“Make no mistake, there will be a trial and when that trial ends, senators will have to decide if they believe Donald John Trump incited the erection against the United States.”

— Chuck Schumer can't get it up; no, really

More Spore


I couldn’t resist linking to this one. Eeeeeevil.

Queen's Blade: The Solo Game


ANN says Queen’s Blade TV anime series. I expect well-rounded character designs with paper-thin personalities, bound together by fate in a by-the-numbers plot.

One in every crowd...


A short visit to Sporepedia.

The creator: 500000753443 Lrg

The artist: 500000752060 Lrg

The specialist: 500000751545 Lrg

One in every crowd:

more...

Expect to see a lot of these...


Today was the public pre-release of the Spore Creature Creator. Lots of people are going to be making critters and posting pictures and videos of them.

Here’s my only contribution for the foreseeable future:

sample Spore creature

And here’s the video, which works in some video players, but not others. (Quicktime with assorted plugins, but not Quicktime as a browser plugin, for some reason; also, no VLC)

I like the way that the children are chibified.

[Update: the web site claims 71,860 creatures uploaded in the last 24 hours. Oh, yeah, you’ll be seeing a lot of these.]

This is wrong tour


Never use this.

Step 1: Take the train to Akihabara on a Sunday. Step 2: Pay an American cosplayer $50 for a tour. Step 3: Profit?

At least they advertise it correctly: anyone on this tour will indeed be called “otaku” by the natives…

Ooma goes retail!


We’ve been taking it slow, but we’ve finally got a retail trial running. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you can finally see our product before buying one, at Best Buy.

"Now throw the switch and let us begin the battle for the planet."
--- The Brain

On Piracy


Back in March, Shamus Young suggested practical ways software vendors can deal with piracy. Step number 5 was “clean house”: as with movies, most of the widely-traded pirated copies of games come from insiders, not retail customers who’ve disabled DRM on their copy and uploaded it.

Supporting evidence for this claim? I just saw the official honest-to-prepress PDF file for the just-released 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook. I’m sure WotC will sell plenty of copies of the book, but I’m also sure a lot of people will be downloading this PDF version for free.

[Update: heh; some downloaders have outed themselves by posting rules complaints and questions based on the PDFs, which apparently are not identical to the printed books. The files that leaked out were not the “gold masters”, as it were.]

Moe Max?


While idly browsing the recommendations on Amazon Japan, I found the latest volume in the apparently-popular Moe yo! Tank School series. The uniforms are decidedly non-regulation, but what really caught my eye was the mascot on their tank.

I had my hopes up for a moment, but sadly, it looks like a generic angry bunny-head, not the one true Max.

“Need a clue, take a clue,
 got a clue, leave a clue”