Ganked from GamePolitics: The Lt. Governor of the Great State of Washington (I live there, I don’t suppose you would have guessed ;), has called for a summit this week to study the economic impact of games. According to the press release, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen will take a look at the economic impact of the cyber and video game industry within Washington at a 9 a.m. meeting Nov. 19 at Bellevue City Hall Council chambers.

During the meeting, the committee will hear from reps at Bungie, the University of Washington, and the DigiPen Institute of Technology (check out their podcast…yeah, that’s my voice). Apparently, Owen’s interest in the whole gaming thing was piqued when he was asked last year to give a welcoming speech at the World Cyber Games which was held in Seattle then.

The meeting will air both on Bellevue TV 21 and TVW in the days following the event.

Hey, folks…just got a heads up about a great opportunity from Hydrogen Whiskey Studios. They are looking to hire an experienced Project Manager for their studio down in Santa Monica, California. Hydrogen Whiskey Studios works with a lot of game companies developing art and animation for them, so this is a great opportunity for anyone wanting to get connected into that scene.

For more info, jump over to their blog site and look over the position post.

I’ve been so busy the past few weeks (we here in the States had this election thingie going on, you know) that I unfortunately did not have an opportunity to post about two more episodes I managed to squeeze out with Corey.

Episode 67 I hosted with Corey, and covers the PopCap Games launch event of Bejeweled Twist, a review about the Macally Pebble, Pebble Wireless, Turtle, and Accuglide mice, Corey’s review of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1, and part 2 of my review of Spore by EA.

In Episode 68 I put together a real quick piece alone a tour I did through the GameHouse Studios and finished off my review of Spore by EA. Because it was such a short episode, an off-week episode to boot, and Corey was also so busy, I just did this one alone.

Look forward to our next episode on November 20th. I’m going to be reviewing Call of Duty 4 for the Mac! And Corey’s promising me an interview with the new Chief Editor of Macgamer.com (see, now he *has* to do it ;).

Lot’s of people have been getting away with turning opening game and hardware boxes into content. And whereas I’m all for being creative and all, opening square pieces of cardboard just doesn’t do it for me. However, to get into the spirit of things, I thought I would drop my own unboxing ritual into the fray…and it all starts with PopCap Games and their soon to be announced new game! Read the rest of this entry »

(Thanks to Macworld.com’s Live Update and Jason Snell for this info)

Everyone’s been waiting to find out what Steve Jobs would announce this morning regarding laptops. Speculation ranged from a Mac tablet to a sub800 notebook, to even wilder thoughts. Reading the responses to the announcement, many people might have felt a bit disappointed by it. But for gamers, the announcement was great.

Read the rest of this entry »

Got a burning question you’ve been wanting to ask someone from Blizzard, but can’t attend BlizzCon? Well, you’ll get a chance to get your questions answered. Slashdot is hosting an “Ask Blizzard Employees About Things That Matter” event, in which all you have to do is post your question, and the Slashdot folks who are attending BlizzCon will ask them. They have a sit-down scheduled with Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II; Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft; Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III; and Paul Sams, Blizzard COO. Your questions regarding Diablo III art will go the way of the dead horse, so don’t bother. Otherwise, post away!

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and have finally decided to change the days on which I post my podcast from Monday to Thursday. I’ve been posting them on Mondays, but this is actually a holdover from the old Gamesome Mac days when we broadcast the show live on Mondays. I have the ability to decide when I want to post my podcasts that don’t depend on a broadcast schedule, and have for a long time. I’ve just stuck with Monday because…well, because.

But, Mondays are becoming an increasingly difficult day to post on, for a variety of reasons. I have a hard time getting motivated on Mondays (don’t we all). I’m grabbing news from the past week (with two non-news days in between) rather than the past few days. With two non-work days, I find it hard to drop back into my work groove again (back to the motivation thing again). I basically decided that several days of work leading up to the post would suit me better.

Anyway, I’m going to try it out and see how it works. Starting this week I will start posting my podcasts on Thursdays. So, my next podcast will be Thursday, 2/21.

I just finished posting episode 53, with part two of the Hal Halpin interview. No game review on this one. Sorry about that. Enjoy the podcast, tho. :D

ETA: You can catch part 1 of the interview here on episode 52. Enjoy!

Well, I fully intended to post episode 53 today. I took a break this afternoon, and thought, what the hey, I’d install my new LCD monitor that my husband got me for Christmas. Shouldn’t be too hard, eh? Well, it did involve removing my old CRT monitor (the big, hulking thing) and putting it on the kids’ computer desk where their old monitor used to be (we recycled it a couple of days ago in prep for this very event).

It did involve a *lot* of vacuuming. I didn’t realize just how many dust bunnies were living on my and my kids’ desks. It did involve trying to figure out why I still have Windows 98 on my kids’ PC, and why I haven’t moved them to a Mac yet (well, I know the answer to that…more on that in a future post). I *hate* Windows 98. I mean, what other OS would ask you for a driver when you put in a usb stick?

But the worst was that it involved discovering that the LCD monitor, a V7 R19PS, sucks big time! My G5 comes up, with lousy imaging, and I ask OSX to autodetect the monitor. It attempts to do so. Screen goes black. Screen remains black, but now an ugly green text box shows up with the words “mode not supported”. Nothing I do has fixed this problem. Rebooting doesn’t fix this problem. The text box won’t go away.

After spending almost an hour on this, I wanted to see if this was an LCD to Mac issue, or an LCD to computer problem. So, I attached the monitor to my Windows box. Windows couldn’t detect the new hardware. Sigh.

By this time, we were ready to leave the house and get dinner, and I’m just too tired of dealing with this issue to deal with switching monitors again, then record the remainder of the podcast. Sorry…a quick one hour thing turned into a five hour nightmare. So, I’ll get the monitors switched tomorrow, then post the podcast tomorrow.

If anyone knows anything about V7 LCD monitor compatibility with the Mac, or with ATI cards (I have an ATI 9800 inside my G5), I would be most appreciative of some input. Thanks.

MacRadio is listed on Blogger & Podcaster Guide, and has been participating in their online The USA TODAY special which I highly recommend. Basically, if someone does a search for a podcast through the Blogger & Podcaster Guide search tool at the bottom of USA TODAY, they can find you.

You can get involved in it as well right now, including a free month in The USA TODAY through Blogger & Podcaster Guide.

There’s no catch other than after the first month there will be a charge if you want to continue promoting to the USA TODAY’s audience. However, they’ve also arranged a 20% discount for you if you find value in the program and choose to continue on.

To get started, here’s all you need to do:

1. Go to http://www.bloggerandpodcaster.com/usatoday
2. Select “New User” and go through 6 Step registration process
3. In Step 2 be sure to select Option #4 and enter `BP’ in Coupon Code box.

They’ll notify you well in advance of the date you’ll be billed, so you don’t need to be worried about unexpected charges.