JosephConley.com Wastin' more bandwidth everyday.

Since the initial public announcement of Guitar Hero: On Tour, there's been a slow trickle of more information being announced to the public. The website for the game, GuitarHeroOnTour.com, was launched. It's flash based and has an interactive demonstration of how the Guitar Grip peripheral works, and a link to pre-order the game. At a recent Activision event, a demonstration was given to the press, and GameSpot provided some coverage. The first tracks to be featured in the game were announced including "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister, "Do What You Want" by OK Go, and "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" by Jet. And at that event they pinned a tentative release date on June 22nd. Unfortunately I'll be in Japan and there's no release scheduled there yet, so I'll have to wait a little longer. Until then, check out some screen shots.

I spent a lot of quality time with GTA in the last two days, and it's really starting to set itself apart from previous entries in the series, in some really good and interesting ways.

 

The importance of interpersonal relationships has been increased a lot. You're encouraged to spend time with your business partners, and doing so generally reaps some benefits. Once you're in someone's favor enough, you'll be able to take advantage of their unique special ability. You also can date characters in the game. From time to time, your contacts or love interests will give you a call, or you can give them one, and you go for a date. You can take them bowling, to play billiards or darts, to a cabaret or comedy show, or you can just go out drinking. But, (and I echo this statement for real life) be sure to call a cab if you do the latter though, it's very difficult to drive drunk, but it's a fun minigame to try once or twice.

Grand Theft Auto 4 has to be one of the most anticipated games of all time. Maybe it's thanks to all the criticisms it gets from the mass media (any press is good press, right?), or maybe it's because it lets you do everything you can't do in real life, or maybe it's just that good of a game.

This Saturday is RIT's first annual Innovation and Creativity Festival entitled Imagine RIT. There will be more than 400 different events showcasing student projects and more.

I've been planning my trip to Japan these past few months, with the help of this study abroad guidebook from KIT. I'm flying Japan Airlines from Boston to Chicago, where I'll meet up with Xander and Shella.

I've been interviewing lately with a team that does GPU diagnostics at NVIDIA lately, and I'm flying out to California again for a day of technical interviews sometime next month.