Friggin' Legit

Interning for the summer, at least. At Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

I’ve been to the beach twice and I make bacon whenever I want.

I often start on a train of thought and, as it progresses, my mind goes on different tangents and rabbit trails until several minutes later when I realize that my brain is totally off topic and I try to retrace the path back to the root of the thought tree. After doing this for about the third time today, I decided to do the same thing with my current interests, how I stumbled upon the things that I like, and it turns out that LoadingReadyRun has been far and away one of the biggest influences on my multimedia life.

In a more basic sense, I suppose it stems from internet comedy in general. The root of this tree is IRL, and its children are online. The farthest back I can trace in a continuous path is back in 2008 when a couple of my real-life friends told me about a YouTube sketch comedy group called Balloon Shop who used to attend their high school. Back then, we thought they were flippin’ hilarious, but really, they weren’t and only got less so. Before becoming disenfranchised with them, one of their members posted a link on his Facebook to the Zero Punctuation review of Gears of War 2 on the Escapist in January of ’09. I thought it was pretty funny and decided to click around on the other videos on the site, when I found Unskippable. Watching that, I noticed that the voices seemed familiar and clicked the link to their site, whereupon I recalled that I had seen LRR’s “Fun With Microwaves” video back in 2008. And from there, things went squirrelly.

An archive binge ensued, and I continued to keep up with LoadingReadyRun as they released new videos and created new series. I paid special attention to CommodoreHustle and the Phailhaus, and also started listening to their podcast. When I realized that they were very much not dicks and actually had very good tastes, I began trying out things they recommended.  Here is a short list of things I experienced through the direct influence of LRR: In Bruges, Persona 4, Magic: the Gathering, Metal Gear Solid, Andrew WK, Child’s Play charity, Yu-Gi-Oh: Abridged, poutine, and more. I even gained a newfound appreciation for Sir Mix-a-Lot’s magnum opus, Baby Got Back.

But the amazing part is that these direct children also led me to secondary interests. The unholy gangbang of Persona 4, Yu-Gi-Oh: Abridged, and LRR’s personal recommendation led me to commit an atrocity I’d never dreamt possible: I actually watched anime. And not just the little bits of Yu-Gi-Oh and Dragonball Z I saw on Toonami after Ed, Edd, & Eddy when I was a kid, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Code Geass, and FLCL. Don’t worry, I haven’t turned into some otaku monstrosity or anything, but rather through LoadingReadyRun, I have experienced many different genres of entertainment I would have otherwise never even considered. They’ve really opened me up to a wider sample of culture, given me a better appreciation for the world around me, and simply entertained me in dozens of ways.

So thank you, LoadingReadyRun, for helping shape who I am today. You’ve led me to numerous culturally enriching sources of  entertainment and given me an assload of laughs. Keep doing the awesome stuff you do.

Unrelated, but I’ve written another article for HardyDev on the nominees for the Best AGS Game of 2010 award, which astute readers will notice is pretty much the same article I wrote last year with some of the names changed around.

So it’s been approximately ages since I’ve done anything in this space, so I figured I’d quickly summarize my last two months with a picture.

(Numbers are roughly clockwise)

1) My torn-apart Eee PC 901. A while back, I broke the LCD by using it as a carrying handle, a use it neither was designed for nor deserved. So I ordered a replacement and assumed I’d be able to install it myself. This was a good assumption; expecting the shipper to send precisely the right model was not. All-in-all, the pins didn’t match up and the backlight didn’t work. Ordering the right part soon.

2) Machine of Death. A great book that I’ve been reading. I think it might be the first actual hold-it-in-your-hands paper book I’ve bought for my own personal reading enjoyment in years.

3) 3D glasses. I was on an Amazon shopping spree and figured why not.

4) My newly repaired Macbook Pro. The turdbiscuits at the Apple Store finally believed me that the issue was the same one I told them it was all along, namely that the Wi-Fi card was Wi-Fried, and repaired the slut of a laptop. So far, so good, but I’ve renamed it “Morgan”.

5) Playstation 2 and Persona 4. I picked up a used PS2 and a bunch of games for dirt cheap over the holidays and have really been enjoying it. Persona 4 is the one game I’ve spent the most time on, over 20 hours according to my save file but many more hours were played but lost to death. It’s really quite fun and I’m looking forward to playing more of it.

6) Magic: The Gathering deck. Yes, I’ve gotten into Magic. I have a few friends with whom I play a couple times a week and currently have 3 decks. Hopefully, I will be able to refrain from converting my entire life savings into trading card form.

7) My DVD copy of The Social Network. The local Blockbuster is shutting down and are in the process of liquidating their DVD inventory, so everything is on sale for, again, dirt cheap. I picked up the special edition of what I consider to be 2010′s best film for a delicious $8.

Otherwise, most of my time has been spent on game development and school. I made another Oceanspirit Dennis game and am currently working on two other unrelated, non-OSD game projects. I also might be working with a certain someone on a certain something that may or may not certainly be a book.

I got a new PC. I made it myself. It has fancy parts for fancy games. Hip hip hooray. With the new PC comes new games, which I could not previously run. These include Just Cause 2, Crysis, Prince of Persia ’08, and all my old games on maximum settings.

Pics!

Shiny...

Messy... I'll get around to organizing the cables.

I’ve been pretty busy recently, working on several different things. Oceanspirit Dennis has been Oceanspiriting, but I’ve got other, different, game-related stuff on my mind. Not sure if anything will come of it.

If I want to graduate on time and receive both my Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degrees, which I do, my school forces me to pay up and take a summer course completely unrelated to my major, which I am. Thus, I’m stuck in the night-class purgatory that is microeconomics. I’ve had three classes so far and am fairly sure that I have learned everything there is to know about economics. If you, for some demented reason, want to enter this strange field, here is all you need to know:

1. A fourth grade level understanding of mathematics. Seems those three semesters of Calculus were all for naught, at least in economics. Here is a comprehensive list of all the mathematical concepts I have used in this course: averaging two numbers, the point-slope formula, solving a simple single variable algebraic equation, and percent difference.
2. Supply and demand. High supply and low demand mean low prices; low supply and high demand mean high prices. Or something like that. There’s other factors, but we’re not supposed to consider them because we’d have to solve equations with more than one variable. Gasp!
3. Profit is total revenue minus total cost. If reading this made you feel enlightened, then you have a promising career projecting the future of the national economy on MSNBC.
4. Those cheeseburger-flavored Doritos are kinda neat the first time, but get really gross really fast. High-level stuff, I know.
5. Please let me integrate something before I lose my mind. My brain is melting.

So, in short, if you are not at all mathematically inclined and want a big fancy piece of paper saying how special you are, economics is for you. Hopefully, I’ll survive until the fall semester, when Physics 3 and Probability will have a chance to revive my dead brain cells.

Also, totally unrelated, but you should keep your eyes peeled for this sweet game that’s emerging very soon from the creative womb of my good friend and coworker, Igor Hardy.

It’s called SNAKES OF AVALON and HERE’S A TRAILER.

Dentists

It’s a well-known fact that all dentists are completely evil. This is never more clear than once every six months when I go in for my appointment. I seriously think they have it in for me because I don’t floss enough. They started off by hooking me up to the whirling X-ray machine of doom and bombarded my mouth with high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. Afterwards, they strapped me in a very uncomfortable chair in an extremely bright room and started taking pictures of the insides of my mouth, presumably to sell to some perverted teeth fetishists on the internet. It was at this point I realized that I was now at the mercies of a woman who clearly believes in “no pain no gain,” perhaps a little too much. As she tore into my gums, she began interrogating me, well aware of the fact that my mouth was busy being assaulted by her sharp implements of terror.

After a jolly good while of this, she decided to mix things up by smearing poor tasting goop in and around my mouth with a mechanical sander, pausing every so often to inject heavily fluorinated water into my increasingly uncomfortable mouth. She wasn’t particularly good at this bit, so half the water ended up bouncing into my upward-facing eyes. When she grew board of drowning me, she stuck a little vacuum tube in my mouth and told me with terrible smugness to swish, as if she knew I wanted to spew the vile mixture in her big, stupid face. After that, the head dentist came in and told me my teeth looked fine. So then I went home.

Games

In completely and totally unrelated news, them ol’ vidya-games are still up to no good. I’ve pretty much decided that Dragon Age isn’t my thing, but I might give it another shot after a cooling off period. I bought Call of Duty: World at War for the deceptively low price of $20. You might think that I say $20 is “deceptive” because the game was really worth much more, but you would be wrong. It was deceptive in the way that it convinced me to buy a wholly mediocre game with AI on the level of Pong. I still can’t stop playing Mass Effect 2, I got back on the horse with Bioshock, and I bought some new songs for Rock Band, so all-in-all a good bunch.

Movies

Recently, I’ve been watching the movies people accost me for having ignored. With movies like Alien(s), No Country for Old Men, and In Bruges, they are completely right. With Avatar, they are dead wrong. Something about that movie just bugs me, and the more I think about it, the more I want to stab James Cameron in the throat with cattle prod. I’m not sure where he went wrong. Aliens rocked, Avatar sucked, but why? As usual, I choose to blame CGI, something that they had significantly less of in 1986. I don’t care how detailed the digital models are or how expensive the motion capture was, the Na’vi look computer generated and no amount of lens flares will get them out of the uncanny valley. I also choose to blame 3D and the massive headache it gave me.

TV

Aw, who am I kidding? The only TV show I ever watch is Lost, which is slogging its way through its sixth season. The show has taken a significant dip in quality this time around, not to be confused with the dip last season, or the dip in season three. I’m beginning to lose faith in what I once thought was the greatest show in the history of shows, since no season has yet to live up to the awesomeness of the first. The writers have definitely realized that they can just make crap up and no one will call them out on it, so the questions created to questions answered ratio is hovering around 3.5. They don’t have long to wrap everything up, so they best be kicking into solvey-solvey mode pretty soon. And why the hell do they keep getting rid of all the black characters? Michael, Walt, Mr. Eko, Justin, they’re all suspiciously gone. Just sayin’.

So I succeeded in staying in bed for 24 hours straight. All in all, it was a fun experience, though I don’t plan to do it again anytime soon unless it’s for charity or something. Some highlights…

• I’d say most of my time was spent with video games, and most of my video game time was spent with Fallout 3. So far, pretty nice game, though arguably inferior to Mass Effect in most ways besides combat, graphics, and auto-saving. But it’s a different type of game for a different audience.
• It seems every time I rent Spider-Man 2, the DVD is scratched or really dirty or something else that prevents me from watching it all the way through. I still don’t recall if I’ve ever seen the whole thing.
• The best way to scare off someone on Omegle asking “m or f?” is to respond “lioness.”
• Richard Feynman’s a beast.

Thank you Ryan North of qwantz.com for the inspiration!

Well that’s my plan. I’m gonna stay in bed for 24 hours straight. Instead of going to bed and simply not getting up, I’m going to start at noon CST tomorrow and go to noon on friday. Why am I doing this? Why not? I’m officially on winter break, so I can do whatever the heck I want.

I will be a little bit more prepared than T-Rex; I’ll have all my electronics within arms reach, as well as a cooler full of tasty treats and maybe a microwave.

About the electronics, my Macbook Pro will not be joining my experiment on account of it being a broken piece of crap. Even after formatting both partitions and doing a full reinstall, the old girl’s still crapping out on me. I did upgrade my Windows partition to 7 and it’s pretty nice. The best part, though, is that I more than doubled the partition size so I can download all the games I want. I would very much enjoy playing my latest purchase, Knights of the Old Republic, except for the aforementioned fail. But I’ve got an appointment at the Apple store before zero-hour tomorrow and I’ll just drop the thing off.

So yeah. 24 hours in bed. I think it’ll be fun. I’ll have my Xbox, my iMac, and Richard Feynman’s autobiograpy, and I’ll be tweeting all the way.

Let’s have some structure:

1. Video games: I recently beat Mass Effect, and let me say that it is definitely one of the best games I’ve ever played. It gives COD4 a run for its money as my favorite Xbox game. Sure, it has a lot of flaws (annoying inventory system, the MAKO vehicle, Unreal engine 3), but it more than makes up for them with an incredible story, truly lovable characters, the best dialog system I’ve ever encountered, and more than tolerable combat. Go buy it now. Other games I’ve been playing recently: Left 4 Dead 2, Saints Row 2, Spider-Man 2, and Modern Warfare 2 (see a pattern?). All of them are really good, but none of them are quite as epic as Mass Effect. I’m planning on getting the collector’s edition (EDIT: For the sequel in January, that is), which is something I’ve never done.
2. Computer problems: If you’ve read my twitter in the past two weeks or heard my screams of anguish (audible radius: 2000 km), you’ll no doubt know that my computer is friggin’ screwed up. I have nearly exhausted my options for fixing it, but I don’t think it’s too late yet. After some preparation, I plan to back up all my essential stuff twice, including app licenses, and do a complete format and reinstall. I’m probably going to end up doing this for both my Mac and Windows partition, so I’m going to use this opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7 and increase the size of my Boot Camp partition. I honestly don’t know why I’m upgrading, since the last 3 times I’ve upgraded my computers I’ve wrought nothing but sorrows.
3. Christmas: I hate Christmas music. I like Christmas, but I hate the music more than anything. Other things I hate more than anything include the cold, rain, final exams, and media whores. Why I’m in Memphis during the winter and why I still have yahoo.com bookmarked is beyond me. But once again breaking my own rule of never announcing anything until it’s done, I have plans for literally 9 different thing for my holiday break. Instead of breaking my rule outright, I’ll just bend it a little by giving the first letter of each: M, C, A, K, F, T, P, S, and B. Guess away.

I can see many ways this can be taken out of context.

Not too long ago, Google announced “Wave.” It seems to be a shiny online collaboration tool made out of pure heroin. Or at least you’d think so by looking at how desperate people are to get their hands on an invite to the exclusive online party. But the obsession seems to have died down; Wave’s been out of the Twitter trending topics for a while now and I’m seeing fewer shameless pleas for invites.

Why all the fuss?

Sure, Wave looks pretty spiffy, and if you do a lot of collaborative work, I could see how it would be useful, but the demand goes beyond that. A lot more people want Wave than need it. Why? Well, for one, it’s new and exclusive. “Gosh, maybe if I can get a Google Wave invite I can finally feel special!” Plus, with the power to invite others comes responsibility, or, conversely, power-hunger. “Sure I’ll invite you… if you make me a moderator on your forum.” These motivating factors have led me to deduce that the hype surrounding Wave and the invites thereto stems at least partially from the economy of scarcity. Since there seems to be only a limited number of spots that Google will allow at this point, the value of an invite increases with time, to the point where invites start showing up on eBay. Because people want into the Google-select so badly, they are willing to pay actual money for a service that they’ll eventually be able to get for free. Of course, since time is money, some people can justify this monetary sacrifice.

I’m biased though, I really wouldn’t have anyone to collaborate with except classmates, but that’s commonly known as cheating. Plus, I haven’t really done any research at all on Wave. Still, I can see the allure of holding such a power, the potential for evil is… staggering. Yes… quite staggering.

At work, I’ve started creating an iPhone app for my rapper boss and am looking at getting into iPhone development as a “serious hobby.” It could fit into some entrepreneurial ideas I have for the future involving videos for university courses, too. Now the virtual iPhone that comes with the SDK certainly works, but I imagine it would be much nicer doing the testing on an actual device. No doubt it would also be friggin’ sweet for mobile browsing, games, utilities, and more or less anything I could imagine. But, daaaamn, a data plan is expensive! Not to mention the charges I’d undoubtably rack up by going download-crazy on the app store. I have a phone. I have an iPod. Do I need an iPhone?

Condawg says no, an iPod Touch would do. I initially brushed off the suggestion as impractical because the Touch didn’t offer enough improvements to replace both my phone and iPod. I’m starting to think it still might be an option, but I’m unsure. Clearly, I’d prefer an iPhone, but would it be an investment or an indulgence? Before I bought one, I’d need to know that I could at least partially cover the costs from app or work income. So before I make the purchase, I’ll want to be more fluent in app design and Objective-C.

Or I could blow all my money on a plane ticket to New Zealand to get some dandy books.

In other news, Triumph of the Nerds is now for sale on ebay for $20! Check it out here.

I might just be the next Ghandi. Well, maybe not, but this new form of protest I’ve come up with will hopefully catch on as a new form of civil disobedience. It is called…

PENIS PROTEST

Penis Protest is a radical new way to get your point across to the Man. Basically, it entails saying the word “penis” a whole friggin’ lot to make the people around you uncomfortable; like the penis game, except with a message. Since penis is not a very socially accepted word, yet not regularly considered an obscenity, passers by will hear you saying penis a lot and will therefore become quite nervous and uneasy. This awkwardness will temporarily create a block in mental activity, thereby allowing the protesters to subtly insert their true message into their captive audience’s subconscious. It doesn’t take long for the new recruits to get in on the penis action and start multiplying. Consider this hypothetical example of Penis Protest in action:

Protester 1: “So I guess the penis of what I’m saying is that when you look at the big penis, all the penises fit together!”

Protester 2: “I agree one-hundred penises.”

Protester 1: “So did you see the penis for that new documentary on penises?”

Passer-By: “Buhuhuh… I’m lost and confused!”

Protester 2: “PETA must be penis stopped!”

Passer-By: “Alright!”

Of course, Penis Protest is not limited to this particular method! In fact, PP is open to interpretation. While some may interpret it in the above fashion, others may instead wear t-shirts with the word “penis” on them, or perhaps put split second flashes of the word into promotional videos for subliminal messaging. The penis possibilities are endless!

What’s 2520 pixels tall (give or take), covered in arrows, and contains the phrase “experimental ass surgery”? Why this flowchart, of course!

It’s true.

And from now on, I’ve decided to stop announcing things. It seems every time I get what I think is a bright new idea, I have to go and blab about it on the the internet or to my friends or to the union of those two sets. See the following Venn Diagram…

Therefore, effective immediately, I will stop announcing new projects and focus all my efforts on completing the ones I’ve started. And on work. And school.