A few weeks ago, I stressed the importance of a Bears' victory over the Detroit Lions on November 13th following their week 9 defeat of the Eagles. That win was a big one, and with that win and a victory of the San Diego Chargers last week, both the Bears and Lions are tied for the top contenders for both of the NFC wild card playoff spots with the Bears going into one of the easiest collections of four games that any NFL team has on their schedule!

But the win over San Diego did not come without its cost. The Bears suffered several significant injuries, the most prominent being starting quarterback Jay Cutler....

UPDATE November 23, 2011 1:26 PM

Kyle Orton was picked up off of waivers by the Kansas City Chiefs, who were higher in the waiver order than Chicago. With Orton unavailable, the Bears have claimed Josh McCown. McCown hasn't played a game since 2009, so he will likely be an emergency option in the event that Hanie gets injured or performs poorly. The Bears also have rookie Nathan Enerle on their roster.

Do you recognize this traffic sign?

Do these signs bother you as much as they bother me?

It's only a school zone "when children are present".

What exactly does "present" mean? Do the children have to be out near the street in order for the limit to apply? What if there are children on the school playground behind a fence? They are "present" because I can see them from the road, but they are on the other side of the fence and shouldn't be crossing the road. So do I need to slow down?

I somehow missed this back at the end of September, but apparently, Konami has struck a deal with the Guy Cihi and the original voice actors from Silent Hill 2 in order to be able to re-use their original voice and motion capture performances. Supposedly, both the original voice work and the newly-recorded voice work will be included in the game.

UPDATE November 22, 2011 (3:18 PM PST)

According to an article on gamepur, the version of Silent Hill 3 that is included in the Silent Hill HD Collection will not include the original voice work:

"The HD Collection is on schedule for Jan 2012 release. The deadline for releasing the masters to the duplicators is like, this week. All major actors for SH2 have signed releases and so the SH2 game will offer players both voices – original and new. One SH2 actor was unwilling to sign, or had unreasonably delayed signing, but he has only two lines in SH2, so Devin and Tomm decided to use the new voice for those two lines. SH3, however, is a problem. Konami people have been unable to locate/contact Heather Morris so they cannot get her to sign a rights release. I have tried to find Heather but I was unable. If you know her contact information, please tell me ASAP otherwise SH3 will not have the original voices."
   -Tomm Hulett

Wait, what?

Why is this the first I've heard about the HD Collection not containing the original voice work for Silent Hill 3? As far as I was aware, Guy Cihi (from Silent Hill 2) was the only one preventing the original voice work to be included in Silent Hill 2. I had no idea they were having problems with the Silent Hill 3 cast as well.

I don't understand why this is such a problem. Doesn't Konami own the rights to the games and all vocal performances within? Why is it so hard to re-use the original voices?

Unfortunately, this means that I can no longer recommend the Silent Hill HD Collection for purchase by any Silent Hill fan when it is released on January 24th. If you want to play the games, buy the original versions. You can find used copies on ebay or Amazon at fairly reasonable rates.

As for the people who know me personally: if you have any interest in playing Silent Hill 2 or 3 (or any Silent Hill game for that matter), you are welcome to come over and play mine or borrow a copy. I have plenty to go around!

The Chicago Bears played a pretty impressive all-around game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night, winning 30-24 after their bye.

It's really hard for me to give MVP credit to any single player or unit on the Bears. The defense did a fantastic job of containing Mike Vick, limiting him to just a few dozen rushing yards, picking him off once, and never letting him throw it into the endzone. But the defense alone doesn't deserve all the credit, as Vick made some bad throws and his receivers dropped some wide open passes, D.J. Moore dropped two gimme interceptions, and DeSean Jackson tripped and fell short of converting a last-minute fourth down to keep the Eagles in the game. And the only reason that LeSean McCoy didn't torch the Bears for triple-digit rushing yards was because the Eagles were playing from behind for most of the game...

According to an article I read today on Digital Trends, Sony is planning yet another step towards becoming the totalitarian overlord of consumer's electronic entertainment domain with a plan to limit the number of consoles that European PlayStation Network users can link their downloadable games to. The intention of the plan is [apparently] to reduce software "piracy" through the simple act of sharing content that you've downloaded by linking to your PS Network account on someone else's PS3 or PSP. The imposed limit is supposed to allow any given downloadable content to be downloaded and installed on a maximum of 2 PS3s and 2 PSPs at any given time. Attempting to access this content through any additional consoles will require you to use a special online tool to deactivate the content on a different console.

I call BULLSHIT!

There is already a limit of five downloads allowed for any given content! And that isn't even across multiple units! Re-downloading a game on the same console costs you one of your precious five activations. So if you have to replace your PS3, then you are going to need to re-download all of your DLC.