Technology

I’m amazed how far technology as came in the past few years, everything has been changing at an astonishing rate. For example a few days ago I went to Best Buy and got a 8 gigabyte flash drive for under 30 dollars; Imagine how expensive one of those would have been just two years ago. I remember when a computer’s hard drive could only hold 8 gigabytes of memory and that wasn’t that long ago. There are many other technological advances that have been made in recent years and they’re just going to keep advancing.

As all of you readers of my blog know that my laptop crashed about a week or so ago and I didn’t lose anything, but there are precautions I’m going to have to take. Lately I’ve been looking at buying an external hard drive and I’m really interested in the one terabyte of memory. For those of you how don’t know about this kind of stuff a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. My parents and friends ask me what am I going to do with such a device and I really have no idea. As of right now I probably wouldn’t need it, but I could store everything for the rest of my life on it. An external hard drive would be extremely nice because if my laptop does crash again I have all of my files backed up onto this external hard drive. These things are not too expensive, but I don’t feel I need to spend 150 dollars on one terabyte of memory, when technology is going to advance and soon enough there will be even more memory to be had.

Not only has the memory space increased the number of hackers and illegal downloads have increased also. There are many programs out there which allow people to download stuff illegally, I’m not going to name any for safety’s sake, but a few years ago companies could control this. Now a day’s almost everyone with a computer does this because it can’t be stopped! Also years ago people didn’t have the knowledge that they have now to create such programs.

There have been many new advancements on all spectrums of technology in the past ten years and there is no slowing society down. From new programs to computer processors to external hard drives we can’t really be stopped, Go Technology!

Yesterday I was on facebook and one of my good friends decided to post a link to YouTube which really angered me. It was all about how the creators of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2(my favorite game) are coming out with new downloadable content for the Xbox only. I was extremely upset with this decision because I have been playing CoD ever since number one and I don’t get to have this opprotunity. Why would the creators, Infinity Ward, do this? The only reason that comes to mind is that the Xbox sucks and they feel bad for these people that are suffering playing on crap.

From what I’ve heard and whats in the video is that the DLC (short for downloadable content)is going to be amazing. So far Infinity Ward hasn’t said too much about it, but as they call it the “stimulus package” will consist of many new weapons, maps, special ops missions, and killstreaks. I have no idea what kind of weapons their going to introduce, but I bet that their going to be pretty crazy. The guy in the video mentioned a lot about the new maps that their coming out with. Infinity Ward said that they have created 3 or 4 new maps and are bringing back some favorites from CoD 4. Otherwise, there’s not much more released about it, the creators just mentioned a little bit about new special ops and possibly a new killstreak called the minibird, or something like that.

The release date of the new content is only a week away (3/30/10) and guess what? I don’t even get to play it till who knows when. I’m such a huge fan of CoD MW2 but this makes me really angry. Plus to make matters worse all of my friends with Xbox’s are bragging about it and are posting links to youtube on my facebook wall, rubbing it in. How are the creators coming out with map packs for the Xbox when the gamers keep finding glitches inside of the maps that were made in the original game. Why do you have to do this Infinity Ward? Why????

My latest addiction is the brand new game called God of War III, it’s a button masher set in Greek mythology. I actually decided to stay up for the midnight release because I love the series and extremely wanted to play it. In fact this addiction is the reason why I’m up so late typing this blog post due for tomorrow or should I say today. For those of you who don’t have any idea what God of War is I can give you a little background, it follows a story of a revenge seeking man named Kratos on his way to kill almighty Zeus because of Zeus’s betrayal to Kratos and the other Gods. This game is rated M for mature and it definitely shows that, from the inappropriate nudity to the extreme gory violence, but that’s what the series is based on and the blood makes it that much better.

Before GoW3 came out I found myself playing GoW2 anticipating what was going to happen in the newest game. After playing my addiction I realized how far the graphics and everything has actually evolved in the past 5 years. Everything in GoW3 is much more advanced and the graphics make the surroundings and the characters look as real as possible. I can see every single detail on every different character; the graphics are of the best I have ever seen. There are many great things about this game, one of them is the numerous ways to kill an enemy, and another one of them is the multiple achievable weapons and upgrades I can get. I also enjoy the fantastic puzzles the creators put in there. With each game the plot line gets even more intense and I can safely say that this is the best on yet!

So far I believe I have played eight hours in the past three days and right now I’m stuck at the fight between Kratos and Zeus, which I fear that I’m coming to an end. I don’t want this game to end I want it to have more replay ability because I love this game that much. I love to kill Gods with my blades of exile and watch how the plot unfolds and the entire dramatic timed button pushes. This is one of my favorite games of all time and I fear that the series is coming to an end. Please Kratos live forever and let me control you!!!

Sorry I haven’t posted since last Thursday, but that’s all because of my unfortunately, unlucky week last week. While I was on my laptop over the weekend it went crazy and gave me the dreaded blue screen no one ever wants to see. I thought to myself what am I going to do? What caused this type of error? There were hundreds of questions running through my head. I decided I would go upstairs to tell my parents about what happened and how angry I am because my laptop is only two months old. I could not get the darn thing to do anything I wanted it to do so I just let it sit there overnight and my mom would call Best Buy in the morning.

That’s exactly what she did and Agent M from Geek Squad told her to tell me that I should bring the laptop in for inspection. Then after school I went home and immediately brought the laptop in; I was so worried about everything, especially all of the documents, pictures, and programs that I had on it and whether or not I would still have them. Luckily the agent how looked at the broken laptop thought that there was an issue with the hard drive and that the repairs would be covered under the manufacturer’s warranty. Both my mom and I were relieved that we didn’t have to pay a penny for a much needed repair.

After a few days, we received an email saying that my laptop was ready to be picked up, but my dad neglected to anyone that we got the email until Best Buy was closed. That upset me a little more knowing that I would have to wait till the next to pick it up. Immediately after school I booked it home to get the receipt and sped over to Best Buy to pick up my much wanted laptop. The guy at the counter handed me my laptop and told me that there was an issue with the RAM (random access memory) and all they had to do was replace. I was dreading that moment when I pushed the power button to see what they had done.

But to my surprise I didn’t lose anything; not even a single picture. As soon as I saw that I jumped up and down screaming ecstatically. Thank God for Best Buy and Geek Squad because without them I wouldn’t be doing this blog and probably playing even more God of War III..

As you can see from the new photo I put up on the blog, there’s a new phone on my wish list. The bad part about this is that it’s only on my wish list and not in my pocket thanks to Sprint’s two year contract. With the advancement of technology every cell phone I get is obsolete within four months; this angers me because I have to have my phone for two years before I can get the full upgrade. This is one of the reasons why Sprint disappoints me sometimes, but there are more and there are places where they succeed.

First I’ll finish what I started and tell you some of the way Sprint disappoints, well I found out about two weeks ago that my phone’s battery can’t be fixed at the sprint store that’s a mile away from my house. Instead I have to drive all the way out to the south side of Rochester just for them to run a battery test. The guy I talked to at the closest Sprint store seemed upset about the movement of the repair shop and he told me that to create a new repair shop, Sprint has to get rid of an old one. I came to find out that the guy who helped me was the repair technician till his job was sent up to Duluth at the newest store. I also don’t like how Sprint forces its customers to have the same phone for two years because technology advances much faster. Plus they could make more money if people kept updating their contracts. Sprint also doesn’t offer the best selection of phones, the HTC Hero is one of three good phones that Sprint has out there; I wish the iPhone was exclusive to Sprint not AT&T.

There are some things that Sprint does well though and those are that they have good service almost everywhere, their now 4g network is very fast, their “good” phones are good, and their plans are fairly inexpensive. My phones connection in school is at full bars and pretty much everywhere I go I have full reception; there are a few spots in the middle of nowhere where I start to roam. Also whenever I check my facebook status on my phone the speed of the loading is extremely fast, it’s kind of nice. The iPhone is definitely the best phone on the market right now, but many companies are finding ways to compete with it and the HTC Hero is very similar. It runs on a new operating system known as “Android”, I just allows the user to download apps and have multiple programs running at the same time. Plus the look of the Hero is very sleek and slim and the colors from the LED screen really pop. The last thing I like about Sprint is the plan that my family has, we only pay around $150 for four phone lines to have unlimited everything, I have no idea how I would survive without my phone and overall I’m glad that I have Sprint.

Man I really hope that by the time my contract ends I’ll have a new phone in mind that’s the best phone on the market, but as for now I’m wishing I had a “Hero”.

I’m so excited for spring break to come because a few of my friends and I are planning to go on a road trip. We’re thinking about going up to Minneapolis and hitting up the Mall of America and just enjoying our senior vacation. After that we wanted to go up to black bear casino and win some money, all of this would be possible through the technology known as GPS.

GPS for those of you who don’t know stands for global positioning system. It works something like this; satellites orbiting the earth at approximately two revolutions per day receive a signal from the GPS and it uses triangles to solve where the signal is coming from. About 30 years ago this technology was only available to people in the military, but now it is a useful tool used by almost everybody. Without GPS we would have to find our way by using complicated maps and run the risk of getting lost. A GPS finds the fastest route to your destination and gets your directly up to the door of that place, anywhere around the world. It’s also great for finding things to do; most GPS’s offer a way to search for anything that sounds interesting. For example, my GPS on my phone can search for the closest McDonald’s all the way to the gas station with the cheapest gas.

Well, I know what I would have to do without a GPS, but since I have one why not use it? These devices are extremely nice to have; they make navigation and traveling so much easier and it’s really interesting how these things work. Thanks to my easy to use GPS I can never get lost unless I type in the wrong address or something stupid like that. We are going to remember this road trip for the rest of our lives and we’re definitely not going to get lost on our way. SPRING BREAK HERE WE COME!!!

This post should have no affect on the last post what so ever, the Playstation 3 is still better than any other console hands down. On February 28 the Playstation network was hacked into and someone planted a virus that affected nearly all of the Playstation, and my PS3 was infected with this bug. I was angered by this, at first I had no idea what was going on but later I would find out what really was happening

Usually when I get an error code it only has numbers but this code was different and it looked like this, 8001050F. Then I decided I would look it up online, but when I tried to access the playstation website it took a really long time to load. When I finally got to type in the error code it basically said that if the disc isn’t the problem then I’ll have to send it in. I knew this problem couldn’t have been the wireless internet connection because my laptop’s internet was working perfectly and I could even access the internet on the Playstation. Therefore it had to be all the Playstation Network’s fault and all I wanted to do was to play some Call of Duty. I couldn’t even play the campaign mode it gave me an error message, “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.” I was so mad that I instantly shut it off and went on my laptop to find out what exactly was going on.

Come to find out I wasn’t the only person facing this, it was happening worldwide to almost all of the older “fat” versions of the PS3. Once I found that out I was relieved that I probably wouldn’t need a new Playstation and Playstation Network would hopefully figure something out soon. Eventually that would happen but I would face some other problems along the way.

When I woke up the next morning I turned on my TV and it didn’t work, so then I tried turning on the Playstation and it gave me a different error code. After that I tried to access the internet on my laptop and what do ya know no signal! I was having a horrible day, no Playstation and no TV, what was I going to do? Later that day I found out that someone ran into the charter cable box outside my neighbor’s house. Thanks to modern technology there are always people to fix it, so someone from charter came out to fix the box and later the next day Playstation Network was up and running again.

In the world of modern day gaming there are two consoles out there that stand above the rest and those are the Xbox 360 and the PS3. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the Xbox 360 is made by Microsoft and is used to play video games. On the other hand the PS3 is made Sony and is also used to play video games and much more, even more than the Xbox. If you can’t tell already I own a PS3 and I believe that the Playstation is the greatest.

Every time I talk to one of my friends that have an Xbox about an exclusive PS3 game coming out soon or anything about the Playstation, they get all defensive. Then the conversation turns into a full on argument, both sides yelling at each that their console is better. This seems to happen every single time and the obvious winner each time is the PS3 and this is the explanation.

The main reason why the PS3 is better than the Xbox is because it has a blu-ray player; normally one of these players goes for 200 to 300 more dollars than the Playstation. Blu-ray has its advantages over the regular DVD’s, the quality of the picture is in high definition and the discs are the future of gaming and movie watching. Go with a PS3 to complement your TV and enhance your gaming experience.

Another aspect that the PS3 excels in is free online; everyone on the Xbox has to pay 50 dollars a year for a tiny bit better online. I’ll give the Xbox some props, they do have more people and their connection speeds are a little better, but playstation is free and it’s just as good. Since the Playstation Network, as it’s called, is free it allows a gamer to create multiple online profiles. While on Xbox you have to pay that 50 dollar fee for each name.

The Playstation can also support a full internet browser while Xbox cannot. While they have a facebook application, us playstation users can be on the actual website.

Another feature the playstation provides is a rechargeable and much more comfortable controller. When an Xbox controller dies they have to go and get two double A batteries and when a PS3 controller dies all we have to do is plug it in through a usb cable. I believe that the Playstation controller is designed more for the gamer; it rests in that persons grasp and can stay there for hours on end.

Although these two consoles are very similar and are pretty equal the Playstation would definitely win in a head to head battle. Both console owners are very protective of their property and if you asked an Xbox owner I’m sure he would say that I’m wrong, but I have experience with both and the PS3 comes out on top.

Photos credited to: http://blogs.palmbeachpost.com/malled/tag/sales/
http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/print.aspx?postid=239472