"Excuse Me"

Lately we've been trying to teach our three-year-old to say "excuse me".

It occurs to me that we use this phrase both when greeting someone who is somehow occupied, and when we fart.

Kind of makes me want to fart loudly just before entering a conversation, just to make economical use of speech.

Geeky News And Rumors!

Some cool and interesting news of interest to geeks that I came across this week. Here's the quick rundown, but you can get more details on this weekend's episode of my podcast.


Anthony Hopkins talks about his personal beliefs in connection to his new movie "The Rite".
http://www.christiancinema.com/catalog/newsdesk_info.php?newsdesk_id=1592

DC Comics is committing to have all of their main titles stay at $2.99 and not a penny more!

McG will direct the Pilot for the Wonder Woman TV series due for release this coming fall on NBC!

The rumors of a Matrix 4 and 5? Completely bogus. :-(

Possibly due to friction between Guillermo Del Toro and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, a movie about the BRPD is more likely to come before a Hellboy 3.

Wizard Magazine is no more!!

Anne Hathaway will be Catwoman and Tom Hardy will play Bane in the next Batman movie!

Ridley Scott is working on a movie that was originally going to be a prequel to "Alien", but now may be a totally original concept.

"Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome" has started casting!

A new Thundercats cartoon is coming this year to Cartoon Network!

For more details and my opinions about all these developments, don't miss this weekend's episode of The Spirit Blade Underground Podcast!

Fallout 3 For A Lousy FPS player

I've been giving Fallout 3 another shot this week, and so far it's going pretty good!

The first time I exchanged gunfire I got toasted pretty quick. In fact, it happened so fast that I almost quit right then and there. But after taking a few deep breaths, I came back to the same fight again and used VATS a little more often. APs recharge more quickly than I remember from the last time I tried this game.

So far, some key elements of my strategy that have helped to offset my insanely terrible FPS skills include:

1. Being a pack rat and picking up everything worth at least twice its own weight. Then fast traveling to Megaton to sell as much as I can. I make multiple trips just for this if I have to. Finances are a major part of my survival, because they directly impact my ability to enact two other parts of my strategy.

2. Buy as many stimpacks and AP recharging aids as I can. Then hot-keying stimpacks for use in battle.

3. Buying the best armor and plenty of ammo(I'm a lousy shot, so I use a lot), as well as keeping my equipment in the best repair possible.

4. Charging enemies that are firing at me and standing or walking backward for melee enemies charging me. With stimpacks stabbing away, I find it much easier to take down the baddies when they cover more space on the screen.

5. Save, save save! Save after every fight. Save after just walking for a bit. They design saving to be quick and possible at almost any time. And though I've only died once so far, it's a safety net that makes the rest of my experience much less stressful.


Unless I come upon some major frustration in the next few nights, I plan on keeping the game this time. With a little adjustment to my expectations, I think this is an action RPG that even a lousy FPS player like me can really enjoy.

Giving "Fallout 3" another chance

After a couple of years, I've decided to give "Fallout 3" another shot. The last time I tried it, I gave up because it felt too much like a first person shooter and I got frustrated when I was wiped out in a gun fight.

I suck at shooters, especially in the first person. I don't know how people successfully line up their cross hairs on moving targets and shoot while also moving to avoid enemy fire. I just don't have the thumbs for it. (And my computer can't run the PC version, which I think would handle easier in the FPS parts using a mouse.)

But in the last couple of years I've been stretched a bit as a gamer. Neverwinter Nights prepared me for the pause-able yet real-time combat I would play in Dragon Age: Origins. Dragon Age: Origins prepared me for the open ended, non-linear RPG experience I would need to be ready for in Oblivion. And I'm hoping that Oblivion has prepared me better now for the first person combat of Fallout 3. Each game in this progression has stretched me a bit, and I know that I'm missing some fantastic gaming in Fallout 3.

My hope is that I'll be able to hotkey a ton of stimpacks (health potions) to use in combat to help compensate for my lousy skills. I'm also going to go in with an expectation of dying more often than I usually do in RPGs, saving a lot along the way. With luck, my adjusted expectations and other compensations will result in adding a great new game to my library.

If not, oh well. I've got more "Oblivion" to explore, and I've already pre-ordered my copy of Dragon Age 2, coming out in early March!

Need Some New Fantasy

Crap. I thought I'd found one. I thought I'd found a new author whose books I could throw myself into and enjoy for their fast pacing and focus on character. David B. Coe did a great job on his first trilogy, the "Lon Tobyn Chronicles". Won an award for it too, which is no shocker.

Too bad his follow up series, in a different world and running twice as long, feels completely different.

It's all cultural/court politics and intrigue. Yuck.

I wish so much there was a fancy device I could plug my favorite authors' names into that would then spit out an author recommendation for me. And I mean one that actually works. For some reason, Amazon.com thinks that because I like Brent Weeks or Terry Goodkind, I'll also like Robert Jordan. (What the crap?? Jordan writes three paragraphs for every strand of lace on a woman's dress! When is something going to HAPPEN already?!)

So here I am, stuck again with nothing to read that suits my tastes. Ugh... The hunt begins anew. yay.

Obliterating Oblivion

I've finally "finished" Elder Scrolls: Oblivion on the 360, including the two expansions available for it. But with only about 100 hours logged, I know I've only played through about half of what the game has to offer on a single, exhaustive run through everything.

Oblivion gates are no longer available to me, since I beat the main game long ago before doing the expansion material. But honestly, I don't really miss them. Despite how cool they looked, the experience of exploring and shutting down gates became repetitive. I WILL miss the cool sigils I earned from those missions, though. You can use them to power up weapons. Looks like I've got the best I'm going to get in that department.

So what now? I've saved the world and everyone loves me. Yet there are a number of paths I haven't gone down because they involved criminal behavior I didn't want to stain my record with. But now that I've done all I can as the savior of this world, I think I'll see what fun I can have destroying it. All those off-limits items lying around are going in my sack! I'm coming for your household trinkets, Tamriel! I'll take down an army of city guards and my name will spread in infamy across the land! Bwahahahahaaaa!

Super Why: Destroyer Of Worlds!!

Our oldest son, now three, has recently become a big fan of the PBS reading cartoon, "Super Why". To the point where much of his play time has been spent taking his stuffed animals and flying them around the room shouting things like, "the power to read!" and "Super Why to the rescue!"

There are two things, aside from Truth, that I'd be thrilled if my boys grew up loving: Reading, and Superheroes. So I wasn't about to miss the chance to get our boy his very first "action figures". Sure, the ones we found were small plush toys on clearance, so collectors wouldn't call them "action figures". But given that he still likes to handle them pretty rough while playing, I consider them "age appropriate action figures".

And lest you think that "The Super Readers" don't count as superheroes, consider this: This is a team of four people who can change reality itself... just by spelling stuff!

Darkseid? The Anti-Monitor? One solution for "Super Why". Spelled D-E-A-D! Fight's over!