The weather around here has been especially rainy and cold. Mother Nature might have lost her Cliff-Notes� for “August”. She’s reminding me of winter and Xmas and the impending deluge of new crap about to metaphorically rain down for great financial year justice.

I’m still working through Odin Sphere which was on a list similar to the one below at one point. It was a title that I had high hopes for; hopes of granjuer far and away from what the game actually plays like. But it’s not a bad thing. It’s like instead of meeting Kirsten Dunst and immediately making out to Queen’s “We are the Champions” on an epic snowy peak at first introduction, I got her autograph and made a joke she laughed at. Odin Sphere is still cool even if it’s Mario Bros, in a loop, with leveling.

What’s up with the orange box? It’s like a temporary warning sign or even a reminder of the temporary placement textures that they use to design the level. I’m about to get on a tangent, hold on to your seatbelts … A while ago, back in 2004, Valve released some very preliminary screenshots of HL2 and they included these orange textures you see in the screenshot above. Placeholders? I was honestly impressed at the numbering and polish of the text that essentially to me reads like internal filenames. To me internal polish is ten-fold more impressive than public-facing polish.

The new TV is a blessing and a curse. As the credit card balance festers, laughs and eventually leaps at me like a Sumatran Tiger I didn’t see; I crouch down behind 1080p specs and marketed contrast ratios hoping they actually do something. But then my nightmarish attacker evaporates when I download a 1080p trailer for Wall-E, the new Pixar film. It’s crystal clear, even to 3rd party wifey units who maybe are not so influenced by technical and marketing hype.