Pages

Monday, December 29, 2014

Unfair Video Game Reviews: Dead Space

A little over a week ago I recorded an Unfair Video Game Review.

The original concept was that a game gets five minutes to grab my attention.  The timer would start after the play button was pressed and time would be added or subtracted based on awesome or crappy things that happen.  If 

While this first attempt was being recorded the realization came to me that I should start the timer after the opening cinematic.  Among other things I know there are many areas where it could be improved.  I looking for feed back.

Let me know what you think.

TED: lol, txting is killing language. JK



One thing that's always fascinated be is the evolution of language, and I'd never thought of the change in the use of the word lol as anything along those lines.  I always felt kinda embarrassed when I would use the word lol when I didn't actually laugh out loud, but now instead I'm going to think about how it's actually being used and what for.  That goes for everything now when communicating in short quick bursts of text. When I find I'm using language in a different way than normal instead of feeling embarrassed I'm going to think about how I'm helping to create a language.



"The limits of my language means the limits of my world."
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Every theater should be screening this movie


After hearing about SONY canceling the Interview and Paramount putting the kibosh on showings of Team America I think I've found the movie that they should screen.

The Great Dictator



This is one of the first talkies that Charlie Chaplin ever made and the mustache made it perfect for a prince and the popper type story line involving Hitler.  The slapstick is good but this speech makes the whole film worth it.

I know it's not a direct attack on Kim Jong Un, but it would be great to play it in place of the other two films mentioned above to point out how silly kowtowing to a dictator really is.

Charlie Chaplin had the balls to take on a dictator why can't SONY and Paramount do the same.

"Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance."
-Mel Brooks

10,000 hours of team building and leadership training.

This is something EVERY one needs to watch.  It explains something I've believed in for a long time.


Games like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online have been building  team work and leadership and leader ship skills for years now.  It's almost at a point where putting guild master on a resume should be a plus with 10,000 hours of training some of these guild leaders have.


What she has to say about escapism is right in line with what one of may favorite authors had to say about it: 

“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Andromeda in the sky



Thousands of years from now the Andromeda Galaxy will be so close it will fill up the night sky.  What I didn't know was how bit it is in our night sky currently.  The image above is a rendering of what the galaxy would look like in the night sky if it were brighter.

I found this image on Reddit.com Here.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

PokeDoom: Professional Pokemon Investigation and Elimination




Digging through some of my old videos and photos I came across this little gem from my past.  As you can see from the image here it is a CD with a very faded drawing of a Koffing.  This is one of the few records of my hobbies while I was in high school.  Most of that content was lost in the aether of the internet after GeoCities went the way of the down.

This disc contains a mod I had began but never finished.  I never really got very far but I had big ambitions for this mod.

Around the time I made this disc was when Half-Life was very popular and I had discovered that you could create your own levels and maps.  This subsequently devoured much of my free time.  I didn't particularly want to learn how to model characters and rig a skeleton.  That meant if I wanted to make a total conversion mod I'd need something a little easier to edit.  So Doom it is.  Dooms sprites were easy to replace with my own sprites and the level editing is still one of the simplest you can find.

As a test of this concept I began by creating what I figure would be the simplest Pokemon to replicate.  That is why I settled on Koffing replacing the Cacodemon.  The Cacodemon had no walk cycle and and the turn around Koffing was pretty much a matter of moving his face over a little bit.


The concept was that in the world of Pokemon some Pokemon would be considered pests and would need to be removed or eliminated.  It was the players job to remove and eliminate these Pokemon. Most of the weapons would remain the same pistols, shotguns, but others would be changed.  I wanted to make the rocket launcher into a pokeball.  Eventually the player would need to take out a Mewtwo run amok after escaping team rockets lab.

Here are links to download the map shown in the video and the sprites.  If you are familiar with Doom wad files please feel free to use and modify these files.  I would love for some one to complete my dream of PokeDoom.

Map download here: http://golfturat.com/downloads/pokedoom/BMAP.WAD

Koffing Sprite: http://golfturat.com/downloads/pokedoom/pokemon.WAD