Gshocker's Toys

Flying Santa

This is pretty cool.. Wonder if this is how Santa is going to be delivering gifts this year..

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Oakley

So I am walking downtown with my wife yesterday and we stop into the Oakley store. There is a GIANT banner out front with several products pictured. This pair of glasses drew me into the store to check them out. When asking if they had they they told me that no they did not have them and.... wait for it..... did not know when they would be getting them. Of course the thing that comes to mind is why is there a giant banner advertising them when they are not even selling them.

Of course it did get me in the store and I guess it is possible that I may have found something else while I was in there but.. I did not..

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Back..

Well after trying a few other systems I am back. I have a few cool items I have been playing with this year and will be posting some reviews here in the next few weeks. I am going to be using this blog for all my tech and game related posts and my other Vox site for my random images and other misc. items. I had thought about posting all of my posts on the Vox blog but it seems a little less blogger friendy and a little more community oriented. A great place for images and video but not as friendly for the random post etc.

If you have a need for video and images in your posts then it is worth a look. The same people that brought you Typepad and Movabletype are in charge of that service.. and it is even FREE !! See there that got your attention.

Well I will be posting about the iPhone, Tivo Series 3 and some cool games I have been playing. Keep an eye out for new and cool posts.

Happy Holidays

Well it has been a while. Work and other sites have gotten busy so this has been neglected a bit more that I had hoped. I have lots to write about eventually when I find some time (assuming that it is still current when I get the time). Things like Zune, Samsung Blackjack, and more Q1 thoughts.

Back here in Boston for the holidays and to anyone who still looks here Happy Holidays and maybe you will see some posts before I return to California.

Heading to E3 !

Well got confirmation that I am going to be heading to the E3 show in May. This is exciting as I have never been to this one before. Covered many trade shows over the years but this is the first game show. Will be posting news and images each day from the show. Lots of exciting things going on this year with Nintendo and Sony both trying to get your Holiday dolllars with new systems. Rumors say Nintendo will have units to play there but rumors are also saying that Sony will not have anything that you can touch in terms of the PS3. Hope that is not true but we will see next month,

xbox 360.. changing the face of gaming

Well this is the unit that has changed most of my game play habbits. I used to play the majority of my games on my PC. I would play my PSP and DS as well but the majority of my game time was spend in front of a PC. This always seemed to be the best platform for me as it was something that I knew and it seemd the best games were always first to the PC. Or course the consoles have been ccatching up over the years but they were never my first choice.

The xbox 360 changed all of that for me. Let me preface this by saying that the PS3 could do the same thing but since it is not out yet I can not be sure.

I am now looking at more titles for both the PC and xbox and opting for the xbox title instead. The reasons are simple -

1. The game will be playing the same for everyone. I will not have to spend time tweaking the settings to get the best of both worlds (game smoothness and quality looks). You just pop in the game and start playing.. The platform is always the same so the developers can optimize it for the hardware.

2. Finding other players to play with is quite easy. The whole live system is a great way to play online and build up a friends list of people to play with. This is not as easy on the PC and I mostly relied on my friend who is currently stuck in a world of poor performing PC. This has made it hard to play the latest titles as well as not always having the same taste in titles.

3. The achievments.. This is an xbox live system that gives you points for things that you do both in game and online with others. This seems like a trivial little thing but it really sucks you in. These points are shown on your gamer card and you can compare things with other friends that you are playing with. It can be quite fun and gives you that little extra sense of accomplishment.

I will be talking about this more but thought I would throw this little bit up to make you think about how this or any of the new next gen consoles can change how you are playing games. So far the xbox 360 gets t wo tumbs way up from me.

Ultimate Wheel

I saw this wheel at the local game store today. Now I am a huge fan of driving games and I have a wheel for my desktop computer but... When playing a console I am generally sitting in a comfy chair with no table in sight. I am not 100% sure how I would even use this with my Xbox.

Granted this would be great with Project Gotham Racing 3 but where to setup so that I would use this one. It features a shift know and foot pedals to make this a realistic experiance. Sure does look cool. Check out Mad Catz to get all the good details on this one.

HDTV

Now that is one big HDTV. Imagine playing some video games on that one.  This has to be the world's largest 720P screen out there.. I am pretty sure you are not going to be finding this one at your local Fry's or Best Buy. If you get a chance to hit Dolphin's Stadium in FL. you may get a chance to see it.

Logitech Harmony Remote

Picked up one of these remotes the other day. I have to say the price was a little hard to swallow but now that I am playing with it I am lovin it. Now that I have the TV, Cable box, stereo, vcr etc all toe controll there are remote controlls all over the place.

I have not managed to pair them down to this single unit. The cool thing about this one is that it lets you make activities where it will do all the things needed to say watch TV.. Turn on the TV, set it to the correct video, turn on the stereo, turn that to the correct preset and then last turn on the cable box. All of this with the touch of one button. Very nice indeed.

The setup is handled thru the computer and you upload all the settings to the remote via USB connection. I would have to recomend this one to anyone who is looking for a way to get rid of so many remote controlls.

The one issue I have with it so far is that the button press to signal sending time seems a bit slow at times. Not as fast as the TV remote but overall the convenience outweighs this little drawback.

Xbox Live

Well I got back into Xbox recently. I have been playing Forza on my Xbox but this past week my friend lent me his 360 and so I have been going crazy with PGR. That game is pretty fun. I am not big into the online play but will give it a try this weekend before I have to give the unit back.

Will have some more Dell info this week as I finally got everything running smooth on my laptop and things seem to be fixed finally. The last problem being the lack of DVD decrypter when you kill the partition with the Dell apps. Oh well more on that later. Time to get back to PGR and Forza Motorsport.