General

I am the Lord of One Word. Say a word to me, and be it evil or good, it will be done, for I am the Lord of One Word. Review of Ghost Hound (available for streaming on Netflix and Hulu Plus): 11 years ago, Tarou Komori and his sister Mizuka were kidnapped and held for ransom in an abandoned hospital. Mizuka died before she could be rescued. Tarou, now a junior high student, still shows signs of post-traumatic stress disorder from the incident, and a new psychiatrist travels each week from Tokyo to help him come to terms with his sister’s death and move on. ...

Space Battleship Yamato The movie starts, like all good space operas, in the silence of space. Blaster fire reflects off the eye of a lone pilot; the camera pulls back and we see she is part of a squadron; the camera pulls back more and we see an invasion of alien battleships against an Earth backdrop. Earth ships fire against the invaders, but their weapons are useless. The admiral sends a cruiser to attract enemy fire as he takes his flagship to safety. ...

Xfire is a background program for gamers that provides basic matchmaking for some games, instant messaging, the ability to capture audio, screen shots and movies while gaming and track WoW achievements and time spent gaming. According to its home page, it has nearly 18 million registered users (which is not the same as active or current users). 121,602 gamers are logged in at the time I am writing this. ...

“Hacker 4 Life? Turn it into a career. Study hacking and get a degree. We match you with programs quickly.” I’m surprised there’s not a Facebook ad for how to shoot a politician, but maybe my profile doesn’t include enough gun references. The picture in the ad shows a bit of JavaScript that authenticates that the new password you entered matches the password in its “type it again” field, so props for actually having the picture be somewhat relevant to hacking. ...

World of Warcraft players, Rift isn’t made for you. Now that you know that, you can stop telling me how much Rift is like WoW. Maybe that it’s an inferior copy. That if you compare it to WoW, Rift comes off really, really crappy. It fills you with ‘meh’. 7/10. I get it. But you’re off the hook; just log in to Azeroth and forget Rift exists. PLEASE. ...

After an hour, I still couldn’t pick you out from the other babies. Wrinkled, wet, head shaped weird, crying… I’d seen it before. I’m thinking this whole baby nonsense has run its course. There’s plenty of adults around that can drive cars, climb trees, and feed themselves. I can’t really see what a baby that can do none of these things brings to the table. Other parents are telling me to give you some time, you’ll grow into something unique and special. But frankly, I’m not buying it. It’s been an hour and I’m bored with you already. ...

Shady browser strategy game Evony has been long criticized for its deceptive ads featuring scantily clad women advertising a game where you build houses and sawmills and really, have very little sex at all. And no women. Must have crushed them when gaming megagiant Electronic Arts stole was inspired by their clever marketing and came out with an example of their own: Lord of Ultima also features building stuff and sending out armies and no sex or women. ...

115,261 people like Purina ONE? That’s more people than I would have ever though had TRIED Purina ONE, much less LIKED it. Do they share with their cats? Or do the cats get their own bowl? I wonder how they taste with milk?

Last week, Spinks mused a bit over on her blog about the tendency of WoW players to distill every activity down to its most efficient execution, even if some of the players would like things to go more casually. She suggested using some social engineering to gather like-minded players together: Maybe some kind of social scoring scheme based on (useful and grammatically correct) forum posts and votes from previous groupees, and some extra cosmetic rewards and titles … ...

Have you ever wondered how the expansive, immersive virtual worlds in which we used to play and live turned into the slick, plastic pieces of disposable entertainment we have today? I was right there, yelling and screaming about it. Kids today. Get off my lawn. Why, back in my day, we… Here’s how I figured out it was me that ruined things. I was at Best Buy Sunday. I haven’t been in ages; they’ve moved everything around at my local store. As Lisana noted the other day, QR Codes are everywhere. I felt sorry I hadn’t brought my phone. ...