Wow! Even more lunacy.

Today (June 4th) Jack Thompson--Asshat Lawyer Extraordinaire--actually walked out on his own disbarment hearing, after discovering that the overseer in the case was aiming for "enhanced disbarment" meaning not only were they planning on stripping him of his legal credentals, they were planning on banning him from even trying to regain them for ten years. Well, looks like at the rate he's going they're going to wind up giving him jail time as well. I recommend they use the wing reserved for compulsive anal rapists.

Thompson, much in the fashion of how we got to this point in the first place has filed what he calls "Thompson's Formal Objection to June 4 Sanctions Hearing", which is of course, filled with just loads of things that have almost nothing to do with why he's being disbarred.

It seems that not even the Florida Bar will tolerate Thompson's form of unending legal trollery.

* For those who haven't caught on yet, the trolling technique in question is rather close to Argumentum ad lapidem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_lapidem in that Thompson, rather than talk about why he shouldn't be disbarred for (just one example) filing gay porn and literally thousands of irrelevant documents in his case against Rock Star Productions, chooses instead to argue that he's being persecuted for just dozens of things completely unrelated to anything going on at the moment. The general idea being that the troll can sucker someone into arguing each and every one of these irrelevant points until they are either completely confused, get frustrated and give up, or just die from old age. Trolls using this technique generally consider Argument from silence the winning condition.

Jack Thompson Walks Out on His Own Disbarment Hearing

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is an episodic RPG-adventure game series set in a deranged comic-book meets-pulp-horror 1920s universe. Armed with unconventional weaponry and witty repartee, you join forces with the Gabe and Tycho, the crime-solving team of the Startling Developments Detective Agency to make war on bizarre enemies and solve the mysteries hidden deep in the sinister heart of New Arcadia.
From the hilarious and twisted minds of Penny Arcade creators Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, legendary game designer Ron Gilbert and veteran producers at Hothead Games comes a 100% authentic and hilarious Penny Arcade experience.

From what I've seen of it so far, that last bit is dead on. The video game is truly effing Penny Arcade. (Either you get that, or you don't.) I'd really like to write something eloquent and insightful about it, but basically, it is the embodiment of the web comic, which also happens to be a video game filled with win.

At ~200 megabytes or so, it is deceptively tiny. ...but since the entire thing is either (and alternatingly) cel-shaded or vector-driven, it can be expected to compress well. (It also looks seriously pimp at 1680x1050)

Download the demo. You will see. (Oh yes, did I mention it runs on everything? Windows, OSX, Linux, and XBox360. ...and the system requirements are miniscule.)

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is an episodic RPG-adventure game series set in a deranged comic-book meets-pulp-horror 1920s universe. Armed with unconventional weaponry and witty repartee, you join forces with the Gabe and Tycho, the crime-solving team of the Startling Developments Detective Agency to make war on bizarre enemies and solve the mysteries hidden deep in the sinister heart of New Arcadia.
From the hilarious and twisted minds of Penny Arcade creators Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, legendary game designer Ron Gilbert and veteran producers at Hothead Games comes a 100% authentic and hilarious Penny Arcade experience.

From what I've seen of it so far, that last bit is dead on. The video game is truly effing Penny Arcade. (Either you get that, or you don't.) I'd really like to write something eloquent and insightful about it, but basically, it is the embodiment of the web comic, which also happens to be a video game filled with win.

At ~200 megabytes or so, it is deceptively tiny. ...but since the entire thing is either (and alternatingly) cel-shaded or vector-driven, it can be expected to compress well. (It also looks seriously pimp at 1680x1050)

Download the demo. You will see. (Oh yes, did I mention it runs on everything? Windows, OSX, Linux, and XBox360. ...and the system requirements are miniscule.)

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One

A thorough review of Thompson’s filings lead to one conclusion. He has abused the processes of the Court… Accordingly… the Clerk of this Court is hereby instructed to reject for filing any future pleadings, petitions, motions, documents, or other filings submitted by John Bruce Thompson, unless signed by a member in good standing of The Florida Bar other than himself.

The celebrations may now begin.

Florida Supreme Court Sanctions Jack Thompson!

"Disappointing" is a word I don't like to use about a video game--mainly because this means I was just "disappointed" out of fifty bucks when this happens, but nonetheless it applies to EA's new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix game.

Not even the magic of the Wii-mote could save this one, because somehow EA's code manages to have trouble differentiating frantically waving the thing in counter-clockwise circles from frantically waving the thing in clockwise circles. This is pretty dire, considering that I've got at least three other games that handle this task just fine.

It is neat to see characters which mostly resemble the ones from the movie on your screen and presumably vulnerable to said frantically-waving wand, but no... except for a few rather baffling (because of the hideous wand-movement parsing and lack of effective tactile feedback) battle scenes, you're not allowed to zap anyone at any time. The best you're allowed is to point your wand at people and look at them menacingly to make them run away. This is important because the AI controlling the other characters makes them about as aware of their surroundings Helen Keller, so you'll be shooing students out of your way on a regular basis--including your two ever-present tag-alongs, Hermione and Ron. Rest assured, it won't take you long to decide that perhaps if one of them were to "fall" and wind up in the hospital wing, it wouldn't be such a terrible thing.

Gone is, sadly, most of the plot from the book, which might explain why it is that the thing feels like a mood-stabilized, Disney-esque version of the book. It also might explain why it is that Sirius Black is somehow now a cheerful, upbeat guy. (For those of you who have forgotten, Black has just spent the last several years being tortured around-the-clock by Dementors in Azkhaban). There's a moderate-length cutscene near the end where Dolores Umbridge gets taken away by the centaurs, which makes no real sense at all, and somehow a screwey-looking giant is involved in this, making his second blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance, which seem to be glaring evidence that at one point there was a lot more game planned here than was actually shipped. Adding insult to injury is the "Room of Rewards"* which contains the now-standard plethora of useless junk meant to represent you having seen all 9/9 of the Jade Thimbles Of Sewingness and having set new records in the nostril mining mini-game--roughly half of these "rewards" are simply trophy items which you're shown close up for almost two full seconds (not exactly long enough to admire much). The other half are basically the anemic stepchildren of DVD "extras" about the already lackluster video game where you get to see things like Emma Caufield gushingly admit that the game showed her new levels of realism in how video games can be. Clearly, Ms. Caufield has never played a video game before this one--or perhaps it's more of the w... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Game Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

A bit of nostalgia (or at least something so you can pretend to be nostalgic about it) for the walls of your study/gaming room.

...whopping large Asteroids (like the game Atari made).

Asteroids!

I know, I know, everyone is still waiting desperately for news of the next shipment of Nintendo Wii's, but if anyone is still actually waiting with bated breath for a chance to get their hands on a Sony PlayStation 3, NewEgg now has them in a not-so-egregious bundle.

Unlike Fry's--who seem to have plenty of units through the interesting tactic of marketing them in a well-nigh unsellable bundle of all the release-day games at a total of just over $1,000USD--NewEgg is selling their PS3's with just Call of Duty and Fall of Man, two of the games that are probably going to pull in the biggest draw for the type of people looking to buy a video game machine. The total price for the combo:

$769.96 before taxes and shipping.

...and no dealing with shifty eBayers needed.

OMG PS3 60Gb Units for sale!

Here's someone on an auction site with zero feedback, claiming to have an unlimited supply of Nintendo Wiis for sale for a mere $275 per.

Su-u-u-u-u-u-u-ure he does.

As of 7:47am, November 25th, 43 morons have already fallen prey to his rather obvious fraud. Let's all bookmark this and check back around Dec 10th to see how many feedbacks of "THAT @#$@ @#$$%! RIPPED ME THE @!#$@$ OFF! I HOPE HE #@$@$! IN THE @##$@ @#$@!!!" there are.

Whee!

Look, kids! Crime!

Okay, so it's a little hackneyed, but it is still a funny "public service announcement". ...and for those of you wondering, that might as well be in-game footage from a video card perhaps one notch higher up than mine.

Friends Don't Let Friends Play Solo

If you genuinely *like* coding, at the moment Basic accounts are free again, and this will be amusing to you.

Second Life free signups