86 Words

Spooky-Cool Online Game with NO FLASH REQUIRED!!!

Built to show off the company’s GameMaker:HTML5 product capabilities, the game, called GraveMaker (cute, huh?) is a Plants vs Zombies style game (kindasorta).

You need friends, so you make undead ones.

This annoys the villagers who’s compatriots they happen to be, and the fight is on.

As you advance, you can grow better monsters, and face stronger villagers.

Good atmosphere, great sound, and interesting play!

Your monsters and the villagers are facing off. You now have to choose the order in which your monsters will fight (the villagers are lined up in their order).

Based on the number of unlocks, power-ups, secrets, etc in the game, it could take quite a while to complete it! Fortunately, the first time you play, you enter a user name and password and your game is saved under that (no other signup is necessary).

When the game starts, you have only the lowly, pathetic skeleton that you can grow, but that changes quickly enough! (well, you do get some plants & animals, but I cant figure out what they’re for).

- GraveMaker Game done w/ GameMaker:HTML5 -

Tags: Virtual, Just Cool, Weird, Scary, Reference, Net Life, Video Gaming, Geek Stuff, Software, HowTo, Gaming, General by Jai
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Shadow Era virtual CCG expanding into the physical world!

We’ve covered the computer CCG Shadow Era before - it’s my favorite computerized card game ever!

Wulven Game Studios, the publisher, is now printing real cards for non-computer play!

One cool side effect of this is that the game has been heavily played and they’ve already tweaked the cards for play, balance, etc, so it’ll release with the bugs already fixed!

The cards are shipping in March, so I have to go start practicing!

The cards are the same ones in the computer game, and the release will include all 10 factions.

There will be starter decks for all ten factions, as well as standard, 15-card boosters.

And of course I have to show a screen shot of the computer version! Note that it’s available to play in your browser, or on Mac, PC, or iOS (iPhone / iPod / iPad).

- Preorder Page with Release Details -
(Note that they aren’t accepting any more pre-orders, the page is now for-info only)

Tags: Virtual, Current Events, Collections, Reference, Net Life, Video Gaming, Geek Stuff, Software, Gaming, General by Jai
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A Major Win for FREEDOM IN THE U.S.!

Note: This article is being posted a day earlier than scheduled due to its importance. Also, the red text doesn’t count toward my 86 word limit!

"A federal appeals court has found a Florida man’s constitutional rights were violated when he was imprisoned for refusing to decrypt data on several devices.

This is the first time an appellate court has ruled the 5th Amendment protects against forced decryption – a major victory for constitutional rights in the digital age."

While I dislike the apparent intent of the accused, I don’t his actual intent.

That’s his business, and the point to the right to privacy.

A note to my (geek) readers: the feds were unable to crack the encryption used in TrueCrypt. It might be worth pondering (and I’ve been using it for years).

- Article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation -

Tags: Reference, Current Events, Geek Stuff, General by Jai
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Faster Than Light Neutrinos

In September, a huge physics discovery made headlines; scientists had timed neutrinos traveling faster than light speed.

They arrived at their destination only 60 nanoseconds early, but that doesn’t matter, it still means that a lot of our understanding of physics is outright wrong!

It was a startling discovery.

So startling, that I told several people about it, but I wasn’t ready to post it here without some collaboration.

Turns out it was bad cables.

Just jiggle that third one from the left - I think it’s mangling the timestamps…

- Original Article on Wired.com -

Tags: Humor, Reference, Weird, Current Events, Geek Stuff, Science, General by Jai
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Hubble helps discover a weird new planet type

The planet was discovered in 2009, but scientists have learned some interesting details.

It orbits its red-dwarf sun at 1.3 million miles and has seven times the weight of the earth but only 36% the density.

The world appears to be made of mostly water (far more than earth), and its atmospheric temperature is around 450 Fahrenheit.

These details are odd but lead to some even odder conclusions.

See the original article for more details.

There aren’t any pictures, of course (you know, cuz they don’t exist), but hey, this pretty artists rendering was attached to the article!.

- Original Article on DailyGalaxy -

Tags: Reference, Current Events, Science, Geek Stuff, General by Jai
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FANTASTIC Wallpaper Site (plus a few favorite wallpaper choices)!

This is kind of a double post.

I found a great wallpaper I wanted to share, but that didn’t seem like much of a post.

Then I decided to cover the site (Wallpaper Abyss) as well.

After that, I figured that I might as well add a few pointers to some of my favorite wallpapers (so far).

Feel free to let us know if you discover any great finds!

The Wallpaper Abyss is an INCREDIBLE resource for wallpaper images with a LOT of other uses!

They provide a TON of ways to search for images…

Even if you just use it as a free art site or an "inspiration" site, they have an incredible array of styles (and provide all images in whatever resolution you want, including custom-as-you-specify)!

This awesome wallpaper is my favorite so far, and is, in fact, the wallpaper I have set on my main Mac monitor.

It was a tough call for first place, but this one ended on my external monitor…

For this final one, I decided on this one from the ABSTRACT>PATTERNS category, though again, it was a tough call!

- Wallpaper Abyss -

Tags: Collections, Reference, Art / Visual, Links, Geek Stuff, Cool Sites, General by Jai
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Anybody need Ten Thousand Bucks?

Apple is about to give $10,000 to whoever downloads the 25 billionth app from the app store.

That’s about double the number of downloads in one year!

I did some rough calculations and it looks like the magic app download will occur on Wednesday, 29 Feb.

Realistically, I expect the day before because people will probably race for the final app.

You can check the countdown HERE.

Good Luck #25,000,000,000!

This is the countdown as of 3:00 today (Feb 18, 2012). Based on timing 100,000,000 downloads (which showed 689.65 apps/second), that puts us at completion of around 11:00 on Wed. the 29th, but I think the timing will accelerate as the magic number gets closer.

You can also enter HERE without a purchase (up to 25 times/day).

- Original Announcement (and Countdown) Here -

Tags: Net Life, Current Events, Reference, Video Gaming, Gaming, Geek Stuff, Software, Links, General by Jai
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How can something with a name like that, look like this?

Have you ever seen a wombat?

They’re adorable!

Now admittedly, the twins shown here are recently-discovered, rare, albinos, which certainly adds to the cuteness factor, but still, how can you call something that looks like a bunny-piglet hideous name like "wombat"?

Henceforth, "wombat" is a much cuter word in my mind.

Maybe I can find a way to use that as my rapper name…

See what I mean? Totally a piglet. This is straight-out-of-Charlotte’s-Web-level cuteness!
(and yes, cuteness overload to the contrary, I’m still a guy)

And here’s bunny-view mode…

Now, to be fair, this outtake from the same picture as "bunny-mode" above shows the sibling wombat looking like a meth-freaked capybara, but he was just having a bad hare (sic) and (sick) day.