Thanks, Geico

   Happy Wednesday, everybody. I was going to say happy hump day, but that stupid damn insurance commercial has pretty much made it a crime to use the phrase "hump day." Thanks, Geico.

The true face of evil.

   Today was my first official day of summer break and it felt pretty good. It was nice, although I did have to work. They haven't scheduled me to work a Wednesday night in a while, and I forgot how freaking busy it is. I go from work, to my violin lesson, then I come home, write this blog, then there's usually an update to be done on the Nerds Under Fire site, and then there's audio editing to be done, and then I get to go to bed. Today was made even busier because I had a rehearsal before I went to work. So as you might imagine, I'm a bit drained at this point. 

   Regardless, I'm feeling pretty good. If you've been on the site during the day this week, you'll notice things will start to move around every couple minutes, and don't stop for two to three hours. I've been trying to find a layout I like, but I just can't quite seem to nail it down. I've been trying to set up a slider to show my recent posts, but Blogger has been thwarting my every attempt. So if anyone has some helpful tips, or just the code that would be great. 

   In light of the recent lull in Azeroth, I've found myself in Telara in the past few days. For those not familiar, that would be the supposed "WoW killer" Rift which went free to play within a year. 

   Now don't think that I'm slamming the game. It's an excellent game, but I don't like the term "WoW killer." At this point, I really think the only thing that will kill WoW is itself. From my point of view, the only way it will ever die is it will just slowly dwindle out over the course of the next decade or two. Moral of the story-WoW is here to stay for a long, long time.

   Back to Rift, I must say it's really quite good, and they really have an excellent free-to-play model from what I've seen so far. You can pick between two factions, each with three races. From there you can pick from the four base classes-warrior, cleric, mage, and rogue. Now that seems like a small amount to choose from, but from there you can select your "soul." This essentially determines how you play the game. There are four roles in the game-tank, DPS, healer, and support. What's really fascinating about this game, however, is any class can be any role (that is, if you purchase the expansion). Without the expansion, for example, mages can support, DPS, and heal. However, if you purchase their expansion you can tank. 

   Now I'm just going to take a break here to let that sit in.

   Yeah, you read that right.

   Mage.

   Tank.

Remember what happened last time?

   I nearly purchased the expansion right there and I hadn't even gotten into the game yet. 

   Once I was in the game, itself I was quite impressed. Everything runs very smoothly, and the art style, while a little darker than WoW's, it's quite pleasing, and the graphics are extremely good looking, even on the lower settings. 

   I haven't even leveled beyond the starting zone yet, so you can expect a lot more to come, but I certainly expect to play a lot more of this game over the summer, especially seeing as it's more accessible to my friends that can't afford the $15 a month to play WoW. I highly recommend this game.

   Hope to see everyone back for Friday!

Tacos,

Gladdstone

Time to Pull the Trigger

   Here we find ourselves at yet another Monday. These damn things seem to come around once every seven days or so.
   In all honesty, I do look forward to these posts every Monday. Even when I have a bad day, they're a great way to get me out of my slump. These past couple days have actually been really great. I had my AP English final today, and it was pretty easy. That leaves just one more final-Chemistry. And that one will be super easy. So all I have to do is get up tomorrow, nail that, and then I am officially on summer break! And judging by what we've been planning, it's going to be a good summer.Unfortunately, this will have to wait at least another week, because I'm going to have family in starting Friday or Saturday. Hopefully we'll be launching Geek Council in the next few weeks here, so keep an eye for that on iTunes.
   Now onto some some interesting news, Nintendo recently lost a lawsuit in the U.K. involving a company called Philips, a company making the claim that the company infringed on several of its patents. The judge ruled that Nintendo's Wii, Wii Remote, Nunchuk, Wii Motion Plus remote, Balance Board, and the Wii U console and Gamepad all violated patents held by the Philips company. Philips also filed lawsuits in France and Germany, making the same claims. Nintendo has gone on record as saying that it has every intention appealing the decision, as they believe the patents are invalid.
   As someone with a fairly limited knowledge of even my own country's patent laws, much less those of the international community, I'm not certain of the implications a loss has for Nintendo, although it seems they will most likely end up making some sort of monetary payment to the company. While Nintendo has been having a rough time lately, I hardly seeing this proving to be a killing blow for the company. At the same time, it can hardly be good, so we'll just have to see how this plays out.
   On another note, there's the game No Man's Sky that was recently announced at E3 so far just for the PS4. At this point I'm having a really difficult time picking between the Wii U and the PS4. But, given that I have the 3DS, I think I'm going to have to spring for the PS4 first, just to mix things up. Anyway, if you didn't see it already, here's the trailer for the new sci-fi sandbox game.

   If that doesn't make you want a Playstation 4, I don't think anything ever will. Each player will start on their very own unique, and undiscovered planet. From there you can discover and scan new forms of planets and life throughout this universe, along with the other players.
   This sounds incredibly fun to me, as I love exploration in games, and yet, this has been described by the game's creator as "the most boring way to play the game." What it seems to be, is that enemies will randomly appear throughout the game, and you can either stay and fight, or make an attempt to outrun them. Very little seems to be known about most of the features of the game, as it's team seems fairly intent on keeping most of the features hidden. This mystery is a pretty big draw, and even with the Hoen remakes announced for the 3DS, this is quite easily my most anticipated game from this year's E3. No release date has been pinned down as of this moment.
   That's a lot to look forward to, on top of all the other amazing games that came out of this year's conference.
   Until Wednesday.


Tacos,
Gladdstone

Netflix Screws Me Again

   First week of summer down, several more to go. 

   To be honest, I'm not super big on summer break. I just don't have a lot of stuff to do. Today I went for a walk with a girl I know from school. We did about four miles, which is pretty good. It was a fun time, my dog got some exercise, and she's fun to spend time with. Tomorrow, my copy of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is supposed to come in the mail from Amazon, at long last. Take that, Netflix! Take my Joss Whedon away from me, will you? Well I'll just take my business elsewhere!

Aw, yeah.

   While we're on the subject of Netflix, I want to vent a little about their new UI. It. Is. Disgusting. First of all, I don't see what was wrong with the old red and black motif. It was sleek, modern, and functional. The new interface didn't lose any functionality, but what it did lose was the sleek, modern look of the old Netflix. 

   The red and black had a very modern, polished look to it. This new white/red style basically just looks like some 7th grader learned the basics of CSS and pissed all over their website. And the new logo is just weird. Something about it is just generally off-putting. Maybe if they put it back with the old color-scheme it would look decent, but I really don't like it as is. Now that I think of it, that old interface was still worse than the one from even earlier. I don't like the self scrolling bits. It feels really slow. So, I guess the moral of the story here is that every time Netflix updates, they get a little bit worse. Pretty soon, they'll be the Myspace of video streaming. Or maybe a better allusion would be just another Daily Motion or Vimeo. Basically, all right, but no one really cares. 

   I finished season one of Once Upon a Time and I'm closing in on the halfway mark in season two. Seeing as season three isn't due on Netflix until September, I may have to bite the bullet for a while on Hulu Plus, which I personally despise because of the ads, but I think it's worth it for the third season. If I don't, then you can probably expect a review of the series up through season two to be up on here by Monday. I'll do what I can to avoid spoilers, but as always, I'm not perfect, so if you absolutely do not want any spoilers, I recommend you don't read on Monday. 

   This weekend, I'll be recording the third episode of Geek Council, this time featuring my friend Nate as co-host, so watch for that. Be sure to check out last week's episode with my friend Tiana as we discuss the possibility of a real-life USS Enterprise, the new Legend of Zelda game Hyrule Warriors, and dissect-can you guess? That's right-Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

   Enjoy your weekend!

Tacos,

Gladdstone

Because I Can

   So summer is more or less here for me. I'm halfway through my finals-I've only got AP English and Chemistry left to take next week and then I'm a full-fledged senior.

Break out the allergy nasal-spray, bitches!

   This should be a fun summer for me. Nik and I both have cars and licenses now so we can take the whole group basically wherever we want. I'm thinking of getting everyone up to Ithaca to do some hiking. If you aren't familiar with the area, it's a town in upstate New York with some of the most beautiful waterfalls and hiking trails within reasonable distance of where I live. Of course, we also have the Adirondacks and Catskills, but those are a bit out of our way.
   Just yesterday we got out of our AP United States History exam and ended up spending the rest of the day up at the mall-because we're apparently stereotypical 90's teens now. Regardless, I may or may not have purchased a belt featuring the three Kanto starters and a Pokeball on the buckle. Spoilers: I totally did. And it is totally. Freaking. Awesome.

Aw, yeah.

   If I'm being completely honest though, it doesn't really feel like summer. More of like a spring break. Seems like this year totally flew by, despite being completely awful. I can't help but think things like "better not sleep in too late tomorrow, you don't want to start a bad habit for when you have to go back to school mon-oh wait." I'ts kind of nice at the same time though, because then I get to remember I have the next couple of months to do basically whatever I like, such as drag my friends out to go hiking for no good reason other than I can.
   In other news, tragedy struck the other day when I turned on Netflix only to find that one of Joss Whedon's greatest masterpieces-Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog-had been removed from the site. Words cannot express the fury I feel at this both loss and betrayal. Anyway, the moral of the story is, after a long and fruitless hunt at the stores in my area (always try to buy local first, folks!) I found it on Amazon. Unsurprisingly, those geniuses had it on sale for $5.00. Now that is knowing the market. They knew people would want to go buy it now that Netflix dumped it. Well played, Amazon. Well played.
   I'll see you lot Friday. Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elder berries. Now go away before I taunt you a second time!

Tacos,
Gladdstone