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| july 2011 microblog digest |
Posted 2011-08-02 21:33:21 by
Jim Crawford
Archived from http://twitter.com/mogwai_poet:
I talk at length about California Extreme on the 9th.
Jul 01
Jul 02
- @_peterdn A friend was able to transfer his contacts from Facebook to Yahoo, then from Yahoo to Google+. So there's that I guess?
- Best part about Google+: opportunity for more people to discover Facebook's reprehensible customer retention tactics.
Jul 03
Jul 04
Jul 05
Jul 06
- @xobs Textures from files? In my day, we used munching squares and we liked it.
- @xobs Also you have to use a pizza box 386/16 where the system beep takes a full second and freezes up the system while it's doing so.
- RT @petermolydeux How about this, listen, a game where you can control if it's in HD or SD and both play a vital part in solving puzzles?
- Life in a content-rich world comes with a number of unpleasant realizations for the creator.
- Used to be, when you made new content you were adding value to the world. Nowadays, unless it's something *good*, you're just adding noise.
- Jamestown is $5 for the next 20 hours: http://store.steampowered.com/app/94200/?snr=1_4_4_
- @chrisleague These are also the marketing geniuses who named their programming language "go."
- About goddamn time: "The first 'test-tube' hamburger is only a year away, scientists claim." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2008347/Test-tube-burger-coming-soon-Lab-grown-meat-needed-feed-world.html
- Rumor: Playstation 4 out at the end of 2012, with Kinect-like interface. http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110704PD202.html
- Can't-fail startup idea of the day: Mon Calamari helmets that let you experience what it's like to have eyes on the sides of your head.
Jul 07
Jul 08
Jul 09
- I eventually realized why the french horn players were rotating their french horns in the middle of the performance. Get a room, dudes!
- @MammonMachine Me, I'd love to have a formal excuse to play such games.
- Trying to find parking at California Extreme. There's a Jehovah's Witness con going on too, which I guess explains why it's so crowded!
- Half a dozen cabinets full of automated musical instruments, wired together like The Grid cabinets.
- Now playing: a tropical rendition of "California Dreamin'."
- Major Havoc's movement controls are busted this year. So that's why nobody was playing.
- The Act has been busy this year, but watching people play, the flirting mechanic is just one of many contextualized minigames.
- There's "Chiller," in a modified "Crossbow" cabinet. Jesus, there are kids on the show floor, guys.
- Waiting for our turn at DDR Extreme, I've seen about a dozen people sit at "Cosmogang" and discover that it's broken.
- Magical Truck Adventure needs a home port *so bad*.
- If only there were pianos with only 7 keys, this Pop n Music player would be a virtuoso.
- Totally got the high score on Twinbee.
- Hall is so goddamned loud, I can't make out a note that the guy with the Chapman stick is playing.
- $400 for a Gauntlet II cabinet. 10 years ago I would've jumped on the chance.
- Totally blowing up dozens of tiny Earths in "Mad Planets."
- Here I am playing Beat Time with 1517 points, and this guy next to me has over 100 million in Twilight Zone. Story of my life!
- I'm pretty sure this is the latest, console-only Mortal Kombat. Clever promotional trick to set up a cabinet here.
- Watching some dudes who actually know how to play Smash TV. 90% of this game might as well not exist for 90% of players.
- In "Time Pilot," the 2001 level is the distant future and has you fighting flying saucers in an asteroid field.
- Gee Bee is a pinball-inspired Breakout variant that's a ton more interesting than Arkanoid and its descendants.
- I still love how "Shark" lets you instantaneously switch mazes in the middle of a competitive game.
- Man, I forgot how much fun Dance Dance Revolution is with a good quality pad.
- Ask the concierge at the Hyatt Recency and he'll say restaurants are "three blocks" away. One of the blocks is the Great America theme park.
- I also still love how CAX is also a beard and ponytail expo.
- Police 911: motion sensors let you physically take cover. Was thinking Kinect for the home port, but Wii balance board is an even better fit
- Atari Force Liberation has the cheesiest texture-mapped sphere I've ever seen.
- Hard Drivin' Airborne: hardcore racing sim with "sprout wings" button. About 5 FPS.
- Playing the Joust 2 level entitled "The Blues" while a nearby musical automaton plays "Dancing Queen" on xylophone.
- Stern's "The End" is a Galaga clone down to the font and the twinkling stars effect -- I bet both are ripped right out of the Galaga ROM.
- I'd dismissed Crystal Castles as a Pac-Man clone after playing home ports, but it's *very* different with a trackball.
- After their success revamping the shmup life system, Final Form should try making Gauntlet fun when you're not paying money per hit point.
- Panic Park tournament going on. Lots of joysticks smashing into one another.
- At the 8bit concert across the hotel. The next band wants to start playing but the DJ is balking at cutting off "Lonely Rolling Star" early.
- Christ, I forgot how intolerable live music is without earplugs. Fuck loudness culture.
- Which is most awesome: video game embedded in pinball machine; pinball embedded in video game; Black Hole, with pinball embedded in pinball?
- Trying to figure out this pachinko machine is like playing Myst. I poke at controls labeled in Moon-man, and inexplicable shit happens.
- Backing off to give someone else a try, this 6-year-old looking kid found a hidden Pachinko control I missed: a hole on top of the cabinet.
- Here's a Neo Geo hooked up to a flat-panel monitor. I love how the cartridges are the size of university textbooks.
- At first I thought this guy's Gauntlet game had locked up, but the screen is just so full of grunts that they literally can't move.
- On the way home. Left heel aching from epic game of Super Sprint with a couple of random guys.
- Sprint's controls are so goddamn violent. You *throw* the wheel. Whacked myself in the junk more than once.
- Forgot to mention APB! It's the police sim where you jam a button to beat a confession out of your suspect before the comissioner arrives.
- "The specialty of house thick milk toast cut-out and cubed, drizzled with honey and topped with green tea ice-cream."
- Alex pointed out that Prop-Cycle had fans pointed at the player. I hadn't noticed!
Jul 10
- Got six new followers and lost like ten during all those CAX tweets. Sorry for the density, guys!
- @xobs We got it as the chaser to BBQ unagi pizza at a Japanese tapas place near Alex's apartment. The pizza had egg on it!
- RT @daphaknee semi-lesbian is a way better term than bisexual
- @icecreamjonsey Thanks!
- "Creative License: how the hell did sampling get so screwed up and what the hell do we do about it?" http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/08/creative-license-how.html
- You know the moment: after the flush, the shower starting, not the door opening. If you're lucky, it's time to pee in the kitchen sink!
- Protip: pee in the sink *all* the time, and they'll never be able to get you with the saran-wrap-over-the-toilet trick.
- 100 points shaved off the low-score record for Super Mario Bros, in the most delightful manner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIKEVSZITps#t=3m12s
- The recording session for "Wind Garden," from the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ6CB5GhQ-k
Jul 11
Jul 12
Jul 13
Jul 14
Jul 15
Jul 16
- If your best idea to ramp your game up to a dramatic high is to give a random dude 5x as many hit points as usual, you're fucking fired.
- It's kind of stupendous how lazy AC: Brotherhood's endgame is -- and not just because the final boss is just a dude with lots of hit points.
- Can't be bothered to design missions around the feature you *named your game after*? Can't justify disabling it? Disable it anyway!
- @mrasmus Brotherhood basically de-sold me on AC's platforming. Not sure why, because the mechanic hasn't changed much in three games.
- @mrasmus Defining moments: Trying to go through a door and wallrunning up the doorframe repeatedly. Trying to run past wells and haystacks.
- Confirmation dialogs should've gone extinct ten years ago. "Undo" is a better solution in every respect.
- Big surprise, Fox News coming to the defense of parent company News Corp as it faces hacking charges: http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/07/15/270344/fox-news-defends-news-corp/
- Alex got footage of the ridiculous line-art cutscene in Boxing Bugs at California Extreme this year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj06Zs4_udI
- If you're a fan of all these podcast excerpts and are looking for dozens of hours of them, I know a guy: http://thisyearcollection.blogspot.com/p/archive.html
- Sneezing in slow motion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2QAGVMlns4
- The Moscow Coup Attempt covers Joanna Newsom's "The Sprout and the Bean." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugYsF2yFac
Jul 17
Jul 18
Jul 19
Jul 20
Jul 21
Jul 22
Jul 23
Jul 24
- "The Heinz Automato57 teaches junior how to dispense Heinz ketchup." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcniyQYFU6M
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk On the other hand, if you look at the future rather than the past, everything's terrible and yet nobody's miserable!
- "The poor bastards didn't have flying cars, or full-immersion VR, and they'd die of old age. They'd get old and just *die*. Who does that?"
- "And yet they were happy! It's like whatever situation they were in, they just considered it normal!"
- Dungeons of Dredmor YAFM: I put a Disposable Ingot Press inside itself, closed the crafting window, and effectively removed it from my game.
- Available domain name of the day: sometimeshumanalwaysbiting.com
- Outfit for Matt's wedding looking great. Still trying to figure out how I'm getting there tomorrow.
- Reinstalling Git. I recall fucking myself last time by picking the wrong line-ending conversion mode, but I don't recall the correct option.
Jul 25
- Photos: Chile and Argentina covered in ash. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/07/ash_covered_landscape.html
- When you "vote with your wallet," don't forget that in effect you're voting for the marketing campaign at least as much as for the product.
- Cummerbund-wearing protip: cummerbunds actually just kind of work. 'scool.
- No offense to other weddings; this was the best one.
- Can't-fail startup idea of the day: steampunk-tuxedo-print t-shirts.
Jul 26
- @fullbright I wore a glittery turquoise cummerbund today and everybody loved it
- We distrust analytical artists and lovers because acting on instinct is necessarily innocent, and analysis admits the possibility of evil.
- But it also admits the possibility of good. Analysis and mindfulness are *prerequisites* for goodness. Mere innocence doesn't mean a thing.
- P.S. Yes that was me on the dimmer during the quiet/loud part of Little Richard's "Shout."
- Latest version of the synthesizer, for Win32/64. Let me know if it's broken somehow or if you make an awesome patch. http://goombas.org/binary/synth.zip
- I feel so underdressed in real life now, walking around in khakis and a graphic tee. I need more excuses to wear tuxedos.
- Mario 64 speed-runner ask-me-anything: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/iygl4/iama_super_mario_64_speedrunner/
- RT @ibogost Results of yesterday's "Worst Thing to Gamify Game": For offense: custody battles (@domfox) For absurdity: nihilism (@tphd)
- Ralph Langer talks about how he and his team puzzled out the purpose of Stuxnet. http://www.ted.com/talks/ralph_langner_cracking_stuxnet_a_21st_century_cyberweapon.html
- "This attack is generic. It would work as well, for example, in a power plant or an automobile factory."
- New Humble Indie Bundle: http://www.humblebundle.com/
- The delightfully recursive music video for Bjork's "Bachelorette." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5nNfbTS6N4
Jul 27
Jul 28
- More interactive Youtube: rhythm guitar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dw_QstTr5Q
- Christ, Dave, that non-diatonic F was the sole interesting note choice in the whole damn melody. Thanks for nothing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxcbr3PJ76E#t=1m5s
- Jury dismissal protip: dismissal is a limited resource. You need to play to one side, or they'll both wait for the other to dismiss you.
- I.e.: if you just act generally crazy, they'll each play chicken, and you might end up on the jury. You need to act *specifically* crazy.
- Mortal Kombat sitcom pilot: "Get Over Here." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYKPBTrcjT8
- @thealawson It sounds effective, but not as effective as scaring just one of the sides and pleasing the other!
- The old chestnut asks: what's worse than finding a worm in your apple? Time magazine produces a comprehensive list. http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1991915,00.html
- (... finding *half* a holocaust in your apple!)
- Ridiculous photos captioned by an ESL student. (I'm pretty sure this guy would still be funny in his native language.) http://my-esl-student.tumblr.com/
- I'm totally baking beets. I'll be eating baked beets in however long it takes to bake beets.
- Air, "La Femme D'Argent" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5bL_XbO64
Jul 29
Jul 30
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