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Just wanted to drop in a note to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

I took some pictures, Val took some as well. I’ve got mine in right now. I’ll put Val’s in the album later. Here’s the link to the album:

I also managed take some video. Now, I didn’t do any video editing at all. But I cobbled the raw video I took together just trying to get it out fast. So here it is. I apologize for shaky video and stuff, I’ll probably take this down in a couple of weeks.

I ended up getting Valerie an iPod Touch, there are tons of great apps and stuff, and with the home sharing, we only have to buy them once between us. But since her phone is provided by the school, there’s no reason for her to get an iPhone. So hopefully, she’ll enjoy it.

I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas. *strange looks* Yes, I already had an Xbox 360. But unfortunately, it broke on Wednesday Evening, I was playing Fight Night Round 4 on it, and it lost the Red Colorstream, then after a little while longer, it finally gave up the ghost and quick outputting video altogether. I tried the composite cable as well, and it did the same thing. Started looking it up, seems to happen sometimes to people, and the Xbox was way out of warranty.

Unfortunately, though I don’t play too many games on it, it has become a staple in our home mainly for the streaming of Netflix to our HD TV. So it had to be replaced (It didn’t hurt that I still haven’t quite finished Dragon Age and need to do so). Anyway, So, I ended up getting an Xbox Elite. It’s much quieter than the other one, plus it has an HDMI port on it, which will be nice if I ever pick up a cable.

Alright, well, once again. Merry Christmas Everyone!!

written by Chris \\ tags: Christmas, Pictures, Video, Xbox

Someone posted this on BGG. I loved it. Wanted to share, if you got five minutes, it’s worth a watch.

written by Chris \\ tags: Video, YouTube

So, in my Facebook feed I have a friend who plays bunches and bunches of those mindjolt games, various puzzles, etc. Most of those games are crap, I’ve tried a few here and there.

Well, one day she posts the comment (after scoring a high score) that a game was ‘pretty good’, but she wished it had a preview piece feature similar to Tetris. Well, most flash games aren’t a good puzzle like Tetris is, but her comment made me try it.

And Now; I’ve been playing the darn thing in the evenings at home whenever I get a chance for the last several weeks. It is a very good game.

It’s called “Combine” I’m sure you can Google that if your interested in trying it and you’re not on Facebook. But the thing is, it’s different. It is a puzzle like Tetris, but it’s not against the clock. In fact, you have as much time as you want to place your piece each turn, the only key is how you rotate and place it.

But the kicker is that when you connect at least three circles orthogonally, the pieces don’t just disappear, they turn into a new colored ball, which you have to combine, also the pool of balls the game gives you will grow to include that color. So over time, the game will give you more balls of varying color and it slowly fills up your grid.

So, here’s my rant, I love this game, I think it’s a great game, and the low ‘twitch’ and ‘reflex’ factor make it a very interesting puzzle. But as you get to the higher difficulties, the game breaks down, in that the pool of balls I am getting are so intermixed I can no longer combine them as needed.

I feel like I’m doing the best I can, but there are people in the high score list scoring multiple hundreds of thousands of points, and the best I can get is something like 130k.

Anyway, I was bored one night and recorded my playing of the game, set it to some generic music in garage band and posted it to youtube, it happens to be my current high score game as well. Maybe you can give me some pointers?!? I sped this up 2.5 times to make it fit on youtube in the allotted 10 minutes.

To me, it looks like I’m doing pretty solid, but it breaks down fast at the higher levels.

I’ve also started playing a similar game on my iPhone. It’s called Alchemize, it has the same idea behind it. It does have a preview feature.

written by Chris \\ tags: Alchemize, Combine, Facebook, Flash, iPhone, Video, Video Games, YouTube

So, I’m still exhausted from this weekend helping Valerie out with the GARC Championships. It’s always fun, but it can also mean pretty long days making sure everything works, and pushing out the data people need.

This time I took the liberty of catching video with my Flip Mino HD again. Wanting to get some more practice with iMovie and putting together video, etc. This time, I stayed away from the titles, making everything more subtle, but I played with other stuff, transitions, having titles in the video.

Also, this time, I posted it in HD. I bought an HD Camera, might as well use it right! In order to view the HD you’ll actually have to go to the page and click Watch in HD. Of course, since it’s HD, the file sizes are big, so if you don’t have a rocket connection, you’ll want to pause it and let it load a little bit.

I’ll embed the Standard Resolution here:

The macbook was hurting on this one toward the end, after adding about two or three minutes of video, or having about 30 minutes worth of source video, it hiccups on some of the transitions and cuts. I need to learn about all the color correction and stuff, as under some of the lights, some of the video looks very different than others. It’s all passable, but I’d still like to fiddle with that stuff more later.

This is kind of fun.

written by Chris \\ tags: GARC, iMovie, Ole Miss, Rifle, Valerie, Video

It’s been a while since I tried this, but I’m going to embed a youtube video here. I think.

Hopefully, this comes out right. I would like to do this a little more in the future. Since getting the little pocket HD Video camera, and the new iMovie ’09 I’d like to try putting together some more of these little kinds of videos. Hopefully you guys like them.

So, here’s some video of Sarah & Olivia goofing off outside playing with some sidewalk chalk.

And yes, I know I went a little bit overboard with the transitions and the Titles and stuff, I’m still trying to figure out how to do all that stuff. So indulge me.

Anyway. Enjoy.

written by Chris \\ tags: Family, iMovie, Kids, Olivia, Sarah, Video