titsay
Not today Justin
occasionally subtle
KIROKAZE
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
cherry valley forever
Product Placement
JBB: An Artblog!
macklin celebrini has autism
dirt enthusiast
noise dept.
Andulka
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Game of Thrones Daily
h
Peter Solarz
DEAR READER
art blog(derogatory)
RMH
seen from Türkiye
seen from Puerto Rico
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Tunisia
seen from Mexico
seen from Mexico
seen from Mexico
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from France
@blind-ninja
This is a blog post that’s incredibly confusing and painful for me to write.
Yesterday morning, Josh forwarded me a tweet that said:
TIL: Max Temkin, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, raped a friend of my friend while attending Goucher College. I don’t support CAH.
Brandon and Ryck from the Daily Anthem invaded the studio to talk about bands that they used to love.
We return to the Dead Horse a short time after the events of The Obsidian Spike. Matloc’s friends have been on a pub crawl for weeks now so he’s looking to adventure with a new crew, Unfortunately, at the Dead Horse pickings are slim…
Brandon and Ryck from the Daily Anthem invaded the studio to talk about songs that defy the law of diminishing returns.
whats for launch?
Hello people, Carlos here. With the new consoles PS4 and XBone dropping in a few months I figured it was a good time to talk about a few of the launch games for some of the consoles of the past.
Lets start with the Atari 5200. Two of the launch games were the classics Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Both of these are classic games that most gamers have played before. Of course in my case I have never played them on the Atari 5200.
But something I did play on a launch console would be Super Mario Brothers on the NES. This is a game that I sunk countless hours in when I was a kid. Of course a had the later released version that also had the amazing Duck Hunt.
Skipping ahead to the release of the Nintendo 64 one of the games launching with the console was Super Mario 64. This game was a blast and is one of my favorite platformers of all time (alongside Super Mario Brothers.)
The release of the PlayStation 2 came alongside the releases of SSX and Tekken Tag Tournament. Now I never touched SSX but Tekken Tag was the first time I actually learned to do something other than button mash in a fighting game.
When the Xbox came out so did good old Halo: Combat Evolved. A great and fun game launching the Halo franchise. Of course when I got around to getting my Xbox it came with the packaged Jet Set Radio Future/GT 2002. Jet Set remains one of my favorite games of all time, and the stylized graphics hold up to this day.
The following console release by Microsoft, the Xbox 360 counted Perfect Dark Zero and Call of Duty 2. But I have never been much of a Call of Duty player and while Perfect Dark Zero looked nice and shiny I never could get into it.
I remember people joking about the name of the Nintendo Wii before launch, but damn if Wii Sports wasn’t a blast. A great choice to drop with the console to show off fancy motion controls, and when you were done playing party games with friends you had the fantastic Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to play.
Did I leave out a console and launch game you think I should not have? Yell at me in the comments!
The Blind Ninja Crew discussed how they would deal with different ethical and moral dilemmas.
Why?
Brandon and Ryck from The Daily Anthem invaded the studio to talk about their favorite songs from other countries. They also talked about the listening to albums on shuffle and the law of diminishing returns.
Decidedly not working today.
We broadcasted Live from the DeVine Liquors Homebrew Competition this year. We got a couple of interviews with the winners and Greg Harris from American Sky talked about the Score Sheets used.
We discussed our fictional countries and how we would run them. Hint: Not well. Beer this week was Zombie Killer a cherry cyser from B. Nektar
Web Comics
One of the motivators to learning to read as a kid was the Sunday morning comics. Garfield, Peanuts and many others in their colorful format would catch my eye. Later on I would enjoy reading through the various collected anthologies of Calvin and Hobbes that I had, a personal favorite to this day. Perhaps they are the reason that I still enjoy reading webcomics today. Of course on our Department of Offence we have had three web cartoonists interviewed: Sketch Gustafson, Doug Kallberg, Phil Juliano and I would recommend giving any of those interviews a listen to. Personally I have a wide variety of webcomics that I read and try to stay caught up on, which becomes rather difficult when the book marks folder I have takes twenty seconds to scroll through. So my usual method of consumption involves going on an archive binge. Archive binges are where you read a massive number of archived articles (that do not necessarily have to be webcomics). I use this method and only keep up to date on a few webcomics at a time. A very few webcomics almost require an archive binge to read at all like the very well done Homestuck by Andrew Hussie, which updates an average of 5.5 updates a day and is thousands of pages long. One thing I enjoy about webcomics is how often times the art and story will evolve over time, such as the first page of Questionable Content compared to this one. If you take a look you can see how the art went from being pretty meh to actually pretty good for a regularly updating strip. Of course not every strip has that kind of art evolution, such as if you take a look at Randall Munroe’s XKCD which has managed to go from stick figures to… stick figures; better drawn, cleverer, stick figures. As I mentioned there are actually a few webcomics that I do stay up to date on. One of the ones I have not mentioned yet is one called Two Guys and Guy by Rickard Jonasson. The clever comedic sociopathy parallels the television show Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. A more recent one that I have added to my *Keep Up To Date On* list is the wonderfully drawn Paranatural by Zack Morrison with its witty dialogue some pretty hilarious facial expressions. One thing to keep in mind about webcomics is that often Sturgeon’s Law (or more techcically Sturgeon’s Revelation) applies, that 90% of everything is crap. For every gem of a webcomic out there, nine webcomics that are pretty horrible are out there. That’s if you are being generous. Of course it all comes down to personal taste in the end. -This will certainly not be the last time I cover the topics of webcomics, and certainly not the last time I use a lot of hyper links. After all next week I am covering tvtropes.
The Chronicles of Amber
I have read a great many books and I am sure I have mentioned this in previous posts. But today I want to talk about a favorite series of mine; The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. It is a dimension hopping, mystery filled adventure; where the world of Amber is literally the center of the universe. The first book opens with a man waking up in a hospital on our earth with amnesia knowing only that he is uninjured and has been heavily sedated. As he makes his way out and meets up with family he learns he is not even human, but an heir to the greatest kingdom of all the worlds; Amber and a member of one of the most dysfunctional families around. Corwin sets out to reclaim his memories, take the throne, get revenge, and to try not to die. All in the first book. Length wise these books are not too long, my old paperback copies averaging 190 pages while the ten book omnibus I have reaches almost 1300 pages. For ten books, this is not too bad. The books are narrated in a clever and snarky first person perspective that makes the pages fly by. The stories told are interesting, if at some points a bit bizarre. I have given a very bare bones description for the fact that there is a lot of twists and turns that I could accidentally spill. The first book in the series, “Nine Princes in Amber,” is one of my favorite books of all time. I would highly recommend this series to anyone looking for a fantasy series that is smart but as bogged down with plots and counter-plots as Wheel of Time or Game of Thrones. In the event that you want something a little bit more in the science fiction section Zelazny also wrote a very excellent and Hugo award winning novel called, “Lord of Light,” (written in 1967) that mixes in Buddhism, Hinduism, and very advanced technology.
Psychopaths
Just the other night I finally got around to watching the movie Seven Psychopaths, and I have to say that I greatly enjoyed the film. Starring Collin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken. Written and directed by the same man behind the movie “In Bruges.” Basic story is that Farrell plays an alcoholic Irish screen writer with writers block trying to write a film called Seven Psychopaths and in the course of it crosses paths with many different psychopaths. Rockwell is his well meaning dog napping friend who works alongside Walken. Woody Harrelson is gang leader who’s dog gets taken and hilarity ensues. Everybody turns in amazing performances in this film most notably Sam Rockwell for his amazing performance as the horribly and hilariously misguided Billy, especially funny is the scene showing how Billy thinks the screenplay should end. Other standout performances include Tom Waits short role as the psychopath Zachariah. In short this film deconstructs other violent revenge films and even pokes fun at itself in the form of the ongoing screenplay being written. From well written characters to lampshades being dropped on tropes all over the place this film was very entertaining and is one of the films I have seen so far this year. So I highly recommend it.
Dark Souls
A few days ago I decided to dust off my copy of Dark Souls for the 360. Dark Souls is a very difficult game where you will die. A lot. A game where you will have to think your way through combat and cannot just go in blindly swinging. A game that will make you yell, “Bullshit!” at your television. It is one of those games I never got around to beating, not because I ran out of patience for it but because my attention span drifted off. Of course I had to start the game over since my mad skills had unfortunately deteriorated in the last year and a half. The very basic of the story is that you are undead and were sent to a where all the other undead are sent. The first goal you come across in the game is to ring two bells to open some gates. Sounds easy right? Well unfortunately there are a lot of very strong enemies between you and those bells. And this game does not hold your hand at all, you will have to blindly trudge your way through the game (or watch walkthrough videos if you really want to.) Each time you die you lose all the souls and humanity you were carrying, along with your progress. Souls are used to purchase arms and armor, spells, and even to level up. After dying you appear at the last campfire you rested at; with all the enemies you defeated back to their places. You can get back the souls and humanity if you make your way back to where you died, but if you die a second time all those souls and humanity are gone for good, which is rather detrimental to making any progress. All in all I have to say it is a very entertaining game, if you are looking for a challenge. If you are looking for a game to casually play through, do not choose this game. This game is difficult and unforgiving but the sense of, “I did it!” when you finally accomplish something you have died at repeatedly for the last hour makes it worth it. I definitely recommend this game if you are up for the challenge. The sequel is currently in development.
The Unfinished
I own a lot of video games and a lot of books. Unfortunately I am rather bad at finishing what I set out to do. As such there are quite a few video games and books that I just never finished; not because they were bad, but because I just got sidetracked. I will start out on unfinished books. Generally this problem of not finishing a book crops up when I am in the middle of a book series, such as how I am only part way through the Dresden Files. Unfortunately for me I have a habit of keeping the books I am currently working on spread all throughout my room. I have Rise of Empire by Michael J Sullivan stacked on Red Country by Joe Abercrombie stacked on William Gibson’s Nueromancer. All half-read and all within arms reach. And do not get me started on all the newer books I have sitting around that are unread that I have acquired in the last four months (hint: they have their own bookshelf). But the worst offender would fall to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. A series I have tried to push through from start to end several times and failed every time, losing steam after the seventh book. Perhaps the problem in my case is not that I do not have enough books but I have to many books. I have boxes of books that I have bought. I have boxes of classic science fiction books that I have inherited. A guess as to the ratio of books I have read to books that I just own would probably fall in at one book out of every twenty. This is in spite of just how prolific a reader I am. This problem is in some ways worse with video games. In some ways I want to blame the online Steam sales, especially the developer package deals (I have only 13 out of over a hundred games installed from Steam.) But the fact is I have had this issue long before I had a computer. On the Sony Play Station the only rpg I beat was Final Fantasy 7; leaving FF8, FF9, FF Tactics, Legend of Dragoon. Unfortunately I will never have the time to go back and finish many of these. It seems that if I don’t sit down and power through a book or video game (or tv series for that matter) I may never get around to finishing it. Except for the books, might be some hope for them.
Kickstarters
Ah, crowd funding. Where people put various projects up on sites such as Kickstarter and people put various amounts of money down so the project can meet its goal. Generally with various tiers. For example a crowd funded video game might offer a digital copy of itself for $10, with other levels of higher donations offering even cool goodies, exclusive contents and more. Of course since your money is funding the project, it will take some time before it comes to fruition and you get what you actually paid for. Now I personally dislike paying now for something that I will not receive for some time. When pre-order a video game is literally the day before the games released. Not that this has stopped me from using kickstarter. I myself helped fund one project last year, specifically a Shadowrun video game. Actually I put in roughly a hundred dollars getting me cool things such as: hardcover collection of short stories set in the universe by authors of the genre, a t-shirt, a usb Shadowrun dog tag with a DRM free copy of the game, the sound track and some other things. It is something I funded on a whim last year and it will still be some time before I get my swag. The thing to remember is that you are funding ideas that are not yet products. There have been many interesting projects on Kickstarter, some of them getting far more money then they asked for. The 3Doodler is one such example that has three weeks to go is one such example. The product: a hand held 3d printer that works like pen. The goal: $30,000. As of writing: $2,046,564 with 22, 951 backers. And the pledge bonus’s include the pen along with a bunch of the plastic that the 3Doodler uses. This makes this one a rather astounding success. Crowdfunding is an interesting way of getting small dream projects the financial backing they need to become a reality. I have not even scratched the surface of crowdfunded content such as this, because I do not wish to write a book on the subject of Kickstarter (which could funnily itself get funded by a kickstarter.) With more indie game developers turning to Kickstarters and a great number of cool projects in the pipeline, this is a part of the internet to keep your eye on.
