moral compass?

i'll start with a random thought...

i know that it's a topic that's been talked to death for years and years, i was thinking last night (when sleeping was not taking place, a common ailment), i wondered about the moral implications of fantasizing about immoral things.

not sick immorality like rape and murder, but plausible immorality like embezzlement and bank robbery....

hmm.


hooray for free stuff!!!

so, for some reason, perhaps my present blind love for pc gaming, i paged through a recent issue (issue 3, actually) of 'games for windows'. i know that it's simply a thinly veiled advertisement for microsoft licensed games. however, i've always had respect for the fellas over at 1up.com (though the c-net based gamespot.com is still my home for gaming info...), and since it's actually them that produce it, i felt a little less dirty for holding it's amazingly well constructedness... i mean, damn it's a pretty publication.

anyway, all that aside, in said issue (see the 'synopsis (i.e. SUBSCRIBE OH GOD PLEASE!!!) here) there's a section called 'freeloader's 101 free games', and, amazingly, the same information is simulhosted (look, i think i just made that word up!) on 1up.com here.

the front cover of the issue talks about that crossover game, which i seem to recall mentioning before.

anyway, the list of free games is actually pretty good. there's actually a few games that i've already played and loved, and more than a few that i've just tried and enjoyed, and even more than i need to find time to check out, because, as we all can agree, free stuff is AWESOME!!!

the one little gem that i found, at least, one that i feel is definitely worth mentioning (and expect that i might mention more as time goes on) is frets on fire, which you can get here.

a quick rundown... it's basically guitar hero for PC... the best part is that it's designed in a way that you'll pick up your keyboard to play, like an actual guitar hero controller!

sounds awesome (literally) and works pretty damn well. if you do a little googling, you can find yourself so more songs to play, too.


a desk that i feel i should have...

it's a mini cooper desk! you can't say anything bad about it! i dare you to! (man, if i had an infinite amount of money...)


ATHF stunt costs turner's [AS] as ass load of money!

if you hadn't heard... there was a bit of a snafu over some light boxes that were put up in a few cities to advertise for the new aqua teen hunger force movie. apparently, some 'morans' in boston thought that, ready... it was a bomb! yep. people are fucking stupid.

so, it's been reported by the new york times that turner and the city of boston reached a $2M settlement, half of which goes to the costs of defusing the non-existant bomb, the rest goes to readiness funds and public outreach.

i suppose the reality is that this is probably still drawing more attention than they would have otherwise, and will work out to be a cheaper marketing scheme in the long run anyway.

but still. people are dumb...


a quick mention on windows vista and games... 'cause, it's a part of my life right now...

extremetech.com has a great article where they run some tests on about 25 different games to see if and how well they run under windows vista.

there's some buzz that the openal project may actually fix some of the sound card hardware problems that have cropped up since the nice folks at microsoft decided to rebuild the sound stack from the ground up. creative is working on the ALchemy project, using openal to fix the fact that the sound hardware abstraction layer in vista is borked. currently in beta, it only supports the x-fi card, but, i assume that they will add audigy support before too long, if it works. of course, you'd think that there would be a better way to fix this problem, like work with the new HAL that microsoft built (i assume there is one, i haven't researched it too much yet...), and make the x-fi work native under windows again...


n-gage? 'in think not!' (sorry... obligatory inside joke...)

well, it seems that enough just isn't enough for the folks at nokia. after failing to get a foothold in the gaming market, not once, but twice now with the n-gage, they are DOING IT AGAIN, according to this article.

i've said this before, about many a product: it's a good idea on paper.

so's communism.

they've failed with this thing before, i can't see how they can expect not to fail again. i mean, if there's some MASSIVE improvement to the platform, and a HUGE drop in the cost of ownership, maybe... just maybe they might be on to something. but i just can't see them garnering any favor from the nintendo ds folks with this thing... it's just un-possible.

you can check out their 'semi-official' blog here. the device is due out Q4 of this year, so, we'll have to see...

(please note: i actually knew a guy with the thing (a qd even). he was ridiculed at every turn. while my cohorts and i were playing twisted metal ad-hoc on our psp's during our lunch breaks, this kid would sit in the corner booth and play bejeweled or some such shit. occasionally, he would get a phone call, where he would immediately have to go outside, and you could hear him shouting "WHAT", and "SORRY" when he had to get the other party to repeat themselves, or when he'd have to repeat himself... it was very comical)

and i'll leave you with some absolutely nerdery!

yes, this is, in fact, the nerdiest thing that could possible happen to you today.

star trek (the original series even) and... monty python: the search for the holy grail... AT THE SAME TIME!!!

NI!