Collins’ Onovia

Just today my Verizon FiOS service was activated. It came with an Actiontec MI424-WR Revision C modem/router combo. Slick look, ok reviews on the net, so I’ll go with it!

The first thing I wanted to get done, was open up some ports for uTorrent, HTTP, and a few others. There’s many resources out there that give you directions on forwarding ports on the MI424-WR Rev. C, including PortForward.com. Finding the directions was a breeze, however figuring out that the directions were wrong wasn’t.

When you are adding a server service port on the router, your source port needs to be set to any, and your destination port needs to be set to single, with the port number typed in next to it. Here’s an example:

This past Friday night I got an invitation from Hulu to start beta testing their service. Hulu, a venture shared by NBC Universal and News Corp, offers full feature sitcom episodes, clips, and other video content free of charge.

The layout of hulu is astoundingly easy to use. There’s no hunting down what you want to watch. Just look for the logo of the show or network, and click. A slick flash interface for the player blows away any other flash video player I’ve seen. Check out the screen shots below.

The quality of the flash videos is top notch. Here’s a shared video clip of The Simpsons.

Of course, not every one is happy with hulu. There are reports that people out of the United States are not able to use the service. This is probably due to some stupid export rule. Something like this is probably going to come back and bite hulu in the ass. For example, Udo Schroeter talks about how restricting access will only lead to people obtaining the videos illegally. Perhaps the team at hulu should rethink their blocking access?

Anyways, head on over to http://www.hulu.com/ and register for the beta access.

I saw on XFire, and advertisement for a game manager chat for Drift City. I’m a racing game fan. So after checking out some screen shots and seeing that it was a free racing mmo, I had to download the client, and take it for a spin.

Graphics
This is the first cell-shaded racing game I’ve ever seen. The graphics aren’t top notch, but for cell-shading, they are pretty good. There’s plenty of tweeks for people with slow machines, which is a plus.

Controls
The controls in this game are amazing. It’s WASD movement. Seems simple right? Well, you’ve also got the shift key, which will allow you to drift around corners and on-coming traffic. Typically, I stay away from racing games on the computer, for the same reason that I stay away from FPS’s on consoles. The controls are usually hard to master. Steering is easier on an analog pad, for the reason that it’s “pressure sensitive”. Drift City by far has the best controls for any racing game I’ve played on the PC.

Game Play
The cool thing about Drift City is that your not stuck, racing around the same maps over and over again. There’s an entire city that you can explore. Race people, crash it up, hit some jumps, pull off crazy bonuses, get items, and go on vigilante missions to destroy the S.U.V.’s. See, I knew there was a world where Anti-SUV people could unite! All that is just in the open world. There’s also a battle mode, where you can race by teams, or solo. The maps in the battle modes are actually portions of the city, so they are places that you will recognize.

Upgrades
You can upgrade your vehicles by buying or acquiring items. There are 4 basic attributes to upgrade. Speed, Acceleration, Durability, and Booster. Every few levels, you can change out your items for newer things with better bonuses and sell your old items in the auction house.

Final thoughts
If your a racing fanatic like myself, this game is well worth the download. Here’s a quick video I threw together today. Thanks LP for the tune-age.

Tonight I had the opportunity to watch 300. I must say that the movie was good. But, at the same time I can say that it could have been a lot better. The plot was great, but like most movies today, seemed to be cut short. The action scenes were amazing, with some really cool camera work. I definitely would recommend you see the movie!