For the Love of Ben G.

Ultra Cool Disc Treatment

Holy cow. I want one of these $199 babies so bad. Clearly, by using the QUADRI-BEAM ULTRA CLARIFIER on my DVDs, the compressed data on the disc will get.. less compressed!

It's just like the over-used movie trope where Will Smith narrows his eyes at the tiny, blurry, zoomed-in image on his computer screen, and says "Enhance the image!". Suddenly, the image magically gets more data and becomes crisp and clear.

It's sort of like Willy Wonka's Great Glass Elevator, which as everyone knows, used skyhooks, not those silly rockets in the Johnny Depp movie. (Johnny, we love you, but please, don't ever talk like Michael Jackson again.)

I Was Not Aware

Now, I'm as big a fan of Aphex Twin as the next guy. (Well, I can only listen to so much before my ears start to bleed, but I think that's kind of the point.)

Here's one of his kinder, gentler tunes. More with the soft and fluffy, less with the "brains leaking out my nostrils" feeling:

Aphex Twin – Flim (LP Version)

What blew my mind this morning was to find out that people actually do covers of Aphex Twin songs. Here's The Bad Plus doing a live cover of the song above (Flim):

Super Joe! Badds! Hitler!

Holy schnikes! Bionic Commando is making a comeback! It's one of my last childhood video game memories that hasn't yet been stripped of its innocence and forced to live on the streets as a 3D urchin.

Let's hope Capcom Japan has the sense to keep a hands-off approach, and that Capcom USA has enough sense to make it as funny as the original was.

I loved killing Hitler Master D at the end of the original 1980s NES game. What a classic!

... Geez. My last three blog posts have all been about video games. I just can't help myself: they're like sweet little nuggets of digital crack. Maybe I need to see a professional about this..

Aperture Science: We Do What We Must Because We Can

Run, do not walk, to your nearest PC or virtualization solution and grab Valve's Orange Box.  Even if you're not a first-person shooter fan, the collection comes with a terrific little first-person puzzle game called Portal, which I just finished at the behest of a friendly co-worker.

And it was the best three hours I've spent in a long time.  I couldn't stop laughing at the ending credits; I don't want to spoil anything, but they really put a lot of heart into the end of the game.  The way the computer mocks you in its sing-song synthetic voice, it's just wonderful.

Highly recommended.  Oh, and Orange Box comes with some other little game called Half-Life 2, with a bunch of expansion packs or something.  Never heard of the thing, I guess it was popular once. :)

Be sure to visit the secret Aperture Science web page!  I hear if you log in as 'portal' and try guessing a password, there's some goodies there.

Together at Last

Oh lordy. My childhood dreams have come to fruition:

Sonic can finally beat the hell out of Mario in the upcoming Smash Bros. Brawl for Nintendo Wii.

I don't know about you, but I've been waiting for this moment since I was a little kid. I'm giggling like a schoolgirl on the inside. Cheers to the folks at Sega who made this possible! I know how hard getting this kind of thing through the legal process can be.