Archive for June, 2008

The New Stuff Chronicles #8

Other, PC, The new stuff chronicles | Posted by Zhooibaal
Jun 21 2008

This post might as well be called the new and old and damaged stuff chronicles instead of the new stuff chronicles. Anyway, there are two items I’d like to tell you about. The first one is a radio controlled car and the other one is a trackball. Let’s start off with the radio controlled car.

BMRacer

The model in the picture above is the one I have, it’s the BMW model. I don’t have any pics I’ve taken myself of this car, but this picture gives you a good impression of what it looks like. My car doesn’t look this smooth and clean anymore though. That’s why I stated that this episode of the new stuff chronicles might also be called the old and damaged stuff chronicles… I’s missing one of it’s side mirrors, the rear spoiler is badly damaged, one wheel looks a bit messed up and it has a huge crack in the front bumper near the left front fender. It got damaged like that when I was driving it around a bit recklessly, but it doesn’t matter, it was great fun to drive it like that and it’s all just visual damage. One other thing that got damaged another day was the left front suspension. This car is all plastic and when it ran into a concrete block the left front wheel was hanging loosly in it’s suspension. One of the plastic pins holding it in place had broken off and I replaced it with a metal screw and it’s all like new.

Anyway, for some info and specs take a look at the site by clicking here.

There are also two other models available. A Mercedes model and a Porsche model. I actually like the Porsche model better than the BMW model, but that one wasn’t available and I didn’t like the Mercedes model at all. I linked to the proper product pages through the images below.

PORacerMERacer

And then there was a trackball.

Trackball

It’s a Logitech Cordless Trackman Optical. I don’t know how they can call something cordless when it has a huge receiver with it which you connect to your computer with an equally huge cord, but it doesn’t matter, this thing is great. It takes a while to get used to it, but now I can play Command and Conquer with it just like I was playing it with a regular mouse. This trackball is very comfortable, responsive and it feels durable. I bought it to be able to switch pointing device every now and then to prevent me from getting RSI. If you’re looking for a great trackball, get this one.

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It’s fun to talk at the I-M-V-U!!!

Other, PC | Posted by Zhooibaal
Jun 07 2008

Sing it along with me to the Vilage People rythm! “It’s fun to talk at the I-M-V-U! It’s fun to talk at the I-M-V-U!”

As you can see I have added a banner to the website of IMVU, which is somewhat a mix between instant messaging like MSN, AIM and Yahoo and sites like MySpace combined with pretty decent 3D graphics. Nothing high end, but for some reason it’s pretty heavy on your system, but that doesn’t make it less fun.

IMVU logo

On IMVU there are several things you can do: create your own 3D avatar, get stuff for you avatar like accessories (jewelry, gloves, hats and other stuff), get pets for your avatar ranging from little baby dragons to penguins and even bodyguards. You can also decorate your own rooms and design your own stuff if you have the expertise to do so and then you can sell the things you make for IMVU credits with which you can get new stuff again of give gifts to other people. And besides all that you can also chat.

Chatting doesn’t occur in just another flat window, but in the 3D scene you, or your chat partner choose. You can also enter public rooms with lots of people and chat away. If you have no friends on IMVU you can simply hit the Chat Now button in the program’s main window and you’ll be connected to someone who has also hit that button and trust me, there’s always someone. The only downside of this Chat Now feature is that most people leave even before the avatar is fully loaded and they don’t say a word, but you shouldn’t give up too quickly as there are interesting people to be found occasionally and you can also look for potentially intersting people on the website instead of using the Chat Now feature.

If you have chat now enabled there will also pop up a balloon on your taskbar every now and then telling you that someone is waiting for a ChatNow session. In this case your room will be used, if you hit Chat Now yourself, the room of the other person will be used and if the other person leaves in that case you will be sent to one of the default rooms with noone else in it and the program will ask if if you’d like to give it another try and you’ll be connected to someone else.

I have found a few nice people through Chat Now, so it’s really worthit to try it once you’re there. Besides Chat Now and a people search there are also groups, so communities within the IMVU community. Just try to find a group, or multiple groups that are to your liking and you might just come across some cool people to chat with or to hang out with in public rooms or even in real life (RL) if they’re close enough.

I’m
Zhooibaal
on

When you sign up there will always be a Guest_ prefix before your name though. It doesn’t bother me too much, but some people find it annoyin. But getting rid of it will cost you some $$$. Which brings me to the only real downside of IMVU. It’s more or less free to use, but to get everything out of it means that you’ll need to spend some $$$. I don’t do that, at least, not yet, you never know what might happen in the future.

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