I know I’ve been neglecting you terribly, friends. And I hope to remedy that soon, even if it means posting whatever comes off the top of my head in snippets barely longer than a Twitter post.

But until then, I’d like to once again share this story about Christmas in my house. Here’s hoping your holidays are every bit as wonderful as they can be.

I grew up in a very large family: I’m the youngest of ten kids. Yeah, you read that right. I have five older sisters and four older brothers — an even 5/5 split. To make things even more surreal, there was an eight-year gap between my youngest sister and my youngest brother, so most of my siblings are at least ten years older than me, with the difference in age between me and my oldest brother clocking in at ten days short of an even twenty years. So even in my earliest memories, my siblings had significant others, and very shortly thereafter, kids. (I now have a niece and two nephews who are married. But I’m not a great-uncle, yet.)

In addition to that, my dad’s biological mother died shortly after he was born, and his father got remarried, which made for five separate and distinct branches of the family tree just two generations back, counting the families of my maternal grandmother and grandfather, paternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, and paternal step-grandmother. And many of them came from big families. (We’re talking about turn-of-the-century reproduction statistics here, mostly for recent immigrants to the country; this was not at all abnormal.)

Anyway, to sum up: we’re a big family. So the holidays were always a fairly substantial production.

Continue reading “Repost: And to All, a Good Night” »

I’ve been hinting at a big project for months now, and it’s finally done. Well, by “done” I guess I mean “begun” — I’ve just launched a new website: Plastic Axe.

See, I love music games. I mean, I really love them. This is in part because I love music in an embarrassingly wide variety of genres, and in part because I’m a musician myself (I sing and play bass, guitar, and drums, in case you didn’t know). So these games sort of hit me right in the sweet spot.

Anyway, I’ve been spending the last few months putting this site together. This is a solo project; I’m doing all the writing, design, coding, PR, administration… Suddenly I’m very tired. Where was I? Oh yes: This site is all me. But I’m also hoping it’ll be useful to other fans of music games, who can keep up with the latest news and releases, and find lots of new music in The Vault.

So there it is, my Big Secret Project: Plastic Axe — Music games for music fans. Go have yourself a look around, and let me know what you think in the comments (over there rather than here, please).

Nope, I’m not ready to talk about my big news yet. At the moment I’m aiming for August 24 as the big reveal, but it could be sooner. It could be later. HEY LOOK, LIFE IS UNPREDICTABLE, OK?

Ahem, sorry. Anyway, the reason I called you here today is to let you know that Mac|Life has posted a how-to I put together many months ago, which aims to provide tips for home recording with GarageBand. You Mac owners may enjoy it — and for anyone on Windows machines, I tried to make these tips as general as possible, so many of them can be applied to any recording situation.

So I hope you enjoy them.

And by “mailbag” I mean, “my e-mail account.”

Steve Taylor writes to ask: “What PS2 or PS3 game would you recommend for those of us who LOVE Ratchet & Clank? I don’t know of anything like it.”

Well, let’s assume you own all the Insomniac-developed Ratchet games. (No? Here are Amazon links to Ratchet 1, 2, 3, Deadlocked, and Ratchet Future 1 and 2.) My next recommendation would be the Jak and Daxter series. The first is my favorite by far, followed by the third, then the second. There’s also a pretty solid racing game.

Also within the same basic genre (and most certainly within the same level of quality) is the Sly Cooper Series.

Beyond these, the Big Three of PlayStation platformers, you may enjoy Psychonauts and Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil. Aaaand that’s where my recommendation engine stalls out, because I honestly can’t think of any other really good games that are remotely similar.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Why, of course I’d add two posts merely days after announcing I won’t be updating for awhile longer, why do you ask?

This is just to say that Green Pixels recently put up a couple more reviews of mine, for Guitar Hero Smash Hits and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (the Wii version, with the fancy-schmancy new Wii MotionPlus pack-in). They’re both good! Go find out why.

It has recently come to my attention that I have been blatantly disregarding one of the key Commandments of Blogging:

Thou shalt post pictures of thy cats.

Clearly this is a profoundly impactful omission, which must be rectified immediately. And so, I give you: Fiona.

Now don’t we all feel better? Oh, fine, here’s one more to ensure that balance in the universe is maintained.

Continue reading “Crisis Averted!” »

Sorry for the major lapse in updates over here. I’m in the middle of a very big, very brain-melting project that I’m hoping to have wrapped up within the next couple of weeks. No, I can’t tell you about it yet, but it’s something I’m pretty excited to share when the time comes.

OK, I’ll give you a hint: It has something to do with plastic. And that’s all you’re getting.

Anyway, please bear with the lack of updates here for a little while longer, OK?

OK, I don’t mean literally, in person. But I’ll be writing previews all week (and possibly next week) for G4TV.com. None are up right now, but I expect them to start popping up regularly within the next 12 hours or so. Come on over and say hello, won’t you?

[Update: Fixed link to reflect where the stories are actually posting. Come leave a comment!]

In preparation for E3, I needed to pick up a new laptop to replace the old Vaio that had served me so well for lo these six (!!) years. So I turned to my friend Brad Linder, who runs Liliputing, the leading netbook site on this whole wide interweb, for some advice. And then some more advice. And then just a little more. (Sorry, Brad.) Once I’d made my decision, he asked if I’d like to write up early impressions and a full review for the site. I happily agreed.

So head on over to Liliputing for early impressions of my brand-spankin’-new Acer Aspire One D250. And I should have a full review up sometime the week after E3.

I hate when blogs go dormant. So just to make sure no one thinks this one has suffered such a fate, I’m still alive! It’s just that I’ve found myself rather suddenly going to E3 (that would be the big game show in LA, for those of you outside the industry), and having to do a bit of scrambling to ensure I’m ready.

So please forgive me if this place goes dark for a bit. I expect to be back in the regular swing of things by mid-June.

Well, as regular as it gets around here.