast is going to be mainly game oriented (with various antics, of course) but a lot of comparing new to old and how the industry is.

Well, we hope, that is.

Odds are it’s just going to be a bunch of guys drinking and talking about games.  Only recorded.  So check out RetroNick’s new site and maybe give the Podcast a listen!