February 5, 2010
Dan
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I recently wrote about Naked News, a very NSFW website where the news casters strip while reading the news, sports, weather, etc. And I have to admit, the idea of seeing boobies does make some of the news a bit easier to take. It also makes me wonder what other areas of our life could be improved through nudity. Maybe if we required all lawyers to be hotties with D-cups and practice their law in the buff we’d all be much happier when we got that summons to jury duty in the mail?
Speaking of funny, I compiled some Jim Gaffigan videos and some banned Super Bowl commercials. I need to work on some videos of Zach Galifianakis. We watched his stand up routine the other night and that guy is hilarious.
January 25, 2010
Dan
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After watching Brett Favre and the Minnesotta Vikings run up the score against the Dallas Cowboys with a late touchdown pass, did we just see karma teaching them a lesson in sportsmanship?
January 4, 2010
Dan
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For the longest time, I assumed World of Warcraft was a solid-but-nothing-special game that achieved popularity based on Blizzard’s name as much as the game itself. It first arrived at the same time as Everquest 2, and after playing both of them for a few weeks, I chose to continue my adventuring career in Everquest 2 because — funny enough — it was less an Everquest clone than World of Warcraft.
Yes, World of Warcraft is just another Everquest Clone. But then again, so are 90% of the MMOs released in the last decade.
Recently, I’ve leveled up a Hunter in World of Warcraft, really giving the game a chance to show me what its got. And I’ve learned a few things in my time in the game. I’ve even compiled some Hunter tips for those that like to play.
But what have I learned most? That I was right all along.
I remember reading about a study where they divided people into several different groups on a website and allowed them to pick out the music they wanted to listen to while on the site. The website also displayed how many times a certain song had been played, thus allowing everyone to see how popular it was. What they found out was that popularity tends to beget popularity — what became popular early tended to rise to the top, given a certain lift by its own popularity.
The key piece of evidence was that songs that were popular among one group were sometimes among the least popular in the other group. It was the act of becoming popular that led to the song being played again and again — people would see that it was popular or hear about it from someone else and would listen to it themselves.
An interesting theory and one I think holds true. Popularity does tend to beget popularity, which is what we see with World of Warcraft. The game’s initial popularity is based on the Blizzard name — Blizzard being well known for producing good, quality game and having quite the fan following before WoW came along. Obviously, World of Warcraft itself is a solid game else these players would have quickly grown bored, but there isn’t anything that really sets it above Everquest 2 or its other contemporaries. Rather, it was good enough to keep the interest of the players, and the sheer number of those players caused it to explode in popularity.
Unfortunately, the genre has become quite stale over the past few years, leaving me to just dream up Frankenstein’s MMO.
November 19, 2009
Dan
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Dragon Age: Origins is a great game and well worth the much-anticipated wait, but while the folks at Bioware did a solid job on many aspects of the game, there are a few things I really don’t like about it.
- The items leave a lot to be desired. There are a few cool items in the game, but mostly, you spend your time finding leaves and dust and rags and useless pieces of paper.
- I don’t see it as being high on the replayability. The cut scenes are great and story fantastic, but I’m not sure I’m going to want to sit through it all. And with long dungeon crawls with no variation (i.e. nothing random) and no fantastic loot, it just seems like it’d become a bore trying to go through again.
- There is no way to put together your party in the campsite, which means you have to travel somewhere even if you simply want to give a companion a gift.
- I don’t mind not being able to respec skills and abilities, but we should actually get good information on abilities from the selection screen. No fun spending four points only to find out mass paralyze only lasts a few seconds.
- I really would love it if the class specializations were more than just four abilities. This is especially disappointing considering that many of these abilities are mostly useless.
- The hotkey bar continually thinks I’m trying to drag an ability when I’m just clicking on it to select it. Ug!
Need hints? Get some Dragon Age tips.
October 8, 2009
Dan
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Yesterday, I did some reading on Apple’s history with Adobe and Adobe Flash to figure out why Apple has such a standoff relationship them over putting Flash on the iPhone. After all, Flash is about to hit just about every smartphone BUT the iPhone, so what’s the big deal?
Apple’s objection is to how much resources Flash takes up and how it will effect performance on the iPhone. But in my research, I found some common ground between Apple and Google when it comes to HTML 5. Google is obviously pushing some HTML 5 features hard through its Google Chrome browser and Google Chrome OS, and Apple is also pushing hard on some HTML 5 features, especially Canvas, a 2D drawing element that could make Adobe Flash all but obsolete.
It is rather interesting what strange bedfellows the digital world makes. It wasn’t so long ago that we were reading about Apple rejecting Google Voice from the app store and the resulting FCC investigation. But as far as the evolution of the web goes, it seems like they are on similar pages.
July 19, 2009
Ann
6 Comments
Some of the simplest toys are the best. You don’t see these in the stores anymore. I used to spend hours obsessing over Wooly Willy, giving him super long nose and ear hair, making curlicue beards and eyebrows, devil horns and drag-queen hair.
I’m glad they still have hula hoops. “You know? For kids.” They’ve got to keep that one around because somebody somewhere figured out it was just good exercise. But they’ve even come up with an electronic version of that with the Wii Fit. I’m not complaining, though, I love my Wii Fit hula hoops. Some kid came over and broke my real hula hoop about seven years ago, and it may be time to buy a new one.
It might’ve been the same kid that threw my nekkid Barbie down into the flood canal like she was committing suicide off a super high balcony. He was so cute and looked at me with innocent eyes, like he was sad he “dropped” her.
Anyway, I was having a moment of nostalgia and just thought I’d share, especially since I haven’t written out here since January when I was talking on singing about singing. I have since become quite the hypocrite, having embraced another childhood memory, The Carpenters Now & Then
album, which only has cover tunes and songs about singing. Go figure.
July 9, 2009
Dan
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I’m sure I’m going to field some questions on Google’s new operating system. Not to mention people wondering why Google has released two operating systems in two years.
Google Chrome OS is basically a lightweight version of Linux + Google Chrome and is being targeted at the PC, laptop and netbook market, whereas Android is more about portability. They are even targeting cable boxes and DVRs with Android.
Here’s a big long article all about Google Chrome OS.
July 9, 2009
Dan
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Since I write about Twitter a lot, I thought I should try and become a bit more active on the service. The problem? Time. And Energy. Oh yeah, and remembering to go to the Twitter website.
There are a lot of really cool Twitter clients – I really like Tweetdeck myself — but none of them seem to offer the one thing I think would really be a cool feature: popping up every once in a while and asking what the heck you are doing. A smart app, of course, that can tell you aren’t playing a web game on InstantAction or surfing for porn on Bing – because Microsoft is awesome to give us all this porn to watch! — but when you aren’t doing much on your computer or iphone, it just pops up the message. Then, next time you pop on to do something, you can say what you’ve been doing.
Seems like a no-brainer to me. It would also keep me from constantly making a tweet while standing in line somewhere and thus trying desparately not to say ‘hate lines’ or something similar.
June 16, 2009
Dan
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It’s rather funny how quickly the media jumped off the Cowboys bandwagon once they dumped T.O., ignoring the fact that many of them questioned why they hadn’t got rid of him before the move, and after the move it has become the biggest mistake in NFL history.
Here’s the facts: The Cowboys defense will be among the best with Wade Phillips more involved and the NFL sack leader continuing his domination. And the offense still has more weapons than the vast majority of teams in the league when you count up Romo, Williams, Witten, Barber, F. Jones and Tashard Choice. And look out for Bennett who is going to have a breakout year in his sophomore season.
Will they win a playoff game? Dunno about that. There’s a December curse going on. But they’ll definitely finish better than many people think.
On a totally different front, I’m dragging Ann and I into the 21st century by getting an iPhone 3GS and giving her my Tilt. Yep, that’s right, we’ll both have cell phones. It’s like dogs and cats living together. Wanna know what apps I’ll be installing on the new phone first? Here’s a list of must-have iPhone apps I compiled for my newest gig.
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