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Summer Shredfest
Posted July 17, 2011




It's the peak of summer and to celebrate the awesome weather here, here's my personal playlist of soaring, wailing shred-happy guitar-work that is fantastic to listen to on a bright sunny day. All these guitarists deserve mention : Vinnie Moore, Andy Timmons, Tony Macalpine, Reb Beach, Joe Satriani, Edu Ardanuy. All world-class shredders. Mostly unknown except by guitar nerds. Get yourself a Corona with a lime, a pair of sunglasses, and crank this stuff up!


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Ninja Please!
Posted July 17, 2011




Now that hell's frozen over officially and Duke Nukem Forever has come out, it's not difficult to see where Duke draws his influence from. That being previous 3D Realms games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Redneck Rampage, and Shadow Warrior.

Duke had his fair share of interactivity, but Shadow Warrior ninja-kicked this up a notch and threw a few shurikans into to to nail it to the wall. Cool challenging puzzles that DNF borrowed directly like a closed-off room where you can use a remote-control car to bring the key to one small opening just to name one specific example. The list goes on and on... These games are all about these little experiences they give to you, not about "beating the boss and saving the day" like the typical borderline-gay one-dimensional emo superhero.

Also, Shadow Warrior, like Duke and Redneck Rampage, has another quality that's sorely lacking in most modern FPS's; That being a sense of humor. Like DNF and Duke Nukem 3D that came before it, Shadow Warrior doesn't even attempt to take itself seriously. Unlike most modern shooters where you've been tasked to "save the world" and it all rests squarely on your shoulders, these Build Engine games turn that on it's ear and proceed to unload a can of whipped cream in it, then laugh mockingly and run away. If you're saving anything, you're either doing it for selfish reasons, like Duke's car getting shot up, or in this case, an 80's movie plot with an ex-bodyguard going after his previous corrupt boss. Standard fare, not-so-standard-fare fun.

As if this extremely polished FPS wouldn't be good in it's own right, the whimsical little jokes and references just add to the fun factor. Something that can't be said of ultra-serious, ultra-expensive, ultra-graphically-intensive, and ultimately ultra-boring games like Cysis. Throwing 50 spoilers, body-kits, and custom whistling exhaust on a Lamborghini does not make it more fun to drive. All the physics in the world can't make up for infusing a game with some good ol'-fashioned fun. Which is the point of games, isn't it?

Downloads :
Shadow Warrior High-Res (3.4 Master-Faster)
Shadow Warrior (Original)

Glorious Links o' Wonder :
Official Site.
Shadow Warrior Central. (Portal with Tons of User-Created Levels)
Walkthrough / Secrets
Shadow Warrior High-Res Patch.
Retexturing Project.
Addon Levels.
Ultimate Level and File Portal.
More Addon Levels. (Official)
JonoF's Shadow Warrior Port.




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The Darkest of Angels
Posted June 11, 2011




In the heyday of thrash there were the obvious choices of the time : Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Overkill, Exodus, Death Angel, Testament, Sepultura, etc. But, of course, there were some acts that really never got the recognition they deserved. A notable one of the unsung hero category is Dark Angel. Described as the "LA Caffeine Machine" or a more aggressive version of Slayer, these guys brought it in a way that's hard to match the intensity of. Before Gene Hoglan was raking in the dough by playing for Metalocaplyse and doing drum clinics, he got his start here with some absolutely wicked drumming. The rest of the members were no slouches either, with relentless savage riffs (246 on one album alone) and some great tenor singing-style. Their career was short-lived, but the albums they did put out are Thrash Metal gold. Listen for yourself and you'll hear. Mosh!


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I Checkmate Your King... Biotch!
Posted June 11, 2011




Chess. The intellectual's strategy game of choice. Older than dirt and still thriving. And there's good reason for that. Plainly it's a deep game. Tactics and strategy at their most pure. Sure, there's tons of good strategy games that are basically Chess on steroids like Advance Wars, Nectaris (aka Military Maddness), and Daisenraku VII which is like Advance Wars on steroids, but they all originally cribbed off of Chess. Of course, there's also the fantastic Japanese game Go which has too many possible moves for computers to mimic effectively. But this is absolutely not a problem with Chess. In fact, the programming of various engines has become so advanced that the engines now regularly exceed the average ELO rating of Grandmasters.

Now, most people think computer chess and their ass arriving on a silver platter for dinner comes to mind. And that's just Joe-Average Chess Engines. But, these chess engines are so badass that they make Gary Kasperov cry and then kick his puppy to drive it home! I will tell you this though. play against these, and every other Chess game will seem like a frolicking hopskotch through a field of daisies on a bright summer day. The upside of this is that playing these will make your Chess game go up in a hurry. And, while it's fun to kick your friend's and family's collective butts in Chess, you'll be challenged to find a more skilled opponent to push your brain against. To that end, there's these free interfaces which use these Hal-9000 engines; Notably WinBoard and Arena. Arena is far easier to set up but has slightly less overall control. Winboard gives you totalitarian control, but at the expense of complexity.

To help you out a bit, I've already spent a few weeks getting all these things packaged up nicely for you, so, for the most-part, you can just download them and have happy good times getting run over by these ridiculously high-powered engines like a M1 Abrams Tank going over a worm. That said, let me make a few notes so you don't get too stuck :

- These engines work off of what are called Chess Fonts. Basically they're standard True-Type fonts that Windows uses but, in this case, the GUI interfaces for the chess engines use them to display all the pieces. To install these Fonts, you just unzip the .TTF file and copy them into the Windows\Fonts directory. Windows will say "Installing Font" for all of 2 seconds and it'll be done. Yeah, it's really that easy.

- WinBoard has a weird way of dealing with multiple user accounts on Windows and it basically forces you to deal with it. It's not nonsensical, but just overblown a bit. Like you and your roommates really want drastically different chess interfaces. But, anyways, in the Winboard download below there is an "Application Data" folder with a few files. You need to find your Application Data directory (In XP under your "Documents and Settings\[User Name]" directory. In Vista under Users\[User Name]\Appdata\Roaming) and dump these files in there to get the look above by default. Some more info here.

Downloads :
Winboard (Chess GUI) (Original Unmodified Version)
Arena 3.0 (Chess GUI)
Microsoft Chess circa 1992
Chess Fonts Collection
Chess Engines (My Collection : Baddest of the Bad)
Chess Engines (Another Collection : Still Bad)
"Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" Book

Wonderous Links Galore :
Chess.com.
Chess Variants.
Chess Engines.
Chess Fonts Page.
Winboard Forums. (Look as shown above)




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Don't be Suicidal!
Posted April 29, 2011





Unless it's the band Suicidal Tendencies. Let's be frank... Being whiny, emo, apathetic, butthurt, downtrodden, and crying in buckets is not going to solve a damn thing. So you've got to give a band like Suicidal credit when they capture that crowd and dump a proverbial bucket of cold water over their heads lyrically and manage to add some awesome thrashy riffs, solos, and funny campy videos on top of that. At least, sometimes they do. The rest of the time they get pretty whiny. So, here's the best songs I've found by them, sans nancy-boyishness. Enjoy!


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ROTT in Hell!
Posted April 29, 2011




After the success of Wolfenstein 3D, id briefly considered doing a direct sequel in the form of Wolfenstein 2. Being that their previous creative Director Tom Hall was now at 3D Realms/Apogee, Tom took it upon himself to have id outsource the work to them. Then mid-drift, id pulled the plug on the project to concentrate on the release of Doom, and the project metamorphised into something unrecognizable. You can see the influence of Wolfenstein 3D, with Nazi-esque guards and whatnot. But then, there's all the whacky randomness. Things that just make absolutely no sense, like Gravitational Anomaly Disks, God Mode where the guy mumbles as he kills people with full-on deity handpower, Dog mode, and a Shrooms powerdown. I am not joking. And of course, you need to add some robed koolaid drinking cult to kill (the Koolaid didn't work).

Don't get me wrong. It's actually a good straight-forward shooter. And that's what makes it's weirdness redeemable. But, just wait until the first time you kill a room full of people in Dog mode where you bark in successively higher pitches "bark Bark BARK BAAARK!!" with people just exploding into showers of ludicrous gibs and you're going to have a hard time not laughing. Or kill a fleet of enemies with Excalibat; a mystical green-flamed baseball bat straight from the pit of hell's dugouts which shoots out waves of exploding baseballs. This is a real game, no joke. Seriously, I think they added shrooms as a powerdown as a reference to the massive doses of them they were taking during development.

And, the boss fights are pretty memorable too. Most especially the NME aka "Nasty Metallic Enforcer" who looks like a dirty trashcan with wheels, but makes a sound that will be tatooed on your brain forever after, like a robotic gyro turning quickly. Right before it proceeds to hand your ass to you on a silver platter. It's the most bizzare and insane fun you'll probably ever have playing a first person shooter.

Links :
ROTT
WinROTT (Allows to run ROTT natively in Windows in high-res)
Official Site with Editor and Addon Extreme Level Pack
ROTT Goodies Pack
ROTT Level Compilation
Return to ROTT (Doom Mod)





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