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Prinny the swimming cat (YouTube) Don't overlook the frightening hand-shaped basin at the end. Creepy!
The Week in Links
posted by Joe
03.20.10 11:01AM
So is this cat jumping into the pool by itself? or is somebody tossing the poor beast in there?
What color is your hero? (Brainy Gamer)
Overview of a GDC talk, discussing the homogeny and insularity of video games, particularly as it pertains to race and gender issues. The question about Heavy Rain is spot-on... the game takes place in Philadelphia yet shows almost no African-Americans. I don't even recall see many in the game's ridiculously trafficked crowd scenes.
ECCC: Whack, Smack! "Darkwing Duck" is back (CBR)
Cool. Can we get a TaleSpin series too? And WTF does "Whack, Smack!" have to do with anything?
GDC 10: the [REDACTED] board game (Destructoid)
OK, so this Train board game sort of has a mindfuck of a surprise built into it... but by now everybody knows about it. I'd probably love to own it and spring it on people, except that after one play, I'm not sure it would stand for another go.
And Then I Read: THE ROCKETEER New Edition (Todd Klein)
Nice comparison of two different printing of the same book, showing what a difference a good re-coloring makes.
450 Words on Why Japan is Pretty Good (Peter Payne)
A bit of a response to the Tim Rogers article from the other week.
Ore. lawsuit claims Boy Scouts sex abuse coverup (Yahoo News)
Once again, the desire for an organization to present a clean, wholesome, community-first brand image gets in the way of stopping scumbags from doing terrible things. See also: your church, your high school, your government, your police force.
Analysis: Soren Johnson On Playing The Odds (GameSetWatch)
I like reading articles about luck and odds in games. Like this one!
Obviously construction guys need to be in your house during the workday, so for the duration we had to lock up the cats every day before we left for our respective offices. We stashed them in the current computer room (Clark's FUTURE ROOM, woo wooooo wooo) along with food, water and litter pans. We would spring them when we got home, but we still had to keep them out of the basement for the duration. This was mightily confusing to them. Since they were making use of suddenly-upstairs litter, I was a little worried that they would re-train themselves to piss in Clark's room even after the litter was gone... especially since one of them (damn I wish I knew which one) occasionally misses the litter box and piddles on the floor nearby. If you know cats, you know that sometimes they can focus on one area and claim that as a public urinal just because they happened to accidentally mark it, even if it does not appeal to their post-piss digging instinct.
Basement renovation 2010, part 2
posted by Joe
03.19.10 08:56AM
Here you can see some drywall going up, and how they boxed out the ugly pipe pillars. The general idea is that, one day, some future big-ass TV is going to sit between those pillars. I had the guys run two cable outlets (one for TV, one for computer) and string up speaker wire for surround sound. S-M-R-T!
Luckily, I can report both cats re-adjusted to heading back downstairs perfectly... even though now they have to stalk down a more-enclosed stairway and saunter through a finished basement to get to the shameful, unfinished side that still houses their litter. It was a near thing; the weeks of construction (and shut-up cat door) made them very skittish about going downstairs again. I had to coax them up and down for a few nights to get them re-acclimated.
And now, the revised blueprint:
Again, not to scale. We're ending up with a nice big awesome room, a strip of storage and cat litter by the sump pump, and plenty more storage available in the HVAC wing. The area under the stairs houses all our holiday stuff. The contractors even moved one of the old lights under there, since we have can lights and sconces in the new room (on dimmers!)
No drop ceiling. We went for whatever it's called that isn't a drop ceiling.
More drywall. This is about the time we were starting to dread having to paint this whopper. Especially the non-drop ceiling. We gladly tacked painting on to the end of the construction bill.
During the drywall phase, they put up plastic sheeting up over the empty door frame. Clark thought the plastic curtain door was amazing, and he was sorely disappointed when the actual wooden door showed up.
These were pretty exciting times, because we would get home from work every night and be astonished at the new stuff. "They boxed the window!" "They made the stair trim match the rest of the house!" "There's a doorknob!"
Here's the painting in process. Most of the room is that coffee color. It is a bit lighter now.
This room is not included in the original heating plan, because both the contractor and the original builder doubted our unit should be pushed to heat an additional room of that size. So we opted for electric baseboard heaters that we can keep off when they are not needed.
There are eight can lights in the ceiling, but the contractor noted that they could not get them in the area behind the pillars thanks to the pre-existing heating ductwork. He suggested sconces, and I suggested putting them on the reverse side of the pillar (rather than the wall) for a dramatic look. See, dramatic.
Standing in the unfinished side, you can see the sconces in action.
At some point, we'll probably have to install a kitty door. Until then, we'll have to keep it cracked open for the cats.
Next time: carpet and furniture!
I can't let March slip past without acknowledging Clark's fifth birthday. We recently had a dentist appointment and were informed that his two bottom front teeth are loose (by now one of which is precipitously shaky.) Rhonda and I were caught completely off guard by this, and it's still a little unsettling to think that by summer he will have one of those charming broken-mouthed kid smiles.
Clark at 5
posted by Joe
03.17.10 09:10PM
We find Egyptian themes in unlikely places.
The hype for Iron Man 2 has invaded. The pose was entirely his doing.
He would always play with this Batman action figure box at Target (you can squeeze the bad guy's legs and abuse a stretchy Plastic Man), so it became a birthday gift. Pretty much the best Plastic Man figure ever, that's for sure. But not one that I imagine will hold up in the long term.
The construction of the basement room was a great fascination last month.
At 5, his entry and exit on the grocery store car-cart is starting to get awkward. We soldier on, of course.
And now, five fun facts:
- Clark almost always asks for his own bag when we're shopping. We try to dissuade him on this for environmental reasons. At the grocery store produce section, he usually gets a twisty to play with as we shop.
- On certain Fridays, Clark can bring in movies to share with his daycare class. So far, he has brought in The Brave Little Toaster, DuckTales: The Movie, and The Hobbit (1977).
- In the last year, not only has Clark enjoyed his first DisneyWorld trip, but also his first high school musical, first corn maze, first AHL hockey game... and saw his first actual mummy.
- Although he has repeatedly watched classic Speed Racer, Pee Wee's Playhouse and the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, I can't get him to take an interest in TaleSpin, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Muppets, or the 1980s Wind in the Willows show. And I only recently got him to watch Wallace & Gromit, after a long period of rebuff. Entirely on his own, he has cultivated a liking for SpongeBob and Yo Gabba Gabba.
- About the naughtiest that he gets is when he decides he is going to be slow and inattentive, usually when we're in a hurry for some reason. Or when he tries to bargain with us to get his (usually absurd) way. Clark has never been a screamer, a toy destroyer, or a violent kid.
Rhonda and I are just so proud of who he has become. We know he will make an excellent big brother.
Basement renovation 2010, part 1 | Joe, 03.15.10
We're still waiting for updates on Caitie. It's getting longer and not getting easier. In the meantime, we're close to completing our basement renovation. Here's the first wave of pictures.
B&W Sunday Scan: The Totally True to Life 11:15pm McDonald's Drive-Thru Window Caper | Joe, 03.14.10
As I was cleaning up some old junk, I found these comic photocopies that I had hanging up in my college dorm room(s). They're probably all from Critters #50 (1990), but I'm too lazy to go double-check that. Either way, Critters #50 was an awesome issue.
Because these comics are so great, I'm going to queue up a bunch of them to auto-publish on Sundays. Enjoy!
Ty Templeton had a bizarre experience at a McDonald's. Sometimes comics just write themselves!
The Week in Links | Joe, 03.13.10
The Beast File: Google (HUNGRY BEAST) (YouTube)
Although I don't particularly care about the Googlopoly message here (isn't that what companies do?) and I'm not especially amused by the trick ending... I do love the overall look and style of the animation.
Getting closer to Total LifeStats. | Joe, 03.12.10
I wish somebody had invented foursquare thirty years ago, because I love knowing stats about my life. I love that something is tracking that information. There is not a day that I drive down the Interstate that I don't wonder if this would happen to be the 10,000th time I've done that. This is probably why I disdain arbitrary, state-sponsored holidays like St. Patrick's Day... I'm busy enough neurotically wondering about my own highly-personalized milestones.
Some time ago our credit card bill started giving a recap of our spending, breaking out restaurants, groceries, etc. I find that fascinating.
Here's what three weeks of foursquare says about my traveling habits:
More plastic windows into my junk | Joe, 03.10.10
Not nearly as filthy as it sounds.
Full archives available at fourhman.com.
game reviews:
Cooking Mama | nds
Starfox Command | nds
Odama | gcn
home webcam:
Bully | ps2
game review by Joe 01/13/07
When I initially walked through the gates of Bullworth Academy, the first student to walk past me yelled "I hate you!" Later on, I had that same kid eating out the palm of my hand. That's pretty much the character arc of Bully. You, as career ne'er-do-well Jimmy Hopkins, show up at a new school full of fools, and you end up as Mr. Popular. Not really the school slaying simulator that certain crusading lawyers and easily-swayed-by-the-press-release media outlets would have had us believe. Whether Rockstar intended Bully as a colossal bait and switch for the video luddite crowed, or... [continued at fourhman.com]
game review by Joe 11/09/06
Two years out, the DS has nicely matured. We’re past the days of tech demos being sold as full games (ahem, Yoshi’s Touch-n-Go). We have enough new-concept, high-profile games to outweigh the launch day panic of N64 ports ahem, Super Mario 64DS). And thanks to the GBA’s agonizingly slow price point death, Nintendo finally feels confident enough to stop selling their first-party DS games at the $35 level (ahem, Pokemon Trozei). The DS rode out that initial wave of gimmicky criticism and has positioned itself as a must-have, just in time to lateral a little of that mindshare over to... [continued at fourhman.com]
game review by Joe 09/12/06
I've been sitting out on the Starfox franchise for years, thanks to all the lackluster offerings during the GameCube era. It sucks, because I really liked Starfox 64 and I really want a new hip iteration in that style. For some reason, Nintendo is bound and determined to avoid that classic, blistering on-rails shooting action... giving us Starfox-as-Zelda and Starfox-as-Rogue-Leader-2 instead. Starfox Command is a return to the game's roots, but not in the way we all expected. Most franchises are ridiculed for not offering enough change-up. Starfox is the rare bird that gets smacked around for not maintaining enough... [continued at fourhman.com]
game review by Joe 05/24/06
I'm only about ten minutes into the first level when the thought occurs: "This is a pretty crappy game." That's never a joyous realization - especially when $50 was tossed like so much salt over the shoulder - but it is particularly grating when the game in question is something you've been anticipating for months. Odama is exactly the kind of offbeat, undefinable game that pulls me in. Games that offer up more than just various degrees of running / jumping / shooting / driving. I live for the thrill of locating games like this. They're underappreciated, underplayed... and in... [continued at fourhman.com]
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