Multitask Hell

Here's a "fun" little time waster. Multitask is just that, how long can you go while the game adds various tasks to keep track of.

It starts easy - balance a ball with the left and right arrows, then avoid spikes with the up/down arrows while balancing the ball. Next comes moving a square to a target in using the wasd keys while ball balancing and spike dodging, and so on....

So far I can't get above 61 seconds - about a second into the fourth "task"...

Wastin' away

Got too much time on your hands? Need to fill the mind numbing parts of the day?

I present to you, Continuity! Continuity is a great little flash game that combines running, jumping and slide puzzles.

But beware, I stayed up WAY past my bedtime trying to finish all 32 levels.

You've been warned.

For those with too much time

A few time wasters for your consideration:

Rock Paper Scissors Deathmatch = The Ultimate Ro Sham Bo...OF DEATH!

For a wider variety of time wasters - Kongregate.com

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

And now for something completely different, I present Crappy Cat.

I really can't tell you what to expect, except psycho cats and exploding spider-Darth-vaders.

Enjoy...

Fanta-TV

I recently found an decent way to waste some time online, if you can believe it. It's called TV Bigshot, and it's basically a fantasy league for TV shows. When you sign up you get $300 million to buy various tv shows that are or have been aired on network TV. After buying whatever shows you have money for, you earn points by how that show does in the ratings, among other factors.

The biggest deal is that the top player supposedly will win $100K. Of course the season is almost over so anyone joining now, like myself, is way out of the running. However, it's still kind of fun.

Here's my chance hopefully learn why TV execs cancel the best shows...

Reason 1

This might be a reason for me to get a PS3. The game is called Echochrome, and is based on the perspective-bending art of M.C. Escher.



OK, so I probably won't be getting a PS3 anytime soon, but it's also available for the PSP. Hmmm.....

Grandmother Your Mother Is Meeting When

While I was wasting some time waiting for laundry, I found this How I Met Your Mother clip from CBS's site



It's the Romanian Cultural Divisions of People subtitled scene where the gang makes fun of Marshall's nude painting. The translations are hilarious.

This is why HIMYM is my favorite sitcom...

At least I'm not alone

You have to love Amazon's "Customers who bought item X were also interested in these." add-on sale page.

I came across this one last night.

Can you guess what I was thinking about buying?

**OK, after a bit of ridiculing I now know the link no workie workie. After searching for a pair of LED safety glasses on Amazon, and clicking "Add to Cart" it told me that other people looking at LED glasses also looked at Wiimotes and IR LEDs. Not as funny now, but I laughed at the time...

Virtual Wii-ality

The great DrHeimlich posted about a Wiimote Project on his blog a few days ago. Thanks to him I have spent the last 3 days attempting to turn my Wii into a VR machine. As of about 5 minutes ago, it's working! Mind you, this is after countless bluetooth, coding and driver problems not to mention the hours and hours on discussion boards.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Dr H is a bad man. Of course it's possible he innocently blogged about this not knowing that I would become obsessed over it. However, I choose to believe that he posted this just to fuel my obsession. It certainly can't be my fault I put my life on hold for this. Please Dr, in the future, can you clear any posts about do-it-yourself technology before posting (especially Wii related ones)? ;)

Anyway, I just got it to work on my 20" flatscreen and it's pretty cool. However, I can't wait to try it out on Ash's projector screen next Poker night. Hopefully I can find and build the cool glasses he uses by then, since it's a little silly holding the Wii sensor bar on your head. Although when don't you look silly playing the Wii?

Next on the project list? Johnny Lee's cool virtual finger tracking (straight out of Minority Report) and his multipoint interactive whiteboard.

Did I mention he's a bad man?

WeBLost

Last night was the season premiere of Lost (finally). While I loved the episode, and I really though it was worth the wait, this isn't about the episode itself (besides, DrHeimlich beat me to it).

I missed watching Eli Stone, which looked like it had promise. I didn't program the VCR to record that long (me and my archaic technology).

Anywho, I also missed the viral ad that ABC aired during Eli Stone. It was an ad for Oceanic, with interruptions by some guy talking about the missing flight 815. It's a web game designed to get people into the show more (as far as I can tell anyway, here's the link).

My friend Roland participated in a similar game last season that was ridiculously hard (candy wrappers fro Australia were used), but sounded like fun. So far this seems like a much easier version, it's all been on one site and not too hard. Though I say this only a chapter into the game.

These are the kinds of viral marketing I love, and wish more companies would do. Because I apparently have way too much free time...

Phobophilia

I know that everyone is afraid of something (well maybe not Ben Affleck). I also know that as a species we have to have a name for everything. Thankfully we have the Greek language to fall back on to categorize things, and with that in mind I present the Phobia List, a very impressive list of the different phobias out there.

My favorites include:

• Coulrophobia - Fear of clowns, in honor of a close friend.
• Alliumphobia - fear of garlic, I'm surprised there are non-undead that are truly afraid of garlic.
• Atomosophobia & Lepraphobia - Fear of atomic explosions and leprosy, respectively. Isn't this all of us?
• Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - Fear of the number 666, that's just a frakking awesome word right there.
• Phobophobia - Fear of fears. Isn't that ironic?
• Proctophobia - Fear of rectums. No comment (I'll leave comments on this to the Jackal).
• Zemmiphobia - Fear of the great mole rat. Holy specific fear batman!

My favorite fake phobia has to be Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (fear of long words), there's no way this is accurate. Actually I wonder about the accuracies of a lot of them. The website claims that all phobias on the list are from some reference (not sure what that means). Real or not, though, the list is entertaining. Another interesting part of this, if you Google any of these phobias, more often than not a link to ABC or NBC news pops up. A little proof that the medias job is to keep us scared.

I am a tad scared of it's counterpart, a list of "-philias"...

Wonderful shadow bunnies

A link sent to me by a coworker:



And wow, I have a hard time making a shadow puppet of a hand...

These aren't the pirates you're looking for...

A while back, Dr Heimlich beat me to posting about this cool video game reviewer (damn you!!!). While it's a cool site, one of the reviews is about Psychonauts, a little known X-Box game from Doublefine Productions. Doublefine is staffed by the best game developers that Lucasarts let go a number of years ago. They were the one's that created such masterpieces as Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle. These were, arguably, the best games Lucasarts ever developed (OK, there are a few Star Wars games - but more often than not, Lucas arts released pure crap hoping it would do well because it was a Star Wars game. Super Bombad Racing anyone?).

Anyway, it made me think about a list of my Top 10 favorite video games of all time. So here we go:

• 10) Galaga - It wouldn't be a complete list if there wasn't at least one arcade game - and this one is easily my favorite.
• 9) Doom - Not that great now, but it helped start the FPS genre. To clarify I'm talking about the original, not Doom 3.
• 8) Zork I - Some of my best gaming memories are of sitting in front of our AT&T computer playing this text based adventure - Good times, good times.
  
• 7) Wing Commander - Actually I loved this whole series. We were blown away when you could get the Speech Pack for WC II - No more reading while flying!! Total crap movie, but great game series, Mark Hamill in full motion video and all!
• 6) Half-Life - This game took FPS gaming to the next level. Impressive graphics, intelligent enemies and a spiffy new physics engine (I know Drheimlich, I know), made this an amazing experience.
• 5) Sam & Max: Hit the Road - One of the most amusing games I've played. The twisted humor made this a winner for me. It even made me play it multiple times - even though I knew the solutions to everything.
• 4) X-wing - This was the first time you could actually fly an X-wing (plus all the other fighters from the movies). The story of the game covered stealing the Death Star Plans to the all out assault of it. I almost peed myself the first time I flew against Darth Vader.
• 3) Psychonauts - This quirky game has the same humor as Sam & Max and Monkey Island, but in a platforming game. The gameplay was fun, but it was the characters, storyline and setting that truly makes this game a favorite.
• 2) Starcraft - One of the few RTS games that I can still sit and play with friends for hours. Plus, I'm not the only one - the game has sold over 10 million copies, not bad for a game that's almost 9 years old.
• 1) The Monkey Island Series - I know that this is actually 4 games, but it's my list dammit. These games are the best games that Lucasarts had to offer. Good old Guybrush Threepwood and his nemesis Le Chuck kept me up many a night. Pirates, interesting puzzles, pirates and some of the funniest moments I've ever had while gaming easily make this number one. Insult Sword fighting anyone?
  

Runners Up:
Myst, Full Throttle, Counter Strike and Okami.

So there you have it, not that anyone really cares. Still, it was fun going back down memory lane. I have to wonder how many cumulative hours I've wasted sitting in front of a monitor or TV.

On second thought I don't think I want to know...

Puzzley goodness

So for all those math and puzzle geeks out there, here's a site that does a weekly math puzzle.

Some aren't so hard - others I had to do it a couple of times (speaks to my math skills eh?)

Oh, and a quick tip:

Don't attempt them in a bar after a few beers. That increases the difficulty by a lot. I also wouldn't attempt them while at the aforementioned bar while a gaggle of cute servers are sitting with you - makes you look like a bit of a geek.

Not that I need help with that...

Doing the Time Warp

Among the latest slew of games I've picked up lately, was a game called Timeshift.

It's a FPS about a "highly respected physicist with a dark past" who steals a suit that allows you to control time. Basically it's Blinx with machine guns, rocket launchers and new age Nazis.

It's a beautiful game, the landscape is yet another post-apocalyptic wasteland (something that's very popular these days), but one that's nice to look at. At least until you get to levels where the main bad guy is spouting propaganda on ALL of the screens and radios in town. That gets a bit old, plus it's something we've already seen in Half Life 2, almost verbatim. In any case the visuals are amazing, especially when time stops in the rain - WOW.

The time control elements play nicely with a shooter game, but unfortunately it's not exactly a new gimmick. Tons of shooters have "Bullet-time" or "Slomo" sequences that allow you to kill 20 baddies before they can get a single shot off. Of course Timeshift does add the other two time features, stop and rewind.

These two powers are by far the most fun you can have with the game. I love to stop time, run up and steal Sergeant Red Shirt's gun. When I start time again, I like to wave as he looks confused about where it went, then shoot him repeatedly. I call it the Van Damme Maneuver, though if Timecop was more like this game, I would have loved it (rather than tolerating the first 10 minutes or so to see Mia Sara naked then changing the channel).

Anyway, the rewind function is fun too, but more restrictive in its usefulness. There are parts when rewinding time is the only way to get through an area. I would have liked it more if you could use rewind right as you die to get a second chance, but that's apparently too hard to program.

The AI is pretty impressive. The baddies will flank you, ambush you, or simply hide until you get tired of waiting, then blow you to smoking bits. However, for some reason the ones you pull the Van Damme Maneuver on, simply stand there looking around, and when you shoot them they simply crouch down. Seems to me I'd run away, fast. The "duck and cover" thing really doesn't work for anything - except nuclear attacks and volcanoes of course.

Bottom line? I like it, it's a great break from the buggy, lagg-tastic, sado-masochistic experience that is Hellgate: London. I almost wish the Techno-Gremlin Gods would come at night and delete all my Hellgate files and scratch the ever-loving crap out of the disc....almost....

Entrepreneurial Philatelists

With the last increase in postal stamps, the Post Office created the "Forever Stamp". Supposedly this stamp will be honored for any letter under an ounce forever, regardless of any future increases.

Makes me wonder if anyone has made an effort to buy thousands of these and hold on to them for a few years, thinking to make money reselling them for less than the USPS charges for future stamps.
After a little Googling, I found that a few people have had the same thought. Some guy bought $8000 in Forever Stamps the day they went on sale.

At first this seemed like a good idea to me. Postal prices have risen roughly 10 cents every ten years (9 cents 1997-2007, 10 cents 1985-1995, and 12 cents 1975-1985). Theoretically, the rate will stay about the same, so in ten years stamps will be about $.51. So $8000 of stamps nets almost $2K - about a 24% profit (I'll rely on Captain Math, AKA Snarky Old Guy to correct me if I'm wrong). Then I looked at what simply investing $8000 will get you in a basic savings account (at 3%) - about $2800 (again relying on C.M, AKA SOG).

Not a sound investment, and to further prove that I found this article. The article basically states that when inflation is taken into account, stamps are actually getting cheaper, because the rise in the cost of stamps is actually below that of inflation. So that shoots that get-rich-scheme right in the buttocks.

Can you tell it's a slow day at work???

A dubious milestone

Yesterday was a first for me. Roland and I went to a local bar for lunch, and stayed for dinner.

That's right true believers, 8 hours sitting at a frakking bar. Today, I feel like death warmed over - and had already made plans to go out tonight.

I'm not saying I'm proud of my first experience at being a barfly, far from it. However it is a milestone that should be shared.

Maybe with enough mocking I'll remember why not to do this again....

Hyrule saved

Last night (after many, many hours of play - I've been playing it since February) I finished Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Despite a few gripe sessions (mostly caused by my poor gaming skills), I loved this game. It's incredibly long - clocked in at 55 hours of play to finish - and there's still a lot of little things I could go and do (non-story related quests, mini games, etc).

Unfortunately the system hung on the "The End" Screen and I didn't get it saved. So if I want to complete all the little things, I'd have to repeat last night's 3 hours session. I think Ocarina of Time is a better way to go.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that I've finally finished it. Not that anyone cares about my sad little accomplishments...

TWiilight Princess

At the same time I purchased my Wii, I picked up The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I've only now been playing it in earnest.

I now kind of regret never playing any of the other Zelda Games. Especially Ocrina of Time, which has received a top 100 of all time ranking with most video game boards (IGN - #2, Edge - #1, GameFaq - #6 (OK this was top 10 adventure games), GAF - #50). Fortunately, Nintendo has it available for download on the Wii, which will be happening on my console shortly after I finish Twilight Princess.

Anyway, I really love TLoZ:TP, it's got a great mix of action and puzzle solving. Hell I've got 33 hours invested and am only half done (even less according to the game - taking into account all the unlockables).

The Wii makes a great game even better, combat is based on how you move the remote & nunchuk. Aiming the bow and other weapons is intuitive and simple, unless you've had too much caffeine.

However, the motion sensitive controller is also my biggest complaint with the system. There have been numerous cliffs I've fallen off because I moved the controller too quickly, or scratched my nose and proceeded to swing my sword off the edge.

Also, and I know this has been said by others before, but what is up with fishing in adventure video games?

Never befriend an enabler.

For the last 6 months or so, I have been relatively free of obsessive video games. It's been kinda nice not having the need to play until 4 am.

Now, thanks to a friend who will remain nameless (but rhymes with "hair in"), I have a new obsession.

"I'll lend you a copy, just to try.", he said.
"You may not even like it." he claimed.

Riiiiight, the first one is always free. This is the same "friend" that got me hooked on Oblivion - a habit I managed to kick about 6 months ago (see a pattern yet?).

This "friend" got me hooked on Battlefield 2142, a squad based FPS. Now I can't let a night go by without trying for the next rank. I dreamt about it last night - which is a sure sign I'm playing too much.

So this is a public thanks to my "friend".

I hate you because....