… there is no winning with you guys …

Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 via wiki

The Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 was a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913, organized by the suffragist Alice Paul for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The march was scheduled on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded”, as the official program stated.

I did not know architecture, design, photography and history were boyish things…

FreeSpace from Backupify — a service that securely backs up user data for online services and web apps — aims to make managing Gmail storage space easier. When you hit Gmail’s 25GB storage limit, Google won’t let you send or receive email until you pare down your inbox. FreeSpace warns you as you approach the storage cap, and displays the ten largest files in your inbox so you can free up space when you need to. Business owners can also use FreeSpace to see which employees are using the most storage and notify them when they near the limit.

via Backupify Blog

NBC’s continued—and continually ill-advised—attempt to keep Up All Night alive is the sort of showbiz boondoggle that cries out for a Devil’s Candy-style treatment detailing each network-mandated misstep and instance of executive-producer-meddling in excruciating detail. Until some bold journalist steps forth with that project, you can make do by stringing every A.V. Club Newswire piece about the show into some sort of linear narrative—failing that, you could also give a look to this piece by TV Guide’s Michael Schneider. It’s low on the lurid details and high on industry sources speaking anonymously, but it does contain a few delicious nuggets of TV schadenfreude, like the following abandoned attempt to bridge the single-camera version of Up All Night and the multi-camera iteration NBC insists, Ahab-like, is out there, swimming in a sea of big ratings and critical accolades:

“One pitch placed a ...

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Sam Mendes may have triumphed over initial skepticism to make Skyfall the most successful James Bond film ever—not to mention biggest British film of all time—but he's willing to give it all up for the theater, which is that big room with the curtains where no one comes in and demands you make a better James Bond film than Skyfall. Mendes officially excused himself from the franchise in an interview with Empire, saying, “It has been a very difficult decision not to accept Michael [G. Wilson] and Barbara [Broccoli]’s very generous offer to direct the next Bond movie. Directing Skyfall was one of the best experiences of my professional life, but I have theatre and other commitments, including productions of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and King Lear, that need my complete focus over the next year and beyond”—likely pronouncing it “thee-AHH-turrrr” to really drive ...

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Crystal Dynamics will play a part in the creation of the next Tomb Raider film, reports Variety. The film will be produced by GK Films, known for films like Argo and The Departed (... and World War Z). Like Crystal Dynamics' new game, the new Tomb Raider film will be a reboot, starring a young Lara Croft. "They are working from this new take that we've given them," Crystal Dynamics head Darrell Gallagher told Variety. The film should help create a "cohesive version of the franchise," he said, rather than simply offering a sequel to the Angeline Jolie films.

We can't help but wonder if Jennifer Lawrence can pull off a British accent. Because we already know she can use a bow.

Crystal Dynamics consulting on new Tomb Raider flick originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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erindizmo:

biosquare:

Stephen Colbert, king of nerds.

Mr. Franco, that was ill-advised.

By John Walker on March 6th, 2013 at 5:00 pm.

Tomb Raider is out, and I’ve played the single player to the very end. How does Lara fare in this reboot of one of gaming’s most famous series? Here’s wot I think:

I don’t think there could be a more emblematic game of the divide gaming has taken in the last few years. In the blue corner are the traditionalists, the old-school, they who see gaming as something they control. In the red corner, the new-school, the neophites, they who see gaming as an experience to be guided through. Tomb Raider, a series traditionally set in the old, in this reboot of the franchise firmly enters the new. It’s got something it wants to show you, so could you please follow this way.

But let’s be clear – this isn’t Medal Of Honor. While Crystal Dynamics have created a game that frankly seems to resent letting you be in control every now and then, those moments do happen, there are extended sections where you can explore, challenge yourself, and most of all, play. And I think that’s the word that divides these two branches of gaming – play. It’s where Tomb Raider is at its absolute strongest, where it feels like something classic, yet technologically modern, free and explorable. It’s also what the game seems to be constantly fighting against letting you do.

So we’re meeting Lara for the first time, all over again. In the hands of the team who created the last superb trilogy, but with a fresh start, a new approach to the British heroine. Stranded on an island with a group of her explorer colleagues, quickly it becomes apparent that a small army of crazed shipwreckees are intent on killing anyone they see as an “outsider”. There’s something about some goddess, weird weather meaning anything that flies or floats nearby gets wrecked, and a clutter of other mumbojumbo that demands we run about climbing and shooting. Lara begins as a young, innocent girl, horrified at being forced to kill to save her own life, and then begins her inevitable journey into a grunting killing machine. (Although it’s a little more nuanced than that.)

It’s become quite well known that the first hour is notoriously filled with quick-time events (QTEs), button mashing, and a strict, linear path. CD themselves explained that we should not worry, that the previews of this portion were not representative of the full game, and it all opens out soon enough. Well, that’s only partially true. Yes, you absolutely can revisit previous areas of the island (using a fast travel option, should you wish), to scoop up any of the seventy trillion secret items scattered about, locate any “Optional Tombs” (puzzle-based vaults where you must manipulate the scenery to reach a treasure), and climb to the top of things to say that you did. But the game really doesn’t want you to. It wants you to keep going, to rescue the next person, to keep saving the day. The urgency with which you’re pressed to carry on means that to go off and explore is to shatter the thin veneer of a narrative it so desperately wants to have.

This narrative, which offers not a single twist, surprise, or even interesting notion, is shoved down your throat at every opportunity, the controls constantly wrestled from your hands as it crucially needs to take over to stop you from doing something it might not like. This is so deeply at the core of every element of the game that you can’t even shimmy along a ledge without the game doing the bits where you go past a pillar for you. Run toward a building and scoooop, control is stolen, the camera jerked upward, because you might not have looked up at the pretty thing they drew. It feels like a combination of arrogance and deep paranoia. “You might play the game wrong! Let me do it!”

For the first hour or so, I don’t remember being in complete control for more than about 30 seconds at a time. This certainly slows down later on, but never so I didn’t feel endlessly exasperated. Sometimes it’s so it can cram the next story element in – a room in which you think, “Okay, I’ll shoot him with an arrow, and then take them out with the rifle” suddenly becomes a cutscene in which Lara stands uselessly still while someone gets killed or captured. Other times, most of the time, it’s for no discernible reason whatsoever.

This scripting also means that Lara is repeatedly put in situations where she must run/slide/fall away from everything exploding and collapsing. (Never has one person fallen so far, so often. The brutality with which Croft is ceaselessly met is astonishing.) And during these sections your job is to move left or right to avoid obstacles, and sometimes jump. It’s enormously impressive, the scenery blowing up and tearing away, the fantastic physics very well shown off. But are you playing? Barely.

This all really cannot be emphasised enough, and I think perhaps is best captured by the following: The game decides when you run, walk, sprint, crawl, get weapons out, put them away, light torches, put them out… There literally isn’t a crawl button in the game, because it’s going to do that for you. And most peculiar of all, there’s no indication from the game when it’s in control or you are. On some occasions I’ve found myself embarrassed to realise I’ve not been controlling things for a while, like a kid in a service station, thinking they’re steering the arcade car while “INSERT COIN” flashes on the screen. On many others I was killed because I wasn’t aware it had stopped playing for me, and didn’t know it was my turn to press forward again. Games do that widescreen borders thing for a reason, Crystal.

And this is such a massive shame, because when you are playing, damn, it’s great. Despite the addition of upgradeable weapons, and some RPG-ish XP-based stats for Lara, it’s actually remarkably similar to the previous Tomb Raiders from the developer. There are puzzle-climbing sections, and there are shooty-bang sections. No one ever wanted the latter in any of the previous eight hundred Tomb Raider games, but they were darned well included anyway. This time, while I’m pretty sure no one on Earth would have cared if they were ditched entirely, instead they’ve had the rather bright idea to make them actually decent. Yes, it becomes yet another cover shooter, but the bow and arrow is great fun to use, and the rest of the weapons are ludicrously powerful. I think there’s too much of it, where more tombs and exploring would always have been preferable, but at least this time out it’s not an absolute chore.

But what’s really great is still the exploring. Crystal Dynamics have proved a number of times just how smart they are at creating challenges, setting up location-based puzzles and letting you explore to solve them. Here Tomb Raider shines. Yes, it’s still entirely artificial, with ledges and beams you can use ludicrously painted white (thanks helpful locals!), and the rope-able sections all mysteriously perfectly placed to allow progress. When something is wrecked, it just so happens to be wrecked in a way that creates a new path! But none of that really matters, because it’s about offering a playground. When the first game that offers truly free climbing and exploring appears it’ll be the greatest day in history, but in the meantime, no one does it as slickly as CD.

So I’m left utterly bemused why they seemed to want to bury it so deeply.

Something should be said for the portrayal of Lara. Yes, obviously things go from her being terrified to have killed a guy, to killing them in their dozens. But it’s not deserving of the scorn some have offered. Lara is portrayed as suffering throughout. It’s seriously gruesome what she’s subjected to, endlessly smashing through roofs and walls, gashed, punched, and bruised. And it feels like it too. She’s never happy (apart from when opening boxes containing relics, when she creepily breaks from whatever horrors she’s facing and excitedly describes a coin to you), always hurting, and never confident. And that makes an important difference. While she’s surrounded by dreadful stereotypes and pantomime villains, her state of mind is gently portrayed. And the interesting effect of this is, no matter how many you kill, she never seems to like it. It always feels regrettable, like it’s eating at her soul. Of everything this game does well, this is its highest achievement.

Things are pretty unrelentingly bleak, too. While the dipshit friends offer nothing but glib nonsense (albeit well acted in the main), the grim weather, sparse lands, and phenomenal amount of gore-strewn corpses certainly set a tone. In fact, there are so many dead bodies that I’m pretty sure this remote island must once have been the most populated place on Earth.

The upgrade system is fairly pointless. It may as well have been just added skills as you progress, since it’s pretty difficult not to have enough XP and salvage to grab everything on offer as you play. But still, you get to choose the order in which you add them, so if you’re especially keen on being able to beat a man to death with an axe, you can opt for that before you improve how long you can hold an arrow in a bow. Really, nothing makes a dramatic difference to the game itself, not least because what you actually do to progress is so heavily scripted that it couldn’t allow it to.

I’m left just bewildered that the most fun I’ve had with the game is going back to sections I’ve already played. This time I’m actually allowed to enjoy them properly, without characters screaming at me to go a certain way, do a certain thing, and the controls endlessly taken from me. Sure, to do so is to abandon what a character has just screamed at you that you need to do, but it’s worth it just to enjoy the game that’s buried beneath the noise. And crucially, once the game’s over you can go back to any area to do so, meaning you can allow the nose-dragging to pull you past without worrying you’re going to miss out.

It looks stunning for a game designed for current-gen tech, and it’s important to note that Nixxes have done another great job for Square, ensuring the game takes advantage of what a PC can do over a console. Although the much trumpeted “TressFX” designed to give Lara realistic hair is absolutely crippling on powerful NVidia cards. Created by AMD, it really seems to only be an option for their own cards. (And it looks epically silly, too.) Also, despite a pretty powerful rig, putting things above the “quite good” details saw things really struggle. Turn things up to the max and I wasn’t offered a slideshow, so much as received a single postcard. I think things could have been better optimised, and perhaps the next set of graphics drivers will see to that.

It creates such an odd space. Tomb Raider is a theme park ride, but one where you can get off and go back to look around the ghost towns you’ve left behind. It’s a game for the new crowd, but clearly with hankerings to be part of the old. When you first see that island map, and the quick travel points, it’s hard not to think you’ve got yourself a Far Cry 3-style thing here, something that will let you encounter the game in your own way, with a main story running through. But that certainly isn’t the case. The story, which you could predict in its entirety from the opening cutscene (let’s just say that of the collection of stereotypes you have with you, none deviates from their inevitable path), doesn’t offer any reward for this obsessive control-freakery.

With the game making every decision for you – and I feel the need to stress this again – even deciding when you run, walk or crawl, some will argue it all allows this rollercoaster ride to be as smooth as possible. It all allows you to be swept along by the experience, to be wowed by the epic scenery and breathtaking destruction. But me – I want to play.

When it let me, I had a really good time. When it didn’t, well, I sat back in my chair and wondered what I was doing here.

Graphics powerhouse Nvidia is working with developer Crystal Dynamics to address the "major performance and stability issues" occurring with GeForce cards playing Tomb Raider on max settings. A number of users on the Nvidia, Steam, and Tomb Raider forums complained about a range of GeForce-related issues, with common complaints including the game repeatedly crashing to desktop on 600-series cards, and AMD's TressFX hair rendering tech taking a chunky toll on performance.

Following no mention of Tomb Raider in its post on the latest GeForce beta drivers, Nvidia's Andrew Burnes took to the comments to explain the situation, revealing the company only received a final version of the game a few days ahead of launch.

"Unfortunately, Nvidia didn't receive final code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided," said Burnes. "We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of their favorite PC games."

Nvidia, Crystal Dynamics looking into Tomb Raider PC performance issues originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Readers of a certain age are in for a shot of delicious nostalgia today. Back in the dawn of time (i.e. the 1990s), many of us had our first taste of multiplayer gaming in text mode, playing things called MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons. MUDs are where games like World of Warcraft and virtual worlds like Second Life have their roots – and they were enormous fun.

Duncan Jauncey wrote something called Alternate Universe MUD ten years ago, and he’s just ported it to the Pi.

If you want to relive some of the text-based fun you had back in the 90s, head over to Duncan’s website, where you’ll find some more information and installation instructions for your Pi.

I’ve been waiting for…ooh, just over a year, for someone to do this. Recantha, an old hand here in the comments and on the forums, has built a tricorder.

There surely can’t be anyone here without a passing familiarity with Star Trek, but just in case: the tricorder is a made-up thing used by the crew of the Enterprise to measure stuff, store data and scout ahead remotely when exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilisations, and all that jazz. Despite its made-up-ness, the tricorder remains a terribly desirable thing. I’ve always wanted to be able to tell whether my planet is M-class or not.

Recantha has bodged together his home-made tricorder using a Pi, some sensors (two for temperature, and one each for magnetism and distance), an LCD display, some switches, a light-resistant resistor, a thermistor and an Arduino Leonardo clone. We hope he keeps adding sensors to it, and maybe, later on, a camera board, until he runs out of space. How about a Geiger counter (this one already works with the Pi)?

Here’s a spot of video explaining what everything on the Picorder does:

(Best of all, the whole thing is cased in LEGO.)

And here’s some more video, showing the thing in action.

If you’re interested in reproducing or building on this project, Recantha’s blogged about it (he has an excellent website, all about Raspberry Pi), and has left a guide to the project over at Pideas, the new site for collecting Raspberry Pi projects. (Go and add something of your own!) Thanks very much for this, Recantha; our office costume parties will now have a dash of added realism. Jamesh has drawn the short straw and will be dressed as Nog.

Pixel artist Doctor Octoroc has reimagined Doctor Who as a 16-bit RPG for the SNES. The humorous animated short covers series five and six — the first two seasons with Matt Smith as the Doctor — of the popular BBC show.

via Russ Frushtick

Shota Ishiwatari — who previously worked on prototypes of the popular Necomimi mind-controlled cat ears — has created Tailly, a fuzzy tail controlled by the user’s heart rate. Tailly is currently available in black, white, pink, and a fox pattern, and is seeking funding on Indiegogo.

via Technabob, Geyser of Awesome

“You won’t allow me to go to school.
I won’t become a doctor.
Remember this:
One day you will be sick.”

-

Poem written by an 11-year-old Afghan girl 

This poem was recorded in a NYT magazine article about female underground poetry groups in Afghanistan. An amazing article about the ways in which women are using a traditional two line poetry form to express their resistance to male oppression, their feelings about love (considered blasphemous), and their doubts about religion. 

One of the best articles I’ve read all year. Here’s the link

(via screwby)

doctorhotpants:

ravenclawsbleedtardisblue:

oh-stewart:

i have the sex appeal of a math book

idk man, i’ve never met anyone that opened a math book and didn’t say “fuck me”

And what person hasn’t banged a math book on a desk? Multiple times?

#….uh. in a fit of desperation i’ve spanked a math book with a ruler.

Easy and fun, homemade Cheez-Its take the junk out of junk food.

thehomesteadiwannabuildwithyou:

architectureofdoom:

How one woman is building homes for the poor out of plastic bottles

Ingrid Vaca Diez is on a mission to build better homes for the poor.

With few funds and little support, she uses the only resource she can find in abundance - empty plastic bottles.

Her own life in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, is one of relative comfort but she is shocked by the rising level of poverty she sees around her.

Though completely self-taught, she designs and builds new homes using recycled plastic bottles filled with dirt as the “bricks”. So far, she has built 10 of these homes.

The people she is trying to help are rural, indigenous migrants, often living in single room, dirt floor shacks.

Watch here

I wish there was a version of “Hooah!” that I could use in situations like this. 

This page collects all information regarding the One Page Dungeon Contest 2013. The results of previous contests are also available (2012, 2011, 2010, 2009).

Check out the Google+ Community, Google+ Page, the Facebook Page, the @onepagedungeons on Twitter or Twitter posts tagged #1pdc.

Dates: Submission deadline was April 30, 0:00 GMT (Tuesday evening). If you live West of Greenwich, you had to send in your submission a few hours before the end of the month. Winners were announced May 25.

Winners:

• Download the PDF (30MB)!

Author	Dungeon Name	Category
Andrew and Heleen Durston	Only Acrobats Need Apply	Best Swashbuckling
bygrinstow	Arena of Blood	Most Macabre
Caelum Roberts	Iron Cloud	Best Sci-Fi
Daniel O’Donnell	Down Among the Dead Men	Best Undead
Gus L.	The Brittlestone Parapets	Best Wizard Duel
Jens Thuresson	The Giant’s Dollhouse	Best Fairy-Tale
Jobe Bittman	Into The Demon Idol	Best Homage
Josh Burnett	The Burial Mound of Gilliard Wolfclan	Best One Shot
Kaylee Thumann	Girly Girl Dungeon	Most Original
LSF	A Stolen Spring	Best Fantasy Mystery
Matthew W. Schmeer	Wizard in the Woods	Best Non-Traditional Map
Misha Favorov	Court of the King of No Men	Best Beastmen
Ramsey Hong	Something Happened At The Temple Near Glourm	Best Map
Rob S	Citadel of the Severed Hand	Best Myconids
Roger SG Sorolla	Devil’s Acre	Best Single Location
S. J. Harris	The Baleful Spring	Best Tower
Simon Forster	Church of Consumption	Best Religion

All Submissions:

• Download the archive with All One Page Dungeon Contest 2013 Submissions (47 MB)
• Individual files

Prizes & Sponsors: Do you have prizes to donate? Let me know → kensanata@gmail.com!

• an anonymous sponsor with $300 via Paypal
• a PDF copy of Clockwork Drama by Blasphemy Press
• a PDF copy of Blasphemous Cocktails by Blasphemy Press
• a PDF copy of Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters by Engine Publishing
• a PDF copy of Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game by Engine Publishing
• a PDF copy of Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep by Engine Publishing
• a set of Go First Dice by Eric Harshbarger
• 10 prizes: a PDF of choice from the Goblinoid Games catalog (including Labyrinth Lord, or any of its supplements; Mutant Future; Starships & Spacemen; Star Explorer; Wizards' World; Rotworld; Sandman; Timemaster, or any of its supplements; or any other PDF file from their catalog)
• a PDF copy of DCC #76: Colossus, Arise! by Goodman Games
• a PDF copy of DCC #77: The Croaking Fane by Goodman Games
• a PDF copy of the complete run of Fight On! Magazine by Ignatius Ümlaut
• a PDF copy of Book of Dumb Tables, Book of Dumb Tables 2, Tell Me About Your Character and the QAGS core rules by Hex Games
• a PDF copy of Gilgamesh and the QAGS core rules by Hex Games
• a PDF copy of Laser Ponies and the QAGS core rules by Hex Games
• a PDF copy of Sex, Lies, & Ultra-Spies, Spy Racers and the QAGS core rules by Hex Games
• a PDF copy of the Sindbad Bundle: The Adventures of Sindbad, The Mountains of the Moon: Sindbad in East Africa, Sindbad and the Demon Pumpkin, Sindbad and the Sword of Kingship and the QAGS core rules by Hex Games
• a PDF copy of the complete run of NOD by John Stater
• a bundle of every available LotFP PDF as of June 1 2013, by Lamentations of the Flame Princess
• a year of free Ascendant Membership by Obsidian Portal
• a PDF copy of the complete run of Oubliette by Peter Regan (issues 1-8 and issue 9 when it comes out)
• a pack of goodies from the Pad of Geomorphic Intent Kickstarter including delivery to anywhere in the world by Peter Regan
• a PDF copy of Lords of Olympus by Precis Intermedia
• a PDF copy of Two-Fisted Tales by Precis Intermedia
• a PDF copy of Teratic Tome by Rafael Chandler
• a PDF copy of Take on Dragons by TakeOnRules
• a PDF copy of Take on Establishments by TakeOnRules
• a PDF copy of Take on Magic Items by TakeOnRules
• a PDF copy of Take on the Lower Depths by TakeOnRules
• a printed copy of the TSRS Guidelines by Thom Wilson
• a PDF copy of Dungeon Map Classics by UnderCity Games
• a PDF copy of Classic Campaign Maps by UnderCity Games
• a PDF copy of the three books by VSCA: Diaspora: hard science-fiction role-playing with Fate, Deluge and Hollowpoint
• a PDF copy of The Daughters of Verona and While the World Ends from Wilhelm's Games

Submissions: Here’s how to submit your entry.

• Create a One Page Dungeon.
• Submitting a dungeon to the contest releases it under the Creative Common Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license with credit to the contest participant.
• The submission must have a name, an author, and a link to the license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
• The judges and readers play a variety of systems. Don’t waste valuable space with a lot of system-specific stats.
• A link to extra material on your blog such as wandering monsters, random events, adventure background, introduction, descriptions of tricks or traps are welcome for readers but will not be considered part of your submission.
• One entry per participant. Participants may revise/replace their entries up until the end of contest, with the last revision counting as their official entry.
• If your font size is too small to read, you will most probably not win.
• Many people will print your submission as a black and white document. Adding colors is no problem as long as the black and white printed copy is still good enough.
• Help us keep file size in check. A single page should not take more than an image with 3000x2000 pixels (1-2MB is cool, 5MB still works, 10MB is too much).
• Submission must be mailed in PDF format to Alex Schroeder → kensanata@gmail.com. Usually we can help you convert your Open Office and Microsoft Word documents to PDF.
• If you have a blog article talking about your submission, send us the link. We’d love to link to it from the One Page Dungeon Contest page.

Judges: Alex Schroeder, Erik Jensen, Brett Slocum, Clinton Dreisbach, Thom Wilson, Brennan O’Brien.

Process: Here’s how we’ll determine the winners.

• Every judge nominates their favorite entries and proposes a category for each.
• We try to make sure that every judge has at least three of their nominations in the final list. The idea is to not only reflect popular opinion but to also capture some of the more eclectic entries out there. We’ll make sure that every judge is well represented with three entries each.
• Based on the categories proposed in the first step, we try to assign a category to each entry on the list.
• Judges gets to check whether their favorites are still on the list.
• We fix omissions and rename categories until we’re happy.
• We publish our list of winners!
• We will ask each winner for three items they’d prefer to win and any items they prefer not to win. Then we try to do a best match, giving precedence to those winners that got more nominations in the first step.
• All the entries and a special PDF with all the winners will be available for download at no cost.

Submissions Received:

• Aaron Frost and Mundi King, Old Guard Tower
• Adam Taylor, Key of Dissension
• Alex Cirsova, The Revelry at Pickett Castle (blog post)
• Andreas Folkesten, Temple of the Demon Speakers
• Andrew and Heleen Durston, Only Acrobats Need Apply
• Barry Pace, Vault of Vintage (blog post)
• bygrinstow, Arena of Blood (blog post)
• C. Martins, Kibhur's Dungeon
• Caelum Roberts, Iron Cloud
• Christian Hollnbuchner, The Mad Riddlers Halls (blog post)
• Cristian Aviles, A Living-Dead Nightmare
• Dan Roy aka Bogie, The Jester's Tomb (large full scale copy of the map)
• Daniel O'Donnell, Down Among the Dead Men
• Doc Brewer, Brewer's Backwoods
• Donny Sanchez, Ten Minute Dungeon
• Dustin Brandt, Clown Robot Doctor Apocalypse
• Dylan Hartwell, Golden Triangle (blog post)
• Dyson Logos, By Esophagus Brood
• Ed Nicholson, Escape from the City of Madness
• Eero Tuovinen, Miscegenation of the Ancients
• Eric Harshbarger, Games People Play
• Erik-Karl Read, The Issue of Blipdoolpoolp (blog post)
• Fco. Javier Barrera, The Black School
• Fraser Nelund, Trouble's Root
• Giuseppe Rotondo, Island Grave of Alsiaurignis
• Greg Haugh, Dragon's Den
• Gus L., The Brittlestone Parapets (blog post)
• Heikki Hallamaa, The Diamond of Hishep-Ratep
• Intrepid Eddie, The Parched Throat (blog post)
• Jacob Wood, Prehistoric Kickboxing Killer Turkeys (blog post)
• Jason Morningstar, La Bassee
• Jim McGarva, Dinner at the In-Laws
• Jim Pacek, The Tavern at the Edge of the World
• Jobe Bittman, Into The Demon Idol (blog post)
• Jeff McKelley, Memento Mori
• John Hazen, Tower of the Toad Lord
• Jens Thuresson, The Giant's Dollhouse (blog post)
• Joe Pruitt, Echoes of Empire
• Jon Picardi, Combat Duality
• Josh Burnett, The Burial Mound of Gilliard Wolfclan
• Joshua J. Laboskie, The Lost Temple of Tyrandraxu (blog post)
• Justin Peeples, Hall of Five Elements (blog post)
• Kaylee Thumann, Girly Girl Dungeon
• Ken Gatzemeyer, The Eternal Maze of the Minotaur
• Kevin Flynn, The Witch's Hut (blog post)
• Lee Mohnkern, Hobrock
• Leicester, Thoorsten's Treasure
• Leslie J. Furlong, Surface
• LSF, A Stolen Spring
• Marten Zabel, Midnight At Halcyons Coven
• Matt Mueller, The Devil's Cell
• Matthew W. Schmeer, Wizard in the Woods (blog post)
• Michael Getridge, The Halls of Power
• Michael Llaneza, The Broken Ring
• Mike Monaco, The Misty Pond (blog post)
• Misha Favorov, Court of the King of No Men
• Nick Wedig, Kingfisher
• Nicolas Senac, The Subterranean Maze of Aarthal (blog post)
• Paul Gorman, Faery Ring to Alpha Ari
• Philipp Hajek, Lost Banner
• ProBono, Great Library Of Hypatia
• Ramsey Hong, Something Happened At The Temple Near Glourm
• Rob S, Citadel of the Severed Hand (blog post)
• Robert Render, Techno Bandit HQ
• Rodney Sloan, Vertigo (blog post)
• Roger SG Sorolla, Devil's Acre (blog post series)
• Roland Volz, The Blackacre Heist
• S. J. Harris, The Baleful Spring
• Scott Slomiany, Assault on the Goblin Hold (blog post)
• Scott W Roberts, The Sea Tower
• Simon Forster, Church of Consumption
• Steve Johnson, Bloodbath at Camp Terrahorra

Back in 2008, ModBlog posted pictures of an incredible nostril and septum resculpting with another entry early in the healing and one more four weeks later. I thought it was about time that an update be posted, since Bogotá, Colombia based tattoo artist, piercer, and alternative model Caim Divell (click here for his fan page) is one of the most remarkable looking people in body modification (and BME’s early entries generated one hell of a lot of debate). As you can see he has reduced the size of his horns, which were at one point the largest forehead implants ever installed, but other than that, his look has continued to evolve. There are very few people who have pushed a concept transformation to this degree, and I would argue that living as a demonic embodiment of metal is socially more challenging than being, say, the Lizardman. As I said, there’s more info on Caim’s surgical modifications in the early posts, but I should mention here that they were created by Emilio Gonzalez (mithostattoo.com).

code · Camen Design: Now With Added Forums:

Modern forum software has become so bloated these days that it seems to have lost the goal of facilitating actual discussion. So many features are dedicated to massaging everybody’s bloody ego, it’s a joke. Signatures chock full of images, user ranks and badges, user profile pages, “social networking”. I wouldn’t be having any of this crap.

In creating the forums, I set some primary goals in mind that would help keep the design focused and let me put together something that worked in the least amount of time.

No database Too much extra code to manage. Each discussion thread is a single file on disk. Want to delete a thread? Delete the file. Want to move a thread? Move the file. No code required. One format, one file per thread

Each discussion thread is itself an actual RSS feed; i.e. the data is stored as RSS. Since there’s no database there’s no e-mail subscription feature, if you want to follow a thread add it to your RSS reader. That means that there’s no duplication on disk, whereby I have to keep a data store (like JSON) and then cache that out to RSS files when it changes. When you add a post to a thread, your post goes directly into the RSS file meaning that the change is seen instantly, no caching is needed (as the RSS file is static) and no code is needed to manage both data and RSS—they are the same thing.

It’s not as simple code-wise as using JSON, for example, but it’s worth it to not have the same content spread across more than one file.

No session, no login, no registration

Has no purpose other than to facilitate all the ego-features. RSS would serve for getting updates, so e-mail isn’t required. Anyone can sign up for a free / fake e-mail, so it doesn’t prevent abuse or spam.

I do respect that people prefer to stick to a particular name / alias / handle, and it wouldn’t be right to allow anybody to post under any name as they could reuse someone else’s name to cause trouble. For that reason, I have implemented a very simple system of name reservation that allows someone to keep their desired name and prevent others from using it.

When you post or reply on the forums, it asks you for a name and password along with your message. Your chosen name and password form a unique key that prevents others from using that name. You do not have to pre-register in order to post like most forums. The very act of posting forms the ‘registration’. Just simply use the same name and password each time you post in order to re-use that name. You never have to log in through a dedicated login page beforehand every time, and there’s no session and no cookies so the forum never has to bother you about logging in to post. Get your web browser to remember your username and password and you won’t have to enter it again at all!

Users are stored as a text file in a folder. The name of the file is the hash of the user’s name, and in the text file is the hash of the password; neither are stored in clear text.
The user folders, containing two text files

This makes user authentication blindingly simple:

 $user = "users/".md5 ("C64:$NAME").".txt";
 //create the user, if new
 if (!file_exists ($user)) file_put_contents ($user, md5 ("C64:$PASS"));
 //does password match?
 if (file_get_contents ($user) == md5 ("C64:$PASS")) {
    ?
 }

Thus you can post under your desired name, also reserving it from others, without having to register, login or use JavaScript, a session, or cookies.

This is obviously not a system for preventing spam (confusing the problems of name reservation and spam is bad systems design). I have put in a very basic anti-spam feature via a hidden field but if the spam bots come along then I will probably integrate Akismet, but any suggestions are welcome; they just have to work without a database, JavaScript, sessions, or cookies :P

Focus on discussion

As has been alluded to so far, I’ve cut a lot of crap that is standard in forums these days. There won’t ever be signatures or user pages, crowd-spam and the like. People’s “rank” should be known simply from their participation and generosity—their actual deeds, rather than a label. In essence the forums should let humans be humans.

I’m not against personal expression, I just don’t believe that bling is personality. As the code improves, I’m happy to add bbcode and other means to better express text, you can even draw PETSCII art using unicode and a proper interface for this would be good.

The forum is unique (I believe) by keeping the initial post of a thread at the top and paging the replies so that the discussion can hopefully remain on-topic by always displaying the initial post. I will have to see how this works out, but I think it a good addition.

Medal skull icon

circusbones:

blacknoonajade:

karkles-the-adorabloodthirsty:

sonofbaldwin:

I got dressed in my traditional Indian regalia, but there was a man, he was the producer of the whole show. He took that speech away from me and he warned me very sternly. “I’ll give you 60 seconds or less. And if you go over that 60 seconds, I’ll have you arrested. I’ll have you put in handcuffs.”

- Sacheen Littlefeather in Reel Injun (2009), dir. Neil Diamond.

They were MAD, CONFUSED AND PRESSED that Marlon Brando would betray White Supremacy in this way.

To this very day, they are TWISTED over this.

And when Littlefeather got up there and READ THEM FOR FILTH, they GAGGED. For eons.

So I imagine there are people like me out there who’ve never even heard of Marlon Brando and are extremely confused over why this is important.

Marlon Brando was the Don in The Godfather, and in 1973, he was nominated for and won an Academy Award for it. However, he was also a huge Natives rights activist, and boycotted the ceremony because he felt that Hollywood’s depictions of Native Americans in the media led to the Wounded Knee Incident (which I was always taught as “the second massacre at Wounded Knee” but apparently that’s not the real name). He sent Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache Native rights activist, in his stead. Wikipedia’s article on her explains the rest:

Brando had written a 15-page speech for Littlefeather to give at the ceremony, but when the producer met her backstage he threatened to physically remove her or have her arrested if she spoke on stage for more than 60 seconds.^[5] Her on-stage comments were therefore improvised. She then went backstage and read the entire speech to the press. In his autobiography My Word is My Bond, Roger Moore (who presented the award) claims he took the Oscar home with him and kept it in his possession until it was collected by an armed guard sent by the Academy.

That is what this gifset is about.

You have GOT to read up on this. The Wounded Knee Incident, Marlon Brando and Sacheen Littlefeather, Anna Mae Aquash. ALL OF IT. 

Her name was known in my house, I hope it’s known in many, many more in the future.

Eternian Equity by Anthony Petrie

Product Placement is an upcoming group art show at Gallery1988 in Los Angeles featuring a collection of original artwork by a group of skilled artist advertising and celebrating objects from movies and television shows that don’t exist in real life. The show’s opening reception is Saturday, March 9, 2013 from 7 PM to 10 PM and runs until Saturday, March 30, 2013.

LOST by Nate Duval

Monkey Paw by Benjie

A Night of Heavy Drinking by Sean Mort

Mad Max Interceptor by Joshua Budich

images via Gallery1988 and credited artists

Since several of 2012's games were delayed into 2013, "the year of the bow" carries on with Tomb Raider, Crysis 3 ... and here we have Gears of War: Judgment with a fancy crossbow. (And let's not forget the wind-up fun of the original Torque Bow.)

Continue reading The bow craze continues in Gears of War: Judgment

The bow craze continues in Gears of War: Judgment originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 06 Mar 2013 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Reader Ryan sent in the video below, which features a notorious bug in Ubisoft's latest blockbuster Assassin's Creed game. The glitch makes it look like Connor likes his tomahawk a little too much.

Look, Connor, it's okay: we understand that sometimes the redcoat stabbing feels so good that you don't want to stop. But you really should. You'll need that hand for other things. Not to mention, you're going to go blind if you keep doing that.

In the ‘50s, when scientists at the University Of California started developing what would later become the Internet, they obviously had one potential use for it in mind: pictures of babies where the baby is replaced with a giant submarine sandwich. It only took 60-odd years, but that dream has finally come true courtesy of the Babies Replaced As Giant Subs Tumblr that launched earlier this week. It hasn’t quite lived up to its full potential just yet, with some fuzzy Photoshop and obvious jokes, but like a little baby or underwhelming submarine sandwich, with a little nurturing and love, it can grow into something very special.

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House Of Cardinals, a House Of Cards parody that would have otherwise merely been a middling “Wouldn’t it be funny if...?” joke has, due to the grace and glory of the Internet, been transubstantiated into a surprisingly professional trailer. Tony Pasqualini stars as Francis Underwood, an ambitious cardinal who views Benedict XVI’s resignation as the perfect opportunity to set his sights on the big hat. Intrigue and egregious fourth-wall-breaking ensue. Most of the gags are what you would expect from a spoof set in Vatican City (namely, celibacy jokes and a suggestively placed altar boy), but the video is surprisingly well put together for a project with such a wafer-thin premise.

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“I’m here for the video game thing,” I confidently stated to the woman inside the film entrance at the Museum Of Modern Art on 53rd Street. Despite my ineloquence, she understood and handed me a press pass. Historically, MOMA’s shows have not been terribly interested in games, but 14 titles—dating from Pac-Man (1980) through Canabalt (2009)—have now been chosen as part of the museum’s Architecture & Design installation, and the museum unveiled the exhibit at an event last week. All I really knew about the whole thing when I walked in, beside the 14 selections, is what I learned from senior curator Paola Antonelli’s recent appearance on The Colbert Report:

Colbert: What are we now? Are we modern? Are we postmodern? Or are we pre-future?

Antonelli: We are post-post-post modern, present, pre-future, but a little bit of future today, with history that comes with us ...

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