emptying my brain onto the internet since 1998…
Several of my friends have been using Good Reads for a while now, and I finally decided to sign up.
I’ll still be keeping my book list and reviews here on this blog as well, but hopefully Good Reads will turn up a recommendation or two for things to read in the future.
It has been a bit over a month since I started my most recent run at getting in shape. Â Phase 1 was 100 Push-ups, and at this point I am actually doing my 100 within ten to fifteen minutes. Â I’m still a bit away from my goal of going it in three minutes or less, but I have definitely seen huge improvements. Â So, I feel it is time to institute Phase 2: 100 Sit-ups.
Now, doing sit-ups is both going to be easier and harder for me. Â My abdominal muscles are actually in pretty good shape… however, I have cleverly hidden them under a plump gut. Â See, I actually use my abs quite a bit, getting on and off the couch, lifting things incorrectly, and other stuff, much more than I use the muscles in my arms (as a computer geek, my arms spend a lot of time resting on the desk while my fingers do all the real work). Â That said, I did my first 100 Sit-ups last night in well under an hour, probably less than half an hour, but they were more crunches than sit-ups. Â That gut covering my six-pack does a decent job of preventing me from completing the full sit-up (and I can’t touch my toes either).
I see getting through Phase 2 much more quickly than Phase 1, so I already need to start looking for a Phase 3… I’m thinking it is going to be some form of cardio… I do own an elliptical machine, so I might as well start using it. Â The key here is that I am not currently in any life-threatening danger, but I do want to make sure I never am, so I want to add and make changes to my life a little at a time. Â Small changes are easier to keep than drastic ones.
When I first saw and played LEGO Star Wars, I was stunned. Â It was just such a great idea. Â Sure, it was tied in to a product, but taking the Star Wars LEGO sets and allowing players to run through the story of the new Star Wars movies was inspired. Â Then Traveller’s Tales followed it up with LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy and it was also quite awesome. Â Having now also played LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Batman, I have seen the full arc of their evolution in this particular medium. Â From here, looking back at the first LEGO Star Wars, I can see how the non-verbal LEGO humor has grown and made later games even more enjoyable. Â And with LEGO Batman they advanced in their storytelling since they were no longer adapting from a movie script to a game, but creating their own stories.
So, given that I love these games, I get disappointed when conversations of these games turn into listing all the other movies and superheroes that people wish they would turn into a LEGO game.
Personally, I think that Traveller’s Tales has “been there, done that”. Â LEGO Batman showed that they could craft their own stories when given characters, and I think I would rather see them evolve if and when they make another LEGO game. Â Rather than saying “Ooo! LEGO Superman would be awesome!” like most folks (and it could be, don’t get me wrong, and given that Warner Bros. bought Traveller’s Tales, a string of DC Universe inspire games might well be coming), I look instead to LEGOs lines of products and imagine what game I’d want to see crafted out of LEGO sets with little or no existing back story.
When I think of the next LEGO adventure, and what I would want to spend my hard earned $50 or $60 on, I’d much prefer to tackle a new genre all together. Â We’ve had the Star Wars space opera (twice), and we’ve had the 1930’s adventure, and we’ve had the modern spandex superhero… next, I want to see them tackle fantasy. Â They could still inject their humor, poking fun at Lord of the Rings and World of Warcraft and other popular fantasy realms and elements, all while building their own lore of humans and dwarves versus trolls and skeletons.
That, in my humble opinion, would be awesome.
Today is the Superbowl, which in recent years (about as long as I can remember) is little more than a program about advertising that gets repeatedly interrupted by a football game, and given that I present you with a comparison of advertisements.
This is why I game…
… this is why I hang my head in shame…
This is something that likely no one will care about but me, however I figured I would make a post about it anyway…
In order to cut back on spam I have set the blog to disable comments on any entry that is more than one year old. Â Probably 99% of spam comments are made on posts from 2006 or older. Â They all wind up in my spam queue for holding and deletion, but I’m neurotic and like to keep an eye on the spam queue for valid comments so I want to reduce the amount of garbage I have to sift through.
Anyway, that’s it.
Enjoy.
I wrote a blog post last week. Â And I rewrote it several times. Â I even touched it again a few times this week. Â The post is entitled “The Animosity of Hope”. Â I actually originally made it to post on inauguration day. Â But I haven’t posted it…
The meat of the entry is that holding on to hope can be one of the most destructive things in life. Â My example, using my own life, is that when you are unemployed and looking for work in an “educated” field, getting nibbles and the occasional interview keeps you hoping that you’ll find work in the field of your choice, all the while your savings are vanishing and your credit cards get filled up and common sense tells you that you should go out and find a job, any job, because if you hold on to hope too long you are just going to end up messing up your financial future. Â And face it, a person’s finances touch everything else in their lives. Â While people surely can be happy with less, its hard to be happy under a mountain of debt and creditors beating down your door.
I haven’t posted that entry because no matter how many times I have rewritten it, and no matter how true I feel that message is, I can’t seem to really tell it, beyond the quick summary above, without the page being filled with venom and spite. Â Animosity.
Sadly, I still have hope… but what I need is a job… maybe this week I’ll have both.
This month I decided to join in with the Vintage Game Club. Â Every month they pick a game to play, and while they play it they discuss it. Â Their choice this month was Beyond Good & Evil. Â I obtained my copy to play through the GameTap service since I already pay for that, making the acquisition of this game easy and with no additional charge.
So, I’ll be playing this and chatting along with the VGC. Â Come join us, or at least come read along.
Back in October, I reviewed my experience with the web based game Travian, and now that I am no longer going to be playing it, I would like to say just a bit more.
If you decide to play Travian, bring friends. Â If you don’t have friends to bring, make friends, fast. Â And if the friends you bring or the friends you make do not play seriously and begin immediately amassing power and strength, dump them and get new friends.
That may seem a little hardcore, but it is pretty much true. Â Travian is a PvP game. Â Building cities takes more time than conquering cities. Â So if you don’t join a big alliance and start conquering other people, other people will start conquering you.
So, to that end, while I said previously that I wouldn’t be playing the game anymore, I won’t… but I would consider it if a big group of people were planning to play it and let me join in with them.
Face it. Â The world is changing. Â I moved out of my parents’ house back in 1994, and in all the years since I have received a full batch of anywhere from six to ten phone books, yellow and white pages, every year. Â And in all that time, I can recall perhaps five or six times I ever used them. Â Nowadays I can find anything I might possibly need a phone book for on the Internet. Â Or rather, I’m going to use the Internet and any business that isn’t out there is probably not going to get my dollars. Â Even the Yellow Pages themselves have opened up YellowPages.com, and if you happen to live in a state serviced by AT&T you can even browse an online version of the printed phone books. Â I’m sure more services are out there as well…
So, given my penchant over the last couple of years to stop junk mail, you can imagine how I feel about my annual stack of phone books that appear on my door step. Â True, I simply drive them over to the post office where they have a dumpster for phone book recycling, but the printing of the books is just a giant waste to begin with. Â (Yeah, yeah… I know, “In Case of Emergencies”, but I keep written down all the emergency phone numbers I would need, especially the ones I would need if I had no power or Internet access.) Â That’s why I was very happy when I got an email from Green Dimes about Yellow Pages Goes Green.
I’ve signed up to have them stop sending me phone books, and now I just have to wait and see…
By way of the ZRC, I have learned that you no longer have to complete Call of Duty: World at War to unlock the Nazi zombie mode for online play. Â You still need to unlock it for solo play, but at least now I have a reason to bump the game up on my want list since I don’t have to wait to wade through zombies as long as I want to bring some friends with me.