If you haven't heard this yet, you will now... enter Cloudkicker, my addiction for the last week straight:

Now that Star Ocean 4 is available on the PS3, I was finally able to continue my long standing addiction with this particular JRPG series. After a few days of random playing I'm now about ten hours in and have come to the realization that I'm truly bored with the genre. Growing up, I spent countless hours conquering every Square-Enix game I could get my hands on, I've played multiple times through just about every RPG for the SNES, and since then I've tried to at least spend some time on all the popular releases to come out for the PS1-3... but all of this has just been leading me to one conclusion over the last few years: JRPGs are increasingly becoming more and more formulaic and are rapidly falling behind the innovative American RPGs to come out in the last few years.
 
So, what am I really trying to get at here? It's not that the last decade of JRPGs hasn't had innovation or even good games, quite the contrary, there have definitely been some gems, but overall the genre as a whole is completely stagnant when it comes to appealling to the same generation that made them popular in the first place. Those of us that grew up as young kids playing Final Fantasy 3 (6) are now around 30 years old and have witnessed the same rehashing of the original formula over and over again.
 

I'm happy to say as promised, 1.4.3-1 has been finished.

A couple of notes before you download and install:

1) i686 and x86_64 were fully tested on clean F12 installs and worked without
any issues, so I am satisfied. However, I spent hours trying to debug an
"audiosink" issue on my x86_64 install and it turned out to be a leftover
config from when I was running F11 and my X-Fi sound card, which was not
supported properly and not using autoaudiosink. The point is, songbird is very
sensitive to which audio engine you are using. If you have playback issues on a
system that has been upgraded F10->F11->F12, etc, most likely that is your
problem and you're not running the same way as a fresh F12 install

Example: Something along these lines...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rhythmbox/+bug/442157

2) I do not have a PPC/PPC64 system any more, so the builds are untested. They
completed successfully, but I can't verify functionality.

3) I recommend using the absolute latest gstreamer and gstreamer-plugins
available in the repo, Songbird constantly upstreams patches. Old gstreamer
versions can lead to playback issues. As always, mp3 support is through the
full suite of gstreamer-plugins not available or licensed from Fedora.

4) To take the load off the devs, when reporting bugs back to Songbird please

I've been holding off on venting my frustration for the last couple of months now, but I've finally had it with Gamefly, the self-touting "#1 online video game rental service." It's really a shame that they choose to run their business in such a shoddy manor, because with no real competition around (except for maybe Blockbuster) they could easily be as big as Netflix. Yet, time and time again they prove to be 100% deserving of a ride on the FAIL boat.

Having been a long time customer of Netflix, I've come accustomed to a huge selection, extremely fast turn around time, and hassle free issue handling. Naturally, when I decided to try out Gamefly six months ago I took for granted that I would be receiving the same level of service. Holy shit was I in for a surprise!

First off, let's compare the rental plans. I'm currently signed up for the three DVD plan with Netflix for $16.99 and the single game rental plan with Gamefly for $15.95. Understandably, games cost three times as much as a DVD, so the cost was one thing I wasn't too concerned about. The queue system also seemed to be the same, so I went down my list of wanted games, ranked them accordingly and ended up with about ten games queued with some exploratory fillers at the bottom. From there everything started to go downhill FAST.

After waiting a couple of years for the right opportunity, I've been lucky enough to spend ten days in Belgrade, Serbia hanging out with a good friend and following the up and coming heavy metal band Draconic. Not only is this city extremely fun to hang out in, but the metal fans here are some of the friendliest and most hardcore group of people I've ever met. The first night I was already head banging and drinking beer with them only a few hours after getting off the plane. It's going to be an interesting week to say the least!

But moving on to the band... these guys rock HARD. Not only are they very tight and play like pros, but the amount of energy they bring to the show is impressive. Every song results in an all out explosion of sound from stage and is matched by the feedback from the audience. I expect great things to come of them in the near future. Their first major record From the Wrong Side of the Aperture is already available in Europe and is set to be released soon in North America as well. According to the bass player, Lazar Galic, the band already has a great deal of new material and is hoping to start work a new release soon.