Archive for May, 2008
May 31st
Tactical Assassin 2, as made by Simon Hason, had a huge following even before its release. Tactical Assassin 1 was an immensely popular flash game released in 2007, and has over 10.4 million plays on Crazy Monkey Games at the time of this writing. For those of you who don’t know, Tactical Assassin 1 and 2 are flash games, with the player being the sniper receiving assignments about which stick man to take out in each level. Tactical Assassin 2 builds on that by adding purchasable weapons and accessories, along with storyline for those who want something to do besides shoot stick figures.
For those of you who might have already played through Tactical Assassin 2, there are level-changing cheats that you can use to change to a specific level of the game. For those of you looking to keep the game on your computer, I took the liberty of getting a downloadable version of the game, which you can get below.
(If your computer can’t view .swf files, I would recommend getting Irfanview, an image/flash/music viewer.)
May 31st
Steam, the service that Valve uses to distribute games online, is known for its excellent copy protection, easy game downloading, and large base of players. Valve announced that they will be adding two more features to help gamers in the near future, namely keeping save games and key bindings on the user’s account, so that players that play their games on multiple computers can keep their data with them. I, who use two computers to play Steam games, find this news a godsend from Valve. This news is also great for people on a single computer, because if a freak accident like a hard drive wipe or fire wipes out the data on your computer, then you still have it when you get a new one! The games that will first see the effects of this update are Half Life, Half Life 2, Counter Strike: Source, and the upcoming Left 4 Dead. I can only hope that they add it to Team Fortress 2 soon after. For those of you that don’t have Steam, you can take advantage of the download button below to get it.
May 31st
For those of you that are completely in the dark, Firefox is a Mozilla-made web browser that is completely customizable. Firefox is used by 15% of all internet users around the world. That may not seem like many people comparatively to the 78% of people that use Internet Explorer, but considering that IE is the default browser on all Microsoft PC’s, Firefox is a very popular choice. Firefox has been around for years, and now, they are finally releasing Firefox 3, which has better virus and malware protection. It features easier password management, full page zoom via keyboard shortcuts, and also scrollable tabs! There are many new updates, and they all bring exciting news to die-hard Firefox fans.
With all of that being said, Spread Firefox is trying to set a world record. If you have noticed the affiliate on the right side of the blog, you would have seen (and hopefully clicked on) it. Sometime during June Firefox 3 will be released, and it is their intent that within 24 hours of the release time, it will reach the most downloaded software in history. All you have to do is download Firefox 3 on that day in June, and you will contribute to the record. Mozilla is making this easy for you to remember by sending you an email on the day of release.
Mozilla has worked very hard on Firefox, and their many other sophisticated projects like Thunderbird. The least you could do would be to contribute a few minutes of your time downloading this fantastic web browser.
May 30th
There are very many types of art. According to dictionary.com, art is the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. What that means in plain terms is that art is an expression of a person, who creates a work that is pleasing to the eye, or is perhaps odd, out of place, but it is something that draws a person to it! I would like to introduce graphic design, which is the production of art using electronic devices, such as a computer, or in this case, Adobe Photoshop. Adobe was founded in 1982, and some of their main products are computer programs used to aid graphic designers. Their most famous program is called Adobe Photoshop, a graphic design editor program, who’s current version at the time of this writing is CS3.
Photoshop works in a very unique way. Picture Microsoft Paint, but way better, with way more options, and way more tools to create the artwork. But Photoshop is also a lot more expensive, and the current version is running at the upwards of $800 with a discount. The good news is that on Ebay, you can usually find a copy of Photoshop 7 for around $150 – $200. At this time Adobe has shut down all their trials, however, so unless you have the extra cash, or the access to the program through friends, you’re going to miss out.
Once you obtain the program, there are a million tools, so you better start familiarizing yourself with them! Play around with all of the stuff, messing around on blank documents, making sure you understand the program and how it works before you actually use it. I will be doing a mini-series on specific Photoshop tutorials, and some tips and tricks along with it. The tutorials I review should be very easy to follow, for beginners only, to help those who just started who have no idea where to go or what to do. If you don’t even know how to open a document (which you should, honestly), I’ll tell you how to do it. Don’t get frustrated if you cannot figure something out, just ask ask me in a comment and I’ll see what I can do to help. Just have fun with it, and be creative!
With that, expect my first post to come out soon, and you can bookmark this post as I’ll be updating it with links to each one.
May 29th
Each year, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) hires many 13-16 year olds to go shopping. They aren’t just shopping for anything though; these teens are out to buy products that have Parental Advisory Labels, or PAL’s. Specifically, they’re attempting to buy R-Rated movie tickets and DVD’s, PAL’d CD’s, and M-Rated video games.
As you can see by looking at the graph to the left, the sales of M-Rated games to minors has drastically decreased in the past couple years, from 69% being able to purchase the games to 20%. This means that video game retailers are paying closer attention to minors without parents trying to buy M-Rated content.
The FTC doesn’t just stop at grand totals, they track which stores allow the minors to buy the games. If you’d look at the table below, you can see, in order of percentage of sales, the stores that sell M-Rated video games to minors.
As you can see, Gamestop denies almost any sales, while Hollywood Video really doesn’t give a care who they make a buck off of.
Just remember kids, if you want to buy an M-Rated game, bring your mom, dad, or guardian with you to the store so you don’t look like an idiot.
May 29th
Firefox is the best web browser on the internet. But even with it’s pleasing looks, there are 3 addons that will make Firefox the envy of all your buddies.
CuteMenus – Crystal SVG: The menus in Firefox are good, but there’s just something
missing. Icons! Cutemenus adds icons to all of the menus in Firefox, even ones that aren’t in Firefox by default. New features include adding icons to toolbars, removing the toolbar dividers (this feature makes Firefox look amazingly better), and removing the “Go’ button from the url and search bar. So if you are looking to make the menus easier to recognize and faster to look through, adding icons with Cutemenus will do the job.
Colorful Tabs: This addon is really self explanatory. After installing the addon, all of your tabs will be different colors. Look through the options, however, and you’ll see that there is much more than meets the eye. Firstly, you can choose to color the tabs by URL or by random. It’s also possible to assign certain colors to certain websites (like this one, for instance). You could also put an image as the background of the tabs if you felt like it.
Menu Editor: After installing a few extra addons, your right-click menu is going to get very cluttered very 
fast. Menu Editor’s goal is to clean up your right-click menu (and all of the other menus in Firefox). Just open up Menu Editor, choose the menu you want to edit, then uncheck anything you don’t want on that menu. You can also add a separator or two to sort stuff even better. If all those extra options you’re never going to touch anyways are annoying you, Menu Editor is the perfect addon to simplify those menus.
May 28th
Continuing the trend of cool bottles and energy drinks, today I picked up a NOS at my gas station for a quick review. NOS definitely has the look factor down. NOS used to make high octane fuel for cars, and decided to kick it into gear and make Energy Drinks too. The gnarly blue bottle has a stylish orange wrapper, a pimpin’ logo, and to top it off, a sweet easy-turn cap. Flavor-wise it’s also pretty good. It has a pretty good flavor reminiscent of grapefruit. Now, I personally am not a big grapefruit fan, but there are definitely a lot of grapefruit eaters out there, and they would appreciate the flavorz.
NOS is also promising in the department of energy. Any tiredness I previously felt was almost immediately with NOS coursing through my veins. With an electrifying 15.63 milligrams per ounce of caffeine, there is almost no chance of you falling asleep after drinking one of these bad boys.
The downside? sugar content. There are 71.5 grams of sugar in one NOS, which means you’re gonna crash. Epically. My verdict, NOS is pretty good, just look out for the crash after the aftershock. In other words, drink responsibly.
May 28th
Hello dear readers. I am Japanerd, and contrary to popular belief, I am not from Japan. I am a Missouri guy with a knack for speaking his mind when no one wants to hear it. So, I decided to move my opinion to the internet, where everyone is accepting and loves me (at least everyone who doesn’t post irrelevant criticisms about my posts. Your mother probably told you you “If you don’t have something nice to say don’t say anything at all”, that better apply to my posts). I enjoy reviewing stuff that people seemingly don’t care about, but thats never stopped me before, so it wont stop me now.
I’m on a mission. I have noticed, in my many late nights spent on the internet, that there is something missing. I am sure that many of you frequently use energy drinks. Thats fine and dandy, but the realm of Energy Drinks has become cluttered with the riff-raff of sub-par beverages, and there is little to help you defer from said riff-raff and the quality energizing beverages. Thats where I come in. I am going to begin reviewing energy drinks, but don’t think I’ll stop there. I may just feel like reviewing flash games, cool websites, or anything that strikes me as awesome. Thanks for your attention, and keep reading Pxl’s blog!
May 28th
Face of Mankind Rebirth is a unique game in two rights. One, it is an upcoming MMOFPS set in space, which sounds like a good game to me already. Two, it has already been on the market for a year. You may be thinking “Doesn’t the title say ‘Preview?’ Is this guy insane or what?” Well, Face of Mankind (without the Rebirth part) was on the market for about a year as a pay-per-month game, but the publishers left the game. So now, the developers are coming back and releasing the game for free, this time the way they want the game to be played. When I played the beta of the original FoM, I was left thinking that this could be the coolest MMO ever made, with a few changes like better third-person combat, an easier mission system, and less of a learning curve for novices. The developers have taken these and other ideas from players to create FoM Rebirth, a game that I hope will set the standard for any future MMOFPS’s (Tabula Rasa doesn’t count in my opinion).
If you click on the link to visit the homepage of FoM Rebirth, you’ll notice that there really isn’t anything there. So if you are looking to learn more about the game, visit either the main fan site for FoMR, or check out the game page at MMORPG.com. You can also be assured that any more news on this game will be posted on the blog.
May 27th
I wanted to start things off with a bang, so I figured I’d try something a bit on the unusual side. I ingested a Hydrive for my reviewing pleasure.
Now, combining my two favorite things, water and energy, seemed like a good idea. I was wrong. I’m not going to lie to you, the best part about this drink is the bottle, which is arguably the coolest bottle I’ve ever used. I’m probably going to keep using it for a while, because its elongated leetness. But after the bottle, it kind of goes down hill.
Flavor-wise, it is severly lacking. I got the Citrus Burst flavor, and let me tell you, it didn’t taste anything remotely like the orangy goodness I was expecting. If you only drink energy drinks for flavor, I would highly encourage you right now to never get Hydrive. The so called “Citrus Burst” was more like water tinted slightly with orange and the water from a bowl of fruit loops left sitting in the sun for two months. Now, if thats your thing, then go for it, but otherwise, I would highly recommend staying away.
Energy-wise its debatable. The kind of energy i was looking for was more of the sudden burst oh my god whats going on why is the room spinning kind of energy. Hydrive has nothing of the kind, but it has something on a different level. Hydrive is more of a Gatorade substitute, in the sense that it rehydrates but tries to cut back on the sugar and whatnot, but made it instead just water. I didn’t go on a run with Hydrive, so I personally have insufficent knowledge to review it in that sense, but from a gaming/speed point of view, it fails.
So all in all, I would say Hydrive really depends on what you need the energy for. Late night gamers, stay away. Marathon runners, go for it, so long as you can get past the flavoring.