The Act of Game...

Games!A whole universe, an entire industry built upon the thought of "game".From throwing a ring over a pole, to tapping a button till it either breaks or your fingers hurt, games are huge in this world.

I would even go so far as to say games are enormous in this entire universe but I think this might be a little far fetched. Hey, some of us say they were abducted by aliens, maybe they just had a fun little game of scrabble before they got their memory wiped and put back on the ground.

Games follow us our entire life from childhood when this little blue plane is an entire fleet of passenger jets landing at the busiest airport in the region to 30 year old men comparing their iPads and Motorola Tablets to the byte.

I'd like to think of myself to be a gamer, not hardcore, but core. Important here is the genre of games as, action figures and Monopoly are very different types of games in general, but I concentrate more on the few acceptable types of games in my age range league thing. The Virtual Gaming genre. PC/Playstation Gaming to be more precise. And I gotta say, its fun and it always will be no matter how old i get to become.

It started when watching my brother play "International Karate Plus" on the Amiga system around 1994, which slowly turned me into a player, very slowly. Seeing pixels jump around in the shapes of little Karate people ... I liked that!

Several years on, and my brother turned me into a Potion taker for his Hero in "Diablo" around 1996. Why just potions? Cuz I was too wussy to play Diablo by myself pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 were my strengths!

The first "Sony Playstation", was my very first REAL gaming "rig" and brought me a lot of pleasure for about 3 weeks, until my "Gampad-Port" broke. How? I have not the slightest clue. It never got fixed and it ended up in the eternal darkness of garbagetown, as for some reason; which I cannot recall - the warranty was void. Did I open it up? I do not remember!

Next up was my very first very own PC back in 1997, it was a left over System my father used to use in his production company before upgrading to the new Pentium II Dual CPU Systems. So it was only natural that it came with Photoshop 3.1 and a software then called " Kinetix 3D Studio MAX" of which I had no clue how to use. And never really understood WHY I should. Now I know!

A few years have passed, and I bought myself my very first very own PC game, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six in 1998. "Low" were the settings I played at and the resolution I had to choose was 800x600. The game looked awesome and was choppy as hell, as I only had a 166 MHz Pentium MMX and an ATI Rage Pro with only 8MB Ram.

I still remember my bothers best friend at the time, "Marc" laughing about me and my eagerness to play the game at a maximum of 15 FPS, but I had started a passion .. and felt that nothing was supposed to stop me. I had a short run with The first Playstation and I hoped the PC wouldn't let me down! It didn't!

It continued with Final Fantasy VIII, SWAT3, Blade Runner and a few more games that changed the way I viewed the world, still... at a max of just 15 FPS.

A few years have passed and I finished Final Fantasy VIII, 3 Times, on 3 different system each giving me an increase of 10 FPS, when I finished the game the 3rd time, Squall finally decided to run smooth. And so did every other new game on everyone else's system, but mine as I never seemed to be able to get on the technology train that said "Next Stop, Upgrade Town"

By 2002 I had saved enough money, to buy myself a PC, a system I was able to configure, a system that ran games at their preferred Framerate, for maybe 3 weeks.

Sigh, I almost had it, almost had i had the coolest Gaming Rig...
I had only enough cash for a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB SDRam and a Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 440 with 64 MB of crazy Graphic Ram. In the meantime, my friends went out to get the Ti 4800 Series. Sigh, I was behind again!

For the following years my Graphic Settings were set to Medium; which was a big improvement to the previous years but still not what i suggest to be a Eden of Graphic Heaven.
My system now is an Intel Core 2 Duo with 2.6 Ghz and a Nvidia Geforce 280 oh and 4 GB Ram, is it enough to Game on it? Sure it is, to me at least. I have long decided that i don't need to Play on "High" settings.

For Gaming now, I use the PS3 my family bought me 3 years ago, and it still provides "Oh wow" moments, any Computer would have been long outdated by now.

So here I am, 17 years later still enjoying the act of Gaming. not far from teaching my son, that the bad bytes are the ones to shoot!

And until he takes the controller to himself, I shall enjoy gaming for a while longer.

that's it from me, Have a great week ahead, Game on!

-Alex

Get in "touch"... literally ...

Since I sold my Nokia N900 - the last hope I had for the manufacturer - I have basically given up on researching info or products from that Finnish company, as the world of Nokia is slowly decomposing and the products they seem to be shooting out every month are aimed at people that want to feel like lab-rats, I simply lost all interest.

There used to be a time of great innovation and slick communication, I still remember my first Nokia, the 8110 or as many people liked to fittingly call it, the Banana.

It's the phone Morpheus used to contact Neo in "The Matrix" in this Office just before he was ambushed by Agent Smiths' Crew. It was a cool phone. It worked too, just like the good old Communicator or the 3210, 3310, 3330 and one of my favorites the 6310i.

It was when Nokia said, "I have an Idea, let's try this", that everything started going to shits.

Now back to the topic at hand, Nokia. As I've said 13 lines above, I stopped researching stuff on the Company, however every now and then jobs slide through, for promotions on new Nokia phones or offers, it is here where I have to do a little research to make sure i get the correct logos, in the correct format and texts in their correct fonts. As this requires me to read a few product infos as well, I basically fall into this hole of knowing stuff about nokia and where the company is heading. Microsofts' Windows phone 7 for Nokia, Nokia N8 and other products I have learned about over that same route.

So here I am basically writing stuff about Nokia, because... you've guessed it, I'm working on a promo right now. It includes a Nokia Phone that includes a Tech that made me start this post in the first place.

Near Field Communication... or NFC, is a technology, that allows transactions, transfers and pairing of stuff, by just simply holding 2 devices, for instance 2 phones, a headset, or a wireless bluetooth speaker, to one another, making them... touch.

So for instance you want to pay for your new Shoes you just found at Prada or Nike or wherever you buy your shoes, and you'd like to pay for it, all you gotta do is hold the phone close to a device to do a transaction from your mobile phone, to your favorite retailer. Making it possible for you to NOT bring any cash or credit cards along.

Pairing works exactly the same way. Hold your phone to your Bluetooth headset, and it automatically pairs.

Sending Pictures too. Let's go with a little example here, Gregs ex-girlfriend just got this new 8MP Mobile phone from Nokia that apparently does great pictures. Now Gregs Girlfriend, seems to like to tease Greg so she decides to take pictures in "suggestive Poses" with her new boyfriend and sends them to Greg to upset him.

The reason Vanessa and Greg are no longer a couple? Vanessa decided to cheat on Greg at this "rad" party down in Miami or Abu Dhabi .. or Mumbai, it doesn't really matter.

Now Greg is still upset with her, and thinks to himself "you know what, I don't care for those pictures, but my friends at this bar might like them." So he asks them to activate "NFC" on their mobile devices and just taps them one by one, sending over an archive to each of their devices,without the need to first pair each phone separately in this lengthy process of passcode exchange and so on.

So NFC seems to be useful... It's NOT an invention of Nokia, it's just a technology nokia decided to pickup on to "attract" customers that they previously lost, but until they decide to actually develop a proper OS, use decent hardware in their mobile phones and offer a "Blackberry type" Service where internet, emails, and other services are being bundled in a decently priced package... they won't win me back. in fact, I don't think they'll win anybody back anytime soon.

So we'll see how NFC develops here in the Middle east, as this phone seems to be the first here in the middle east that officially advertises this feature in their add campaign.

Just don't forget your Mobile phone or get it stolen... you won't be able to call your bank to block it as it's ... gone!

Until next time, Game on.

-Alex