figures - Kotaku

figures - Kotaku

Oh no.

So I've been playing Valve's excellent Portal recently. My computer ate the last copy of Half Life2 that I installed, so I figured the switch to the console realm wouldn't hurt*. I dislike installing a bunch of TSR crap, because you can never get it to go away properly so you get your old computer back. Annoying. So I get the Orange Box, both for the ability to resurrect HL2, and for Portal, which friends assure me is worth the full retail price of the whole thing, even though it's just a bonus.

*as long as I don't move my Xbox, which tends to eat DVDs if you move the console when the disk is spinning. Microsoft denies the problem and says you should read your owner's manual, but that's just the last resort the lawyers come up with to avoid having to spend millions of dollars on corrective actions because their engineers fucked up. I know what I'm talking about, I live this sort of thing every day. Thing is, when we screw the pooch this hard, we fix it.

But I digress. Portal. I've managed to play through to the final scene without resorting to walkthroughs (though I did peek at one to confirm that I was on the right track in level 18. I was, and what I was trying was going to work, I just hadn't successfully executed it yet.) I've really been enjoying the way the game is written, and the lines are classic. Real tongue-in-cheek stuff. So I go to see if anybody has done a T-shirt that says "The cake is a lie."

Yes. They have. Cool. Good idea for a birthday gift for somebody.

Then I notice some other links, and click on them. People are going to immense trouble (and doing a really good job at it as a result) to make their own action figures of video game characters.

Wow. I guess the thing that surprises me is that I'm surprised. I shouldn't be. But it hits me like it did seeing small-scale models of larger-scale radio-controlled models of full-sized cars when I was in Japan recently:



In other random news. The D300 rocks. I was looking forward to taking it up north on a winter camping trip this weekend, but we bailed because Sunday is going to be a high temp of -14, and a low of -24. With blowing snow. No fun. No thanks.

Word of the day: Snizzooch. You can make up your definition, but I originally thought of it in the context of ... er... something gynecological.

Crossfit is going well. Pretty regular, seeing some good gains. Started marathon training (intervals) and can hold onto a much higher speed (1:20-2:00 per mile faster) than last year, so something is working.