The Periphery of the Mind

First up we have The Outbreak, a choose your own path adventure about a group of people trying to survive a zombie uprising. The twist? Instead of reading the adventure like a book, you watch it like a movie.

Next is Corpse Craft, an amusing little game where you match three identical colors to collect body parts you use to make ghastly monsters to send against an opponent. It gets more complicated than that, and while the game play is adequate the setting is rather amusing.

I'd also mention Left 4 Dead here, but it's neither free nor even available to play yet. And, after some issues with Spore, I'll probably wait until the game is half-price or less before picking it up. Still, it looks like it'll provide one of the scariest games that's been released in some time.

Labels: Games

So I've been kicking an idea lately. We need to start standarizing our vehicles to run solely on electric.

I know, I know. Electrics lack the range and power of standard gasoline cars. But the idea is that we can, in time, develop more efficient batteries and charging technologies, improving range and making a "fill up" take only a few minutes instead of several hours. Possibly through some sort of capacitor charge, or even a simple battery switch. Whatever method we use it'll take time to convert our current gas stations to electric, but the stations will still be needed.

But why do we need to standardize for electric vehicles at all? Put simply, it's not fuel efficient enough to do otherwise. When you fill up at the pump you chose between two to four different fuel types, and at some places like Shell you have to choose between "name brand" fuels and more generic gas. Each of these different gasoline types require different refining techniques, different storage methods, and different engines to use. And they all come from a supply of global oil that can't keep up with demand.

But if we switch to a standard of electricity for our fuel, it matters less where we ultimately get energy for our cars. Solar, wind, nuclear, coal, natural gas, and even oil can all still be used by electric plants to generate electricity. And as costs for alternative energy technologies drop, people can start to afford some of these options for themselves, generating the energy they need with their own windmills and solar collectors. Don't worry, the oil companies won't be struggling, as they'll simply cut production from fuel losses and continue to sell oil to manufacturing concerns. After all, we'll need plastics and oils for the materials in all those panels, and mills, and power plants. Not to mention everything else we need.

Now, for my next trick: convincing people that a 55 mph national speed limit will more effectively drop oil prices and keep them down than all the begging to OPEC we've done.

Last Friday of the month, so a double dose.



"Hand on Your Heart" by Jose Gonzales.



"Village Green Preservation Society" by the Kinks.

Labels: Funky Friday

They now have a game where shaking the remote actually makes the character move better.

The shirts are in, and they look really really good! I'll start getting them out to people as I can. Hopefully I'll have them all handed off by this weekend.

Labels: General, NWA

Solona, at Saint George Island.

We're going back!

Labels: General

"Clouds Across the Moon" by the Rah Band.

Labels: Funky Friday

I know comics can get kind of weird, but wow....

Labels: Geeky

Okay, all the good jokes may very well be in the trailer, but they're still pretty good.

Hopefully it'll be on the Encore next year....

Labels: General, Humor, movies

I'm tired, and possibly getting sick.

The storm blew off the siding on the house. Called my insurance company and reported it, and then called the woman who is likely to by my claims adjuster (I work with her husband). Had a contractor come out and take photos. No ETA as to when the insurance company will get in touch with us again. I may call them by noon if I don't hear anything sooner.

Saw my Grandma at the hospital Saturday. Brought her flowers. High point was getting to run around with Shanna.

Went to work in the garage on a shoe rack. Discovered Aslan had gnawed through about 16 inches, up and down, on the table saw's power cord. And then he gnawed through the three wires inside of that in places. It wasn't plugged in at the time; kind of wished it had been. Yes, it'll be sad when he dies, but at this rate we're lucky when he just ruins stuff. Eventually he'll burn the house down. It's not "funny" anymore. Wrapped the exposed wires in electrical tape, then wrapped those wires up in more electric tape, and the saw seems fine.

Dogs are still all upset and agitated after the storm, the neighbors' even worse than ours I think. And they now have another over protective barking dog they ignore all the time.

I'm really getting sick of the house, sick of the neighborhood, and almost sick enough of all the animals to do something about it.

Labels: General, whine

"Ghosts" by Ladytron. Droning and repetitive, but it kind of gets stuck in your head because of it.

Labels: Funky Friday

So above is the Spore Widget, which lets people see the stuff I've been tinkering with in Spore. I wish it was a little bit clearer, but the last four creatures are shown in reverse evolutionary sequence.

Made it to the Space Stage yesterday, and it really is a whole new game. The learning curve is higher than before, but now things are really taking off. Literally. Exploration, planet changing, colonization of other worlds, research, artifact hunting, and so on. Two of the missions I had really stood out. First I was hunting artifacts for some alien empire. I went to one of the target planets holding these artifacts and found it buried inside the city of a (more primative) alien race. I wasn't sure how to get to it, so I just started burning the city to the ground with my ship's lasers and looted the rubble. As I was doing this the city came under attack from it's continental neighbors, who were waging a holy war against them. While the game said nothing on the matter, I couldn't help but imagine I was seen as a herald of divine favor... or wrath.

Another mission made me realize just how big the space stage is. I had 20 minutes to locate a specific world around a specific star and gather half-a-dozen life different life forms from it (the planet that gave me the mission wanted to increase their biodiversity). The thing is that I spent three minutes just looking at my map of star systems I'd visited (the target was a place I'd already been to). And then, once I found the system, I had to find the world within it. It plays out easily enough, which is impressive in and of itself, but the scale and scope of the space stage is literally astronomical.

Labels: Games, Geeky

Woke up yesterday at 4, unable to sleep. Went to Wal-Mart to get groceries (I always go early in the morning anyway) and saw that they had Spore on the shelves.

After spending yesterday playing it, with occasional input from the Professor, three words describe it: impressive, cute, fun.

Basically you start off as a microbe in the Cell Stage, eating and growing and slowly evolving. It plays kind of like a gorgeous version of Pac-Man really, with you running around and gobbling up creatures and plants, trying not to get eaten in turn. As you grow, you begin to notice giant things in the tide pool with you. And even bigger things lurking in the background. As you get bigger, those giant things start to notice you, and you have to avoid them. Until you get big enough to eat them that is. After about ten minutes or so, you've grown big enough to enter the...

Creature Stage. Here you walk out on land, hunting for food and growing. The big differences of course are that you can really begin to adapt your creature. Growing legs, arms, advanced mouths, wings, and so on. And yes, your critters can fly. And you'll need every edge you can get, as the goal here is to survive and evolve. While you can play it out aggressively, I went for a more social lifestyle, charming and prancing around to impress other species. As you grow, with lots of cutsey mating dances and teaching of babies, you eventually reach sentience and the...

Tribal Stage, which is so far the weakest part of the game for me. Basically you can dress your critter now, domesticate wild animals, and go conquer or ally with other tribes. It's not bad, but I suspect it'll be fairly dull to play through again, as the only real variance seems to be in what critters are randomly evolved to compete with you. There was a lot more player input and variety to be found in the Creature stage, but fortunately that player input returns in the...

Civilization Stage. Here you finally set out to conquer the world and its resources, as well as creating all sorts of things. I'm only about a quarter through it, but I've been using religion to guilt rival societies into defeat with great effect. In Civilization Stage you can design your own buildings, vehicles, and even a national anthem if you want. It's really quite impressive. And what about when the world is conquered? Well, I'm not there yet but that leads to the...

Space Stage. Maybe then I'll get to deal with all the UFOs that have been tormenting my poor world as far back as the Creature Stage. See, back when my peaceful creature was trying to make friends with other species, a giant UFO started flying overhead, scaring them off. And while it didn't abduct my critters, it was apparetly hunting for new species. I think. And in the Civilization Stage, it appeared over a city, bringing the city joy and happiness as my armies were trying to convert them to the worship of a giant holographic frogman yelling at them (fortunately a third party nation appeared and just started attacking the city with its tanks, demoralizing them enough to embrace giant frogman as their god).

Seriously, the game is wacky and fun, and remarkably easy to get sucked into. All that said there are still some gameplay issues that bother me. I found at least one bug that crashes the program when first loading a saved game, but I've also found a workaround for it. And there are some problems I have in that the game isn't as free in letting you tweak your creature's appearance as I think it should be, but that's more of a personal opinion than an actual problem. I suspect that over the next few weeks the problems with game crashes will be fixed, and then it'll be a pretty much perfect product.

Labels: Games, Geeky

Sometimes the funky is fun, but sometimes it's just funky.

William Shatner doing an interpretive cover of Elton John's "Rocketman".

(seriously, who was drunk, who was high, and who the hell thought this was a good idea to begin with?!?!)

Labels: Funky Friday

I'll get her an assualt rifle!



(sad thing is, I can almost see the Professor dropping her "no guns" stance in this situation)