HD Loader was just updated to 0.8.

Shadow of the Colossus works now, and you can install DVD9 games directly from the PS2.

This will probably be the last patch for HDLoader we ever see, and it’s pretty much perfect at this point!

Well well well! The world’s richest man has decided to stop working, giving his two YEAR notice in a press release.

What took him so long?

I think I could comfortably retire by the time I hit 10 million…I’d buy a modest four or five million dollar house near the beach and live off the interest of whatever’s left over.

Then I could call myself a socialite! Socialites are rich people who just hang out all day and don’t have to work.

Paris Hilton is a socialite. I would be exactly like Paris Hilton.

There’s been some trickery going on in the world of video game pricing lately and people aren’t making enough noise about it!

One of the worst offenders is Bethesda Softworks. They released Oblivion and while it’s a rockingly cool game with enough content to keep you busy for months, it’s sixty bucks. That’s not exactly a small amount of money, but I’d say it’s probably a fair price for a game of its size.

Normally when a game like this comes out you could expect an expansion pack or two to hit the shelves a few months later for about $30. And that’s where this story takes a horrible, horrible turn.

Bethesda has instead chosen to release bits and pieces of game expansions for a few bucks each. There’s only five available right now but they promise they’re working on many more.

So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that the gamer’s total cost of ownership is totally obscured by this pricing model. A few months ago you could be reasonably certain that you’d be spending $60 on a game and $30 on an expansion pack and you’d have access to the entire game universe.

With games that follow the Oblivion model you’ll spend $60 on the game and a few bucks more on an indefinite number of game expansion packs which in the end may very well equal the cost of the original game – or more!

All this nickel-and-diming means that at some point you could find yourself paying much more money than you would for a traditional expansion pack for the same amount of content – and you won’t even realize it.

That’s what I believe to be the insidious plan at the heart of all this tomfoolery!

Maybe I’m just being dumb and old-school, but I find it really hard to get excited about “episodic content”. Call me crazy!

Maybe you’ve heard, but there’s this Superman movie coming out soon.

This is a wasted opportunity.

Instead of remaking an old movie, they should have made a totally new one. And not just a sequel – a PREQUEL!

The only Superman movie I’d want to watch is one that explains what life was like on Krypton before everyting went to hell.

Seriously. All we really know is that Krypton was a planet full of crystals and people with white hair. And then one day everyone died.

I don’t care about Superman. I want to know how people lived when Krypton’s advanced civilization was at its peak. What forms of transportation did they use? Did they live underground or above ground? What did they use to power their cities? What attempts were made to prevent the destruction of their civilization? Why did they fail? What kind of interpersonal relationships and conflicts did the Kryptonians have?

There are so many opportunities here for good storytelling and an exploration of life on Krypton pre-Superman that I can’t help but see this movie as a total waste of resources.

I sound like Comic Book Guy! Worst movie ever!

If you drink a few cups of regular columbian coffee and then chase it with a french roast, you’ll be left with subtle tastes of wasabi in your mouth.

I have no idea why this happens, but I approve.

I’m back from Italy! It was a great two weeks, and the tour we took kept us busy every step of the way. I’ll try to post some photos in the next few days, but I don’t want to bore you. I know I hate it when people make me look at their vacation pictures. Unless you’ve been there yourself you just don’t have the right frame of reference to appreciate them!

We started and ended in Rome. Here’s the path we took:

The espressos were good, the limoncello was great, and the absinthe was interesting. Watching TV at 50hz was flickerific, but I managed to make myself watch an episode or two of Star Trek Voyager in Italian. I spent my birthday in Italy and Switzerland!

I will never fly on an airplane without noise-cancellation headphones again. Inside each one is an elf who works around the clock to filter out the roar of the plane and boost the clarity of whatever you’re listening to. They really are amazing, those elves.

Here’s a bunch of interesting news that I would have probably posted if I had been around during the last two weeks!

The Pirate Bay was raided and had all their servers siezed before promptly returning to service just three days later. Those guys are like lawsuit teflon.

The Xbox360 Spring update happened and the complete list of 125 changes is here.

Devil360 turned out to be a still-in-progress 360 modchip. Some jerks in Greece decided to steal the name to release their own unrelated product called the “Devil Mod 360” which is nothing more than a DVD drive firmware switcher.

DevHook 0.41a lets your 1.5 PSP emulate firmware 2.5, enabling you to play games that require 2.5 without having to upgrade. It’ll let you play both ISOs and UMDs.

Epsilon is an in-progress third-party firmware for the PSP. Combined with the still-unreleased Undiluted Platinum modchip you’ll be able to run pretty much anything you want on your PSP eventually. UP’s price has been rumored to be as much as $95, so that convenience will cost you.

Site 5 looks like they’re trying to copy our ‘hip/edgy/irreverant’ blog posting style with every new post they make.

Pixar’s Cars came out and with it came the Ratatouille trailer.

Cory Doctorow is a buffoon. At least I’m not the only one who recognizes it. The script needs more self-righteous indignation, though.

Anyhoo, that’s about it. My two-weeks of unread email just finished downloading, so it’s time to get back in the swing of things!