It has been a busy few days since I finished exams on Friday.

I had intended to update the site more often, but some recent news has put a hold on that.
It turns out that Blogware; the blogging service I use, will be shutting down in early 2008.  That means I'm going to have to move my site to a new blogging service... again.  Argh!

Anyways, it shouldn't be too hard, it's just time consuming.

Typepad and Wordpress are at the top of my list.  Any other suggestions?

Five Terrible Senior Pictures



It's easy to go back in time and look at the crazy clothes and crazy hair and get a good laugh. Plaid and mullets had their days. Crochet umbrella, fans sets and peekaboo belly dresses most likely never will.
Check out the rest of these amazingly bad high school graduation photos.  5 Terrible Senior Photos

Haha look at these jerks!  They made decisions in high school that they may have regretted later in life!!! 
Man those people are idiots! I especially love this one!



Bahaha check out this asshole!  He probably ha... ...hey wait a second!

Proof that I wasn't always as handsome and debonair as I am today.

Iron Man Is A Drunk... But I Still Love Him.


Click the image above to see a super high resolution version.

All I can say is that I am really looking forward to the Iron Man movie coming out next year.  Jon Favreau is passionate about the character.  Robert Downey Jr. is perfect for Tony Stark/Iron Man: arms dealing playboy and superhero.  And they got the Stan Winston Studio(the guys who brought us The Predator, Terminator and Aliens) to design and build the Iron Man suit based off the badass Adi Granov conception of the hero.  This movie cannot possibly suck.  You can quote me on that.  Check out the trailer here.

Atlas Shrugged

I'll thankfully be finished my end of term tests very soon.  When I returned home tonight I resolved myself to get any work I had to do out of the way so that I could enjoy the remainder of the evening, and tomorrow unhindered by studying.  I finished my work and decided to take another trip into Rapture. 



Rapture is the underwater utopia-turned-dystopia from the game BioShock.  I finished the game pretty quickly on normal difficulty shortly after it was released earlier this year.  I enjoyed my time in Rapture a great deal, despite the many shortcomings of the game.  That's why I was so glad to hear about the patch for the game that just arrived.  The patch fixes many of the shortcomings I mentioned; minor annoyances really.  Fixing bugs is of course is the main function of the patch, but it will also give the player more options to increase the difficulty.  Additionally new abilities are available to the player... ooh new Plasmids!  I'm going to play through again on hard difficulty with the Vita-Chambers turned off.... hopefully that should provide me with more of a challenge.  Check out the patch at The Cult of Rapture. 

Don't get me wrong, I love BioShock.  I will sing its praises to the highest tower... I just felt a little let down given the games pedigree.  BioShock is after all the spiritual successor to one of my favourite games of all time(yes I know I say that about a lot of games, but I'm serious with this one); System Shock 2.

Like its predecessor, BioShock is a very psychological game.  It knows how to get under the players skin; how to disturb and unsettle you.  The two games are essentially identical in premise, save for their disparate setting and eras.... and that's fine.  I would have played BioShock if it were a shot-for-shot remake of System Shock 2, but that doesn't get to my point. 

The fact that BioShock was developed simultaneously for the PC and Xbox 360 cheapens the experience for the PC gamer.  The two versions of the game are for all intents and purposes identical.  They run on the same engine, play the same and the story is identical.  But they shouldn't.  Maybe this is just the jaded old-school PC gamer in me, but I don't think PC games should be ported to consoles.  The very act of doing so restricts the potential of the PC version by kowtowing it to the limitations of the console version.  To me, playing a console version of the sequel to one of the best PC games ever made would be blasphemy.

When 2kGames was showing off BioShock to the press, they did so with the Xbox 360 version of the game.  BioShock was developed with the Xbox 360 in mind, and because of this the PC version ultimately feels like a direct port of its Xbox 360 counterpart.  BioShock should have been a PC exclusive, a game that could have truly succeeded System Shock 2.  Instead it was turned into a PC version of an Xbox 360 game... a bastardized version of what it could have been.

I'm not some ardent PC snob who despises consoles.  I own a 360 and a PS3.  I probably play console games more regularly than I do PC games.  BioShock doesn't challenge the PC FPS player enough, it doesn't offer the variety and choice promised by the developers, and in that respect BioShock is a disappointment.  All I'm saying is that when you play the PC version of BioShock, you see a game robbed of its potential in the name of mass market appeal and exclusivity deals with Microsoft and NVidia.  I'm not saying that's wrong,  I understand capitalism... You go where the biggest market share is.  And right now that big market share is on the consoles, particularly the Xbox 360.  I just wish they had developed the game for the PC and created a game that lived up to its lineage and truly kept the flame of PC gaming alive.

Does this make me a PC gaming romantic?

- Will

Christopher Nolan's follow up to Batman Begins is looking awesome.  Here's the new Joker themed poster.



Watch for the full theatrical trailer on the upcoming Will Smith movie I Am Legend.



GamerHelp recently posted their Greatest Video Game Endings Of All Time, a pretty awesome list if I do say so.  Well you can't do the greatest endings without making a list of the Greatest Intros of All Time!

While I agree with the list for the most part I lament some of the truly great intros that didn't make their list.
The Final Fantasy VI and XII intros are amazing, as are the intros to any of Namco's fighting titles like Tekken and Soul Calibur.  Of course, there's the train intro to the original Half-Life, and I can't forget the awesome intro to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake from 1990!  Here are a few of my favourites... Come on you can't get J-Pop/Rock like that in a video game intro anymore!











Honourable mentions go to the more recent Dawn of War and of course the classic Fallout 2.





And now back to studying.

- Will

Be warned if you're young or elderly, please do not google any of the horrible things I mention in the following paragraph.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Sometimes I hate the internet, and a little piece of me dies inside.
I've been traumatized enough by the cruel Mistress that is the internet... goatse, 2girls 1cup, tub girl, and all manner of sexual deviancy flung my way by others as a "joke".  Rule 34 of the internet states:
If something exists, there is porn of it.



However, for every horrible thing I will never be able to unsee that the internet throws my way, something good and hilarious will bubble to the surface.  Case and point this random forum gem.



You're the best internet.  Thanks to fibbery of the site that shall not be named for finding this.

Martin Scorsese Shoots Hitchcock... Sort Of.



Yes it's an advertisement for wine... but it has Martin Scorsese... shooting a Hitchcock homage!  Scorsese doesn't sell out for less than $50,000 an hour, so I too am sold.

Check out the mini-mockumentary and....The Key to Reserva

Man Finally Put In Charge Of Struggling Feminist Movement



WASHINGTON—After decades spent battling gender discrimination and inequality in the workplace, the feminist movement underwent a high-level shake-up last month, when 53-year-old management consultant Peter "Buck" McGowan took over as new chief of the worldwide initiative for women's rights.

Read the rest of this hilarious Onion article here.  My roommate thankfully interrupted my studying by sharing this with me.  But now I must return to the drudgery of cramming for exams.... this is all the procrastination I will allow myself... Internet.... Can I resist your whiles!?

- Will