Sunday, 7 November 2004
11:59pm
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Well, this week I took delivery of a new Canon PowerShot S70. Some people are somewhat surprised since my past two cameras have been from Nikon, but the fact of the matter is that this camera is everything I was looking for in a digital camera. I really loved the wide angle lens that was on my CP5000 (28mm equivalent at full wide), and this is a pretty difficult thing to find in consumer level cameras today, and this was a huge priority for me. Secondly, I wanted something that would fit fairly easily in a pocket. After all, what good is a camera if it's never around when you need it because it's too big to lug around with you? And finally, I wanted something that would have full manual controls available for when I feel like getting creative. Well, this camera (and its predecessors the S60 and S50) fit the bill perfectly. Perhaps the best part is that this is actually the cheapest "real" digital camera I've ever owned, and at least as far as the specifications go, it blows all of my previous cameras away. As you can see, BryBry approves!
I particularly like how it doesn't use a separate lens cap, and that when it's turned off, there aren't any parts that protrude out from the rectangular body, which is nice for keeping this thing in a pocket. Of course, what this all means is that I can go back to taking pictures of random crap and forcing you guys to look at it! And though I did take it out to take some pictures of my "new" (not so new, now that I've been here for 7 months!) neighborhood, I must admit that so far I've mostly used it to take pics of my TV screen while playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Those that have known me for any length of time know that I've been a fan of this series of games, and well, this newest installment is by far the most amazing video game I have ever played. The two previous games, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City were groundbreaking in the degree of freedom allowed the player. You can choose to disregard the main story line of the game completely if you like. You're free to move about and do as you wish in the world of the game. Vice City expanded on this freedom, but what San Andreas does is add a level of detail never before seen in a video game.
And by detail, I'm not talking about the resolution of the graphics (becuase lets face it, the Playstation 2 is getting to be a pretty old machine that by today's standards has pretty limited capabilities), but rather I'm talking about tens of thousands of little details in the game that just make the gameplay emulate real life. Think a really violent version of The Sims except it's out in the outside world intead of just inside your house. And without having to worry about little details like telling your character when to go poop. To give you some idea of the amount of effort that went into this game just to fill out all these little details, they recorded about 250 people's voices just for the random pedestrians. Just the random folks walking around in the game that really have very little to do with the game itself. They even greet each other and have conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with what you are doing.
In fact, there are so many little details in this game that have absolutely nothing to do with what you are doing in the game. There are police shootouts and high speed chases that don't involve you in any way. I don't want to go on and on about all the little things (because there literally are tens of thousands of little things) that make this game so life-like, but again, it's on a level of its on. Oooh, and I absoluely looooove the soundtrack. I love early 90's hip-hop, and this being a game about a gang banger in a ficticious clone of L.A., set in the early '90s, has quite a bit of early 90's hip-hop in it.
Of course, like the previous games, this is a pretty violently themed game, and it definitely is not for children. Just like there are rated R movies, this really is a rated R game. Actually, if this game was a movie, I'm pretty sure it'd be rated NC-17.
They've also made some technological optimizations in this game over the previous two, one of which is no waiting for loading data when traveling in between the major sections of the city. One side effect of this is that it puts a lot more wear and tear on your PS2 than most other games would, as there is constant heavy seeking going on with the DVD-ROM drive, and after maybe about 60 or 70 hours of playing this game, it pretty much killed my already well-aged and abused PS2. Already addicted to the game however, I was forced to buy a new PS2... and well, these new PS2's are slimmer. Quite a bit slimmer. In fact, they are downright tiny.
How tiny is it? Well, that's it, sitting underneath the DVD case for the game right there. It's actually pretty freakin' cool. When I opened the box, I couldn't believe my eyes... it was the size of a short hardcover book! Also it has no cooling fan, so it runs almost completely silent. Pretty damned neato, for sure.
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Now this wasn't an exhorbitant, I'll never have to work again type sum of money (hey, this isn't 1999 anymore), but I gotta tell ya, I must be one of the luckiest people alive. I swear in the last 4 years I've done very, very little looking for money... somehow, just enough money seems to just find me. Thank you Jesus, and if you're reading this, thank you Sarah from NYC for stepping up and contacting me directly. Maybe I'd have spent the money on actually going out and visiting New York, but the camera was a higher priority for me (after all, if I did go, I'd want to be able to take pictures, haha).
So yeah. All kinds of craziness going on right now. I'm glad I got to catch you guys up on some of it, if there are even any of you left still checking for updates after a year of virtually nothing going on, haha. And now, I've got to go get some work done. G'nite all!