Tag Archives: Off-Topic

Let the Halo 3 Build-Up Begin.

Geeks who were around for the launch of Halo 2 and were paying close attention to the Internet around that time will have fond memories of ilovebees.com, which was far ahead of its time and a pioneering attempt at alternate reality gaming. Several groups have since tried to start up ARGs, only to have them fall apart due to lack of participation, lack of planning, or both.

Now, three messages have shown up on the Internet that appear to be the precursors to a Halo 3-influenced media campaign. Are they an ARG? Who knows.

I’m going to be paying attention, though.

The countdown is to midnight PT on Thursday.

Make Sure You Play Along, Or You’re Not an Official Geek.

John Siracusa’s annual WWDC bingo card for the year has been posted, and I’ve already got mine printed and ready to go while I keep up with the live feed at work on Monday.

In case you’re unfamiliar, this has become a tradition in the last few years with the Mac faithful. We dream about the wonderful things that are going to be announced either at WWDC or at Macworld, we get our hopes up to stratospheric levels (my big hope for Monday is a new iMac running Leopard), and then we sit over the keynote presentations like hawks, waiting for tidbits of news to make us excited.

I know of no other group in geek-dom that behaves quite like this.

The Only Thing More Unnerving Is That No One Seems to Care About It Anymore.

In case you missed it, STS-117 launched launched successfully on Friday and appears to be going quite well. I’m quite upset at myself for not paying more attention to it and forgetting that it was going up this month, and more upset that I never saw anything about it on the news or anywhere else.

It’s really a shame that we appear to have forgotten how important (and how dangerous) space travel can be – at least until something actually does go wrong, and then everyone manages to care again.

There’s some great pictures that are tagged as sts117 on flickr; I suggest checking them out.

Because I’m Flattered That a Coworker Dedicated a Setting to Me.

We hail Thee as our Savior, Lord,
Our refuge and our great reward;
Without Thy grace we waste away
Like flow’rs that wither and decay.

How oddly appropriate given that Hannah was recently baptized, and I think also that I needed to hear these words recently for some reason.

Thank you, Henry.

Colossi Cast Really Big Shadows, Or: It’s Time to Clear the Backlog.

Inspired by a thread at 360 Arcadians, I’ve decided that my Xbox 360 going in for repairs was the perfect time to begin attempting to clear out my game backlog (that is, the games I own that I have not yet finished). The entire backlog is listed below.

I began with Shadow of the Colossus, which actually took me about a week of real life to get through, mostly because there were several evenings I didn’t play anything at all. I’m determined to play through only one game at a time, to make sure that I actually finish a few this time around.

Colossus was pretty good in the end. There was a period with a few of the mid-game colossi where I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like the game as a whole, and I believe I stated that I hated the game in those circumstances, but when the 12th colossus and later rolled around, I found I was actually having fun. I still think the controls are a bit iffy and the camera is detestable, but the overall experience was a good one. The game has atmosphere by the bucketful and pushes the PS2 pretty well.

It started strong and ended strong, so I’m willing to forgive some of the sloppiness and poor enemy design in the middle few encounters. 1 through about 5 or 6 (maybe even 7) were great and introduced everything well, and the last four colossi were simply amazing to play.

For the record, the final time to completion according to my savefile (which includes watching the credits) was 9:38:09.

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