Cleverbot FTW: Miley Cyrus edition

Theme adjustment

The theme of the blog has been adjusted to reflect the attitude conveyed by our endless ramblings about “The War”, such nonsense as psycholinguistics and the general feeling of mild snobbery. I suggest readying an early session of tea and crumpets and listening to this whilst viewing the site from now on:

I am not sure how long this theme will last so all of you that accidentally ended up here looking for real Spore news enjoy it while you can.

Empire: Total War Campaign Multiplayer… please?

Remember when people finished games before releasing them? Games had their share of bugs to be sure, but for the most part the lack of any way to alter the shipped product post release meant that developers had to work long and hard to ensure that as many bugs as possible were squashed pre-release. This is not the case in this day and age, because while downloadable content allows for wonderful new experiences, it also allows developers to release unfinished products and expect player’s money and faith.

Violins FTW: Dmitri Shostakovich

I recently purchased via Amazon a recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphonies 8 and 9 performed by the Aviv String Quartet. While the technical quality of the recordings leaves much to be desired the music being conveyed is nothing short of incredible.

Noam Chomsky and Psycholinguistics: A Newcomer’s Rebuttal

Descartes’ meditations are a wonderful introspective look at the human condition and what it means to be a thinking entity. Whether or not Descartes’ work is truly wonderful has been a manner of contention, and slightly unnoticed has gone the debate over whether or not his works were written by a machine. One may be surprised to hear that it is actually commonplace to believe that his works, and all other literary endeavors are actually the byproduct of a biolinguistic machine that resides within each and every human.

Mirror’s Edge PC demo: come on DICE

Dice, a company that is most renowned for its work on the Battlefield series, has neglected to release a demo for its recently-released PC title Mirror’s Edge. Most often, the PC version of a demo is the most valuable, many people will use it as a canary would be used in a mine shaft. If the demo runs great and controls well, I will most definitely go buy the game. But until then I suppose one can only hope that DICE, who reached fame on the PC, will stoop to support its bastardized child of a platform with a Mirror’s Edge demo. Thanks DICE.

Speechless before this incredible Littlebig Planet Creation (they have made a calculator)

This is so incredible, it looks simple until a little ways in where you see how they got this to work.

Team Fortress 2: too late to jump in?

Team Fortress 2, a game that retails for 19.99 and one that I have finally purchased after a year of not having a pc to play it on. Of course, I was a bit nervous entering an online fps this late in the game. Yet I found TF2 and its community to be decidedly welcoming and easy to assimilate into. I had high hopes for TF2 as a game, and it has done nothing but exceed everything I had previously conceived about it. If you were hoping I was going to have plenty of negative things to say, stop reading. If you are late to this party just as I was, come on in, theres still room in the server.

Gaming and Stress

Playing games can be a wonderful stress reliever for me, sitting down to spend some time with Mario Galaxy wipes away the woes of the day. Yet games giveth and most certainly taketh away. Note the use of the picture of Geometry Wars 2. This was no mistake, some games can be the exact opposite of a stress reliever.

Chocolate Rain!

This is so ridiculous, this person is serious. Here is his website, again, he is serious. [update] If you ignore the video the song is not all that bad, not for those angered by repetition though. [update] nevermind