Sears Tower gets glass observation deck, still shorter than CN tower.

Published
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Jason Surguine
on July 3, 2009
in Random
. 0 Comments

Not to be a rabble rouser (one that stirs up the masses of the people)…

But the Sears Tower has a new glass observation deck, generically named The Ledge, which looks scary and awesome.

Similar to the Grand Canyon Skywalk (except it’s easily accessible and doesn’t require driving for 6 hours to the middle of nowhere).

The CN Tower in Toronto has had something similar for quite awhile. I just happened to be in Toronto and paid it a visit. It was awesome and scary too. I’ll admit, the Sears tower one looks scarier, but it’s still not as tall as the CN tower :)

Now if they build something like this in the Burj Dubai (official tallest building in the world)… I’m all over it :)

Transformers is terrible. Please stop ruining my childhood cartoons.

Published
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Jason Surguine
on July 2, 2009
in Random
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Hollywood: Please, please, please stop turning my childhood cartoons into live action movies.

Transformers was a great cartoon when I was a kid. As was Thundercats, Voltron, GI JOE, the Smurfs, and a bunch of other crap I couldn’t stomach today even if I wanted to. They were children’s cartoons for a reason. Leave them that way. Robot Chicken is able to parody them all they want because it’s satire and it’s damn funny.

Oh crap, I just checked, they are making a Thundercats movie.

What’s next, Silverhawks? (whoops, shouldn’t have said that)

Stop it. Please.

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Jaybot’s essential Top 10 best Videogames of all time.

Published
by
Jason Surguine
on July 2, 2009
in Game Design, Games and Random
. 0 Comments

You wanna study game design without blowing all your money at Full Sail? :)

This is so subjective, but people always ask me what my favorite games are. They expect me to rattle off a few games they have heard of so they can feel well-informed. I usually say Pac-Man and Tetris and they are satisfied. :) Anyway, to the list:

1) Final Fantasy VI, VII, VIII, X, this counts as one game really.

2) Monkey Island, DOTT, Sam & Max, Leisure Suit Larry 1-7, this also counts as one, really.

3) Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II EX+ Alpha, these are just different flavors, so it counts as one.

4) Final Fantasy Adventure for Gameboy (also called 聖剣伝説 ～ファイナルファンタジー外伝～), Wario Ware… unrelated to each other, but this still counts as one.

5) Kid Icarus, Castlevania 1-4, Bionic Commando, Ninja Gaiden, Battle of Olympus, Punchout, Rush N Attack, Track and Field II Star Tropics, Strider, Wizards and Warriors 2, Metal Gear, Zelda 1+3+LA, 3D World Runner, Contra, Donkey Kong/Jr. Dragon Warrior, Gauntlet, Double Dragon, Excitebike, Goonies II, Prince of Persia, RC Pro AM, Magic of Scheherazade, Faxanadu, Section Z Gradius, TMNT 2, Blaster Master. These should be standard case-studies for game design, and count as one game, of course.

6) Tetris, Yoshi’s cookie, best thinking puzzle games of all time, damn near the same game, so it counts as one.

7) Q-Bert, Arkanoid, hate/love relationships with both of these, so it counts as one. While Arkanoid has a billion incarnations, you’ll see there are very few Q-Bert clones.

8) Mega Man X , Out of this World (Another World), Actraiser, Chrono Trigger. No relationship between any of these, but all came out within the same timeframe of awesome gaming years. So yes, they count as one.

9) Wolfenstein 3D, the original, not the new one.

10) Saga Frontier 1, Wild Arms, something campy about both of these RPGs, but something keeps them stuck in my mind as being awesome.

Err… that was 10 right?

Making this list reminded me of a few things:
a) I’ve played a plethora of games
b) Nothing on the list is from recent years; this doesn’t mean there aren’t recent excellent games (KOTOR and WoW deserve a very honorable mentions), they just haven’t reached the list of long-time awesomeness yet, and
c) I’ve played a plethora of games.

Many of these games are being released on the Playstation/Xbox/Wii’s online games service for a good reason, and for trivial amounts of money. Legal online emulation sites exist for many older systems too.

See all that money you saved on going to game design school? Now you can spend it on more important things, like donuts. Or new games ;)

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Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died, I had a bagel.

Published
by
Jason Surguine
on July 1, 2009
in Random
. 2 Comments

There, I said it. Michael Jackson hasn’t done anything interesting in the past 20 years (aside from a satirical appearance on South Park, which wasn’t him anyway). While most artists would blow all their money on cocaine and hookers, he blew it all on building a castle for himself, seducing children, and plastic surgery; at least he was different.

I’m sure Farrah Fawcett did some interesting stuff during her time. I’m just too young to remember anything about her. The only thing I can recognize is her alliterative name, sorry.

I’ll probably feel the same way in 10 years when Axl Rose and Cindy Crawford die at the same time, for the same reasons.

Do not multi-task! Just single-task?

Published
by
Jason Surguine
on June 30, 2009
in Development, Personal, Random and Technology
. 0 Comments

Blech, I dislike mornings. I’d like to like them. There’s something romantic about waking up and watching the sunrise, the birds whistling their morning calls, and Snow White singing outside my window. Alas, I’ve yet to see any of this in real life. But I digress…

All my fellow geeks are lifehackers are going to hate me for this :)

This is something I realized a long time ago and I think it applies to most humans out there. And I’ve just started utilizing it again because I just started work on the new game. I’ve found that if you multitask (that is, doing three or even two things at the same time): you’ll do everything at a worse level and take up more time than if you just did them separately.

I have no data, just personal experience. I’m sure if you googled it, you can find great arguments on both sides of the fence (oh, Tim Ferriss agrees with me, that’s neat). But I’m sure I’m right for most people out there. Try it.

Turn Outlook off (or Thunderbird, Mail.app, etc). Turn off your phone and any push-email/sms/texting device. Turn off your instant messenger. Stop browsing the internet, reading news articles and blogs (wait, finish this post first! otherwise you’ll—!….) (Okay, you’re back? Good. Finish reading this post, and then close the browser :) )

And do whatever it is you are supposed to do. I bet you’ll get it done 5-10x more quickly and have 5-10x better quality than if you were multitasking with all the other noise going on. Then stop doing that (close whatever program, if you were using one). Now open your email program and respond to your emails. You’ll be surprised how long it doesn’t take now. If you still have something to chat about, do it after everything else is finished. You’ll find that you actually enjoy the chat more, and you won’t be worried about interrupting what you should be doing ;)

The one exception to the rule I believe is background music, that’s okay, as long as it remains background (i.e. don’t sing along).

So give this new-fangled technology called ‘single-tasking‘ a shot ;) It may just help you be more productive. Enjoy!

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