Valve is beta testing a new Steam mobile app that will let you see what your friends are playing or chat with them while on the go, get updates on the latest games and purchase games so you don't miss the Midweek Madness sale ever again. You can download/sign up for the Steam beta on the Android Market or iPhone. (Thanks ShackNews)

Ever wonder what it would be like to be a Honey Badger? Well now you can find out with MEDL Mobile's Honey Badger Don't Care on Android and iOS devices. Check out ShackNews for more info and videos of the game and the original Honey Badger Internet meme. (Thanks ShackNews)

Max Payne is back this March in Max Payne 3. The new engine allows for some pretty sweet action. Check out this video on weapons and targeting. (Thanks ShackNews)

The kids were bugging me to take them to 7-11 for Slurpee®s an hour ago. Now they are making hot cocoa. Kids!

Sweet! The new gaming machine is up and running thanks to some parts from Lil Trooper. It's all serial ATA drives now and didn't like my EIDE drive that had all my games saved on it so I have been downloading games from Steam Powered for 4 days. I like having all mygames in steam so I don't have to find the discs but man is it slow. I have to back up my games to the server or another computer in the future.

Two games that did finish downloading that I was able to play are Need For Speed: Undercover and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. After checking those tow out to make sure they were all set up correctly I started thinking if you have one recent Need For Speed, you probably don't need any others. The game play is pretty much exactly the same for the last 5 years. Need For Speed is the Madden of racing games. One of these two (I don't even remember which one I was playing) kept telling me I was earning things and to check out NeedForSpeed.com but when I went there I didn't see anything about achievements. I wonder if achievements for these games has already been shut down. Nice.

UPDATE: I found the stats page for Hot Pursuit. It looks like it doesn't spit out stats in XML format so the info can be used in modules on the DOH! Network website though. I take back what I said about all Need For Speed games being the same. Hot Pursuit has some other race types like you are the cops in pursuit of the racers and the cars actually show damage. Car crashes look look pretty destructive. Parts don't go flying off but they are violent looking. It is a big change from earlier racers where the cars didn't show any damage after a race. They can actually roll over now. Nice! I keep unlocking new cars after every race though. I don't know how they are going to keep unlocking stuff in later levels unless they are going o release faster versions of current cars.

While looking at the Need For Speed: Undercover screen in Steam I saw that EA is closing 18 online multiplayer services. Game companies should release server files when sutting down games so the community can keep playing if they want. I personally don't play any online games from EA but if I did it would be nice to have the option to host a server especially for LANs.

The new Logitech gaming keyboard is taking some getting use to. I don't know why but my fingers keep getting a couple of keys off. I don't know if it's that extra couple of rows on the left but every now and then I type something and have no idea what I was triyng to type. You know what would be cool on a gaming keyboard? A couple of rollers similar to the volume control on the top right that you could configure for driving games. One for gas and the other for steering. With the keys you have to tap so your speed/steering is all or nothing. With a couple of rollers you could work them like a throttle and only get so much wheel turn for those not so tight left turns or when you don't want to go full speed into a sharp right. I could buy a steering wheel but those take up a lot of space on the desk.

Finally got Bioshock and started playing that. It didn't have sound after the intro so after some searching around the workaround mentioned on the forums is to run it Windows XP compatibility mode. Finally got the tv to stream movies from the server. After messing around with miniDLNA and accidentally wiping out the etc folder on the server the server is running right again and I can actually watch my movie library on the tv instead of on a little monitor. The DLNA concept was created by Sony in 2003. You would think it would work on Sony Bluray players but that's not the case. The Bluray player would only play one form of video. The one where you rip it from the DVD and it makes like 10 VOD files that you can't rename so you know what movie you are watching. No AVI or MP4 or DIVX or any other format I tried to rip it to. Thanks to the LG tv I can rip to whatever format I prefer now. Now I am going to need to add some terrabyte drives to the server to hold all my movies so the DVDs won't be sitting in piles everywhere.

The final computer parts should arrive this week so I can put the gaming machine back together. It's about time. I can only play so much Where's My Water.

Apparently my new pc case is being driven to California from Illinois. It was last seen shrotly before 3:30pm there.

The new gaming case hasn't moved since 12/31. Hopefully it will make some progress today.

UPDATE: Sweet! The new pc case has finally left Illinois. It still won't be here till Friday though.

Sounds like a fan in the server is not happy. Take a quick look and it is the CPU fan. It is slowing and speeding up again. Found another cooling fan in the garage. Time to shut down the server for a quick replacement.. ... New Cooler Master fan is in. The Thermaltake one stopped groaning just before I shut down the server like it knew it was on its way out and was trying to save itself.

My new year's resolution is to get rid of all the mp3s on the server that I would never listen to. I don't know where half this stuff came from. My second resolution is to have more LANs once I get the new gaming machine built. Not sure I get this Amazon Prime 2 day shipping. The case for the new gaming machine has spent the last 4 days in Indiana and Illinois.