James Chamberlin

I was pretty surprised when I heard the news that Age of Empires 2 was getting a facelift. The engine is reportedly getting some tweaks to bring it up to a 1080p resolution.

After watching the new trailer, I can’t say I was blown away by anything I saw. I wonder how well the original version still plays. Do you need to use the XP compatibility mode in Windows 7? It makes me wonder.

As much fun as I had playing Age of Empires 2, I can’t see myself buying the HD version. I don’t feel it would be worth the cost. It’s not like they are completely overhauling the game. The game definitely looks dated.

That being said, listening to the music again brought back some good memories of those old AoE days. If they were to ever bring out a totally new Age of Empires game, I’d probably buy it. I’m not interested in Age of Empires Online. It’s the business model that I don’t like for that particular franchise. Free-to-play with some premium content doesn’t work for every game. Age of Empires turned out to be one of them.

Over the last ten years I haven’t played that many video games on a regular basis. The ones I have played were either for work or were just played occasionally for fun. Facebook’s explosion in recent years has introduced a lot of interesting free-to-play games, but only a few have caught my eye.

For almost a year I played a game called Battle Pirates. It was one of the few games that actually reminded me of my old RTS days. It was more like Age of Empires than any other game I’ve played in recent years. I really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, as you rank up, the longer it takes for your ships to build and repair. You end up spending minutes playing the game and all night repairing your ships.

It wait times have really sucked the life out of the game for me and I now play less than ten minutes a week, keeping ships building, in a desperate hope that Kixeye, the game’s developer, will see they made a mistake and will correct it. They’ve been aware of the problem for many, many months but have been reluctant to do anything about it. They know they can still make money on the game. Time speed-ups are the principle ways they make money. Whip out your credit cards, boys and girls. People have literally spent thousands of dollars on this game.

Not me. I think I’ve spent about $50 on it. And that won’t even buy you a single completed Dread X (one of the best ships in the game). If you were to complete a full fleet of Dread X’s, you’re talking about a couple hundred bucks. It has truly gotten ridiculous.

So I recently made a change in my gaming habits. After seeing a couple of gameplay videos of War Thunder, I decided to download it and give it a shot. It’s in open beta and free. It has some premium options, but if you want to stick to playing for free, you can, and you will have a LOT of fun doing so.

As of right now, War Thunder is limited to players fighting in aircraft. They are working on adding ground forces (tanks) and naval forces (ships). I don’t have a whole lot of interest in tanks. There are enough tank games out there and I never liked getting into tank battles back in Battlefield 1942. Naval battles could be pretty cool. Air battles are absolutely epic!

You don’t need a top of the line graphics card. This was a concern I had because I just have a GeForce GT 430. I use the medium settings. I can probably play at a higher level, but I figure why bother when the game already looks gorgeous on the medium settings?

One of the reasons I like War Thunder over say Battle Pirates is the platforms each game uses. I haven’t a clue what engine Gaijin Entertainment is using for War Thunder. I just know it’s a million times more stable than Flash, the preferred platform for Kixeye.

Why Kixeye loves Flash so much is beyond me. Battle Pirates is simply too much for Flash to handle. Ask any Battle Pirates veteran about the game and they’ll bring up Flash/Shockwave crashes and countless other graphical issues that have accompanied the game.

As of this publication, I’ve played War Thunder off and on for a week and I have only had one crash. That’s not bad for a game in beta. I don’t know what the problem was. I rebooted and updated my graphics card drivers and I’ve been good so far. Upgrading my drivers should have been the first thing I did before I played the game, so I take some of the responsibility for that.

That was one heck of a game! The Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers squared off in an outstanding game that will go down in history for books not just for the play of both teams, but also for the ridiculous power outage that occurred just after half-time.

Just after the Ravens scored an incredible kick return for 108 yards to start off the third quarter, most of the stadium lights were off following what was said to be an external power loss. The stadium lost power and it took roughly 35 minutes to get the lights back on and for play to resume.

The power outage gave San Francisco time to recoup after that shocking 108-yard return. In a four minute span that followed the outage, the 49ers racked up 17 points to finally make the game competitive.

The end of the game came down to close calls, no calls, and some great strategy. There was a controversial no-call on that safety. Honestly, I don’t believe the game would have changed much if the referees would have called the holding on Baltimore. In my opinion, the Ravens still would have won the game.

After truly leading his team, Ray Lewis fell short of making a big impact on this game with tackles, sacks, etc. Statistically, he was practically a no-show. His age caught up with him. I saw numerous times where he was a step or two too slow to catch up to the ball carrier. Even though Ray brings tremendous leadership qualities to the team, the Ravens will have to incorporate new, younger talent in the middle linebacker position.

The half-time show was okay. I’m not a big fan of Beyoncé to be frank. She made a lot of headlines when she announced she wouldn’t lip sync anything in the show. I laughed during her performance because through the first half of it she barely sung anything. It wasn’t until the second half where she actually had lyrics to sing. So I can’t really criticize her for lip syncing. She did a good job with her dancing. She and her dancing were very sexy.

Some Super Bowls have me tuning in more for the commercials than the game. This time around, I was truly interested in the game. I knew it would be good. The commercials, for the second year in a row, absolutely sucked. There were a few that made me smile or snicker, but nothing great.

I recently got wind of a former domain of mine that was about to expire. Name Cheap still had the rights to it. If I wanted to, I could pay them roughly $70 to backorder it. I elected not to go that route and take my chance that no one else would backorder it either.

Fortunately it worked out for me. No one backordered it and I was able to swoop in and get it for next to nothing. Now it’s time to get that domain some use. It’s been a while since I’ve done very much web development.

In perhaps the dumbest decision I’ve read about in weeks, Charter Communications has decided to get rid of its social media team and move them to phone support. As a long-time Charter subscriber (Cable TV and Internet), I’ve used their social media team to resolve a lot of issues. They do a far better job than the phone support system.

The move is clearly a cost-cutting move. But in this day and age when everyone and everything is on the Internet, is it really that smart of an idea to remove your social media presence? It’s a foolish mistake, one which Charter will eventually realize. I seriously hope they change their mind.

Last night’s big game 7 contest of the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics showcased some of the best talent in the NBA. Unfortunately for Boston, that talent showed its age come the fourth quarter. The veteran leaders were consistently a step behind the younger, healthier Miami Heat.

I was really impressed by what I saw from Chris Bosh, Miami’s center. He had missed several games due to an abdominal strain. Now that he’s back, he looks rejuvenated. One thing does have me concerned for him going forward and that that’s his conditioning. When you take off as many games as he did, you need several games to get back in “game shape”. You can’t just show up and expect to be right back where you left off.

I genuinely felt bad for the Boston Celtics. I’ve had a lot of respect and admiration for this group of players. Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett are all Hall of Fame-bound when their careers are over. There’s just no telling where they will be playing next year. Pierce is still contracted to play in Boston next year, but there’s talk that Boston could trade him for younger players. As for Garnett and Allen, they could land anywhere. Garnett looked terrific after Doc Rivers moved him to Center and Allen should be much better once his has surgery to have the bone spurs removed from his ankle. All of these guys have a couple years left. And the way Ray Allen takes care of his body leads me to believe he could be around for another five.

Miami will have their hands full with the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals. OKC is a very young and talented team. This is going to be one heck of a finals. It’ll star the two best players in the league: LeBron James and Kevin Durant.

I don’t have central air so every summer is a gamble as to when to put in the window air conditioner. I hate putting the A/C in too early. I like having the full window open in the spring to let that fresh air in. However, waiting too long will have you feeling miserable as you bake in 90+ degree heat.

This year, I did it right. I had one or two warm days and got it in right before it got really hot. I was ready to go when the local weathermen predicted 97 degrees for a high. When it’s that hot, you really don’t feel like doing anything. Just thinking too hard can make you pop a sweat.

I know I’m not the only one who is enjoying the A/C. My dog loves it. After going on a long walk in the heat, he comes in and plops down on the floor in front of the A/C to cool off.

For me not much beats the NBA playoffs. Call me crazy, but I prefer the NBA playoffs over even the singular event that is the Super Bowl. It used to be the other way around slightly, but the Super Bowl hasn’t been the must-watch event in several years.

I’ve always enjoyed the NBA playoffs and this year is no different. I haven’t had a favorite team in years. I used to be a huge Bulls fan but that came to an end after Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen both left Chicago. I eventually found a team in the Charlotte Hornets, but they’ve since changed cities and the roster no longer even comes close to what it was like in the ’90s.

Today, I’m more of a fan of the entire league. I don’t have one team or player to hope for. I think that helps when it comes time for the playoffs. My team is never out of the playoffs. 😛

I just love watching the teams that do make the playoffs play their butts off. The intensity of the games is clearly ratcheted up. Everything is on the line. Legacies and dynasties are formed in the playoffs.

Right now the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs are squaring off for the Western Conference Championship while the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat do the same in the East. Everything tells me we’ll be seeing the Spurs and Heat in the NBA Finals. I’d really like to see those two teams square off. I’d like to see Tim Duncan try to win one last championship before he retires. Conversely, I’d also like to see LeBron James get his first. Whatever happens, I’ll be glued to my television, catching nearly every minute.

I wonder how many others have an uneasy feeling over the Facebook IPO. You really can’t watch the news without hearing about Facebook. All of the news websites are plastered with photos of Mark Zuckerberg.

I’ve seen a lot of trendy sites come and go and I frankly suspect Facebook will be another Myspace (or one of many other sites no longer relevant).

How Facebook intends to make a profit without selling its users’ private information is anybody’s guess. General Motors recently pulled its $10 million in ads after coming to the conclusion they simply don’t work.

As a potential investor and as someone who has seen so many sites disappear over the years, I’m incredibly standoffish when it comes to Facebook. I use Facebook to a degree, but I don’t really care for the product. It’s got way too much going on. It’s obvious to me that whomever they hired for the user interface doesn’t know what the heck he/she is doing.

Of all the tech IPOs I would have gone in if I had the money in recent years, Google is the only one I would have jumped in on. It’s a company that works, even though some of their products end up failing. Facebook is essentially one big product that’s going to be bankrupt in just a few years.

One of the frustrating things about Internet usage has become the dreaded ISP bandwidth limitations. Just when they announce new, faster speeds, you also learn in the fine print about data usage limits. Some US ISPs will limit its customers to just 100GB a month before they cancel your account, leaving you high and dry. For me, it’s 250GB. It may seem like a high number, but with high-quality video becoming ever popular, 250GB really isn’t that much data.

You would think that all ISPs with bandwidth limitations would provide its customers with free tools to monitor their bandwidth. Not in my case. Charter Communications has repeatedly said they are working on them. I eventually said “enough” and went in look for tools to do the job.

I’ve tried a few different programs which promised to monitor bandwidth for my computers but it wasn’t until I came across DU Meter from Hazel Technologies that I found what I had been looking for.

DU Meter had a very easy to use installation wizard. You don’t need to be an educated network administrator to be able to use DU Meter. It’s simple and straight-forward. The default settings will work for 99% of users. I expected I’d have to customize the heck out of it, but that wasn’t the case. It was clearly programmed by someone who knew what they were doing. I’m sure customer feedback has been tremendously helpful.

One of the things I found frustrating with other bandwidth monitoring software had to do with cross-network file transfers. Most of the software chose to include that in the bandwidth totals. DU Meter, by default, chooses to monitor “Internet only” transfers. This has been an enormous help to me. I don’t have to constantly change a setting every time I want to transfer something from one computer to another.

Perhaps the best feature of DU Meter is the archived data transfer stats. You can go back days, weeks, even months to see how your Internet habits have affected your Internet data usage.

There are only two drawbacks to DU Meter. One of them is the program can’t monitor all of the bandwidth across the network. You’ll need a router with bandwidth monitoring technology if you have gaming consoles and the like which are hooked up to the Internet. If you only have computers or you don’t do very much online with those consoles, you’re going to be just fine with DU Meter.

The other drawback is that it’s not free. However the price is quite reasonable considering the frustration that I’m sure would ensue once your ISP cut you off for going over your bandwidth for the month. It has really put my mind at ease. If your ISP has bandwidth limits, I highly recommend giving DU Meter a try. Its 30-day trial offers you plenty of time to give it a shot.