Christmas Eve

Normally I would be posting about some great new gadget I got or something that I really hate, but not this time. I don't have anything new to report at this point in time. I am just burning some nervous energy, because its Christmas eve and I typically don't sleep well anyways. I'm just downloading some Leo Laporte podcasts on my iBook, which I posted about a few days ago. Tomorrow morning I hope to get some new device full of circuits and covered in buttons, but I don't really expect anything. That is fairly unusual for me, not expecting anything I mean. I didn't specifically ask for anything, but I guess somewhere I had a list. If I get something cool other than T-shirts in the winter, I would love to make an unboxing video of it. I have never actually made one of those videos before and it sounds like fun. Well, its back to iTunes for me.

Empire Earth (the original)

Halo 3 has gotten really old. Last Year about December it was a Christmas present. I have played it so much I am really sick and tired of it. So I decided to dust off my copy of Empire Earth. I bought it during the spring on eBay along with its expansion pack, The Art of Conquest. The boxed set is called Empire Earth Gold Edition. I introduced a friend of mine to the game. He seems to like it well enough. The graphic detail is not bad for a game made in 2003. In fact the game seemed popular enough that Sierra Entertainment made a Empire Earth 2 and 3. I haven't played either of those however. Empire Earth features a vast array of units, buildings, and heroes spanning 15 different ages. I personally like the space age the best, because it has the most units and seems to play out the quickest. The stone age takes forever to build up a sizable force, and by the time you do the enemy seems to build some towers which are way to powerful and nearly impossible to destroy and easily decimate any army you bring. The middles ages are somewhat better, because you finally get access to some siege weapons and cannons. In the space age you can choose to fight in the air, over land, floating in water, or in the vacuum of space.
If this sounds like fun to you, try and find yourself a copy online, or maybe just buy one of the newer versions of the game.

Google Chrome

Recently I downloaded the Google Chrome web browser. A few months ago I used a beta version of the browser. Not much has changed since the beta, at least not anything that I could notice. The browser first struck me as being almost Mac like. It has a very clean interface. No file menu and very few buttons make the interface uncluttered and slick looking. You can have your home page be a page that contains previews of your most visited websites and all of your other bookmarks. The page is not unlike the speed dial page in Opera. In Chrome you can drag your tabs out of the browser and into blank space on the desktop to create a new window out of that tab. One thing I notice about it is the fact there is no search bar to the right of the address bar. Instead you search by typing your query into the address bar. It has a few issues that I have noticed, such as flash videos occasionally fail to load. While editing my blog colors in Chrome I noticed that the preview of the colors would not refresh, so I couldn't see what the page would look like with my new colors. I would love to see Chrome work well as Firefox someday. I recommend Chrome if you are fed up with Internet Explorers error and security flaws, or you just want an overall simpler web browsing experience. You can download Chrome at www.google.com/chrome.

Apple iBook G4

I've always been a PC user. A few years ago a friend inroduced me to Linux, but I never really liked using it. Now the same friend loaned me an iBook G4. Its not particularly powerful, but it works just fine for everyday web browsing and email tasks. The Macintosh interface is very simple and easy to use. Sometimes I wish it had a right click button though. Having to press CRTL and click to bring up a context menu is somewhat annoying. Software installation is quite easy. Download the file, double click the file, and drag to the applications folder. The operating system itself appears to be quite stable as well. The hardware is also simple yet elegant. The bottom of the laptop is one solid piece except for the battery. There are no stickers, vents, or panels that clutter up the bottom.  Overall the Macintosh platform is pretty nice. Its definately not a power user's platform. However if you are looking for a stable, easy to use computer, I would suggest a Mac. Just remember, that you will have to look for software that will work on the Mac if you want to do more than check email and browse the web.