Google Imaging

Once more, I’ve put on my lab coat just for you guy(s). Here’s what happens when you apply the labors of science, magic, and boredom to Google image search every letter of the alphabet.  The SCANDALOUS results are below.  Please note that Moderate Safe Search was filtering (de-porning) these images. 

See a pattern?  The overwhelming Sesame Street pressence here is begging for a good old fashioned trust-bustin’. (Lights torch) Who’s with me?

Interesting Google Fact #232

3/4 of my Carcassonne crew are absent from work today, so I’ve been reduced to surfing the net during my lunch break. It is unfathomable how my boredoom lured me to do this, but “Googling” each individual letter of the alphabet produced the following (shocking?) results:

a – www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html
b – prb.aps.org/
c – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)
d – prd.aps.org/
e – www.eonline.com/
f – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit
g – mail.google.com/
h – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen
i – www.apple.com/itunes/
j – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J
k – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K
l – www.loreal.com/
m – www.imdb.com/title/tt0022100/
n – www.harveycartel.org/metanet/n.html
o – www.oprah.com/omagazine/omag_landing.jhtml
p – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P
q – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q
r – www.r-project.org/
s – www.craigslist.org/
t – www.mbta.com/
u – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U
v – www.vmagazine.com/
w – www.starwoodhotels.com/whotels/index.html
x – www.x.org/
y – mail.yahoo.com/
z – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z

It is clear to me now that the cool kids get to craigslist by doing a “s” search. Cue that “The More You Know” jingle. Also M does direct you to the Fitz Lang film of the same name. And f’ing right it should!

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull script

This whole thing is one big ha-ha.  I guess you shouldn’t read this if you don’t want to be spoiled.  But I God-damn near gaurantee that you’ll feel “spoiled” when you watch the film anyways. 

Click the picture of Shia LeBuffster below to be transported to this funny read.

Shia as Mutt Williams (Yes, years of fine-tuning script rewrites have yielded a character named Mutt).

Carcassonne’s Scorecard is Failure

I play this game nearly every day on my lunch break.  And after many, many games my fellow compatriots and I agree that the game’s 50 point max scorecard sucks.  The average score of a basic game of Carc is well over a 100 points per player.  If you throw in Builders and Traders, the scores get flipping crazy.  The rules tell you to contort your meeple on its back with each pass of the 50 point marker in order to keep the game sane.  If you pass 50 again (and you probably will) whip it into Twister fashion and throw your meep into a different pose.  Bottom line is that the stock board can’t hang, so I spent some time yesterday trying to make a better one.  Here’s the fruits of my labor:

Not completely terrrible but, just like in Chutes & Ladders, it’s WAY too easy for your point-tracking meeple to end up going the wrong way which fucks the hell out of your total score.  I was going to take another stab at designing a better board when I decided to see if anyone with a higher nerd power had tackled this problem already.  BoardGameGeek to the rescue!  Take a look at this dude’s work.  Comparatively speaking, I now feel a little bit retarded. 

I pledge allegiance to Freezepop

This could be a douche-worthy statement, but I firmly attest that Freezepop is to synth-pop as Metallica is to metal.  Masters of this genre; they are stinking brilliant.  Songs like Super Sprode and Brainpower stand tall and proud among the piles of mp3s dwelling inside my personal computer.

But did you know they covered the theme song to Jem?  If you had a pulse in the 80s, you know what show I’m talking about.  I have a pair of younger sisters that worshiped this stuff along with the My Little Ponies and the Rainbow Brites.  I saw/endured many an episode.  Anyways their cover is mighty suave and merits a watch.  Here it is along with the original song.

Olde

New

Can I get a heck yes?

I wish Calvin Harris was my homeboy

Seriously check this:

I simply can not get this Dizzee Rascal tune feat’ing the awesome Mr. Harris out of my brain.  It just keeps looping over and over, messaging my lobes with funk.  And, as a service to you, I’m virally dishing this song out to the few masses that read this.  It kicks butt, does it not?  Fo shiz.

This is the title of this post

After several days,  umpteen hundred gallons of gold gas, and scores of ridiculous heavy boxes I have completed the move from Troy to Godfrey.  And now I am up to my eyeballs in debt (read: super responsible mortgage)!   

We all know that lists are neato, so here’s one comprised of other things I’ve done while I was giving my blog the cold shoulder.

1. Despite the awful name, Boom Blox has easily become my favorite Wii game.  It’s pretty much like if Legos and Jenga had a 3-way with that carnival game where you throw baseballs at milk cartons.
2. Iron Man kicked my ass so many times in the movie theater.  What a surprise!  I only hope The Dark Knight is as good.
3. Indy 4 was ass in the movie theater.  My expectations were the lowest of lows, and I still was disappointed. 
4. Played another expansion to Carcassonne with my work gang.  This one is called Inns and Cathedrals.  So far I’m enjoying it greatly because roads are actually worth a shit in this version.
5. I broke the grain and bought a cell phone.  Those who know how much I enjoy these pieces of technology can take this as an ample sign that the apocalypse is steadily approachin’.  

 

The Skinny on Knytt

Scrolling through my blog posts I’ve come to a small realization:  I do a lot of shameless promoting of stuff that I fancy.  The majority of these writings consist of “try this doohickey” or “feature x kicks unholy ass.”  And while I have no problem with this kind of thing, I’m amiss that I’ve never expressed my love for one particular indie video game.

This is Knytt. 

Knytt debuted on the Internet back in 2006 (I think).  Most of the Internet agrees with me that it’s one of the best platformers ever created.  And here is a cherry for your top:  the game is completely free.  So  if you call yourself a gamer and have not played Kyntt, oh the SHAME.  Play it now, and thank me later.  I’m trekking through this fantastic adventure for the 2nd time and loving it even more!

Edit:  I should add that Knytt is a Windows-only affair.  But it runs/executes like a champ in Wine so we Linux users are covered.

More Openbox Love

What do you do when you’re bored? If you’re like me, you spend countless hours installing various Linux distributions in a whimsical fashion to pass the time. The latest product of my boredom is an Arch box running Openbox. Here’s a peek.

And I finally set up that fancy perl script that you see in my terminal window. I feel obligated to state that the ascii logo is tres sexy!

The Skinny on We Are the Strange

What works: Gorgeous visuals that walk hand in hand with the film’s 8-bit chiptunes music. If you axed all of the character’s dialog and further trimmed the running time down to that of a short film, We Are the Strange would have been watchable.

What doesn’t work at’ll: The script to We Are the Strange is so “thick” I’d reckon it could have be written on a napkin. Things like narrative flow, character growth, decent voice acting and plot must be for weenies because you’re not going to find any of that awful stuff in this movie.

Bottom Line: We Are the Strange was released on YouTube in its entirety so you can watch this and make up your own darn mind. As far as my mind is concerned, I think it was teh epic fail (3/10).