Xeno-swag: Anticipating Aliens

Certain franchises just stick with me. Perhaps the one that I chatter on about the most is Resident Evil. The RE universe has stuck with me because it used to frighten me; the games don't do that anymore, but I still play. Before Resident Evil came along, Aliens satisfied that fun and frightful itch. Yes, I was way too young to be watching rated-R movies, but I did anyway. And man, I loved the Alien franchise back then.

Actually, I still love the Alien universe. Whether it's Ridley Scott's Alien or Joss Whedon's Alien: Resurrection (he wrote the screenplay) or the retarded little brothers Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, I have thoroughly enjoyed all the films. I can't say that I've spent too much time with the games: I completely missed out on the early Nintendo and Sega cartridge games and the AVP PC games were quick romps (if that) because I wasn't interested in their stories.

February marks the return to the Alien universe with Aliens: Colonial Marines, a first-person-shooter and spiritual sequel to James Cameron's Aliens; it's the one of the few video games without all the muddled predator pollution. I am one to ignore the FPS genre, but I will make an exception for Aliens: Colonial Marines because I really want to know what happened after the terraforming reactor and colony on LV-426 were supposedly destroyed.

Picking between the Xbox and the PS3 will be a tough choice, but the pre-order deals look pretty amazing. I'm a total sucker for gamer swag (especially games/franchises that I love) and ACM has a $99.99 treasure trove. The Aliens: Colonial Marines Collector's Edition comes with a statue of a power-loader fending off an alien. Patches and in-game items and characters, including Sgt. Apone and Pvt. Hudson. Man, I hope that includes their voices.

After hunting around online, I had to go with Amazon's pre-order because both Best Buy and Gamestop's pre-order allocations were all used up. Dry. This might be the hardest collector's edition to get your hands on right now. Here's to hoping that the aliens thrill and terrify just as they did when I first saw Alien.

For once, I am looking forward to February.

Enough of This Craziness

Last year's new year post went up on the fifth of January. The fifth. Can you believe that? That's crazy. Well, I'm here to tell you that craziness like that will not be tolerated on the DoNothingMan's blog.

There were 41 posts in the year 2012; that's almost three-and-a-half posts per month. Also a little bit on the crazy side. Let's pull those reins back just a tad and not get ahead of ourselves. On the bright side, I haven't changed my NASA wall calendar. It's still open to December 2012 with a picture from the Hubble telescope and a blurb about dark matter.

So what is on the horizon for the year 2013, the luckiest year of them all? I don't know. Grand Theft Auto 5 is set to come out this spring. Aliens: Colonial Marines has me really excited, but I'll probably be disappointed. There's another Iron Man movie in the works. Three. I'm successfully hacking PSP handhelds now. Fried chicken beam attack.

Yep, this is going to be a good year.

New Content Coming...

Mad, Mad Scientist

I wish I were a mad scientist. Is that enough to constitute a blog post? One wishful sentence. Probably not, but that doesn't mean it's any less true.

Part of the problem is that I don't have a laboratory. I have access to a space that could be a lab, but no one has given me permission to clean the space up and transform it. Sad. Like a hermit crab without a soda can.

What would I do in this imaginary laboratory? Research, develop, and build computers, robots, and (oh yeah) hack and modify video game consoles. This seems like a phase I go through: it gets cold and dark out in the world and I desire to take things apart and build something better.

Things have flared up again with the original Xbox. I found a pretty sweet and thorough video about the soft-modding process and swapping out hard drives. The original Xbox has an 8 GB hard drive (which seemed like a lot at the height of its console days) that can be easily upgraded to 320 GB or even 500 GB. Considering that I have 8 GB SD cards spilling out my ears now, upgrading doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Finding the right kind of hard drive might be a challenge. In the video, the guy pulled one out of an old computer. I'm not sure I will be able to do that. The computer stuff is always a little complicated. I've successfully soft-modded a Nintendo Wii and completely bricked a Phat PSP. So, despite some success, I'm always a little nervous about this sort of thing.

I'll have to take inventory of older computers that I have around and see what I've got for hard drives. My biggest problem with this stuff is that if I do it (or attempt it) then I stop messing with it for some time, I'll forget all about it and how I did it.

My Wii is probably my best excursion in this realm because I kept track of everything that I did step-by-step and I have a folder with all the set-up files, channels, emulators, and everything else that I downloaded still on my computer. I also use this modded Wii enough that I remember everything. That's important too.

Shopping: Yoda's Christmas Miracle

I love Amazon. Totally free advertising right there. You are welcome Amazon (though it probably makes little difference to you).

Online shopping is the only reason that I have gifts to give around Christmas time. I hate shopping. I really do. All kinds. Even grocery shopping pisses me off.

It started with just a couple things from online venues and the rest from brick and mortar stores. Not anymore. No brick and mortar. Ever again. Yep, that's right. I basically do all of my Christmas shopping online.

With only a couple of days before Thanksgiving, I still have gifts to order. My nephews get nerf guns and Legos; they're the most fun, which is where Yoda enters this story.

Christmas shouldn't be about winning or losing, but I won Christmas last year with my sister and her two boys. I gave them a Lego Advent calendar. Every day of Advent they opened that day on the calendar and they found a new thing to build. Usually a ship or Lego man. Lego Yoda was the last one on Christmas Eve, I think.

Apparently, it was so much fun that the boys have requested another one. I think I can make that happen, but this year's calendar comes with a Christmas Darth Maul. I don't think he's as festive as Yoda. Christmas Yoda could kick Christmas Darth Maul's ass any day of the week.

Marvel Movies: No Angry Comic Nerd Here

Recently, a friend asked me this amazing question: "When it comes to Marvel comics converted to movies, are you usually satisfied with it, unhappy with it, or both?"

Sit back and let me show you a whole new world (and why I'm totally fine with Marvel movies not being true to their comic book counter parts).

The Short version: Marvel's characters are always being re-created and re-imagined; their stories are constantly being retold.

The Long version:

Every single character and story created within Marvel Comics exists in the Marvel Universe (think Multiverse).

The Marvel Universe consists of parallel dimensions (I'm using 'dimensions' in place of universes because it makes more sense to me). In each dimension there is a Spider-Man, an Ironman, a Deadpool, and a DoNothingMan. Each dimension has it's own little twists. This allows for the Marvel writers and artists to infinitely create (or kill) and re-imagine characters.

You want a black Spider-Man? Then you want Miles Morales of Earth-1610 (Ultimate Marvel) a dimension where Peter Parker was killed. But don't worry, Peter Parker is still alive and well in Earth-616 (and many others).

A beautiful example of these dimensions is Deadpool Corps.

The Earth-616 Deadpool travels across the parallel dimensions to recruit a team of alternate versions of himself. He selects Lady Deadpool (Earth-3010), Kidpool (Earth-10330), Dogpool (Earth-103173), and Headpool (Earth-2149). After the team is put together, hilarity ensues.

At the bottom of the list are the movies.

Earth-199999 appears to contain Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers. Notice that The Hulk (movie) is not listed. That movie was so bad that Marvel kicked it out of the entire Marvel Universe. LOLz. Also notice the Guardians of the Galaxy in the announced section. This is the craziest team of super heroes ever. Even crazier than the Deadpool Corps.

So basically, Marvel created a storytelling ecosystem with infinite possibilities. It's how writers/directors/artists twist the characters and place them in new and different situations that makes the changes so interesting.

October In Full Force

It's been four weeks since Resident Evil 6 dropped and I still don't think I've played enough of it to adequately "review" it. Then again, I haven't played it that much. I blame the game itself. But I can also blame another game: Dead Space. Yes, the original Dead Space. This red-cased, greatest hits game is scarier than most of Resident Evil 4, all of Resident Evil 5, and what I've played of Resident Evil 6 combined.

Sneaking through the Ishimura a couple weekends ago was satisfying and creepy; to add extra tension, I'm going for the plasma cutter challenge and only using that weapon. At first I thought it was hard to shoot for the limbs and appendages (I'm a seasoned zombie killer, aiming for skulls) but I slowly got the hang of it. I'm also a fan of the Kinesis module; sharp objects and explosive canisters are launched at anything that moves. The most fun I've had in-game has involved creative killing with gas tanks and shrapnel.

Unfortunately, the Kinesis module isn't that original. I've encountered the mechanic before in Half-Life 2 and Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil, but it's still fun to use. It's definitely a good thing that weapons like the gravity gun don't exist in real life, because I would cause all kinds of trouble armed with one.

Out in the real world, everything around the DoNothingMan is falling apart. I still can't get my twitter feed to display in the blog margins (this just suddenly started happening and I don't know to fix it) and last Thursday my van decided to stop running. Hopefully I can bring it back to life.