Poke Me In The Eye

Moe’s Picks:

Human stupidity really does know no bounds. I would love to get an email like this
In memory of Carl Sagan, this video about the hubble telescope is amazing
Some rules that every artist should learn. Hell, some rules just about anyone should learn
It never ceases to amazes me what they can do with computers these days. Check out this CG water video for a good example.
A tip every man should know how to do. How to remove a bra with one hand

Crawford’s Picks:

If I drop my fork, am I screwed or is whomever below me screwed?
Someday I am going to follow this advice. I hope I don’t regret it.
You can use this website to generate a description of a fictional castle. Why? I’ve absolutely no clue.
Make a squirrel wear clothes.
Wikipedia has everything…including people who hate Coca-Cola.

Crawford’s Answers:

In no particular order…

Goldeneye for N64

This was the ultimate multiplayer FPS for a long time. I really hope it comes out for the Wii. It was simple but exciting, decent graphics (fantastic for the time) and had great controls for the generation and platform. I’ve played it more times than I can think of and worked damn hard to get all the cheats.

Legend of Zelda

Another simple one but oh so much fun to play. There were so many secrets to discover with little to no hints on where to find them. This was before the internet so it wasn’t all that easy to get descriptions on where things were…adding to the difficulty. It was hard without being impossible and launched a fantastic franchise.

Half Life 2

I loved the original but the sequel absolutely blew it away. The graphics still hold up and the physics in the game are astounding. I blew threw the whole game fairly quickly but still like to go back and use that unreal gravity gun

Gran Turismo (series)

I can’t just pick one…the first blew racing games out of the water, the most recent is breathtaking. I’ve probably played this one more than any other game in existence. It’s one that can always be picked up and jumped right into.

Pitfall

It doesn’t get much more simple than this. You run, you jump, you survive. But it was, without a doubt, groundbreaking at the time. It never became harder…no real puzzles to solve nor bosses to fight. Just started with a simple choice (left or right) and continued forever. In all honesty I’ve no clue how long it will go…someday I will find out

Moe’s Answers:

This was kind of a tough one for me, there are a lot of games over the years that I have really loved including some old school games. Technology advances makes me want to pick more new games but instead I am going to go with the games that really made an impact on me or that I spent the most time playing.

Hard Driving

My freshman year of college there was an arcade about 100 yards away from my dorms. I spent far too much time in that arcade playing Hard Drivin’. I got a bit of a reputation for myself as well. I set many of the high scores on their machine and one day while I was playing some guy was standing by the machine waiting for his turn. I eventually ran out of time and as I was entering my name in the machine (my name was octopus) the guy waiting for me was like “holy shit, you’re Octopus!”, I felt like king of the dorks for about 3 seconds. Hard Drivin’ still has some of the best controls of any racing game in my opinion. If you could combine Hard Drivin’ with Gran Turismo you would have the best racing game in the world.

Team Fortress Classic

I don’t think I have spent as much time playing any other game than I have playing TFC. I am referring to the Half Life mod of TFC here by the way. I have some great memories of me and my roommate charging into the enemy base, both of us as heavies and just laying waste. I was even in a clan at one point. I cannot wait till TFC 2 comes out.

Yars’ Revenge

I have been a gamer for a very long time, we even had the original pong machine. My family had tons of Atari games but my all time favorite was Yars’ Revenge. Probably not a very popular pick and I bet there are some people who read this who have never even heard of it. It was a very challenging game but not impossibly so, it had the perfect level of challenge as far as I am concerned. I haven’t played it for many, many years but I’d be willing to bet I would still love playing it.

Half Life

First person shooters are probably my favorite genre of games and I don’t think there is a finer example than the original Half Life. Half Life literally opened my eyes to what video games could actually be. Valve really made it feel like you were a character in a movie rather than moving some pixels around the screen. I actually recently went back and played Half Life through again. Even though the graphics aren’t up to today’s standards the game play is still rock solid and the AI is still better than many of todays games.

Super Mario Brothers

If you had an NES I’d be willing to bet you had this game. I was one of those really lucky guys, I got my NES about a year before most people had even heard of it. Nintendo selected a few small markets to test out how Americans would like the system and I was lucky enough to be in that market. I vividly remember being at FAO Schwarz and seeing the NES for the very first time, they were playing Duck Hunt and I was instantly blown away. I begged and pleaded for my parents to get me it for Christmas and luckily for me, they got it. Anyway, Super Mario Brothers is one of the greatest games ever created in my opinion and it is a game that I would say 80% of the population are at least familiar with.

Crawford’s Picks:

Make Mead!
A strangely exciting Super Mario Bros race
Sometimes it isn’t good to know so much about possible mental disorders
See the blooming of the Corpse Flower. Why is it called that? Look it up and find out.
The most sad Calvin and Hobbes cartoon of all time.

Moe’s Picks:

This kid is really excited about getting this pokemon card
I would love to go to this beach and watch the show
A huge collection of the funny cat pictures that are sweeping the net
Not sure what to do with your loved ones ashes? Turn them into a pencil
What might happen when you call that number on the bathroom wall

Add another point in the Google column of programs that are extremely useful!

I installed Google Desktop some time ago and although I had a couple minor issues once I figured out what I wanted from it I’ve installed it on practically every machine I can get my hands on.

In its most simple form it is a search engine for your computer. I’ve always been frustrated with the basic “file search” program embedded in Windows (you know the one I’m talking about…it has a cheerful little dog that can’t find jack). But it goes much further than that.

If you have multiple computers connected on a network it will “index” all files on all computers across the network. This comes in very handy when you’ve got stuff spread out all over the place (like I did when I was using my laptop often). It can be configured in multiple ways too. You can have a search bar on your taskbar, a floating bar on your desktop, a keyboard shortcut activated one (which is what I use) or a full column on the side of the screen (what I did when I had a dual monitor setup).

When you’ve got the full column activated you can enhance it with a huge variety of add-ons and automatic searches…weather, news, sports, movies, recent searches…it’ll display a slide show of pictures you have, has a music player…all kinds of stuff. But what really blew me away is that when I’d so something like search www.craigslist.org for “Acura parts” it would automatically continue to search craigslist at set intervals and update me with new posts/ads. I’m not sure if that is part of that RSS stuff (that I know next to nothing about) or something it “figured out”…but either way it was brilliant.

It’s come in especially handy for the computers at work. We’ve had a ton of different people using the PC’s in our office over time and they’ve spread out files all over the place. Before it was frustrating trying to find something…now a simple “ctrl-ctrl” click and up pops the search bar…type in what I’m looking for…and here come the files! It even shows relevant web pages that have been visited that pertain to that keyword. That is useful…but can also be used to spy on those that are a bit less computer savvy!

When fully activated as a column it can be a handful. It is constantly updating itself with new information and I found it a bit distracting as it would pop up things every couple minutes. If I was doing a lot of heavy computer work I’d probably like it that way…or at least would customize it to be a bit more selective. But running in it’s most basic form it’s been amazingly handy.

I highly suggest this program to anyone that wants to be able to pull up information on their computer quickly and easily. And for those that are seeking massive amounts of information from the internet or their network…with a little fiddling/customization…you won’t find anything better…or more useful.

Download Google Desktop