RealFolkBlues

So BGC's thread got me thinking: how many of ya'll have kids? This thread can also be for anything parenting-related (such as pictures or funny stories about your kids,) but please don't derail the thread with diatribes about overpopulation and such. That would probably be great fodder for a PPR thread. I will start! I have a two year old son named Jon Leo. He is pretty awesome in all respects, though he decided he would really get into the role of a two year old literally the day before his birthday. We were trying to bring him from our room to the bathroom for his bath and he decided that just wasn't the plan. Threw the worst tantrum we had thus far seen, complete with holding onto the door frames and flinging himself down head-first onto the ground. Pretty ridiculous. Still surprisingly cute, though. Alright, OCR, go, go, go!

D'awww, that sounds adorable. Our son just turned two a few weeks back. Mayhap we should make an OCR parents thread. I would be interested to see who all has younguns.

Happy belated birthday! Also, it's sweet your b-day is St. Patty's!

This is pretty sweet. You guys should check out the Chrono Trigger Mixtape and Team Teamwork, if you haven't already.

I liked this video. Good examples and well-edited. I thought her "lecture" diction worked well in the context of her providing some introduction and analysis. Overall, I think her point was solid; the damsel in distress trope is ubiquitous in games and objectifies/dis-empowers women. I think she could easily compare how using the old "end of the world" trope would probably have worked as well in any of these game plots, and often if paired with the damsel in distress. I would like to see her talk more about how games have (sadly) been almost entirely the domain of men and boys, with men making and marketing them for boys and young men to play. As the industry has grown, this has changed somewhat, with more and more women involved and sexism (extremely) slowly losing some of its hold on the art form. I believe this trend will continue in games, just as it has in other media. That having been said, I'm sure she will at least touch on all that, if not go into depths. I am really looking forward to the rest of her series. I'm also really interested to see where she goes with Samus, though I'm sure she will make hay out of her portrayal in Other M. I hope she remembers that that game was made by a developer (Team Ninja) well-known for objectifying women.

I've been married for two years as of last October!

Yeah, this is true actually. Liontamer has the sickest vendetta. Ask him about it.

Bumping this up from way back. I just beat the main story last night, though, so I wanted to see what everyone thought. I don't want to start a flame war, but I am very disappointed with this game. I LOVED AC2, Brotherhood, and Revelations, and even liked AC1 a lot better than it seems most did. I had some real issues with this one, though. For starters, the game is just way too damned buggy. I'm sorry, it's horseshit to release a hugely anticipated game that bugs out all of the frickin' time, yearly/holiday release dates be damned. In the words of Miyamoto, a delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever. I'll grant it's a little different now that they can release patches, but I'm still watching horses get stuck in fences. WTF, Ubisoft? That having been said, there were many things this game did very well. The frontier is beautiful and fun, there is copious amounts of stuff to do, and the naval battles are terrific. I'm just a sucker for polish, and this game is sorely lacking in that area.

Oh man, nice one, ocre. I'm loving this show's first season. I sort of wish I could be on the next season, but my nerdiness is very broad, but not especially deep. Seriously, I've done a ton of nerdy stuff (except for cosplay and larping, I don't think I've heard of much I haven't done in terms of nerd activities,) and I love all manner of nerd material, but I don't know if they would be interested in a nerd of all trades. Meh, I really don't think I could do it with my schedule/general lack of funds. All that having been said, someone on here should totes do it. DJP? Zircon? BGC? There are some real nerd's nerds here, and of course I mean that in the best possible way.

Ugh, somewhere around there I stopped the simulator challenges. There were what, like 26, 28 challenges? I think I three-starred up until 24 or 25, when they started just making the challenges lame, with multiple PerfectSims (cheating bastards, those guys) against you. Stupid. As it was, I got up to rank 5 or 6. Multi was fun on that game, but I was really about the campaign.

Yuuuuppppp. The stuff in between the chapters is proof enough to me as well that the man could do prose if he wanted just as easily, and that the book could work almost as well as a novel.

Pretty much my philosophy. Rare ruined me for collectathon's back on the 64. I got 105% or whatever it was on DKC64, and now any collectable without a really nice reward I ignore. Other than that, I beat Perfect Dark on Perfect mode. I've talked to a handful of other people who have done that. Was mostly a lot of fun doing it at the time, but now I really feel no need to play most games, especially FPS's, on the harder or hardest difficulties.

While surprising (especially Moore,) 'tis like you say. To each his own. I, for one, can't stand Grant Morrison, even though everyone in the industry and most comic fans have like the biggest hard-on ever for him. Oh, BTW, The Derrit, one more for ya; Neil Gaiman, especially Sandman. The last few story arcs are kind of weak but that series starts out great.

Sweet Jesus. This. So this. I am a Mass Effect fanatic (stupid ending and all.) I'm reading all of the side material they have put out now, actually. I didn't even start playing until ME3 was almost out. A friend made me borrow the first one because I mentioned that I hadn't played it, and it was game over from there, natch. Too be honest, I thought I would like it okay, but I thought I would be bored and have to drag myself through it. I had watched friends play other Bioware games and just wasn't too pumped. Boy howdy, I'm glad I was wrong.

DarkeSword has a bunch of good recommendations thus far, but I gotta throw some in here. Garth Ennis, especially Preacher and The Boys. Preacher is narrowly my third favorite comic. Y: The Last Man. Amazing. Narrowly, but still decidedly my second favorite comic. And great Caesar's ghost, Alan Moore. Anything by him will slap you across the face with its awesomeness. Especially Watchmen, though, if you haven't read it. I liked the movie pretty well (many people did not and I can see why and also don't really want to start a flame war here,) but the book is still better. And by better, I mean one of my favorite books. Period. I'll grant, most of that is not necessarily under-appreciated, but still. Good stuff.

HA! That's sweet. My dad had a balalaika on the wall of our house when I was growing up. I like this thing. Makes me think of the Guitarron from mariachi music. Pretty sweet, and totally silly looking. BTW, I guess it's not too odd for us OCR nerds, but I still think the Theremin deserves a nod. Pretty weird by most measures, I'd say.

Nice find on the webpage in general! That bamboo sax is sweet. I would love to hear a jazz band/tracks based on its tone.

I love my smartphone. I didn't think they were so awesome until I had one. Now the thought of not having one pretty much amounts to barbarism in my mind. Utilities: Agreed with all the Google utilities; Google's road view (part of their Maps) is crazy awesome for directions. Dictionary app - helps if you are into precision with language. Flashlight app is pretty damned useful for obvious reasons. Yellowpages - you could just Google everything, but this is pretty handy. ColorNotes - very useful for scribbling down rando stuff, as you might expect. Zedge - the mad hookup for ringtones and such. I usually do a whole theme for whatever game I'm playing at the time. At the moment I have an Assassin's Creed thing going on with background, notification sound, ringtones, etc. Weather channel app. 'Nuff said. Shazam - it's surprisingly sweet to be able to press a button and see the pertinent song information. Pandora - pretty nice having all kinds of music on your phone without even using space on an SD card. As for games, I haven't played too many, really, but the Angry Birds series is a must have. These games are seriously incredible. Fantastic for casual gamers but surprisingly in-depth for hardcore peeps. Seriously. Dragon, Fly is also fun, though not of course of the same caliber.

Bump for it being this coming weekend. I have to try. Sigh. No love for Asheville or me. Seriously, though, I suppose most of you are gearing up for MAGFest, and I can't blame you. Traveling however many hours to go to some rando city to a comic expo to see 3 vg bands is perhaps a bit extravagant. Nonetheless, since I can like never go to MAGFest again, this was kind of a godsend. I will post pics and let you know if these guys continue to rock. My guess? Yes they do.

Good god, Buckeyes, where the hell did that come from? That was amazing. Just amazing.

Sweet! How near?

Check it out. So last year my beloved Asheville, North Carolina played host to a comic convention (Fanaticon,) and it was pretty sweet. Unfortunately, Fanaticon is no longer, so our local awesome comic shop Comic Envy picked up the slack and organized a new con for this year. It's called the Asheville Comic Expo (ACE,) and will take place October 13th, 11am - 7pm. It should be fun in general, but for all you video game metal fans, ACE has a real treat in the form of some fantastic nerd metal groups; , friend of the site Danimal Cannon, and (mostly) AVL natives Metroid Metal. It should be awesome. Come on, OCR! Come to my city and rock! Some of you guys even live relatively nearby. BGC? DJP? You know me. (Sorry.) Seriously, though, it should be badass.

Yet another fantastic Easter egg. I'm super excited about this movie. A comedy based in the video game universe sounds pretty great by itself, but then you throw in some great voice acting (John C. Reilly, Jane Lynch, Sarah Silverman, etc.,) and this should be very solid.

Congrats again, 'dude! Remember now, your whole job the next eighteen years is to keep her off the pole. As much as you may be into working on a remix, if she asks if you can talk, drop it! Nobody wants their daughter in clear heels! Seriously, though, that's awesome. Best of luck!