Netharuka Reboot

If you’ve visited this site lately, you’ve probably noticed a conspicuous absence of new content. No, I haven’t gone away, but I felt I needed to get some time away from writing to think about how I wanted to approach this site.

For a lack of a better way to put it: it’s grown dull. It’s not that the articles I wrote were bad per se, but after a while even I get tired of stuff borrowed from other web sites. I got lazy and little by little most of my original content was slowly disappearing from this site.

This also coincided with my involvement with Sankakucomplex. I’ve been regularly contributing over there, and it has definitely had an impact on how I perceive this site. I’ll leave the details about that for another post, but suffice it to say, it’s made me motivated to make this site better.

Bear with me for the next couple of days as I redo this site both conceptually and its overall design.

Age of Conan trial

So Funcom is offering a free 7 day trial of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. I’m slightly tempted by this, but  I am more than a little disappointed that it’s only seven days. With only seven days available, you will probably have enough time to roll a couple of characters and maybe try out a few missions. For MMOs, that isn’t really enough time to get a feel for the game. Most of MMOs play pretty much the same in the beginning part of the game. Your character runs around with beginning equipment, mostly fetching things for non player characters and killing small numbers of low level monsters and critters. Hardly exciting stuff.

I’m a little surprised Funcom is so stingy. This is the game that’s supposedly bleeding subscribers, getting the majority of their lunch money taken away by World of Warcraft and the remainder by Warhammer. I haven’t paid a ton of attention this game, but even I’ve heard of the server merges and the resignation of their CFO. Supposedly Funcom has also made a lot of changes to their game, balancing classes, fixing bugs and improving PvP. That makes the short trial even more ridiculous because as a new player you probably won’t see any of those improvements until you reach the mid levels, which is hardly possible within a scant seven days.

Anyway, if you want a diversion from your main game, you can download the trial here.

12-year-olds on Counter-Strike

A recent video reminded me why I stopped playing Counter-Strike with random people and stuck with matches with friends and people I knew in real life. Take a look at the following video; the kid in it is one of the most obnoxious examples you’ll ever find of the horrors you may encounter in a random public match. Just a warning the video is very NSFW due to racist and foul language:

E-sports on the ropes

Forgive me if I crow a little bit.  The New York Times recently published an article that questioned the sustainability of e-sports in North America. The article notes that Rupert Mordoch’s News Corporation and DirecTV unexpectedly shut down the Championship Gaming Series and that several major e-sports tournaments have been canceled citing the bad economy and lack of sponsorship. Read more

Tauntaun sleeping bag

Wow. It’s cute, cool and disgusting all at the same time. It’s cute because watching a little one snuggle into their favorite animal character sleeping bag is never un-cute. It’s cool, because if you’re a Star Wars fan, you’re impressed how well made that Tauntaun is; it doesn’t hurt that the little tyke is cosplaying Luke. It’s disgusting because if you remember the film, Luke was stuffed into the body cavity of a dead Tauntaun after Han disemboweled it and pulled all the guts out of it - possibly the grossest scene in the Star Wars franchise. It doesn’t help that the sleeping bag lining looks like entrails.

By the way, you can actually buy this if you want - it’s $39.99. Maybe a must-have for a true Star Wars fan?

Via ThinkGeek.

Star Trek porn parody

So apparently, Hustler magazine, is hoping the cash in on the upcoming Star Trek film by making a porn parody of it, and releasing it on the same day. When it was first announced, the movie hadn’t even been cast yet, but getting a cast together and assembling a few props doesn’t seem to be much of a barrier for a porn filmmaker. As Io9 reports, the casting seems complete. Read more

Collective shrug at $99 PS2

As announced in a number of media outlets today and a story first broken by a number of enterprising store clerks who noticed the change in price in their store inventories (as detailed here), the Sony PlayStation 2 is now $99, a drop of $30. This much anticipated announcement wasn’t what hardcore gaming fans were expecting, especially since it was hyped up at sites like Kotaku, 1up and Smarthouse among a few others. Read more

One cool D&D resume

Haha. I love creative resumes even though I’ve rarely seen one in my 14+ years of corporate life. This one would definitely earn an interview from me. I would have a few pointed questions for him though, like why his Artist Block Saving Throw is so low and whether or not he really has a tumbling skill of 15?

Anyway, Sean, if you’re out there, good luck on your job search!

Star Wars Paso Doble

It’s amusing to see Star Wars music put to different mediums. I’m no judge of ballroom dance, but I think the two did pretty well. I just wish they got the lore right. I wonder if the two dancers know that Darth Vader and Princess Leia are father and daughter and sort of an inappropriate pairing for a passionate Latin dance.  Anyways, take a look at the video:

Via Star Wars blog.

Old but cool cartoons

There were a number of old but cool cartoons back in the day that had me glued to my television set on Saturday mornings. I honestly don’t know what’s for kids on Saturday mornings these days since I usually spend my weekends either sleeping in or doing something more productive. However, judging by what’s available on the Internet, I find most American animated fare (at least the stuff geared for morning television) sadly lacking.

Back in the day, realistically rendered cartoons that didn’t look like an episode from your favorite Hanna Barbera show seemed exceedingly rare. The style of the Flintstones and Bugs Bunny pretty much dominated the animation landscape. Things are different now and American animation, from what I’ve noticed, has become much more diverse, adopting styles from anime and forging ahead with unique styles of their own. Read more

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