The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I’m writing this on my iPod.

You see, this evening was really quite horrible. Sub-par! Was decent before that, but busy. I changed some oil, beat a game, and so on. Therefore, my planned ramble about Lost Planet 2 never happened. And now I’m blogging on an iPod. Yeah.

This WordPress app isn’t great. Then again, any app designed around typing a huge amount of text is going to be a bad experience on an iPod, but still. The interface goes crazy when I rotate the screen, for instance. Not solid.

Still, I guess I have it to thank for having content today, however horrible, so thanks, WordPress app! I’ll probably never use you again.

Okay, time to try to sleep.

Edit: And now, it’s the morning after. How did it do?
Passable.
It claimed to have posted on the wrong day, which I fixed, but the twitter integration did work, which was surprising. I figured that also would have fucked up.

Yeah, as I said, passable. A passable app. Maybe it would work better on an iPad. Then again, on the iPad I could just use the web interface I’m using now, so it’s kind of moot. Oh well.

Linkdump day! Linkdump day! Hey everybody, it’s Linkdump day!
Sing that to the tune of the Cartoon Planet Mailbag song.

But yes, it’s that magical time again where I have way too many tabs open. I need to fix that! Let me fix that. Here, for your enjoyment, are some tabs I have open.

Here’s a very impressive little song and hand dance routine that I was linked by Brer. It’s fun! I can’t get over the expression on the guy’s face.

This link is me being excited that Tron Bonne was officially announced for MvC3. I know that’s kind of old news now, but I missed the offical announcement, and recently discovered it. I have excitement. Tron is my super favorite.

I laugh every time I watch this touching moment with Sonic the Hedgehog.

Val linked me this short film. It’s pretty damn solid, though I dunno, some of the music is weird. Still, impressive. Worth your 15 minutes.

Anyway, there’s some viewing enjoyment for today. I hope you have fun watching them. Maybe I’ll write something significant tomorrow! Then again, I always say that and never do, so…

I’m not sure what I think about the title of Cut the Rope. On one hand, it’s simple and catchy. It explains what the main thing you’re going to be doing in the game is. That’s all cool. On the other hand, it suggests a simplicity that is quickly removed from the game as you play. Granted, it never gets overwhelming, but it is a puzzle game, and it does require you to have to wrap your head around some complicated, timed situations later on. It eventually gets a little less casual than it first appears.

Either way, though, the game is fucking fantastic and if you have an iDevice, you should totally pick it up for a buck.

Basically, the objective of the game is to feed a small cute thing candy. This candy is suspended from a rope or series of ropes in a box full of contraptions like bubbles, electric traps, and little grappling hooks that will tie the piece of candy to another rope if it comes near. You interact with these objects to feed the cute thing. The challenge, though, comes from 3 stars also placed in the level. It’s normally trivial to get the candy into the cute thing’s mouth, but much less so to make that happen after making the candy pass through all 3 stars. Solving the puzzle of how to do this is where the bulk of the gameplay lies.

The game starts simple. You slide across ropes with your finger to cut it and make the candy drop into the mouth. Simple. Then maybe you’re manipulating the physics by cutting ropes so the candy swings at the right momentum. Then you’re having to use multitouch to cut two ropes in different places at once. By the time you get to the last levels of the game, you’re using a rope on a slider to move candy in a bubble through a spike maze while a spider tries to walk up the rope and eat the candy. Also, electricity is shooting at the candy. It gets really crazy, but the game does a fantastic job of slowly adding more and more complexity as you go along. It makes sure to do everything it can with a mechanic before adding another, and then uses the combination of those two mechanics in every way it can think of as well. It’s really excellent.

I’m glad I listened to twitter rumblings and picked this game up. It’s one of the best iPhone games I’ve played, and one of the best game experiences I’ve had recently. The menu says, too, that they plan on having free content updates, so I am looking forward to playing another set of levels sometime in the future. Anyway, get it. Seriously. Seriously.

I think what I’m really wanting is a respect for what I’m doing. That’s all. I’m not against doing favors. I’m not against waiting a little bit longer if it makes everything else go smoother overall. I am against doing these favors, and they are completely favors, if it isn’t understood what I’m sacrificing to do them.

I feel like my dad gets it. When we talk about these things, he talks about it in a way where it’s clear he understands how much I’m hurting, and how significant waiting is. He makes it clear that he wants to help, and will help, but that this is how he sees it going down the best. He isn’t really on board with the idea, completely, but he knows my mind is made up and I have to do this to be happy, and he’s going to do what he can to make sure I’m happy in the smartest, best way possible. I can respect that. I want it to go down the best, and I’m willing to do what it takes to have it be the best. My family is super important to me, for better or worse. I can handle doing something for them, as long as they’re behind me.

My mother, however, doesn’t get it. Every time we talk about it, it’s clear, to me, that she’s simply stalling. She’s attempting to discourage me, and she doesn’t have my best interests at heart. She’s being dismissive of my problems, and how much waiting is going to hurt me. She does not take a decision to wait as anything significant. She makes me want to cry. She makes me angry. She makes me want to go “fuck this!” to doing things the right way and just get it the hell over with. She makes me wonder why I am even trying to connect with her and make her happy, when she seems so uninterested in it.

For my dad’s reasons, I’ll wait till after the wedding, no problem. If it means a stronger connection with my family, and more support when the actual time comes and things get tough, I can stall for a tiny bit longer. For mom’s reasons, they can just fuck off, because I have to start living my life. I only get one life. I’m tired of wasting it, and I get absolutely nothing out of waiting in her scenario.

I’m going to keep talking to them. I’ll probably have talked with them again before this goes up. I hope things go better. I wish I had a solution to all this bullshit. I wish it wasn’t crushing my belief that things will get better.
I wish a lot of things. Of course, in the end, I have to go out and make them happen.

Mercenaries is fun.

I had always heard so much about Mercenaries, but of course, not having given a shit about any Resident Evil, I never played it. In 5, I wanted to try it.

But fuck, it’s hard.

To unlock more levels and characters, you have to get A ranks, a feat I simply couldn’t do. My brother and I tried the first area multiple times, and didn’t even get close. Twitter came in and attempted to give me some advice, but to no avail. I couldn’t do it.

Then I realized there were Resident Evil fans out there, waiting to help me.

It only stood to be the case that anyone playing pickup games of Mercenaries online at this point was really good. I hopped on Xbox Live and joined a random game. My focus was purely on survival. I knew I was dead weight, but I figured as long as I stayed alive, everyone else would carry me along.
I was right.
Soon I had unlocked several characters and maps! Awesome! Of course, then I got to the point where I couldn’t survive without actually being passable, and I stopped progressing. Still, I was having fun. The combat of RE5 is intense, in it’s own broken way, and all the balls to the wall co-op combat was addicting. I kept hopping into games and playing rounds until they booted me out for sucking so much.

It was fun!

I still wish it would have been easier. I could really enjoy the mode with friends if the difficulty was dialed down just a little bit, to the point where I could unlock all the toys and everyone could play with them. Man, though, that really is neat. Something like that with some custom classes built into the mix… I’d pay 10 bucks to play that online, easily. It really is a huge little extra mode.

Of course, it’s only significant to me because this one has co-op, but, you know. That’s why I enjoy Resident Evil 5.

I promised you Resident Evil 5, and you’ll get it!

I really enjoyed this game.
Often I’ve tried Resident Evils, to attempt to figure out what the game was about. It’s such a big deal, right? But I always hated them. Even RE4’s new direction was one I just didn’t get. I was no good. It was no good. Why was this a big deal?

Then Resident Evil 5 came along. Since Jonathan enjoyed 4, and it had co-op, I wanted to try it. We tried it.
It clicked. It was fun. I bought it from Gamefly so Jonathan and I could finish it at our own pace.

Then we stopped playing it. Jonathan did moving and whatnot. It was forgotten.

Then I watched some Let’s Plays of Mercenaries and got all gung-ho about RE5 again. I forced Jonathan and I to get back to it.

And then, over a year after we started the game, Jonathan and I finished it on Saturday.

I’m glad we did. The game was super-fun. Co-op fixes a lot of what made RE4 unpalatable to me. Mainly, the fact that there’s another person around means that your mistakes aren’t nearly as horrible, since the other player can save your ass. This seems simple, but really, it turns RE5 into a fun, more casual experience than RE4. The other main issue that got me to enjoy the game more was that I stopped trying to use the handguns. I had watched Jonathan play through RE4 with all kinds of Handgunning, and assumed that was how you did it. This was not the case at all. Once I switched to a shotgun/machine gun combo, things went much better for me. I was an asset! It was wonderful that way. I played the tank, running in front and controlling crowds with the shotgun while Jonathan sniped from the back with Rifle and Pistol. It was a pretty solid division of labor!

I had originally worried about the “Zombies with guns” parts. I thought they’d be really annoying and stupid. In reality, I didn’t find them that way. Sure, when you tried to use the cover mechanics and saw how awful they were, it was pretty bad. But you rarely needed to use them, and since you were so powerful, especially with two co-ordinated people, the zombies needed something to get at you from a distance. It was a solid challenge. I didn’t feel it unfair.

Know what was unfair? The whole endgame fights with Wesker. Holy shit, that was annoying. Very little indication of what to do for the first part, with the rocket launcher, and such an annoying bullshit sequence of required events the second time, around the lava. Especially the part where Chris was supposed to save Sheva. I could never attack things from a distance well, and having to snipe Wesker was the most annoying thing. I eventually had to put the cheap Rifle I had with like 6 rounds left in it in my inventory just for that part of the sequence. Ridiculous to have to do that. So stupid.

The plot, too, was really ridiculous. It’s so tied into the thrown-together bullshit “canon” of the Resident Evil series that it’s completely incomprehensible, really. I had read a lot of RE let’s plays, so I kind of had an idea what was going on, but it was all… well, I guess I don’t get what kind of person would care about the plot. Still, it was nice enough to let you skip things, even the non-interactive parts of the interactive cutscenes, so that’s pretty nice of it.

Those problems aside, my feelings on the game are still extremely positive. It does a great job of having you manage limited ammo and inventory without giving you TOO little, and it has plenty of great opportunities for great co-op interaction. It’s an excellent game to play with a friend, completely, and I really had fun with it. I don’t know if it was the sort of game a fan wanted to play, but it was exactly what I wanted to play. I’d buy another game based around co-op like that, easily.

A wise man once said, “If you’re going to cut it, cut it close.”

This is about the closest I’ve cut it on my “daily post” idea since I started it. Seeing as it’s already the day of this posting. Still, I’m doing it! I mean, I teased Brer about writing a guest post, but I was going to get something up here, dammit!

Of course, I never promised it was going to be interesting.

Oftentimes, when I remember I need to write one of these, I sigh and wonder why I put such importance in it. I mean, I know some people read it, and that is super cool, but I doubt anyone would cry if I stopped posting. (And now it’s looking like I’m looking for people to tell me they enjoy this and blah blah… not what I’m wanting, really. Just being unable to think of another way to say what I’m wanting to say here.) It’s not a job or something like that. Having a website is something I am paying money to have. It’s something I’m doing for me on some level. But what if what I want to do is play a game? Or sit on my ass? Why do I make myself write?

Whenever I feel that panic that I haven’t written something and it’s getting late, I know why I do this.

I am damn, damn proud that something goes up on this site every day, even if it’s mostly useless ramblings and very biased game impressions. I think it’s fantastic that I am generating so much text. Am I proud of all of it? Not all of it. I find typos sometimes days later, and I’m not golden every day, or most days, even. Am I proud that I haven’t missed a day in years? That’s right, multiple years? You better believe it. This has been the most successful project I’ve ever undertaken, and I think that’s neat.

Am I going to let the fact that I’m busy as fuck stop this blog? Nope. You’ll get bullshit every day. Come back tomorrow! I’ll tell you about Resident Evil 5.

My class this semester won’t talk to me.

I try, I really do, but they just won’t talk to me. Usually there’s always at least one or two people in a class like this that will bail a teacher out and respond, even when nobody wants to. I don’t have any of those students in this class. It’s a complete failure in that regard. It got so bad that I had to give a listening comprehension quiz the other day because they simply would not have any discussion about an essay in question.

I’ve had to break them up into groups with specific questions to answer in order to get them to talk. I really would prefer not to do this. I feel like they’re going to get more out of an experience which is less guided, where they are free to come to their own conclusions about the text, and then get feedback from me about how they did. It’s there they can learn that they can disagree, they can take other angles of attack, and they can pick what they feel is important. These are all lessons I wish I had figured out earlier in my college career, and I want to give that to them early. They just won’t do it, though! It’s frustrating.

Still, on Friday, I really got them to talk, due to something really stupid.

I put a list of discussion questions on the board, as I’ve been doing. Then, simply because I do things just to entertain me, I added an additional question. “What is the best artificial flavor?”

Debate ensued.
Every group had a different favorite. Cherry. Strawberry-Kiwi. Orange “drank.” Blue Raspberry. Every time a group voiced a favorite, everyone wanted to talk about it. It was amazing! The class could actually discuss things!
Of course, it then became really hard to get them back on the topic of essays. But, well, at least it’s something. Small victories.

I’ll probably attempt to refer back to this discussion when we talk about the Evaluating essay, as this is exactly the sort of topic they can write about then. That’s really one of the things I’ve found you have to do to be effective as a teacher: you have to be willing to let the random stuff work in and entwine with what you’re teaching. You have to make what people already care about relevant to what you’re doing, and not in a way that feels fake. I can do that with this. That’s good.

Still, I’d rather they have just discussed to begin with. I was spoiled last semester with a class of people who were really passionate about writing, even if they never turned anything in. Oh well.

I’ve had a root canal.

This is always described as the worst dental procedure one could have done. Since it’s the only real surgery of any kind I have ever had done, I was extremely nervous about it, but in the end, it went fantastically well, and now you get to read about it, I guess.

All the people at the Endodontist’s office were quite nice. They were extremely informative on what was happening, what needed to be done, and what I should do in the future, but they also weren’t persecuting me for needing dental work done. This is something I had kind of worried about. I was really embarrassed by this whole tooth thing, and I didn’t really want to be embarrassed more. I wasn’t. I appreciated that.

Basically, the procedure consisted of me getting three shots in the mouth to numb me. I had never been so numb before: later, when drinking a beverage to take more painkillers, I could only feel half the rim of the can, which was creepy as hell. Still, what they gave me worked perfectly. I didn’t feel any pain at all during the procedure. It was really awkward and kind of boring sitting there the whole time, but it didn’t hurt. It was just time consuming. They even mentioned that they have a lot of people fall asleep on them while they were doing this, and I could see why. I nearly did at several points. You’re laid back in a comfy chair and have nothing to do. Napping is easily.

The worst part of the whole experience was the smell, really. I don’t know if it was because of infection, or if that’s just what it normally smells like, but oh god, the smell of drilled tooth was horrific. I felt it linger, imagined or otherwise, all day, and it made me feel kind of ill, more than anything else. I survived it of course, but man. It was that, not any pain, that was the problem.

I was told to take a ton of painkillers, and that would deal with any soreness. I followed that advice, and it actually worked to, which surprised me. Besides dealing with a bit of a numb feeling on one side of my face for awhile after, there was really no bad effects from this procedure. They apparently know their stuff at Cape Endodontics.

I’m glad it’s over with, of course. Not having my tooth hurt is a good thing. But I was just surprised by how much of a non-issue most of the thing was. Apparently dentistry techniques have changed a lot or something, for the stories to have been this bad and the experience to have been this good. Now it’s done. One more thing done, I guess. That’s good.

Yesterday was pretty horrible for me. Maybe sometime I’ll tell you about it. Not today, though. Not now. Not now.

However, it is my Mom’s birthday, and that’s something. Happy Birthday, Mom.

I recall a story about my mother not being sure if she should go to the hospital to have me because she was watching a March Madness game. Thus, it seems relevant (Okay, not at all relevant, shut up) to point you towards something to read today that has something to do with Basketball. That, of course, would be Kalir’s fucking amazing LP of Tales of Game’s Studios Presents Chef Boyardee’s Barkely: Shut Up And Jam Gaiden: Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. I think this game is amazing, as you can see. It’s so awesome, and Kalir has done an amazing job of documenting it so you don’t have to play it. Give it a read.

I’ll try to give you something to read tomorrow. Maybe about Dentistry. You never know.