Jigsaw hc's Rants and Reviews

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Zoho Writer Review [Update]
2007-03-07 22:57:00
In my recent review of online word processors I mentioned that my only complaint about Zoho Write r was the inablilty to create folders. Since posting that I've had a couple people mention ways to to get around this.First, Zoho Writer has a built in option that lets you use the tag names as "folders". The full details on it are available here. It is not a true folder where documents can be stored, but it does add the tag to the left side bar. When clicked it on all of the documents with that tag are opened. This a useful tool, but it does not help clean up my mess of documents. The second method was mentioned in the comments on the origional post. It is to use OmniDrive with Zoho Writer. You can add folders on OmniDrive and launch your Zoho Writer from there. So, it is not directly putting folders in Zoho Writer, but it does allow for using folders with Zoho Writer. I don't really have a need for an OmniDrive account currently, but I may have to check it out if Zoho doesn't ad...
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Larger Xbox 360 Hard Drive
2007-03-06 22:15:00
Information came out yesterday that Microsoft is releasing a new 512 MB Memory card for $50 and lowering the price of the 64 MB Memory Card from $40 to $30. You can read the full details here. In the process they are increasing the 50 MB limit for Xbox Live Arcade games to 150 MB. I have no complaint with them releasing a larger memory card, but I'm curious who actually uses a memory card. I know at least a dozen people with Xbox 360 s and none of them have a memory card. Everyone I know has the premium package that came with the hard drive. Even if someone didn't have the premium system the 20 GB hard drive for $100 is a much better value than $50 for 1/2 a GB. For the extra $50 you get 20 times more storage.This news lead me to my rant. Where is the 100 GB, or preferable 200 GB, hard drive? The ability to download high def shows or movies to my Xbox 360 is a great option, but the 20 GB hard drive only holds a handful of shows or a couple movies. I want to be able to download...
More About: Drive , Hard , Hard Drive

Online Word Processor Comparison
2007-03-05 19:04:00
A lot of times when I start writing a blog post I only get part way through it when I get side tracked. Or, I have an idea for a post that I don’t want to forget but I’m not in the mood to write the whole thing. I’ve been using a Word Doc to keep my notes and ideas in, but it has started getting long and it is a pain to keep a current copy between work (If my boss is reading this I only blog on my breaks) and my house. Sure there are a lot of options to remedy that. I could email it to myself or use a USB drive, but then I have to remember to take that extra step at the end. I also tried using Blogger’s New Post option and just saving my partial posts as drafts, but I kept accidentally posting half finished ones so that option is out. I decided using an online word processor is probably my best option. It lets me work on my partial posts from home or work without having to keep track of where the most recent copy of each one is since the most recent copy is always sto...
More About: Processor , Comp , Paris , Online

Three Reasons I Hate Crackdown
2007-03-02 22:11:00
Three Reason s I Hat e Crackdown: My Crackdown ReviewI got a hernia trying to move a car that was blocking my drivewayI got fired for putting a hole my office roof while checking for agility orbsAccording to my lawyer "Skills for Kills" does not have any legal precedenceWho am I kidding, none of those are real and I love Crackdown. Not a lot of games properly pull off the feeling of being free to do whatever I want. A lot of games tell you that you can do whatever you want, but then the map only gives you a couple places you can go. In Crackdown you can literally run/drive wherever you want as soon as the game starts. You may not live very long because you're abilities have not been leveled up, but you can still go anywhere you want.The size of the city is pretty big when you're driving around, but it gets even bigger once you realize you can climb any building. The vertical size of this city makes it huge. According to LiveEye I've played Crackdown for over 7 hours, and I've...
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Contest: Win Uno, Robotron, and a Month Subscription to GameznFlix
2007-03-01 19:08:00
The other day I received and email from Xbox.com letting me know that I was “smart enough to buy an Xbox 360 and register it.” As a result I was getting rewarded with a free copy of Robot ron, Frogger, & Joust. A little searching around the usual forums and I found that these emails started going out to everyone who bought an Xbox 360 and registered it. I appreciate that I’m getting free games, but why do they have to be these games specifically? They are some of the oldest games and anyone who wanted to play them probably already bought them. In every forum where people were talking about getting this email at least half of them already had at least one of these games. Personally, if I had wanted any of these I would have picked them up months ago.The Xbox Live Vision Camera Gold Pack Bundle has a similar issue. It comes with Uno and Robotron as well as 200 Marketplace points. However, by the time the camera was released the majority of people interested in Uno or Robot...
More About: Contest , Script , Flix , Game

GRAW 2 Demos Reviewed
2007-03-01 00:04:00
Since Ubisoft is planning on releasing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (GRAW 2) just one year after the release of the Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) there has been a lot of talk about whether this will be just an update to GRAW or if it stands on its own. Fortunately, they have tried to show us that it is not just a half baked update to GRAW by releasing both Single Player and Multiplayer Demo s . So, is it really worth of the name GRAW 2 or should they name it GRAW 1.5?First the Single Player Demo. It was fun for the most part. I’m not a fan of the cover system. Who thought it would be a good idea to get into cover by running into an object, then keep running into it and you use it as cover? It is a terrible way to do a cover system. It is hard to get into when you want cover and other times you accidentally get into cover when you don't want to. Setting aside the lousy cover system I did have fun playing through the single player demo a few times. The new improv...
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Sunday Afternoons
2007-02-26 22:38:00
I’m almost glad it is Monday today because now that football season is over Sunday afternoons are so boring. For 6 months of the year I have a nice Sunday afternoon tradition of watching football with the family and possibly some friends. Now that the NFL season is over there is no more fun with friends and family. Just me flipping through channels while the wife naps. Why is it that the NFL Season is so short? They play so few games and the season is over very quickly. Why don’t they start the season earlier and let it go longer. Maybe they are worried about injuries. It seems like football players have a lot higher probability of getting injured than players in other sports. Probably due to the nature of the game. So, it stands to reason that a longer season would mean more injuries. This could probably be offset with a larger roster size. However, that would require a higher salary cap. Also, second string players don’t generally play as well as the starters so games...
More About: Afternoon , After , Day After

Top Traffic Exchange Site for Blogs
2007-02-25 22:53:00
I’ve been looking around the internet for way to make sure my blog is listed when people are searching for it (or for related topics). Since I’m pretty new to blogging I wanted to make sure there was not some sort of obvious thing I was missing. I already was using FeedBurner and a couple of pinging services so when I update the various search engines get notified. While I was in this process I stumbled across the idea of traffic exchanges sites. For those of you not familiar with them basically they work like this: I visit your website and in exchange you visit mine.The idea seams a little like speeding. Everyone seems to be doing it, but that doesn’t necessarily make it right. It seems a little like I’m whoring out my blog to whoever will look at it just to boost the number of hits I’m getting. However, just because traffic exchange sites increase the quantity of hits to my blog they don’t necessarily increase the quality hits my blog gets. As I was looking at ...
More About: Traffic , Traffic Exchange , Change , Blogs , Blog

Gears of War Multiplayer Map Pack Review
2007-02-24 22:02:00
Not that everyone has not already tried them out, but I wrote this up a while back and never posted it. So, for those few of you who have not had a chance to play them yet here's what I think.Raven DownAt first I did not really like this one because, until you get the hang of the layout, it is hard to know which side the enemy will come from. However, it grew on me very quickly because it is a tiny map which makes it very fast paced and frantic. Also, due to the size it lends itself well to a rapid flanking attack. I also really like how it splits the teams up into two groups of two at the spawn. It is different in that way and it makes it good for teams that work well together. I also like that the only additional weapons on the map are frag grenades. Plan on practicing up on your shotgun skills for this one.Old BonesThis map is BIG. If it is down to a one-on-one match up it can take a while to find the other guy if he is camping. The only minor annoyance I had with the map is...
More About: Review , Play , Player , War , Multi

Tetris Evolved Coming
2007-02-21 17:00:00
I saw today on IGN that THQ is releasing a new Tetris game called “Tetris Evolve d.” "Tetris Evolved adds two new modes, Go Low and Eraser, for both single and multiplayer gaming. The multiplayer modes support local and Xbox Live play for up to four people and Xbox Live vets can use the matchmaking system to vie against same-skilled Tetris players and track them via a newly implemented ladder system. Tetris Evolved also offers achievement points, "high definition" graphics, and adds video backgrounds as well as customizable themes, skins, icons and soundtracks." I do like Tetris. So, the idea of a release for the Xbox 360 with support for four people locally or over matchmaking sounds like it could be fun, but at the end of the day it is still just Tetris; another retro game. The price and release date have not been announced, but if they charge more than $25 for it I do not expect that they will sell that many copies. On the other hand, if they were to add it to Xbox Live Arca...
More About: Ming

Heavy Weapon Review
2007-02-20 20:58:00
Despite my previous complaints about Xbox Live Arcade it does have some games that are fun to play. Heavy Weapon is one of these games. My review of Heavy Weapon is going to be pretty short and simple. The more people playing the more fun the game is. I tried out the demo by myself and it was ok, but not so fun that I was going to buy it. A couple days later I had a friend over who likes gaming, but is not that good at the games I’m currently playing (Gears of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas). I remembered that Heavy Weapon had co-op support and thought he might like it. So, we started playing and had a blast. The next day I was playing online with three random players trying to get the Achievement for staying a live 15 minutes. With 4 of us playing it was not too hard. We did learn an important lesson. Always save at least a nuke so that if there is only one guy left alive he can use them while the other people re-spawn. The game only ends if all 4 people die at the same tim...
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Top 3 Problems with Xbox Live Arcade
2007-02-15 02:08:00
Right off the bat I want to state that I think Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) is off to a pretty good start. I want to mention that at the beginning because by then end of this post you may think I don’t like Xbox Live Arcade when in reality I just have three areas of complaint.Problem #1: Slow Game ReleasesWhy are so few games being released? I do like that Microsoft made Wednesdays “Xbox Live Arcade Release Day,” but why do they just release one game. Or worse yet, an add-on pack for a game. By my count so far there have been 45 games released for Xbox Live Arcade. That is far less than one a week; especially when you factor in that 10 of the 45 were released when Xbox Live Arcade started. For the most part these games are selling well. They are easy to buy and the demos make it easy to see if you think they are worth picking up or not. So, I have a message for development companies please put some teams together and work on more Arcade games. Microsoft Certificate Team, I rea...
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Why I left RegisterFly.com for GoDaddy.com
2007-02-13 20:37:00
After my last comparison review I must be in that type of mind sent because I’ve got another one for you today. You may have noticed my blog was down most of last week. At that time I was using Regis ter Fly.com as my host and domain registrar. I had been with them for a few years and never had any real trouble. From time to time portions of their site would be under contraction, but nothing to drastic. That was until last week when I found one morning that my site was not up. I proceeded to call RegisterFly and wait on hold for 30 minutes only to be told I would have to open a support ticket on their web site. Their website clearly states they have web, phone, and email support. Apparently phone support is only for issues that are not really technical. I opened a support ticket and noticed about 4 hours later my site was back up. I finally received a response about 36 hours later that said my site was back up. At the time I was hoping it was just a random fluke and it would ...
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Logitech Harmony Remote [Update]
2007-02-11 08:20:00
I have not given up on my new remote yet and I'm glad I didn't. (If you don't know what I'm talking about check out my origional post). After calling Harmony support and not getting much help I posted my questions in their forums and one of the other members there was cool enough to tell me how to trick the remote into doing what I want it to.Basically, if you make a custom button for a specific device (in my case it is for my receiver) the remote will put that button on any activities that use that device. My problem was that I did not want the button when I use my Xbox 360 even though I do use the receiver with it. Thanks to WannabeActuary over in the Harmony forums I found out that I can trick the remote by telling it the buttons are actually for my TiVo and not the receiver. That way they only show up when I want them to.My love/hate relationship with the remote has become a love-only relationship. I'm now giving it 2 thumbs up. In addition to getting the buttons how I...
More About: Logitech , Tech , Update , Armon

Logitech Harmony Remote for Xbox 360 Review
2007-02-08 01:27:00
My "relationship" with my new Harmony remoteis quickly becoming a Love/Hate relationship. I call it a relationship because I spent more time with the remote Saturday than I did with my family. It started off so innocently. I finally got around to getting a surround sound system and I did not want to have to use 2 remotes just to watch TV. So, I did a little research and found a great price for the Logitech Harmony Remote for Xbox 360. I ordered it on sale on Amazon for $40 off the list price. Apparently I was not the only one because it was back ordered for a month. It finally arrived last week and I was pretty excited. For those of you who are not familiar with Harmony remotes, you connect it to a computer. You then tell it all of the components in your entertainment center. The software that comes with it then walks you though how you use your entertainment center and programs the remote for you. When you're done with the setup you have buttons labeled things like "Play ...
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A place for me to post my thoughts
2007-02-05 20:13:00
I have a couple of reviews I was going to write up for a website I frequent and I thought that my friends might also enjoy reading them as well. So, I started this blog. The only thing I promise is that the things I review will be stuff I have actually tried and that I will be honest about if I liked it or not. No guarantees I will post anything on any regular basis, or that they will be grammatically correct.
More About: Post , My Thoughts , Thoughts , Thought , Place