SuperAwesomeBlog

Lincoln Way has been messed up for the last 2 weeks now – and I can’t see any actual improvements happening. I *have* noticed a number of new holes get opened up, some BIG ones in fact. I even heard they ruptured an emergency 911 fiber optic line by accident!  (Nice work, guys.)

And just WHAT are all the giant holes for? Did the city find pink ectoplasmic goo in the sewer system? Is Vigo the Carpathian coming?

Making matters worse, the sidewalk is closed on both sides (however there is a noticeable lack of ANY “sidewalk closed” signs) making things extremely dangerous for both bicyclists and motorists as the bikes literally have *nowhere* to ride.

In the meantime I guess I’ll be avoiding the main thoroughfare in Ames. No big deal.

I just saw this on Netflix – and wow – was I surprised!  I initially expected this to be  pretty lackluster, but it turned out to be not only a great Superman / Captain Marvel short, but a collection of even more great stories: a dark murder mystery featuring the Spectre, a gritty western revenge story featuring Jonah Hex, and a pretty good action story featuring Green Arrow. 

Check out IMDb’s entry, give it a watch online or better  yet… pick it up at the store (Try Mayhem Comics maybe…?)

Who is Mr. Plinkett? Well, for starters he’s a (hopefully fictional) psychopath who kills women and murdered his wife -   he also reviews movies with surprising clarity and insight, and a lot of hilarity – I check the site for updates almost daily!  Created by Red Letter Media, the Plinkett reviews are great watching and well worth a visit!  

My absolute favorites are the Star Wars reviews – I’ve never seen such a clear dissection of exactly what was wrong with Episodes I-III, or probably laughed quite as much!  Red Letter Media has so much else too, like the Grabowskis, Feeding Frenzy, and a lot of wacky shorts… Go watch some today!

The New York Times did a cool video article on Pixar Studios:

Their working environment is, well, unique!  Read the full story here.

A while ago I wrote a posting called “When I Love You Is Not Enough” outlining my problems with Valentines Day.  I was in the store yesterday and it looked like someone took an Uzi to cupid’s pimp wagon – pink and red balloons splattered everywhere, overpriced flowers littering every free surface, overpriced chocolates soon to be discounted filling up shelf space nearly everywhere.

As a gay man, a married one at that, I’m *so* thankful that my husband and I don’t have to deal with this bullshit. It’s so unfair that straight guys get taken advantage of on this day, spending absurd amounts of money spoiling their partner with the spoils of this unfair holiday… all of it disguised in a thick layer of “romanticism.” I call “bullshit” on this.

What’s romantic about a stressful day where a guy has to blow $100.00 on a dozen roses, try to get a seat at a packed restaurant full of other stressed out guys, and then after a stressful week worrying if he can prove he actually loves his woman, suffer erectile dysfunction as his reward…?

Why can’t being romantic and saying “I Love You” be an every day thing?  Why not go out on “dates” every now and then… make being romantic more than a once a year affair? Ugh.

I was doing a search for “HRC” on Google… and surprisingly got a little rainbow flag under the search box.  A little research and I found out that the gay-friendly people at Google apparently put a little pride bar under certain search terms, like Drag Queen, Stonewall, Gay, Gay Marriage, and HRC!    Thanks Google!!

GURPS Taverns is an add-on book to Steve Jackson’s Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS.  Part of the Dungeon Fantasy series of E-Book supplements, GURPS Taverns explores that most common of Fantasy RPG settings: the Tavern…where every adventure seems to start!

I got really excited when I saw this book as I’m always looking for better maps and detailed settings for our TL3 Fantasy game. When it comes to settings, Taverns provides a lot of interesting ideas for Tavern specific characters and special rules for bar fights, tavern based adventures, and more.

Taverns also includes a few pre made taverns… but not many.  Most of them are also pretty bizarre – I found it difficult to integrate any of them into our game.  The maps are only for these strange taverns and are certainly not to scale – I would estimate they’ve been shrunk 75% from what you’d want if you’re using miniatures. If you were hoping for removable pages that you could move figures around on… better hope your copier has a nice zoom setting!

Unfortunately Taverns left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I was hoping for some good maps and settings and ended up with a fairly limited selection. The character details, as usual, are quite excellent. The settings themselves, while not being what I wanted, might be useful to you in your game.

I don’t feel cheated, as the price is only $7.99 from E23. If you’re looking for some pre-made settings and

Yep. We’re on Twitter. You can follow us at: http://twitter.com/superawesomeweb .

Enjoy!

Noah Kalina started taking a self portrait of himself on January 11, 2000 and hasn’t stopped yet.

6 years of these self portraits are found in a video I found by chance on YouTube – it’s set to a powerful piano piece by Carly Comando, and shows 6 images per second of Noah as he ages over the course of 6 years – from January 11, 2000 to July 31, 2006.

Noah’s eyes are entered on the camera as the age progression occurs and his background changes, creating the effect that he’s staring at you with those big, sad, brown eyes. The work is really powerful -- transcending normal YouTube offerings and entering the realm of art.

Amazing.  Noah is still taking pictures – you can see them here.  I hope this video is either updated or a new one is made following his progression from 2006 to the present.

When I first started using Windows 7 I didn’t really care for the new Library feature. However, as I got more familiar with the new operating system I found myself really liking libraries, and increasingly annoyed that I couldn’t add network locations. 

For me this is especially annoying, because I use a central Linux server for all my files and access them from various terminals throughout the house. You can “sort of” make Windows 7 do this already by telling Windows Media Player to add these folders, but it doesn’t work very well.

Understandably I was thrilled I was when I found out that someone has created a utility that tells Windows it really is OK to index network locations and use them in libraries. Yay!

Kudos to the Washington Post’s Rick Broida for the excellent review, and to Zorn Software for their great Win 7 Library Tool!

Get it today! It’s simple and free!