Bill O'Reilly Loses His Shit

Daniel found this gem of a clip:

Hey, don't let that deter you from buying this book, though:

It takes a special kind of asshole dad to buy that book for his kids.

The Adventures of Mark Twain

This is a really strange claymation movie... From Amazon.com's editorial review:

Based on elements from the stories of Mark Twain, this feature-length Claymation(r) fantasy follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Huck Finn as they stowaway aboard the interplanetary balloon of Mark Twain. Twain, disgusted with the Human Race, is intent upon finding Halley's Comet and crashing into it, achieving his "destiny." It's up to Tom, Becky, and Huck to convince him hat his judgment is wrong, and that he still has much to offer humanity that might make a difference. Their efforts aren't just charitable; if they fail, they will share Twain's fate. Along the way, they use a magical time portal to get a detailed overview of the Twain philosophy, observing the "historical" events that inspired his works.

Watch this crazy clip from it, though. It creeps me out a bit:

Making the PS3 Controller Better

I have complaints with the PS3 controller. The analog sticks and triggers are convex, which means, after playing for awhile, my fingers tend to slip off them.  Note that the 360 controller does not have this problem at all.

 

So aside from Sony doing a redesign of the controller, which doesn't seem like is ever going to happen, what can be done now?

You can buy some of these analog stick grips:

Or some of these really goofy looking ones:

 

Around May 16th or so, you can buy these trigger grips (unfortunately, only as part of a package with "Controller Armor"):

If only I knew how to make my own grips. I could possibly make a trigger out of clay, then super glue it...

But... in the end, this is probably the ultimate PS3 controller solution:

I Want A Secret Room

I've always wanted a secret room in my house. The thing is, I have an office area in my basement that would be perfect for converting into a "secret" area, if only my wife will let me!

I could probably get away with something like the one below, because it looks rather nice:

Here's a Do-It-Yourself Hidden Room complete with the book door handle.

How cool would it be to find a secret room in your house a year after you've lived there?

Ever heard of the Củ Chi tunnels in Vietnam? Lots of secret doors and passages there.

Today the tunnels are a tourist attraction:

Some tunnels have been made larger to accommodate the larger size of western tourists, while low-power lights have been installed in several of them to make traveling through them easier and booby traps have been clearly marked.

Booby traps?! Here's a picture of one:

If I ever have a secret room, I'll leave the booby traps out. Maybe.

Pompous Ass May Produce Greatest Invention of All Time

Archer Quinn claims he has invented a free energy device that will change the world:

I guess if there is a god, to give a person the ability to end global warming and destroy the filth that control the planet in one single move, would be somewhat of a miracle so I nicknamed it the "Sword of God"...

 
Above: Archer, with another of his inventions, the "Thermal Accelerator." He looks a bit like Hannibal Lecter.

He's supposed to unleash his device on the world on June 20th.  All we know is that it has something to do with perpetual motion and gravity -- and that Archer Quinn is completely full of himself.

So you can imagine I am crap to play trival pusuit with, the worst kind of know it all, one who usually does. I never understood why i was made with the ability to do anything...

...evry [sic] person, every network who says anything about what will turn out to be the greatest discovery of all time, will be scorned, and I personally shall treat them with contempt, as will the rest of the world.

And boy, he has strong opinions about people that run oil refineries:

These people are the lowest filth ever to have walked the earth, these are not merely business people ripping people off, they are the trust elect, they should be relegated as servants to pedophiles in prison.

Sometimes I don't know what he's even talking about:

Fuck changing your habits so some cocksucker next door can throw away your life’s hard work in a minute running around turning this shit off and losing all your fucking clock setting etc.

Visit his website for more info on this possibly crazy (but possibly genius?) man.

I Had a Dream... That I Was Vectorman

I'm not joking. That's very sad, I know.  What's that? You don't remember Vectorman?!

I had a Genesis in 1995, and I had never played Vectorman until yesterday, but while grabbing the above screenshot from the wikipedia entry, I stumbled across an interesting news article that said this:

Oct. 24, 1995, will go down in history as "V-Day," the day Sega of America turned video gamers around the country into "Vectormaniacs."

She Has a Boyfriend

I need to find out what the name of this show is. I recognize the guy as Doctor Todd Rivers from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Seems like he's doing the same character!

She Has A Boyfriend - Watch more free videos

Wondering what Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is all about? Here are two samples:

New Blog From Ricky Gervais Annoys Karl Pilkington

Apparently Ricky Gervais is annoying Karl by blogging about his every move. Here's an excerpt:

[Karl] is also "sick of doing pointless meetings with people who don't know what they want." So he stayed down in Kent "playin' scrabble 'n' that."

I pointed out that if he did some work he would have money coming in as well as out. He said, "I'm doin' another book and I can do that anywhere." I said, "But you're not doing the book; you're playing scrabble."

He replied, "I've learnt two new words that can go in the book." "What are they?" I said. "Tittle," he said. (So look forward to reading that word in the new publication) "What was the other word?" I said. (long pause) "Can't remember." Idiot.

You can read the entire blog here:
http://www.rickygervais.com/chimpanzee_karl.php

2D Gaming Still Rocks

IGN played Bionic Commando Rearmed's multiplayer modes and said it was great, but it's missing online multiplayer. There's an interesting little nugget in the comment about it:

The original plan was to add online play to this, but it proved too difficult since the gameplay was not built with online lag in mind. Judd did note that online play would be considered in the event of a sequel.

Wow, already talking about a sequel. Could you imagine a brand new 2D Bionic Commando game? I'm excited enough about the update of the classic one.

I like the way things are heading lately in regards to video games. It seems like once 3D games became possible, that's all any game developer wanted to do. 3D has its place, but it shouldn't be considered a replacement for 2D.

Above: 10 Worst 2D to 3D Games

Take Nintendo's old 2D Mario and Zelda games. All they have to do is update the graphics and release them for the Wii (like Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES), and they'd probably sell millions. Of course, they just release them as-is on the Virtual Console, and people still buy them anyway, so what do I know.

Original SMB3

Super Mario All-Stars SMB3

On a related note, Nintendo no longer makes Mario sprites the way they used to. The Mario found in New Super Mario Brothers for the DS looks much different than the one from Super Mario World on the SNES. I found an article on it awhile back, and you can read it here. Basically it amounts to this -- it's easier to make a 3D model than it is to make individual 2D sprites.

Take a look for yourself at the evolution (or de-evolution?):

  

From Left:
Super Mario Bros (1985, NES)
Super Mario Bros 3 (1990, NES)
Super Mario Bros 1 & 3 All-Stars (1993, SNES)
Mario vs. Donkey Kong (2004, GBA)
New Super Mario Bros (2006, DS)

I think I actually prefer the All-Star version.

The echochrome demo is out today on PS Store!

Echochrome is one of the most unique-looking games I've seen in a long time. I'm looking forward to trying it out this evening.

From Crackle: echochrome trailer

 

Read more at the Playstation Blog

President of Epic Games Says the Wii is a Virus

Mike Capps, President of Epic Games, had this to say about the Nintendo Wii:

...It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on...

...As an investor you love [Nintendo], but as a next-gen console technology maker, they don't run [Unreal Engine 3] and they can't.

He also talks about downloadable content, GTA IV, Ninja Gaiden 2, Gears 2, Portal, and more:

...You know, Ninja Gaiden I didn't really get into because it's so ****ing hard...

...Metal Gear, if it has boring-ass long cutscenes that I can't skip then I'll play for an hour and quit. If it's the non-stop action stuff that they've done and the smart AI and everything else in their games before then I'm going to play it obsessively and play it through twice. GTA I'll play but I won't be able to finish because it's going to be too damn big. A lot of us played Portal not because it was really fun but because we knew we could finish it...

Here's the link to the full article:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/868/868001p1.html

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Help

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue was just released for the PS3 last week. It's really my first GT game, and it's a lot of fun, but I had (and still have) problems with it because of the unfamiliar terminology used in the game.

It tells you stuff like, "Use slipstreams to win!" -- what?

So here are some links to help you other GT fans (like me) who can't figure out why those guys online are passing you like you're sitting still (in the same car, on a straightaway, while you're going as fast as your Honda Integra will go).

• Slipstreaming (aka "Drafting")
• Drifting (not to be confused with "Drafting" above)
• Gran Turismo Basic Reference
• Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Strategy Guide

I personally think I'd be better at the game if I had the new Logitech Driving Force GT Steering Wheel, but even if I had that, I'd still need to have a place to put the steering wheel.

I found this:

• HOWTO: Build your own GT4 Steering Wheel Mount
• PriceGrabber's current prices for the Driving Force GT Steering Wheel
• Or, buy the mount and a seat
• Reviews and pictures of other "racing cockpits"

Blizzard's April Fools' Day Jokes

Out of all the April Fools' Day jokes I saw, I'd have to say Blizzard's were the best.

• New World of Warcraft Hero Class: Bard
• New StarCraft II Unit: Tauren Marine
• World of Warcraft on a Console
• Diablo Loot Piñata

I especially liked the concept art vs actual screenshots of the new WoW game.

Trying to Think of a Good Name

I can't think of a good name for a comic.  The Far Side is just perfect.  Too bad it's already taken.

Free (Or Very Cheap) Software You Need (For Windows)

In no particular order:

Paint.NET
This is an amazing free image editor.  If I had my choice, I'd rather use Adobe PhotoShop, but PhotoShop is not free. I've tried using GiMP before too and have been thoroughly annoyed by its ugliness and confusing interface. Paint.NET is actually very easy to use.

 

Adobe Reader + CutePDF
A lot of people recommend Foxit Reader.  Foxit Reader opens PDFs much more quickly than Adobe Reader, but it seems to have problems with its integration with Internet Explorer, so I eventually gave up on it and went back to Adobe Reader. The newest version of Adobe Reader opens much faster than before and looks nice too.  When I want to create PDFs, I use CutePDF. It installs itself as another printer, so you can create a PDF from anything you can print.

FastStone Capture
This is very simple screen capture software. You can already capture screenshots in Windows by simply pressing the Print Screen key on your keyboard (which takes a screenshot of the entire screen) or pressing Alt+PrtScn to take a screenshot of the currently active window. But what if you only want to grab a small portion of the window? That's where a screen capture program like this comes in. Note: If you have Windows Vista, you can just use the Snipping Tool. I also hear a lot of people talking about SnagIt, but it costs money, so boo.

 

Audacity
This is free software for recording and editing sounds. It's much better than the built-in Sound Recorder in Windows. In the past I used Goldwave, and then when I got a little money, I used SoundForge. Audacity is definitely a nice free alternative to those.

 

Windows Live Messenger
You can mess with GAIM or AIM or Google Talk or Yahoo Messenger or whatever, but I prefer Windows Live Messenger.  It's simple, it's integrated with my hotmail account, and all of my friends and co-workers use it.  It's a no-brainer for me.

 

Windows Live Writer
If you have a blog, you might as well make it easy on yourself to post to it, so do yourself a favor and download Windows Live Writer. It gives you a rich text editor with the ability to publish, edit, and delete blog entries. Uploading photos, inserting maps, etc. is all simple and straight forward. Programmers can even post their code with syntax highlighting with a Code Snippet plugin from Windows Live Gallery.

 

Google Pack
This is a combination of free software offered by Google and respectable third parties. Visit the website to see what all is included. They add new stuff to it all the time, but some of the highlights are Google Earth, Picasa, Norton Security Scan, and Spyware Doctor. Adobe Reader is included in Google Pack as well.

 

Google Docs & Spreadsheets
If you don't want to shell out the money for Microsoft Office, this is a nice web-based alternative. I would prefer to use Microsoft Office, but I have been in situations where the PC I was working on didn't have it installed, so having access to a word processor and spreadsheet via Google was great.  If you have a slow or inconsistent Internet connection, you might be better off with an actual Windows-based Office alternative such as OpenOffice. I've heard some people recommend StarOffice, but it costs money too.

VLC Media Player
The swiss army knife of media players. It has codecs built-in for most popular formats, so you could probably get by with this player alone, but I would go ahead and pair it with QuickTime and Windows Media Player to make sure you've got the best of everything. It even plays DVDs with its built-in DVD Decoder. Also, I've just recently heard about a new media player called Democracy that seems to be based on VLC but with a prettier interface. Oh yeah, and to hell with RealPlayer.

Floola
I love my iPod, but I loathe iTunes. What to do? Find some other method to transfer songs to it, of course. At first I tried Anapod Explorer, but it costs money and registers itself to a single iPod, which means your friend can't connect his iPod to your PC and use Anapod Explorer to transfer songs.  Floola works great.  Note: you can copy songs back to your PC (or any PC) from your iPod with either Floola or Anapod Explorer.

DeepBurner
If you don't currently have any CD/DVD burning software on your PC, you should give the free version of DeepBurner a try. It's not very pretty, but it gets the job done. If you're wanting to make an actual video DVD, you might want to get DVD Flick.

7-Zip
7-Zip reads not only the ZIP format, but also RARs, ISOs, and more. Before 7-Zip, if I needed more functionality than what was available with Windows' built-in Compressed Folders, I would use WinZip, and if I needed to extract a RAR file, I would use WinRAR. Those programs both cost money. 7-Zip does it all, and it's free.

Notepad++
This is a free Notepad replacement. There's just no reason for Notepad being so crappy.  Notepad++ has basic syntax highlighting, line numbers, can record macros, and do all sorts of other nifty things that Notepad can't do.

 

Natura Sound Therapy
This one is not free and the demo is time limited (which sucks), but I couldn't find a better program to offer up the kind of white noise I wanted to keep me from getting distracted at work, so I bought it.  $29.99.  Turn this up, and it blocks out everything.

 

UltraMon + Zune Desktop Theme
I have two monitors side-by-side at work, and this was my old setup: the start menu and taskbar were on the left monitor, two levels high, and auto-hiding.  Now that I use UltraMon, this is my new setup: the taskbar is spread across both monitors, one level high, and due to the Zune Desktop Theme's cool blackness not getting on my nerves, I don't bother auto-hiding anymore. UltraMon is only showing those items that are open on a particular monitor on that monitor's taskbar, so this setup works beautifully and provides easy access to all my open applications. Note: The Zune Desktop Theme looks slick whether you have dual monitors or not.