Blog: Cool Things on September 28

This week has been pretty quiet, mostly due to me having things to do in the "real world" Either way I still found a couple of things that are pretty cool this week.

Podcasts

Recently the Nerdist Podcast interviewed Henry Rollins (Listen to it). I happened to listen to it this week and thought it was really worth listening to. Rollins is, as always, incredibly insightful and also passionate about some very interesting things (which is not to say that everyone needs to be passionate about Finnish noise metal, but it's good to see someone who is genuinely passionate about things). The Nerdist crew is also interesting in this one since Jonah and "Nerdtern" Kyle are also big music heads.

The Nerdist Podcast, may involve ... long snowflakes?

Flash Games

Sometimes you just want a game that you kick off and then it plays itself (or at least I do ... in fact I may be the laziest gamer ever). Other times you want to fill the world with zombies. For times when you want to do both (with nice pixel graphics) there's Infectonator II, by Toge Productions. In this game you play the role of the zombie virus crafting the perfect zombies to wipe out the world. You gain money from the people your zombies eat and use that to make your zombies better and better. The humans meanwhile will bring in better opposition to bring you down so you'll need to keep getting better. I haven't played a lot yet, but I really enjoyed the first one and so far this seems like a sequel that leaves the good parts in and improves on the irritating bits.

It's cold being a zombie sometimes. (via Toge Productions blog)

Then there are the times where you just want to command an army of Monkeys to pop every balloon in the world. For times like those there's Bloons Tower Defense 5 by Ninja Kiwi. This is a pretty straight forward tower defense game, balloons come in one end and you set up monkeys with different powers to pop them. It only takes one dart to pop a balloon but most of the balloons come with other balloons inside of them. I really like the level design on this one as compared to the earlier versions of this game and the power / organization of the monkeys feels a lot better as well. On the downside I think the levels are a bit too long, but at the same time it can be tough to get enough money to unlock the really cool monkeys. The other major problem with the game is that before the balloons start coming you can't tell where they come from on each map. Beyond that though this can be a lot of fun if you feel like a tower defense kind of game.

Every monkey should have a spiffy sweat band.

Then of course there are the times when you want to match three things together and get bigger things out of them. Triple Town (warning Facebook link) by SpryFox is not at all a new game, but was recently upgraded (on Facebook at least) and I've fallen back into it (with the help of a good friend, who really enjoys matching 3 things together). The core game play hasn't changed, but the way the in-game store works and the over world have been redesigned to make it a lot easier to play and give you more reason to play. It's worth checking out on facebook or wherever else it might be found (I really don't know).

All decked out for ... fallo'ween?

Videos

As far as I'm concerned, Corey, Mr. Safety, of SMPFilms is one the best film makers on YouTube. His cinematography is always amazing and his videos convey his love of California with amazing clarity. In this one (in a small ploy to get himself an iPhone5), he straps his old iPhone to a rocket and gets the best footage of his world yet.

Wrap-up

So we learned this week that I when I have real world work to do I play flash games. Hmm, see it is all about the productivity.

I've also been debating about this video from Geek & Sundry / Felicia Day, so I dropped it here. It's episode 9 of the Vaginal Fantasy Book Club. I have to confess that I haven't finished watching it (since it's incredibly long) and I'm not sure I'm interested in what these four are talking about (that being sci-fi/fantasy/horror romance(?) books), but they are a pretty entertaining group of ladies and the the mix of tentacles and whiskey really does demand to be watched.

Blog : Cool Things on September 14, 2012

I'm starting a new series of posts on the blog side where I'm going to mention some of the cool things I've run across. I hope this is roughly weekly, but the blog schedule has to flex to the actually being a student schedule.

This first edition is mostly things from youtube, where I'm a little better oganized about keeping track of cool things (and you don't have to worry there's at least a year's worth of favorite YouTube videos before I have to do anything there). In the future I will hopefully be keeping track of all the cool things.

Videos

Let's start then with the inimitable Dodger, who has started a let's play series of the game They Bleed Pixels. The style of the game is pretty cool, I especially like the character's pose as she jumps, and how reactive the game looks. It looks like it can become incredibly frustrating so I'm just as happy to let someone else play. Dodger's Let's Play style is enjoyable, she's actually good at games, and makes for great back ground listening. I also appreciate how she goes back at the end of the prologue video to pick up the collectables she missed. Check out the following episodes too, unfortunately there isn't a playlist of them yet.

Another cool video I found this week is Karen Kavett's video on how she created a Doctor Who Guess Who set. She's pretty inspirational on the getting excited and making things front and she makes some pretty cool things. The video features the music from Chameleon Circuit.

The last video this week is the 1000th video from the vlogbrothers (well, technically the 1001st). It's pretty cool all the things that have come together over the last five years. DFTBA.

Games

This week I've also been playing (a bit to my chagrin) Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Dark Lord, a downloadable title by Square-Enix on the Wii. This game is a pretty cheesy tower defense game (in which you have to defend your tower ... rather than use the tower for defense). The concept is a little weird/j-rpg the mechanics are a bit simple (and sometimes frustrating) but for some reason this is a hell of a lot of fun.

Yeah, that's what it looks like ... (via GameFAQs) 

Podcasts

I've recently run across the not-at-all new Film Sack from the Frog Pants Network. In which Scott Johnson, Brian Dunaway, Randy Jordan and Brian Ibbot discuss a movie each week, usually a B from a while ago and see how it feels, if it holds up and whether people should actually be interested. Despite not being much of a movie buff myself listening to these four guys talk about films is really fun and the kind of thing you can put on in the background while getting things done. I've started listening both to the oldest episode and going forward and the newest one going backward and we'll see what happens when the film sack trains collide.

On a related note, Film Sack's cousin podcast Autopilot is preparing for it's second season. This podcast (put together by Scott Johnson and Tom Merritt) takes a look at the pilots of television shows and is informative and entertaining. They released the first season earlier this year, and decided to fun the second season through Kickstarter (rather than through sponsorships). I enjoyed the first season enough to get on board to give them a kick.

Wrap-up

I'd like to thank my friend Daley for his bump to the blog earlier this week. He runs his blog at lingwhatics.ca and keeps a good eye on the world both there and on his twitter.

And finally, although I'm sure everyone's had enough gangnam style, here's the crew of Weekend Confirmed getting overwhelmed by the spirit of ... dance ...