Good moaning!

First, before y'all go WTF, the title of the post is a reference to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DrAp5gzdqc  Yes, this show is on my todo list XD
---
Anywho, thus far this moaning I've been looking through my morning links and already have a couple things to report ... first, apparently there's an official site where people can post LEGO product ideas, and if enough people vote on them they get developed into actual sets, this is where the Minecraft lego set came from ... here's a few sets that I'm following in case you're interested in sharing the love:
Thinking with Portals!
Mirage
Labyrinth Marble Maze
Apollo 11 Lunar Mission
Settlers of Catan
---
Second, out of my own curiosity I took a look through what there is available in my area for conventions coming up, I've been to a couple anime conventions in the past and had an awesome time, hopefully I can do more of this in the future ... looks like there's a World Boardgaming Championships event the first week of August, I'm going to keep looking into this and maybe actually check it out, it's only maybe an hour's drive from here.
---
Third, checked out Spelunky, it's quite difficult (died during the tutorial, natch) but it looks to have a surprising level of depth and I look forward to playing it more and seeing what all lies beneath the surface.
This is Gibbslap, and the dee is hit and blight.

Die, Death, Die!

After struggling with this for well over two weeks, I've finally done it, I've finally defeated Death in Castlevania and moved on to the sixth and final area of the game.  Don't ask me how I did it, I'm still not sure, I just know it involved having the rest of the level before him mastered to the point of hardly taking any damage, and fighting him with the cross boomerang thingies and the III multiplier.  Other than that, mostly luck I suppose.  Now I still have one area (three stages) left, and time will tell how difficult they are, but at least I made progress finally.
This is Gibbslap, and there's a great big beautiful tomorrow.

...longest twenty minutes ever, dood...

Whelp, so it's apparently not today after all.  Ah well, Valve is smart peoples, they know what they're doing. I suppose, if we knew for sure when the sale would be, that probably wouldn't help their current income out, now would it?  I'll just keep watching ... apparently the current rumors are saying either July 2 or July 12 for various reasons, we'll see what happens.  Worst case scenario, they don't even have one until winter, but goodness knows I have enough to keep me busy until stuff goes on sale.  Hakuna Matata, am I right?
---
It's not like Valve didn't give me something to be excited about, either.  Turns out that the Pyro update includes a fancy pair of goggles that give the wearer Pyrovision, effectively retexturing apparently the entire game.  That would make this possibly the most impressive single item added to the game, and opens up a new realm of potential upgrades for the future.  Awesome job, keeping the game fresh even five years after it was released...
---
Also, thanks to a post somewhere on some news site, I discovered a little downloadable title called Spelunky that looks pretty wizard ... I'll give it a shot at some point and let y'all know how it is.
This is Gibbslap, and the waiting is the hardest part.

Twenty minutes @_@

Okay, so I've mentioned the Steam sale a couple times ... yes, I'm way too excited about this.  A running theory that I've seen quite a few times points out two things:
1. The past two summer sales have begun on the last Thursday in June.  This year, the last Thursday in June falls on 6/28.  AKA today.
2. Most of the minor sales (including the one going on right now) start and end at 4PM PST, or 7PM EST.  AKA twenty minutes from now.

CAN YOU SEE WHY I'M A LITTLE EXCITED ABOUT THIS.

Admittedly, there aren't many huge huge titles that I'm looking for ... a bunch of Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Beyond Good and Evil) and I still need to pick up Arkham City (but I don't have a machine that can play it yet so I'll probably still wait) but there are quite a few indie titles on my wishlist that I've checked out and found myself interested in.  Fingers crossed, guys!  Oh how I love a good sale!  Isn't shopping fun???
...
...
I'm still straight, guys.  Really.  I swear.
This is Gibbslap, and I'm on the edge of glory.

Level Up 2011

Okay, so I knocked something off the 2Dew List (of DOOM) last night, I went through all those demos I talked about, took some notes on each of them.  Here's my results:


Atooms to Moolecules
  First level felt like there was practically zero difficulty involved.  Second level spiked it hard.  The interface is tricky and provides most of the problem, making the puzzles more of a Nintendo Hard than an actual thinking challenge.

BeatBuddy
  This does NOT feel like a pre-alpha game.  The little preview at the beginning was cute ... the game itself is gorgeous, and I'll admit it didn't do much for me at first, "how can this possibly get difficult", but then I kept playing and I found myself really enjoying this, I'm looking forward to the full version now!

Blackwell's Asylum
  I'll try this later ... when it's daylight and stuff ... I know the twisted scenery was offputting, and I don't want to risk scaring myself this late at night.

DIVO
  Did that just say ... powered by UNITY?!  This is a Flash game, on Steam ... what's the world coming to... it certainly looks and feels like a flash game, this one needs a lot more polish before it goes anywhere I'd say.  The concept doesn't seem THAT different, anyways...

Imagine Earth
  Good lord, was this written by environmentalists?  Very heavy environmental themes in this one, otherwise it's basically a SimTycoon game.  Not my thing unless there's rollercoasters, sorry.

MilitAnt
  Nice concepts but the execution on this one feels really sloppy, it should NOT be that difficult to hit enemies, and the ant runs and jumps way too far and fast.  This got pretty old pretty quickly...

Plutonic Repulse
  Confusing and not explained well.  This just really didn't do much for me, and I really couldn't figure out the gameplay.

ThunderWheels
  Needs a lot more polish.  Controls are very sloppy and the interface doesn't even look good enough for a flash game.  Not really my kind of game anyways...

Trash TV
  Straight of the bat, got a bazooka and had to do explosion puzzles.  Next!

The White Laboratory
  Interesting ideas, but it's not really explained well, I kept trying to stack the turret pieces but I couldn't figure out how the numbers worked.  Maybe if there's a better tutorial I'll figure it out better.


Conclusions
Maybe I'm just a picky gamer, but the one game out of this list I want to focus on is BeatBuddy.  Sure, most of them had unique bits, but that was the only one here that really truly captivated me.  The others just seemed to be covering familiar ground...
This is Gibbslap, and you didn't have to cut me off.

Well hello, Pyro! Nice to meet you!

So this happened today!
(that there's a hyperlink, make sure ya click it)
Pyro is possibly my favorite class in TF2 (one word: Detonator), and this video is about 19 kinds of awesome.  Due to me being so busy, I hadn't yet noticed the TF2 buildup ... and ... and ...
IS THAT A NEW FLAREGUN?!?!
*squee*
This is Gibbslap, and mpphhh mphh mphhhh mphhh mhh!

2Dew List (of DOOM!)

Whelp, good news is, my Backloggery finally contains the entire list of games I own, plus three other little achievements.  'tis here (until I figure out how to link it somewhere on the blog so that the link is always there...)
http://www.backloggery.com/gibbslap
Here's a basic interpretation of the statistics.  There are 181 games on this list that I care about.  One of these (the sole N64 title), I played at a friend's house and knocked off the todo list.  The others are games that (1) I own a physical copy of and have said physical copy right here, for PC, Wii or Gamecube (which I play on the Wii) (2) I purchased or downloaded on Steam or Virtual Console or (3) Cave Story and La-Mulana, which are independent downloads that don't directly interface with Steam (and I think those are the only two).
Of these 181 games, I've 100% completed just shy of 1/3 of them (seriously, 1/3 would be 60.3 games, I've completed 60 by this list).  The remaining 2/3 are split almost evenly three ways between games I "beat" but not 100%, games I started playing but never even finished the main story/goal/etc, and games I own that I literally have not played yet.  By these numbers, I'm actually doing pretty well, or so I've been told.  Of course, this doesn't include the staggeringly large list of games that I have yet to own a copy of...

So where do I go from here?  Well, on July 3 I'm going to be taking a few days' vacation at my parents house by the lake.  I doubt I'll be accomplishing much there, so I have a 2Dew list (of DOOM) that I want to accomplish before then.  This consists of:
Catch up on "the news" (aka The Daily Show/The Colbert Report ... I'm a couple weeks behind on each)
Beat Death in Castlevania (frustrating as heck, I tell ya)
Try out all the Level Up demos on Steam that I downloaded a couple weeks ago (and report on each here, natch)
Maybe make some progress on Donkey Kong Country
Clean my apartment
and Figure out why my kitchen smells of week-old General Tso's even though I've cleaned it already
Upon returning from the vacation, I will (in theory) have done a fair deal of Steam purchasing due to the impending sale (which should be starting any day now), and I will be focusing on putting my wish list on Gackbloggery, and starting something on Steam like I said a few days ago (albeit, after the sale and thus later than I intended).

For now, though, I have to go make some money.
This is Gibbslap, and my bologna has a first name.

Teasing Bluejay? (Or, When Gibbslap Can't Make A Good Title)

Well, so instead of uploading the rest of my PC collection, I just now finished Mockingjay.  Wow ... I have no idea how they're going to make a movie out of this ... this is from Scholastic Press?  Don't they make kids' books?  This was terrifying in spots, one of the darkest books I've ever read ... I'm trying to not spoil anything, just be aware that the series starts dark and just keeps spiraling deeper.  Epic moments near the end though.  This is one of those books that I'm not sure if I should feel guilty about enjoying ... and I'm probably going to hell for this reference, but...

This is Gibbslap, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Three-way

Back from the board card games!  We played two games, Dominion and Citadel.  Both games were a lot of fun, both complex card games.  Dominion in particular, each player has a deck that they build up by buying cards from a bank ... the available cards in the bank are chosen basically randomly (ten cards are chosen out of ... I think about 20 options in the original, and there are something like 7 expansions apparently).  We had an odd game where most of the cards were about revealing the top couple cards on other players' decks, and it was a lot of fun, I hope I get another chance to check out the other cards.  Citadel, on the other hand, was very challenging, and the three of us playing were basically on edge for the entire second half of the game ... it was intense ... and we wound up in a three-way tie XD  Epic and hilarious.  I need to do this more often!

So I'm back home ... going to add the CD/DVD-ROM collection to Backloggery tonight ... also, picked up Mockingjay on the way home from the games, I've been dying to read it ...

Also, still looking for suggestions on what on this list: http://www.backloggery.com/games.php?user=Gibbslap&search=&console=Steam&status=1&unplayed=1&rating=&region=&own= to play next.  I already am working on Castlevania (the original!) and Donkey Kong Country on the Wii Virtual Console, this is something I'd be doing in parallel with those.

This is Gibbslap, and this was never the way I planned.

And some other things...

See, I keep forgetting to mention stuff when I make these posts XD  I should start keeping notes or something...
---
So apparently Adult Swim is teaming up with Valve for something TF2 related.  I'm not much a fan of Adult Swim (primarily because I've never seen much of it) but if there are talks of a TF2 television series?  *squee*  TF2 is awesome and made of win and lots of stuff ... even further awesome, there have been hints that Meet the Pyro is finally coming very soon, and ... well, all hell will break loose then XD  All of this is making me really want to play more TF2, so maybe that'll happen soon XD
---
Also, Steam sale is practically guaranteed to be happening within a week.  Every six months for the past couple years, Steam has done a huge, two-week long sale where practically everything in their store older than six months is priced at dirt cheep at some point, plus for the past three sales (maybe more, I don't remember) there has been some sort of meta-game where achievements in Steam games are worth real prizes such as DLC or full games.  I am *very much* looking forward to this, I know I still have things to finish from - get this - Winter 2010, but this could very well be my chance to complete my PC collection.
---
Finally from Steam (yes, I'm a Valve fan, shaddup) a couple weeks ago there were a number of demos from the Intel Level Up 2011 competition ... I downloaded them, haven't tried them yet, baffling thing is that they don't seem to be on the Steam store anymore O_o  I found them on the website here: http://store.steampowered.com/sale/levelup , why can't I find them in the store?  No matter, I have them, I'll be playing them soon, probably before starting my next game completion project.
---
Speaking of my next game completion project, I don't know what it is yet.  So guess what! I'm gonna let you pick.  Go here:
http://www.backloggery.com/games.php?user=Gibbslap&search=&console=Steam&status=1&unplayed=1&rating=&region=&own=
and pick ... I dunno, two or three titles, and comment on this post with what you think I should play.  I only ask that you do not pick any sequels to something else that is in this list, remember I'm CDO and thus I insist on playing series IN ORDER, DANGIT.
This is Gibbslap, and that's the way it is.

Steaming Mad

So my Backloggery (still here: http://www.backloggery.com/gibbslap) has now been updated with everything I own on Steam.  Thus far it looks like I've 100% completed just about 1/4 of what I own ... which apparently is really really GOOD.  Now I still need to add everything from the big case of CD/DVD-ROMs, which apparently holds 216 discs ... while some of these are backups from Steam, others are multidisc games, still others aren't even games at all, that's still a pretty sizeable pile of games we're talking about.  I also know right at the front is my copy of Sonic Mega Collection Plus (yes, I have it for PC, got it shipped in from Europe for my 19th birthday ... Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the first video game I ever played, soon after my 4th birthday, roughly 15 years later I finally own a copy, and much rejoicing was had) ... that's going to be fun to add, because while it's one DVD, it contains almost the entire Sonic series pre-Adventure.  Anyways, I'll add this later, for now I have to get ready, a bunch of the guys from work are getting together to play board games ... you know, the German style board games, really deep and strategic and complicated.  The good stuff, mmmmmm~
So get on it, take a look at my Backloggery, and please please please leave me a comment if you know of any similar sites for tracking movies or TV or books.
This is Gibbslap, and I'm on a horse.

Conceptual Tizzy

Okay, so I used the word "Tizzy" in a post title ... wow.  Just ... wow.

Anyways, the reason I haven't been doing as much to update this blog as I should is, I've been addicted to Conceptis Puzzles lately.  conceptispuzzles.com  Check it out, really.  Not sure how to describe their puzzles other than "made of win".  Sure, most of them cost money, but if you register, it'll give you free puzzles every week.  Usually I just go with the free weekly puzzles but then I found several puzzle packs on Kongregate ... anyways, I'm going to get serious and update my Backloggery again.  If you haven't figured this out yet, while this blog is for anything geeky I participate in, there's going to be a pretty heavy slant towards video games...

This is Gibbslap, and you think you know me.

The week! It is ending!

So this is how I feel right now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVsfOSbJY0
My goal tonight is to continue updating my Backloggery for you all and maybe make a more proper post in a bit.  For now though, I kinda want a nap.
This is Gibbslap, and I so excited.

So I'm lazy...

Pretty much all I have to say right now is that my Backloggery is now updated with the Wii games I own.  I left out a few titles that I never play (basically sports games my brother had) but otherwise included everything from the game case.  I do wish though that I could get off Conceptis long enough to get other things done ... but the puzzles ... the puzzles, man, the PUZZLES...
This is Gibbslap, and Wii would like to play.

105% Hot

SAINT HEIFER it is hot.  Triple digits.  Thank goodness for AC, I'm trying my hardest to not pull a wicked-witch-of-the-west.  Tonight I'm going to try to organize and fill up my Backloggery some, and maybe play some Castlevania ... I'll keep y'all posted.
This is Gibbslap, and I'll get you, my pretty.

First!

The Rising Ner- ... oh dear lord, I haven't even gotten through the title yet and I've already said something borderline raunchy.
so...
HAIIIIIII
Call me Ishmael Gibbslap.
I am a 24yo software dev currently living in Cancun with my two supermodel wives and my gorgeous pet alpaca.  When I'm not spending my time fighting crime in a cape and tights, or infiltrating the Illuminati, I enjoy racing my lime-green Audi TT in the local grand prix, or swimming in my own personal vault of money.  Also, approximately 5% of this paragraph is true.  (hint: it's not the part with the alpaca)
But who the frick cares?  Your not hear to here my life story any more then your hear for thees speling mistakes.  You're here because this is my first blog post, and because something in that title caught your interest (it was the "rising" part, wasn't it? Perv.)
I kinda hope that it's the nerd part, because that's really why I'm writing this.  Basically, I'm a nerd, or I want to be one.  I probably already am, but not enough of one, so I'm "rising" to it.  Like bread.  Bread rises when it's hot.  Usually after it's been kneaded.  It usually goes from being soft to being firm, and ... have I mentioned yet how extremely perfectly straight I am?  I have?  Good.
Anyways, thanks to the support from a few friends, I've decided to make a blog about my ... journey, if you will, into the deep nethers of nerddom.  There are long (*very* long) lists of games, movies, books, shows that I have always wanted to consume, and have yet to do so.  I was raised in a moderately sheltered household ... I wasn't allowed video games aside from some games for the computer, that my parents had chosen based on educational value.  We barely used the TV, we only had the basic three-networks-plus-PBS deal.  Most everything we watched as a family, and I was the one nerd of the group.  Only in the past year have I moved out of my parents' house and gotten a decent source of income, and now I'm going to start making up for lost time!
...phew, that paragraph was torture, needing to stay normal for so long ... ah well, exposition is almost over!
This blog is going to chronicle my journey.  I'll talk about what all I'm watching or playing or reading, occasionally talk about some of what I was allowed access to when I was younger.  Over the course of the next couple few several days weeks I'll work on making lists for you all, lists of what I've done and what I intend to do.  I'm leaving most of this wide-open, hoping that this will become a sort-of stream-of-thought thing ... I mean jeez, I produce enough thinking over the course of the day, perhaps some of it is of value to someone?
Anyways ... I'm starting here: http://www.backloggery.com/gibbslap  At the time of writing, I've only put three games up, of the ... I figure well over 500 that belong on that page.  Yes! I'm that CDO (you know, OCD, I alphabetized it for ya)  I also like to think I'm pretty knowledgeable about random stuff'n'things (I aced the TVTropes class at my school with flying colors ... what, you don't have one at your college?)  Didn't say it would be a difficult journey ... but it'll be fun either way!  Come join me, we'll have such an adventure together! :3
...
...
Yup, still perfectly straight.
This is Gibbslap, and this was a triumph.