June 20th, 2012
This story on the coming demise of Best Buy is interesting for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that the company has evidently been around since 1966. Who knew?
Not mentioned in the piece is one of the most striking parts of Best Buy’s evolution over the last 15 years: it’s increasing devotion of floor space to household appliances. Stoves, dishwashers, and fridges are still items you don’t buy online, at least in part because most of the time you cannot trust the manufacturer’s listed dimensions and you’ve got to measure the things yourself to make sure they’ll fit.
2 commentsRed Letter Media Goes After Prometheus
June 20th, 2012
Courtesy of Galley Friend Mike Russell.
4 comments
Bunheads
June 20th, 2012
I’m giving it six episodes to get its sea legs because (1) I have the heart of an 11-year-old girl and (2) The quirk slot in my TV rotation has been empty for a couple years and New Girl wasn’t up to the job.
TVWP is a little harsh in their assessment of episode 1.2, but only a little. (I thought some of the jokes–particularly the ones based on religion–were pretty funny.)
5 commentsCalling All Nerds
June 18th, 2012
Speaking of 8-bit, Santino has a post about the game M.U.L.E.
I played it on a friend’s Odyssey II; Santino had it for the NES. (Which makes me crazy–if I had known there was an NES port, the Pig and I would have wasted months in front of that thing as opposed to trying to figure out the right pattern for Mike Tyson and the stupid effing infinite forest on Zelda.
Anyway, Santino mentions that there’s a Kickstarter for getting a new port of M.U.L.E. As nerd charities go, this seems worthwhile.
0 commentsWe Are 8-Bit
June 18th, 2012
Via the Transom, two neat 8-bit tributes–one a 7-minute long docu. The other, this little trailer for a modern Super Mario Bros.
0 comments
Just Call Him Vic “Civ” Matus (Get it?)
June 15th, 2012
Remember the epic Eternal War / 10-year Civilization game from this week?
Well Matus is possibly the only guy in the Nerdosphere who’s actually interviewed Civilization creator Sid Meier. So he decided to drop Sid a note and see what the guy who made Civ thought about it.
I don’t do Reddit or Slashdot, but if any of you do, I suspect the Nerdosphere will enjoy this morsel of awesome.
0 commentsCivilization Notes
June 13th, 2012
And so The Eternal War was ended.
After 1,700 years of bloody conflict, Comrade Stumpster took command of the Glorious People’s Army of the Celtic Empire. And in just 58 years, he achieved a complete domination victory. Largely by selling useless civic improvements, abandoning terraforming, and using howitzers instead of tanks.
History will long remember his great triumph.
Update: Matus has finally weighed in. It’s great.
1 commentSantino. Lindelof. Prometheus.
June 13th, 2012
Santino took the bait and has a great riff on script-doctoring, Lindelof-style. Not to be missed.
I didn’t see Prometheus and the chances of me ever seeing it, even on DVD, are vanishingly small. That said, I’ve been struck by the criticisms of the movie. In general, very smart movie people, like Santino and Mike Russell and Fatboy Roberts really didn’t like the film. But in the course of criticizing it, they’re engaging Prometheus on a pretty deep level. Which suggests that Prometheus is probably a really interesting failure. Maybe even interesting enough that in a couple years it will get some re-consideration by film geeks.
Maybe I’ll get to it then.
0 comments
