Game of the Year 2009 (?)

The end of the year draws near which invites a lookback on the last 12 months and with video games it is no different. All of the podcasts, magazines, websites are all readying their lists now that all the big tentpole releases are out of the door, but what about yours truly? The long absence of an Insert Coin qualifies me to give the definitive answer of course, but for me who can be considered as part of the core demographic, this is probably the best and worst time of the year.
This year saw the sequel to Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare, and so a lot of games have pushed back their release to the new year to get out of the way. Even so, the fall period still offers a rich bounty of top games, and for a gamer like myself, who wants to play and experience all of these great games, there simply isn't enough time to give them all a go and then give a solid response to the question "What is your game of the year 2009?"

Read full post >>

Streaming from a Mac (Surviving the transistion)

Image by [kilodelta] via Flickr

A few weeks back I was moaning of hard drive trouble. It seems that the PC I built a few years back has been pretty demanding on the hard drives as I've had a couple of failings over the last 3 years or so. I've been very keen on moving to a mac of some kind for some time now, and with this latest hard drive failure, now seemed a good a time as any (although my bank manager might say otherwise). I have actually had a Mac Mini for quite a while but never really moved over to it - it lacks the intel processor to allow me to bootcamp into Windows if and when I needed to so the Mini just got the occasional run out but nothing more.

So I decided to take the plunge and purchase some kind of Mac. I was tempted by a Macbook Pro, but I would have been paying an extra premium for the portability which I would never really need. No, in the end I decided on one of the new iMacs - the "baby iMac" as my good friend Jackson has named it as it is the entry model on the new line of iMacs that were released earlier in the year. Technically with it's 21.5" screen it is an upgrade from my 20" Samsung monitor, it's super quiet compared to the set of fans plus GFX card which would get noisy even when idle. I'm not a PC Gamer at all - I have two dedicated boxes under the TV for that itch, so ultimate performance is not crucial for me. Plus I can always boot into Windows if I have the need which hasn't been that often - at the moment the only reason I need to is that there are no snow leopard compatible drivers for my old crappy Lexmark printer. Again, I don't do *that* much printing so again it's not an issue.

For the most part, it has been business as usual now that I have a stable machine once more, but there's a couple of alternatives I've found (and will probably continue to find) for Mac OS X, but this post will concentrate on the media server options which I needed to desperately carry on my demand to watch content via the Xbox360/PS3 and the TV downstairs, rather than sat at a desk.

Read full post >>