Posted by puzzlehead | 0 Comments
A Few Changes Here & There
As we get Smashy.net up and running again you’ll see that we’re making a few changes. So far we’ve added two new categories: Food and Sports. We’ve also added author based RSS feeds. Why did we do that? Simple, we’re giving contributors the ability to cross post their content to any other site(s) that they might want their material.
In fact, if you have any ideas for features, articles, or funky dances that we can do then please don’t hesitate to let us know!
Read MorePosted by puzzlehead | 12 Comments
And we’re back…sort of.
As you may well have realized, smashy.net has been incommunicado for almost a year. It has been quite the experience. The original site used bblog. According to their site:
NEWSFLASH: bBlog is dead! Long live bBlog!
After a number of years of the bBlog project, with the last couple inactive, it is time to call it a day.
bBlog is no longer activly maintained, and there are no plans to carry on with development.
There was an attempt to resurrect the project, but after a year nothing has come of it.For this reason, it is not reccomended to carry on using bBlog, instead I suggest you try
Other Blogging Software
That was in 2005.
This led us to convert the old site from bblog to WordPress last year. Almost everything was migrated and we had smashy.net up and running for about 3 months when all hell broke lose. Our Pimp-In-Charge, Smash, ran into a bit of a quandry when his ISP had an internal bitch slapping session amongst its owner and staff which ultimately led to the company disappearing. This, in turn, stranded a lot of site owners who had no way of getting back their content. Luckily, we at least had a partial archive of the site.
So here we are. Up and running again but with a few glitches. Please be patient with us as we try to salvage as much as possible and fix what we can. Or don’t be patient. Put your big boy pants on and take a walk. Maybe when you come back we’ll have most everything fixed or new content.
Read MorePosted by puzzlehead | 0 Comments
Speaking of Comics & Video Games: Port Sherry ...
The tag line for Pedro Arzipe’s Port Sherry web comic is "When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man…". The March 4, 2009 comic titled "The Obsolete Add-on" so deftly illustrates how far we’ve come with video games as well as how much we’ve lost.
In this era of next generation consoles we are able to celebrate ‘the next big thing’. For those of us who were born and raised on Atari 2600 home arcades, ColecoVision, Intellivision, the Odyssey and the Commodore 64 we can only marvel at how much detail and raw computing resources are required to produce the modern video game. Whereas we were used to 16 color sprites sporadically moving across the screen today’s PC & console games regale us with things we only fantasized about: particle physics, bump maps and texturizing, variable light sources much less worlds which did not require linear play and environments that allowed you to interact with them.
"The Obsolete Add-on" captures the innocence of those early years of video gaming and pretty much nails the generational differences between gamers of yesteryear and today. Whereas back in the day we relied on our imagination to pretend that we were driving the Formula 1 racers in Activision’s Grand Prix these days were drifting through corners in games like Gran Tourismo or the Need For Speed series. We played Atari’s ‘Combat!’ and hid behind blocks on the screens which were buildings and bunkers, ricocheting our shells on certain game settings while these days we’re reliving almost every military campaign imaginable in gritty, realistic detail. My Samus from Metroid looked like a gingerbread cookie; today she is rendered with muscle tone, flowing locks and ample boobies.
Are we spoiled these days? In a sense, yes. For a good portion of the video gaming experience we no longer have to think and players can concentrate instead on the game play. Do I regret the marvelous advancements that have been made to bring the games industry where it is? That’s a toss up. I can’t wait to see where we end up and how advanced the system and the games become.
I whole heartedly recommend reading through Arzipe’s comic for some interesting commentary on gaming.
Read MorePosted by Smash | 0 Comments
Cockeyed!
I have long wanted to complete a review of one of my favorite sites on the internet: Cockeyed. Always entertaining, whether it be nerdy science features like How Much is Inside?, where you can learn just how much beer is in a keg or Science Experiments, one of my favorite is where he made a phony speed trap in his neighborhood, Rob Cockerham, site creator and mad scientist never fails to deliver the goods.
I first found Rob’s site after watching the movie “Cast Away” where, apparently Rob had the same thought I did; “How hard is it really to make fire?” Except Rob did what I, and most people, are far too lazy to do- actually try it! On his site he chronicles a six day adventure of trying (and mostly failing) to make fire without matches.
One of the best bits you’ll find in Rob’s site is his ‘Fake Found Money’ test- seeing how (dis)honest people really can be. But perhaps his most noteworthy achievement is that he now has the attention of Cash4Gold for exposing their scam.
More recently, I had nerd fun taking his “One Page Fiction Quiz” Part 1 and Part 2. Take the challenge and let me know how you scored. On the first, I got 5 out of 7 and on the second I got 6 of 7. Apparently I picked Danielle Steele twice and Ayn Rand not at all! 
Either way, if you enjoy your blend of humor and geek, be sure to check out Cockeyed.com periodically like I do. Even his Halloween costume stories are entertaining!
Posted by Smash | 0 Comments
Heroes, 24, Mad TV
Hilarious. And I don’t generally like MadTV
