OK, the trailer has me completely pumped.  As I say with SharePoint – I’ve followed Fallout since before it was Fallout – I still have the Wasteland book/copy protect up in the attic somewhere.  The combination of tongue in cheek humor and E.E. “Doc” Smith sense of Epic (you can hear the capital “E”) storytelling makes an unbeatable combination. And from the trailer – it looks like the “bloody mess” attribute is still there.

Fallout 3 should end up having a run for the money for being “Game of the Year” for 2008.”  I’d put it as a sure thing (no slam to Mr. Cusack) but Spore is also coming out this year, so competition is VERY tight for this year.  Oh, and that Metal Gear game had another release this year – I need to see about playing that one day.  Once they release it on the 360 platform of course.

Tags: Life in General

If you’re old like me and remember Memeograph machines, this should be something interesting.  And if you’re a spring chicken and don’t – look at what your elders had to put up with in school (at least on a smaller scale.)

http://cephaloprint.olympe-network.com/index.php?/steamroller/

Tags: Life in General

When I was back in undegrad in Aeronautical Engineering, one of the professors at my campus had a great little car.  I finally found it (I think) at the Tiny-Cars post on haha.nu!

This was the coolest thing ever, as it was as long as a regular car was wide, so parking was super easy – parallel parking was non-existant.  You just drove it up to the curb.  It was protected from the elements, and you had a nice, easy entry and exit.  For today’s green tech push – why not release an update version of this?

Tags: Life in General

Looks like “Left 4 Dead” now has a release date.  I think I’m going to have a busy fall.  With Spore coming in during September, and a number of other games finally releasing in the fall, I’m going to have to be pretty aggressive in my time management.

Tags: Life in General

This may be your washbasin.  One of the reasons I’m into TechShop is that I would be able to make stuff like this for my wife without paying the huge “cool” premium that these guys tend to command!

Tags: Life in General

I also found the TED talks I keep hearing about.  I have a bit of a mixed opinion on them – about half are great, and half are… well not what I’d expect.  I love the guys talking about changing the word, but not so interested in the guys juggling as a new artform.

http://www.ted.com/talks/browse

Tags: Life in General

One of the mediacasts that’s making me try to work in WorldCon in Denver again (Can I do 3 whole months on the road?  But it would be interesting to be in Denver NOT for a contract) is Escape Pod. 

Escape Pod is audio editions of various short Science Fiction stories – I ALWAYS have several episodes on the Zune when I’m on the road – it’s nice to have something that’s not cramming details into my skull while I’m driving, but it still keeps me thinking.  If you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend it – it reminds me of the early ‘Zine days but with microphones rather than memograph machines.  (Those of you that don’t know what that is, think a copier that didn’t need to plug in, and smelled bad.)

You can find it at  – http://escapepod.org/, as with much of Science Fiction, please note that it’s not always conservative work safe, but there is a warning whenever the story moves into less standard territories.  If you want a nice, date movie type of introduction to the kinds of stories that are done on Escape pod, try Permanent Link- EP105- Impossible Dreams.

Tags: Life in General

I still have to wait until Wednesday but, the SporePedia is now up.  Just seeing the different creatures is enough to get my attention, but I found a nice tip on the side -

“How do you see one of these Creatures in your Spore Creature Creator? Right Click on the thumbnail image of the creature. Save the image to your desktop. Drag the saved image from your desktop into the Spore Creature Creator. Voila! The Creature is in your game.”

What’s that?  Evidently (after digging a bit) the image itself stores the entire creature.  So your creature you create, with texture, shape, behavior, and everything is stored there.  I checked one of the images and it came out to be 28,123 bytes that renders to a 128×128 picture.  So thumbnail, config, behavior, textures, skins, everything comes to you in a package you already know how to deal with.  Now THAT’s an incredible feat of functionality that procedural generated content has allowed.  Leave it to Will Wright to bring a fascination with mathematical functions back (after a generation of Mandlebrot sets) with Spore providing a visualization tool for this particular solution set.

Oh, and did I mention there are already more than 13,000 creatures for you to meet in Spore already – before the creature creator even gets into the hands of the public.  I really need to figure out what’s going on around Sept 7th – the day after San Antonio Barcamp of all days.  That means I’ve got to really get some sleep before that – I’m going to be camped out for whoever does midnight launch, and then play for the next straight week or so.

Tags: Life in General

Just a quick check – leave me a comment or send email through the contacts information on the blog.  I’d love to hear information about how the Austin TechShop is going – especially before the Maker Faire Auditions happen!

Tags: Life in General

www.spore.com shows the option to buy or download the free preview of the Creature Designer, but it’s still not coming out until next week!  Why do you continue to torture me?  Isn’t it enough that you’ve held my (pre-purchased) copy all this time????

Tags: Life in General