Lately I’ve been rather obsessed with online comics. You might have noticed the list on the right of this page has grown considerably. In this post I’m going to introduce some of my favorites from this list.

• Fanboys - About 3 people living together, all of whom have declared allegiance to a different video game manufacturer. Lemmy to Nintendo, Paul to Sony (formerly Sega), and Sylvia to Microsoft.
• Goats - A comic about a couple lazy dudes and a talking goat. Through their inter-dimensional adventures, they meet a talking chicken, a talking fish with a split personality, some aliens, talking monkeys, a large broccoli-man, and the devil himself.
• Megatokyo - Piro and Largo, a couple gamers from the states, want to go to the Tokyo Game Show and end up getting stranded in Japan. This beautiful manga is illustrated by a guy who lives in my home-town. The storyline has evolved away from gaming, but there’s still a few references here and there.
• Goblins - A comic in the D&D universe, except the goblins decide they will live under the rules of the Player-Characters instead of the rules for Non-Player-Characters.
• Hockey Zombie - A hockey fanatic dies and returns to the world of the living as a zombie. He can’t control his hunger for brains, and eventually infects an entire city with his zombie disease.
• The Mows - Day-to-day account of the lives of three cats. The author has a very interesting perspective on what’s going through cats’ minds. As a fellow cat-lover, I can’t help but love this comic.
• Bear & Kitten - A bear and a kitten live together and share some crazy, silly adventures.

The following comics are quick reads - often one panel - with a crazy bizarre style of humor. These are updated daily (except PBF) and good for a pick-me-up in the morning. Better than coffee. These are not for the prudish.

• Natalie Dee
• Toothpaste For Dinner (linked from Natalie Dee)
• Married To The Sea (linked from Natalie Dee)
  
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
• Explosm
• The Book of Biff
• Perry Bible Fellowship

Again, the links for these comics can be found on the right side of the page if you are interested.

Today, I would like to bring to light something that infuriates me. The following Sure deodorant advertisement significantly reduces my faith in humanity.

What the hell has the world come to for a large company to expect people to respond to this shit?

First, and certainly the lesser offender on this ad, there is absolutely no creativity in it whatsoever. This is close to the dullest ad I’ve ever seen on the webs. I think the only things that would make this worse are flashing and sound, but at least in those cases it catches the customer’s eye. My cat has drawn more interesting things in MS Paint by accident. “Hey guys I’ve invented two new colors: ‘blah’ and ‘light blah’! We can use them in a gradient in our new advertisement. And I’m working on another color we can use for the button part of the ad that does absolutely nothing. I’m calling it ‘meh’.”

Second, and by far the worse of the two, is the slogan. This makes me want to type profanities in capital letters until my fingers bleed. This is a family-safe site, however, so I won’t be doing that. This is absolutely atrocious. No capitalization, no punctuation, and only half the words aren’t spelled like a 13 year-old girl sending a text message to her ‘BFF’. The slogan itself doesn’t even make sense for a deodorant company! Seriously, Sure should have enough money to pay someone with an IQ greater than 80 to write their ads.

I think someone’s retarded cousin needs to be fired. Affirmative action be damned.

I just got back from 1408. It’s a psychological horror movie that does what’s advertised. It had my adrenaline pumping throughout most of the movie, unlike many other films in the genre. I would like to see it again - I’m pretty sure there are subtle bits of foreshadowing and symbolism that I didn’t pick up the first time <insert other hippie concepts from film class here>. But 1408 is not what this post is about.

This post is about copycat movies, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t have a thousand things to get off my chest about them. The longer I type rants like this, the less ranty I become. I don’t know why, but it’s happened to the last 3 postings. I write a little bit, then I just delete them cause usually I decide the argument is petty as all hell. I guess I’m not so much of a written ranter.

Anyway the gist of the post was copycat movies like Deep Impact & Armageddon and Madagascar & The Wild need to stop. We see what you’re doing, movie makers, and we don’t like it. Or something. Take some creativity pills. Or as I like to call it, acid. There were very few copycat movies in the 70s. Think about that for a minute before you steal someone else’s movie.

I rant much better in person, I swear.

I’m sure everybody’s heard of the Sudoku by now. Y’know the one with the 3×3 grid of 3×3 smaller grids where you put in a number in each of the 81 squares so they don’t match any of the other numbers in their smaller grid, row, or column. Yea, that one. If you haven’t heard of it you really need to get out from under that rock and go to a book store or a magazine stand somewhere. Or you can use that fancy magical box you’re using to view my site to look it up. I recommend Google. Haven’t heard of that either, you say? YOU’RE HELPLESS!

Ok, for the Sudoku informed, there’s a few other number-pattern games that are really quite fun and you may find to be more challenging than Sudoku if you’re getting bored with it. Two of my favorites are Kakuro and Nurikabe.

Kakuro plays a lot like a Sudoku crossword puzzle. Each row or column is labeled with a sum (clue). The boxes associated with the clue (collectively a word) can each only be filled with one digit, and each word can not have repeating digits. Certain clues can only have one possible solution, like 17 with a two digit word can only have 8 and 9. Generally you can deduce which of the two squares gets 8 and which gets 9 by the intersecting clues. Here’s a daily Kakuro puzzle to get you started.

Still too easy? Nurikabe is quite a bit more difficult. There’s a lot of rules and strategy to solving them. Each number must be connected to an island (white blocks) of that size (including the square with the digit). No two islands may touch at any square. And the river (black squares) must be contiguous and can’t have a pool (2×2 black square). Islands marked ‘1′ can be marked black on all four sides because it’s an island of size 1. If there’s a black spot with only one edge that hasn’t been marked white, it is black because the river must be contiguous. Here’s a daily Nurikabe puzzle (with some easy smaller puzzles) if you’re up to the task of solving them.

Click the first link in the description paragraphs for a much better explanation of rules and strategy. Make sure you do some of these puzzles every day. Doing so will keep your brain exercised and healthy.

I look back on the last few years of my life, specifically with regards to video games, and I see a guy who spent a LOT of time playing them. I don’t consider it a waste by any stretch of the imagination - I had a shitload of fun and even met some of the coolest people I know through them. Since graduating from college and starting work at Dynamic Edge, though, I’ve grown apart from my beloved games. I’ve gone from a decidedly ‘hardcore’ gamer to somewhat of a more casual one. As much as I would have liked to fight it in my college years, it was inevitable.

In the past year we’ve seen two VERY different video game systems released. One focused on the top of the line specs: uber graphics chip, multi-core processor, Hi-Def movies, games, music, huge hard drive, etc - all of this with a giant price tag. The other system focused very much less on the specs - just enough to barely rival those of the previous generation graphics, with a price tag to match. The latter system chose to focus on a different area of gaming; something that could not be measured by specification sheets. With the Wii, Nintendo decided to focus more on innovation and breadth of gaming rather than depth.

When the PSP and DS were released, a similar situation arose. Sony went with a system that was, as far as specs were concerned, much more powerful than the DS, and included a lot of fluff to make it a ‘portable media solution’ - again, at an increased cost. The DS focused on innovation and changing the core of handheld gaming. The two-year-old DS has seen two releases (in true Nintendo handheld fashion) and has even gone through a recent Christmas drought, and the PSP is selling like month-old hotcakes. The cost of the system and cost of the media for the DS has made it the choice handheld among most gamers, and the exploitation of the ‘gimmicky’ touch screen by developers has produced some of the most entertaining games in the history of handheld gaming. The similarities between the handheld systems and the Wii/PS3 are uncanny and I’m betting on a repeat performance.

Back in my hardcore-gamer college days, I didn’t have to work 8-10 hours every day and I didn’t have a couple thousand dollars every month in bills. When the pre-release hype was being spread around, I was admittedly more exited about the PSP than the DS. Two years later, I play my DS for at least a few minutes every day while my PSP has been gathering dust for the last 6 months. Now that I only have a few hours a week to devote to games, purchasing a $600 PS3 just for those few hours is insanity. Madness, if you will. The Wii’s $250 price tag is much more reasonable, especially when I can live without the fluff, and the innovative controls should make for some seriously fun games when developers come up with some neat ways to use it.

Any game system that can get my dad (and mom, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc) to ask to play it, has got to be doing something right.

A DS update: nothing. I’m not neglectful, just terribly busy at work. DS programming is easiest for me to neglect because it’s more difficult to pick up and put down after only 2-3 hours. When I get started on a programming project I usually get into the zone after an hour. Breaking that concentration soon after that is really frustrating. So there it is - on the back-burner until I’m finished at Borders, which is slated for early June. What I can start up and stop in my few hours of free time are movies; and I’ve partaken quite a bit in the recent past.

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I want to take a minute to tell you a story about a musical expert.

A friend, and soon to be co-worker, of mine (we’ll call him Brian) recently told me to check out Jonathan Coulton on my nondescript portable media player management software. I brushed his suggestion off as just some silly song that I’d laugh at for a bit then promptly forget. Brian pestered me to check out some of his stuff a few more times, so I gave in and listened to some of his stuff. I’m glad I did. His music reminds me of a mix between Presidents of the United States of America and Barenaked Ladies. If you like folk/alternative music give it a listen.

I fell in love after hearing 3 songs. First, was a remake of Baby Got Back that reminded me a lot of Boyz-n-the-Hood by Dynamite Hack. Next was a song I heard a while ago but didn’t know who wrote it. It’s called Code Monkey and it hits quite close to my heart. Third was another remake; Bills, Bills, Bills. Having heard Baby Got Back I was confident this would be awesome. However, when he fired up the banjo, I couldn’t contain myself. I had an eargasm right then. Other notable songs include Tom Cruise Crazy, I Hate California, Skullcrusher Mountain, and First of May.

You can find some of this stuff on his podcast, Thing a Week. If you’re financially blessed, you can hop by his site and purchase all his music - including songs not offered on his podcast - for prices comparable to iTunes’. Additionally, the songs on his site are DRM free. Good deal!

Note: Don’t subscribe to Jonathan Coulton Project. It’s done by some fans who add video to his music. Mostly they aren’t even video, just pictures that match up with the words Jonathan is singing. While I’m sure he appreciates the fan support, the ‘videos’ are pretty bad (thus don’t deserve italics).

Edit: apparently italics show up as bold in my new theme. Bummer.