Halo - The Future of Gaming

You'd think this is a possibility with all the Halo3 tie-ins.

Have you ever played Halo? Will you?

I haven't. I'm not much for first-person-shooters. Especially player-vs-player ones. I just suck. Still, Halo3 looks to be graphically beautiful, and there is something a bit cathartic about blowing away digital enemies. I'm just not going to drop $350 on an Xbox 360 then another $50 or more just for a single game.

People are doing it, though.

Squirrel Ninja Warrior

I love Ninja Warrior on G4. (Called Sasuke in its original Japanese format.) This little squirrel has got them all beat!

If you've never seen Ninja Warrior (Sasuke), here is the Japanese original airing of only the second man to ever beat the course. (The course changes somewhat each competition.)



I foresee a fully Americanized version on the horizon. Though I do love the Japanese version. They have the best television!

Sure beats American Gladiators!

Which is making a comeback. =/

Toot-Tone: The Greatest Invention Ever?

The audio is a little soft, you may have to turn up the volume slightly.


I'll never hear a ring-tone the same way again!

Thinking on it, I wonder if there are ring tones that make fart noises? What a great prank that would be to download it into your friends phone, set it to default, then call him when he's in a public place!

5min - Life Videopedia

I just heard about this new website called 5min. It is a video sharing site that is for sharing knowledge and how-to's rather than cute animals, groin shots, or Internet freakology.

Here is how 5min describe themselves:

5min is a place to find short video solutions for practical questions and a place for people to share their knowledge.

The idea behind 5min is very simple: any solution can be visually explained in no more than 5 minutes. Our goal is to create the first communal Life Videopedia allowing users from all over the globe to contribute their knowledge by sharing visual guides in areas such as arts, business, fashion, sports, health, tech, food, and much more.

5min's basic philosophy is that everybody is an expert in something and has something to teach others, so why not share that knowledge for the better of the whole? That's why we created a place to gather that collective knowledge onto one platform.

You can read more at 5min's About page, and even *Gasp* watch a 5min video about them!

Unlike YouTube, Google Video, or other video sharing sites, you cannot embed 5min videos to a webpage, though you can send them to your mobile phone. The reason is 5min's proprietary Smart Player that is much more robust than typical online video players. With Smart Player viewers can slo-mo the action, zoom in and out, and more.

I like this idea. Having useful information in one place, rather than buried inside a pile of pseudo-entertainment, is a great thing!

Categories include: Arts, Fashion, Food, Games, Health, Music, Spiritual, Sports, Life Tips and many more. Thousands of videos are already available.

Some of the more interesting videos:

How to Survive a Knife Attack - Especially if it's a rubber knife, you can do it all in slow motion, and the knife-wielder is a passive behemoth!

How to Tie a Du-Rag - 'Cuz you never know when you might need to fly those gang colors.

How to quit playing WoW! - So you can spend more time looking at Hillary Duff Pr0n and researching how to create explosive devices!

How to Wash a Cat - This is followed by the How-to video "How to Treat Infected Cat Scratches".

Tips for Managing Your Zune - for all 3 non-iTunes users out there. You know who you are!

Who says online videos can't be educational?

The Guild - Episodes 1 - 3

This is for all my gaming buddies:

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call


The Guild - Episode 2: Zaboo'd


The Guild - Episode 3: The Macro Problem


Yes, that is Felicia Day, Vi from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A couple others look vaguely familiar, but none of their names (from the credits) ring a bell.

Anyhow, funny stuff!

And eerily familiar overtones. o.O

Live Optical Illusions

The brass nuts illusion is freaky! It works on the same inverted principle as the dragon video below.

Iron Man Trailer

Iron Man is one of my favorite super-heroes. I used to love the whole playboy millionaire / super-hero / flawed individual thing he had going. And his armor suits were freaking cool!

On 05-02-08 Iron Man will burst onto the big screen. Robert Downey Jr. is an inspired casting choice to play Tony Stark aka Iron Man. John Favreau directs ol' Shellhead's debut picture. Many other big name stars are also on board: Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Hilary Swank, Jeff Bridges, and the incomparable Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury!

I'd advise going to Apple's website to view the trailer in a crisp, clean Quicktime or HD format.

If you don't wanna go there, the trailer has already shown up on YouTube. Not sure how long it'll be available, but here is a link to one below:



I love how Black Sabbath's Iron Man made it into the trailer. Makes me wanna see it even more!

It may surprise you to know there is already a fantastic, full length Iron Man movie available on DVD. The third in Marvel's animated features, The Invincible Iron Man is a surprisingly good adventure and origin story.

Iron Man's arch-enemy Mandarin is in this one, though continuity is much different than in the comics. His origin, battles with powerful magic imbued statues, a love interest, and more armor action than you fire a repulsor at will keep you glued to your television. Easily one of my favorite super-hero movies ever.

I'll likely watch this once or twice before next May. My anticipation level for the Iron Man movie is running high! I can't wait!!

Smallville Season 7 Teaser

For all you Smallville fans out there!

Internet People (Frederator)

"An animated tribute to the internet people of the world, wherever you may be. Animated by Dan Meth, with music by Dan Meth and Micah Frank." A Meth Minute 39 show.

How to Untangle Earphones

Below is an easy, step-by-step video on how to untangle earphones from MP3 players and other devices.



I wanted to post this last night, but was too tired. This morning I find out it's one of those new viral videos, even getting featured on G4's Attack of the Show. Even the YouTube video jumped up almost 40,000 hits since I saw it and wanted to post.

*sigh*

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride! ~.^

Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires (And This Squirrel)

Coin Puzzle - Are You a Genius?

Okay, I know I said I'd take a few days off, but I'm feeling better and can sit for a little bit, so ... Here is a post I was holding onto. Just watch the video below, and follow along with it. Just to help you out a bit, you will be asked to get five coins: three large and two small. (Quarters and pennies work well.)

I'm ashamed to say it took me 5 tries. I am typically much better at these logic puzzles, especially after seeing the solution. D'oh! In my defense, I had a sinus headache and was under the influence of Sudafed and my usual cocktail of prescription medication.

If you go to the website shown in the video, there is a slew of comments to the video saying how they completed this coin puzzle in four moves or less. By the rules in the video, yes, they did. But I'd add another rule to the puzzle which states, "When moving the paired coins, their ending position must have one of the two coins touching at least one of the non-moved coins."

How well did you do?

Few Days Off

I likely will not be blogging for the next few days. A painful medical condition has arisen that precludes me from sitting too long. I'm too embarASSed to tell you what it is. Butt, hopefully I'll have some PREPARATION done for when I return, TUCKing away little ideas and such.

Until then amuse yourselves with Star Wars: Attack of The Hemorrhoids!

Kitty Say What?

Now I got this song stuck in my head! Nooooooo!

D&D&Me

Wow ... that D&D video was perhaps the most boring and poorly put together piece of promotional crap I've ever watched. I put the wrong video up. I had meant to post this one:

A much more light-hearted look at Dungeons and Dragons over the years.

I've played D&D since Summer 1979. Yes, my first time playing was when I was 8-years-old!

All I really recall is I was given an elf to play. At that time elves were not a race, as much as a class. They were a combination of warrior, archer, and magic-user. I didn't care about that then, though. I knew my elf could shoot a bow and cast Magic Missile! Of course, my mental image of Magic Missile was of miniature ICBMs flying out of my elf's hands, not mystical shards of light doing force impact damage. I was eight! Whaddaya expect?

The only other thing I recall from that very first experience was encountering a stegosaurus. Now, I loved dinosaurs at the time. One of my favorite toys was a pack of cheap, multi-colored plastic dinosaurs I would play with for hours, doing mock battles, attacking my other toys, growling and roaring.

The fact said Stegosaurus was in a 10'x10'x10' room in the middle of an underground dungeon never crossed my eight year old mind. Nor did the fact that Stegoaurs do not eat meat, yet piles of bones and half eaten goblin corpses littered the hallway surrounding the door into the dino filled closet. What did register is that the damn thing killed my elf in one lousy hit. This was after my Magic Missile spell bounced harmlessly off its scaled hide, as well as a slew of hastily shot arrows.

I didn't really get into playing D&D until a few months later in 1980, after the Christmas break, when a friend of mine got the Basic game from Santa. Our small group of friends spent hours and hours pouring over the rules, creating new characters, and trying to draw what our carefully crafted characters looked like. All before we ever stepped foot into a single adventure.

The Keep on the Borderlands was my first, real adventure. Fighting orcs, goblins, and the occasional Ogre and undead in the Caves of Chaos is still a warm memory. My elf made it all the way to level 3 this time ... before a black dragon ate her. She had no chance, really. The dragon was hiding under a pile of dirty goblin clothing in a small side cave. The DM (Dungeon Master) added that little encounter into the published adventure after deciding we had done enough Dungeons, it was now time for the Dragons part of the game's title. =/

I was beginning to hate reptiles.

The rest is history.

Playing D&D gave me a way to unleash my imagination, a love of reading (mostly fantasy stories at that time), exercised my math skills with its often arcane rules of figuring out if an action succeeded, broadened my communication skills through story-telling and role-play, and taught me how to research by looking up rules in the books, as well as all sorts of esoteric things relating to medieval times from the library. (Yeah, I learned the difference between a bill-guisarme and a halberd, as well as what a buttery was, and why a longbow was deadlier than a crossbow, among other things. You know, important knowledge to help me in my day-to-day life!)

I've played, and collected, D&D since. I used to have several of the varying Basic Sets (but they were lost or otherwise misplaced over the last 27 years). I have many original 1st edition rulebooks, most of the 2nd edition core rule books, the vastly underrated Skills and Powers options set of rulebooks (more like a 2.5 edition), and the core rulebooks for 3rd Edition.

I never "upgraded" to 3.5 Edition, though i do have the 3.5 Basic Game box set which I keep intending to teach and play with the boys, but never do. Mainly because, by the time the weekend rolls around, we are so busy with one thing or another, someone is on restriction for something, or Mom isn't feeling well (the only real gaming spot is a table very near her bedroom), we have no time. Plus I play WoW ... a lot. More than I should.

Which brings us to this weekend and the lack of posts Saturday and Sunday. I could have, but they would have been made in the late afternoon, almost evening. Evenings are times when I like to pop into WoW and hook up with online friends to hang out. Plus, one of the kids was in big trouble (for something I felt was minor and way overblown, but Grandma wouldn't let it go! *sigh*) and the house was an unpleasant place to be, let alone try to write a blog.

All in all, I'd rather have been in a 10'x10' room with a Stegosaurus.

D&D 4th Edition

An official video about the recently unveiled, upcoming 4th Edition of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game.

More to come later ...

The Ballad of the Noob

This was hilarious! And, yes, according to the video's creators, they are aware alliance and Horde cannot actually talk to each other, let alone trade items.

You may want to turn this up a little, as a few spots get kinda hard to hear.

The Brothers Tauren 2

Meh, not nearly as funny as Red Sky Foundry's first one, but humorous enough. This was posted to YouTube on November 8, 2006. Being that was almost a year ago, the chances of The Brothers Tauren 3 being made are not looking so good.

Red Sky Foundry also did a SIMS machinima (movies made from video game captures). It can be found at their woefully un-updated website. It's pretty funny, and the SIMS game seems well suited to making your own movies in it.

Wonder what a WoW SIMS game would be like? Hmmmmm ...

The Brothers Tauren

Created by Red Sky Foundry. This is one of the funniest, and most professional, WoW movies I've seen. I'll post the sequel tomorrow.

AC-DC

No, not the rock band.

In this case AC-DC stands for Air Conditioner Does Cool.

That's right, my AC is working again! Yay!

Per the tech guy (who looked a little like Corbin Bernson) the unit was just frozen solid. No repairs were required. Freon was charged, pressure was good. He also mentioned the unit looked like the Trane equivalent of Frankenstein. (We've had numerous repairs to it over the years, especially after it got fried by lightning.)

We were charged a total of $130 for two trips out. I was a bit miffed at that, but can only blame myself because I did not see any ice in the unit and did not shut it off before his first trip out. This required a second trip after we sweltered all night with the AC off.

Still, small price to pay in light of what it could have been. Though the tech did state the unit was on its last legs, and we had better start saving for a new one. We're hoping it lasts until the lawsuit against the roofing company that screwed up and caused major water leaks is settled before this happens.

So, if you live in Tampa and need air conditioning repairs, I highly recommend Action Air. Friendly, not as prompt as I like, but they did not push us to get a new unit, and no mysterious ailment of the machine was diagnosed. It wasn't broken, they said so, and I appreciate that kind of honesty in a business.

We've found our new AC company, and when we do get a new unit, they'll be who we go through.

For anyone who thought they'd find some real AC~DC stuff here, and for those of you who read through the entire post above, and because as hot as it got last night reminded me of Hell ...