I am in for one hell of an afternoon. I stopped at the store at lunch and bought:
Anyone want to party at my place?
Also, I just made the single nerdiest post I’ve ever made on the internet. It’s not this one – it’s on a forum I frequent – but it’s so nerdy that I am almost embarrassed for myself.
Almost.
nerd ho!
I have the best readers in the world.
optimash prime!
Kristin found this in a store and thought I ought to have it. She sent him to me and he is awesome – the other assorted Optimii are in awe. Hooray for random presents! They are the very best kind of presents! I love getting stuff in the mail, and knowing that people think of you when they see things like this is just awesome. Thank you, Kristin! :D
Have you ever wondered what goes on inside my head?
I made you a flow chart so you can see for yourself.
Flow charts are awesome.
I faithfully read IGN.com for game news and reviews, so when I saw they had posted their Best of 2008 game list, I was excited in the pants. I’ve played a scary number of the games that were nominated in each of their 22 DS categories, but this post isn’t about my illicit behaviour that I learned from watching you, okay.
Instead, I am letting you know that I am beyond excited and filled with glee to note that The World Ends With You was nominated in 6 categories, and won 4 of them including DS Game of the Year. HOORAY! I love it when things I love win awards and stuff!
There was another nerdgasm when I learned that TWEWY was nominated for Best RGP at the Spike Video Game awards. It lost to Fallout 3 (which is probably the only game in the category that I would agree was better), but I was still happy to see it up there.
I was extremely surprised to see that Crosswords DS won the Best Puzzle Game category over another of my favourites, Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I have both, and didn’t think much of the crossword game. I’m really picky when it comes to word games, and I thought the Nintendo crossword game was a little too basic (which didn’t stop me from playing several thousand rounds of anagram puzzles).
This post in which I bitched about the existence of what is now one of my favourite games of all time is highly amusing to me.
emo raaaaage!
I’ve explained this before, but if you’ll bare with me for a minute, I need to do it again:
A long time ago in a world before the internet or IRC, I used to use and eventually run a 12-line chat BBS called the STS-07 (Synergy Teleconferencing System 07: Information Overload). User accounts were by number; each member had their own number and would show up in the online user list as such. You could change your name at will, but your number was always the same.
Since the first time I logged onto that system, my number was 169. I chose it seemingly at random and because all the “good” numbers were taken – 7, 13, 42, 69, 666, etc. I picked 169 because “it’s like ‘I 69’, get it?”; nevermind that at that point in my life I had never actually done any numbers at all, let alone 69.
169 became my number. I used it everywhere. It’s still in all my passwords, it’s always my number of choice. It appears all over the place, in strange and spooky places – we’ll play a game, and I’ll end up with a score of 169. When I read a book, I’ll glance at the page number and I’ll be on 169. I know it’s one of those “the number is significant so you’re subconciously looking for it” things, but Ed can attest that 169 shows up a LOT in my life.
Three or so years after having the number 169 as my very own, I discovered that my birthday – June 18th – is the 169th day of the year.
Why am I telling you all this?
Because I did the final tally for the Cans for Comments Extravaganza last night, and together we netted 169 comments – 169 cans – for the food bank.
You have no idea how much this satisifies me. It’s like 100% uncut Columbian nerd crack.
Thank you all for participating in Cans for Comments! I will gather up some final numbers for everyone who participated, and yes Mike, there will be pictures. I’m off to can it up today – it’s a good thing Shan and Miranda both have giant cars, because that is a lot of food for Vancouver’s hungry. I’m so proud of all of us!
169forlife!
The battle was long and hard, but in the end, I emerge victorious – Banjo is running a stable XP with sound and ethernet. They said it couldn’t be done. They said I was a mad man; said I was playing god. They said Vista was my destiny, and that I should really put on some pants – but who’s laughing now? WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?!??
That’d be me. I’M laughing now. NO MORE VISTA! ALL HAIL XP!
I will take my leave now to do a naked victory lap around the living room, but before I go let me leave you with this:
I’ve had a headache for two days now that is inching ever closer to becoming something that incapacitates me. Naturally, I do not have time for this. In addition to wanting to play video games, I am literally surrounded by fucking routers that need configuring which, in my role as technical writer and training manager, I am clearly responsible for doing.
Some days, I feel an awful lot like Dante (my life is both a Divine Comedy and an Inferno, and I’m not even supposed to be here today).
Last night I traded in Fable II (finished it), Animal Crossing: City Folk (it’s *exactly* the same as Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS) and an extra controller to my favourite EB in exchange for Fallout 3 and Burnout: Paradise. They didn’t have any more Special Edition copies of Fallout, which was kind of a bummer – I wanted the lunch box and bobble head. I haven’t started playing it yet; I have to wait until Saturday for Ed to be in class so I can play without spoiling the story for him and vice versa. We did start in on Burnout: Paradise last night though, and it’s pretty awesome. I had actually pre-ordered Need for Speed: Bro Hugs Undercover, but the horrible reviews it’s getting scared me off. It’s a shame – I genuinely like the NfS series, but the last few offerings have been just awful. B:P has everything I look for in a car game (outside of Mario Kart, I don’t play racing games because I cannot drive in a straight line) with the added bonus of no people. That’s right – there’s no crappy plot, no terrible but hot actresses hamming up my TV, no extended cut scenes of thugs with barbed wire tattoos and pixelated sneers. All there is to do is drive, jump off stuff, drive through stuff, knock other cars off the road, and break billboards. I love it. Destruction is awesome.
die die die
I did a thing.
A bunch of different flavoured nerds got together last month with Stephanie’s idea: pick a director out of a hat and create a photo that captures the style of that director. I got two names – Terry Gilliam and Federico Fellini. While I haven’t done my Fellini project yet, the above link will take you to my Gilliam attempt.
I was especially challenged by this entire thing, given that I do not watch movies and haven’t seen anything, ever. Gilliam is a founding member of Monty Python, but is also an influential director. Some of his films that I have not seen include Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, Brazil, The Brothers Grimm, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and more. I was pretty much limited to what I could read on the internet, and several things struck me in particular: both Twelve Monkeys and Brazil feature dystopian societies (Brazil is a parody of Orwell’s 1984), and he was responsible for all the weird animations that appear in Python sketches: namely, his shit is fucked up.
I thought for several days about what I wanted to do, and figured my version of dystopia would be somewhat doable. I don’t exactly have a large number of identical people lying around, so I did the next best thing: a barren, hopeless future acted out by dollar store toys. It works, sort of. At any rate, it’s pretty fucked up.
I don’t know that I did Gilliam’s work any justice, but I had a great deal of fun putting toys in bizarre poses. My favourite shot is probably the one of You Tube – to me, nothing could possibly be more depressing and dystopic than a future in which we are all ruled by what we see on You Tube. The 1984 Apple Commercial was my attempt at tongue in cheek – not only did the commercial spoof on the very thing one of my director’s films also play on; but my “Big Brother” is in fact the very computer the 1984 commercial was introducing. Full circle; I haz it.
So, check it out. My Fellini project won’t be quite so many photos, but if I can pull that one off I’ll post it later. I don’t think my entry is nearly as good as some of the others – Shan’s is awesome, and not because I was her model – but I had fun with it, and my own little in-jokes give me a great deal of pleasure.
I’ll post links to the other projects as I find them!
Oh, Fido. Why did you have to piddle all over the country?
I was blissfully unaware of this, but apparently Fido has been experiencing “brand ambiguity” ever since being purchased by Rogers a few years ago. To combat this, they’ve undergone yet another image revamp. It’s all the rage these days; just recently Bell Canada went from anthropomorphic beavers to the classier (?) and wholly confusing “-er” campaign. Not helping matters is the Telus entry into the discount mobile provider party – they’re the bastards behind the disturbing 80’s fitness-branded Koodo, a company seemingly targeted towards people who like to get physical and wear legwarmers.
Fido is, of course, my current cell provider, and I’ve been trying to log into their website for the last three days to get my latest bill. I’ve been having trouble doing so, and today I found out why: they launched their new website to go along with their new image, and it is fucking horrible.
It doesn’t take a degree in Marketing to see what they’re going for here – in Canada, the bright yellow screams CHEAP! DISCOUNT! NO FRILLS! YOU CAN AFFORD THIS! It’s the same yellow used by No Name brand products available at bargain basement grocery stores and Best Buy. It’s also hideous. The old Fido brand featured a website with a black background and shades of teal, beige and brown – it was actually pretty classy. Their new website is an eyesore and actually made me wonder if it had been hacked. Smart move, guys.
Before today, if you had asked me if the company’s image played into my willingness to pay for their services, I would have scoffed and said no. My extreme distaste for the new cheap Fido, however, is proving me wrong. Frankly, I’m embarrassed that these guys are my phone provider. Just like I would never be a Koodo customer because of their awful ads and imagery, if this version of Fido had been the norm when I was looking for a new provider in July, I would have passed them by. I suppose this is really snooty of me, but it’s the same everywhere – you go with what you like. I liked Fido’s old image; that of warm colours, cute dogs and hip people who could totally be me. Their new image – one of obnoxious bright yellow, sloppy sketches and scruffy dogs/people – is highly distasteful to me.
I suppose the bottom line is really the cell service, and it remains to be seen whether this new cheaper Fido will cut back on the quality of service I receive from them. If it gets bad, I will bail and go elsewhere.
In the meantime though, if anyone asks, I’m with Sprint.
Last night was awesome.
As cool as the entire spectacle was (and I highly recommend seeing the show if it comes to your town), the highlights of the evening for me weren’t actually part of the program:
They also debuted a song from the next Need for Speed game, Need for Speed: Undercover. The song and trailer were pretty cool, but I’m pretty sure the working title of the game is actually Need for Speed: Bro Hugs. For a game about racing cars, there were an awful lot of buff manly hugs going on, not to mention the Ethnically Diverse Hot Chick Looking Sad theme running throughout.
Most of all, I was very glad to note that the evening didn’t make me as sad as I thought it might. Video games make me sad, you see, but that’s an enormous post for another time – today is not for sad; it is for good times.
I did feel strangely disconnected from the most popular pieces played, though. As much as I love video games and sport a rather impressive collection of game music CDs and MP3s, I tend to not play a lot of the big ticket games that were featured last night, like Final Fantasy (*fist shake*) and Metal Gear Solid. The audience went nuts during the segments for Warcraft and Starcraft and Halocraft, but while I thoroughly enjoyed the whole evening, I wasn’t all swoony with glee like the rest. Of course, if they had played things that *I* have a strong connection to, I would have been hollering with the best of them. I wish they had played music from Beyond Good and Evil as they have in the past, but overall it was a damn fine evening and I’m very glad we went.
I was both amused and conflicted to note that EA had a job booth set up. I was torn about the whole thing – half of me was filled with scorn (where were you when I desperately needed you and would have given my left arm to join your ranks?), but half of me wanted to throw myself at their mercy and beg them to take me on. I wanted to ask if my dream job exists, but decided against it – neither answer would make me feel good. If I was told no, there is no such thing as a Video Game Manual Writer, my dreams would be completely crushed – but if they said yes, we hire Video Game Manual Writers, then what? Would I throw everything away to try to join their forces again? Or do I put my dream on the back burner and continue to do my current job that I really do enjoy, all filthy warehouses in Richmond aside? Am I better off not knowing if my dream has any chance of becoming reality, or should I plant my feet on solid but boring ground?
Too many deep thoughts for an evening of fun.
delicious juice dot com 