Proving That Science Make Everything Cool

Like most of the world, I've been hit with that goofy little song and dance, the Gangnam Style. If you don't know what it is, here's the original video.



It's cute, I'll give it that. But I find the video (not the music or the silly dance that goes with it) rather boring.

That's when I discovered that the folks at NASA's Johnson Space Center made a parody. It is so much cooler than the original. It's a bunch of people geeking out for three minutes. No, really.



I really wish I'd become an astronaut.

Flash Games Forever!

As I've said before, I'm a little addicted to flash games. I could play some of them for hours on end. A few of them, however, are better than others.

One of these is William and Sly and its sequel, the recently released and uniquely titled William and Sly 2. (I can give the creator, Lucas Paakh, a lot, but his titling is not at all creative.)

In the first game, you play as Sly and you're trying to turn a bunch of runes back on for your human friend, William.

The stunning 2D play is complimented by equally beautiful music. It plays like a typical platform game. You use the arrow keys to move and jump, and you have to grab a certain number of fairyflies (little floating orange light-y things that fly around in the game) to turn on the runes. Also, like a typical platform, there are regular baddies to destroy called darklings. They pop up and steal your fairyflies. At the end, there's a boss level to fight.

As platforms go, it's not particularly original in its gameplay and yet... I've played this game at least a dozen times, if not more. I'm not sure what it is about the game. Is it the perfect amount of difficulty that keeps it interesting? Is it the amazingly relaxing music? Is it the idea that I might just be playing with a fox that can either jump abnormally high or just happens to live in a world where there isn't a lot of gravity? I'm not sure. This game is one of the darlings of Newgrounds and there doesn't seem to be a specific reason for it.

When William and Sly 2 was released in December, fans of the original game (like me) hyperventilated at the chance to play the long awaited sequel. And we've waited awhile. The original was released in July of 2009.

As gameplay goes, William and Sly 2 is both a wonderfully similar experience, and completely different as well.

Firstly, there's the graphics to consider.

Where the original game was this:

The new game is this:

Yeah. Paakh has taken William and Sly out of the realms of 2D renderings, and into 3D. And it's stunning. The world was already immersive and beautiful, and now it's even more so. Plus there's new music and a brand new series of objectives.

But this is where the similarities start to end. Where the original game was almost typical platform - you mostly went in one direction and you had a level boss - the new game is more open world. There are four objectives here where once there was only one. Now you need to unlock the runes, save the pixies, put the Ahmni back on their towers, and retrieve the scraps of William's journal that those blasted gnomes have scattered everywhere. Now, instead of only moving right, you're going all over the game world. 

There's no boss, either. That doesn't make it any less frustrating at times. I spent my first night with the game desperately trying to find the last key to open the last chest that held the last journal scrap so I could win.

However you look at it, William and Sly is a brilliant game series, and I look forward to seeing if there will be a William and Sly 3. No matter what, I'll play it. You should too. I guarantee, you'll enjoy yourself thoroughly.

A Video Countdown to Christmas - Day 12

On the 12th day of Christmas the blogger gave to me... Someone spiking the eggnog!

Wait, what?

A Video Countdown to Christmas - Day 11

Mythbusters + Christmas = Rube Goldberg Machine? Why not?

A Video Countdown to Christmas - Day 10

Because monks who take a vow of silence like Christmas carols too.

A Video Countdown to Christmas - I've Lost Track

This is what happens when you go home for the holidays. Despite my best intentions I haven't posted a video countdown in three days. No, I'm not going to make up for it. That would be a lot of videos. I don't think you have time to watch four geeky flicks while your family is there and it's a better idea to go play games with them than watch funny videos on my blog anyway.

Sigh. Where was I again? Oh yeah. Video.

YouTube is known for having piles of animal videos, and in some of them the animals even talk. (Warning! Video is a little NSFW. If you don't know what that means, you may want to avoid that video.)

A Video Countdown to Christmas - Day 5

I gotta say, the subject of this video is possibly the most irritating thing about being a Steampunk.

A Video Countdown to Christmas - Day 4

Sorry it's so late, guys. I was cleaning and totally spaced it.


"Quick! Write in happiness!"

A Video Countdown to Christmas - Day 3

Please assume the Party Escort Submission Position before watching this video.

A Video Countdown to Christmas - Day 2

In case you were wondering, each word of the song has a length that corresponds to one of the first 50 digits of pi. So the first word is "Man" which has 3 letters, "I" 1 letter, "can't" 4 letters. Pi's first three digits are 3.14. See?

A Video Countdown to Christmas - Day 1

Hello loyal blog followers, I have returned from the depths of blog apathy to bring you the newest addition to my chronicles of insanity - the Video Countdown to Christmas! From here on out, I will be posting a new video every day following a theme until Christmas gets here.

This year's theme: Blessed are the Geeks, For They Shall Inherit the Earth.

To start us off, here is a fantastic video from The Piano Guys!

I Think I Must be the Worst Blogger Ever

Really. I'm kind of the blogging equivalent to this guy:



Seriously, I'm that kind of a train wreck right now.

The trouble has been that there have been way too many distracting things. Work, school, getting ready to graduate... and way more knitting that I care to admit I've let slip past the realms of Ravelry and my blog.

See, the other thing that's been happening is that I've been busy with a special project.

What kind of special project?


One that heavily exemplifies my eventual and inevitable decent into geekery.

Wait, could you be more specific?


Um... it involves me doing geeky costume-y things?

That's not going to be enough for you, is it.

Okay, here's what I've been doing: For the past few months, I've been slowly amassing my steampunk costume. Yeah, you heard me. A steampunk costume.

I'm obsessed. I've been obsessed with steampunk ever since I read The Voyage of the Basset when I was about nine or ten. I deeply wanted the HMS Basset to be real and take me off to a magical land, and I wanted my very own Wunterlabe (pronounced VOONT-er-lob) to navigate the "Otherwhere and Otherwhen." 

The thing is, everything in the world of the Basset is either clockwork or steampowered, and I was enchanted. This lead to a love of Sherlock Holmes and other victorian mysteries. Then I just started thinking about complicated machinery run entirely by steam and clockwork. I simply lacked the word for what this obsession was.

The weird part was that I honestly thought I was alone in my passion.

Then, a few years ago, an interesting and very fun show came to SciFy network. It was Warehouse 13. Oddly, everything in Warehouse 13 was exactly that. A quick perusing of the wikipedia page told me it was called "steampunk." And that's when I realized that for ten years I have thought I was alone. There are whole conventions for like-minded people. There are musicians and people making music videos about steampunk!



Really, I'm just ahead of the curve. And now I can't wait for Halloween. Geekdome... here I come!