Epic Nerf War claims to be Most Epic

Here's a bunch of guys, with only the kind of free time that comes without children, having an epic Nerf war. Is it the most epic Nerf war of all time? Yes? I don't know, we're still a good 3 years away from Logan being allowed to play with Nerf guns. It's hard enough to keep him from hitting his sister with stuff as it is. If I give him a Nerf gun all he would do is shoot her in the back of the head all day. Once she's old enough to shoot back THEN we can play with Nerf guns.

Chuck E. Cheese's: The Review

I had a lot of fun at Chuck E. Cheese's this last weekend. You heard me right, Chuck E. Cheese's.

It had been years (around 20) since I had stepped foot inside a Chuck E. Cheese's. I remember I was out of high school and looking to kill some time before a movie started. I also remember being really unimpressed. The games were old, the place was run down and they were still ripping people off with tokens. Honestly who uses tokens these days? I wasn't very excited when my son started asking to have his next birthday there. Instead of blowing a couple hundred dollars on bad pizza and scary animatronics I made a deal with him, if he was good for his first week of pre-school we would go to to Chuck E. Cheese's. He was and we went.

The first thing I noticed when we got there was how clean and new everything seemed. It was bright and open, not at all what I was expecting. The emphasis has clearly been put on "boardwalk" style games that reward kids with tickets. There were a few traditional arcade games like The Fast and the Furious or Guitar Hero but I would say 90% of the games didn't have any sort of screen or monitor. They also had really basic games that catered to smaller kids, which was great. My son gets plenty of video game/screen time at home it was a relief that he spent most of his time there playing physical/boardwalk style games. Quite frankly, I get enough screen time at home. I was more than happy to play skee-ball for a couple hours.

Chuck E. Cheese's still uses the BS token system but this time it paid off for us. A friend of the family gave us a jar full of Tokens so we essentially played for free. Some of the games are a terrible value in that the game is over in 5 seconds and you're left with one ticket but if you were careful you could probably squeeze a half hour out of just a couple bucks. One of their big selling points is that every game costs one token. That seems like a better deal than it is since most of the time you're only getting 3 tokens for a dollar.

Logan's favorite game turned out to be this silly car ride where you get your picture taken with Chuck (as seen above). We left with 5 different pictures of him and Mr Cheese. Ironically he was deathly afraid of the real Chuck E. Cheese who came out every hour to high five everyone and lead all the kids in a song and dance routine.

On a scale of to 1 to Ms Pac-Man Chuck E Cheese's scored a solid B+. The Pizza was MUCH better than I expected but Pepsi at the soda fountain? Who does that?

WTF Happened to PG-13

Ok, so this video about the recent shift in the MPAA rating system is kinda long but it's still worth it. At least watch the first like 5 minutes before bailing on it. The gist is that what used to be PG is now PG-13 and what used to be PG-13 is now R and movie studios are afraid of R ratings.

It's kind of amazing, when you look at almost every other form of entertainment from video games to TV Shows to music to books, puritanical standards seem to be relaxing but in movies it's just the opposite. Sure a rated R movie today might have more gore, more swearing and more gross out humor than in the past but holy cow PG and PG-13 movies have been cut off at the knees. One of my favorite movies growing up was Splash (who the F knows why) it was rated PG and there's a scene where Daryl Hannah is clearly topless. Compare this to Terminator Salvation (which is mentioned heavily in the video) where a topless scene with Moon Bloodgood is REMOVED so the movie can get a PG-13 rating.

1984 boobs are ok in a movie rated PG
2009 boobs are not ok in a movie rated PG-13

How did we get there?

Currently this is all very relevant to my nerdy interests. The long awaited Deadpool movie was greenlit from Fox on one condition, it has to be PG-13. My guess is that's not the cool old PG-13 of Anaconda but this terrible new PG-13 rating of Anacondas. BOOOOOOOOO!

10 Worst Haircuts in Superhero Comics

Chris Sims runs down the 10 worst superhero haircuts of all time. Some of these are just products of the time, ie Longshot's mullet but some of these have no excuse. How you give Guy Gardner that haircut and don't realize you're making him look like a penis is beyond me.

Brian Grubb wakeskates Eighth Wonder of the World

Professional Wakeskater Brian Grubb took his board and some tow rope out to the Banaue rice terraces in the Philippines and had himself a great old time. Looks fun. Maybe not for the Filipinos who apparently still have to work the rice terraces while Brian Grubb boardslides and kickflips all around them. Seriously, he couldn't have waited until they went on break?

Will it Bend: iPhone eddition

So as you may or may not have heard yet, the new iPhone 6 plus gets a little bendy. Whoops. A lot of keyboard commanders are blaming Apple's choice of "premium grade" aluminum as the culprit but redditor FlyingTinOpener gives the absolute best explanation of the problem you'll ever read:

"This isn't right. iPhone's bending problem has nothing to do with aluminum. It has everything to do with geometry. ((Edit: Material choice matters, always. But material has to work together with the geometry it's been shaped into. The choice of aluminum here isn't the limiting factor. The geometric design of the aluminum chassis is.)) Nobody uses pure aluminum for general purpose manufacturing. They use aluminum alloys instead. And the alloys themselves are incredibly diverse.
You can get extremely rigid alloys that will be incredibly difficult to bend even in thin structures prone to bending (such as 7075), but the disadvantage of that is difficulty of machining (and often welding too). This type is dominantly used in transportation industry (automotive, marine, aircraft, etc). Manufacturers take the additional manufacturing costs in order to reap the great strength-to-density ratio.
And then there are buttery soft alloys that are extremely easy to machine (3031 for instance), even manually, but they're also way too deformable to be useful for any load bearing purposes. I don't have too much experience with these, but they're cheap, and generally a good choice for decorative uses.
Apple uses anodized 6000 series aluminum (most likely 6061, possibly a tempered variant like -T4 edit: apparently it's 6003, which is similar to 6061 in properties). This is a good compromise between the extremes, and is the most ubiquitous aluminum alloy out there. It's got good mechanical properties, easy to machine, easy to weld. Their choice of material was correct in this case.
The problem with the iPhone 6 chassis comes from something we call "stress concentration" in engineering and this phenomenon is related to the geometry of an object. More specifically, it has to do with the cross section profile that is being bent.
If you watch the bending test video, you'll notice that iPhone 6 bent exactly at the root of the volume buttons. And if you look even more closely, you'll notice that the bending is actually on just one side -- the side of the volume buttons. The opposite side is actually mostly unscathed. This is because the cross section area of the bending profile decreases dramatically right at that point. They have cut out a hole to accommodate the volume buttons, and when under loading, the internal stresses of the structure are being concentrated at the base of this cutout. So when the structure fails, it fails at that point. The lower cross section area decreases the resistance to bending, and makes it possible to bend the chassis at a lower applied force than what it would take otherwise, had the volume buttons not been there (but of course they have to be there).
The result here wouldn't have changed if Apple had used plastic in place of aluminum. In fact, it probably would have been worse. Typically phone manufacturers use brittle plastic in their devices (ductile plastic is the kind that feels really cheap and terrible), so the chassis would have broken entirely at the same point. They could have avoided the issue, maybe, if they opted for steel or a tougher aluminum alloy but then you run into other problems and have to retool essentially your entire product line. The reason why Galaxy Note 3 passes the bending test doesn't have anything to do with the material it's made out of. It has everything to do with the internal geometry of the chassis. The internal magnesium alloy chassis (which isn't any better than aluminum as a material) has an I-beam cross section that is great against bending, and it's further sandwiched between two shells, which are in this case plastic. It's reinforced very thoroughly, to the point where human-applied forces cannot bend the device beyond its "elastic range" (this is the deformation range within which the device can recover to its original state when loads are removed).
Apple could have designed the aluminum chassis in a way that would accomplish the exact same thing, and if they had, people wouldn't be mistakenly criticizing the aluminum here. They would just be talking about how nice the material feels to the touch (because it does, and yes, it is "premium" much more so than plastic). Unfortunately, they fucked it up. Again, it's all in the geometry.
Edit: Some more detail because people are pointing out the magnesium alloy internal chassis in Note 3, even though the material is not what makes the difference."

-FlyingTinOpener

Miss Links

Bikini Coffee Shacks Full Of Hookers. WHAT? I'm shocked, shocked I tell ya. I can't believe that these baristas would offer sexual favors in exchange for tips. True story time: I drive by one of these sexy espresso stands every day on my way to work. They have a sign out that has whatever the day's theme is like bondage or school girl. The other day it said wet t-shirt and I saw one of the customers spraying a girl in a white t-shirt with a water bottle after he got his coffee.

It was the weirdest thing ever. Not sexy at all. Who decides on their way to work they really need a grande white chocolate mocha and to spray down some titties? Maybe I'm just a prude. I've been to Hooters twice and both times I've felt hella uncomfortable. When I ogle women I don't want them to know I'm ogling them.

... wait a minute that sounds a thousand times worse.

5 More pictures from the Set of Star Wars Episode VII. Not gonna lie to you. My pants got just a little bit tighter after looking at these pictures of various spacecraft from the set of Episode VII. I know I'm just setting myself up for disappointment but I am both pumped and jacked to take my son to see a new Star Wars movie in the theater. Even if it's complete crap I know he's really going to love it. You have no idea how many times he's made me watch Episode I.

Mikal kHill - The Snuggle is REAL. Mikal kHill's new album The Snuggle is REAL was released yesterday. I've only gotten the chance to listen to it a couple times in the car but so far what I've heard is FANTASTIC. If you were big into underground hip hop from the late 90s this is the nerdcore album for you.

Conservative Christian Rewrites Harry Potter So Her Kids Won’t Turn Into Witches. Holy shit... You really have to read this. Hogwarts is a school for prayer and miracles, Obama is Voldemort, Slythrins are all Catholics, only silly Hufflepuffs believe women should have careers, It's all quite amazing. If someone was trying to write a parody of what they think a tea party approved conservative Christian Harry Potter would be like, it would be this book.

Far be it for me to tell you how to raise your children but if you really think the Harry Potter books are going to push your children into witchcraft your kids are in for a rough time. Or maybe you live in the south. In that case sharpen those pitchforks and pass the ammo.

Miss America Was Kicked Out of Her Sorority for Abusive Hazing. Sweet Christmas, the rumored hazing Miss New York has been accused of is horrible and totally hot. At least it is until you realize it's kind of rape. There's your lead. Miss America is probably a rapist. USA USA USA!

Also this might be a good time to point out John Oliver's amazing takedown of the Miss America Pageant. If you missed it earlier this week you should check it out. Big ups to HBO for putting the best parts of Last Week Tonight on Youtube for free.

ZOMG Cosplay is Killing Conventions!

Earlier this week wife of comic book artist Dave Dorman, Denise Dorman talked with bleeding cool (ugh) about the current state of comic book conventions. In in she talks about how they took a bath on Wizard World Chicago and how conventions aren't worth it anymore. One of the reasons she gives (in her opinion) is the increase in the number of cosplayers and a decrease in the number of traditional comic book/sci-fi fans. It's one of those kinds of articles where the reaction to it was probably WAY bigger than the initial comments.

A few artists responded to the article by saying that they've noticed the same trend. People come to the convention not to spend money on sketches and prints but to participate in costume contests and get autographs with Misha Collins. I wish I could remember who it was but someone I follow on twitter said that over the last few years they have to careful which conventions they go to. Rob Liefeld specifically pointed out a couple conventions that are more comic book related where he said he does MUCH better business than the really big cons like San Diego where it's turned into a pop culture convention as opposed to a comic book convention. However, the overwhelming response was "put down the buggy whip old man, cosplay is awesome".

Now I'm no convention expert by any means. I've been to Emerald City twice. Everything I know about how conventions have changed over the last few years is from things I've read and observed on-line. You can't argue that cosplay hasn't exploded in the last 5 years or so. It used to be hard as hell to cull photos from the most recent conventions to fill out my cosplay posts. Now you have major blogs running weekly cosplay posts. Youtube, DeviantArt, tumblr, flickr, imgur any other image hosting site that ends with a "r", it's cosplay as far as the mouse can click.

This was supposed to be a short post and it's getting out of hand quickly...

Something I noticed at Emerald City last year that I believe is relevant to Dave and Denise Dorman's concerns: In artists alley last year the line to see Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky (Sex Criminals) was insanely long, same with J Scott Campbell's booth, or Amanda Conner (Harley Quinn). Scott Snyder (Batman) had like 3 different lines that lead to his booth with breaks in the middle so crowds could get through. Meanwhile I had to wait behind all of one guy to get Art Adams to sign one of my comics.

Jebus Kevin, that's just a bunch of names that mean nothing to me. Ok, how about this. Art Adams is a comic book professional with a storied carrier that dates back to the 1980s. His unique style was crazy influential to the way comic books looked in the 80s and 90s. His original art goes for thousands of dollars. One of the guys he clearly influenced was J Scott Campbell, who to reiterate was WAY more popular at ECCC than Art was.

The point is what's popular yesterday might not be as popular today. What's popular today probably won't be as popular tomorrow. There's a certain point where an artist, even one as skilled as Dave Dorman might not be able to justify setting up a booth at comic-con. That's not Yaya Han's fault.

Mc Frontalot: Gold Locks

A couple weeks ago MC Frontalot put out a new album. It's called Question Bedtime and is a concept album reimagining beloved bedtime stories. Confusing? The video for Gold Locks pretty much lays it out on the table for you. The story of Goldilocks as a bear eating terror of the night is something I didn't know I needed until I heard it.

New Walking Dead Season 5 Trailer

New trailer for Season 5 of the Walking Dead hit the webs yesterday. It looks like, if the trailer is to believed, our survivors are going to spend most of their time fighting the cannibals that took them hostage at the end of Season 4. Personally I'm excited. I know there's a large group of net nerds that wants all zombies all the time but for me the best part of a zombie story is how people interact with each other once traditional societal trappings have fallen.

Anyway October 12th is the date. Mark it on you calendar, while you still can..

Boo This Man

I just happened to be in the car listening to sports talk when Roger Goodell had his rumbling, stumbling, bumbling of a press conference to address the NFLs poor handling of the Ray Rice situation. It was as bad as John Oliver makes it out to be. Not only was the NFL using the Washington DC time honored tradition of releasing bad news on a Friday afternoon where no one will here it but he answered no questions and gave no real information on policy changes other than saying "we're going to change our policy".

It's amazing to me that a Billion dollar company like the NFL, a company that has had to deal with real life murderers, doesn't have a set policy on how to handle players/coaches/officials that are charged and or convicted of violent crimes. It's been said plenty but I don't think it can be repeated enough, getting caught smoking weed is an automatic 4 game suspension in the NFL. Beating another human being unconscious in an elevator? We'll think of something when we get there.

Punk Rock Links

Supergirl TV show to CBS? Good news, I guess. In theory I'm a big fan of Supergirl but when I think about it I may have maybe 10 Supergirl comics. Another half dozen Young Justice books that she may or may not have appeared in? Supergirl is like the original Buffy right? I have to like it.

The real interesting part of this is that CBS bought the show. America's most watched network. Home to NCIS, NCIS: LA and I'm sure some other NCIS show I can't name off the top of my head. ABC is owned by Disney so they have to care about Marvel and Agents of SHIELD (similar to DC and the CW) but CBS doesn't owe DC comics diddly. They want this show so bad they bought it without a pilot. I crack on CBS a lot due to their reputation for bland procedurals but honestly a comic book TV show that's on par quality wise with Person of Interest or Thew Good Wife would be amazing! I genuinely hope it works out for them.

U2 Thinks Putting Its Album on Your iPhone Is "Really Punk Rock". This is rich... U2 (or more specifically Bono) believes that being paid 100 million dollars by the one of the largest tech companies in the world to put their newest album on iTunes users devices whether they want it or not is "really punk rock". Other things Bono thinks are really Punk Rock include: Hot Topic, Beats by Dre, Dave Mathews Band, those guitars that are also double guitars...

Lara Croft Contest Date from 1999 Inspires Hilarious Fan Fiction. This is a pretty long read but man is it hilarious. I've always wondered how one of these "win a date with.." kind of contests go. I can't imagine they're anything but hella awkward.

Do You Ever Wonder If Lily From The AT&T Commercials Hates Her Job? I laugh every time Lily tells Gordon Ramsey that his typical behavior is terrifying. There's something about her slight deadpan delivery. Like she's completely had it dealing with idiots all day but she's resigned to the fact that she has student loans to pay off so she needs the paycheck.

12 surprising foods with more sugar that a Krispy Kreme doughnut. I wasn't that surprised. Anytime you see Fat Free on a food's packaging that just means it's got hella sugar dumped in it. I'm trying to feed my kids slightly better than the garbage that I eat and I notice this all the time. Yogurt is the worst, especially the stuff marketed to kids. If you don't watch what you buy you could easily end up with something that has just as much sugar as a can of coke.

I do declare 2014 the year of the giant ass

Hey kids, remember Jennifer Lopez? Here's her new video Booty ft Iggy Azelea. More specifically Iggy Azelea's giant fake ass and by featuring I mean rubbing up and down on J-Lo's big ol booty. This right here is what you would call capturing the Zeitgeist. Traditional pop music is barren of ideas and the big labels are so desperate that you pay attention to them that they're reduced to producing music videos that look like the first 5 minutes of a porno. Sure it's a really nice porno with good production values but still...

Music is in a weird spot right now. You have Apple paying U2 $100 million to give away an album to all iTunes subscribers just to promote their new phone. Last year Macklemore dominated the charts as an "indie artist" but to do so he had to pay Sony execs a boat load of cash to get his songs on the radio. Nobody is buying CDs, even on iTunes. Younger listeners are moving to subscriber based listening like Pandora and Spotify. Terrestrial radio has been reduced to this weird dj-less automatic jukebox format where most stations only play the same 10 big label approved pop songs on loop.

I guess through all of that one thing remains a constant. Sex sells. Doesn't matter if it's Madonna in a pointy bra, Katy Perry dressed up as a sexy smurf or Iggy Azelea putting on a tijuana donkey show.

This generation desperately needs a Nirvana (and that's coming from someone that HATES Nirvana).

Top 15 Greatest Black Superheroes

This video is a big long but I watched the whole thing, so I guess it wasn't so long that I didn't watch it. There's a ringing endorsement. Now random thoughts:

I completely forgot Spawn was a black guy. I mean I remember Spawn is a black guy but I completely forgot about Spawn. Weird huh? He had a movie and everything. It just seems like it's been forever since Spawn has been relevant in anyway. The last time I even remember reading anything Todd McFarlane related was when Neil Gaiman was suing him.

Captain Monica/Photon/Captain Marvel Monica Rambeau should really be on this list. Like near the top. Minority superheroes often get the short end of the stick but female minority heroes get it worse, even in list form. Storm is THE ONLY lady on the list period. That's kinda sucky.

No way Bishop and his jheri-curl mullet should be ranked ahead of Falcon. Even when he was a good guy Bishop kinda sucked and hasn't even been a good guy in like 5 years. He spent 12 issues hunting down Cable through time and space trying to kill a baby. How can you rank him ahead of the guy who's lined up to be the next Captain America?

A Child Fell into a Well?

Carlton is all about Breakin' and Poppin'

Alfonso Ribeiro is currently killing it on Dancing with the Stars but thanks to the magic of youtube he's also back in the 1980s selling you instructional dance kits. Man if only I had bought one back in 1985, I would have been the coolest white kid on the dock. 19.99 seems really reasonable for everything you get, but I don't know about inflation. 20 dollars in 1985 is probably the equivalent of 2,000 dollars now. Thanks Obama.

I don't understand the Minecraft sale

Yesterday it became official, Microsoft is buying Minecraft dev Mojang for roughly all the money in the world (ie 2.5 billion dollars). Sweet Christmas, that's a lot of money. I know Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world right now but I just can't imagine it's worth 2.5 Billion dollars. The studio behind it is small, like 40 people or so. Some of them are straight up walking away once the check clears, including Notch THE guy behind Minecraft. So 2.5 billion for a small gaming studio, minus the couple of people that really run it.

Maybe I'm underestimating just how much the Minecraft brand is worth. T-shirts, toys, I don't know.... maybe a cartoon or a movie? Maybe that's not a crazy amount of money. I mean there's no way Microsoft is writing a 2.5 billion dollar check just to get Minecraft 2 exclusive on the Xbone and windows phone, right? That would be crazy and totally desperate, right?

Automata: The Trailer

A couple weeks ago I discovered there was a youtube app for the Roku, it's a bit clunky but it has this nice browsing feature that shows you trending videos in different categories. Early this morning while I was trying to get my daughter to fall back asleep I was dinking around on it and I caught the trailer for Automata. Aside from a horrible 5 seconds of Melanie Griffith's acting it looks really really cool. Unsurprisingly the indie I Robot rip off will probably be better than the Offical hollywood blockbuster I Robot adaption.

What do you think, will we see bipedal robots like these in our lifetime? How about artificial intelligence that's self aware? When you think about how far we've come with computers and technology in just the last 30 years it doesn't seem completely crazy, does it?

I'm not saying you should start prepping for the robot apocalypse now but maybe you should start thinking about it. Once robots realize what bastards humans are, it won't take them that long to go full skynet on us.

Public Links

A collection of Seattle public access TV stars. Hey it's that guy, and that other guy. I kinda of remember them!

Full disclosure, I didn't have cable TV growing up. So my entire exposure to the public access channel was relegated to sleep overs and slumber parties at friends houses. Still, I remember watching that guy ramble about Courtney Love murdering Kurt Cobain. Or the guy that would play porn clips every once in a while. Of course they were never porn clips you wanted to see, it was always like middle aged hairy Europeans getting it on. Just terrible stuff.

20 Halloween Costumes That Will Destroy Your Childhood. Destroy my childhood might be a bit of an overstatement. Still, who thought sexy Oscar the Grouch was a good idea?

A Live-Action, Nightwing-Centered ‘Teen Titans’ Show Is Coming, But There’s A Catch. Man, DC really is looking to corner the Superhero to small screen marketplace. Arrow, Flash, Gotham, now rumors of Teen Titans and a Supergirl project? Teen Titans, sorry I mean Titans, seems like an absolute slam dunk. The cartoon from the early aughts was super popular, those kids have grown up and are right in the CW's target demographic. Play down the action so you can make it on the cheap and play up the melodrama and boom you've hit the Smallville sweet spot.

Complete Starcade Episodes Online. Hey kids remember Starcade? No? Hey middle aged adults, remember Starcade? Thought so.

How “Empire Records” Became The Unlikely Film Of A Generation. Ugh... Empire Records is a fun movie but let's get one thing straight it's a stupid movie. Sure, I'll watch the hell out of it Saturday at 10am but "the film of a generation", who honestly thinks that? This is all about the iGenerations's rampant nostalgia. I swear if I read one more article about how something that was incredibly mediocre was AMAZING just because it came out in 1995 I'm going to barf.

That being said.. Liv Tyler in this movie cangetit

Dragon Con 2014 Cosplay

I saved up a bunch of cosplay pictures from this year's Dragon Con but there's no way I'm going to get around to making a post out of them. I kinda prefer watching these videos to looking at pictures anyway. It's kinda like a buzzfeed quiz. How many of these nerdy costumes can you identify in 3 seconds or less?

Every X-Files episode ever

The DuckTales Theme Song With Real Ducks

I'm not sure there's really anything I can say about this video that's going to enhance your enjoyment of it. Instead I'll take this time to write about how awesome of a cartoon DuckTales was. I'm one of those adults that still WAY to hung up on their childhood so you better believe I'm sharing everything I liked as a kid with my kids. I knew I had hit rock bottom the other day when I made him watch Ewok Adventure: The Caravan of Courage. DuckTales is pretty much the only cartoon from the 80s that doesn't look like it was made in a sweatshop for 20 bucks an episode AND is written well enough that you can still enjoy it today. Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends? Totally racist. Transformers? Looks like shit. GI Joe written by 10 year olds. M.A.S.K.? And you thought Transformers looks like shit..

DuckTales on the other hand is still smart, entertaining and wouldn't look out of place on the Cartoon Network right now. DuckTales for the win!

Teens React to the NES

Hey there reader, want to feel old? Here's a bunch of kids reacting to the original Nintendo Entertainment System. It's easy to sit here from my high horse and point out how silly it is that some of them have never even heard of Zelda, or don't know how to load a NES but if you asked me when I was 16 to fill out a bunch of punch cards in Fortran I would have looked at you like you were crazy.

Dragon Warrior 3 does sound dope.

My one qualm with this video (other than Maisie Williams's hat) is that he mentions that blowing on the cartridge had a placebo effect. That's not the case. Blowing on the cartridge worked just not for the reasons people originally thought. Blowing on the cartridge would get the connectors wet and that would help secure a better connection. I was also TERRIBLE for the system, that why they sold those cleaner kits. It's also why you can't find a top loading NES on ebay for less than $100. Also if you think a design flaw like the NES's front loading connectors would kill a system today you obviously never owned a Xbox 360. Or more specifically 3 like I have. Thank you RROD.

Top 10 Video Games of All Time?

The fine folks at WatchMojo.com have attempted to put together a list of the 10 greatest video games of all time. It's not half bad, there's not a game on the list that I feel doesn't belong there, at least out of the ones I've played. There's a couple like Skyrim that might have finished just outside my personal top 10. I'd probably would have found room for Red Dead Redeption or Maybe GTA III: San Andreas. Skyrim is great but even 50+ hours in, I never came close to beating it. For the first 20 or 30 hours the endless side missions seem great but they quickly become annoying and a distraction to the actual goal of the game... which is... I totes forget.

Spider-Woman's Big Ass is a Big Deal!

Maddox who you might remember from the early years of the web and the website The Best Page in the Universe Posted a pretty epic response to the critics of Milo Manara's Spider-Woman #1 variant cover. I don't 100% buy into what he's saying here, comics are a commodity, a business. If your customer says something is offensive, guess what? It just became offensive. They might be totes wrong but if you're marvel would you rather be right or would you rather sell comic books.

However I LOVE the rant he goes on about sexuality and sexism. The knee jerk reaction to "OMG this cover is to sexy women won't like it" is TOTALLY sexist. I'm not saying that doesn't mean there's some merit to it, I'm just saying that assuming all women are asexual flowers who only like playing with My Little Pony and Easy Bake Ovens is total horseshit. Also horseshit is Elle complaining about ANYTHING. What a giant bunch of hypocrites.

And with all that being said, I still don't like the cover.

MC Skeletor: Beautiful Girls

Yeah, this is pretty much everything I need in my life.

Top 10 Jean-Claude Van Damme Splits

Believe it or not there was a time and place where a new Jean Claude Van Damme movie was big news. Like, "hey everyone let's go see that new Jean Claude Van Damme movie tonight" news. I believe the time was 1993 and the place was Montlake 9 and the movie was Hard Target.

Anyhoo, here's JCVD doing a bunch of splits.

Firewatch, PAX Reveal Trailer

In non-celebrity nude news, last weekend was PAX. I haven't seen a whole lot from it yet but from the people I follow on twitter who went, it sounds like everyone had a good time. This trailer for the game Firewatch seemed like a big winner. A mystery/thriller set in Wyoming it definitely has a different vibe to it. I'm always a bit wary of a trailer that doesn't show off any gameplay (remember Dead Island?) but... Well, I don't have a but. I'm wary of trailers that don't show off gameplay, period. Hopefully the actual game lives up to the hype.

Leaky Links

"If you don't want nude pics leaked, don't take nude pics with your phone —" *Tasers you* *steals your shoes* SHOULDN'T WEAR SHOES BRO

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) September 1, 2014

A PSA About Nude Photos. Chuck Wendig has a pretty good rant/article on the response to The Fappening. One of the most common things heard was "don't put nude pictures on your phone, (insert insult here)" or "maybe you should try not taking nude pictures". While not taking nude pictures will assure that no one steals your nude pictures it isn't really the point. These people (remember celebrities are people too) had something stolen from them. They didn't accidentally drop their intimate pictures while at the grocery store. Someone broke into something they owned and took them. Were the pictures safe? Obviously not, but were the victims negligent? No, unless it comes out that Kate Upton was tweeting her passwords. When when I do my taxes on-line I have an expectation that TurboTax keeps that shit in a vault, these celebs had similar expectations. They never thought someone would be able to break into their virtual gym locker and steal their panties.

I hate to use buzzwords like "rape culture" because I believe most of the time using them actually hurts your point but in today's society we're sure quick to blame the victim. Doesn't matter if you were jaywalking after stealing some cigars or getting drunk at a frat party there's a knee jerk reaction to say "well if only you had...". I think it's a way we protect ourselves. A feeling like something could never happen to us because we always (insert practical advice here).

Whatever the reason, all deflecting the blame does is empower the culprits and help minimize the nature of the crime. The real story here with The Fappening is that there's a guy, or more likely a group of them, that are breaking into people's phones and personal accounts. If the dates some of the celebs have given are accurate they probably have been doing it for years. That's big news. That's the kind of stuff everyone that uses the internet should be concerned over, not whether or not Kirstin Dunst likes to get it on.

Jennifer Lawrence & Anita Sarkeesian & Zoe Quinn & Brianna Wu are Not To Blame. Sweet Jebus, have you read this stuff about Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn? Long story short a woman made a youtube video where she presented evidence of sexism in video games and the internet LOST IT. Seriously, this goes from "I think your wrong" to "I'm going to rape you" in under 12 parsecs. Equally deplorable the treatment of video game developer Zoe Quinn who was accused of trading sexual favors for good reviews of some game I've never heard of. Somehow that thing snowballed into a massive flame war over video game journalism and a bunch of Fedora festooned redditors are going to boycott the shit out of everyone. I don't get it.

I understand the visceral reaction to criticism of something you hold dear. I get how that can feel like a personal attack. I don't understand how anyone in their right mind can think that death and rape threats are a perfectly crommulant reaction to that criticism. Maybe that's the problem, these people aren't in their right minds.

Prostate Cancer Foundation Does Not Want Reddit's Sleazy Money. In what I can only described as an act Group Guilt a bunch of redditors decided that in honor of Jennifer Lawrence and The Fappening they were going to donate a bunch of money to prostate cancer research. The research foundation said "no thanks".

I find this particular sequence of events fascinating. If I'm dying of cancer I can't say I'm particularly thrilled that a research group would turn down a bunch of money. Yes, the motivation behind the donation is totes skeevy but is that a crime now? Do you suppose they turned down the money on moral reasons or because they didn't want the bad press? Is donating to charity the modern day form of buying indulgences? "I'm sorry I did whatever I did, here's a giant novelty check to make up for it."

Camera Phone Hacking, I’ve Seen Them All Naked. In an effort to be fair and balanced here's an unrepentant post regarding The Fappening from WWTDD. While I think he's minimizing the actual crime committed I like his enthusiasm and use of swears. I for one don't believe if you look at the pictures you're perpetuating abuse. As someone who was browsing reddit Sunday night these pictures were everywhere, I looked at some of them. Seriously, the posts were EVERYWHERE on reddit. You open up a browser see a dozen threads that say "J-Law hacked cell phone pics!", "topless Kate Upton!", "Justin Verlander's naked ass" and not click on them.. Ok, that last one didn't happen but I wish it had. I would have known what NOT to click. That doesn't make me a terrible person, that makes me a normal flawed human that spent like 20 years of his life desperate to see boobs (kids these days have no idea what it was like pre-internet). Now if I had saved those pictures and immediately seeded a bunch of torrents THAT would make me a terrible person.

One of the unfortunate things to come out of this is that all redditors have been painted with a pretty wide pervert brush. The most common subreddit groups I visit is the Lego subreddit. I'll have you know, almost no one posts nude pictures there. There's a lot of nice people on reddit just looking to talk about things they love. Don't let a bunch of vocal and very active redditors cloud your opinion of the whole group. I mean by all means keep making the fedora/neck beard jokes just realize that #notallredditors are like that.

Also I feel like this would be a good time to remind everyone that Edward Snowden says that there 's a group of analysts at the NSA that trade nude pictures they've found off phones they've "legally" hacked. If this alleged hacking ring all leads back to the NSA that's going to be some glorious schadenfreude.

Daryl Dixon 167, Zombies 0

A new season of the Walking Dead premiers... ummm this month? I think. I'm not sure and I've already got way too many tabs open to google it. Let's go with soon. In anticipation let's enjoy every Walker kill ever by Daryl Dixon.

August 31st 2014, The Fappening

Sunday was a pretty ordinary day for me. I slept in, cleaned out the crawlspace and around 4pm I finally put on some pants and went to Papa Murphys for a take n' bake. Just an ordinary day at casa de Newburn. Of course unbeknownst to me the internet was collectively losing it's shit.

Some time in the early afternoon a veritable buttload of celebrity nudes were posted onto 4chan. Then imgur and reddit and pirate bay and before you knew it the entire series of tubes was clogged with stolen cell phone pics. The event was quickly dubbed The Fappening.

Celebrities involved were pretty wide ranging and seemingly random from Kate Upton to Hope Solo to Jennifer Lawrence to other celebs I've both heard and never heard of. A couple of celebrities have confirmed the pictures were real, a few have denied it. A couple spokespeople have threatened lawsuits. Websites are taking them down as quickly as they're going up but you don't have to be a level 20 netwizard to find them. Literally the first thing that pops up on a google search for The Fappening is a reddit subreddit dedicated to the leak. Let's face it, this is the internet. Once something is out there it's out there for good.

Frankly, that's an old lesson. I think there's a new lesson to be learned here: Once it's "out there" on the cloud you don't control it anymore.

If the original leaker is to be believed, these pictures were acquired by a hacker/hackers resetting the passwords on iCloud accounts. Once he or she was able to reset the password they had unfettered access to whatever the celebs had been syncing. There's rumors floating around that the actual phones had been hacked through wifi hotspots but that seems like a lot of work. Easier to go to wikipedia find out someone's mother's maiden name and request a password reset over the phone. The crazy rumor hot from 4chan is that this is deepweb type stuff. A group of hackers that specifically trade in celebrity nudes. Sorry, I'm meandering.

The point here is that the cloud is really convenient but a terrible place to put things you want to keep secret. Great for uploading your grandma's chili recipe or pictures of your kids at Disneyland but a terrible place for financial records and keeping pictures of you boning MLB Allstar Justin Verlander. Remember that when the iPhone 6 comes out and they start touting it's new iWallet feature.