Parade of Awesomeness

The Parade is Over! I started the Parade of Awesomeness on...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:10:00 -0500

The Parade is Over!

I started the Parade of Awesomeness on February 27th, 2008, and I committed myself to writing one entry every weekday for one year. With the exception of the holiday season and a trip out of town, I have kept that promise, and now the project is complete.

Thanks to anyone who’s ever read and enjoyed this blog, and double the thanks to anyone who’s left a comment or sent me an email about it to let me know that you’ve been reading.

If you’re interested in reading more of what I write, I plan to start blogging more frequently over at JDHarper.com. I’m sure that this blogging will include some of the same sorts of found awesomeness that I’ve been posting here.

Thanks again for reading.

-J. D. Harper

(Thanks to Flickr user beavela for creative commons licensing the above photo.)

Nadya Vessey had her legs amputated below the knee due to a...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:52:37 -0500

Nadya Vessey had her legs amputated below the knee due to a childhood illness. Two years ago, she wrote to Weta Workshop, the special effects company behind the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia movies, asking if they would make a prosthetic mermaid tail for her.

And they did.

The Scout Update for TF2 just came out a couple of days ago, and...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:11:36 -0500

The Scout Update for TF2 just came out a couple of days ago, and it finally makes the Scout an interesting class for me. He’s got three new unlockable toys: an energy drink that lets him run past bullets, a shotgun that sends his enemies (and himself) flying, and, by far my favorite, a baseball and bat that can be used to stun enemies for a short time.

You can get Team Fortress 2 for just $10 through Friday. Seriously, it’s the best $10 you’ll ever spend on a game. I’ve been playing for nearly a year now, and it’s still fun. A lot of that has to do with this awesome gaming group I’m in, but these constant updates keep the game fresh and exciting.

Depression Era Cooking with Clara is a collection of videos from...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:04:27 -0500

Depression Era Cooking with Clara is a collection of videos from a 91-year-old chef. She tells stories about her childhood in the Great Depression while she prepares the meals that they ate at that time.

(The website linked is down for now due to high traffic, but the youtube videos are still up.)

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 47 - Mine Again

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:15:47 -0500

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 47 - Mine Again:

As the year-long Parade of Awesomeness project draws to a close, I’ve chosen for the final podcast episode the song Mine Again by Black Lab (courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network).

I hope you enjoyed this cross-section of my musical tastes (at least, from those artists wise enough to allow their music to be distributed freely over the internet). I’d love to hear any feedback you have; just leave a comment right here on the blog or send me an email at Jeremy.Harper@gmail.com.

This is called the BeardHead. It’s the best ski mask ever.

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:57:12 -0500

This is called the BeardHead. It’s the best ski mask ever.

This Is Why You’re Fat is a blog dedicated to one of my...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:17:50 -0500

This Is Why You’re Fat is a blog dedicated to one of my favorite things: pictures of disgustingly decadent foods. For example, the above is a giant hamburger that uses two meat pizzas as buns. The blog is updated daily, sometimes more often.

StartCooking.com is a great website for people who want to learn...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:26:27 -0500

StartCooking.com is a great website for people who want to learn the basics of how to cook. Kathy Maister and Atelier Transfert have put together a bunch of really simple videos, ranging from recipes like “French Onion Soup” and “Santa Fe Chile” to cooking techniques like “How to Brown Ground Beef” and “How to Fry an Egg.”

The videos are well-made and simple to follow. I’ve found it to be a useful resource. And you can download the videos as a podcast, so you can follow along with the video in the kitchen as well!

The Space Game is an excellent flash game. You build a network...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:59:33 -0500

The Space Game is an excellent flash game. You build a network of asteroid mining stations and defend them from pirates. It starts off pretty easy, but that last level is very challenging. It’s fun!

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 46 - Some Kind of Superhero

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:30:54 -0500

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 46 - Some Kind of Superhero:

This is Samm Bennett’s song which he published on MeFi music back in 2007 under his name flapjax at midnite. He’s got a new CD out, called Roomful of Ghosts, and it’s not bad at all.

If you have any thoughts about the show, I’d love to get your feedback at jeremy.harper@gmail.com, or even right here on ParadeOfAwesomeness.com. Thanks for listening!

Pandora is the world’s best internet radio website. You...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:09:58 -0500

Pandora is the world’s best internet radio website. You decide what kind of music to listen to by giving it the name of a song or artist that you like. Pandora uses the Music Genome Project to select a set of songs that sound like the artist/song that you picked.

As you listen to each song, you can give it a thumbs up if you like it, giving Pandora a better idea of exactly what kind of music you’re in the mood for, or a thumbs down to stop the song immediately and skip to the next one. You can also bookmark a song or artist so that you can come back later and buy that song from Amazon or iTunes.

Their iPhone app is really impressive as well. It feels very much like the built-in media player, but it gives you access to all the functionality from the website. The streaming quality is excellent, with gaps being rare to non-existent.

It’s an amazing free service. Give it a try if you haven’t already; you’ll almost certainly find something you like.

In Railroad Tycoon: Rails of Europe, it’s your job to...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:19:21 -0500

In Railroad Tycoon: Rails of Europe, it’s your job to build railroads and to ship goods from city to city.

You start with no money; the only way to get starting capital is by selling shares, which give you $5,000 immediately but cost you $1,000 per turn for the rest of the game. You spend money on laying railroad connections on the map, on upgrading your train, and on urbanizing small towns to accept new goods.

You earn money by shipping goods from city to city. You move up the score track one space for every link you move a good: move it next door, and you get a point. Move it three links over, and get three points. As you get more points, you get more money at the end of each turn—until about forty points in, when the money you earn starts to go down as your points go up.

It’s a game that’s all about careful expansion. Since you can’t pay back shares, they are a permanent drain on your cashflow. If you take too many shares, you can actually get to the point where it’s impossible to make money any more. And if you don’t have enough money when your cash flow starts to fall off near the end of the game, you can be forced to take a lot of shares.

The game ends after a certain number of cities are emptied of goods. You take your points, subtract the number of shares you took, and add any points for Tycoon Cards (which give you a bonus if you completed a certain condition by the end of the game, like “have the most money” or “have the best train.”). Whoever has the most points wins.

The European map has a lot of tiny chokepoints where only a couple of train tracks can get through, so there’s a lot of competition for space. (By comparision, the American map is wide open and not as well balanced, or so I’m told.)

It’s a fun little game, definitely worth giving a try.

The Michelin Challenge Design has a lot of really neat concept...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:32:40 -0500

The Michelin Challenge Design has a lot of really neat concept car designs. The above is one of my favorites, a really neat-looking ovaloid car called “Flexible.”

The other really neat one is called the Metro Cell Vehicle, pitched as a replacement for public transport. They’re one-person vehicles designed to be picked up and dropped off at different stations around a city.

Lots of neat designs to look at here; I’d love to see the Metro Cell Vehicle come into its own someday.

Eternal Silence is a neat Half-Life 2 mod that combines a space...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:46:57 -0500

Eternal Silence is a neat Half-Life 2 mod that combines a space combat simulator with a first person shooter. Defend your own battleship while attempting to board the enemy’s battleship and destroy it.

There are different classes of ships, from bombers, which are a bit fragile but good at taking down enemy defense ships, to interceptors, which are good at taking down other player-controlled ships, to gunships, which are personnel carriers. You can also choose from a half-dozen soldier classes, with your choice of machine guns, flamethrowers, ion cannons, or remote-controlled railguns.

It feels a bit like someone took Tachyon: The Fringe and mushed it together with one of the Battlefield series. I’ve only played it a couple times so far, but I’m enjoying it a lot, and it’s free if you already own Half-Life 2. Which you should.

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 45 - Never Gonna Bring You Down

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:41:22 -0500

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 45 - Never Gonna Bring You Down:

I normally don’t care much for mashups. This is a rare exception, created by flatluigi over on Metafilter Music. Seriously, it’s the best mashup ever.

If you have any thoughts about the show, I’d love to get your feedback at jeremy.harper@gmail.com, or even right here on ParadeOfAwesomeness.com. Thanks for listening!

Audible

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:12:34 -0500

Audible:

I enjoy stories, but years of reading for college have taught me the bad habit of skimming through paragraphs rather than reading slowly and enjoying the process. That’s why I love audiobooks: I can get the full impact of the story without skipping ahead. And, I get the added benefit of being able to do other things while I listen.

Audible is a great and inexpensive source for downloadable audiobooks. The best way to use Audible is to sign up for a monthly subscription: You can get one credit a month for $15/mo, or two credits for 23/mo. Most books on Audible cost one credit, though some longer works like Neal Stephenson’s Anathem cost two.

If you buy an audiobook on CD, you will pay a lot more than $11.50 for it. You’ll likely pay more than that for a hardcover edition of a book.

The books are downloaded to your computer and added to iTunes or whatever other media software you use. They have a huge variety of books, from current best-sellers to the classics.

They’re also great about sponsoring podcasts like Escape Pod. Sign up through the sponsor link on their sidebar, and you can get an audiobook of your choice for free. The books you buy with credits remain yours even if you cancel your subscription, and you can re-download them at any time.

I’ve been really pleased with the service since I signed up more than a year ago, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Kayla Kromer of Austin, Texas loves hamburgers. She loves them...

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:43:03 -0500

Kayla Kromer of Austin, Texas loves hamburgers. She loves them so much that she made a bed in the image of a hamburger. It’s 8 feet in diameter and apparently very comfortable, in addition to being the most awesome bed ever designed.

La Havre is the latest board game from the designer of Agricola....

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:46:15 -0500

La Havre is the latest board game from the designer of Agricola. This time, you play as businessmen on the harbors of France.

The game mechanics are simple: The board consists of seven different piles of goods (money, fish, wood, clay, iron, grain, and cattle), a track with seven spaces (to mark who’s turn it is and what goods need to be added to the different piles), three stacks of building cards (available for purchase or construction), and several buildings owned by the town (available for use immediately).

Each turn, you move your boat marker to the next available slot on the track and put the two goods marked on that space onto the piles. Then, you choose to either take a pile of goods or to move your person marker into one of the available buildings.

One such building is the Building Firm, which lets you spend goods to build one of the buildings on top of one of the stacks of building cards. In addition to being worth points, buildings that you build can be used by other players—for a price. The abbatoir, for example, costs a coin to get into so that you can convert cows into meat and hides. If you own the abbatoir, other players have to pay you to use it, and you don’t have to pay anything to use it.

Every seven turns, you have to feed your workers an ever-increasing amount of food. You can lower this amount of food by building ships at a wharf, but wharfs and ships are expensive.

The game is all about efficiency: you can’t afford to waste precious actions. Spend too many actions getting food for your workers, and you won’t be able to grab the piles of construction materials you need to build buildings. Fail to feed your workers, and you’ll have to take out expensive loans to pay them instead.

At the end of the game, the player with the most value wins (money + the values of buildings and ships).

It takes a couple of games to really get into, but it’s a lot of fun for the serious gamer. Unfortunately, it’s only available in Germany and Australia at the moment for some incomprehensible reason, but if you can import it or hold out until the US release, you’re in for a really good time.

The Free Sound Project

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:30:18 -0500

The Free Sound Project:

The Free Sound Project is free archive of sound effects. The sounds are all licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling+ license, which basically means you’re free to do whatever you want to with it, except for using it in advertising, so long as you provide attributition.

There are hundreds of sound samples, from nature sounds to electronic sounds to voices. You can have alarm clocks, ray-guns, church bells, and crowd noise.

It’s a great resource for pretty much anyone who needs sound effects.

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 44 - Courier

jeremy.harper@gmail.com (J. D. Harper) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:30:56 -0500

The Parade of Awesomeness Podcast - Episode 44 - Courier:

Today we hear from Richard Shindell, who has graciously made several of his tracks available for download on his website. If you ever get a chance to hear the song Transit, off of the same album as today’s song, Courier, you should definitely give it a listen.

If you have any thoughts about the show, I’d love to get your feedback at jeremy.harper@gmail.com, or even right here on ParadeOfAwesomeness.com. Thanks for listening!