Thursday, September 08, 2011

Buffet

This week has just totally gotten away from me.

On the Eli 10.1 front, all kinds of good things are happening: great teacher, good friends in his class, first school flag football game on Friday, and fifth grade is generally awesome. He's also taken up (and is quickly mastering) another sport, believe it or not, and I hope to tell you about that next week.

The fires down here look like they'll be extinguished soon, and at least the wind has died down so that they stop spreading. And speaking of spreading, Erik Highter sent in a link to an incredible video that clearly shows how fast the fire in Bastrop was moving. As far as I can calculate, on the windiest day, it was moving over a foot a second, which is quite terrifying.

There's been an absolute crush ton of gaming industry news this week. Nintendo is apparently adding a snap-on base to the 3DS in Japan to add a second analog stick. This might only be available for Monster Hunter 3 G, but it could possibly be coming here as well. Take a look for yourself.

Yeah, I don't think that's a great idea, either. Nintendo may be entering another "WTF?" era (they had several in the past).

Here's a bit of a bombshell: Gamestop to start accepting (and reselling) iOS device trade-ins.

Well, I'll say this for Gamestop: that sounds like a pretty damn good idea to me, at least in the corporate sense. Apple creates so many versions of their hardware that their devices are perfect candidates for resale. And Gamestop better start building their mobile device business, because (as I mentioned yesterday) I think the console business is in serious jeopardy, and it will drag Gamestop down as well.

Rock of Ages came out yesterday, and I was very briefly able to take a look at it last night. I wasn't particularly enamored of the keyboard control scheme, so I'm going to try it with a game pad tonight. It's very, very funny, though, and Terry Gilliam could have easily done the visuals.

I've gotten some very clever e-mail about the Maryland state flag this week, but my favorite was from Daniel James:
I'm sure about 100 people e-mailed you this already, but the flag of Maryland is actually the heraldic banner of the Baron Baltimore, who founded Maryland.
flag of Maryland Wikipedia entry

When you see it fly, it's actually a hell of a lot more attractive a state flag than most. The colors are bright, but their flag looks a lot classier than the dozens of state flags with clip art on them (I'm talking to you Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York). And this is speaking as a Virginian who live in London. Heraldry does it better.

state flags of the U.S.

Seriously, there isn't really much good competition in there. Apparently no one took the "create our state flag" contest very seriously.

Daniel makes a terrific point: there are some seriously shitty state flags in the U.S. While I still think the Maryland flag looks like a 4th grade art collage, who cares what I think? As long as the people in Maryland are happy with it, then good for them.

I still believe the Maryland football team looked like the desperate girl in college who was so insecure that she wore a beret to get noticed, though.

Last note: if you're fortunate enough to have an Android phone, the next completely addictive game from Kairosoft, Pocket League Story, was released yesterday. It's a soccer management game, believe it or not, and so far, it's even more addictive than Grand Prix Story. I highly recommend buying it immediately.

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