Mass Effect (2 hrs) - Dan tells me that if I don’t go for the optional quests, I could be near the end.  After the next major story beat I’m probably going to write up my next Mass Effect blog post. I’m really enjoying the fiction.

Team Fortress 2 (60 hrs) - I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy playing this game.  I am not an FPS person.  But it recently went free to play so I figured “why not?”  I started playing the game and it’s every bit as fun and funny as the “Meet the X” videos.  It’s a lot of fun to formulate the strategies for the game.  I’m still learning a lot about that.  And just when you think you know what to do, there are the extra weapons you earn for getting certain achievements.  They don’t throw off the balance because they give with one hand and take with the other.  The Heavy’s gun Natasha, for example, has a higher chance of critical hits, but it takes longer to spin up.

A ride features in this Top 200 Photo

photo #72 is:

This is from the periphery of Coney Island. I’m not sure if this ride is still there after the restructuring of the area in an attempt to revitalize it. With the how crowded it gets on summer nights I’m not sure how much more revitalized it could afford to get. We’ve all been on rides like this at the fair. It’s a fairly basic ride. You spin around, usually backwards, and loud music blares. I used to always ride the one at the state fair. Like most of the rides at Coney Island, I’ve never been on this one.

Objection! This photo should be ranked higher in the Top 200 photos!

photo #73 is:

This is a cosplay from Phoenix Wright. It’s a video game where you play a defense attorney. You’d think that couldn’t possibly be fun, but it can actually be quite a bit of fun to play.

Computers are once again the focus in this Top 200 Photo

photo #74 is:

I love building computers. So, when my father-in-law needed a new computer, I jumped at the chance to build it. It was a small form factor computer about the size of a pizza box. (A little bit taller) This is the motherboard with the CPU already installed.

Back to that surreal October for this Top 200 Photo

photo #75 is:

This was tougher to do than you might expect. It’d be a piece of cake if someone else was at the shutter. In a rare move, I also uploaded a black and white version which might appear later on this list. Usually I pick one interpretation or the other. But in this case I did both. And I tend to actually like the black and white version better.

small mistake - I missed this one before 76…whoops!

More splashing for today’s Top 200 Photo!

photo #77 is:

Here I’ve captured two drops that didn’t fall in the same place. You can see that where they meet the amplitude of the wave is higher.

Start here before FF Fantastic Four By Jonathan Hickman # 1 - Volume 1 I’ve always been a Fantastic Four fan, but it’d been a long time since I last read F4 when I picked up FF. Being as this was a #1 of a new title, I was very confused about what in the world was going on with the Future Foundation. I knew what’d happened to ellicit the name change, but that’s about it. Well, if you read this book, it will all make sense. Right from the beginning you meet one of the future members of the FF. And later on you meet almost all of the rest of them. This TP also introduces the Reed Council which is the whole reason for the the first FF story arc. Hickman is like Marvel’s Grant Morrison. If you really want to understand FF, you are really going to need to AT LEAST read his run on F4. By the end of this TP, almost EVERYTHING from FF had been setup. I’d say, about 15-20% has yet to occur.

Not Feelin’ It Astonishing X-Men # 36 - Monstrous, Part 1 The only story arc in Astonishing I haven’t read yet is Exogenic. I am really not liking this one. I know this is the first issue, but I’ve also read the third one due to when I got into Astonishing. I really, really hate this art style. It just looks weird and almost like a super deformed (in the manga sense) version of the X-Men and I don’t think it fits with the previous art style or tone of the book.

It was OK Uncanny X-Men # 539 - Losing Hope I was hoping this was linked to what happened in Generation Hope #8, but sadly it does not appear to be. We do get to see how M-Day has affected some former mutants, and that’s neat. We also get to see why Wolverine acts so strange around her. (Although an astute reader probably already guessed why) This issue felt like a very fast read and I wasn’t left as satisfied as I’ve been with recent Gillen works. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Injecting some fresh blood into the X-Men Generation Hope: The Future is a Four-Letter Word # 1 - TPB We live in a world where the big comic companies are in financial trouble. We’ve got so many things to occupy our attention and many of them are free. So we’re drowning in reboots and revamps and retellings. Ghost Rider is a woman now. Captain America is back for the umpteenth time. So it’s quite refreshing to see Marvel going in a different direction with the X-Men. Rather than doing a reboot so we can see the X-Men when they first became X-Men, they are introducing new, young mutants.