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I Want One of Those!: T-Virus, Minecraft Pickaxe and Plush Companion Cube

October 16, 2011
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It may cause zombification, but I still want it!

It has been a while since I have done one of these, I have been kinda holding back till I found something interesting that I would want. Then this week I was having a chat with a friend who run a geek merchandise website known as The Geekest Link, He was telling me that he had a whole pile of new items going up for pre-order so I thought I would take a look at them.

I found a few things I would love to have in my collection and I am pretty sure I’m not alone.

The first is something that will be familiar to all fans of the Portal games, you may have thrown it into a fire and incinerated it at the command of that insane AI but thankfully that was not the end for the companion cube. It is now possible for you own your own adorable Plush version of your cube shaped friend to love and call your own.

It may only be a 6inch cube, but at only £15 its well worth a buy Portal Plush 6 Inch Companion Cube – The Geekest Link

The second thing I wanted to highlight is from a game that has made millions despite not having actually been released yet. That game is obviously Minecraft and as every minecraftian knowns the one thing you should never leave home without is your trusty Pickaxe. Well now its possible to bring its every useful blockyness out into the real world with a 1:1 scale (45cm long) solid foam replica.

Sure it wont be able to help you dig down find yourself a nice block of gold but it will stand out in your collection. Minecraft Foam Replica 1/1 Pickaxe 45 cm – The Geekest Link

Finally is the ultimate in Geek Merch. You have one of these on your shelves and other gamers are going to notice it (and if they don’t you are fully justified in evicting them from your premises) though they may also be somewhat justifiably terrified of it.

As pictured to the right, I am of course talking about the 1:1 scale (13cm long) replica’s of both the T-Virus and the Anti-Virus. These are officially licensed versions of the props from the films, made of aluminium and plexiglass and even contain internal LED’s to make the things glow in a perfectly ominous way.

With only 750 of these sets made they are really collectible, however that also means they are a bit pricey – setting you back £200 for the set. Resident Evil Replica 1/1 T-Virus & Anti-Virus Display – The Geekest Link

If you can’t reach out for that but you do still want some Resident Evil Merch, there is also a slightly cheaper option in a official replica of the Raccoon City S.T.A.R.S Police badge in a Leather matching wallet for close to£50 Resident Evil Replica 1/1 S.T.A.R.S. Badge & Leather Wallet Set – The Geekest Link

That’s it for now, there is a lot of other interesting stuff on the site but these are the ones that stood out to me.

Making a Point

September 30, 2011
By

Dave! Watch the Ice Pat......Nevermind!

Normally I am a very patient person, I have what I consider a very well-defined sense of humour. I am aware that something I do not find funny may be hilarious to others (the office for example). So the actions I have taken today are not a knee jerk reaction to me not getting a joke.

Earlier today a story broke in the general news -PlayStation gamer Mark Bradford, 46, throttles schoolboy in Call Of Duty revenge attack | Mail Online - This is a terrible story and the reason I have linked to the version on the Daily Mail, is that I have made my hatred for how they handle their gaming news clear on many, many occasions. So my linking to them I wish to further emphasise my disgust at what happened next.

What that man did is deplorable, there is no excuse for his actions at all. I hope that the kid is okay and that when the case is finally before a court properly he has the book thrown at him for his actions. Nobody could read that article and come down on the side of the attacker…….

Or so I thought!!

Cue Joystiq, a large and rather popular gaming blog. Naturally they would have to cover this story, so they did but how they chose to do so actually made me ashamed to have used that site as a source for stories in the Drinky Talky Thingy podcast.

They chose to run the article with this headline Guy chokes a kid after being made fun of in Black Ops, we’re … upset - Now I have deliberately not linked the article as i don’t want to drive any more traffic to it that I have to, but obviously you need to be able to find it if you want to see for yourself.

The basic gist of that article is that basically the kid got exactly what he deserved, that the guy was fully justified in having gone round and choked a 13 year old for giving him some smack talk over voice chat & that he should be seen as a hero for doing so. They even compare the guy to Batman at one point!

When I read this I was appalled, I could not believe what I was actually seeing. How this could even have been written is mystery one, Mystery two is how the hell this managed to get approved and published by the editorial staff of the site.

Obviously I was not the only one dismayed by it, I have followed a very long conversation on Google+ about the whole thing. (https://plus.google.com/117068783534087330802/posts/GaEQwMc2ikY?hl=en)

I personally decided that I would be removing Joystiq from my RSS feeds, I will no longer be using them as a source for the podcast. Also I wanted to let my opinions be known directly at Joystiq so I sent an email to the sits tipbox account (due to not being able to find a complaints one).

Now I have yet to receive a response – however Blogger Stephanie Morrow (aka Stargrace) of MmoQuests.com & Nomadic Gamer has and this is what they had to say in response to her complaints

Actually, readership is up, but thanks for theconcern. I hope you realize that thearticle in question was a work of satire. No, we don’t condone CHOKINGKIDS and most of our readers read the story with the right frame of mind. Ingeneral: kids act like monsters online and choking people is bad. While thehumor in the piece is evident to me, I’m sorry you read itdifferently.

Satire? That is your defence?

When I read this I made up my mind that simply not using them as a source for the podcast any more was simply not enough. For that reason I have made my removal of Joystiq retroactive – All links to their site have been removed from the show-notes of the last 10 episode of the Podcast, The rest will be deleted during the weekend.

Now I know this is only a very small site, so wont even show up on their radar, but I refuse to drive even a tiny amount of traffic to a site that works with that kind of attitude. This as the topic of the post states is me making a point, even if they do not notice it – I will!

So if your looking back over the last few Podcasts and the show-notes look a little odd – this is why.

</rant>

I’m sure the Lord of Destruction would approve

August 1, 2011
By

From the way people are acting you I would not be surprised to find Kotick as the end boss of the next game, he's apparently far more evil than Diablo

Most times when I sit down and write these rambling posts I only have a passing idea as to what I am going to talk about.

However today there is only one topic that as both a gamer and a long time Blizzard fanboy that I honestly could talk about and that is the Diablo III news. It’s for that reason that I am going to scrap the 25 minute timer, as im pretty sure im going to go over it and keep going till I have said my piece.

—

A few days ago a whole bunch of websites were invited to Blizzard HQ for a press briefing and hands on with the latest build of Diablo III, however they were all under embargo until this morning. This means that the web has been awash with new information from the game.

unfortunately, as is always the case, because the web has altered our brains to make it hard for us to digest large amounts of information ast once most of the web has focused in on 3 elements of the news and gone batshit insane. Those 3 facts are these

1) Diablo III will have no Offline Mode
2) Diablo III will have no Mod system
3) The auction house in-game will support Real Money auctions

So taking a look at these in order

1) No Offline 

Ok, I agree with all the fuss about this. Any game that includes a single player campaign should have an offline mode – there are no exceptions, no if, and’s, but’s or maybe’s. It simply should be there. I said much the same about Starcraft II when it came out. Their justification for it this time round is in part to tie in with point 3, they can’t let you real money trade items online that could have been duped in a modded/hacked offline version.

That argument doesn’t work for one simple reason – you don’t want that to happen you simply flag all items that drop in offline mode as such – then do not allow items with those flags to be sold in the system or even transferred to a character in an on-line game.

However the problem is we really lost our chance to fight this one, we let the thin end of the wedge get past when Starcraft II came past and we happily lapped up online only with only a measly cross game chat as the justification. Read more »

Ramblings on Spotify

July 25, 2011
By

Lego does just seem to make everything better

Well its been a week since I said that I was going to try to increase the personal posts on here and guess what happened? Yeah that’s right I was about to let it slip again, despite having fully intended at least one more post last week other than the Podcast show notes. I know it’s not that big a deal but its a bit annoying that im so easily distracted.

Anyway once again I have my 25 minute timer running in focus booster and whatever is written when that thing tells me times up is what you will get to see.

However this time I don’t really have as much of a plan about what I wanted to talk about, last weeks post I had a topic to base it on before I started which gave me a bit of a start in the right direction. This week im kinda winging it.

While im writing this as well as the timer, I have Spotify playing along which is an interesting topic I suppose as the service has finally made it state side. It has not been received as well over there as it was here due to the fact that while they were waiting for it a lot of americans found other streaming services to fill their needs.

That is not to say its gone badly, I know a few americans that are very happy with the service – but I just wonder if that will remain the same when their free service gets the unlimited taken out of it like ours did. Like a skilled crack dealer, Spotify got us all hooked on it auditory goodness  with unlimited free usage only to several months ago pull the plug. Now our free trial with adverts is time limited to 10 hours a month and only being able to play any track 5 times. Read more »

A return to personal posting

July 18, 2011
By

Is it just me or does the iTunes podcast logo remind you of Magneto as well?

When I restarted this blog at the beginning of the year I had intended to use this as a personal blog as well as kicking off the podcast properly.  As you will plainly be able to see by the fact that the whole homepage is filled with only the weekly podcast posts, that has kinda taken a backfoot over time.

So today I have decided to take the time to make a personal blog post and to give me a little bit of a push i am using a trick I saw on Lifehacker a while back. Using a program called focus booster I am writing this post with a 25 minute timer ticking away, whatever is written by the end of that timer is what my post will be.

Why, you may ask, would I want to do that? well for one simple reason only – If I can output one coherent post in 25 minutes then I have no reason to not do so more regularly in the future. 25 minutes is not too much time to put aside in an evening.

So, when coming up with a topic for this first attempt at this posting trial I was left with one key thing in mind and that was the podcast. Now as well as recording the weekly podcast I actually listen to quite a few, so today im going to give you a brief overview of some of the ones I listen too regularly. Read more »

Could a Free VideoGames Day work?

May 13, 2011
By

Everyone loves Wolverine comics, even more so when they are free!

The first Saturday of every May something interesting happens. ComicBook shops around the world give away stuff for free.

Free ComicBook Day was started back in 2002 by American comic industry as a way to advertise their comics. 10 years later and it’s still going strong, now giving away free comics in over 2000 stores in 30 separate countries.

I as always went down to the local comic store and picked up my free comics, likewise as always I left with far more than just those free comics. I think I did pretty well this year, it only set me back £20 rather than the usual £40.

That I guess pretty much proves the point of the event, as a marketing method its incredibly effective.

When I got back from the comic store I was checking out twitter and talking to a few people when a random tweet caught my eye.

So Free Comic Book Day at Brainstorm was fun, when’s Free Video Game Day?

That was said by the Twitter user @SugarGamers, and is a concept that when you think about it would be an incredible thing too see.

Since then I have thought about it quite a bit and there are a few things that would need to be worked out first but I think it could be done.

If your interested in the idea, unfortunately my thoughts were a bit lengthy so I have had to put a break in here. So click the link to get the full version

Read more »