10-4-08

Proof that unicorns hate mimes:

10-3-08

I missed the vice presidential debate yesterday and decided to do a little catch-up on Youtube. Sarah Palin is not as dumb as she looks. McCain's selecting her may have been the most transparent political ploy of all time, but her "hockey mom" ditsyness is at least partially an act.

10-2-08

Athletes have Gatorade, but playing sports is nothing compared to the extreme intensity of sitting at a computer. That's why we gamers need Mana Potions, the most terrifying energy product in the universe. Don't believe me? Here. I don't care how useful Vitamin B12 is; cramming 6667% of it into a 50 mL capsule can't possibly be a good idea.

10-1-08

Scarlett Johansson got married this weekend.

Damn.

9-30-08

Real product in Japan.

9-29-08

"I don't think I'll ever become an American, Mom. I don't think I'll ever forget Russian. And the main reason I'll never become an American is, because I don't like pizza."

-- Me, when I was 6.

Well, I still remember a little Russian, but I do like my pizza.

9-28-08

"Money can't buy you love, but love can bring you money. In software the only sustainable way to earn money is by first creating love, and then hoping that some folks want to demonstrate that love with their dollars.

The cheddary 'Free to Play' is not just a cheesy marketing slogan, but a shift in assumptions; it costs approaching nothing to give away some bits, or let people play Puzzle Pirates for free. Every player, free or paid, adds value to the community and excitement for other players. Free players are the content, context and society that encourages a small fraction of the audience to willingly pay more than enough to subsidize the rest.

'Not fair', the vendor of music or packaged software cries. Well, tough shit. Nobody added your business to the list of protected species, despite what your lobbyists and lawyers say. Find a business model that's actually appropriate to the 21st century."

-- Daniel James, at Penny Arcade

9-27-08

The farmers' market in Madison is the largest in the country.

9-26-08

Paul Newman died today.

9-25-08

Quick-change artists.

9-24-08

I generally try to keep this blog free of porn, but...I can't resist SFW Porn.

9-23-08

In Iceland, tipping is an insult.

9-22-08

Batteries don't have a constant charge.

9-21-08

Facebook borrowed a line from Google and introduced a Pirate language. It does make Facebook vastly more interesting.

9-20-08

Mario Paint Composer.

9-19-08

Speaking of new versions of classic games, Desktop Tower Defense has been upgraded too. There are new towers now as well as various challenge modes. Unfortunately, the old scoreboards have been cleared, so my mazes are gone forever and I'm going to have to relearn the game.

9-18-08

I don't know when this happened, but there's an expanded version of Stick RPG. That mall thing that was closed before is open now, and you can do crazy things like upgrade your house and play in the stock market.

The best way to make money is still just to max intelligence, though.

9-17-08

Monster's Den.

9-16-08

So Rock Band 2 came out and, honestly, it appears to be crap. The song list is lame and there's nothing new except a handful of completely unnecessary interface changes. I swore off the Guitar Hero series after witnessing the abomination that was GH3, but Guitar Hero: World Tour actually looks a lot more exciting.

9-15-08

Bioware is making a new RPG!!

9-14-08

Which is cooler: ninja dog or ninja cat? I think the cat is a little cooler.

9-13-08

"That's the kind of person that, even if there's no God, they're going to hell."

-- Sam, on Feng Shui consultants

9-12-08

I finally tried a burger at Culver's, the local fan favorite burger joint. It was pretty bad.

9-11-08

Officials: Burglar wakes men with spice rub, sausage whack.

9-10-08

Sam's Club is owned by Walmart.

9-9-08

When you take the GMAT, instead of scratch paper, you get a dry-erase board. Which you're not allowed to erase.

9-8-08

Incident

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Balimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

-- Countée Cullen

9-7-08

I'm not sure what it is with me and pictures that are used as jokes in forums.

9-6-08

Imperius: I fully expect to meet you at the Pearly Gates, little thief, and don't you dare disappoint me.
Phillipe: I'll meet you there, Father... even if I have to pick the lock.

This is a line by Matthew Broderick's character in the 1985 movie Ladyhawke. Awesome line. Shitty movie.

9-5-08

Spaghetti Cat.

9-4-08

Amazons cut off their right boob so they could shoot a bow better.

9-3-08

Cool educational video about spiders.

9-2-08

Soul Calibur now has Mortal Kombat-style fatalities. What is this, 1992?

9-1-08

The new Firefox is ugly. My god, it is ugly.

8-31-08

Really, I'm not sure what to think.

8-30-08

Today I played Agricola, the new #1 game on BGG. It's well deserving of the hype. It has the same depth and freeform nature as Caylus, but with much simpler rules and a shorter playing time. This is a game I hope to play many times.

8-29-08

I took the LSAT today. It's hard.

8-28-08

Cats are left-handed.

8-27-08

My new favorite forum-related joke:

8-26-08

Forgive this spate of vocabulary-related posts, but I continue to be floored by some of the words my students don't know. We've already had erudite, placid, and tome. Today's addition to "Boris's List of Words He Can't Believe Some People Don't Know:" renegade. Hasn't anyone played Bang?

8-25-08

High school-age Jersey girl: So I went on my ex-boyfriend's Facebook, since his birthday was last week. Only like 30 people wrote on his wall to wish him happy birthday.

Friend: Oh my god. What a loser!

-- Overheard in New York

8-24-08

"Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world, for everyone thinks himself to be so well endowed with it that even those who are the most difficult to please in everything else are not at all wont to desire more of it than they have."

-- Descartes

8-23-08

Dave bought Soul Calibur 4 for the 360. Namco's major accomplishments with this one are as follows:

- Yun-Seong has been turned into a gay pirate. This is not a joke.
- Ivy's boobs have gotten even bigger.
- All of the characters' eyes are now blood-rimmed, as though they'd just been snorting coke. With their eyes.
- Cervantes has a beard. He is actually now the hottest character in the game.

The excellent story mode of Soul Calibur 2 is apparently a relic of the past, as the designers seem to have spent most of their time pandering to repressed teenagers by making all of the characters hotter (see "Cervantes" and "beard," above) and giving them bigger boobs if at all possible, and by making it trivial to unlock every single character within .5 seconds of inserting the disc.

True to the spirit of the shitfest that was Soul Calibur 3, a bunch of new features have been added that add nothing whatsoever to gameplay, such as an "equipment destruction" system which is really just an excuse to transform the characters' already revealing clothing into even more revealing clothing as the battle progresses. Men lose their shirts and fight barechested. Women are much better about keeping their shirts on, but all of their clothing becomes tattered and jagged as large strips of it are ripped off. I wonder how many repressed teenagers will subtly throw matches with female characters in an effort to see how much ass they can glimpse. (Answer: quite a lot, and I recommend Sophitia.)

Also in line with Soul Calibur 3, everybody's still a bit slower than they were in Soul Calibur 2. This means you can usually attack into a blocking opponent and still have time to block their counterattack, making combat a tedious block-centric affair where the only way to deal damage is to hope that your opponent does an attack at the same time you do and that your attack randomly supersedes theirs. To be fair, there is now a "soul gauge" that eventually flashes red if you block too much, at which point the next attack from your opponent will pierce your block and send you into a state of "soul crush." But the inclusion of this feature is essentially an admission on the part of the developers that Soul Calibur 3 was a piece of shit, because Soul Calibur 2 was perfectly fine without any such shenanigans. Moreover, the soul gauge recharges so quickly that the threat of soul crush is rarely relevant. Things like this make me wonder why game designers are so reluctant to, you know, keep doing what works.

Also in line with Soul Calibur 3, characters perform fewer moves than they did in Soul Calibur 2. In 2, pretty much any button combination + direction resulted in a different move. In 3 and 4, many of the combinations are either redundant or do nothing whatsoever. For a game that's (let's face it) resolved primarily by button mashing -- or, okay, intelligent button mashing -- the dramatic decrease in combat variety continues to be disappointing.

So in short, if you're wondering, "Have they found a way to make a Soul Calibur game that isn't strictly worse than Soul Calibur 2?", the answer is still no.

8-22-08

Newton wrote more about religion than about science.

8-21-08

A month ago, one of my students didn't know the word "erudite." That's reasonable, it's kind of an erudite word. Another student didn't know "placid." Now that's shocking, but hey, it's just one student.

Today, though -- I don't think I can ever come to terms with what happened today. My entire class didn't know "tome." Tome! As in, a common synonym for "book." Is this not as common as I think it is?

8-20-08

When you eat sushi, you're not supposed to slather the whole thing in soy sauce. Soy sauce should be used sparingly, and not even on all of the pieces.

8-19-08

My new GRE class has exactly one guy in it. Everybody else is a girl. Does this mean there are more women going to grad school than men, or that women need more help than men do?

8-18-08

Morton's Fork.

8-17-08

I played A Game of Thrones today. I liked the game when I played it a year ago, but today I was sufficiently unimpressed. The diplomacy and battle elements are great, but the event cards at the start of each turn have a significant impact on the players' fates and, what's worse, usually favor some players over others. I'm terrible at wargames and probably would have lost even if the event cards hadn't screwed me over every single turn, but it was decidedly unpleasant to feel tossed about by random chance in major ways in a game that takes eight hours.

8-16-08

Simon's Cat.

8-15-08

I watched this "Dr. Horrible" thing that everyone's been raving about, and it's good. I admire Whedon's ability to evoke unique sensations out of something so cliched, yet the problem in the end is that it is, after all, cliched. The humor is excellent, but there is a definite sense that the show aspires to make a serious point, and you can't make a serious point when the plot and the characters are so banal. Two flawed men compete over a boringly perfect woman -- I'm not going to be moved by what happens.

8-14-08

8-13-08

Flibbertigibbet. It's a real word.

8-12-08

8-11-08

Eidos is making Deus Ex 3. What are they thinking?

8-10-08

There's an addon for Firefox that conveniently lets you download embedded movies from Youtube. Or elsewhere.

8-9-08

Bernie Mac died today. He had pneumonia.

8-8-08

Wondermark hits one out of the park.

8-7-08

Hugh Jackman is Australian.

8-6-08

There's been a surge of incredible Live Arcade games recently. Case in point: Braid.

8-5-08

Eschalon: Book 1 is a kick-ass RPG. It's old-school, but the graphics are still pretty good, the story is cliched but intriguing, and the character system is excellent. If you've been bummed that the last good pure RPG came out like ten years ago, be bummed no longer.

8-4-08

Auntie Anne's caramel sauce is frickin' unbelievable.

8-3-08

Every single person at the Radiohead concert was A) white, and B) high.

8-2-08

The Phoenix lander found water on Mars.

8-1-08

Desert tortoises live underground.

7-31-08

Geometry Wars 2 is amazing.

Now, the original Geometry Wars was the best Live Arcade game of all time -- really, the only good game -- so naturally you'd expect the sequel to be a huge flaming pile of ass. But no. It is unbelievable. Imagine everything you ever loved about Geometry Wars. Then imagine it all doubled. Then imagine playing it multiplayer. I mean, jesus. If you own a 360, you either need to buy this game and play it, or buy a shotgun and shoot yourself in the face.

7-30-08

Apiphobia is the fear of bees.

7-29-08

Damn. Stupid Blogger and its artificially shrinking pictures. Here's a version with less fuzzy in it.

7-28-08

The number of cards in a deck is the same as the number of weeks in a year.

7-27-08

GRE test-takers are given exactly six pieces of scratch paper. You can ask for more, but they won't give you any unless you return the first six. That is some Draconian scratch paper management policy, there.

7-26-08

Chili is really easy to make.

Yes, that's right. I cooked. Food!

7-25-08

Tonight I played Extreme Jenga. It's like regular Jenga but with parallelograms.

7-24-08

There is something even more disgusting than body piercings. Oh my god.

7-23-08

They're making a prequel to Battlestar Galactica. It appears to be an abomination.

7-22-08

On August 3rd, I'm driving to Indianapolis with four friends to see Radiohead.

Broadening my cultural horizons, guys. Broadening my cultural horizons.

7-21-08

I taught my first full Kaplan class tonight. It's fun!

7-20-08

Sifting through old college emails.

"I do wonder if all those years looking at chess boards have made you too ready to translate greys into black and white?"

-- My poetry teacher

7-19-08

Right now if you do a Google search for "That Dead Actor" you'll find news results for Heath Ledger.

7-18-08

Inky Dreadfuls.

7-17-08

Lila has a friend whose sister is a professional tennis player. She's on Wikipedia!

7-16-08

How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

Yeah, you know, I felt the need to say something, but just, ok.

7-15-08

Pleonasm.

7-14-08

The Deckmaster logo on the back of Magic cards has a stray pen mark.

7-13-08

Rechargeable batteries can't be recharged indefinitely.

7-12-08

"Fuck Apples to Apples."

-- David

7-11-08

I totally want one.

7-10-08

"The White House apologised for what it called 'sloppy work' and said an official had simply lifted the characterisation from the internet without reading it."

Ha, ha.

7-9-08

Western Spaghetti.

7-8-08

7-7-08

Rock Band 2 is coming out in September.

7-6-08

Yesterday I played football for the first time. Today I can't move.

7-5-08

It is a felony to try to stop someone from calling the police.

7-4-08

Bozo the Clown died yesterday.

7-3-08

These are real.

7-2-08

"No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why. "

-- Mignon McLaughlin

7-1-08

Utah is instituting a 4-day week. Only for government employees, though.

6-30-08

The website is down.

6-29-08

Ticket to Ride came out on Live Arcade. If you own a 360, you need to check it out. It's well done.

6-28-08

Blizzard is making Diablo 3!

6-27-08

Wanted is horrible. One of the central plot elements is something called "The Loom of Fate." Not kidding.