Biggs' Zone

A Geek's Cogitations, Conjectures and other Cortical Experiences

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The MMO Times: Back to School

Rogue One Cast Issue 127: Greetings again, gamers!! I hope everyone had a lovely summer as, by now, kids are returning to school which means the malls and trade chat are safe once again during the day. The news of the impending fall season isn’t all bad as that also means football season is upon us! I hope I have some exiting things for you to read about in this issue, as I know its going to be difficult to top the past two issues with all the Legion goodies and Gamescom news. Although there were some pretty sexy geek announcements at Disney’s D23 Expo (such as the announcement of the Rogue One movie cast as seen in the image above). 

In any event, I have some things to talk about other than the new WoW expansion (though there are one or two headlines in here about Legion and/or WoW). Actually there are a couple of titles that haven’t been in the news much lately such as The Secret World, Elder Scrolls Online, ArcheAge, to name a few. I had to include the headline about the sweet new PS4 coming out this fall (once you see the article, you will know why). There is more BlizzCon news to read about, which is probably the next big gamer conference we are all excited to see. Beyond more Legion news, I hope we hear more about Overwatch (such as when the beta’s start). Enjoy. KCGO.

Empire (In Her Name: Redemption)

Book Review: Four

Four: A Divergent Collection (Divergent, #0.1-0.4)Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth

My rating: [rating=4]
(Click here to read this review on Goodreads)

I really enjoyed the different perspective and the little bit of backstory about Four. You learn a little bit about why he left Abnegation, why he and Eric don’t get along, and what is going through his mind during the time he is Tris’ initiation instructor. Obviously that means this book does have portions from Divergent so you should at least read Divergent before reading this book.

There are some interesting plot points that, had Four decided differently, would have completely changed how the war would have begun. It may have even altered the fates of some of the transfers in Tris’ unit.

I probably haven’t read the other books since Divergent was in theaters so some of the conversations between Tris and Four are a little fuzzy. I feel like some of the things they say to each other were different between the two books but I could be mistaken. Honestly it doesn’t really matter, it was a fun read regardless.

View all my reviews

Thomas, Thomas, Thomas!

brady-sketchYou know Tom Brady’s last name is apt because he’s the cherished primadonna of the Patriots just as Marsha Brady was to Tom and Carol. The man is guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was, at least, knowledgeable of the under-inflated footballs. He won’t admit to it because he’s Tom Brady, the man that can do nothing wrong. The only other people completely diluted other than himself are the New England fans, while the rest of us, living in the real world, know the man is guilty. Despite his royal status the NFL did uphold the four game suspension, which surprised the heck out of me, I thought for sure they would cave and reduce it to two games. Of course that could all still change.

Now, it seems, Brady has succeeded yet again, in deflating balls in the NFL. Originally the NFL said he would not be playing in the pre-season opener but that was overturned rather quickly. I did not watch the game but I heard he did terrible, probably because he had a hard time gripping a properly inflated ball. Meanwhile the deflated balls are the testicles of the NFL that decided to let him play after all. This will be the first step toward the NFL backing down, yet again, to the big, scary Patriots and they will get away with, yet another, cheating scandal.

Why are the Patriots such a pampered team?? At least the Cowboys have an excuse! Jerry Jones has more money than God so he can spoil that team, and the fans, with all kinds of high-tech stadiums and equipment; but at least he hasn’t cheated his way to a Super Bowl championship. I have no problem with the Red Sox (in fact they are probably my favorite AL team) and I don’t have a problem with the Bruins, but why does Boston have to claim the Patriots as their NFL team?? If you don’t want to be a Giants fan or [for whatever reason] a Jets fan, then switch allegiances to that other footie sport.

Tom Brady should just retire already, he’s nothing but a sniveling, talent-less cheater!

minion_keboard_smI could get so much more accomplished if I only had minions!

Microsoft Edge is Egregious

microsoft_releases_windows_10I thought about making this a Tech Talk topic but I want those posts to be more informational and less opinionated. I’m also going to preface this post by saying that I did give Edge an honest try so I feel I’m being unbiased but I will admit, I probably wasn’t as open minded as I could have been when I was using Edge. I’m not going to berate Microsoft either for trying to “force” you to use Edge by making it your default browser upon upgrading. Despite Mozilla’s attempt at a flame war, if you paid attention to the install you could easily prevent that from happening and I’m not going to fault Microsoft for trying to change your default browser. They want people to try Edge and setting it as the default makes good business sense but they were wise to give you the option to switch it off.

minion_whatOk, enough giving Edge the benefit of the doubt because, as the title of this post suggests, I don’t have many nice things to say about Edge. In fact I straight up don’t like it. It doesn’t feel like a modern browser (which I’ve mentioned before). It’s so plain and boring. It has terrible space utilization (like all the blank space when you click/tap on the settings menu). Initially it does feel like it performs as well as Chrome but once you toggle all the suggested privacy settings it definitely feels slower (and its recommended that you turn off those privacy settings).

I think the most cognitive dissonant thing about this browser is that Microsoft is trying so hard to distant it from Internet Explorer but the icons look almost identical. Also, Edge still struggles with a lot of web sites (which is common for debutante browsers) but its suggestion is then to view the site in Internet Explorer. Doh! Also, as a developer, I’m really, really not looking forward to having to code for yet another browser’s idiosyncrasies.

Now, so I don’t go out on a completely sour note I do think that considering the performance of a browser fresh out of the gate, Edge does have a slight “edge” (see what I did there 🙂 ). Since its performance is pretty close to that of Chrome, it has room to improve and could become stiff competition in the browser wars, as long as Microsoft doesn’t screw it up.

I say might as well give it a try if you are on the fence about it, you might like it better than I did, which is fair. Everyone knows I’m pretty critical and not easily pleased by Microsoft. As improvements are released I might give it another test run but in the mean time I will stick with Chrome.

/cheers

minion_keboard_smI could get so much more accomplished if I only had minions!

The MMO Times: The Calm After the Legion

sw-tfa-teaserIssue 126: Holy Cow, that was a crazy Gamescom! I think Blizzard definitely stole the show but everyone knew it was going to happen, which is why I think so many other companies had a lot of their own products to talk about. The increase in interest gave them the perfect arena to market their games too. There will be some residual posts below from the final couple of days of Gamescom, but for the most part I tried to keep it to news more immediately published.

I will try to limit the Legion talk as I’m sure there will be plenty of it in the coming weeks (especially as Blizzcon draws near). In fact I actually threw in some Rise of the Tombraider because it has some new footage really worth checking out. There is also Diablo III patch news, WildStar beta news, Heroes of the Storm latest PTR status and more. So take a break from trying to find that perfect Demon Hunter name and check out these great headlines. KCGO

1 Year Later …

rip-robin-williams

We still miss you Robin.

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