April 18th, 2014

Thanks to my girl, I've got a pair of really nice looking earbuds coming to me in the mail.  You have to bow down and do some marketing survey for Black and Mild, but you know, I like Black and Milds.  The back of the earbuds are not made out of plastic, they're made out of what looks to be cigar box wood(not the maple that the wood tips use, something nice and brown looking).  They come in a nice carrying case too, which is something my current set of earbuds did not have.  Oh, those are Phillips She3590, and they sounded amazing... for as long as they work.  They're sub-$10 so get a few pairs.  Really great bass and clarity, but in about 9 months you'll be wanting a new set.  A lot of places rate them as highest in the sub $30 range on sound quality.

There is a game on my tablet that I can't really recommend to you without knowing you.  It is called Star Traders and its by the same guys that make Cyberknights.  These are true sandbox games, and Star Traders even more so.  They have steep learning curves, its going to take you HOURS to learn what exactly it takes to do things.  Also, there's no real direction, you have to make your own goals, you have to find your own way, you have to motivate yourself to play.  If you're the kind of person that played Minecraft and said "I don't get it, what are you supposed to do" then don't get Star Trader.  If you want to act like you own a ship, and manage a crew, and travel along the stars in some retro 16bit graphics and read a whole lot, and deal with HARSH random outcome generators, try it out.  Its kind of like FTL, but with spreadsheets.

I have read that Civilization is doing a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri with the next Civ game.  Civilization games is a weird thing to me.  I LOVE sim games.  From Sim City to Banished, to lots of stuff in between, i love that stuff.  I can't get into Civilization games, the game style doesn't "click" with me.  I bought a silly expensive Civ3 limited edition set once, thinking "so many people are treating this like God's gift to intelligent gamers" and I think I played 3 games of it.  I watch Yogscast play it, and enjoy hearing them talk and goof around while playing, but still, I don't think its for me.  Maybe a scifi spin on it will make me feel better about it, because its largely the theme and premise I don't care for.

Oh, and big science news, like actual science.  They found the first planet that is the size of Earth and in the habitable zone of a star.  Now, the star is a fainter, lower heat star, and so even though the planet orbits it in only 180ish days, the planet only gets 1/3rd the amount of heat from its Sun as we do.  This could mean its an ice planet, or that it just has very large icey poles.  Still, its generally thought to be in the ball park size of Earth, and its designation is Kepler 186... so if we murder our Earth, we know where to go?  Probably not.

Lots of RPG's getting funded on Kickstarter lately.  I have been looking forward to this time, if its indeed here.  The indie group got big on platformers, and then a few years back they the beat'em ups came and then the shooters just about a year ago.  If you know your NES history, after the Marios came Double Dragon and Contra, then late came the Final Fantasy.  Its time for indie devs to be good enough to make their Final Fantasies.  Also my demographic(the ones that aren't me) have disposable income(agian, the ones that aren't me) and they are the ones that made the JRPG boom of the late 90's.  Its approaching a generation since then, and that's generally when big things come back in vogue.  When the kids that fell in love with trading cards came into their 30's, you saw a small renaissance of super high expensive baseball cards being made with pieces of shoes and jerseys and such.  JRPG's are due for a researgence, too bad I don't believe a word Square Enix says about going back to their old fans, they've buried their heads too far up the wrong people's asses for too long.