Somewhat Manly Nerd

Any game that features levels called “There’s no I in Teamocil” and “In Soviet Russia, N plays you” deserves to be bought for $10 bucks. It just so happens that this game also is incredibly fun and unique in its own right. You are a miniature ninja attempting to jump and slide his way through increasingly difficult levels of pure platforming goodness. It’s been available in freeware flash form on the PC for years, but there has never been controller support (unless you really know your PC shit). Now, released on the 360 with HD graphics and — obviously — controller support, the game is one of the best on XBLA, and arguably the most content-laden of any 800 point game on the service. 250 single-player levels and 50 co-op levels to conquer, with a bunch more for multiplayer race and survival modes. You can even make your own maps, but only the person who made the custom map can host a game using it, basically defeating the purpose. That, and horrific lag in 4-player online, are the only complaints I can muster. The game is totally awesome. Wall-jumping, lasers, missiles, and gibs in floaty gravity is an awesome formula. Don’t even download the demo. Just buy the game. I should’ve bought it a few weeks ago when it came out. Don’t make the same mistake that I did. Don’t wait. BUY IT.

P.S. The game is coming out for DS and PSP and I bet it’ll be at least 20 bucks.

It’s like a spinoff of LOLCATS, but better. The last point being obvious, since dogs > cats.

The link to the site: Fail Dogs.

Some of them are oldies.

Some are new ones.

It is all awesome (at failing).

I need to get my dog Emma on there.

I guess I should also mention The FAIL Blog, from which this meme is derived. I looked at it a while ago, but never bothered to go back again. Just like 99% of websites I see.

It’s pretty crappy quality, but I don’t care. It’ll take forever to download the HD version with Blizzard’s worthless torrent client, once that is posted. Unlike the game that was just released today, this is truly the game of the year (even though it will almost definitely not be released this year).

Also, some impressions from serious Koreans HERE.

A picture of the books I needed to purchase this semester for aforementioned class:

This does not include the numerous short stories that are online, or full novels posted on the net, like The Time Machine. I really don’t mind, because I haven’t really had to read for a class in a while, and sci-fi rocks. Getting an upper-division credit for reading Starship Troopers = amazing. Out of the ones I’ve read so far, the Star Trek one was easily the worst. But that was mostly because I already knew the vast majority of the physics talked about in the book. And the fact that I’ve seen maybe a dozen episodes of Star Trek (TNG only) in my life, and I don’t even remember them. I just have a vague memory of watching Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise with my dad. Or maybe that’s just YTMND getting to me.

A Canticle for Leibowitz could barely be classified as science-fiction, as it follows a monastery through 1800 years after a nuclear holocaust. But it’s pretty interesting how it shows the Church paralleling the book-copying and knowledge-storing service it provided the Western world during through the Middle Ages, and how independent intelligent thought begins to arise again. It’s also one of the most depressing novels I’ve ever read.

The Forever War was a pretty cool exploration into a war-driven future economy of Earth, the effects of time-dilation (time slows down when you approach the speed of light) on human beings, and possible future technologies. The manner in which many of the breakthroughs are detailed and explained makes them sound plausible. With regards to the human and war side, you can tell that it was written by a Vietnam vet. The best quality of the book is how quick of a read it is.

Man, I should writing shit up FOR this class, not ABOUT it.

Here you go. The newest one.

Go to PBFcomics.com to see what greatness I have not kept you up-to-date with. It will soon be over.

Notice: You need to have seen the original There Will Be Blood trailer for this to be awesome.

I bring you There Will Be Bud.

It may not be hilarious the whole way through, but it is the most well-done parody I’ve seen. Damn impressive. Bravo.

- So Brett Favre finally retired. Looks like he’s relegated to throwing picks at the family Thanksgiving game.

- Bangs are the worst haircut/hairstyle this side of Princess Leia/Queen Amidala. Any girl that convinces herself that bangs look good is too lazy to fix her hair up in a decent way. A girl actually looking decent in bangs is solely due to her being attractive to begin with. Let’s have one of the most beautiful women in the world demonstrate:

Sure, one of these pics was taken 15 years before the other, but the point still stands! I can do whatever I want! This is MY blog! Bangs suck!

- Burnout Paradise not having local multiplayer of any kind is a travesty. I really cannot describe how pissed I am at the multitude of 360 games that seemingly ignore that people actually still want to play games together IN PERSON.

- The Democratic Party is more self-destructive than the African continent. Hillary winning Ohio and Texas means that this is in all likelihood going to the convention, so by the time Obama and Hillary are through with each other, they probably won’t stand much of a chance against McCain in November. Not like a black guy and a woman had much of a chance against a bona fide war veteran anyway.

- The Aviator is Martin Scorsese’s best film this decade. Fact.

- “Still Alive” is a godawful song to be in Rock Band. Maybe if Rock Band were called Clever, but Ultimately Boring Hero, it’d fit in better. “Hell March” kicks the living shit out of it. As does it’s sequel. Who doesn’t want to yell in German? Not to mention that any gamer my age worth his salt grew up thinking “Hell March” was possibly the coolest game song ever.

- While I’m on it, Rock Band needs instrumentals. That would open up so many more possible songs. Just write up some code and embed it in the song DLC to make sure it’s out of the World Band Tour rotation when one of the players is on the mic. In that case, “Full Stop” would totally rock balls. As would a bunch of other Frank Klepacki songs. God, the Command and Conquer series is so awesome. I need a new PC.

- After an incident this past weekend, I’ve become convinced of one thing. Long Island needs a guido genocide.

The best part is Keith Hernandez cracking up.

Thanks to Veronica Belmont’s blog, I was made aware of some entrepreneur opportunity called TechStars. Corny name, but the $15,000 caught my eye. Create a tech company with a few dudes, come up with an awesome idea, and you can go to Boulder, CO and have a bunch of successful people who also had cool ideas help you get your idea and company off the ground — with $15,000. Too bad I only know basic C programming, rudimentary Photoshop techniques, and how to translate videos into GIFs. Frank! Anyone reading this who knows how to code! Let’s come up with something, and I’ll motivate you to code! Here’s what I got so far:

NEEDS MORE SOCIAL NETWORKING
This should pretty much be the motto of the internet. There is such a mind-blowing amount of sites dedicated to people posting stuff about themselves and/or interacting with others of similar interests. There are communities centered around topics and ideas ranging from sci-fi book clubs, to the most deviant sexual behavior one can think of, to Friendster for cats. All we need to do is come up with another site where people can post attention-whoring crap.

The XP Squad
We would make a living off of upgrading PCs from Windows Vista to Windows XP. Yes, I said upgrading. You know it to be true. Too bad Bill Gates would probably have us murdered within a week of operation.

Meme Reader
4chan might as well be called this, but a site that ravenously keeps track of all the inane memes across the net could become pretty damn popular. LOLcats, O RLY, FHUTA, Rickrolling, etc… I’m getting excited just thinking about what a trainwreck of a site that would be. And imagine an RSS feed just of all those ridiculous pictures and future ones. Nerds across the globe would be giggling endlessly.

Loser Town Factor
A blast from my recent internet past, concerning sports fandom. I truly need to make this website. LTF would calculate and list the ineptitude (or success) of every professional sports town, according to an already formulated method. Its success would depend on how many Cleveland citizens embrace it.

Successor to Stage6
Yes, it went under due to money troubles, but maybe we’ll have better luck. We can take on Veoh, easily. I think some people would be willing to pay a few bucks a year to use a website as awesome as Stage6, especially if it had a decent search engine. Plus, I would ban anime. That alone would make it 10x more attractive to normal people.

Something with monkeys
I don’t know how technology and monkeys can be fused together, but once they are, it’ll be gold, Jerry. Gold!

KidNet
Wow, this actually might be a decent idea. Exploit the one demographic that has yet to revel in the shithole that is the internet. Get them before they fall into the traps of MySpace and 2girls1cup. Parents would be able to strictly (and secretly, if they wish) monitor their kids’ activities on the network, while kids get to talk about whatever crap cartoons they watch nowadays. Everyone would be happy. (Since this is a good idea, it has probably already been done for years.)

Professional/Viral Trolling
I would need to incorporate some online buddies in this venture. Frank, you could take care of real-life trolling. I’ve known you to rip apart just about anyone or anything. The online trolling section could be handled by these online acquaintances. We would be the answer to viral marketing. Think of the possibilities! I could get paid for complaining about how overpriced Macs are on my blog, or for saying that PS3 has no games on a gaming forum. Microsoft would be willing to pay for that sort of support.

That’s all I got for now.

The internet always has a backup. I saw a post about this site soon after the Stage6 shutdown announcement, but now even the defunct Stage6 has put up an endorsement of the site, encouraging its former users to move to Veoh.

Stage6 is introducing Veoh Networks Inc. as a site that promises to offer our users a smooth transition. Millions of people use Veoh each month and we feel it is a great fit for our users.

Veoh enables you to upload, download, and watch high quality videos, including any DivX file.

Sounds alright to me. As a bonus, it also appears to have a search engine that wasn’t coded by a teenaged chimpanzee.

First impressions:

- You have to download the VeohTV program. Reminds me of Joost, which I tried out once and never opened again, soon deleting it.

- There’s a massive amount of channels available. Many of the same TV shows and episodes on Hulu are on here.

- The quality of the Muse concert I am watching right now is nowhere near what Stage6 was capable of. This looks slightly above shit YouTube quality, and that’s debatable.

- Speaking of YouTube, you can choose to search the net (through Google) for videos, so you can watch crappy YouTube videos if you wish.

- Some of the videos I get as search results on veoh.com are not showing up when I search on the VeohTV client. I have no idea what’s going on there, but it’s not cool. Maybe I spoke too soon about the search engine.

- It appears the reason why many of the same TV episodes of Hulu are on VeohTV is due to the fact that VeohTV is pulling the episodes directly from Hulu. And as a result, they actually look decent!

- Ok, it seems like that was just a shitty video before. I’m downloading it anyway, since it’s Muse.

- Veoh is no Stage6. Try it if you’re desperate, but it kinda sucks.