ACL Festival video + Shia Arrested, Of Course

If you missed the Austin City Limits Music Festival (like I did) or are just looking to relive some of the moments in video, check out the Red Bull TV video highlights. It’s not the most generous assortment of headliners, but you can find songs from Gary Clark Jr., Nate Ruess (of Fun), San Fermin, […]

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WTF, WWF?

Zynga’s Words With Friends. I’m a word guy, obviously, and I can’t help playing this game against friends and strangers. It’s crowdsourced word puzzles, really. But why, Zynga? Why does your QC have to be so utterly lousy? Why are you so hellbent on proving you couldn’t care less about this marquee property? Here’s example […]

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Chrome Doesn’t Trust Google

A few days ago I tried an innocent Google search in Chrome — “master lock 141q” — and Chrome told me that www.google.com presented a certificate issued by an mysterious entity (the Elder Gods, I assume) that is not trusted by my operating system, aka Android. Essentially, Chrome doesn’t trust Google.com. Chrome, please help me […]

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Hilton Hhonors Royally Botches Password Security

How Not to Handle Password Security Recently Hilton’s Hhonors loyalty program asked me to reset my password in their attempt to increase security. Makes sense, after high-profile security breaches at several online websites like Target.com. They dangled a 1000-point reward for early action so of course I hopped over and reset my password. Today I […]

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Videogame Writers Are Important #4

Far Cry 4: Egg on Face You know, videogame writers aren’t perfect. We make mistakes and typos, and sometimes our producers and teammates create mistakes and typos in their well-intentioned efforts to fix mistakes and typos. Such is life. However, sometimes a videogame writer gaffe is just so glaring and ill-placed that it has to […]

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Food for Thought: We Make More with Less

Thought I’d share this interesting macroeconomic article today. The summary, sans cool graphics, is: Since the turn of the century, we mine and drain a lot less resources per dollar of GDP. We spend a lot less of our total energy to make manufacturing basics like steel (the percentage has dropped, but we actually spent […]

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Videogame Field of View

I came across an interesting inquiry on Quora recently, and thought I’d share it with you folks. The question: “In 1st person video games, why don’t they introduce peripheral vision? The angle of sight seems to be a lot less than our own angle of vision.” I’ve had this complaint as well, in both first-person […]

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Kickstarter Drama: Why Are the Fans Paying for It?

Kickstarter Campaigns for Veronica Mars and Richard Garriott? So yeah, as you’ve surely heard, Kickstarter and other social fundraising vehicles are now part of the movie- and videogame-making landscape. How about a little review of where two of those big-name campaigns are now? I’m talking about the Veronica Mars movie and Richard Garriott’s Shroud of […]

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Are You Allergic to BBQ? And Google’s Spoofable Emails

Yes, Virginia, There Is a BBQ Allergy Allergic to meat and barbeque? I would’ve thought it impossible, but recently the intertubes and the power of science have proved me wrong. According to CBS News, increasing numbers of people are afflicted with an allergy to red meat, ironically caused by the bite of the Lone Star […]

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Gauntlet Revived: Reworking a Classic

Just saw this trailer for the reboot of the arcade original, and it’s well done. It shows how the gameplay echoes the original, and even more importantly, it’s humorous. I like how the arrowshot at the beginning draws you through the story it’s telling. The new game can be found on Steam.

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