Andy Laub

I bought my Xbox at the end of the product cycle. It was late 2005 and the 360 had just hit the market, but I wasn’t ready to make the leap yet (mistake). The Xbox was intended as a sort of stopgap, and a way to catch the games I had missed out on in the years where my time was occupied first by the Gamecube and later by the PS2.

One of the first games I bought was Halo – a staple for any collection. It was enjoyable enough, and was really one of my first experiences with the modern first person shooter (FPS). I was indifferent to the overall art direction (generic) and level design (repetitive) but I played through it with Abe and it was a fun, co-op way to kill some time.

Halo 2 followed shortly thereafter, but for whatever reason didn’t receive our immediate attention. By the time we started to play through it, it was on the Xbox 360. Console choices aside, Halo 2 was a struggle for us to stay interested in. The frequent switch between characters and storylines was confusing, and the environments weren’t any better than the first game. We spent a fair amount of time just trying to figure out what we were supposed to do. I’m being generous if I say we made it roughly halfway through the game before it got shelved, and that was my last experience with the Halo series aside from some occasional local multiplayer on Halo 3.

So maybe it was the lull in games, or the recent release of Halo 3: ODST that made me want to try to continue the adventure. Two weeks ago I put in Halo 2 once more in hopes that my interest would be rekindled. A couple ugly, repetitive, frustrating levels later, it was becoming clear that this was not going to be the case. With no achievements to keep me motivated, it was roughly a couple of hours before the game found itself shelved once again.

Still lacking for games to play, I ended up borrowing Halo 3. I’ve been told that a) I didn’t miss much by skipping the rest of the second game and b) the third is a much stronger game. Both of these assessments proved to be accurate, for while I still experienced some of the same typical Halo frustrations, I can look back and say that I did enjoy playing the game when all is said and done.

The Good

As the first of the series to appear on the Xbox 360, you’d expect that Halo 3 would be both visually and aurally superior to the previous iterations, and it is, if only in a technical sense. I found the story to be engaging enough that I at least wanted to continue playing through the game, and the gameplay is solid as ever; even the vehicle controls felt much less frustrating than the previous games. There wasn’t nearly as much repetition to the environments which meant that I spent less time getting lost and backtracking and more time enjoying myself, and I also enjoyed that a good portion of the game took place on earth. I also especially liked the sequences where I fought alongside the Arbiter and/or the Covenant Elites – both make solid teammates.

The Bad

The thing is, where Halo was once the king of shooter games thanks to its solid gameplay, it seems like dozens of similar games have since flooded the market, some of which offer things that seem to be a staple in games nowadays. Gears of War and its emphasis on finding cover during battle comes to mind, something that a first person game such as Halo would have a hard time dealing with. The problem is, there are a myriad of situations in Halo 3 where running and gunning is the last thing you should be doing; you need to hunker down and pick off enemies from a safe vantage point, but there’s no mechanic to encourage this sort of behavior.

Aside from that, all the processing power in the world can’t disguise the fact that this is merely an update to the artwork from the original game. Obviously trying to change character designs midstream is a bad idea, so I suppose more of my issue is that I’ve always found Halo’s style to be incredibly generic. I also had trouble occasionally following the story, particularly in one sequence where I felt as though I missed a cutscene.

Fortunately for me (and for Halo 3), I didn’t go into the experience expecting something groundbreaking; I just wanted to shoot guys for awhile. Which brings me to my final critique: it’s hard to shoot guys when you can’t find any ammo.

I’ve made it no secret that I’m a huge bike nerd. I’ve spent countless hours poring over cycling websites and forums, reading about new gear, and just generally obsessing about things that a normal person wouldn’t give a second glance to. I have brand preferences, and I can list off the parts that I would put on my dream bike at any given time, from memory. I’ve cleared well over 3000 miles this year on a bike I’ve only had since March. So why have I only broken 100 miles (nearly all of them indoors) this month? There are a few reasons:

Weather

It’s October, and apparently it’s been decided that good weather is done for the year. It’s cool at best; windy and rainy at worst. I feel bad for not riding to work, but I don’t miss the hassles that it brings in terms of clothing and preparation. I’ll admit it – when you’re used to getting places under your own power, driving becomes one of those guilty pleasures.

Reliability

I’ve been constantly afflicted by a flat rear tire in the past two months. I couldn’t figure out what was causing it, but I was going through a tube every few rides or so. For that reason biking was no longer a reliable mode of transportation for me. I couldn’t justify trying to squeeze in 15 or 20 miles if I knew I’d have to spend a portion of it on foot, hoofing it to a gas station.

Time

I was trying to average 20-25 miles a day when I was riding during the summer. It wasn’t terribly difficult when I was going to and from work twice a day, but no matter how you slice it that ends up being nearly 90 minutes of riding, which is a time commitment that I’m just not interested in making when reason number one comes into play.

Disinterest

When all the reasons above combine it makes for an experience that’s just not enjoyable anymore. One alternative is to train indoors (I picked up a set of rollers earlier this year), but it is seriously boring, and not something I want to do everyday (if at all).

A Solution

With all this in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to start running.

Here’s the funny thing about that. I suck at running… or at least, I did. I couldn’t run a mile to save my life, and if by some miracle I did manage, my lungs would be on the verge of exploding so it may have been a self-defeating act. My very first run (in recent history, at least) consisted of a distance of about 1.5 miles, half of which were walked.

I paid for it dearly. My major mistake was opting to wear the Nike Free’s that I used for Wii Fit. While they were fine for a more aerobic use, they were terribly unsuccessful at dealing with the foot-to-pavement interaction, and my hips were out of whack for two days afterwards.

When I finally did recover (read: when I could walk without being in pain), I decided to give it another go, this time in a pair of borrowed Nike Shox. While I didn’t much care for the feel of them (Shox in general seem relatively heavy) they did a much better job of absorbing the impact and left me feeling much less damaged the second time around.

The fact that I committed to a second run at all is something of a miracle, as I don’t think I’ve ever reached that phase before. Apparently, that’s all it took. I lucked out and found a pair of Nike Zoom Start +, and the deal was sealed.

Nike +

It was no accident that I ended up with a pair of shoes that are Nike + compatible; that was basically one of my only requirements when searching. When it comes to exercise, stats have worked in my favor in the past, so I had no doubt they would work their magic again.

I was right. When base your distance on landmarks instead of hard data, it’s easy convince yourself you’ve gone farther than you actually have, and to feel more entitled to a break. The little voice in my ear told me otherwise, which made the little voice in my brain say “Keep going! You can do it!”

As it turns out, I can do it. In spite of the extremely temperamental weather (which fades to the background once warmed up) and the sporadic pain (which is assuaged by time on the rollers) I’ve found that I actually do love to run. It’s such a simple activity, and that’s why I was always frustrated that it always seemed to escape me before. It carries a lot of the same traits that I enjoy about cycling without the drawbacks. I’ll openly acknowledge that it’s harder on the body, but I’m getting more done in less time (in terms of exercise) and I don’t have to worry about random equipment failures.

And I can listen to music while exercising, which is basically a deathwish on a bike when you’re on public roads.

In the last week or so, I’ve found myself facing a bit of a dilemma with regards to the various bits of content that I’ve created/found/shared online. The problem with the social Internet is the it inevitably results in massive stacks of content distributed widely throughout the various services; in my case what began with a handcoded blog gradually turned into WordPress, and soon was joined by links (fed initially by del.icio.us) and then Flickr. Then Twitter joined the party.

Through this point everything remained fairly manageable. Thanks to the terriffic Twitter Tools plugin I was able to easily turn those tweets into “real” posts. But recently I’ve become smitten with a new (to me) service that leaves me wondering where to go from here: Tumblr.

I’ve been playing with Tumblr for a week or so, and I’ve found it to be a neat bridge between WP’s long-form posting and Twitter’s extreme short form, text-only entries. I like Tumblr’s versatility when it comes to handling a large variety of content types, and it seems to have just the right amonunt of meta for such things.

The problem is, I still like WordPress. I’ve built a nice little home with it over the years, and for longer pieces (like this one), it’s pretty darn great. Plus it has comments, although I’m just not sure how important that is to me anymore.

So given my current situation, it seems I have some figurin’ to do with regards to what andylaub.com actually is. The ideal for me would be to treat posts from Tumblr similar to how posts from Twitter are handled in that they’re imported into the actual WP database and join the archive. From there it’s safe to assume I could use the associated meta to manipulate the various sorts of posts as needed. Honestly I would love to see the same behavior with Flickr.

Currently, though, it doesn’t seem that such a plugin exists. I’m about 99% positive that I’d prefer to avoid the opposite approach (RSSing WP into Tumblr). The other option is to break everything apart completely and then reaggregate it into one central location, but that too seems like a huge compromise.

You’ll probably see me messing with this issue over the coming weeks; alternatively I may lose hope completely or go completely crazy and try to replicate some of Tumblr’s functionality within WP. Time will tell, but ’till then I’m certainly open to suggestions.