More coverage from North Korea

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Travis

Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un has declared a national state of emergency after returning from the bathroom to see that someone has unpaused his Skyrim game without his consent.  Loyal comrades are reported to be throwing themselves in the streets in outrage of this affrontery. 

Official investigation is underway, with the military pledging full support in resolving this crisis. 

During the official conference, Supreme Leader took his valuable time to also deny reports that “Whoever smelled it, dealt it” but assert that he does support the official position “Whoever made the rhyme did the crime”. 

In unrelated news, a former bodyguard to Supreme Leader has been jailed due to reports of flatulation on Supreme Leader’s bean bag chair.

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Exclusive coverage from the DPRK after the funeral of Kim Jong Il

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Travis

Kim Jong Un has now been officially presented to the people of North Korea as Supreme Leader, with the full backing of the Workers Party and the military.  Exclusive coverage from our sources in North Korea reveal the Supreme Leader’s first actions at the helm of the DPRK.

“After the long procession to the tomb where his father, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il will be embalmed, Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un spent hours tirelessly meeting with party members and tending to affairs of the state.  The Supreme Leader of the People’s Worker Party will now retire to his rooms where he will play Xboxu against South Korea, in an effort to unify the country.”

“Teabaggu!  Teabaggu!” the Supreme Leader shouts, as he swings his benevolent jowls back and forth after a glorious triumph in a Halo deathmatch”.  His late father, Dear Leader, was a cinematic genius.  Supreme Leader’s prowess is instead in the art of video games. He has graciously designed a console for North Koreans, called The People’s Box which will begin production shortly.  The first title for release will be “Run, Jump, and Kill Imperialist Americans” and will be issued to each citizen of the DPRK.

“When asked by an ambassador of his plans for managing the DPRK food shortage, Supreme Leader proudly took them on a tour of his Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza garden, and he has used his superior intellect to predict it will start growing Stouffer’s French Bread Pizzas by spring.”

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Merry Christmas!

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Travis

Lately I haven’t been updating as much as I used to, and I wanted to leave a note to wish everyone Merry Christmas.  I also wanted to take the opportunity to share a Christmas movie… Santa Claus Conquers The Martians.  It’s old, it’s cheesy but it’s entertaining if just for the simple fact that it’s filled with stereotypical “alien” features from the 50′s and 60′s (like food pills).  Check it out!

 

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Online Poker with Strong Bad

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Travis

I have recently discovered a Steam game that surprised me.  Now, I’m not much of an online poker player (Or a poker player at all really since I sort of suck at the rules).  When I saw Poker Night at the Inventory however, I had to take a closer look.  It’s from Telltale Games, which I already have experience with due to some of their other well known hits.  I have been a Homestarrunner fan for years, and they were tapped by the Brothers Chaps to produce the Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.  Yes.  Strong Bad is a character in Poker Night at the Inventory.  How can you pass that up?  I haven’t seen any updates for Homestarrunner.com for quite a while, but I can get my Strong Bad fix by firing up steam and logging in.

Along with Strong Bad, there is also that wierd Rabbit from Sam and Max, a character from Penny Arcade, and Team fortress 2′s big dude Tycho. Clearly I have my favorite, but it’s interesting to see the rest of these guys showing up.  Suffice to say, I was entertained.  It did get me curious about poker though.  I decided to do a bit of perusing and took a visit to Pokerlistings.com based on a recommendation.  There is a lot more to this online poker thing than I realized.

Now, I’ve already mentioned I’m not so swift with the poker rules, but a friend told me it’s not too hard to pick up Texas Hold’em, so I headed on over to the Texas Hold’em section, and sure enough… they have a list of rules, strategies and a ranked selection of places to test yourself online. It’s worth checking out, and with the holidays coming, you can relax a bit and entertain yourself in between hanging your Christmas lights and watching Christmas specials on TV.

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Zombie Outbreak… Disaster or Opportunity?

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Travis

I have been watching The Walking Dead. 

This show keeps me up at night. 

I am deeply worried that I will never get to experience a zombie outbreak.  I feel like I was made for such a catastrophe.  I use the word catastrophe in its most beautiful sense.  When poets and novelists in the early 1900s wrote of utopia, clearly they must have been envisioning the excitement and sheer joy of a zombie apocolypse.  In no other circumstance do you get to drive any vehicle you choose, in any manner you wish.  Is your dream to drive a supercharged Ferrari down the middle of the freeway?  Do it!  The previous owner is no doubt a mobile corpse now.  He won’t need it or miss it.  Have you always wanted to play indiscriminately with weapons?  Not only is a zombie outbreak the perfect opportunity, it practically mandates that you shoot everything you see. 

Before you naysayers chime in with “But… what if you get sick Mr. ‘Pocolypse Pants’… what then?”, I will explain one simple truth.  The only real disease you have to contend with at that point is whatever infection caused the outbreak of dead people shambling around your town.  The previous carriers of influenza, strep, colds, etc. are all now carrying nothing but the blessed Zombie virus.  Oh, the blessing is not on them, but on you… the intrepid survivor who gets to enjoy the thrill of breaking in to stores for cool supplies like machetes and shotguns.  When else do you get to say “Let’s break in to that sporting goods store… we’re running low on machetes.”? 

Survival is ultimately simple.  Carry a pack of one 1911 pistol, one 12 gauge shotgun, one scoped rifle (for entertainment) and a load of ammo.  Everything else is ultimately taken care of with one katana.  Why a katana?  They’re well made, durable, and have a very keen cutting edge.  With one katana you could easily pare down a herd of zombies, or simply behead them for use later (see scoped rifle).  An enterprising young survivalist could tie up a line of zombies and use them to pull his or her apocolypse sleigh.  With the help of a bulldozer, you’re essentially set to go trekking around the country.  You can drive over the zombies in your path, or mash them with your bucket.  Any vehicles in your way can be pushed aside at leisure.  Don’t tell me you’ve never secretly wanted to run someone over.  Well, during a zombie outbreak, it’s not only permitted… it’s down-right encouraged!  Relive the excitement over and over! 

Stand on the roof of a bus or panel van and pretend to give a rousing speech as the zombies all gather around.  Pretend you’re in the wild west and lasso some zombies.  The opportunities for fun are simply endless.  Chances are the military bases will be largely abandoned.  Now is the time to explore, and have fun with all of that equipment.  Steal a tank, and listen to the delightful noise of zombie bodies slapping the pavement as you careen in to them.  Without annoying humans to interrupt you, the world is your playground. 

Sadly, I am afraid I may never get to experience this utopia.

I fear I may never meet my life’s calling as a zombie survivalist.

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Exclusive New Picture of the Iphone 5!

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Travis

As a member of the blogging press I have been granted access to an exclusive picture of the Iphone 5.  As you can see, it’s impressively designed, and Apple remains in the forefront of innovation and cool, pragmatic device architecture.

Exclusive Image of the Apple Iphone 5

 

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What Do They Call “Little People” in Middle Earth?

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Travis

Modern people with dwarfism (like the most common achondroplasia form) call themselves either dwarves, or the more widely used term “Little People”.  So what would they be called in Middle Earth?  Dwarf was already taken.  Hobbit is indeed a halfling, or “half-sized” human, but they do not share the same physical properties as a modern Little Person.  Would an actual dwarf be angry when a non-bearded Little Person came running in to their mine?  What if said little person refused to look for gems?  Would the dwarves cast them out?  Hobbits were said to be good tree climbers, but I have never seen a Little Person in a tree, not even on “Little People Big World”. 

Hobbits prefer to be barefoot, but Little People enjoy wearing little shoes.  If a human had a baby that turned out to be a Little Person, would her husband assume she had cheated with a dwarf? What would happen if a dwarf or hobbit had a baby with modern dwarfism? 

If a Little Person drank the ent’s water, would they grow really tall but keep the same proportions?  Would they still call themselves a “Little Person”?  Sadly Tolkien never saw fit to flesh out this portion of his world.  It appears we will never have important questions like this answered.

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Middle-Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Travis

Everyone who was (or had) a child in the 90′s knows what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are.  They were heroes on a half-shell.  Crime fighting turtles that were transformed by a radioactive ooze, and given names by a rat.  This can all be forgiven.  What cannot be forgiven is that they were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  If you looked on the back of the packaging for the action figures you discovered that their ages were all 15, except for Leonardo who was 16.  The most annoying age humans have.  This is the age where they talk back to Splinter, and try to sneak cigarettes in one of the other sewer holes.  It’s the age where they get their driving licenses and get in to fender-benders in the Turtle Van because they were too busy cranking up their emo music to pay attention to the road.  In every iteration of this series they are teenagers, never growing up or facing real issues besides the Foot Clan and Shredder. 

I propose the Middle-Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles.  They come home to the sewers from their day jobs, after they realized there is essentially no income from patrolling around in the van all day.  Michaelangelo, having come to terms with his adult obesity from eating nothing but peanut butter and jelly pizza, wears sweatpants all day and works in a call center for JC Penny.  Leonardo has a failed marriage, having moved back in with Splinter after his wife discovered he has no genitalia.  Donatello was imprisoned for credit card fraud and now paralysed from the waste down due to being shanked in a prison riot.  Raphael is fighting his alcoholism with AA, but cannot hold a steady job because he sends inappropriate e-mails to women in his office.  At night they band together to patrol for the foot clan, but the foot clan doesn’t exist anymore because their parents put their foot down and cancelled their xbox live subscriptions when they sassed back. 

The Middle-Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles come with the Turtle Van playset, complete with an inflatable donut for Leonardo’s hemerrhoid.

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Minecraft 1.8

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Travis

*Update*

Minecraft 1.8 is officially released now!

Good afternoon!

It looks like Minecraft 1.8 will not be coming out until later in the week.  Still, the pre-release is available, and I have been playing it.  Villages generate a ways out from your spawn, and they are hit or miss with how complete they are, but they’re very interesting to see.  After all this time of playing minecraft, it’s strange to see buildings in there that you didn’t create.  There are some pre-release bugs, but Jeb has already tweeted that he will be updating tomorrow (September 13th) to fix them.  My favorite things so far:

1. The lighting makes the game much more immersive and just plain pretty to look at

2. The newly improved biomes make it much more fun to explore.  Mountains are now truly large and interesting to climb.

3. Who doesn’t love giant shrooms?

4. There is so much more to see now when you wander through the landscape.

 

I l0ve the new oceans.  Building a base at the bottom of one is now a lot more cool to try.  As soon as things are more stable I will be. I have had some lag and RAM usage issues with the 1.8 Pre-Release.   I think Jeb has already fixed one memory leak, but I was able to fix my own jitters by turning on the advanced opengl functionality.  I honestly don’t know if that was just a placebo, but I mentioned it to others and it seemed to help them too.  Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I don’t have access to them here!  I’ll be posting more later.  On a related note… Terraria is getting… unicorns!?

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Moving house

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Travis

Hello!

 

I apologize for so few updates.  I have been building a house!  A real house, not a minecraft house.  Since this has been such a big process it did take a lot of my time here.  I will be adding posts more frequently too.  Thanks for hanging in there with me.  I will be back in full soon! :)

 

 

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