Greener Pastures . . .

Well, I seem to have moved to another blog name. Based upon the most recent posts and where my current focus is(Wife thought that this blog was a bit geeky), I have decided to stop posting on this blog. If you stumble here and would like to see future posts please follow the link below.

Click here for more tasty goodness.

Periodic Table

Well, after watching some Teen Jeopardy and not doing so hot at the questions about the elements I found the following video setup for figuring out the Periodic Table.



This is just a taste of what all of the videos have to offer and if you go subscribe as the video asks you to, you can enjoy the rest of the scientific goodness.

Want to save water? This may or may not be your ticket to conservation bliss . . .

Save Water by Barbecuing Your Poop

Nice.

Very Wierd.

Ok, just watch the first 25 seconds of this video and let me know what you think. . .

Follow up. .

Congratulations China. While watching the men's gymnastics team last night, we also were able to view some of the other countries and China was flawless. No question they deserved the Gold medal.

As a followup to the post about the men's 4x100. another team came together and overcame their own fears and mistakes to medal where they were not supposed to. The men's team all-around gymnastic competition was fun to watch and showed how a team from the US can draw together to win.

If you did not notice it yesterday, you can click on the title just below to read ESPN's take on the story.

Clutch, and unexpected, performances lead U.S. men's team to podium

By Elizabeth Merrill
ESPN.com

Unbelievable.

I am all for Michael Phelps, and his quest for 8 gold medals (in a poll I said he will probably get 6) however, I believe the American spirit is better reflected in a story where our team overcomes a seemingly insurmountable opposition.

Reflecting on the 4x100 Men's Relay from last night reminds me of another Olympic team that overcame. How about the American Hockey team beating Russia. These are the kinds of stories that inspire and cause us all to leap from our couches screaming and hugging each other and more prominently feature the true enduring fire of American spirit that should drive our country.

In addition to the rocket boosters that seemed to propel us from behind to grasp gold in last night's race, there was a little bit of trash talking coming about how the US was going to be crushed. That was just the bright red cherry on top of the sundae. That race was just unbelievable.

For a great article about the race and comments from the swimmers read the following article:

'No way' turns into 'no quit' for Lezak, men's relay team

By Pat Forde @ ESPN.com

The video was up on YouTube for a while but has been removed due to copyright infringement. I am sure NBC had it pulled, however if you can watch that race I would highly recommend it.

Unbelievable.

Random YouTube Videos

The following are slightly funny at about 2am. You have been warned.

Sports Frog details funny stories about old time cheating in the Great American Pastime.

Here are a few stories that I found while reading the blog at Sports Frog that I thought were interesting compared to today's "cheating."

Belt grab: Legendary Baltimore Orioles third baseman John McGraw played in the rough-and-tumble era of the 1890s. There was only one umpire per game in this era, and he couldn't see everything. McGraw used to grab the belt of the runner on third, or try to trip him or knock him down, when there was a hit to the outfield and the umpire's back was turned. In a humorous aside, note the time that Louisville's Pete Browning, aware of McGraw's tricks, was on third when a sacrifice fly was lofted into the outfield. Browning quickly unbuckled his belt. McGraw, who didn't know it was unbuckled, grabbed the back of the belt. After tagging up, Browning scored easily. McGraw was left at third, alone and embarrassed, gripping the belt.

So hated was Ty Cobb that, on the 1910 season's final day, when he was neck-and-neck with Napoleon Lajoie for the American League batting crown, the St. Louis Browns' third baseman played his position as far back as feasible to help Lajoie back into the batting crown by letting him drop bunts guaranteed to be beaten out for hits. Fat lot of good that did. The actual race ended in a dead heat, but American League president Ban Johnson, "seeking an essential truth in lieu of true facts," as Bill James phrased it, "made up a couple of extra hits for Cobb and declared him the champion, anyway."

Mickey Mantle's fondest desire at the end of the line, in 1968, was to finish ahead of Jimmie Foxx on the all-time home run list. Denny McLain, who pretty much had his 31st win in his hip pocket, decided to make Mantle's wish come true.(Brings to mind Farve and the fetal position for the sack record) "He's told me to tell you what's coming," Detroit catcher Bill Freehan told the Commerce Comet as he approached the plate. "He wants you to get it." Mantle simply waggled his bat at the spot where he most liked to connect, McLain obliged, and Mantle drove one into the Tiger Stadium upper deck. (The on-deck hitter, Joe Pepitone, not hearing the original exchange, though McLain was in such a good mood that he might get a groove pitch to hit. Pepitone waggled his bat to the spot where he liked to connect.and McLain smashed three straight unhittable fastballs past him.)

In Game 2 of the '91 World Series, Kent Hrbek blatantly pulls Ron Gant off first base and applies the tag, while first base umpire Vince McMahon calls Gant out. Hrbek, with his back to the ump, used an elegant maneuver involving his hip, thigh and glove to get sufficient leverage to pull Gant off, making it appear to the ump behind him that Gant's momentum carried him off, but making his intentions obvious to viewers who got a perfect angle from the third base line camera.

The cheat proved costly for the Braves, who lost the game by one run and lost the series in seven games.

Another elaborate tale of deception is not from the players or coaches, but from a grounds crew. They can do as much to affect the outcome of a game as anyone else out there. For instance, the popular example is of the famous family of groudskeepers, the Bossards. Their family started in the 1920's when Emil Bossard would move back the portable fences as a Cleveland Indians' groudskeeper to nullify the distinct power advantage that the Yankees had. Then his son, Gene, would take it a step further. He would "freeze" balls, keeping them in a room with a humidifier for a period of almost two weeks, which would subsequently make them heavier and less likely to travel further than a normal ball. Then his son, Roger, was actually the one who made the basepaths softer and, thereby, harder to steal bases from and stretch long plays out for an extra base.

The full article can be found here.

Does anyone have an optimistic view of the economy currently?

I was curious about some of the current views and found this one interesting.

The Entrepreneurial Mind

Pros: The blog deals mainly with how the world is affecting the entrepreneurs and financial topics, however this shift from optimism to "Professor Doom" is thoughtful for how short it is.

Cons: I was a little bothered by the spelling mistakes in the authors reply to his detractor in the comments. Not too big of a deal though.

Another awesome post from Make Magazine

Wow this looks like it took a lot of work. Original blog entry here.

Bob Dullam made his own Batman tumbler vehicle.

How to spend your time if you have recently won the lottery and do not know what to do. . .

This came from a DIY blog that I watch from MAKE Magazine by Phillip Torrone

My belt sander can beat your circular saw

TEN feet short of the finish line, Barbie Airplane was stranded. A screaming speedster powered by a whirling circular saw flew from a wooden ramp at the recent Power Tool Drag Racing competition in Seattle.

The cheerful contraption — a Craftsman belt sander crowned with a powder-blue toy plane — had been careening down the 75-foot racetrack moments earlier. Then the sander’s rotating belt came undone, stopping it dead.

In the neighboring lane, Heavy Metal Waste, a circular saw souped up with skateboard wheels and flaming antennas, had already rocketed past. Cheers of victory rang from the bleachers.

“Time waits for no one!” heckled the announcer. So Randy Lisbona, a 47-year-old air-conditioning engineer from Dallas, hauled his broken-down belt sander off the track to make way for the next heat.

That’s how it goes at power tool drag races. The premise is simple: Take a hand-held power tool. Rebuild it into a racing machine.

Monster Truck err Segway?

Ok this was cool. I wonder just how good this would do offroad, and the driver seems pretty pleased with himself.

Online Shopping Tool

BeatThat! is an online shopping tool run by its visitors to get the best deals on merchandice. All in all it is a pretty cool idea and could save people some cash. The site describes itself as follows:

BeatThat!'s Mission

BeatThat! is committed to providing an open, transparent view into the world of online shopping - so that shoppers online can feel comfortable that they've found the very best deals from merchants they know a lot about - and the site guarantees that it has the lowest prices for its products, or you'll be paid for alerting the site to a better deal!

Who Finds the Deals at BeatThat!?

BeatThat! is run by its Deal-Finders - those hard-working people who scour the Internet for the very best deals on every single product on the site. Why do they do it? First of all, they love the "thrill of the hunt" - looking into all the nooks and crannies of the Internet where great deals reside. Second, they get a lot of attention and respect for their skill here at BeatThat!. And lastly, they get paid for it! If you think you'd like to become a BeatThat! Deal-Finder, just read on!

How to Shop Using BeatThat!

It's simple: Find the product you're interested in by either typing it into the search box, or by browsing for it (links on the home page), then find the deal that you like the most, and then click on it to go to the online store. That's it! Tell your friends how easy and great shopping here is!

Follow the link to the site itself : Go check it out.

Olympics

I thought these were pretty good places to track the olympics this year. Comment if you have any that I have missed that are better:

Google Addon
NBC Coverage
BBC Map and coverage

Status of Blogging. . .

Well,

I came, I blogged, and I got really bored, really fast. Sorry, I am just not the type for blogging. The majority of the games I was playing all take either a lot of time or actually green to progress in and I do not feel like placing much of either into them. So, I will start just placing random items on the site that I think are either cool, funny, or unbelievable and see how long that goes. Here is the first one:

Ok way too much time . . .

So I grew in some of the games to unmanageable proportions and decided to just drop the majority of them. I am still playing Duels.com along with a friend at work since it does not take any more time than you want it to and can be immediately stopped without any repercussion.

Night Bird Razor Bought gold 2004
Fist of Stillness Bought gold 2910
Darian Boomstick Bought gold 512

Lack thereof . . .

Sorry for the lack of posts. I have been taking a break from my online strategy games and I watched the entire run of episodes of Dragonball, Dragonball Z, Dragonball GT straight in a row and now am working on all of the Naruto series.

We had a barbecue last night and it was fun. Lots of kids as we not only had ours but the two other families that we did it with had kids with them and then our family and one other family had extra kids that we were watching totalling 5 adults and 10 kids total.

Vacation

Well, we got back from vacation and it was as if I had not left so things are not as dismal as they seem. Time to get back into the swing of Strategy Browser Gaming.

Ultimately, in Tribal Wars the Tribe I was in totally disbanded and is now spread out among any number of different old and new tribes. We will see how long this lasts since I got into a pretty small tribe.

Console Gaming
I went to the local Game Stop tonight looking for new meat(Wii games) and decided to get Resident Evil 4 and one of the Rayman games. The control of a Wii is slightly better than the xbox and playstations for aiming but it still cannot compare to a good mouse and keyboard.

My years playing doom up to Half Life spoiled me for any game on a console that uses any aiming system. They are nowhere close to as good or as responsive. I can remember doing jumps from platforms spinning 180 degrees shooting someone in the head on the level below me and then shooting someone directly below me in a split second in Quake3 without breaking a sweat and that would not even be possible in any of the new console shooters.

Even at the highest sensitivity the best pc gamer could clean house against the best console gamer in halo or whatever. That would be an interesting tournament to watch actually. I hereby patent the idea of console vs pc shooter tournament.

The Military Channel

The Military Channel has a show on at night that goes over the top 10 of a certain weapon or vehicle or whatever. Last night from 7pm to 8pm EST they had a show that I found very interesting:



Top Tens
Top Ten Infantry Fighting Vehicles
TV-PG, CC

The list was given as follows:

10. Humvee

9. LVT MK-4 (Landing Vehicle Tracked)

8. M-3 Halftrack

7. Universal Bren Gun Carrier

6. BMP-1

5. Sd.Kfz. 251

4. Stryker

3. MCV-80 Warrior

2. M-2 Bradley

1. M-113

The Drudgery of Dying

Well,

I have not posted much in the last few days due to the drudgery that is strategy browser gaming. Here is an update:

Tribal Wars W9 - waiting to die.
Tribal Wars W13 - waiting to die.
Travian W6 - building and waiting to die.
BiteFight - slow building process.
RuleTheSeas - slow buildling process.
Silentmurder - slow building process.
Others - waiting to die.

Fun. Fun. Due to this I have not had a lot to update this blog with. Hopefully I will get attacked and can detail how I was destroyed or was able to fight them off.

Desertion. . . aka Loyalty vs. Self-Preservation

Well, it seems that a lot of people are just full of hot air (unless they are on the winning team). A large part of the tribe has stuck in the fray even though it is looking dismal. Another large group started some attacks in the last few days.

Desertion in the face of an overwhelming army or force is an interesting thing. Players start thinking about personal survival instead of the survival of the group and that is when all remaining ties break down.

We have orders to start taking the villages of the deserters, however I do not think I will do anything to them unless they attack me first. I have enough on my plate to have to open a fourth front with deserters.

Ultimately, it does boil down to loyalty vs. self-preservation.

Winds of Change.

Ok, the war that was progressing slightly negatively for us has now taken a turn for the worse. It actually has some of my tribemates jumping ship. We were taking on one of the top 4 or 5 tribes in the world and now another of the top tribes has joined on the other side. Needless to say this does not look good for us. lol. I am hoping that the morale thing plays a large part of this next part or we will be in big trouble.

Producing troops and supporting the frontline as always.

Expansion, Expansion, Expansion. . .

In Tribal Wars I am in the expanding business. I started out slowly but have increased the growth recently:

Date - - - - - - - - - # of Villages conquered
23rd March 2008 - 3
21st March 2008 - 2
13th March 2008 - 2
11th March 2008 - 2
06th March 2008 - 1
05th March 2008 - 1
04th March 2008 - 1
01st March 2008 - 1
29th February 2008 - 1
28th February 2008 - 1
27th February 2008 - 1
26th February 2008 - 1
20th February 2008 - 1
18th February 2008 - 2
10th February 2008 - 1
07th February 2008 - 1
05th February 2008 - 1
03rd February 2008 - 1
02nd February 2008 - 1
29th January 2008 - 1
25th January 2008 - 1
24th January 2008 - 2
21st January 2008 - 1
19th January 2008 - 1
16th January 2008 - 1
12th January 2008 - 1
11th January 2008 - 1
02nd January 2008 - 2

Ultimately, whoever controls all of the villages wins. Tribal Wars is different from Travian in that you do not win and have the server end and reset once someone controls a Wonder of the World long enough.

Telemarketer Call

My wife received a telemarketer call yesterday that was pretty funny. Here is the script of what happened:

Wife: Hello?

Telemarketer: Is the Owner there?

Wife: I'm the Owner.

Telemarketer: Hi I'm calling today to offer you a interest rate check.

Wife: I'm not interested.

Telemarketer: No I'm not selling anything. This is a simple interest rate check to see if you are paying to high on your credit cards.

Wife: That's okay I'm not interested.

Telemarketer: So you are okay with paying more in interest?

Wife: Actually I have a pretty good rate.

Telemarketer: Really? What is it?

Wife: 0%

Telemarketer: (disgusted) I don't believe you.

Wife: Sorry, I don't care if you don't believe me. It's true.

Telemarketer: I want you to fax it over to me and show me.

Wife: I'm not going to fax over my statement to a stranger. You called me.

Telemarketer: No no you can cross out all your information, I don't need to see that. I want to see the 0%.

Wife: I'm not going to take the time or the effort to fax over a statement so a telemarketer will believe me.

Telemarketer: Click.

"The Best Free Browser Games List"

Well, I have found another blog that deals with all free browser games. I liked what he had listed so thought I would add it to the links on the side. You can find it there or here.

Major War going on. . .

My Tribe in Tribal Wars is involved in a large scale war. Currently, the sides are my family of tribes which include 3 of the top 20 tribes against a top 5 tribe and needless to say we do not have the involvement needed to really sustain a good front.

I think we have lost about 40+ villages to the enemy and have gained around 5. Not a good balance there. Being in the second level of the family tribes a lot of the members of this 90+ person tribe seem to just be coasting along and not supporting the front line players.

I have 37(increasing all of the time) villages and points in the 290,000 range. Not huge but not small either. I am supporting 6 or so of the front line villages with anywhere from 16,000 troops up to 50,000 troops in each of those villages.

Now that to me sounds impressive, but it starts to pale in comparison when the attacking player has 1.2 million points and who knows how many troops at his disposal.

The good thing about the game is that the attackers are limited by the size of the village farms. The farm maxes out at level 30 giving that village a maximum number of troops and building points of 24,000. Technically, you could have 20,000 axemen in one village but the majority of villages that I have seen have 10,000 - 12,000 points and that limits the amount of axes or other attacking troops to around 12,000 to 16,000 if they have any type of token defense for the village.

This means that each attack can only have that many attackers and you can stack villages with as many defending troops as you would like. It all boils down to how active the defending tribes are. If they all support each other and beef up the attacked villages they loose very little troops while they wipe out the attacking armies no matter how large the attacker is.

Also playing into this equation is the Morale calculation. A member of our tribe wrote the following in our forum:

What is morale?
Morale is basically how much your troops want to fight a smaller target, they may feel sorry for them or whatever. If your attacking a larger target, your morale is always 100%. Morale is not like luck which is random but it is a definite calculable figure which your simulator will happily calculate for you.
Morale Figures
Enemy 20% of your points, you have 90% morale
Enemy 17.5% of your points, you have 82% morale
Enemy 15% of your points, you have 75% morale
Enemy 10% of your points, you have 60% morale
Enemy 5% of your points, you have 45% morale
Enemy 2.5% of your points, you have 38% morale

And what does this mean in practice?
If morale was 100%, your losses are at 100%

Morale is 90% => you lose 133% troops
With morale at 90%, you lose 1/3 more. If this tips the balance of the battle it of course gets a lot worse-

Morale is 80% => you lose 150% troops
Morale is 67% => you lose 200% troops
Morale is 50% => you lose 300% troops
Morale is 32% => you lose 600% troops (32% is lowest morale you can ever have)

And for the record. Morale is calculated on your total player points vs. total points of your target.

So, if our smaller players get their act in gear we can decimate the attacking forces due to our smaller sizes and then retaliate.

All in all this is going to be a very drawn out war and I hope that we start to turn it around or get a bit more active.

You have to support your Tribemates as if they were you since it will be you someday.

If I had a time machine . .

I was sitting at work and my building queue's were full when I started thinking about what I would do if I had a time machine. Now of course I would go back in time and give myself information to make me a billionaire but it is more fun if there are rules. Here they are:

1) You cannot interact with yourself in any way. "Back to the Future" style or you will destroy all of time.

2) The regular laws of the land apply so no killing, maiming, or running amok.

I figured that I would go back in time and just watch stuff happen. Popping in and out of ancient world would be fun as well as seeing the Roman empire in all of its glory. I would love to see the American continent before the white man arrived and watch the sermon on the mount. I would hide in the mountains and see the real story of the 300 Spartans.

I would go back to the slam dunk competition where Michael Jordan dunked from the free throw line and be court side for that, as well as at the Superbowl when the Dolphins had their perfect season.

What would you like to do?

Browser Gaming, MMORPG's, and MMOG's

Reflecting back on how my love (my wife would call it an obsession) with gaming started, I have to start with my memories of my brother, friends and I in a basement playing Dungeons and Dragons for hours on end.

My younger brother and I would go over to our friends house, Bryan and Greg who were our ages and we would order pizza and setup for an adventure.

Starting out, my friend Bryan was the Dungeon Master, and sure enough a rock would fly out of nowhere and kill his brother just for fun and to make Greg mad. Greg would then block the rock (even though he was supposedly already dead according to his brother the DM) with his somehow newly acquired +25 speed ultra sword which would then turn into a snake (according to the DM Bryan) and bite him and kill him. I just have to laugh, good times.

We got tired of that game for some reason, and started rolling characters in the TMNT universe. I think that I was a wolverine and we always somehow ended up with characters that were 10 times more powerful than they were supposed to be due to fudging our rolls.

My pages with all of our characters and weapons are probably around my office somewhere or in a box in the attic.

Gradually, we moved on to Palladium which stuck with me well into my college days and I proudly display the 8 or 9 compendiums and resource books that I own on the bookshelf in my office. I need to get my pewter skeletons and dragons out if I can find them as well.

It was getting harder and harder to find willing and able friends to go out and slay pencil and paper dragons, so I ended up looking online at the games that were available there. All of the MMOG's and MMORPG's are just pen and paper adventures with the DM being the programmer and the pen and paper being replaced by a keyboard and monitor.

I still miss the old paper and pencil nights around a table looking through a dungeon for some super powerful bad guy. However, then I remember why I enjoy the online versions after writing with a pencil and erasing it for 8 hours straight.


So there I was, in college and I heard about a game called Everquest. A friend of mine was on the game already and asked me to join in. I created Vron, a wood elf druid, and started grinding away.

Vron seemed to always be just below the highest level and would get to that point as a new expansion would come out and then I would have to start grinding again. I played that game off and on for a few years (5 - 6) and ultimately had to give it up due to never being able to accomplish anything. That truly was a never ending quest. By the end of the game I had 10+ characters with a few of them being the highest level and geared somewhat well. Nothing that the top players had but I was a casual player and liked exploring more than just sitting and gaining experience.


I tried the other games such as World of Warcraft and enjoyed them but they all present the same scenario. If you want to get to the top, you have to quit your job, divorce your wife and kids, and stop eating. It isn't that bad but when the group that you join requires you to play nightly for 4+ hours a night you run out of time for a lot of other things. Most of which are in reality more important that getting the upgraded weapon or piece of armor.

That is when I was shown online strategy, RPG, and adventure games and started into those. They seem to be the best of all of my worlds. I can do them at work during my down times, and they do not take a lot of time to do well.

I do miss those games though of Bryan and Greg and mysterious rocks and swords. Good times.

Grinding along. . .

Well, I just finished updating my Tribal Wars village queues and am waiting on resources in Travian. I am just grinding along making sure resources do not go to waste and my building and troops queues are full and producing. Cheers.

Other links

I was wondering what other sites were out there that dealt with browser gaming and came upon a few good ones:

Game2K - A website that has a very large amount of games that it states are browser games. I have not checked out the reliability of any of these. Let me know what you think.

Dark Galaxy - Space Based Browser game that goes for up to 3 months at a time.

Internet Strategy Games list on About.com - Again a good list of some of the games out there but I have not been able to check any of them on the list yet.

Wiki List - I found that Wiki has a great list of games though that site is a give or take depending on who is writing it.

Strategy Browser Gaming

Well, I have a job where my free time between actual work can be anywhere from a minute up to 30 minutes. Generally, it is closer to a minute but there is no rhyme or reason and some parts of the day I do not have any time at all. Due to this, I am unable to do anything that places a specific time demand on my actions.

Now I like to read through the news and every once in a while I will look up popular YouTube videos, however those are pretty boring and get old after a while. So, some of my coworkers and I found out about online browser games.

I think it started with Tribal Wars and then branched into others but the beauty of these types of games is that you can log into them for 5 hours or more straight (not recommended if you want to have a life outside of them) or just for 20 seconds. I have a list of the current games that I am playing as well as the games that I have tried out.