Sexual Education in SPAAAAAACE!

This one of the weirdest things I've read in a while. Give it a read if you ever wanted to know what hooking up in space, Antarctica or on Mars would be like...

After this month's conference about arsenic-based life, it looks like there will be no Star Trek-esque hybrid children, though. At least not yet.

*hyper-cute Miss Martian by Chou-Roninx via deviantART

The Dawn of a New Adventure...

I'm following in the footsteps first pioneered by James Rolfe in his AVGN segment, but I think this is a seriously hardcore and air-tight concept.


In 1982 Atari started a contest to promote the release of four new games for their Atari 2600 Console entitled Swordquest. Each game was based on one of the four classic Greek elements (i.e. Earthworld, Fireworld) as well as having a room structure for each based on classical theological elements (The Zodiac, The Tree of Life, etc.) . The concept was that if players were smart enough to decipher the clues in each game they would be eligible for a prize that was custom made by Franklin Mint and valued at $25,000 in 1982 USD. The Earthworld contest had a prize of the"Talisman of Penultimate Truth". Fireworld's prize was "The Chalice of Light". Waterworld's prize was to be the "Crown of Life" and the last game, Airworld, was to have the prize of "The Philosopher's Stone". After these four contests were completed, the champion of each game would compete for "The Sword of Ultimate Sorcery".


Earthworld was released in October of 1982. it came with a gaming manual, cartridge, poster and comic book by DC Comics. Players were to solve the riddles in the game, find the associated clue in the comic book, submit their entry into the contest and pray that Atari would select them to be in the final competition. The final competition consisted of a variated version of Earthworld that the players would have to solve in 90 minutes. The final winner, Steven Bell, was given the Talisman of Penultimate Truth.

The second game, Fireworld, was released in February of 1983. Atari again had the contest but now had many more contestants this time around, so they held a secondary elimination round before Michael Rideout claimed the second treasure, The Chalice of Light.


Fate intervened before the third game's contest came to fruition however. The Video Game Crash of 1983 cause Atari to cancel the tournament at the last minute and the Crown of Life went unclaimed. Similarly, with the whole contest cancelled, The Philosopher's Stone and The Sword of Ultimate Sorcery faded into the echoes of Obscurity. $100,000 worth of treasure, lost for the ages.

Many people have wondered what became of the Lost Treasure of Swordquest. Some say it rests gathering dust in the basement of Atari. An undated picture floating around the internet seems to lead credence to this theory:


Another, more sinister theory stems from Atari's CEO Jack Tramiel.

Born in Poland in the 1920's, Tramiel spent his time during World War II in a garment Factory under German occupation. After being liberated, he emigrated to the US 1947, where he purchased a typewriter company in 1953. From this company he made various connections and founded Commodore Business Machine, which would eventually evolve into the computer producing company the name is known for. After sparking a price war that would leave some of his competitors bankrupt, Tramiel stepped down from Commodore, started his own company (again) and then purchased Atari Inc from Warner Communications. Tremiel decided to pull focus away from marketing and game budgeting leading to the downward spiral of Atari in the light of other consoles, such as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Some employees say that the work environment during this era was volatile and even go so far as to say their careers have been ruined by Tramiel and his sons.

The treasures of Swordquest is most likely in the possession of Jack Tremiel and his sons. But if they aren't, where are they? Are the original two treasures still in the hands of the winners? Have the five items of the trove ever been reunited since they were pulled from the forge in the early 1980's? Have they merely been melted down into a new toilet for Jack Tamiel?

These questions will haunt the original participants and subsequent gaming generations alike. Will we ever know the answers? Someone needs to find the truth. Someone needs to launch a NEW Swordquest...

Mmmm...Gaming Steak!

These pictures remind me of the steak-eating portion of Monster Hunter Tri. Right before some merciless giant bastard humiliates you.

*sigh*

Fuck, that game is hard. Stupid hard.

WANT!

KA-ME!!! HA-ME!!! HA!!!!! *ca-ching*

I Got Your Mystic Quest Right Here...

Painfully true and pretty hilarious, check this flowchart of any RPG.

Seems pretty timely considering that the craptastic "American" Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest became available this week for download on Nintendo's Virtual Console.

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle...

At today's Mac event, Commandant Jobs unveiled some fairly lackluster updates.

Something about iPhoto. I don't really care since I happily use picasa and flickr. And if I were to pay for something to edit my photos, I would save up until I could afford to get Aperture.

Something about Garage Band, which, again, is boring as I don't play music. I don't even play Rock Band for that matter.

But there were a couple of hopeful glimmers.

Jobs dropped the bomb that they were working on their next OS system: Lion. The biggest advances seem to be aimed at bringing the functionality of an iPad back to the Mac. this means they want to be able to run full-screen apps and have multi-touch control for the macs. If they can incorporate this multitouch into the next generation of Macbook Pros with the Liquidmetal design, the proposed cooling patents and somehow keep the machine from becoming sentient and trying to destroy mankind, it should be a pretty solid machine. But it kind of seems that Jobs has painted himself into a corner with the name of the system. Lion? The king of the jungle? What will they call the next OS afterwards? Sabretooth? Tabby? Or will there be a shift to a new animal-avatar? "Presenting Mac OSX...Koala."

Steve also managed to sneak in his characteristic "Once last thing..." before closing out the hour-and-a-half long schpiel. A newly redesigned Macbook Air. What really caught my attention about these updated models was the complete abandonment of a hard-drive. As of late I have been warming up to Solid-state Drives as the future of storage on computers. They're faster, quieter, cooler, smaller and less prone to mechanical problems than regular disc-based hard-drives. The new Airs instead use flash memory as storage. Consequently they are only able to hold between 64 Gb and 256GB. In a world where Terrabyte storage is becoming more common place and the Petabyte is looming ever closer, this amount of storage is paltry at best. And also, it might just be my own personal experience with the program Flash, but the name itself brings to mind negative connotations. Time will tell if this system will be preferred over regular hardware found in the grown-up version of laptops, or if this was merely the bastard son of a drunken tryst between a Macbook and an iPad.

Overall, it was another bland entry of a Mac Event. I guess I'm just jaded against anything that isn't a mind-blowing hardware revelation. Guess I'll just have to wait until the next generation of workhorse.

I would watch it...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

3DS 3Destroys All!

Sweet, merciful Poseidon, this is a good one. Earlier this week Nintendo announced the final specs, library and features of their next generation handheld system: the Nintendo 3DS. While there had been a decent amount of information that had been released during it's initial unveiling at E3 (as well as some launch titles), Wednesday's news revealed cold, hard facts about it's latest and most glorious handheld.

First off, the 3DS (as the name implies) is 3D. Full-on, stereoscopic 3D, but WITHOUT GLASSES. Suck it, Sony. The 3.53-inch screen provides autostereoscopic 3D with a sliding dial on the side to determine how much depth of field you want or to turn off the 3D completely.

The hardware for this device is pretty great too...for Nintendo. The (boring) facts of this handheld. 3DS sports:

CPU: 2 x 266MHz ARM11

GPU: PICA200 133MHz GPU by DMP

RAM: 64MB

Storage: 1.5GB Flash-based plus available SD card expansion.

Blah, blue, snore. Right? But here's the thing. Below are the specs for Nintendo's last home console: the Gamecube.

CPU: 486 MHz IBM "Gekko" PowerPC CPU

GPU: 62 MHz "Flipper" LSI GPU

RAM: 43 MB total non-unified RAM

Storage: None. All storage is on removable (and easily corrupted) memory cards.

I'm not a scientist or anything, but it seems tome that the new 3DS has more horsepower than the 'Cube. You can run and tell THAT, homeboy.

To be fair though, there have been rumors that the Gamecube had the internal capabilities for 3D way back in 2001, but the cost of the associated monitor was cost-prohibitive

The starting line-up of titles is pretty impressive: (*INHALES*) Kid Icarus, Mega Man, Metal Gear Solid, two Resident Evil titles, Super Street Fighter IV, Paper Mario, Mario Kart, Final Fantasy and 3D re-releases of the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Star, Fox 64 and (supposedly) Super Mario World.

But the fun doesn't stop there. 3DS will play DS titles (presumably) in 3D.

Chrono Trigger...in 3D. Oh god. It's full of stars!

That's it, right? You're sold. Well shut up for a sec. There's more. Nintendo will be offering a Virtual Console for previous Gameboy and Gameboy Color titles. Kirby's Dreamland, Metroid II, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Link's Awakening. Now you have no reason not to.

There's also talk that the 3DS will have streaming TV coming to it as well, but only in Japan.

Dear Santa....

Remember all those years when I asked for a Hoverboard and ONLY a Hoverboard?

Well you owe me. This Omega-awesome shirt from GlitchGear.com will do.

You got three months, get crackin'.

Signed,

The Nicest Boy in the World.

Old School Gaming Rekindled

As of late I have been simultaneously enthralled and challenged by the glorious specter of the Angry Video Game Nerd. The premise is simple, a nerd plays old school video games and points out how much they suck. He occasionally reviews some classic mainstream games but mostly it's games that I've never heard of. And I have played a lot of games. More than you think.

After his review of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, I felt the need to give the game another try. I had been stuck at the same point for probably years. That game is so ridiculous because of its non-linear gameplay and absolute lack of in-game advice. Everything the NPCs (non-playable characters to the jocks) tell you is useless and probably a lie. His sarcastic review, however, provided several clues that have allowed me to get to the last level.

The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES is a demon and another classic game that I devoted HOURS of my life to. It is ridiculously hard. Plain and simple. The farthest I've EVER gotten is level 4. Before puberty I was an epic gaming monster and was capable of intuitively wailing on any game you handed to me. Now, not so much. I blame boobs. But the subsequent sequels were less difficult, more rewarding with better action and geared toward playing with friends. If I had only had friends, it would have been great.

The biggest thing that grabs my attention about this web-series though is the nostalgia. I remember fondly renting a video game every Friday and staying up to the wee hours of morning for a couple days just playing games. The games that immediately spring to mind for these weekends of juvenescence: Super Mario 3, Rampage, Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure, The Adventures of Bayou Billy, Excitebike, Jaws: The Video Game, Faxanadu and a specific Mega Man title that escapes me. It was a good one, but easy enough that I could beat some of the bosses...Nevermind.

The Nerd captures this nostalgia perfectly with his Game-Cave. But seeing his walls o' NES cartridges has roused some long-dormant gamer feelings in me.

Though I wholly love my Wii and its contemporary games, one of the reasons for its purchase was the promise of being able to play my old favorite NES and Super NES titles. There have been a few essential titles that have come over for the wii, but for the most part they have barely scratched the surface of the 600+ titles for the NES and the 700+ titles for the Super NES. As of today there are 89 NES titles and 58 Super NES titles available for download from the Virtual Console. Instead Nintendo seems to be focussing on the Wiiware original titles rather than the classics. I guess they need to focus on the games that bring in the big bucks and leave their older fan-base to play with ourselves.

To this end however I have started to research obtaining a used NES and/or Super NES. I have no room for this trove nor the financial means to procure it. But the idea of coming home from work on a Friday night, strolling through a massive library of titles and picking one to play well into the night fills me with a giddy, nerdy anticipation and almost a sense of tranquility.

The Father of Stereoscopic 3D visits Attack of the Show

James Cameron stopped by G4's Attack of the Show to talk a little bit about the upcoming re-release of "Avatar". The re-release will be solely in digital 3D and will include an additional 9-minutes of footage. Cameron also says that there will be more Na'avi lovin'. Pass...

More importantly he showed off the rig he used to shoot the live-action scenes of last year's cash cow. Weighing in at 28 pounds, his rig uses a beam splitter rather than the standard side-by-side in order to capture images in 3D. Cameron goes on to say that he's been working on this technology for around seven years.

To put that into perspective, seven years ago I was well on my way to gaining ten pounds from eating Wendy's everyday.

Also of news in the world of 3D, Toshiba has announced plans to release one of the first glasses-free stereoscopic 3DTVs before the year's end. Following hot on the heels of the Nintendo 3DS announced at E3 this year, this could be a sign that the industry is shifting away from the bulky glasses that a lot of people cite as the biggest complaints about 3D movies.

New Mac-1000

Over the weekend Apple signed an agreement with a Delaware-based company by the name of Liquidmetal Technologies for use of all filed patents. Liquidmetal specializes in exactly that, newly developed applications of their uniquely crafted, super-strong metal. They boast that it is twice as strong and weighs less than titanium.

Liquidmetal's website seems pretty dinky, having not been updated since 2007 and is laid out like a high school computer project. But if their products can live up to their claims this could be overlooked. check out their Youtube video of a bounce test of their material versus titanium and adamantium...or something.

I would think the main purpose of Mac's pursuit of this company would be as a new, stronger casing for Mac portable laptops. Imagine a Macbook Pro that cools fast, can take a fall unscathed and still run efficiently all while being about 20% thinner than the current models. This could mean an even longer battery charge for the already efficient models.

If this were to play out along with the rumored patent of using idle USB and Firewire ports as additional thermal vents, then the future models could be EXTREMELY efficient.

I'm kinda glad I didn't break down and buy one when they released the line-up with the new processors in April.

Slow Tech News Day...

Not much tech news these last couple days, so here's a pretty bad ass depiction of my favorite bounty hunter!

Spam JUSTICE

At long last, vengeance will be mine.

Like many people I have a phony email address for business exchanges and for potential spammers. I hate that I have to separate out my emails for business, personal and spam emails. But unfortunately after years of various curiosities I have accrued quite a lot of spam. On any given day I receive twenty to thirty unsolicited, potentially dangerous emails. Some seem almost legit and some seem blatantly perilous.

But now there is a way to find out where all this crap is coming from. This map, provided by Google, shows physical locations for malicious IP addresses that send out the inbox-clogging bullshit.

It's almost like a sex offender list. I think if these things ever move they should have to walk around the neighborhood and tell them they are spammers.

3D for the Masses!

Well, this pretty much explains itself.

Panasonic has released a consumer grade 3D camcorder for $1400 bucks and 3D lens for Lumix DSLRs.

The general gist: Blah Blah Blah, 3D camcorder. Blee bloo blah, 3D lens.

Middle america can now submit their drunken hijinks to America's Funniest Home Videos (season frakkin' 21!) in 3D!

New Mac Update Makes Me Want to Rob a Bank.

After another year of hibernation, Mac has souped up their line of wallet-shattering Pros. Gizzy talks about it here, but you can scope the new products directly here.

Granted you can't get one until August. But if you can't render CGI, process RAW photos, download new Adobe software and look at Daily Puppy at the same time, you might want to think about getting one.

They start at $5000. I'm not even sure my car is worth that. If you spec it out enough it can run you close to $30,000. I'm positive my car isn't worth that. One thunderstorm and/or a glass of Cabernet later...

At any rate, if you're just looking for a new workhorse you might just want to wait until the end of the year when Mac is expected to quietly upgrade the Macbook Pro to include a 1 Tb hard drive to go with its already sexy i7 processor, who look to be bumped up to 2.8GHz as well.

Avoid Cable Money Traps

Yet another article on Giz about avoiding higher priced cables, though this time it's about audio cables. In the past there have been some postings about how much of a rip-off Monster Cables are. It's true. If you went to Best Buy and bought a 8-foot HDMI cable it would set you back a whopping $130.

Before you do, I want you to think of all the things you could possibly get with $130 USD. Think of it as a moment of Home Theatre Zen.

OK, back?

Go here. Less than a dollar a foot. Scared about quality? Don't be. Also, grow a pair. I've had my cables from these guys for over two years and they're still great. Additionally, Firefold has all sorts of tech related deals as well as some awesome miscellaneous grabs. Take a look around.

Stereoscopic 3D is...dying?

Wait, I'm confused.

According to this article on Gizmodo, 3D venues have seen a steady decline in opening weekend grosses since the release of the, apparently, "tentpole" of Stereoscopic 3D features...Avatar.

Let's look at this a little closer. What do four of these six movies have in common? They're CGI kiddie flicks. It's ridiculously easy to make a 3D CGI movie these days. All you have to do is make the CGI film and then render it to two outputs that are slightly off. No actual humans were involved in adding the third dimension.

Avatar was shot in stereoscopic 3D and then incorporated CGI (see above).

In contrast the other Avatar (The Last Airbender) was shot in 2D and then hastily converted to 3D in an effort to combat the evident dismal film. This requires some editor/artist spending many hours in a dark room pushing and pulling the z-axis of the shots and CG in order to get it right. Most conjecture comes to the conclusion that M Night Shamamalama's film was so atrocious that they needed another gimmick to drive attendance up. They decided to do some absolutely-last-minute conversion to 3D to jack up the cost of tickets for an inflated box office gross. So to hold up Airbender as an epitome of 3D films seems ridiculous. Especially since the film itself is terrible. That's like walking up to an outhouse and saying: "Wow, this stinks." No shit, it's an outhouse.

I think the biggest hurdle 3D needs to overcome is finding a universal mount that is as comfortable and slight to be easily used by filmmakers. For epic long shots, yeah, stereoscopic 3D is king. I would love to see Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance in 3D. But if you want a close-up shot of anything, it takes all kinds of mathamagical calculations to get the two "eyes" to cross effectively. From a production point of view I can see the downside of this technology.

But there have been a few setbacks for the assimilation for stereoscopic 3D into mainstream American cinema. Because of the previously mentioned hassle of 3D rigs Marvel has passed on shooting the forth-coming Thor and Captain America films in 3D, instead opting for the post-production option of conversion. Although this might result in lack-luster effects as seen in this year's Clash of the Titans, it is a step in the right direction and a stark contrast to DC/Warner Brothers' anti-3D stance as decreed by their de-facto patriarch, Christopher Nolan. I personally think that The Dark Knight actually could have pulled off some decent 3D shots if they had applied themselves. But this, of course, is blasphemous.

At any rate, I think the first time we will really see the emergence of decent 3D films is when low-budget stereoscopic equipment becomes available to the plebeian auteurs. Hopefully Red will break through and save it before it falls back to the interest level of anaglyphic 3D.

And a special FU to the 3D faithful with that picture of anaglyphic glasses in their article. Props Gizzy.

Bitch: Now in URL form!

This site is nothing but a black-hole for time and intelligence. I'm still curious as to whether the web-masters actually built a program that makes logical statements or if it's just cross-feeding input from simultaneous users. In either case this "chick" (as she vehemently insists she is) is the most dada-ist bitch I have ever met in my life.

Enter her elaborate web of lies, misinformation and deceit at your own peril.

A Harmonious Marriage of Booze and Gaming

Few things in life give me as much pleasure as playing video games and drinking. Many, many hours of my life have been spent drinking beers of varying qualities and playing an engrossing game (e.g. The Metroid Prime Trilogy). I can also pretty much guarantee that if I had had access to alcohol during my first run of Chrono Trigger, I would still being working on getting my GED. And Super Smash Brothers Melee? I can't hear the theme music without wanting a beer...and gummi bears....and Cheeze-its...and more beer.

So it is no surprise that when I learned of not one but TWO separate sites dedicated to video game -themed cocktails and beers. Were I not currently dedicated to staying on the wagon for the rest of the month, I would gladly fall off and let it roll over me.

http://videogamesandbooze.blogspot.com/

http://www.thedrunkenmoogle.com/

Photoshop Is now Smarter than I am

Holy crap. The new Photoshop will now be able to autocorrect around objects to be removed. It will only cost $178,943!

The real problem is getting hot chicks to hang out with gamers.

A recent posting on VGC has a listing of the top 10 best Wii games to get girls to wiggle for you. I'm not sure I even know women of this caliber, let alone getting them to willingly play these games in bikinis.

Alice in Wonderland 1.0

Painstaking effort was made to restore the very first version of Lewis Carroll's classic story of Alice in Wonderland. And here i am bitching about when Th Life Aquatic will be out on blu-ray.

Tech Picks of the Day:

Flexible LED

Doodling 2.0

Been doing this for years.

Mars is not a Cold Dead Place...uh...well...

Someone FINALLY Invented This!

At long last you can clear your nose anytime someone calls. The tissue industry will explode. Time for some smart investing.

It has begun...

I often wondered how the Zombie Apocalypse will begin. Until now I had assumed it would be started by the unusual events starting back in July of 2008. A fireball descended over Southern California and disappeared before anyone could find evidence.

And again in September 09 and as recently as January of 2010. I myself have witnessed one of these fireballs and can vouch that it is humbling and awe inspiring.

The biggest news though was the impact of a meteorite in Peru which caused local villagers to fall ill. This was the beginning of the end to me.

But the truth of the ZA will arise from what will be heralded as a breakthrough in modern medicine and/or man's extension of his lifespan.

Brain cancer vaccine. Enough said.

Eighteen months later I would reflect upon this turn of events while reloading my shotgun in a derelict Jamba Juice followed shortly by the jarring bark of my 100-pound Rottweiler, Artemis, as more limping corpses came our way.

Day One

This is a test of the might of man and machine combined. May this harmonious be a beautiful harbinger of brilliance.