I’m not much of a gamer. I didn’t really play video games growing up as a kid. Most games don’t really grab my attention. But, Mirror’s Edge was badass.

So, I’m looking for some demos to test out different games, but I have no idea where to start.

The Serendipity Happened…

I saw a commercial for Wet on Hulu and it looked pretty good so I downloaded the demo today. I installed it and went to start it up and heard the music and I knew it was going to be good.

I played the Story Mode on the demo and it was awesome! The gameplay is like Mirror’s Edge except with lots more action. The look and feel is like a modern day western/samurai movie or something. You feel like you’re in a Tarantino movie! You get a Kill Bill + Yojimbo vibe which is really nice.

I dunno all the details, but you play some chick with guns, a sword, and amazing reflexes. The controls aren’t hard to use and the moves you can do are easy to pull off. If you wanna slide and slice somebody, you press the appropriate buttons. It just makes sense.

When you’re not running/sliding/jumping around killing people, you’re in a cutscene. There are also moments when you’re not really in control and you just have to press the right button to make cool shit happen. I dunno what that’s called since I’m not a gamer, but its pretty cool. The whole thing feels like a movie and that aspect only enhances the mood.

As a movie lover, I really appreciate what the developers did in this game. They really set the mood. The cutscenes aren’t long and boring like other game’s that I’ve played. The action is cool and diverse. Its not some dumb hack and slash thing. The music is psychobilly! How can you not like that? The game is like a good movie in that it is very immersive. Plus, the character has a cool personality. She said, “I don’t have time for this shit!”, when prying open a door. A woman after my own heart.

The game also has this thing called Rubi vision. Its neat. It’s like when The Bride went whack in Kill Bill. Your vision turns red and you see everything very abstract and you turn into an even more dangerous killing machine.

The only thing that’s a little annoying is the camera. You really have to control the camera a lot. But, Mirror’s Edge probably just babied me.

This game looks badass. I’d buy it and I’ve only ever bought one game in my life. So yea, 5 out of 5 or whatever. I’ll buy and play this thing the next time I have more $$$.

I downloaded other demos, but I dunno if I’ll even play’em. This game is that good!

We’ve got this old tower from like 2000 if not earlier. Back in 2006 during my junior year of high school, my dad bought my sister and I two Gateway laptops. These laptops were supposed to last us throughout our college careers. My sister caused my laptop to be unusable because she broke the screen by yanking on it–she’s a great sister by the way. No really! Karma finally bit her in the ass; her laptop got infected this summer and she had to get a new one.

I’m back home from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I was an IT major. I’m gonna go to UTEP next semester. That means I have a semester off. I’m bored. There’s unused computers lying around. So yea, I’m making a home network.

Originally, I wasn’t going to do anything really productive with them. But, I’ve been working on my sisters infected laptop trying to rescue all her pictures. My family doesn’t really backup their data and I’m the one who has to pay for it. I decided to take the bull by the horns and just make a file server for everyone to back up to.

The Setup

The two laptops and tower will be the servers. I named my computers after philosophers. I’m a liberal arts person at heart forgive me.

Kierkegaard is the tower. Kierkegaard is a web and PXE server. Nietzsche is my old laptop. Nietzsche will be the file server and I’ll hook up my terabyte external hard-drive to it(him?). My sisters laptop will be Camus. I don’t really know what to do with that one yet.

Voltaire is my PSUbuntu. Voltaire will just play the files held by Nietzsche.

I’ve used my personal laptop to SSH into all these guys and install whatever needs to be installed. But, I do have this Dynex TV will lotsa connections in the back. I used it to see what was going on during Nietzsche’s install and I use it with the Voltaire.

Excuse the mess.

This has been a good experience so far. It feels nice to put my skills to good use. Plus, I’ve got a lot more networking and server experience. There’s more to come too. I’ll probably end up installing a DNS server on Camus.

What makes this ghetto?

Oh, I don’t know…

Is it the loose wires? Is it the cheap rack? Is it the fact that I’ve got all these computers in my messy room?

Its all of that. Plus, did you notice the clip on fan? Scroll back up and look more carefully.

Yea! Yea I’ve got a sweet cooling system. Cross Breeze 2.0!! Since I’m in El Paso, TX the air conditioner is almost always on. If I open up the window behind the rack and turn on the fan, I get a sweet cross breeze going.

So, there it is. My nascent ghetto home network.

Oh, and you may have noticed my record player. Voltaire and the Dynex are essentially my entertainment system. You know how most entertainment systems have nice speakers? Well, my record player has pretty nice speakers. =)