http://gizmopolis.net Your greatest challenge lies ahead--and downwards. Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:14:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en We visited Remlinger Farm in Carnation this year to buy pumpkins and also check out the park. The farm features an assortment of holiday entertainment, rides, a train and even a mini haunted house. The kids had a great time in the park and we picked out some nice pumpkins.   The next weekend we got busy carving the pumpkins. It's ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=225 Bungie surprised attendees of the Toyko Game Show today by announcing a new campaign experience for Halo 3. There is very little information available at this time but it has been reveiled that the game is a stand alone expansion and will be set prior the events of Halo 3. Rather than playing Master Chief, this time ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=221 A few years ago I discovered the most awesome cashews while shopping at Uwajimaya in Bellevue. While in the snack isle I came upon a 21-ounce plastic jar of wasbi cashew goodness. The product is the Dan-D-Pak Wasabi Cashews which, as the name implies, are wasabi covered whole cashews which are both ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=152 I had the privilege of seeing the band Queensrÿche in concert tonight at the Paramount Theater.  Queensrÿche is a local Seattle band and tonight's concert was a bit of a homecoming after a long tour.  The band put on a great sounding show and played a mix of old and new material. ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=188 After ripping all my CDs to lossless WMA files I needed to create a mirror directory containing compressed versions of the files for use on portable devices. Finding a program to perform a batch conversion while preserving directory structure and ID3 tags turned out to be more difficult than expected. I tried 4 ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=181 One of my projects over the holidays was to rip all my music CDs to the computer in a lossless format. People typically rip CDs to a compressed format (e.g., MP3 192 kbits/sec) because the resulting files are much smaller. A lossless format is superior to compressed because it provides a bit accurate copy ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=174 Thought I'd finally write a review of BioShock... Like most people, I found BioShock to be an outstanding game on many levels. The graphics were superb, the enemy AI well done, the combat system inventive, and the story was engaging and often made me think. One of the strongest features of BioShock ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=172 Below is a card I made to wish a happy holidays to friends in my World of Warcraft guild. My main character (a Night Elf Druid) has a Panda Cub pet which is fairly well known in the guild. For this year's card I decided to make a drawing of Panda with a ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=171 I attended a friend's birthday party today who was turning 30. The first part of the day was planned to be a time-speed-distance road rally which is where teams (consisting of a driver and navigator) follow instructions to travel a route and arrive at checkpoints precisely on time.  Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate and the rally ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=168 Over the last few weekends I've been working to get the project studio cleaned and organized. I never really got things setup properly since moving the studio from my old house. About a quarter of the room was filled with boxes and equipment that had not been unpacked since the ... http://gizmopolis.net/?p=165