2007 Nov 28, 2:09Valve shows off their cool visualizations of stats they generated from folks playing HL2E2 including heat maps of player deaths by level.
visualization statistics hl2 game games valve development 2007 Nov 15, 4:01They're giving away Carcassonne. I recall playing this at some point at Daniil's house.
carcassonne xbox microsoft game games free download 2007 Oct 22, 4:47
I purchased the
Orange Box off of Steam a bit ago and like
others before me who have
discussed elsewhere, I already owned two of the five games that come from the Orange Box. However, the combined price of
HL2E2 and Portal, the two games I actually wanted was supposedly equivalent to the price of the Orange Box bundle. Incidentally, if anyone would like HL2 or HL2E1 I can
gift them to you.
HL2E2 was excellent of course but the big surprise for me was Portal. (Mild spoilers follow) It has a sort of zen simplicity: there are a few simple game-play mechanics, a handful of textures and
objects, and a deceptively simple story all used well and tied together to produce an entertaining and polished game. It seems a bit short but its probably better to end with the gamer demanding
more. The humor and the sort of
play within a play aspect of the game is what really sold me though. It has the funniest
ending theme I've heard (also
blogged by the creator). The voices of the automated turrets are so adorable I would feel compelled to hug them if they weren't
always trying to kill me. Additionally the
weighted companion cube seems like an experiment in understanding gamers'
attachment to NPCs. In this case the NPC is a box and yet I still felt awful incinerating it. The whole time I was vaguely reminded of
Solitary the reality show
that sticks contestants alone in small rooms forcing them to endure various tests all the while being watched by a humorous computer with a female voice. Someone should sue...
RPS has articles on Portal including
a Portal review, a page
suggesting Portal is a tale of
lesbianism, and
others.
hl2e2 game hl2 solitary valve portal nontechnical 2007 Oct 18, 5:06More on the ending song for Portal from the creator.
portal game games music jonathan-coulton blog valve videogames song 2007 Oct 17, 11:47A weighted companion cube you can make out of paper!
game games humor portal blog article 2007 Oct 12, 3:20And now to fit in better with the rest of the emo kids on LJ, in no particular order here are some reasons why I feel old:
- I've attended friends weddings sorted chronologically by when I met them: Lucas from high school, followed by Carissa from college,
and then Palak from Microsoft.
- I rarely get carded for alcohol.
- Jon's moving to Germany soon -- this time permanently. He's already started the process of getting rid of possessions he's not taking with him like his car and TV. However, after doing so he
couldn't maintain his smug "I don't even own a TV" attitude and ended up trading me my small CRT TV
(as mentioned previously) for his DDR pads and games. A good trade for both since we were each looking to dump these items. So far I've
only convinced Sarah to try DDR once with me. Somehow I've gotten much worse at something I wasn't that great at to begin with.
- I have business cards.
- I still have semi-monthly nightmares in which I'm taking a Linear Algebra course for which I haven't studied or done homework in years. This differs from the more frequent nightmares I had
immediately after finishing that series of classes in which I was taking the final and it was all on the one topic I didn't study. In reality, the prof. had done his PhD work on this one topic and
I, correctly betting it wouldn't appear on the final, didn't study it. Apparently this was a traumatic bet for me to make given the wake of destruction left on my dreams.
- I have to remind myself that 2005 was two years ago.
personal nontechnical 2007 Sep 14, 12:59Maybe I won't throw out my old XBox...
diy exploit hack lifehacker linux microsoft mod xbox videogames howto 2007 Jul 26, 12:27My friend Chris' interactive fiction games.
friend chris-shelton if interactive-fiction 2007 Jul 20, 9:09Checkers has been solved. All possible moves have been mapped.
checkers solution csc game games 2007 Jul 18, 8:51Games that influence your opinion. They're Op-Ed games.
flash game games politics 2007 Jun 7, 11:56Video of the Back to the Future mod for GTA. I wish they could have better time travel effects but otherwise totally cool.
bttf backtothefuture gta youtube video videogames mod game time-travel 2007 Jun 7, 4:35
A few weekends ago Sarah and I visited the
Woodland Park Zoo (Finding its website I'm amazed that its domain is 'zoo.org'. Somebody in Seattle was
quick on the domain registration.) I liked the zoo except for all the children. Human children... As visitors to the zoo... What did you think I meant? The kids are everywhere! Shouldn't they be
inside playing video games or something?
There was a gorilla that was wrapped in a dirty blanket. It looked like a homeless person and very sad. I'm reminded of the episode of the Simpsons in which
the octuplets work at the zoo and the scene in which while Homer is breaking out the children a gorilla tries to get him to take her child too. Looking for a
clip of this to post here I can only find clips from the Simpsons in German for some reason.
Like this one.
Two thirds or so of the way through my camera started running low on power. We were forced to choose which animals were camera worthy. Is it too common? Is it cute enough? Etc. Sarah
took a very nice shot of some hippos under these conditions. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good angle and view of the Elephants. But they were cool and had an interesting habitat (that's zoo for
large-ish cage.)
zoo personal nontechnical 2007 May 31, 11:11An article from newscientist about videogame avatars. There's a slideshow with side by sides of people and their avatars.
internet videogames avatar culture article photos 2007 May 24, 10:48Whenever I see references to Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Arch at MS) I always think of Ozzie the evil guy from Chrono Trigger.
wikipedia article wiki ozzie chronotrigger videogames 2007 May 20, 2:39GlovePIE provides a simple scripting interface to Wii remotes. It also comes with a bunch of premade scripts for example wiimote accel. controls the mouse.
bluetooth nintendo programming coding tool videogames wii wiimote wireless research:wii-remote 2007 Apr 13, 2:52Shocking newsflash: Kids view adult content! OMG! FTA: "Commission investigators also found that youth access to violent fare had fallen since 2000, especially in video games. Only 42 percent of
unaccompanied young buyers were able to buy games rated M (f
article business censorship government rights violence videogames 2007 Apr 8, 3:46This weekend was fun. Sarah and I went out for Jane's Birthday. We ate at a little Italian restaurant where our group was almost too large for the place and afterwards went to the
Viceroy lounge. The website apparently isn't very representative because although I looked at it before going out and I'd been to the place previously, I didn't
realize it was the same location until we got there.
I got several games for my Wii through Sarah's connections including
Wii Play and
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. We played both of them and I thought
Find Mii was especially fun.
Sarah's bunny is getting pretty big. Its been biting through wires now includig part way through the power cord to the cable box. You'd think after getting to the copper that it would learn to stop.
At any rate, it didn't hide any eggs. I don't have any new photos but you can see
the old bunny photos via my Vizicious
tool.
personal nontechnical seatle wii 2007 Mar 22, 12:24A 22 month old child plays Wii Tennis pretty well.
wii video nintendo games humor baby
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