It Looks To Be Another Update Of Sorts

I'm only kind of at a loss as to what to talk about today.  I wasn't able to post this last Friday (8/9/2013) as Conklederp and I had some friends (Vorlynx and Mills Co.) visiting from Nor*Cal all last week.  There was a robotics conference up here in Portland and there was some river floating and blackberry picking that had to be done as well.  We also started the process of making blackberry wine (adapted recipe to follow) and now our kitchen smells like fermenting fruit, which in turn brings me back to my time working for R.H. Phillips Winery during the 2006 harvest season.  It's the kind of smell that would make you think some fruit somewhere has done something it shouldn't have, if you didn't already know where it was coming from.  Goodtimes.

I've (still) been playing a lot of Infinite Space, (still) and have acquired some more "abilities" such as having a docking bay for individual fighters (a la Battlestar Galactica's Colonial Vipers) which cause minimal damage to the opposing fleets flagship while slowing down the rest of their fleet; realizing that icons above each of the ships in your fleet correspond to weapons and each have their own max and min range; melee battles are a pain-in-the-ass and play like a constant game of  roshambo; ship modules of a certain type (such as bridge/red modules) can fit in other areas of the ship as long as they don't say they have to be in a specific location in the description; "Grus" is a word used in the game that is substituted interchangeably for both "shit" and "fuck" and any other variation thereof; the game is pretty mature, considering it's Teen rating, such as the main character cutting off a bad guys arms to get information and a main character shooting a bad guy at point-blank range in the face out of frustration/fear/anger.  There's a lot going on in the game and a lot of space to do it in, sometimes almost too much space.

I also played a bit of Portal 2 co-op with Vorlynx, but only so much before I had to leave for work (which was also before he had finished the single player campaign).  I've also put roughly six more hours into Torchlight, 2 hours into Half-Life and maybe an hour into Penumbra: Black Plague.  Torchlight is more-or-less just dungeon crawling fun that I continue with after Half-Life becomes too frustrating with having/needing to save after every encounter with enemies and then reloading every time I feel I've wasted too much ammunition or taken too much damage.  I want to play more of Penumbra: Black Plague (partly so that I can write up my First Impressions, but also) because I really liked the first game in the series, I like the company (Frictional Games) and I want to see how the story will end.  And semi-most importantly, I want to play it in the dark for maximum un-nervingnous.

I also went through a couple of the demos that I have on my 3DS, most successfully were the two demos for Style Savvy which will make their way to Demo Time in the coming weeks.  Yes, stop laughing.

I haven't kept up with video games in the news and what's been going on in that world.  I haven't played enough "older" games to warrant another Emulator Hour.  I kind of feel like a bad person, except that I don't.  Boo hoo me, I know.

With all the PAX timbits floating around, I'm very sad that I will not be able to attend PAX Prime this year (as I haven't been able to since PAX2010) due to work scheduling problems.  It doesn't help either that I live 600 miles closer than I did when I was able to attend, but things are in the works (loosely) so that I will be able to attend in the future, although I vaguely recall making a similar statement last year around this same time.

Oh hey look, The Bridge is on sale.  Time to go and take care of that.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Wonders Need Time