TOYSPEDIA

Because Everybody's Free to Wear Nostalgia | Internet Explorer's "Child of the 90's" Ad

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:44:00 +0000

Damn right, in those days, a troll was still a friend, and lunch was a puzzle, not a picture.

Teary kid that I am, this ad naturally brought tears to my eyes--those innocent, corny days of our youth when everything was still happily insulated from likes and comments and you were still content.

Nice photography too; even without those 90's "artifacts", just because of the photography the 90's touch was just unmistakable.

I wish I used Internet Explorer, but the thing is, I migrated to Mozilla soon as I learned there was Mozilla, and then to Google Chrome soon as it was available. Who knows, I might peek into IE from time to time from now on.

Run, Run, Run | Five Runner Games for Android

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:52:00 +0000

Now that the much awaited sequel to Temple Run is out, this whole thing has prompted us to write a review of the best and not so best runner games in Android right now.

Rail Rush | MiniClip Games

Rail Rush puts you in a sort of roller coaster ride (without the vertical loop, but alas, with lots of gold nuggets to collect along the way.) The fact that you're practically trapped in a constantly moving cart around a seemingly endless ride means you really have no choice but to zoom along, unlike in other runner games where you nevertheless run like crazy even if no one's chasing you at all (We're looking at you, Agent Dash, The End App, Panda Run, etc.) Controls are smooth in Rail Rush, if only a bit more forgiving. As long as you swipe up or down, it doesn't matter if you did it a little too early, you'll still make it.

Just like traditional runner games, missions abound in Rail Rush, from collecting a certain amount of egg rocks to hurdling this number of wooden barricade, encouraging you to play yet one more round till you've unknowingly spent an entire hour.

What to do with those gold nuggets you've amassed? Buy characters (each one with a quirky ability of only being able to smash either left, right, upper or lower obstacle), and some nifty cart add-ons for a hassle-free ride.

The Nice: Smooth motions, tilt function, secret tunnel, battery-friendly looming darkness
The Not-so-nice: Absence of bats (it's an underground passage, right?)

The End App

It's almost a shame you can't stop running in The End App, considering that the developers have rendered such a beautifully-detailed, gloriously colorful, post-apocalyptic city ruins (if you can call post-apocalyptic ruins beautiful and glorious). All over the street cars are overturned and up in flames, the roads are all fissured and cracked, seemingly from an aftershock, with lava and flames spilling over from below, and there are even buses nosedived into the ground below, having gone off the freeway.

With all these fascinating details, one would definitely wish the character would slow down for chrissake and admire the view, do a little exploring like old school adventurous Mario.

But as we've said, you just keep on running, turning either left or right, and not much more. Meanwhile you collect, uhmm, duct tapes. Yes, duct tapes are the ultimate survival gear, alongside your Swiss knife and heavy-duty LED flashlight (and if Douglas Adams is to be believed, a towel too.) The nonstop quest to collect duct tapes simply begs the question of why? If you want, you can pony up a few dollars to unlock other survivors as well as new devastated cities.

After a few runs, The End App, with its fast-paced action and upbeat music, becomes a bit of a chore though, and you find yourself wondering, if the apocalypse is all over and I'm the only survivor left in this godforsaken town, why the heck am I running all the time?

The Nice: Devastatingly detailed environment
The Not-so-nice: Awkward running position of default character, Questionable duct tape quest

Panda Run

Simply put, Panda Run is not worth your time.

The Nice: Hmmm. Unless you find pandas on the run cute.
The Not-so-nice: Everything.

Agent Dash | by Full Fat

You'll love Agent Dash for its secret agent appeal, complete with the handsome tuxedo suit (for the titular character Agent Dash) and a sexy catsuit aviator outfit for the female Agent Goodtug.

Apparently, your goal in Agent Dash is to blow up the enemy's headquarters. So you run through various obstacles in a jungle setting, inside the enemy base, and then outside the streets, in that order, and then back to the jungle again. Power ups are available including jetpacks and a magnet for magnetizing, uhm, the diamonds, but hey, that's their game. Fortunately, graphics are nice, and the characters look like they just came right out of a well-established cartoon show, but alas, after a few runs, the game feel tiresome and old, and aren't agents supposed to be stealthy in the first place, not running all the time? And where are the crazy gadgets? As a matter of fact, where are the villains?! Because there seems to be no one else around.

The Nice: Great sound and music, Funny when the agents fall flat on their faces or smash into a wall of rock
The Not-so-nice: No tilt function, and well, the runner mode is just plain wrong for the spy genre.

Temple Run 2 | Imangi Studios

The husband-and-wife team who gave us Temple Run is now back with, well Temple Run 2. This time around a single huge gorilla is out to get you, prompting your endless run.

The new environment is just gorgeous, very detailed--a splendid floating city high above the clouds, built by a long-gone civilization, which feels like you've seriously violated just because you're treading in their sacred grounds. In the original Temple Run, it feels like you're just trapped in some sort of endlessly looping pathway where the boring straight paths either take you left or right. In Temple Run 2, you meet the Great Outdoors.

Just like in the real world, the roads have curves and terrains now, while the camera suavely tracks your movement. Curiously enough, the occasional waterfalls and transitions from floating cities to the forests remind me of an M.C. Escher painting, but of course thinking about topology won't get me anywhere.

Rope swings have been added for Tarzan moments when you need to negotiate cliffs--don't worry the characters have safety gloves so no rope burn. (The developers thought of everything.) And for added measure there's even a mine cart where you take a ride. Just like in the first version, you're still collecting coins here, but now the collecting is less tedious and a lot more fun.

The Nice: Rope swings! Mine carts! Depth of field!
The Not-so-nice: Still no redemption for the character, no secret passages you can explore at leisure, or puzzles to take a break from all the legwork.

Za is a word?

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:11:00 +0000

What’s a Z Really Worth?

Why efforts to assign Scrabble tiles their “real value” miss the point of the game.

from Slate.com

I have in my possession two tiles from a prototype of the game that would become Scrabble. They were crafted by architect Alfred Butts circa 1938. They are made of plywood with the letters stenciled in India ink. Their point values are handwritten on tiny squares of paper and glued beneath the center of each letter. My Q is worth 10 points. My X is worth six.

Any Scrabble player can tell you that the X is actually worth eight points. But as Butts was creating the game, in a fifth-floor walkup in Queens, he tinkered—with the layout of the board, with the total number of tiles, with their distribution, and with their respective point values. “It’s not hit or miss,” Butts said long afterward. “It’s carefully worked out.”

Seventy-five years later, Butts’ carefully worked out point values are under attack. Late last month, a University of California–San Diego, cognitive science postdoc and casual player named Joshua Lewis conducted a computer analysis to recalibrate Scrabble’s letter values based on the game’s current lexicon. Lewis reposted his findings to Hacker News, and they were picked up by Digg and went viral. Around the same time, Sam Eifling, writing for Deadspin, asked a programmer friend to do the same. Both were inspired by the fact that while the language had changed dramatically from the time Butts performed his calculations, the game of Scrabble had not...

If you've got time to read a fairly exhaustive article about the point value system of Scrabble tiles, this is it. Although it took me a minute or two to move on after stumbling on the paragraph that says you can actually score points in Scrabble for the "word" Za (short for pizza).

HexBug nano | for The Robot Insect fiend in you

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:04:00 +0000

The HexBug nano series, which come in all sorts of insect forms--from millipedes to flies to roaches--look like something a high schooler can easily cobble together for the science fair in a matter of days.

The insect robots are crude and spindly, and the plastic parts don't look like they'll last a week in the hands of even the most careful kid. And they're pricey besides. We'd be happy if the darn insects can at least be used to spy or clean up something, but as it is, the HexBug nano is just for show.

The millipede, for instance, has a sensor that allows it run around like crazy without bumping into anything at all. There's larvae versions in transparent capsules, and there's even an arena where the insect bots can crawl around.

Maybe a smartphone integration is coming which will make these bots more interesting. In the meantime, we're gonna say pass.

How to Cheat and Look Like You Can Solve the Rubik's Cube by Matt Parker

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 18:50:00 +0000

from Geekosystem.com

The Many-Storied Stories of Building Stories

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 07:30:00 +0000

Building Stories by Chris Ware

Redefining that hallowed genre of graphic novel (or comics, as the purists would have it) Chris Ware's Building Stories is boxful of pamphlets, booklets, newspapers, and diagrams that trace the life and times of the sad but hopeful residents in a crumbling apartment. The pieces aren't bound in a traditional way (see photo above) so read starting from anywhere you like. Linearity has no space in the story as the reader is left to his/her own devices in marveling at the various narratives of love and loss presented in the various artworks.

One thing I love is the way everything is in relation to the architecture. The spatial location of the characters is given importance, which in today's world mirrors our need to always know at what exact point are friends are. Dwarfed by the very structure that supposedly protects them, the characters age and decay in tune with the apartment. The drawings are crisp and colorful, indifferent and deadpan even, reminding me of those laminated illustrations in airlines, which is to say everything's nicely done and intended.

In the insane world of Chris Ware, everything's till-further-notice, tentative, and tragically lurking for the surface. This convoluted microcosm is certainly not meant for your tablet. Chris Ware's Building Stories is meant to be physically handled, flipped over, devoured, and then devoured again. And if you let it, it'll haunt you even.

Image from fullpagebleed.blogspot.com

Toy Aquarium Fish Without the Guilt.

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:10:00 +0000

Fishes kept in aquarium look pretty on the surface, but deep down we all know how they got from the pet store and into our glass tanks is never a serene story. The aquarium fish trade is seriously damaging marine life, and at what cost? So bipeds like us can have nice brilliantly colorful fishes to look at to let us de-stress after a day's work.

Enter Robo Fish, the toy robotic fish that swim, frolic, feeds, and even cluster like the real thing. Up close, they're not that realistic yet, but at least they got to fool the cat.

You know what this means. Low maintenance pet fishes that you don't have to feed (though you'll have to replace the batt once in a while.)

And best of all, no fish was caught and separated from its natural habitat.

$37 (2900 Yen) per fish at Amazon Japan. (Trust the Japanese to wow us with these things.)

Four of My Favorite Android Games on My Phone Right Now

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 05:59:00 +0000

Pew Pew (from Jean-François Geyelin)

Pew Pew is what the classic novel Flatland might look like if all the characters were pitted against each other in a chaotic space combat. Sure enough, you've got 3D spaceships and enemies, yet you only get to move around a 2D plane. But even so, this retro shooter game featuring sleek graphics--minimalist lines, spare shapes, and psychedelic colors--is so fun to play you almost forget it's on touchscreen. Pony up for Pew Pew 2 for more challenges, though the free version on Android will already blow you away.

Nice bit: Replay function of your top 5 high scoring games, which gives you a 360 degree view all over.

World of Goo (from 2D Boy)

Sticky black goo and physics merge in this ingenious puzzle where you build spindly structures . Excellent graphics and storytelling, with bonus mystery of the sign painter. The black goo, by the way, reminds me of the black oil in The X-Files--animated too, but less fatal. Free for the first 10 levels, but the paid version is definitely worth it.

Furdiburb (from Sheado.net)

Hark back to the simple days of the keychain tamagotchi games back in early 2000s, and see if you can still remember what the fuss was all about.

Enter Furdiburb, possibly the only tamagotchi game worth your time on Android. Your creature to care for: a ball of an alien stranded on a planet, with quirky inhabitants selling you stuff and eventually helping you rebuild your spaceship. As with the tamagotchis of the past, you also give baths to your charge (in the form of cloud showers), and feed with various produce you yourself have grown. The mini-games along the way are all enjoyable without losing replay value. Furdiburb reminds me of Samorost (though less grungy and gritty--there's much sleuthing going around, customizing your crib, and plenty humor--all wrapped up in crisp candy-nice graphics (not too girly, thankfully). Beware, Furdiburb isn't just some touch-and-click mindless fun; you'll have to pay attention.
Nice bit: Tilt your phone to move and shake up things.
Sad bit: when Furdiburb eats Chicken Mama.
Best bit: Sheado just came out with an update!

Robot Adventure (from Runner Games)

Just when I thought something was frigging wrong with my robot--too clunky and won't fly at all--I complete my mission and was able to upgrade--from better gas mileage to shock-proof helmets. From then on, each flight became a breeze, though still frustratingly hard enough so you'll keep coming back. Robot adventure is perfect for quenching that age-old, never-ending thirst to reach the stars and the unknown, although I hope an update will really let my good ol' Robot bump into something new.

Sad bit: Fully upgrade, my robot looked like a chunk of gold. Not the most aerodynamic metal.

Best bit: What lies beyond.

Halloween is in the air. Or at least on the store shelves

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 14:44:00 +0000

They're stocking up on the spooky toys and scary masks now.

Halloween at Toy Kingdom

Dashing or Not So? Agent Dash at Google Play

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 07:04:00 +0000

Tired of Temple Run's run-for-your-life adventure? Try Agent Dash instead: it's free too, just as exhilaratingly fast-paced, and for a change no one's chasing after you. After all it's definitely far more intriguing to see a man running and running with no one behind him.

Your goal though as the tuxedo-donning Agent Dash is to destroy enemy bases. Without tripping or crashing into conveniently helpful signposts or falling into a river of lava of course.

The non-stop running means Agent Dash--and all the other fast & furious agents like Joanna Goodthug and Jawbone--won't have time to smell the roses, much less explore the nice, lushly-detailed world game developer Full Fat has prepared for its characters. As it is, graphics are rendered beautifully (from the shafts of sunlight streaming down the forest to the flowing lava) while ambient sound really adds a nice overall depth (crashing waterfalls, eerie hollow underground sound for instance).

We especially like the tongue-in-cheek tidbits when the game is just beginning to load (Loading some crates, Straightening the bow tie, Greasing the wheels, Loading some important stuff, etc. Get it?)

Replay value suffers after days and days of running though. Unlike other runner games, Agent Dash doesn't have those mini-objectives that you can achieve per level. You end up, well, just running and running until you slip and trip.

Overall the game's polished look feels like Agent Dash could have been a popular animated show deftly turned into a action-packed game. But the lack of whistles and bells, and all things that make the spy genre infinitely intriguing make this a bit of a disappointment after a few runs.

Have Clothespins, Build a Macross

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 09:25:00 +0000

I used to fiddle with clothespins as a kid too, but never got anywhere this good. Expensive model kits, phew! :)

Donald and The...

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 07:54:00 +0000

Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey team up in this charming, if not slightly icky book about a boy named Donald and his new pet.

This being illustrated by no less than Mr. Gorey, the black-and-white drawings have that direct-to-the-point and yet jarring starkness in them. Donald and his mom are sketched simply, appearing almost flat and plain amid their beautifully-detailed Victorian surroundings--the garbage can, the table cloth, the monster, the picture frame, etc.

Expect no butterflies and rainbows (and for that matter, no morals as well) from this one. The book's first sentence alone--One day Donald and his mother went to the garbage can--is delivered in that deadpan, macabre way. Just the way we like it.

Furby and Siri

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:13:00 +0000

This cracked me up. :)

Puzzles for Tipplers

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 03:56:00 +0000

The next time you bring wine over, consider getting this to go along with it--a Don't Break the Wine Bottle Puzzle.

photo from IncredibleThings

It's a locking mechanism that:

1. ensures your host has to earn his/her booze. (Of course on your part, ensure too that you've actually brought good wine.)

2. gets trickier the more you get drunk, assuming the lucky puzzle solver has already had too much.

And since it's completely reusable, the puzzle can simply be passed on to the next party host.

P.S. Cutting the rope doesn't count.

Space-age and Still Angry

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:59:00 +0000

And so this is how our darling angry birds got into space.

Rovio follows up its smash hit Angry Birds with, well, Angry Birds Space that will have everyone excitedly tapping their phone screens again for sure.

Do we hear a Plants Vs. Zombies sequel anytime soon? Well it's already a perfectly-designed game as it is, so there's no need. Unless PopCap Games is keen on sending them to space too, or some other hitherto unexplored frontier.

The new Angry Birds Space looks brilliant, especially faced with new villains, and it's set in space(!) which we've always been a sucker for. Enjoy!

Hurray for Higgs Boson!

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 05:23:00 +0000

... and the thousands of scientists at CERN who labored in hunting it down.

We heard it'll be tricky handing the Nobel Prize to just three of you since three awardees is the maximum (then again the Nobel can simply go to the entire institution). Hats off to you anyway. And hopefully, the above cartoon is the already baddest and meanest the Higgs Boson will ever be put to use.

And Now... Electrolite

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Out of the many music videos of REM and the quirky ways Michael Stipe has held court onscreen, this is what I choose for a lazy blog post: Electrolite. (I was thinking of E-bow the Letter, but too morose).

Electrolite is the last song in New Adventures in Hi-Fi, one that I always looked forward to on Side B of the cassette tape. (Yes, there was a thing called cassette tapes back then, kids. Plays on both sides. Clunky and prone to being "eaten" by the tape player. For some reason I burned that cassette. Teenage hormones. Oh, why did I ever do it?!)

Anyway, all these people chained to various objects, the balloon reindeer, riding high on a desert buggy, all that tilting and sliding and weightlessness. It's fun, unceremonious, and whimsical. An apt farewell to the 20th century indeed. And I love how the band members don't mind the funky shirts and feather boas, not that they have to throw hands in support of Stipe, who happens to be wearing a teeny T-shirt. They just know how to have a good time. Which is why we love them.

I miss the band already.

Thank God for Music, thank God for Beethoven

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:40:00 +0000

and thank God for Flashmobs.

Bow and Arrows Much

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 19:06:00 +0000

from valvado at 9Gag.com

They forgot Hawkeye though.

Meanwhile... Flash Drives.

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 09:27:00 +0000

Remember when USB flash drives cost a bomb? No actually, they have never cost that much; I bought my first Kingston flash drive, a modest 1GB stick, for just PhP 350 back in 2008 and I still have it. Now though, prices have dropped and so my TDK flash drive is 8GB for just PhP 260.

And they have 256 GB flash drives now, probably more than enough to contain the lots and lots of files Scully found in the filing cabinets in the Paper Clip episode of The X-Files.

There was a time I carried around a floppy disk in my bag, lovingly assured I have 1.44 MB of data secured. Yes it's so crude and so 90's but I'm still glad I got to experience that to have a point of reference.

* * *

Of course you already know flash drives don't always have to be inside their generic thumb-sized plastic cases. You've seen them housed in cigarette lighters, rubber erasers, mint canisters, stuffed toys, fake plastic severed fingers, plastic shrimps, and Lego bricks, anything you think would gladly accommodate a flash drive, which is to say the list is endless, and customization really depends on your crafty DIY-readiness.

For flash drives with a personality, try Mimoco: all your favorite characters and superheroes--from Emily Strange to the cast of Star Wars and DC universe to Transformers to GI Joe, etc--now turned into a flash drive. There's even Einstein for good measure. Batman here may look pudgy but he packs 16GB of data.

Wenlock and Mandeville are Watching You

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 01:33:00 +0000

Love them or hate them or parody them all you want, but the 2012 Olympic mascots are here to stay. Wenlock and Mandeville may not be as heart-stoppingly cute as Pikachu. In fact they're sleek and space-age and probably efficient, not too mention quirky, freaky, and somewhat disconcerting, what with their single solitary eye (It's still rude to stare.)

Supposedly these two steel-based beings oozed out from the last girder of the Olympic stadium, but they could also be something dropped off by an alien spaceship, in a preliminary bid of exploratory friendship, before setting out to destroy all of human race, as seen in this spoof by Tyler Davis:

Wenlock works in a frenzy.

And then there's that all-seeing eye. It's a surveillance camera, which is just fitting in our highly-surveilled Big Brother society. Cameras watching us everywhere 24/7, not that we're not aware of the scrutiny and the gaze, but now they've actually created a mascot--not just one but two mascots that don't have any pretensions about being cute just because they each got a single huge Cyclops eye, but are blatantly equipped with that huge eye for strictly surveillance purposes.

Wenlock and Mandeville might remind you of Kang and Kodos duo in The Simpsons, but they remind me more of Bubu, the adorable one-eyed green-skinned alien featured in a tiny java game for mobile phones about five years ago. Your goal as Bubu: armed with your hypnosis-inducing stare, you have to elude guards, nurses, and docs and escape the psychiatric hospital where they're keeping you.

Just like Wenlock and Mandeville, Bubu was an outcast, a weirdo, a freak, a suspected nutcase. All the better.

It's Fun Outdoors. Trust Us. | Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 06:12:00 +0000

Plui
Plui lets you create your own rain--a drizzle or a steady downpour depending on how you control with your finger. The perfect accompaniment in the bathtub or in the pool. Can be a stressball too if your palm's up to the challenge.

Boomerang
Of course we all know what a boomerang does, but how many of us has actually thrown a real, live one?

Geospace Jump Rocket
Now you can launch rockets right at your own backyard the fool-proof way unlike North Korea. No combustion required, as rockets are simply and safely launched by jumping and landing on the air pump (Kids on the heavy side naturally have an advantage).

Big Bubble Bucket.
Of course the simpler days called for just a mayo jar of soapy water and bubble blower made from a bendy stick, but check out this bubble powerhouse anyway. It's no-spill, holds a lot of bubbles, and best of all, allows sharing with friends.

Frisbee
The good ol' frisbee that started out as a cookie tin lid is now glow-in-the-dark. Allows for extended play in the nighttime.

Nerf Super Soaker Thunderstorm
When Plui isn't enough, this water gun should do. It packs a blast that reaches as far as 25 feet away, drenching your opponent with relentless thoroughness.

Angry Birds Outdoor Action Game
Get the kids off their iPad with a real-life hands-on Angry Birds game meant to be played outdoors. Original game rules apply, but scoring depends on where on the mat your bird lands. The best part is, it's multi-player.

Part 2 of Outdoor Toys is here.

Or B is for Booze.

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 10:21:00 +0000

So apparently Tom Robbins has written a children's book called B is for Beer--not the most palatable topic for a minor, yes, but then trust Robbins to create a fairly digestible and plausible narrative that manages to include beer in every single page without sounding like a tippler.

B is for Beer is a drunken tale about how beer is made, with a sympathetic curious girl named Gracie Perkel taking the lead role, a beer fairy to do the explaining for her, a nice-enough mother, and a perennially absent father.

Plus an oddball, free-spirited, anti-establishment, philosopher uncle named Moe, in the tradition of Robbins' previous odd, free-spirited, anti-establishment, philosophizing characters: Bernard Mickey Wrangle (in Still Life with Woodpecker), John Paul Ziller (in Another Roadside Attraction), the Chink (in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues), and Stubblefield (in Villa Incognito)--characters Tom Robbins employs so someone can talk about the deep and heavy things.

Done in his usual conversational, unapologetically flowery, at times deliberately tacky, and self-referential style, B is for Beer somehow feels clumsy and off-target. We're used to Robbins guilefully lambasting institutions such as organized religion or the military, or else advocating sexual freedom, individuality, even immortality--and he has us convinced.

There's still some of Robbins' signature blows and tricks in B is for Beer, no doubt. When Robbins romanticizes beer though as having the elements of earth, water, fire, air, and a fifth one (which could be Magic, or Love, or Mystery)--it feels forced and pushing it too far. Moe the oddball uncle, for instance, admonishes Gracie: Every time a person goes to the mall, she loses a little piece of her soul. It's nothing we've heard of before, and it can only come from

Tom Robbins, and yeah, there's some truth init for sure, but you can't help but think whether there's a bit of snobbery involved. I'm sure the soul bounces right back after every trip. Somewhere in the middle Uncle Moe falls in love and disappears in Costa Rica (one of the handful of countries which has no armed forces), to be replaced by the very chatty, beer-induced Beer Fairy who has taken it upon herself to explain the process of brewing beer--arguably the part where the book becomes so chock-full with trivia you begin to wonder about Google. After her sort of astral field trip to a barley field, a brewery, and a tavern courtesy of the Beer Fairy, Gracie comes back a little wiser.

Things however become rough for her parents eventually, and this is where Robbins hastens to wrap up the story even before you can feel affinity for any of his characters. But anyway, B is for Beer still has its funny moments, moments when you go nodding your head because that's about the same exact reaction to things you had when you were only six (or not quite six).

The cover says it's a children's book for grown-ups and a grown-up's book for children all at once, which is also the case with The Little Prince although it didn't need to declare so. For all its efforts though, B is for Beer has no memorable characters to speak of unlike in his other more solid novels where even the supporting cast is as tangible as a paper clip. At best B is for Beer is only for die-hard Tom Robbins completists.

Spidey Amazes Us

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:20:00 +0000

1. Well, now we know why Andrew Garfield is the man of the hour now. Whether you like it or not, comparison between his and Toby Maguire's portrayal of Peter Parker is inevitable: Maguire was charming, yes, but Garfield, ruggedly beautiful Garfield, put in the right amount of teenage confusion, angst, and awkwardness, plus he's got the right build for Spider-Man.

from flickriver.com

2. We always knew the Spider-Man film should be grittier and darker in tone. Kids can take it. I still wince thinking of that scene where Toby Maguire danced in Spider-Man 3. Marc Webb (Webb!) does a fine job of directing. Don't mind the overlaps and deviations with the previous origins story by Sam Raimi.

3. The CGI is just amazing in the new Spidey film, but the stuntwork is also commendable. With the three previous films, I know that once Toby Maguire puts on his mask, the CGI Spider-Man takes over, and while they did a clean, seamless job there, nothing beats a real live actor and stuntman doing the web-slinging.

4. Is it just me or is that scene where the construction guys joined forces with their cranes to help Spidey is just a real tearjerker? I think I cried about five times during the movie, not that the film went for sappy. The first time was when he was trying out his new-found powers inside the warehouse, skateboarding here and swinging on chains there. I know it's not a teary scene, but Coldplay's Til Kingdom Come was playing.

from MetalBoyft96

5. Whenever Aunt May lovingly chided or hugged Peter Parker, I can't help but remember Sally Field and her mom role in Brothers and Sisters. At the end of the day, it's mothers/mother figures we come home to, it's mothers waiting for us, whether you're Spider-Man or not.

6. I liked it that Spider-Man put the lid back on the manhole.

7. And yay!, The Amazing Spider-Man is the first in the trilogy, with the second film slated for release in 2014.

8. And then there's this:

Cross-splicing gone bad.
from loyalkng.com

The Glorified Typewriter | And Why Hermione Doesn't Google.

noreply@blogger.com (mothproof) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 09:27:00 +0000

How the Internet gets inside us.
by Adam Gopnik
from the New Yorker

"When the first Harry Potter book appeared, in 1997, it was just a year before the universal search engine Google was launched. And so Hermione Granger, that charming grind, still goes to the Hogwarts library and spends hours and hours working her way through the stacks, finding out what a basilisk is or how to make a love potion. The idea that a wizard in training might have, instead, a magic pad where she could inscribe a name and in half a second have an avalanche of news stories, scholarly articles, books, and images (including images she shouldn’t be looking at) was a Quidditch broom too far. Now, having been stuck with the library shtick, she has to go on working the stacks in the Harry Potter movies, while the kids who have since come of age nudge their parents. “Why is she doing that?” they whisper. “Why doesn’t she just Google it?”..."

* * *

I'm losing the entire point of why I have to keep shelling out for Internet bill every month. Have I gone so dependent on the Web for just about anything? Maybe I have. Maybe I itch when I can't look anything up at Google right away. As if the lack of information was fatal. To imagine this PC without Internet connection is unthinkable, but there was indeed a time when our PC was just a glorified typewriter.

I remember the first time I emailed someone back in 1999. I didn't have an email address back then so my photography professor offered to let me use hers so I can email another of my prof. The prof on the receiving end naturally thought I had hacked someone else's email account, and told me that was in bad taste.

I've forgotten what my very first e-mail address was, and haven't checked if it's still recoverable at all.

A few years later, when I worked for an SEO company, I had to use about ten email addresses to conduct my various nefarious activities.