Destroying the evidence
Monday, December 24, 2007 »
It's like Christmas in December!
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 »
All these little eggs showed up today, which was a great surprise because I pre-ordered them months ago and forgot:
But whatever could be inside??
Oh wow, celebrity ships from various shooters! It truly is a Christmas miracle.
Allow me to geek out for a moment:
Back row, left: OF-1 Daedalus from Image Fight
I'm honestly not familiar with this game, much less this ship. It's actually a little embarrassing to start the list off this way. Onward!
Back row, right: Silver Hawk from Darius
It's the 1P model, which was a great relief, because having a 2P ship without a 1P would just be absurd. I was never a huge fan of this ship's design, but I have a newfound appreciation for it after having to assemble a miniature version of one.
Second row, left: R-9A from R-Type
Mercifully, the R9 itself required no assembly. Also, you will notice that it comes with both a FORCE (round type) and BITS. Two of them! This is amazing attention to detail. Surprisingly, this actually made the R9 the most difficult to assemble, just because of the ridiculous interlocking stand pieces required to give the illusion that the FORCE and BITS are floating in space, ready to release the super wave cannon. The only thing that would have made this better would be if it came with a plastic air-to-air laser. (Or if it were a 1:1 model that I could climb inside and use to shoot aliens.)
Second row, right: Metarion from Gradius 2
This poor-man's Vic Viper was the first capsule I opened up, and as the little paper brochure inside each one has the Vic Viper on the front, I was pretty confused trying to put this one together. AND YES, THAT IS AN OPTION floating behind it. I didn't even know these were included and when I found out they were I was probably the most unreasonably excited that I've ever been!
Front: Vic Viper T-301 from Gradius V
OK, LET'S CREATE A SPACE-TIME ANOMALY IN BETWEEN AND TIME WARP.
♥♥♥
» comments: 1
Tekkon Kinkreet
Monday, December 17, 2007 »
I watched Tekkon Kinkreet recently and I'm trying to decide whether it was GREAT, or just good. The animation and characters were well-done, but the plot is what I'm caught on. The ending gets extremely Japanese. Actually, there's a lot of Japanese-ness going on the entire time, but during the ending especially.
The thing that's tricked me into thinking it's great is the fantastic soundtrack, by English electronic duo Plaid. It's a weird electronic/jazz/Asian mix, and a lot of it actually reminds me of Edward Shearmur's score for K-PAX. Anyway, I've probably listened to it at least once a day for the last week so I can't avoid thinking that it's causing some bias. I may just have to get the movie again.
» comments: 0
The great sidebar backlogathon
Tuesday, December 11, 2007 »
Hey, remember when I used to update the links over there? →
I'll get back to that soon. For now, here's a roundup of my favorite stuff from the Internet over the last few months.
Can you kill a PlayStation 3? The behemoth console is subjected to various extreme conditions. Can it fare better than an Xbox 360 operating at room temperature?
Clive Thompson delves deep into Bungie's development and testing process in The Making of Halo 3. I wish there were articles like this for every game studio.
The most violent fight scene ever! You've got a lot of guts, Oscar! (Warning: Violent!)
Hole punch art by Steven Nicholson.
Isaac Asimov's The Last Question
Makoto Nagano conquers Sasuke, the end-all of Japanese acrobatics gameshows.
Almost certainly a hoax but a great idea nonetheless: Massimo Silenzio's Installation is a sculpture claiming to be the top of Mt. Everest, which he sawed off and removed.
Outside In: Learn how to turn a sphere inside-out. Probably harder than it looks.
Winston the weird cat.
A collection of old TV production company logos.
Almost certainly a hoax but a great idea nonetheless: Xu Zhen's "8848-1.86" is a sculpture claiming to be the top of Mt. Everest, which he sawed off and removed.
Lauren Weedman writes about how she just didn't fit in at The Daily Show. Lauren Weedman is my least favorite Daily Show correspondent of all time. I had reservations about writing that on the off-chance that she'd read my Internet page and be offended, but based on the article it seems like she's really good at ignoring what anyone says.
The Histogram as the Image: Hidden images within value histograms in Photoshop.
Toyota Prius for the Blind. Silent killers no more.
The Great Pizza Orientation Test. NONE PIZZA WITH LEFT BEEF NONE PIZZA WITH LEFT BEEF
5 Awesome Sci-Fi Inventions (That Would Actually Suck). I've thought plenty about flying cars being disasters, but not as much about the whole transporter death issue. Also, if you haven't already, you should see The Prestige.
Trippy images from a broken digital camera.
Runner-up entry for Jonathan Coulton's "I Feel Fantastic" video. This reminds me a lot of old They Might Be Giants.
Wizard's list of ultimate weapons.
Alec Baldwin plays a zillion characters in one scene from 30 Rock. Does that guy have an Oscar yet? An Emmy? How about a Nobel Prize, or maybe a medal of honor? I think he's due.
For Web-geeks only: How Many HTML Elements Can You Name in 5 Minutes? Followed by How Many CSS Properties Can You Name in 7 Minutes? It turns out there are way fewer CSS properties than I imagined.
25 years of water effects in games. PIXEL SHADAZ
The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings. As you're reading this, remember: This list is in descending order of quality. The images keep getting worse.
And, ending on a really high note: Kid playing video games gets attacked by a dog.