Sep 7
Hello All,
On this episode Tanya and Chris discuss the affects of Chris’s time off on the baby. They also discuss visible overnight baby weight gain, work done on Labor Day and touch on The Tale of Despereaux.
Chris talks about the value of work and why it is important to our faith life. Plus there is actually feedback in this show!
Links:
That’s all for this week. Please check our Interact page for our new promo and enjoy the new website.
God Bless,
Chris, Tanya and Linus
Podcast: Download
Sep 7
If all went according to plan, and it seems that it did, the site migration is now complete. It took about 2 hours to re-post all of the podcast episodes. All of the blog entries were moved over, with the exception of the lifeonfire posts relating to site stuff that doesn’t matter anymore.
The new feed still needs to be tested prior to changing the feedburner one. This will be done tomorrow prior to the posting of this week’s Life on Fire episode.
You can now listen to podcast episodes right through their blog post, rather than through a central player. This seems to work out better for the site overall.
Hope you like the improvements!
update 9/7/09:
Feed is working OK and has been changed over at feedburner. Replaced the twitter plugin that wasn’t working correctly with another one which works.
Sep 5
Ok,
This Drupal setup is causing way too many problems. When the podcast feed is updated, all the fixes/changes to existing feed items get erased. These changes have been made 3 times already to make it so that people can download the MP3 files directly.
Also, the feed reader doesn’t update the way that it should and the Twitter module caused database problems.
We have made the decision to migrate all of the site and podcast content to WordPress over the next couple of days.
WordPress has an awesome Podcasting plugin that includes a player for each post. It also has a plugin to add Google Analytics, which we use to check out site traffic and such. They also have around 900 themes to pick from and seem to be a lot better developed in other areas.
We are hoping that there will be no visible interruption in the site during the migration. Perhaps we will set up a sub-domain to have the WordPress site on for now and then, once everything is migrated, we will just backup the database, rip drupal and wordpress and then re-install WordPress into the main directory and import the data from the backup database.
This will take a few days but, really seems to be for the best…
Sep 2
I didn’t get to post a blog last week, how lazy of me! Speaking of laziness, I won’t be doing screen shots for this post, I just don’t have the time or computing power to switch between the game and image software…you can find plenty of screen shots online, trust me.
Anyway, onto the review…
About a month ago, some friends at work turned me on to Steam, the gaming platform/network developed by Valve software. The reason was, they wanted me to get Left 4 Dead, which I still haven’t purchased.
However, I was able to make a compromise with Tanya and was able to purchase and download The Orange Box, which has Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Hald-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. I really only wanted Portal, as I had played the First Slice demo of it, but, figured for $10 more I could get a few extra games so, why not?
Portal is a 1st person puzzle thriller. I don’t know if I could describe any other game I have played with that genre type.
The story goes something like this. You wake up in a science lab of some sort, with no knowledge on how you got there or what you are supposed to be doing. A pleasant computer voice greets you and welcomes you to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.
The voice then takes you from test chamber to test chamber, each time introducing a new element or concept in regard to portals, or how to use the Aperture Science Super Colliding Super Button. Eventually, you even get a gun that allows you to create your own interdimensional portals, with which you can place your own portals for the completion of test chamber activities.
As the game progresses, you begin to notice that the test chambers get more difficult and the risk of death seems to be going up. Despite the fact that there should be little or no risk to participants…supposedly.
In the end, you discover that the friendly, cake-loving computer voice is not all that friendly and is trying to kill you. I won’t reveal more than that, because, you should really play the game yourself and I refuse to give out too many spoilers.
The gameplay is simple on the surface. Create a blue portal, create an orange portal, go through the blue portal and out the orange portal to complete puzzles. However, once the fear factor hits you, the game really takes off.
The dialog from the computer AI GLaDOS has to be the best part of the game. Her subtle sarcasm and threats make you just slightly question what her intentions are, up until it becomes clear that they aren’t good. For example, one line is, “Did you know that you can donate one or more of your vital organs to the Aperture Science self-esteem fund for girls? It’s true!”.
The game challenges really do encourage critical thinking and even use the ideas of physics, such as inertia. These ideas and concepts become critical to use as the game gets more difficult.
Graphically the game is simple but, effective. The portals allow you to see the room from the exit angle and the characters are well designed. My favorite are the friendly turret bots you meet in later levels. I want to build a replica of one! I doubt Tanya will let me though…LOL.
The great thing about this game is there is very little physical violence overall. There is the chance of seeing some blood and obviously you can die. However, it isn’t the normal first person shooter and to me, is acceptable for young teens to play.
Overall, Portal has to be one of the best games I have ever played. Tanya even thought the game was interesting, and she doesn’t play games very often. I highly recommend getting the game. You can purchase the game through the XBox 360 marketplace, Steam or in stores. My suggestion would be to purchase The Orange Box instead. You have the option of buying Portal by itself for $20 or to get all of the Half-Life 2 series and Team Fortress 2, plus Portal for $30, which is a better deal.
My suggestion, if you have a Nvidia graphics card, download Steam and go to http://www.steampowered.com/nvidia . Enter your steam credentials and you will get Portal: the First Slice for free. This is a 10 level demo of the game. I will warn you that once you start playing, you won’t be able to stop and will have to purchase the full game.
One last warning. If you play through First Slice several times and get bored, DO NOT turn on the developer commentary. You won’t be able to turn it off after your purchase the full version, except by starting a new game. Because of this, you won’t get any of the game’s achievements, which are an added element of fun in the game.
I am currently downloading Portal Prelude, which is a free, independent prequel to Portal. You must own the full version of the game to play this mod. It looks really interesting and I can’t wait to let you all know how it plays.
Oh, a final note, The Cake is a Lie!