Sam's Mini Pumpkin

Iron Man is here!

Sam is ready for Halloween.

Age of Booty

I downloaded the demo off of XBox Live Arcade and Age of Booty is a great game. If any of my friends get this, ring me up and let's play online. It looks like it would be a blast online. It's kind of a real-time Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. The demo is good and you can even play online multiplayer with it.

Vigilante 8 Arcade

I'm looking forward to this on the 360. The split screen multiplayer mode should be fun for parties, while the online will make it fun the rest of the time. I was a big fan of Interstate 76 which this was based on. The new multiplayer XBox Live modes should breathe some new life into it.

Are you a Genius?

When I'm alone in the car I typically set my iPod to play an album or occasionally shuffle my whole library. The library shuffle tends to require a lot of song skipping which can get annoying. At home, I play whole albums almost exclusively.

That is, until the new iTunes introduced Genius. I'm back in the shuffle game now! It is simple to use. Pick a song and hit the Genius button. ITunes will try to find 25 songs that it thinks you will like. It doesn't just base its selection on genre, it also looks at era the song was released, mood, etc. I'm not really sure all the criteria it uses, but it works pretty darn well for a quick and dirty playlist. Of course, it does have issues. Rare songs give it heartburn and will tell you that Genius does not have any recommendations. It also won't include arcane or rare songs in the playlists it generates. But overall, when you don't know what to listen to, it works very well. I've been surprised by some of the playlist selections and it has the grand effect of digging out songs I have forgotten or never listened to.

Korg DS-10

Synthesizers are usually very expensive items. Korg has released the DS-10 for the Nintendo DS. Check out this video of the software in action. For $40.00, this is a deal.