Chris Gerling

  We recorded Ep 5 last night, and will hopefully have it out faster than last time.  I experimented with using logmein.com to remotely connect to my desktop at home, and using an alternate Skype name added into our conference call, recorded a backup steam with MX Skype Recorder.  I stopped the recording at around 1 hour 40 mins (the show isn’t that long.. haha) and the file was around 1 gig.  The quality blew away my expectations, if after editing it sounds good enough we might forego having folks record on their end (although it may be a good backup plan should the world explode), and may result in faster turnaround.

I had the crew down last weekend and we did the traditional Rock Band stuff, but also spent awhile at the beach, as well as Jillian’s arcade at the Waterside in Norfolk.  I hope to always have friends like these throughout my life.

In other news, Christine’s moving in this weekend, I’ll be driving up tomorrow and after a farewell party at her apartment we’ll be packing every last thing she owns into both of our vehicles.  Some would say it’ll be an interesting change, but I can’t really say that considering how much time we’ve spent together over the last 10+ months.  I’m very much looking forward to not having to drive 4-5 hours every other weekend, at least, alone.

Here are some recent pictures:

Head on over to http://www.securabit.com to listen to episode 4.  We had a few audio hiccups, but overall I think it came out great.

We have forums/IRC up as well, and hope the community starts building up.

I’ll try not to go weeks without updating again .  I’ve been pretty busy with my job hunt, the SecuraBit show, and with Christine lately.  This past weekend we headed up to Richmond to see Robert Schimmel perform at the Funny Bone there, and it was a pretty decent show.  Saturday night a bunch of us went out to a new place on the oceanfront, where Christine lost her purse/phone/everything (well, stolen would be my assumption) and I got the high score on the Mrs. Pac Man machine there, although I neglected to take a picture, most likely because my score was only about 35,000ish and nothing to boast about for me.

Season 4 of Hak5 is looming and I have some ideas written down in our little brainstorming area.  I’m going to add a couple of more once I’m done writing this, and hopefully I’ll be able to deliver better quality stuff this season.

Last night we watched the movie “Funny Games”, which I thought was good, but entirely too slow for my taste.  I think I’m too americanized where I need explosions and plot twists every 3 seconds, vice every hour.  I do recommend watching it, however.

I’m pretty happy with what we’ve managed to do with the SecuraBit show so far.  Other than some audio issues and getting too drunk, I think we’re on the right track.  For the next show I plan on changing the format slightly to have a better flow to things.  I think the correct mix of alcohol to show was Ep 2 though.

I do still manage to jump on Tabula Rasa here and there, although my subscription will be ending soon and I won’t be renewing.  Another MMO bites the dust for me, I can never actually keep playing the things for any length of time, and when I do it’s an hour a week if I am lucky.

The job search is on.  I think one of the more important things for me when I look at companies is what sort of management structure is in place for what they are doing, how well communication flows up and down, and whether there’s been any thought put into the actual environment people work in.  I wouldn’t mind getting into something with a lot of R&D-esque work, provided there was a proper setup for it, space/equipment/etc.

Christine will be moving down soon, which should make the summer a lot more fun, and probably less costly on gas as well.  

I’m roughly 50% in GTA 4 now, and showing signs of slowing down.  This is by far the furthest I have ever gotten in the GTA series in terms of story, and I do plan to eventually finish every mission available to me.  I think I am finally ready to start playing it online in a halfway serious manner now that there isn’t much left in terms of spoilers.

Rock Band is still at weekly staple for me.  I did finally finish Green Grass and High Tides, although it was in the practice mode so it doesn’t count to anyone but me, seeing as there’s really no way I am ever going to get any further than around 85% through the song.  I’m able to play many songs on Expert on the drums now, although the kick drumming really kills me as my body just isn’t wired for my feet and arms to be on a different beat from each other, so I know there’s a ceiling I will hit there. 

This weekend Christine and I are going to a wedding, which we’re baking the cake for.  That should be an interesting experience as I have never really baked anything before.  Hopefully I am relegated to measuring stuff out and handing it over.

I think our next SecuraBit show (and last with all of us in the same room) will be next Wednesday evening.  We’re going to try to make certain that our audio is all on the same level this time around.

Head on over to http://www.securabit.com to check out episode 2 of our show.  It should be quite the riot, and far more entertaining than the first.

Please leave feedback if you have any. 

I won’t spoil anything, so I will talk about some of the technical merits of the game so far.

At 42% in, I can say the story is simply amazing.  I feel like I am sitting in front of a highly interactive movie, and the script is stellar.  The choices you are allowed to make and the way those choices can impact the way the game flows have me torn at times, yet are probably one of the most amazing parts of the game.

The only major gripe I have so far is that there’s a constant feel of annoyance from your ‘friends’ in the game.  They always want to hang out at the worst times, and what kills me is that I can’t just take 2 hours and cruise around the city without losing some like/respect points from a friend or two simply because (and I really love the way the latest zero punctuation put this) I have to pick their ass up, pretend to enjoy whatever we’re doing (for the 999th time) and then take their ass home.  There’s only so much enjoyment I can derive from playing Darts with Little Jacob, mabye if they let me throw darts at his face.

We’re recording Ep 2 tonight, slight possiblity of live streaming, and we’ll get that out to everyone if we do.  We have some interesting topics lined up, and if we’ve figured out our audio like I think we have, Chris Mills will be able to join us.

There’s also a contest we have going on to come up with a good slogan for which we’re giving away a yubikey.  Head over to http://www.securabit.com!

I purchased Worms on the Xbox Live Arcade the other week, and have gotten a great deal of enjoyment out of it.  So far the roommate and I are about even for wins/losses, but I think my skills aren’t as good as they used to be.  The first time I ever played a worms game was back in the Win95 days so you’d think I’d be a god at it, but it’s been awhile and I’m rusty .  Christine seems to do better against me, though I’ll always blame the map haha.

I’m humming right along in GTA 4, but also taking my time to enjoy the game fully.  The missions are always very engaging and the storyline is simply awesome.  I do have a gripe with the shooting system though, the camera can make you disoriented if you have multiple enemies around you and have to keep moving the camera as you dispatch them.  I’ve only tried the “friends” multiplayer option so far, but I think I will delve into the full multiplayer tonight and post thoughts about that.

I’ll have some pictures up of the new garden soon, so you can all see the disaster recovery job my girlfriend and I did on it.  She’s the green thumb and did the majority of the work.

Head on over to http://www.securabit.com to download the first episode of our security podcast.  We recorded Friday night, and I am having a little trouble getting it to show up in iTunes right now.  It might be an additional 24-48 hours since I have to change the RSS I submitted to them to the feedburner one, once they activate it to begin with.