Unsought Input

A nerdy little video. I really always like it when you can see pictures in music. I just think it’s cool.

If you had played Portals, one of the five games on the Half Life Orange Box available for Xbox 360, then you would know what I am talking about. Or you might have played it on an emulator, which is illegal and you will be found and flogged. But it’s a fun game that makes you think about the important things in life, like not following others commands blindly, whether to destroy your only friend and whether or not there is actually cake. While tooling around on the internet I found this cool site I wanted to share with all of you.

Check out ApertureScience. When you first go there it will look like an old computer with the black and green screen. Some of you may remember those back in the day. Anyway, there are several things you can do here. I don’t want to ruin the fun for anyone, especially those of us who remember how to use these green and black screens, so if are not getting anywhere, click here to be directed to a page that tells you how to do all the fun stuff on this page. I think the computer actually flicked me off while applying to work for Aperture Science. Well, either way, have fun.

And just because it’s the best thing, here is the portal ending song.

I started hearing it this morning, but I guess I should have expected it. With news of the Indians being one win away from the World Series, apparently Fox executives are worried about a “flyover” World Series between Cleveland and Colorado. Boo freaking hoo.

I’ll concede that the potential viewing audiences for a Red Sox-Cubs or a Yankees-Dodgers series could be more numerous than an Indians-Rockies series, just by dint of sheer population. And I could argue that the viewers that matter - the real baseball fans - will watch a World Series no matter who’s playing. Even if it were Florida and Toronto. The only benefit to a coastal series is that all the hangers-on - the girlfriends who wear pink Red Sox caps - might tune in. But if the ads are directed to a hardcore baseball fan, then what good do you think they’ll do for an audience of hangers-on?

But the real problem here is the bigotry of geography. I’m a meat-and-potatoes Ohioan, regardless of where I live. Any time I hear the term “flyover state,” it incenses me more than these East Coasters can understand. I’m proud of where I grew up, and I take particular pride in the success stories to come out of the Midwest. Such as this year’s Indians team. Nevertheless, East Coasters - particularly New Yorkers - feel compelled to treat the vast majority of this country like a third-world hellhole.

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Who says that nerds won’t make good parents? Oh, no one said that? My bad. I guess I misheard, but here is a list anyway. Oh, and I am too lazy to prioritize these, so they are in no particular order.

1. Who has cooler toys and gadgets than nerds do? I can tell you my husband has three little man armies downstairs that he built from models, a million dolls-oh, I mean action figures- all over the place, card games, board games, you name it. As far as gadgets, how about good computers, video games consoles, large televisions and home theater systems? And let’s not forget about the plethora of DVDs or Blue Ray or whatever you happen to own. The child of a nerd will want for no awesome toys, as the nerdy parents will have already bought them all for themselves.

2. The children of nerds will not be left to watch TV alone for hours on end while the parents ignore their children. Oh no. And I can guarantee you that these children will not be watching The Doodlebops, either. These kids will be watching DVDs of G.I. Joe, Transformers, Thundercats, Sesame Street, Voltron, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and many more of our childhood favorites. And we will be sitting right beside them reliving our childhoods.

3. A Surplus of old comic books to read. Your nerd child is years behind on the X Men Series so you had better start reading him/her in the womb. Think about it, if you had the comics you had now as a child (all of them at once, I mean) you may have never left your room. Nerd children will be able to read by the time they are in kindergarten and they will have already read the entire Phoenix Saga. (more…)

We’ve seen a lot of really bad movies based on video games. From Wing Commander to Super Mario Brothers to, well, everything Uwe Boll has ever made. And they don’t seem to be getting any better, or really making much money at the box office, so I can only imagine that producers green light them to punish humanity for some horrible war crime.

Once again, a million random people on the Internet are churning out better video than companies with $100 million dollar budgets. Well, they’re turning out better movie trailers, anyway. Below are the five funniest video game movie trailers we’ve seen on the web.

1. From the geniuses at College Humor, Where the f#ck is Carmen Sandiego

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We’ve shown you the total awesomeness that are Japanese obstacle course competitions. And we’ve brought you the true power and spectacle of Hard Gay. So now head three minutes into the video below to see the Beyond-Ultra-Power-Awesomeness that happens when you combine the two.

Bonus Awesomeness awaits when the British announcer points out that Hard Gay’s competitor “takes one to the old happy sacks”.

The Nintendo Wii is a lot of fun, but it’s in a bit of a new game drought right now. While the rest of us sit with bated breath awaiting Super Smash Brothers and Metroid, some folks have made some Wii games of their own. Or at least they pretended to and put videos on the Internet.

Here’s a whole series of rejected WiiPlay games from the folks at Loading.Ready.Run.

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I am not a very sports oriented person, as several people will tell you. In fact, I learn most all of my American sports knowledge from my mother-in-law. But, I do like extreme sports, like skate boarding, snow boarding, and the Ultimate Viking Challenge. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this challenge, this is possibly the most difficult obstacle course ever made. It was originally a Japanese show but now airs in the US on ESPN and in Europe. I don’t often get the chance to watch the show, but when I do it’s definitely worth it. Anyway, I am not writing about that right now, what I wanted to talk about today, actually to show you a video of today, is Nagano Makoto, the only person so far to get to the final stage of Viking, The Ultimate Challenge. He lost by running out of time in the last five feet of the course. Below is a clip (albeit of very poor quality) of Viking so you get an idea of what is going on there.

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The Virginia Tech murders got plenty of coverage in the press and on the Internet, but none of the writers here at Unsought Input weighed in on the subject. Really, there wasn’t anything left to say that hadn’t already been said a hundred times on a hundred channels already.

But now there is something interesting going on that isn’t getting enough coverage. Did you know that there are two more casualties to add to the list of 32 people killed by Seung-Hui Cho? In addition to murdering and wounding all those people, Cho somehow managed to kill common sense and reason in thousands of commentators and high school principals across the country.

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In keeping with Dwallz post today on a live action Mario Bros, I thought I would entertain you with something I found that I thought was amusing. Please keep in mind that the titles of these videos are Mario Frustration, so could all of the water bottle toting protesters please leave the room now?

Click on read more to see the other two parts of this video. It’s worth watching even though it’s 23 minutes long. I mean, you are already killing time here anyway, might as well watch it all. (more…)

Oh my god. I cannot wait for this to happen. Just watch how much fun this is going to be, and wait for it, I know he kinda tumbles from his topics but wait for the megastar! I mean, if you don’t already own a Wii, this is the game to buy it for if Zelda wasn’t.

And here is some more, in case you weren’t convinced.

The creativity in games for the Wii is already awesome, but I have a feeling that this game will blow away any previous conceptions you have on video games.

Yes, you read the title correctly. Thanks to the advent of YouTube and it’s brethren, anyone with a camera and some free time can put video up for the world to see. So it’s almost inevitable that people would re-enact their favorite video games with food, people, and various objects in stop motion..

First, a medley of classic arcade games from EatPES.com.

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So, as stated previously in the title, this article is supposed to be about entertainment for road trips (and four hour drives). In particular, road trips that I am taking, but these can be applied to all sorts of events, even just short road jaunts, like the family trip to Wal*Mart or the much more anticipated Sunday excursion to The Mall. I mean, most of these games are created to entertain bored passengers at the expense of others, so please feel free to not read these if you are going to be offended when I am making fun of you on the highway. Just trying to help.

Okay, so most of these can be played anytime but some of them are seasonal, which will be decidedly marked as such as we go down the list. Also, and I will mention this again, please feel free to leave in the comments section more ideas for entertaining games for road trips. I will definitely comment on whether they suck or not.

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Recently the hotly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, the Burning Crusade came out. I got the chance to play it and I was blown away by the improvements made to the game play. The following are the top three coolest new additions to the game.

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Hmmm… It’s a hard choice on how to spend your after Christmas/Hanukkah money. I hope these informational videos will help.

This is a commercial for the Wii. Nobody wants to play with the fat chick. But she is wearing layers (more…)