Virtual Photography

I like video games, I like video games a lot! I think video games are as good as fried chicken. They keep getting better looking, and now many of them offer "photo" modes so that you can take pictures of what you are seeing. To me there's no point in using that feature if you can't transfer the images to another medium, like your computer.


I've wasted a lot of time this spring playing my xbox 360. I've been trying to convince my dad to get one. He's a big car guy, so I thought he'd be impressed with this game Project Gotham Racing. It has a good photomode but you can only look at the photos you take in the game itself. That's frustrating because it means you can't show your images or describe it to anyone who doesn't have an xbox 360 and also the game. So I figured out how to take pictures of the television screen in a way that doesn't degrade the image too badly, and overcomes the refresh rate issue (for the most part). I can finally share my videogame pictures outside of the stupid game console. Yes, it's been killing me. I bet whoever is reading this is sooooo excited. Ha... These are all pictures I took of my in-game photos from some of the replays of my races.


I think they look great considering they are just pictures of a television screen. Even clicking on these to see the larger versions they still look great, a little softer than what you'd actually see, but far better than my former attempts at taking stupid pictures of a T.V. screen. Project Gotham is alright as a racing game, but these first games that have come out for this current "next" generation look good enough that I'm very excited about what things will be like a few years down the road.







If you mess with the depth of field then for some reason the cars on the tracks come out looking like little miniature cars. To me they actually look more realistic than the other shots. It's just that they look like more realistic miniature plastic cars than they would otherwise. The ones below came out looking like that.

Pandora

I thought I would explain what the new tab to the right it where it says "My Favorite Songs" because it's been bugging me that it says that. I use a program called Pandora to listen to music sometimes while I'm working or browsing the web. It lets you create music "stations" based on music you tell it you like. Each station would start out from a band that you specify, then the program tries to introduce you to new music that has similar qualities to the band you originally named. You can then tell it if it sucks or not. I find that it works great for me if I just let it know what I don't like and only occasionally give a thumbs up to some song I think is particularly good.

Anyway, it let's you create a "favorites" list so you don't forget about stuff and let's you link that list to your blog, which I did. It automatically makes it say "my favorite songs" as opposed to "songs of the week" or "stuff I might get sometime". For the most part, they are all songs I like, but don't own. Some I have heard before but many of them were introduced to me by Pandora.