I did but as it turned out I lived in igno­rance for quite some time. After read­ing this blog post over at Dai­lyTech I did some research – and this guy is right! Japan­ese CEs con­tain some amaz­ing stuff: doc­u­men­taries, inter­views, exclu­sive illustrations/storyboards/art books, books con­sist­ing of arti­cles, past inter­views and draw­ing, trail­ers and TV com­mer­cials, T-shirts, and more often than not some hand­crafted items. That’s what I call a pack­age wor­thy of being a Collector’s edition.

I’m not into CEs as far as movie DVDs are con­cerned because all I want is the film and per­haps a sec­ond audio track. But I like to own Collector’s Edi­tions of games. The last one I bought was the Heroes of Might and Magic 5 Collector’s Edi­tion and I didn’t rue it because it cost only 5 bucks more. Accord­ing to the short arti­cle on Collector’s Edi­tions I don’t need to worry as far as God of War II is con­cerned. Seems like I’ll get every­thing for free

I just spent a cou­ple of days off but I couldn’t relax just like I thought I would. My girl­friend wanted to paint her flat and that’s what we did. As if that wouldn’t be enough, my com­puter decided to mess with me last Fri­day. Don’t know what’s wrong but my wire­less NIC just doesn’t wanna work any more. Well, I wanted to do a com­plete setup in the next few weeks any­way but I guess I’ll bring it for­ward. In the mean­time, there’s a short arti­cle on sto­ry­telling in video games up at The Escapist. In the con­clud­ing fourth part of the series the author dis­cusses how next-gen hard­ware can be used to make great games in terms of design. If you love intel­li­gent, well thought-out games, you should tackle this story – it makes for a good read.

Actu­ally, I wanted to post my opin­ion of The Foun­tain, star­ring Hugh Jack­man and Rachel Weisz. Instead, I’m writ­ing about the PS3. First of all, I didn’t encounter any prob­lems at all after my ini­tial expe­ri­ence with the PS3. I did notice though, that a bunch of work­ing col­leagues weren’t so lucky (In ret­ro­spect, I should prob­a­bly call them dum­b­asses but that’s for another story.). Any­way, they have some prob­lems and so I ended up writ­ing this text to get them started. OK guys, let’s tackle your “problems”.

Here’s the offi­cial site and they have a work­ing forum. If you can read, stop try­ing to per­suade oth­ers to help you out. Check it out for your­self and you may actu­ally learn some­thing new. How­ever, some guys over at the PS3Forums have com­piled quite an exhaus­tive FAQ which should be more than enough for trou­bleshoot­ing pur­poses. And there’s a short list of PS3 error codes which can be found here.

As for the guys I’m writ­ing this – you most cer­tainly have a NAT prob­lem. Since the lousy lot of you has dis­abled UPnP on their wire­less routers you have to for­ward ports man­u­ally. Just access your router’s web inter­face where you should be able to find a topic like Port For­ward­ing. Here we are. Just for­ward ports 80, 443, 5223 (TCP) and 3478, 3479 (UDP) to your PS3′s IP address and you’re done. If you like to uti­lize the won­der­ful voice chat, you also have to for­ward 3658 (UDP). Now, every­thing should work like a charm. You may have to extend this list even­tu­ally, depend­ing on the games you play. Don’t ask me next time, look it up some­where on the net.

Since I’m already writ­ing this for your, here’s how to upgrade your PS3′s firmware. If you absolutely have to per­form the update using your PC, get your new firmware here. ATTENTION: Always use the firmware made and pro­vided for your region! After you down­loaded the upgrade, copy the firmware to a portable stor­age device. You have to cre­ate a folder called “PS3″ and within that a folder named “UPDATE”. The lat­ter one receives the firmware. Please note, that you absolutely have to use upper­case let­ters or your Playsta­tion won’t rec­og­nize your update! Last but not least, remove all USB devices, start the update process and fol­low the instruc­tions on the screen.

Just as I promised a few days ear­lier, here’s what I think about 300. I went to the the­ater with only one expec­ta­tion: I wanted to see a heavy styl­ized film. And that’s exactly what I got. Well, first things first. Let’s start with some his­tor­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on the bat­tle the Spar­tans and the Per­sians fought. I already wrote about it here and if you’re inter­ested you should dig it.Well, Dave and I bought the tick­ets and went for some beer which proved to be a bad idea. But hey, it hap­pened and we know what we shouldn’t do next time. After about an hour we got our­selves pop­corn and some coke and walked into the audi­to­rium. You have to know, watch­ing movies in Eng­lish isn’t that easy around here, so it is some kind of a niche mar­ket. That means that Eng­lish the­aters are small and cramped. Some­times the big the­aters are in for an Eng­lish ver­sion of a block­buster but they usu­ally pick their small­est screens for that pur­pose. You see, there was a cou­ple from the USA and when they walked in the guy said looked around and said to his wife/girlfriend annoyed: “It sucks.”.

What­ever he may have thought about the cramped con­fines, he cer­tainly enjoyed the movie. In short, 300 is a visu­ally stun­ning piece of art. It blends vio­lence, pol­i­tics, bru­tal­ity and nudity into an uncon­ven­tional movie expe­ri­ence. The bulk of the movie, how­ever, is devoted to bloody, highly styl­ized hand-to-hand com­bat. That’s exactly what I wanted to see. There were only two mildly dis­turb­ing things in the whole movie. I under­stand that, deriv­ing from a comic the movie is quite simple-minded, but it’s almost too much sim­pli­fied. You don’t get to know the enemy which is a sad thing. And then, there are the Spar­tans – nearly naked men with oiled 6-pack abs killing off wave after wave of Per­sian sol­diers. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the scenery and the action, but did their abs really have to shine that much? Not even blood wanted to stick to it, it seemed …

I like the artis­tic direc­tion and the impres­sion the watcher gets. It’s almost like a glance into the past. Did you know that their fight­ing styles and for­ma­tions are based on Spar­tan war­fare? They pur­pose­fully changed some things to make them look cool which, to my mind, works quite well. 300 deserves 8 out of 10 decap­i­tated heads.

…. every­thing seems to be under con­trol again. The last weeks were both phys­i­cally and men­tally exhaust­ing and I can’t even say the result was worth it. I did fine, of course, but the guys in charge messed up big time and we lowly pro­gram­mers had to fix it. Any­way, what’s done is done. Today I decided that I will go on leave for a week or so but I don’t know when yet. It’ll be soon, per­haps the week after next.

In any event, I’ll be back more reg­u­larly. There are some things to catch up with like my movie review of 300. Stay tuned