27Aug2008 1833: Crashing

I almost didn't have science to put up here on this last week of Impromptu Science Month, but Boing Boing came through at the wire: the monetary density of things, with the bonus that it's posted on the premier website by and for mad scientists.

Castle Crashers releases today and it is time to party. I hope this game recaptures the magic of playing Ninja Turtles or X-Men in an arcade with my friends. I hope that the servers haven't crashed under the strain of everybody downloading. I hope the Blue Knight is as blue as he's been in my dreams. I hope.

[Black Kids - I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You] is pleasant enough, a sort of watered-down Killers sound. And the iTunes synopsis and myself both noticed the Go! Team yelling from the backup ladies.

I was hoping that [The Lost Trailers - Holler Back] was a send-up of Hollaback Girl in the same vein as Alanis' My Humps, but alas! It is country and only poking fun at rap music in a general way. Most of the song is about how awesome living out in the woods can be. If you need some fiddle in your life go hit up Gangstagrass instead.

[Kudai - Lejos de Aqui] is radio pop and fails utterly at having any of these "hooks" things that are so important to the music industry. It also lacks "grooves" and "beats". It does have 75% of your recommended daily allowance of vitamin Banal.

20Aug2008 2234: Wut

Every time I think I've reached some unexplored level of free time heretofore unseen by human eyes, something inexplicable appears to punish my hubris, a digital monument to the countless billions of man-hours of spiralling self-reference that I will never possess.

20Aug2008 1914: The Inexorable March of Science

August is turning into Hooray Science month here. Raharu passed along a site YouTubing every atomic element, which is pretty cool. And I've been reading a fascinating book about language that seems to be 368 pages of "humans: get over yourselves and harness the mighty power of crows". Well, no. It's a nice overview of every advance in animal cognition and language-related neurology of the past three decades. But there is a part on crows!

Aaaah. Another of week of comforting, interesting, non-threatening sciOH CRAP RAT ROBOT.

[Grupo Fantasma - El Sabio Soy Yo] starts with a powerhouse 70s disco funk buildup that sadly collapses into mariachi and never recovers. [Gran Ronde - Wisdom] is a much better choice, but even it can't overcome the hump of "mediocre". It's good, I guess? I can listen to it. This may be too generous a comparison, but it puts me in mind of Cure.

13Aug2008 1933: Braid

Braid. Go play it.

You're still here? You're still not playing the 8th-best Xbox 360 game of all time? Okay, I understand, maybe you don't have an Xbox. Maybe you'll have to wait until Saturday and come over to my place to see it. And just maybe I can continue teasing you with a non-spoily developer walkthrough of some of the easier puzzles. That walkthrough is highly recommended; the art isn't quite final but it's nearly there, and you can sorta see how awesome it is through the compression.

Late-breaking news: five rejected Bond theme songs that were better than the ones used.

To counterbalance the scientific horrors of last week's post, this article about actual observed (and repeatable!) evolution gave me a huge science boner.

[Erre XI - Te Abrazare] and [SLO-O - Soul on Ice] are making me seriously rethink my policy of not checking genre before downloading the free tracks. "Reggaeton y Hip-Hop" would have been a tip that I was wasting my (and now your!) precious time with Te Abrazare. It's not even like the "Hip-Hop y Fusiliers" demonstrated by SLO-O; Erre XI is the mellow radio-play kind of reggae, the kind that usually discusses matters of red red wine.

06Aug2008 1844: Contagion

Boing Boing purports to be a directory of wonderful things, but today they had a one-two punch of our imminent doom, via the usual doom and gloom over antibiotic-resistant bacteria and then a surprise visit from oh shit contagious cancer. Never fear, science will save us!

In today's episode of Monty's Behind the Curve, I got a game that finally pulled me away from The World Ends With You: New York Times Crosswords DS. 1000 puzzles! And also I recently started and slightly less recently stopped playing I Wanna Be The Guy again. It is not a nice game.

This week on iTunes we have two country songs and a reggae. I believe I have made my position on such things very clear.