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Free Windows VMs!
For once I found a way to run Windows for free that wasn’t a scam! Turns out the Microsoft makes VMs of Windows XP through Windows 8 available for free. The point is for you to be able to test how your websites will look in different versions of IE and different versions of Windows.…
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Voice Acting on Children’s toys
When I really got into animation a few years ago, I started appreciating a lot of the aspects of animation that people don’t even realize took work. For example, in a live action movie the set designers can go buy chairs and lamps and lights. Everything in an animated work has to be created from…
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Microsoft and Sour Grapes with XBONE DRM
In a lot of ways I really don’t care what happens in the video game console world. In the last 2-3 years I have rediscovered computer gaming. Actually, to be more accurate, game publishers have rediscovered computer gaming. I remember in my youth when the best of the best games came out for computers and…
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Zach Braff’s Kickstarter
A little over a month ago I came across an article on Boing Boing about the movie Zach Braff was trying to get funded via Kickstarter. It was interesting time as I had just contributed to two Kickstarter projects for the first time – I Fight Dragons’ Project Atma and the Code Monkey comic by…
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Spending Time as a Female in a Physics Puzzle Game
Gender is a pretty interesting concept when it comes to video games. Putting aside “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, video games are unique in that the players are active in constructing the narrative. Some games, like puzzle games don’t REALLY have a narrative (but that doesn’t mean my brothers and I didn’t come up with…
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Disney Princess Culture Part 1
I titled this Part 1 because I am sure I’ll have to revisit this topic in the future. Scarlett is only 1 and she barely cares for television, much less Disney animated films. However, if you don’t think about the future, it has a way of surprising you and finding you unprepared. Of course,…
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Websites and Lost Culture
I had something of an obsession with preserving history. It’s why I am constantly using photography to document my life. (And was doing so back when we had to use expensive film) A few months ago I wrote about how emulation can help us preserve our culture when it comes to video games. We’re in…
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Podcasts I’m Listening to 2013
I’ve cut back a lot because I have less time to listen to podcasts. Here are the ones I have now: Video Games Giant Bombcast – This is a HILARIOUS podcast that is mostly about video games. I say it’s mostly about video games because these guys often will go off on random tangents…
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last.fm listening habits Q4 2012
Throughout the month of October I alternated between listening to newly acquired music (of which I had quite a bit) and a dynamic playlist that was weighted so that most of the music had auto-ratings above 90, less music above 75, and even less above 50. Any song that I listened to only once would…
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New Feature Over on Dan’s Blog
I started a new feature over on Dan’s blog since his blog is so focused on video games. It’s called You Never Forget Your First Time and it’s about reliving the first moments with a game. The first entry is here.
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Last.fm Listening Habits 2012 Q3
For the first time since I started keeping track The Beatles did NOT make the list! That’s mostly because I have been acquiring TONS of new music (over one thousand tracks) in this quarter and haven’t really been listening on random as much. Although my #1 artist doesn’t have as many listens as some other…
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Using Digikam from the Point of View of Lightroom User
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’ve been into photography since I was five years old. That’s when I got my first Kodak Instamatic camera and started shooting photos and creating photo albums. I have about ten photo albums, with most of them coming from when I got to high school and could really…
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Review: Bastion
While I’m not some video game hipster that doesn’t enjoy the Triple-A games, I have found myself increasingly having my most compelling game experiences on games created by indie or small studios. I think this is because indie studios are no different from starups, indie bands, and indie film makers in their willingness and ability…
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Looking Back at Comic Books
Recently I was thinking about cataloguing my comic books. Recent family events convinced me to get on with it and so I spent all weekend putting the information into the KDE collection database Tellico. It had lots of useful fields to fill out, so I figured I was probably only going to do this once…
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Thoughts on Final Fantasy X
note: this game came out ten years ago, so I’m going to speak about spoilers freely I finished Final Fantasy X a few weeks ago. I’d started playing it a long time ago, but the horrible voice acting grated on my nerves and I stopped playing. But, as I was making a list of games…