1.21 Gigawatts

FORA.tv

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:46:48 GMT

I can't get enough of this site, it's like YouTube for smart people.

Jennifer Heldmann: The Moon
A crash course on why the moon is the way it is. Heldmann goes over why moon dust is such a big concern, how the moon was formed, what it's made of, why craters which haven't seen light for billions of years are neat. Lots of cool stuff.

Kenneth Miller: Evolution and Intelligent Design
Miller describes how religious fanatics have been trying to pass off Intelligent Design as science. They're also trying to skew what the word theory means. ie:evolution is a theory, not a fact. *May cause fits of NERD RAGE.*

Daniel Suarez Daemon: Bot-Mediated Reality
Daemon discusses bot evolution, specifically how you can't do anything in the digital world without interacting with them. Submitting this very post requires me to send data through an automated script! In his section on game bots he talks about how people literally have to compete against farming bots in World of Warcraft. It was very interesting after seeing how the bots were made and updated to avoid detection. No word on when Skynet goes live though.

Also, here are my new Xbox 360 Mii's.

QBasic Nerd

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:56:56 GMT

Sonic Games

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:42:35 GMT

Special Bonus: He's a wolf now.

Fable II - Missing DLC

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:28:36 GMT

If you purchased the Fable 2 Limited Collector�s Edition and didn't get your downloadable content card then head over to Microsoft's support page and register. A new code will be sent to your email within 10 days.

The offer is only good until the 31st so you better hurry!

I'm not sure if they're just giving out the codes to everyone or they're going to do some sort of check (which I highly doubt), so it would be a good idea to sign up even if you got the regular version.

Fable II - First Impressions

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:25:57 GMT

The Good:

The dialog is very, very funny. A Fable game almost seems to be more about weird characters and silly dialog rather than killing monsters and gaining XP.

Innovative time wasting. When you get to the first town as an adult you're tasked with waiting around until whoever you're meeting up with gets there. While you're waiting there are neat things to do like spamming the same emotions over and over to build your reputation or getting a job.

Jobs are a very interesting way of making money. They're basically a watered down version of Wario Ware, but they get the job done. You basically do the same task over and over, the better you do the higher your gold multiplier goes up. Though it's almost too easy to make money once you get the hang of it, not having to grind for gold for 5000 hours is a very, very good thing!

The dog is actually pretty cool. I thought I was just going to kill it and be done with it, but I'm actually using it. Though it's more or less Navi to me, at least I don't have to hear it yell HEY! LISTEN!!!

Albian Orbs - or whatever they're called. I don't know why, but it is just really cool to see everyone else playing Fable at the same time. I hope to god they patch this up so you can actually see their characters running around, though I'm still waiting for them to do that for coop, which I'll cover in a bit.

The Bad:

At random times my dog will wig out and either run into a wall forever or zigzag around for no reason.

NPCs have walked through walls.

An NPC who walked through a wall got stuck waist-deep in the floor because they didn't walk up the steps into the house, they just walked through the wall at ground level.

I don't have a $3000 HDTV so it's really hard to read most of the screen text. If it wasn't for voice acting this game would almost be unplayable.

The font color inside menu buttons is hard to read, it doesn't stand out from the button texture well enough.

Movement is clunky at best. You don't really turn, you pivot around in a wide circle while the camera slowly plays catchup.

The game seems to have general frame rate issues. Sometimes it's just the UI, which is really friggin' weird. ie: You're doing a job/emotion minigame with the dot that slides back and forth across a slider bar. The dot doesn't really slide, it sort of "ticks" along the bar. Look closely and you'll see what I mean, though once you see you wont be able to unsee.

The dog never grabs the ball while playing fetch. He just walks to it, stands by it, and runs back. My friends haven't been able to reproduce this so it might just be that my dog is retarded.

There is no UI adjustment. Not only is the text hard to read (as I previously stated), there's no way to adjust the screen objects. My health bar is half way above the edge of my screen, the first line of any tutorial/tip/whatever on the top of the screen is completely cut off.

The map sucks. It's generally hard to tell where you're going since most of the shrubs and bushes look exactly the same and the camera likes to point towards the ground rather than where the trail is leading.

There is no way to instantly toggle the "breadcrumb trail" like in Dead Space. It would have been much better if you could just push a button and have it appear rather than automatically leading you by the hand.

They shrunk the hands and feet on your character. You no longer have big bulky gloves, which I thought was awesome.

Online coop was the selling point for me. I wanted to be able to play online with friends and offline with my brothers sometimes, though I'm not fond of sharing the same screen. It works and all, but you can't play as your own character! You have to choose between a Good/Neutral/Evil Male or Female, you can't jump in with your own guy.

I honestly can't understand how they thought this was a good idea. Not only is it completely gimped, they had to patch it after the game shipped.

Fable 2 is a great game, but coop was why I got it rather than Fallout 3. If they don't patch up the coop by the time I beat it I'm just going to take it back and pick up something else.

Dolphins

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:57:43 GMT

I, for one, accept our new bubble master overlords.

can i haz drawball?

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:53:27 GMT

http://www.drawball.com

WHAT 9000!?!?

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 06:45:12 GMT

Free Stanford Engineering Courses Online

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:01:51 GMT

Stanford is offering some of its engineering classes free of charge. You can download a course guide complete with various lectures, assignments, and handouts from their website. I've only been able to watch the first lecture of Programming Methodology (50 minutes) and so far it's pretty awesome.

They'll be teaching Java without any preexisting knowledge of programming.

Introduction to Computer Science

Artificial Intelligence

Linear Systems and Optimization

Programming Methodology - Lesson 1:

An open letter to Xooxer.

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:51:58 GMT

You're friggin' bonkers.

-SuperAntx