January 2009
72 posts
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Rewind 4: Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale, ...
December 2008
59 posts
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2008 Gaming Retrospective
Here we are, the last day of the year 2008. Being a gamer, it’s amazing to look back and see the multitude of great experiences that were had this year… and also grieve my wallet’s slightly anemic form. Regardless, it was an idyllic year in gaming. Even just describing them can show what a diverse crowd showed up.
In what other year did you defend small hula-children, command an...
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IPhone Apps: Don't Be That Guy With The New Year's... →
Remember when the iPhone still had class?
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Go easy on me; it's my first day.
Um. Hi!
OK, that was awkward.
So, I’m here primarily to opine about food and drink. I have no outstanding qualifications, other than that I drink alot (mainly craft beer and gin), eat alot (although I can’t cook to save my life… worst foodie in history? Very possibly!), and get paid to be a coffee snob (oh god, don’t get me started). I imagine you’ll hear from...
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WatchBy Eirik Solheim
More fun time lapse videos from Vimeo, and an old favorite.
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Commence Snake-Hating
On the independent games front, I made an awesome discovery this morning when browsing various forums. The discovery, much like the ones you’ll make in this game, seemed totally random yet here it is: Spelunky!
The basic idea behind this is crossing a platformer’s mechanics with the level generation behind Rogue-likes such as Shiren the Wanderer or the Mysterious Dungeon games. What...
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Seattle and Minneapolis in a literary battle to... →
Paper cut casualties are at a six year high as Minneapolis (pfft, what?) and Seattle (woo) tie for “Most Literate City.” Calculated by six factors (newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources), Minnepoopolis and Seattle-the-fair have traded places at the top of the list over 6 years.
...
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Best Graphic Novels, Part 2
Scott Pilgrim
by Brian Lee O’Malley
This series has been going since 2004, but it’s back in the spotlight because of an upcoming Universal film (and I just caught up with it), so I would like to review Scott Pilgrim anyway.
The Scott Pilgrim series is based around main character Scott discovering that the girl of his dreams is real, and is in fact using his mind as a shortcut...
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Jews in Space (Jew-ish.com) →
The fine folks over at Seattle-based Jew-ish.com have enlightened me to something deeply excellent. From a creative little essay on how Jews should treat extraterrestrials when we finally encounter them (link above) we get this fact:
“From Golem stories, which are closely mimicked in robot-based fiction, to Spock’s hand gesture in Star Trek (a holy gesture signaled by the Cohanim, the high...
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Finding a Better Cup
Seattle is an awkward place when it comes to coffee. We’re the seeminly proud origins of multi-megaton coffee giant Starbucks, yet we as denizens of the ‘coffee capital’ aspire to a greater taste. It’s true: compared to the vast majority of coffee pots divorced from the coasts, Starbucks is heavenly. Though, just as much as we seek shelter from rainy days, Seattleites...
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Ok, all the CloudHerders sort of skirted the whole...
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Screaming Mimi
I love my adopted Emerald city, but there are times when I just want to roundly smack every journalist who works here. Take a gander at three consecutive headlines from the Seattle P-I last week.
“SNOWED UNDER.” Yes, all 6 terrifying inches of it.
“START PRAYING NOW.” Is this about the snow or the bus collision in which no one was hurt?
“WILL IT EVER STOP?”...
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A Descent into the Darkness
Over the past...
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Art by Daniel Krall →
I’ve been doing a lot of internet wandering over the past weeks, and I stumbled across the art of Daniel Krall on one such journey. Bright, stylized pop-art, his subjects range from superheroes to raves to book covers, and all of them are fun and kitschy. Some of his work clearly hearkens back to a 50s vibe, with clear, defining lines to clothing and hair, and his portrayal of pretty...
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Gaming Lineage Part 5 ~ 1999-2000
This is a continuing series. If you want to start from the beginning, check out the posts tagged Gaming Lineage.
1999 - Year of Sprites’ Return & Classic FPS’s
Grandia - A port of the original Saturn RPG, which has the second best sense of exploration and wonderment in a game that I’ve played.
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete - A remake of the original Sega CD...
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Gaming Lineage Part 4 ~ 1997-1998
This is a continuing series. If you want to start from the beginning, check out the posts tagged Gaming Lineage.
1997 - Year of Fandom Origins
Atomic Bomberman - Amusingly enough, this was my introduction to Bomberman. Not genuine at all, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Diablo - My introduction to online gaming, and the origin of my first gamer handle: Diablo Knight. I was so freaking...
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Chrono Cross Arranged Preview
Check out the background music at Procyon Studio’s website.
As a Christmas gift from composer Yasunori Mitsuda, the fine folks at Procyon Studio have released the first track from the just-announced Chrono Cross arranged album. The CD will be released next year for the 10th anniversary of Chrono Cross’ release. From the sound of the orchestra used in this track, it seems that it is a...
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Year-End Rewind 3:
Seabear, The Ghost That Carried...
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Best Graphic Novels, Part 1
The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite
Gerald Way & Gabriel Ba
This novel could be called a “tour-de-force”, but that is inadequate- It’s simply a near-perfect condensation of a superhero-squad story run through the steampunk tumbler for a high degree of quirk and charm (the children’s benefactor “invented the televator, the levitator, the mobile umbrella communicator”). The first page (a...
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Busview Applet Launch →
This is one of the more fabulous things I have seen in a while. The pop-up window on busview. org details exactly where busses in King County are in their routes, when they can be expected to arrive, and why the hell I always manage to miss the 30 by one minute every time I try to catch it. Plus, there’s detailed route info, and even an alarm setting that ostensibly will warn you when your...
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WatchWallis Bird, Blossoms in the Street
I honestly kind of can’t deal with how cute she is. If I were to make a video about my life I think it would end up looking a bit like this, but I’m not a platinum-haired Irish pixie, so it would all just be a little sad.
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The Year-End Rewind
Rewind 2:
Wallis Bird, Spoons...
Startup seeks someone to watch funny or cute... →
Hm.. I wonder if this has been filled yet.
The Big Picture - Boston.com →
Incredible photo blog- check out the 2008 retrospective
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WatchLittleBigPlanet, which to no surprise is high contender for my game of the year, is expanding. While the original game provides an unthinkable amount of customization and flare, a new special expansion pack is being released next week that is bringing even more to the plate and is exciting me immensely.
The above video, if you haven’t clicked play already, is a trailer for the...
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Gaming Lineage Part 3 ~ 1994-1996
This is a continuing series. If you want to start from the beginning, check out the posts tagged Gaming Lineage.
1994 - Year of Gameplay Over Graphics
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening - Still my favorite of the Zelda games ever made. It also is the first Zelda game I ever beat, as the NES ones were far too difficult for me at a young age.
NBA Jam: Tournament Edition - The only...
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The Year-End Rewind
Most blogs do an end of the...
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Wintry Mix
SaRRa: Where the crap is the snow we've been promised/warned about?
Nickherder: Yeah, there's no snow...I think the wind blew it away
SaRRa: My widget claims it is snowing diamonds, currently.
SaRRa: Honestly, I can't figure out what the image is telling me, besides that there's a cloud that's releasing round, faceted white orbs that look suspiciously diamondoid.
Nickherder: Frozen rain, maybe?
SaRRa: And it ain't doing that outside my window.
Nickherder: My widget says it's snowing & raining. Oh wait, now it's just a cloud.
SaRRa: It's dubbed "wintry mix" on the rollover. That's a freakin candy type, not a weather pattern.
Nickherder: I want to see the widget image for Ragnarok
SaRRa: It's just the eye of Sauron
And, from the Seattle P-I today:
"Schools throughout greater Seattle closed Wednesday at the mere threat of snow late in the day, a symptom of the city's deep phobia of the white stuff and near-complete inability to deal with any significant snowstorm."
"So the fear of snow pervades far beyond the schools. Metro, the Seattle area's transit system, put tire chains on 80 percent of its 1,329-bus fleet overnight. But after the chains kicked up sparks on bare pavement during the morning commute, forcing drivers to go 35 mph or less to avoid tearing up the roadways, the chains were removed, said Metro spokeswoman Linda Thielke."
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Geek girl heroine Felicia Day should be on your...
Creator of “The Guild,” a web-based series of short episodes about a group of eccentric online gamers, Day is a professional actress, musician and writer. First seen in primetime in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Day wrote, starred-in and directed the first season of “The Guild.” Season one was shot on a shoe-string budget that was funded almost entirely by fellow MMORPGers donating to...
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Gaming Lineage Part 2 ~ 1992-1993
This is a continuing series. If you want to start from the beginning, check out the posts tagged Gaming Lineage.
1992 - Year of Animals and Others
Bucky O’Hare - Forever remembered as the franchise that turned the school bully into one of my best friends. The yellow planet plagued my existence.
TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist - While everyone else was playing Turtles in Time in the...
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Growing up so fast..
We now have our own domain- cloudherder.tumblr.com is now www.cloudherder.net! Be sure to update your bookmarks and tell some friends. You will still be able to access the blog at the tumblr address (it will redirect you).
The new domain gives us the ability to add new features and make our blog be even more like what we envisioned. It also makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. So stay...
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Sonja Blomdahl and Shelley Muzylowski Allen at the...
Two beautiful shows are currently on display at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Washington. Washington glass artists Blomdahl and Muzylowski are on opposite sides of the spectrum, career-wise and in their subject matter, but the side-by-side shows are each notable on their own merits. Additionally, it’s a welcome thing to see two female artists showing at a museum without having a...
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Gaming Lineage Part 1 ~ 1990-1991
As a kid with a game console, there’s a very different perspective when it comes to the games themselves. It’s a feeling of, well, I’ve got this small collection of games and I’m going to play the hell out of them because I know I won’t get another any time soon. And so the games we play as kids might be chosen or by chance, but they often evolve and form a lineage of...
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The Art of Staring
As photography rapidly became a widespread art form, painting began to mimic its technique and feel straight across the board. Suddenly, portrait subjects were being painted mid-word, mid-gesture, or blurred as if too long exposed. Faces were patches of intense light and deep shadow, dappled and un-demarcated, as if crystallized in the light of a flashbulb. Landscape and city street became an...
Donuts →
Photo/copyright Eli Black-Mizuta
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Snow!
Real, honest-to-god, snow in North Seattle. Winter isn’t a lie after all!
(Snow melting turning to black ice in t-minus 9 hours.)
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Turning To The Church
Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches - NYTimes.com
Mars Hill is mentioned in the 2nd paragraph as having grown 1,000 members to 7,000, “One of the fastest-growing evangelical churches in the country.” If you aren’t familiar with Mars Hill, it’s a church that appeals to 20-somethings and is known for some controversy.
That is beside the point, however. When times are tough, we need...
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More of What We Already Have. Hurray!
Well folks, bid a farewell to your favorite teriyaki-joint-on-the-side-of-the-road, Hoki’s Teriyaki Hut. Even after sprucing up the joint with new management and a paint job the not-so-venerable Hut has succumbed and will re-open as a Pasta/Pizza-Italian-restaurant-on-the-side-of-the-road. Yes, because Leary needs another Italian place. It’s like adding another Thai restaurant to the U...
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Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, 2008
Edited by up and coming urban fantasy author Ekaterina Sedia, this collection of short stories brings together international notable and not-yet-notable perspectives on the myriad lives of cities. In a palimpsest of modern and medieval, fantastical and realistic, 21 writers expound on what it means to be a city dweller, and on the many wonders and...
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Cavity-inducing link of the day
Now that the Shiba Inu puppies are too big to be cute anymore, what will get us through the day? How will we get through the long hard slog of work without being able to check in on 6 romping/sleeping/fighting puppies streamed 24 hours a day?
KITTENS. They’re Icelandic, so that adds a bonus +5 to cuteness. Am I trying to get you fired? Yes, yes I am.
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Persona 4 Initial Impressions
The Persona series, for the uninitiated, is a collective of games developed by Atlus in the Shin Megami Tensei universe. The general theme surrounding each one is a group of individuals that come together in some manner, organized or not, to solve a mystery involving supernatural occurances. During the course of the game, they discover the use of their Personas, manifestations of their darker...