The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

This week I discovered a great browser-based 4x game called “Neptune’s Pride.” Take Master of Orion with real-time fleet movement, slim down the tech tree and add a dash of Diplomacy and you have this game. It’s free, it’s elegant and it’s fun, all things I look for in a game. To help me with planning, I whipped up two quick and dirty battle calculators in PHP which can be found here. Nothing too fancy, but they should get the job done.

On a related note, I started up an account on the Andromeda server of OGame. OGame is essentially Ikarium with a space theme. Which I am also a sucker for. Both are good coffee break amusements for the time being.

I also bought Assassin’s Creed II for Lynn for Valentine’s Day, and we should enjoy playing that together, too!

I hope that this doesn’t mean it will be blown to smithereens. It would be incredible to see this in a museum. PAX River’s Naval Air Museum has a couple of design and test aircraft for this program and they’re awesome. I hear PAX River just got a second real F-35 to work with, too.

Penny Arcade has started their now annual Christmas series of comics, which are almost always amazing. This year they appear to be mixing How the Grinch Stole Christmas with the Elder Gods of H. P. Lovecraft and Mind Flayers from D&D. Awesome.

Friday night Lynn and I received our new kitten from a great rescuer in NJ. Robin, the same woman that we got Preston from, works with a group called Maddie & Friends to rescue cats from bad areas of NJ and then get them adopted through Pet Finder and other means. We wanted to get Preston a playmate for when we’re gone and naturally we went back to her for help. She had a litter of orange-striped kittens, boys and girls, and we picked a young lady out. Her name is currently Charlotte, but it may still be up to debate. She’s very much a lap kitten, but doesn’t like to be held or carried. Loves to cuddle up in a warm lap, and as you can see below, loves video games, too. Her and Preston are still adjusting to each other. He wants to play a lot more roughly than she does, so she tends to roll on her back and claw at him when he gets too physical. But sometimes they will be cute and nice to each other, too. Hopefully it doesn’t take too much longer for them to adjust to each other’s tolerance for “fun.” And now, the part you’ve been waiting for:

SidekickKittens

As my addiction to the Puzzle Quest games and Gyromancer will no doubt attest, I’m a fan of the puzzle/RPG hybrid genre that has sprung up recently on handhelds and the PC. I suppose Bookworm Adventures might also count. This week Capybara Games (totally awesome name!) released an impressive-looking entry into the field which takes the puzzle/RPG combo and adds some elements of turn-based tactics RPGs and Magical Drop move mechanics. It’s called “Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes”. Having read some of the early reviews and hands-on coverage, this quirky title has jumped straight to the top of my Xmas list. (Yes, I already own too many games to play and too many books to read, sue me.) Check out some video:

And the official sites.

2009 has already been an amazing year for video gaming with incredible sequels such as Left 4 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, plus brilliant new IPs such as Plants vs. Zombies and Torchlight. This strange little portable strategy title may blow them all away.

I finally have converted this season’s volleyball schedule over to a Google Document and have added it to my Sports schedule page:

The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth » Sports

My volleyball team played its first match of the season on Friday. We lost all three games, but they were to a pretty solid team and we are still shaking some rust off and teaching new players.

In other news, Lynn and I spent the weekend cleaning up the place in preparation for a few house-changing events. First, she’s going to be moving in over the rest of this month. Second, we’re getting a second kitten as a Christmas present for our first kitten, Preston. The cleaning is going well, but there are still two more rooms to tackle. A lot of my old junk has been tossed or donated to Goodwill, with some more to go. Soon everything will be much cleaner and more organized so there are places for her things. The custom desk we’ve been building in my spare room is almost done, but we discovered after getting all the pieces together that it’s about two inches or so higher than the average desk, which is fine for me, but makes it unusable for Lynn. We’re probably going to need to find her a custom chair or chair + cushion to get her to a comfortable height.

You may have noticed some changes on the other Blogs that I help admin. My mom, my sister and Lynn have all changed their themes around and have done some customizing. I’ve also created and started working on a blog-based site for my co-ed rec hockey team, the Bellevue Bearcats. The GM and I are currently working on getting the data for various pages up, then doing some photo work.

The funniest thing in the history of today:

The second funniest:

My current rec sport schedules can now be found at The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth » Sports. Cool, huh?

Another gallery of pics using the Lazyest Gallery plug-in.

Lynn