Wintergatan – Marble Machine

Hemingway Editor

Since the beginning, I’ve been using this blog to improve my communication skills. I push myself to write clear and concise posts like I read on Reuters, TwistedSifter, Tiny Cartridge, and Daily Overview. I use Hemingway when it’s time to edit my thoughts down to a single paragraph. Hemingway highlights any parts that are hard to read so I can make sure the finished post still makes sense.

Hooray for self-demonstrating articles! My title text doesn't have the one paragraph limit and I don't normally run it through Hemingway. I tried Hemingway on this title text and it's Grade 6 (Good). It doesn't like adverbs like "normally".

Source: Hemingway Editor via I think Lifehacker

Stéphane Picq – Fractalian Space

30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 28: Music that makes you nostalgic From MegaRace (DOS, 1993)

My first CD-ROM game. It came with our Windows 3.11 computer. MegaRace isn’t very good, but it gave us Lance Boyle and some early 90s CG videos that we get to drive on.

Source: YouTube, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun

hpknight – Saturday

pixiv is basically the Japanese DeviantArt, full of talented artists I’d never have heard of otherwise. I picked up Udon’s Pixiv Almanac last year at PAX East and I craved more. I’m now subscribed to pixiv Top Weekly – Top 20 which gives a good balance of quality and quantity. Other pixiv feeds are available at PixivRss. If people like this post, I may do some more like this in the future.

You can click each image below to visit its posting on pixiv. If you register an account there, you can download the full resolution image. Also, this is a good time to remind you that I write mouseover text for almost every image on this blog, which you can see whether you’re on my site or reading my RSS feed.

(This post and the four before it were all one post over on my old blog. Tumblr doesn’t support mouseover text, so I’ve copied those over as plain text for each image’s post.)

That sky is pretty! I use this as the wallpaper for my Grub menu to choose which OS to boot into. I think I was actually linked to this one by a Tumblr blog I followed, but I forget which one. Sorry.

UPDATE: Added Google Translate-based guesses for all titles and usernames to bring this more in line with my other pixiv posts

Source: 「土曜日」/「嗨P」のイラスト [pixiv]

Kaplamino – The blue marble

Domino builder Kaplamino also experiments with Rube Goldberg contraptions like PythagoraSwitch. Here, Kaplamino challenged himself to launch a tiny blue marble all over a tilted table in using clever magnet tricks. All these unstable setups arranged in 2D make me want to play some Incredible Machine.

Source: Kaplamino via TwistedSifter…again, like my other marble video post

Quake Live

Quake Live is a refreshingly fast and simple first person shooter straight out of the 90s. It was merely a free-to-play version of Quake III Arena until a few weeks ago when they added weapon loadouts. You now start with one of four primary weapons and one of four secondary weapons. If you want to start every life with a railgun and a shotgun, now you can! Quake Live made its debut on Steam this week, so find me there and join the fight!

If all the guns and killing put you off, how about Jazzpunk’s take on it? It’s full of gaming references like this.

Source: Quake Live – Official Steam Launch Trailer – YouTube via Rock Paper Shotgun, also Jazzpunk – Wedding Qake & PolyBlanka vs. Some Honda – YouTube via a DuckDuckGo search

Rob Hubbard – Monty on the Run

30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 26: Music you like from a game you haven’t played From Monty on the Run (C64, 1985)

I grew up in an Apple II house, so I’ve barely touched the Commodore 64. I’ve played Space Taxi a couple times, but that’s it. Is THEC64 worth picking up?

Source: YouTube via I Wanna Be the Guy, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun

Dr. Fatbody - Sonic the Hedgehog 1 at AGDQ2019

Awesome Games Done Quick 2019 brought us a Sonic 1 run by Dr. Fatbody, a highly entertaining player with the speed and precision of a yung Wumbo. He tries risky tricks that backfire sometimes and will goof off a little for style. When everything works, he’s really fast! He reminds me of my own playaround style, and now I know why. He’s also from the fighting game community and plays Zangief in Street Fighter V! It all makes perfect sense now.

Source: Games Done Quick via GeekNights

Girls and Space!! – pixiv Spotlight

These girls should be very dead. If I could survive without heat, air, atmospheric pressure, and radiation protection, then I’d wish I could float around in space too. Maybe they can do it because it’s cool, or maybe they’re robots? pixiv Spotlight posts twice a day in English, and this one’s about girls in space.

In a far off place not yet known to us… the cosmos!! Humans have long before wanted to travel through the universe… a very romantic idea! Ever looked up at the sky and just wondered about the Milky Way? Today’s Spotlight is about the fantastically magical cosmos… with girls! Mysterious and awesome, all at the same time. Check them out.

I wondered how I should reblog a pixiv Spotlight. For now, I'll copy the behavior of pixiv Spotlight's RSS feed, with one image that you can click to get to their full post. I hope this is OK. I mean, technically I should be spelling pixiv with a lowercase p and Nanahime as NaNa_HI_ME.

NaNa_HI_ME – Yume no Hoshi

Source: Girls and Space!! and ななひめ – ゆめのほし via pixiv Spotlight‘s English RSS feed

PAX East 2014 trip and Twitter

I’m on my way to PAX East 2014 with three of my friends, about to ride the Metal Gear Line to Boston. The 19-hour train ride each way is basically a mini-convention full of gamers that are also going to PAX East. I’ll be using my normally-inactive Twitter to arrange meet-ups with friends, and I’ll be keeping tabs on Facebook and #pax IRC too. For those of you that are headed to PAX East, let’s meet up and play some games! If you’re not going to PAX East, why not? It’s 60,000 people meeting up and playing games. What’s not to like? I’ll post some pictures at the end.

Tweets by @hitstun !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");

I was going to post the Geeknights PAX East 2012 highlight video here, but the video's thumbnail includes a pony on one of their badges. I'm trying to avoid ponies, but with Kinkaido and the other bronies from my stream here, I probably won't be able to hold them off for long. We're picking it up at Bryan on the northwest corner of Ohio. I probably won't be able to dodge ponies there either. Resistance is futile.

Source: PAX East 2014 and PAX Community Wiki

Thank You Scientist – Swarm (8-Bit Version)

Thank You Scientist is a seven-piece band playing jazz fusion progressive metal, my favorite! Their new album is streaming in lots of places including YouTube. The band’s drummer, Faye Fadem, thought Swarm would sound cool as a chiptune, so she made it happen. The title says “8-Bit”, but the SNES samples and K.K. Slider vocals say otherwise.

Source: Thank You Scientist Bandcamp