Summer was great and fall has been pretty good so far too. Parties, vacations, turkey, new operating system, fun games. Overall not too shabby.
We had a Halloween party that went really well. The decorations turned out perfectly – lots of fake moss on the kitchen table and lots of spooky-looking candles (took a long time to burn them to look right). Even did the candle on the skull thing. We watched Dead Alive (zombies vs lawn mower — pure bad zombie movie bliss), played some DDR, and pumpkin bowled. Felicity and Ross even showed up.
My Aunt Susan owns a place up in Lake Placid, NY and let us stay there the first weekend in November. Nice little town on a beautiful lake. It was part of a lodge so there were amenities out the wazoo. Valet parking, game room in the basement (with a bowling alley), heated pool. Lots of wonderful restaurants around the place too, one of which served the best Pumpkin Spiced Ale I’ve ever tasted. Really we just tried to do as little as possible all weekend, which was great and just what we needed.
Thanksgiving was way too much food in one day. No offense to mum, but I’m glad she moved to Florida, I don’t know how we would have dealt having to eat three Thanksgiving dinners. Two (Kiera’s parents, Dad) is enough. Lots of tasties though so I guess I can’t really complain about that.
Enough life-stuff though; there are two things that came out in the past few months which I feel are worth digressing about for a bit. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and Assassin’s Creed...
Leopard
After a little over two years since the last Mac OS X release, Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) came out in October. Of course I had it the day it came out (yay to Apple’s free same-day delivery). So what do I think of it? Certainly worth the upgrade.
The new Finder alone is what makes the upgrade worthwhile. While I’m not a big fan of the new dock or menubar (I guess they had to show off the spiffy new Core Animation somewhere, but still, meh) the Finder itself has finally gotten an overhaul and feels like a modern OS X application. It’s responsive and doesn’t hiccup when dealing with network shares like it used to. It can generate file-previews for almost any type now (which makes browsing a directory of videos very easy) and QuickLook is handy when one just wants to quickly see what is in a file. Coverflow is a bit flashy and I haven’t found a use for it yet, but it’s a cool way to browse through a directory of images on occasion.
Time Machine is, while not anything amazing, something I’m sure many people will come to forget how they lived without. Built-in easy to use backups - plug in an external hard drive, say yes to a dialog box, and you’re done. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Spotlight has been updated, or fixed, depending on how you look at it. It’s safe to say this is what it should have been when it was first released. The speed has been improved so it’s truly instantaneous (used to get sluggish when you had a lot of data). Plus it now acts as an application launcher; just type in the first few letters of the program you want to launch and hit enter - programs are the default "top result" when you search. I now see why QuickSilver users love their program.
And on top of all that, it’s faster. Just like every other Mac OS X release before this one, the OS runs faster on the same hardware. It’s not like Vista where your machine will probably run slower than it did with XP. They added lots of features, but they didn’t add bloat, which is just as important as adding features.
So yeah, if you have a Mac, go get Leopard.
Assassin’s Creed
Assassin’s Creed finally came out. When I saw the first trailer for this last year it was the nail in the coffin and I finally got an Xbox 360 (Gears of War had just came out, so I figured why not). I’m a bit torn about how I feel about it. Overall I can safely say it’s lots of fun but not without disappointment.
It’s obvious that the game engine itself has gotten all the attention, all the polish. I love the control interface and it’s a blast to just run around in the incredibly huge world and do random stuff. The combat system is very enjoyable too. It’s not just graphics, far from it, it’s the way you interact with the world. Walking through a crowd you’ll try to gently push people out of the way, running though it you’ll bump into one and possibly trip. It’s one of the most realistic virtual worlds I’ve seen.
Unfortunately it seems like they didn’t put much thought into the plot, specifically missions, in the game. It gets a bit repetitive: go to a new city, climb 10 or so high buildings to get a good view of the place, do 7 or so missions (which are always the same in each city – pickpocket some guy, beat him up, listen in on his conversation, or help some dumbass find some flags he’s dropped) then go kill the "boss" for that area. Your boss tells you good job, you get a new weapon or ability, repeat.
Honestly if it weren’t for the amazing interaction within the world the game wouldn’t have much to offer. As it stands, as long as you enjoy just playing around in the game and you can look past the repetition, it’s very enjoyable. Maybe Assassin’s Creed 2, if they make it, will be better since they already have an amazing engine in place and they can focus on some variety in the plot.
