A few years ago, I was in Paris during the summer, and it was so intolerably hot that I needed to stay in for the middle of the day. My friend Mike, whose family I was staying with, was also there, and just as tired of the heat. We resolved to put our MacBook Pros on an ad hoc network and play through Quake — you know, instead of visiting the Louvre or something. And I recalled then just how awesome that game is.

We played through most of the original episodes. Some years before that, I had played through Quake II during a lull in real releases. And of course I played Q3A when it came out. Now that I think of it, I seem to have played the entire series in reverse.

Anyway, the point of all this is that the Quake series is really, really awesome in the classic-FPS sense. No stupid invisible walls or mission objectives. It’s just you versus a legion of reanimated dead and terrifying Shamblers. Seriously, you’ll enjoy every second if you haven’t played these already, and you can get them all on Steam for $15 at the moment. You can play them original style, or you can get Tenebrae or another mod and play those suckers in HD.

Band Hero is almost here to rock out on your Nintendo DS and it sounds like it’s going to be a decent adaptation. Soon you’ll be able to jam with your buds over the four-way ad-hoc network and play either the guitar, drummer, or lead vocalist. Players will be able to configure the game so if you all want to be drummers, you can. But there is one little thing that might bug some of you early adaptors.

Yeah, so Band Hero uses the GBA cartridge port. I know what you’re saying. Your brand new DSi doesn’t have a GBA port. Exactly, so you will not able able to join in on the fun. Sorry. [via joystiq]

What can be said about the latest Eye-Fi SD card that hasn’t been said about every other iteration? The Pro is just that, a Pro. With support for RAW files, Ad Hoc network support and Selective Transfer, the Eye-Fi Pro is perfection.

Using the Eye-Fi Manager, it took all of three minutes to get the Pro up and running on my Mac. Setting up an Ad Hoc network to my Mac was simple enough that a donkey could do it. From the wireless network dropdown list, select the “set up ad hoc network” option and create an ad hoc network. Once you’ve done that, refresh the network list, select your new ad hoc network and configure the Pro to recognize it going forward. Switch back to your wireless network and you’re done.

DSLR users can now shoot in RAW or RAW+ and have those images directly upload to their respective desktops/laptops over Wi-Fi. Eye-Fi creates two separate folders for RAW images (7-6-09) and JPEG images (July 06, 2009) with differing date formats.

Rather than uploading every single image or video that you capture, the Selective Transfer mode utilizes your camera’s protect function to identify which images to upload and which ones to leave. It’s dead simple. Protect the images you want to upload and then Eye-Fi takes care of the rest.

The Pro, as I’ve said before, is a dream come true — but at $150 it’s tough to justify such a purchase for a slow 4GB SD card. However, it also automagically uploads to your photo sharing site of choice and supports Ad Hoc networks. In a pressure-filled situation, like a live blog, the Eye-Fi Pro is a required gadget in a blogger’s bag. I’d throw down $150 clams for one, but I have the luxury of expensing it back to the big guy.

Eye-Fi Pro [Eye-Fi]