Family Circle
Cindy: Mia darlin’, while you’re up, would you please turn off the light?
Mia (age 7): What am I, the maid around here?
Cindy [suppressing laughter]: So, you think you do too much work around the house?
Mia: Well, Pops is always telling me to bring him the wine.
Half-and-Half Tower
I love this image from Mary Jeys.
Mirror’s Edge
Mirror’s Edge is a first person shooter with a physics and movement engine modeled after parkour. It will apparently make you vomit, or at least pretty queasy, by “hacking” your proprioception:
When you run, you see your hands pumping up and down in front of you. When you jump, your feet briefly jut up into eyeshot — precisely as they do when you’re vaulting over a hurdle in real life. And when you tuck down into a somersault, you’re looking at your thighs as the world spins around you.
Fallout 3
Striking Screenshots from the newly released Fallout 3. This game is the reason I have been neglecting you, internet.
4 million domino world record
Videogames are disappearing.
Richard Lemarchand from gamecity on Vimeo.
No, really. They are.
Okay, Take Your Medicine
Saw this in the Dallas Morning News today:
Fellowship Church pastor Rev. Ed Young preaches a sermon dealing with sex while sitting on a bed at the Grapevine church. Rev. Young is issuing a challenge this Sunday for married couples to have sex on seven straight days.
You have to see the picture.
Some difficult choices
I’ve been eating a lot of sushi lately, I offer by way of introduction to this post.
I have been thinking about something for the past day or so, albeit intermittently, I will admit. Here is the scenario. Please place, to the best of your ability, in order of worseness, from least worse to most worse, the following ways of being killed by an animal:
(a) By Snake: The snake will either wrap itself tightly around you, suffocating you to death in your shock and terror, or it will poison you and you will die painfully over several minutes or hours. Either way, you will think while you are dying about the fact that you will end up a human shaped lump inside a snakeskin covering, you will think of those large snake jaws unlocking and consuming you whole, and that what the poison or the snakemuscle didn’t get, the digestive juices would finish off.
(b) By bear: Mauled, torn limb from limb, eaten alive. Most likely done quite quickly, with the possibility of being ‘left for dead’ in some abandoned place, to die of hypothermia or your wounds.
(c) By crocodile: Depending on the appetite of the crocodile’s moment, you will probably be dragged and impaled on croc teeth for some time, maybe only halfarsedly eaten, maybe a leg pulled off of you and chewed up, the rest of you being left underneath a log or a large rock to be consumed at a more convenient time, later.
There is no hyena option.
I look forward to your responses.
Nous volons des banques.
“How you? This here’s Miss Sheila Ryan. I’m Alek Lindus.
“We rob banks.”
Read more
got the equipment, where’s them coins gone
An Archivist and a Shootist
Lucy knew I’m an archivist. And she’d seen the odd photograph I shoot now and again. So first she asked me, “What do you archive?”, next, “What do you shoot?”
I sent her a camera-phone snapshot of some of the things I shoot: American coins. I use an air rifle and shoot mostly indoors these days, though in my wandering-in-the-desert year I used to sit out on the front porch and shoot not only coins but any liquor bottle that featured a suitable image. Bottles of Bombay Sapphire were always fun, though I never much cared for the contents.
Transparent Mask
Daryl, Deron–I Told You Not To Run Over Those Squirrels!
Texas leads the nation in deaths from vehicle/animal crashes.
What did I tell you?? It’s like running with scissors.
The Unfinished Swan
“The Unfinished Swan is a first-person painting game set in an entirely white world. Players can splatter paint to help them find their way through an unusual garden.” The game, however, is still under development.
In which Mr. Simone indulges his video game geekery
If you weren’t aware the new, fan created Portal Prelude is officially released (torrent here, download here). The original game is widely considered one of the greatest games of all times (teaser trailer here) and, I think, is interesting enough for both the hardcore and casual gamer.
Found
Today. In the cat’s litter box.
A chess piece. A white knight.
Ben Folds Five - Underground
It reminds me of being 18, cutting class, drinking beer, and playing vintage (at the time) video games like MOO2 and Warsong.
Monopoly + Helvetica
I feel like somebody posted this before, but it bears repeating. (via Daring Fireball)
dear clusterflock
Any suggestions for a drinking game for the Biden / Palin debate?
Pier Solar
PIer Solar is a new game for the Sega Genesis/CD. It is an indie game done in the Japanese RPG tradition, reminiscent of Chrono Trigger, and made by fans for fans on a retro system.
Chris of the Artful Gamer has a pretty good breakdown of why this is exciting:
First, the entire game has been developed for the Sega Genesis/CD using a fan-developed SDK - that means that the game is truly a console RPG! It is going to be released for the Genesis on cartridge and in CD-format for those with a Sega CD. (At this point I’m unclear if buyers will receive a ROM image of the game to play on their PC, however.) Second, the team released a working beta demo of the game to give us a taste of the final game. Third, this is one of the few JRPGs with a fantastic script/dialogue - it’s witty and charming, and has a way of pulling you right into the game. Finally, I’ve never seen a fan-developed project of this calibre. Even though the demo is a beta (with some bugs), you can see the love and sweat that went into making the game, and the final product looks like it will rival some of the ‘big indie’ commercial releases like Braid.
You can pre-order it at the website (warning: lots of flash nonsense), and also find a demo under the “media” section.
John Cale | An interview (14 October 1984)
BTW
Line Rider is coming out for the iphone.
Go has been turing’d
Turing’d is the term used when one can no longer tell whether an act was accomplished by a human or a computer. Until recently it was thought that Go, an ancient pattern recognition game, could never be beaten by artificial intelligence. That changed recently.
Last week on Thursday August 7, 2008, MoGo, a software program running on borrowed supercomputers (stuffed with 800 4.7 ghrz processors with 15 Teraflops of storage), beat a US Go professional. According to the American Go Association MoGo beat Myungwan Kim who is an 8-dan master. While the game was played on a professional 19 x 19 board (most previous wins by computers were done on smaller amateur level 9 x 9 boards), Kim is not the highest ranking pro (a 9-dan) and he gave the computer a nine-stone handicap. He beat the machine in two other games. Afterwards he estimated MoGo as a 2 to 3-dan player.
McCain Campaign Apology
If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.
high school musical
Blake Peebles, a 16 year old Guitar Hero virtuoso, is dropping out of school to pursue gaming full time.
In fact, young Mr. Peebles is dropping out of high school… in order to focus on Guitar Hero full time. Peebles hopes to join the small but growing crew of players looking to make gaming a job. Citing his victories in Guitar Hero tournaments, which include “gift certificates, gaming equipment, and chicken sandwiches,” Peebles thinks he has the chops to play competitively and earn actual money in the process. As the story notes, top gamers on the competitive circuit can earn up to $80,000 a year (though $25,000 is more common). Peebles, of course, can count his 52 Chick-fil-A combo meals toward that total.