Very Nerdy!

Spidey Defeated

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:18:00 +0000

So, here's a thing...

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:06:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Grant) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Oh and here's a quote Fox News' website. This is from a comment on a story saying the ad worked (linked as story that said it did not).
http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/10/29/eratner_1029/

Comment by TX Lady
October 30th, 2008 at 12:42 am

"Can any one here say that they did not vote for Bush the last two times?
Mike Kneller"

Yes I can. I have been a registard Democrat for 40 years. This is the first time in my voting life I voted Republican.

Obama is a lier and has no experiance to be President.

TX
Lady

That's something.

noreply@blogger.com (Grant) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:05:00 +0000

Try to remember this coming November
To Vote for Neuman, vote for Neuman
Change your direction; don't look for perfection
and vote for Neuman, vote for Neuman,
Alfred E. Neuman though slighly subhuman
Will win just like Truman did from Missouri,
Back him again and we'll say once again
"What, Me Worry?"
We all vote the same way anyway, so there's no use in talking politics here but I wanted to post Brian's lovely song, as is voting season. Let's hope Obama wins, nice times ahead!

noreply@blogger.com (Grant) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:55:00 +0000

Let's all play Age of Booty!

noreply@blogger.com (Grant) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:31:00 +0000

Just so everyone knows, the selection on Netflix's streaming service has increased dramatically both in quantity and quality. There were always a handful of Herzog films and a few Fassbinder films I doubt I'd watch, but now there is a very large number of wonderful films.

I recommend Holiday to everyone. It's a George Cukor film staring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn and though I'm rarely fond of her, she's completely competent in this. Cary Grant however is exquisite and it's one of my favorite performances of his. It's a simple and silly film but its sweet and fun. I loved it and think you all would too.

Also there are some great Woody Allen films available to stream! AND HORSE FEATHERS! WATCH HORSE FEATHERS! It's my favorite Marx brothers film, hopefully you'll love it like I do.

Casablanca, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Barry Lyndon, and many more!

noreply@blogger.com (Grant) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:56:00 +0000

Well I just wrote a big post and closed the window. Crap.

I'd like to recommend Dickens to all of my friends. I'm reading Oliver Twist now and it's familiar and warm. He says that Oliver has a good and sturdy soul, which is a wonderful thing to say. He has lovely things to tell and tells them quite gracefully. I'm glad I've discovered his work.

Also, Julian's new record is out. It's beautiful and I recommend everyone pick it up before the holiday season. He recorded and played all the music and Brian Dewan made the artwork. It's a really special record. It's also the first record Julian recorded quickly and it turned out marvelously.

Julian's work is something very dear to me. I don't relate to any other works in the way I relate to his, even though I'd never be capable of making the things he does. I hope you all enjoy his new records as much as I do, because they bring me a great deal of hope and joy.

I've become very interested in astronomy again. I had been going through depression and thinking of things so beautiful, grand and real can focus my attention away from unimportant and less beautiful things. I recommend everyone listen to Astronomy Cast and visit their website for show notes. Also, the website Universe Today is full of wonderful information and news. Astronomy has traditionally been very important to me and it feels like I'm reawakening to something dear and innate in me as I'm discovering it again. Throughout my childhood, it was also the most important thing to my brother and I and it engaged my imagination in ways that little else could. From elementary school until high school it was always important to me. Throughout middleschool and early highschool I couldn't relate to the world around me, but I could lose myself in the grandeur of the universe. I feel that way again now and its a sweet and comforting feeling looking at the sky with a friend on a cold night and knowing we're so remarkably improbable and standing on a tiny bit of rock and water that can only sustain life for another 500 million years. We're so lucky.

Also, the weather is nice. While I'm recommending things, I may as well tell everyone that fall is lovely.

SFW

schwoo@gmail.com (Jared) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:25:00 +0000

http://view.break.com/577249 - Watch more free videos

INVISIBLE GIRL

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:38:00 +0000

Hello everyone

noreply@blogger.com (Grant) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:39:00 +0000

I haven't made a post in a while. I'll start again.

Everyone should watch "Holiday". Cary Grant at his best. Wonderful in every way.

Also, there's this.

Rock Band 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:44:00 +0000

Reading the reviews of Rock Band 2 makes me really want to play it. You guys want to have a Rock Band 2 party soon?

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:02:00 +0000

David Foster Wallace is dead according to multiple sources. He is said to have hung himself yesterday. He was probably my favorite living writer, the one I thought was best in touch with the times. That he could choose to kill himself at this moment, when his point of view is arguably needed most, is so disturbing/upsetting to me.

Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:59:00 +0000

Scott McCloud of Understanding Comics fame illustrates Google's presentation of their new web browser, which the Cult of Mac blog says is less like a browser and more like an OS. I didn't know what "cloud computing" meant until I looked it up on Wikipedia just now. It turns out that cloud computing is already my world, for the most part, with the exception of Garageband and iTunes.

Obama/Biden!!!!!!

christina.wooke@gmail.com (Christy) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 05:23:00 +0000

Thank God.

Julian's new record

noreply@blogger.com (Grant) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:13:00 +0000

Is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. I think you all will enjoy it too.

Thoughs on Braid

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:30:00 +0000

So, I've been playing Braid. It's a wonderful game and I fully recommend it. On the surface the impressionistic "painterly" art style of the game is beautiful, and far more attractive and interesting to me than games that fall into the uncanny valley of attempting to look realistic.

Although the game's basic mechanics are extremely simple and familiar, with it's Mario style side-scrolling platforming and it's key and lock puzzles, the unique time mechanics of each level made me think in ways that I never have before. The only comparison I can think of is Portal. Portal made me think in a new spacial logic that doesn't really exist in reality, and Braid does the same with it's unique temporal logic.

Although this game is relatively short, it is challenging. Most of the game's 60 puzzle pieces took some thinking for me, but no longer than 15 minutes to solve. There were however three pieces in particular that took me quite a bit longer to figure out. In frustration at one point I looked at developer Jonathan Blow's official walkthrough, only to discover that he had pulled a fast one on me and encouraged me to figure them out myself. So I went back and spent some serious time with these three remaining pieces, and as he suggested in the walkthrough, they may have taken me an hour or two to figure out. But figure them out I did, and it felt extremely satisfying. After experiencing Braid's clever ending and epilogue I thought I had finished the game.

Apparently the game was not finished with me though, as there were still a a few nagging things in the back of my mind. I had read artist David Hellman's excellent article on gamasutra about the exhaustive process he and Blow went through to make sure the art in the game was perfect. In the article he displays numerous mock-ups of a single screen in the first level the player encounters in the game, including this one:

Hellman notes:

When I sent these to Jonathan, he jumped on the rectangular "cut out" on the bottom of the center platform. It was a conspicuous geometric variation in a puzzle game where the player will assume everything has been placed for a reason.

It would be bad for the player to get stuck trying to figure out the puzzle-solving purpose of something with purely aesthetic value. As we went along, I got more disciplined about eliminating stuff that might distract or confuse the player.

I knew that Jonathan Blow's design philosophy was to exclude extraneous noise, and everything in the game had been carefully placed for a reason. Without giving anything away, I had noticed several things in the game that seemed out of place, strange details that Jonathan Blow had placed carefully to linger mysteriously in the minds of players like me. As he notes in his walkthrough: "Braid does not have a linear story the way most games do, so Getting To The End is not necessarily what you would expect. The idea of 'beating the game' does not apply so much, here."

With these little unresolved pieces of the puzzle nagging at the back of my mind, but with no clue in which direction to proceed, I did exactly what Jonathan Blow's walkthrough advised against. I read a forum. What I found was pretty astounding. Aside from people trying to analyze the game's abstract fragmented "story" which presents snippets of optional text that seem to be related on the level of theme alone (personally I'm torn on how I feel about this aspect of the game, but I'll spare you that tangent for now) there is a series of nearly impossible (both to find and execute) hidden challenges in the game that unlock an alternate ending.

If anyone reading this is playing the game, to give you a hint about these challenges without spoiling them for you as a few have already been spoiled for me, they involve finding the stars in the constellation visible in the city overworld, dispersed throughout the game. One of the stars requires starting a new game, or at least finding the star near the beginning of your first play through. Another requires waiting for about two hours in one of the levels! I can't help think that despite Jonathan Blow's statement to avoid reading forums to solve the game's challenges, that these stars were built-in specifically for the forums, where people who found all the puzzles pieces but still wanted more could cooperate to uncover these challenges and be rewarded for doing so, much like Bungie did with the skulls hidden in Halo 3. Indeed, Braid is a game that can be played and appreciated on multiple levels, and it is this kind of depth that makes it so interesting and great.

Donkey Kong Jenga

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:34:00 +0000

Check out this awesome Donkey Kong themed Jenga set.

In addition to the classic game of Jenga, it has some sort of Donkey Kong themed alternate rule set that involves using the spinner to moving the little included Marios up the girders to save Pauline from Donkey Kong. I wish this image was a little more high res so I could see what's on that spinner. It's currently sold out on Amazon.

Weight Watchers is an RPG?

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:25:00 +0000

Clive Thompson posted an interesting article on wired today about how Weight Watchers functions exactly like an RPG. I really like the idea of turning dull, boring activities that people have trouble motivating themselves to do into games. The brilliant thing about Weight Watchers though, if it does actually function like an RPG, is that it isn't marketed as a game and most people who use it probably have no clue that they are playing one.

Ocarina Of Time

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:14:00 +0000

I'm enjoying The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, which I paid $10 to download from the Wii Virtual Console. I borrowed this (along with an N64 system) from my friend Shannon Wheeler not too long after it came out ten years ago, but had to return it before I had completed the game.

At the time I resisted the move from 2D to 3D, and I still see problems with it, especially when comparing this game (the first 3D Zelda title) to the very polished SNES predecessor A Link To The Past ($8 on the VC), which remains beautiful, taking perhaps the gameplay of the original Zelda to its logical, refined conclusion: The play control is more-or-less perfect, the items and their uses and encounters with the quirky non-player characters so much fun, and the graphics and colors beautiful.

One main problem in 3D gaming has to do with the motions of the camera: What images and viewing angles you the player are seeing on the TV screen as you pilot your character around this world. Although Ocarina is said to handle this problem gracefully (and I can attest that compared to Mario 64 this is a big improvement), there are times when it still feels awkward. When being attacked by something just off-screen, for example, as a player I would appreciate it if the camera automatically zoomed back a bit and adjusted itself to a position where I could see both Link and his opponent clearly. But aside for that, and aside from some play-control issues -- having to leap to narrow/moving platforms, for example, is so much more difficult in three dimensions -- this game is pretty beautiful visually, still managing to be evocative even with its comparatively blocky graphics, and the graphics and music combine to create what feels very much like a three-dimensional world that you are slowly exploring, uncovering hidden sections on a map you carry as you do so.

The extensive, relatively in-depth interactions with non-player characters (townspeople, etc) is a big change, and one that I enjoy. Each little village is a puzzle box waiting to be carefully unraveled by the player as you perform this or that task to help people solve problems and receive rewards for your efforts, which in turn sometimes allow you to solve a previously unsolvable problem/puzzle.

What I know now that I didn't know ten years ago: If something seems too hard, do something else instead. It is a lot easier to go through side-quests once you have accumulated some items from the main quest. If you see something unusual, like for example a hole in a patch of dirt, it almost certainly serves some purpose in the game, even if it is not something you can currently do or access -- it pays to remember its existence and location and come back later, once you have more items to try to use there.

I'm going to see if I can go through the whole Zelda series without looking anything up on the internet. We'll see if I make it.

The next installment, Majora's Mask, which was also an N64 title but which has not yet been released for the VC, contains non-player character interactions to an unusually intense and at times bafflingly complex degree. But I plan to keep a notebook by my side, recording clues as I go through. In fact, that might serve me well during this one: sketching a map of the lost woods, for example, and noting locations of pieces of heart and other items that I can not yet obtain.

Aquabats! Supershow!

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:33:00 +0000

It looks like superhero synth-ska band The Aquabats are finally getting the television show they always dreamed of, thanks to the producers of Yo Gabba Gabba. Here is a sneak-preview of the pilot episode:

Critter Crunch

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:41:00 +0000

If I could get my hands on an iPhone I would totally buy this puzzle game:

Fat Princess

christina.wooke@gmail.com (Christy) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:26:00 +0000

Alright, I'm sure you've all already seen this, but Fat Princess (PSN), oh my god. You must rescue your princess from the enemy's castle, only they've been stuffing her with sweets. So, it's capture the flag, but you must drag out an obese woman.

(not in-game)

The Coming (or not) Digital Presidency

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:04:00 +0000

Last week I read an article called The Coming Digital Presidency that talked about how Barack Obama's use of the internet to run his presidential campaign could influence the way he uses the internet to run the government if he takes office.

Today I read an article on the New York Times website about how Chris Hughes, one of the founders of facebook, now works for the Obama campaign to create the My.BarackObama.com social networking portion of their website.

All very interesting stuff, and promising too, as the internet and social networking could potentially reinvigorate the principals of democracy our country was founded on, bringing power back into the hands of the people, many of whom have become unfortunately quite jaded by the political system.

Oh, then through a link in another New York Times article I saw this video, in which John McCain states that he doesn't know how to use a computer. Hmmm...

Stoned spacial reasoning

noreply@blogger.com (Grant) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:07:00 +0000

If you're having people over and want to play a videogame, but don't want it to take the attention away from the conversation or ruin the relaxed atmosphere, pick up Boom Blox. Highly recommended.

Woody Allen directing a film staring Larry David

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:27:00 +0000

It's true. IMDB says so.