Penny Arcade Expo

Oh man did I just have a nerdy weekend.

I went to the Penny Arcade Expo, otherwise known as PAX, and gamed for about three days straight.

There were console games, handheld games, tabletop and Magic-style card games, PC games, you name it. I even competed in the Tetris DS competition, and survived the first round only to get wiped out in the second.

We got to go to a panel where they drew a Penny Arcade comic live in front of us, which was hilarious, because he added audience requests, like a still-beating heart. That will confuse the readership tomorrow when it publishes.

I also got to check out a shitload of not-yet-released games like Pirates of the Burning Sea, the new Lord of the Rings MMO, Guitar Hero II, Castle Crashers for XBLA, Elite Beat Agents on the DS, and much more. I can't freakin wait for them to come out. There were also shitty things like Fury, a MMO that combines World of Warcraft and Unreal Tournament in a horribly unplayable way.

Anyway, I got some good pics, and Yuzo and I recorded two NooBTooB podcasts from the Expo, which are here(day 1) and here(day 2). Check them out if you're interested, we invented a new drink called Taynt to compete with the energy drink Bawls, which was a PAX sponsor. Heh.

Now for the pics!

the bias of science

Every time I read frantic behavioral science studies in the newspaper, I cringe.

I just finished reading an overview of a new study in the Week, where they talked about a study by the Rand Corporation of the effects of sexual music on teenagers.

"51 percent of those who listened to sexually provocative music started having sex within two years, versus 29% of those who listened to less provocative music".

This is supposed to prove that sexy music makes kids want to have sex, right?

Wrong.

Say that you're an avid subscriber to Guns and Ammo magazine. Did that magazine cause your interest in Guns and Ammo? Or did you purchase it because you already had an interest? Isn't it possible that people would listen to more sexually provocative music if they're already interested in sex, or more sexually active themselves?

That's like saying that people who buy condoms are more likely to have sex than those who buy laxatives. OH NO! CONDOMS MAKE PEOPLE HAVE SEX!

"Studies" like this make me so angry. This is useless pseudoscience at its worst. Pointing out coincidences isn't science. Nor is getting cause and effect backwards.

SoaP pix

Here's some pictures from SoaP tonight, it was a freaking blast.










And of course the crazy fans. These guys were awesome:

Snakes on a Plane!

Anyone in the Bay Area looking for a good crowd to see Snakes on a Plane (and by good I mean loud drunken asshats), feel free to swing by and join my group tomorrow.

About 15 of us are going to The Sports Page at 5:30pm, which is the closest bar to the movie theater in Mountain View, having some dinner and drinks, and then walking to the Shoreline theater in Mountain View at 7pm (for the 8pm show).

It's Shoreline, so there's gonna be nerds dressed up, and probably light sabers for no good reason. There will be flasks, too. And Snakes. On a Plane. All are welcome to join us.

nerdorama

Is anyone that reads my blog nerdy enough to actually be going to the Penny Arcade Expo next weekend?

19,000 dorks, a billion games, tabletop and handheld and LAN and console, plus lectures and workgroups, plus lots of game developers.... it's going to be heaven. Anyway, if you're going, let me know so we can meet up while I'm up in Seattle.

Now that E3 is cancelled, PAX is going to be insane. They're expecting 40-50k next year. So this is the year to see it while it's manageable.

Forget SoaP- Zombies in a Mall!

There's another episode of NooBTooB up and ready for your listening pleasure on noobtoob.com.

This week Yuzo and I rant and rave about Dead Rising, a zombie game for the 360, we cry and hold each other gently at the lack of good arcades here in the US, and how much cooler arcades are in Japan, and we talk about a few other games we've been playing this week. Listen if you're interested.

And as usual, you'd be my best friend if you went to dig and dugg our story. :)

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Forget_SoaP_Zombies_in_a_Mall_Audio_review_of_Dead_Rising_for_the_Xbox360

Also, if you really enjoy it, go to itunes's podcast area and review us. That'd be sweet.

linux flavors, and ubuntu sucks

For the first time since college, I decided I wanted to get back into linux and see how it's improved since 1998. I really didn't enjoy it much back then, and I've been working a lot with Solaris ever since. Anyway, I looked around a bit, and I'd been hearing a whole bunch of buzz about the Ubuntu distro, so I tried it first.

My god does Ubuntu suck my ass.

I tried it on THREE of my home machines. Success rate? 0. It would go into display modes that were unsupported by my monitors. It would freeze up when the windowing system booted. It would go to black screen. It wasted hours of my evening. It was like 1998.

At Range's urging, I grabbed a copy of the Fedora distro, burned the DVD and popped it in. The machine booted great, the install was flawless, the options were many and easy, and for the first time, I can say that Linux was just as easy as Windows to install. Not only that but it's got an auto-updater called yum that's updating all my packages now. That was my big second complaint about Linux, I'm a firm believer in software updating itself, or at least making it easy.

Anyway, I guess my point here is that Ubuntu sucks. Don't believe the hype. Fedora is a fantastic experience so far. I'm gonna spend the next few hours poking around the guts of this bad boy.

NooBTooB has launched

A buddy of mine and I have launched a weekly podcast about gaming and gaming culture, called NooBTooB.

We both love listening to podcasts in the car, or whenever we've got some free time, but we noticed that all the podcasts that cover gaming mostly work in the news-style, which is to read off news items of the week and talk about them.

What we wanted was a podcast where real gamers talk about new games that are coming out, play them, and tell us what they though. What's it similiar to, is it worth spending cash on, is it fun? And bonus points if it's enjoyable to listen to.

Well, there's really not much out there like that. So we started our own. We've got four episodes under our belt so far, and I think each one sounds better than the last. If you're interested in video games, or just enjoy two guys ragging on each other about getting destroyed on the new Street Fighter release for Xbox, come check us out.

http://www.noobtoob.com

If you're a digg.com subscriber and you wanted to digg us, you'd be on our best friends list, too.

So give us a listen. If you like us, subscribe to the podcast through itunes, we've got a link on the site. If there's anything you think could be improved about the podcast, or if you have comments on what we said, or you just want to tell us that we have damn sexy radio voices, send us email at feedback@noobtoob.com.

darth jackass

This is a really funny, well edited clip of Darth Vader being a total dick.

Keep in mind that this is actually funny, unlike that Chad Vader garbage everyone has been sending me, which isn't.



Ah, Star Wars. I think people will be doing jokes with you 30 years from now, and they'll be just as funny.

the wine of the future

A coworker of mine told me about this place up in the city called VinoVenue that sounded pretty neat, it's a wine bar in the city, and I've been drinking more wine lately, so I'd like to find a place where I can sample some.

Then I start looking through the site description, and I see the greatest thing ever:

"For the first time, guests can serve themselves by purchasing a VinoVenue tasting card (like a debit card), inserting it into the automated wine tasting stations, selecting a wine and receiving a 1 oz. pour. "

Holy crap, it's a cyber-tasting!

Adrienne saw it and immediately said "That's right up your alley", since I'm infamous for hating other human beings and wanting to remove them from the loop in anything I need to get done. People always get in the way, slow things down, or fuck them up. I am the world's largest fan of self-checkout, self-checkin, etc. This just looks perfect, slide a card, get booze.

I'll have to go check this place out this weekend. I'll take lots of pics of me getting made saucy by robots.

google maps feature changes

Did anyone notice that Google maps had a new feature for about a week?

For a while, if you clicked to zoom in or out on a map, it would actually do a little "zoom", where it took the current map and either blew it up or shrunk it, so you'd be able to see the zooming effect.

Now it's back to the "pop" method, where it just loads the new map, with no transition.

I actually liked the new zoom, but it was there for about a week, and now it's gone. I wonder why, that was pretty cool. I can't imagine people complaining.

I also dig the new tabby feature they have so that Google local isn't a different site, it's just a tab on google maps. That makes it easier to find a starting location and then search for businesses near it. Cool.