Rated C for Clean

Doing laundry has gone from a very labor intensive activity, to a down-right easy one. So easy, that it's kind of boring to sit around and wait for our clothes to be clean.

Designer Lee Wei Chen has created a way to simultaneously take laundry back to the time where it was an interactive process, and take it to a more futuristic level. Behold! The Arcade Game Washer:

 The concept is pretty cool. Load your clothes and start playing. The success of your laundering is dependent on how well you do at the game. If you're a noob, you have to add more coins to get to the rinse cycle.

It's a neat marriage of household chores to gaming. However, I am lousy at most old school arcade games. I would probably go broke trying to get my clothes clean this way. I like it's potential as a teaching household item for moms though. It could make doing laundry fun for kids/teens, and every quarter they put in could be put towards a college fund or a savings account or something.

Also a practical place to keep all the pocket change you come across doing the wash.

Pottermore!

Oh hai guys! I've been lucky enough to get in on the beta testing of the new Harry Potter fan site Pottermore. I thought I'd dish a little on what it's like and what I liked.

Basically you get to go through little interactive vignettes from each chapter, finding objects that you can collect (like books, important props from the story, and the golden snitch) and uncovering new content about characters from JK Rowling. I think getting to read the exclusive content is probably my favorite of the site so far. Getting the life stories of Prof. McGonagall and Quirell, and the story of how the Dursley's met was very fun and interesting!

The art style on the site is very rich and beautiful. It really captures the mood of the books well. And I think that's something kind of important to keep in mind about the site: It's meant to serve sort of as an accompaniment to the books. Reading the feedback comments from other people in the Beta, it was clear some people were expecting there to be a lot more to it, for it almost to be a living movie you could act out. It's more like a series of explorable moments. With that said, there were a few things on it that I'd like to see improve.

1. There's no music - I think that would enhance the feeling of the site a lot.

2. The two most exciting interactive pieces, that enable you to earn house points, are not functioning optimally right now. You're supposed to be able to do spells in a wizards duel, but that piece has been "under maintenance" since I first signed in. There's also a place to make potions - but they take a REALLY long time to brew and sometimes the interface is a little clumsy. I wasted a whole bottle of Billywig Stings because I couldn't figure out how to hold the bottle properly. What a waste of Galleons!

3. You can buy pets on Diagon Alley, and they become your avatar. You have to pick really carefully because you can't change it. Not that I hate my choice of the traditional black cat, but now I wish I'd picked the Siamese instead and there's no turning back!

OK though- Here's the cool stuff. You get to go through a series of personality tests to get your wand and sort you into your houses. Here's what I got!

My Wand: 11 1/2 inches, Ash and Unicorn Hair, unyeilding

My House:

Slytherin Bitches! Haters Gonna Hate!

I'm actually really pleased with it. I feel like the test got it right. I'm ambitious and resourceful.Plus, I think I would kinda hate those foolhardy Gryffindor jerks if I was at Hogwarts. F pointless heroics.

Right now we're in second place with in the House Cup - Ravenclaw is winning. Despite having the most members, Gryffindor is in 3rd (BOO LOSERS) and, naturally, Hufflepuff is a losin'.

Anyways, it's a lot of fun, a great way to rediscover the books and learn more about the characters. I can't wait till they put up the rest of the content. Pottermore is pretty sweet.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that they randomly assign you a user name. Mine turned out to be pretty alright: WolfsbaneRose139. Look me up when you can get on!

Guy of my Dreams...

...Is an awesome flash game that kind of plays out like an episode of "This was Your Life." 
You are a kind of gothy teenage girl who negotiates relationships and career advancement in the quest to find the said guy.

It's an easy and entertaining game. It come across as slightly sexist at first, but the game play is cool enough that I was won over by it. It's my current time waster du jour.

PLAY

More like Tom Crook...amirite?

For some reason, 2011 has ushered in an era of playing 10-year-old GameCube games at our house. Our most obsessively played diskette? Animal Crossing!



Every day when we come home from work, Paul and I take turns diligently working towards paying off our house by finding dinosaur bones, fishing, and doing chores for our neighbors.

Games like this are so weird, because they're predicated on you laboring more than you would at your real life job. But it's strangely, strongly addictive.

The most fun part of the game is buying/earning items to decorate your house. I'm trying to collect all the items in the Cabin Series, which will make my house look roughly like the interior of "The Great Northern" from Twin Peaks.

 

Addictive!

Iwatani's Sketchbook

I thought this was so neat! These are the original, hand drawn designs for the classic video game, Pac Man. Such a cool peek into the creator Toru Iwatani's journals. What a beautiful intersection of video games and art.




Pac man is 30 this year, as commemorated by the google playable interface:

http://www.google.com/pacman/

Yummy

This is the best beer I've had in a long time:



Trois Mousquetaires Unfiltered Kellerbier from Quebec. It's been awhile since I've had a beer that I'd declare categorically delicious. Very refreshing, not too sweet or intense, with just the right amount of hoppiness and citrus flavor. The unfiltered-ness gives it a nice slightly earthy quality too. Plus, it sure looks pretty in a glass.

I enjoyed it greatly. Paul and I drank it while playing:

Which is awesome! Allons-y!

Music for Racing

As I mentioned, Paul and I are back into playing Mario Kart again. Lately, I've enjoyed muting the game, and playing my own sweet tunes during the racing action. It's a great way to get in the zone, and some times you even get some of that good ol' fashioned synchronicity I mentioned the other day.

Caroline's Top 5 Songs to Kart to:

1. Beta Band: Troubles
Perfect Track Pairing: Rainbow Road



2. Cake- The Distance
Perfect Track Pairing: Koopa Cape



3. Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
Perfect Track Pairing: GCN DK Mountain



4. The Police: Every Little Thing She Does is Magic
Perfect Track Pairing: Moonview Highway



5. Daft Punk: Harder, Better, Faster
Perfect Track Pairing: GBA Bowsers Castle 3



Also:

The Almighty Dollar

I would consider myself a person who is more attuned than average to the dangers of materialism, on ecological, psychological and economical levels. That being said, I am always loathe to call my self a consumer. This week I think proved to me better than most that I am just as bad about acquiring stuff as any other American. I blame the heat wave, it made being inside an air conditioned store seem like a better option than sweltering in our house.

The first thing I bought was even to help us keep cool. Paul and I ran through the sprinkler the other day and it was awesome. I run it for a little while in the afternoon too, to keep the vegetables alive.


I was also fighting a really nasty cold earlier in the week. I decided that taking vitamins would probably help my immune system kick it. I opted for the gummie type, because I'm secretly 5. The name of this brand is a big oxymoron. "One-a-Day"....but you take two of them!

We finally decided to resolve the not having Mario Kart issue once and for all, and broke down and bought a new copy of the game. I missed playing so much!

A Hula Hoop. Paul and I are going to the Gathering of the Vibes music festival at the end of the month, and people often bring hula hoops to these types of events. I had always been bad at hula hooping, and wanted to see if I could get better at it. I'm still pretty terrible, but I like to think I'm improving...The check out guy asked me if I went to Hampshire College when I bought this.
These hot shoes. I could not resist them, for they were only $7.

Mmmm....Trader Joes Vegetable Gyoza are AWESOME!

Annnd in spite of them losing the summer beer taste test, A Harpoon UFO is still nice on a hot hot day.

He was Joe, I was Mac

A few nights ago, Paul and I played the entirety of and beat "Joe and Mac - Caveman Ninja," an SNES game from 1991. The game is all about being Cavemen, fighting other cavemen and killing dinosaurs. I think that calling the main characters "ninjas" is a slight overstatement, but it does make them seem a little cooler.
At the end of every level, a super-hot cave-lady comes out and gives you kisses. There are also bonus levels where you jump around and eat lots of various meats. The weird part is, in the regular levels, when you kill another caveman, they turn into meat as well...So Joe and Mac are basically cannibals. Yikes.

The boss level where you fight the mammoth is even weirder. You win by ripping off the elephant's trunk. It's terrible!


Paul used his awesome computer wizardry to make it so we hard unlimited lives. It was definitely much more fun that way. I can't imagine having the patience to play through the whole game in earnest. It would take forever and be obnoxious. The levels themselves are pretty short, but littered with a ton of temperamental obstacles. And the boss levels are crazy long.

I enjoyed playing it though. Maybe I'll try "Joe and Mac 2 - Lost in the Tropics" next. That one has a role-playing part to it, where you marry your super-hot cave-lady and buy furniture for your house with your points.

Wii-licious

Its been how many months now (?)and our Wii is still on the fritz. Once Paul called the service line (which incidentally, plays old school Mario tunes for on-hold muzak (awesome!)) and found out our machine was no longer under warranty, it kind of took the urgency out of sending it back. Especially since some games still work in it, and winter is the #1 season for hunkering down with your electronics. We're waiting till we can go outside again, I think, to repair it. I am still really really missing Mario Kart though. Our other games (that work) just aren't the same...

Right now our wii-motes are about as useful, but not nearly as tasty as this sweet chocolate-mote from DigitalChocolates. Hooray for candy that looks like gadgets!


Don't get confused and eat your wii controllers! Also, don't try to play a game with this, cuz it'll melt on you! Also, not work.

Valentines

Hell of a Ween

Halloween was really fun this year, but pretty different from what Paul and I have done the last 5 years or so. To all the very very dear friends that we didn't hang out with on the ghoul night, we missed you! I wish that I got to drink with you and see all your assuredly fabulous costumes. It really does bum me out when I think about not seeing you all.

Paul and I spent the day working at the Haunted Higgins event. It was a lot of fun, despite it requiring us to leave the house at 8 AM.

I was Princess Lolly from Candy Land.


The event was structured around all these different themed areas, and since there was no Candy Land area, I threw on a pair of borrowed wings, became "The Candy Fairy", and hung out with some really cool girls in the Fairy Forest.

Paul went as a Yip Yip.

Understandably, this costume elicited some drastically variable responses from the kids, ranging from excitement and joy to abject terror.

Some of my favorites were:

- The little boy who stared at Paul for a solid 10 minutes, then blurted out "I love you!"
- The little boy who encountered Paul on the stairs and yelled "Oh no! A ghost!"
- The little girl, who after sizing him up declared "That's a pretty bad Elmo costume."

Indeed, probably half the kids were under the impression that he was Elmo. Really kids?
This is the like Elmo of your most terrible nightmares.

It was a lot of fun though, giving out candy and playing the part of the mischievous fairy, skipping around the museum and seeing all the cute kids in their costumes. The most popular choices were Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Vampires. My personal fave was the brothers who came as Bowser and Waluigi. The museum did a really good job of it too - they even had a battle between a Jedi and a Sith lord, using only moves from authentic 16th century training manuals of course.

It was a lot of fun, but honestly exhausting. Afterwards, Paul and I went home and promptly took naps. We awoke a few hours later to our neighbor blasting a haunted house soundtrack into our backyard, which was super weird at first. Being half asleep and hearing screaming and evil cackling, it's hard to tell if you're dreaming it.

We got a healthy number of trick or treaters, but most of them were 12+. When the candy-begging died down, we went to a Party in Northampton with Pat S. It was kind of cool to go to a party where you didn't really know anybody. It took me back to freshman year.

I am looking forward to having a a more familiar crowd around me again next year though. I'm think about hosting, but don't hold me to it :). I hope you all had so much fun at your respective shindigs!

The constant

Even though life has been kind of transitional lately, getting used to new jobs, new houses, and commutes 3 times as long as they used to be, there's one thing that hasn't really changed at all.

How addicted I am to this game : http://www.oopixel.com/games/escape-the-red-giant/

I've been playing it since the summertime, and I'm pretty sure it was snowing tonight when I drove home from Higgins.

Sucks to be Nadine!

I remember when I was about 8, My dad took me to go see "Nickelodeon Live!" at what used to be called the Worcester Centrum. It was one of the most memorable and exciting times of my kid-hood, as all the awesome game shows I used to worship and dream of being on were played right in front of me on stage. They picked random kids out of the audience to play Double Dare games, pie their parents, and even climb the agro-crag!

The hosts of Nick Arcade and GUTS were even there, in person, to host and pull people out of the audience to participate. I didn't get to play, but Mike O'Malley ran up the aisle past me, mere feet away! When I called up my childhood friend Laurie Santora to tell her about the amazingness, she hung up on me! Apparently, she was in love with Mike O'Malley, and was overcome in a jealous rage. She wouldn't speak to me for days...

I remember being most dissapointed though by seeing behind the scenes of Nick Arcade. I think, watching it on TV, I really believed that the kids were inside real video games, and that they were really experiencing it as reality. I was kind of dissillusioned learning it was all done on green screen.

That being said, watching this video of "The worst player on Nick Arcade", I totally see that these contestants have absolutely no connection with what's being projected around them.



Right of the bat you can see that these kids have zero enthusiasm for fighting Merlock. Watching this poor girl trying to orient herself, and then run out of power at the worst possible time, it's painful. But also very very funny. At the end too, that kid who didn't get to play is so sad!

Nintendo is Delicious

Bad news for the Barba house. It seems our Wii is starting to rebel, and moving down a path to self-destruction. It has stopped reading our copy of Mario Kart, which was one of the first things I ever blogged about on here. General consensus around the internet seems to be that this is just something wrong with the Wii, and that it will eventually stop reading all of our discs. Suddenly, the fact that our copy of Wii Sports worked once, but never again after that makes more sense. At some point, we'll probably have to ship it back to be repaired. I miss playing Kart so much though....

I found these Mario themed gummies at a department store in Maine. They're no racing game, but they did kind of give me a Mushroom Kingdom fix. Plus, they're 3-d! 3D!!!


Gotta love the excessive packaging.


It was fun to play with them too, making little tableau's. Too bad they don't photograph well. I think this was supposed to be a marriage between Donkey Kong and Yoshi.

We devoured them all after the reception.

What I did Friday Night

So first and foremost, I saw Star Trek on Saturday with Husband, Addison, Mike, Pete and Cait. I LOVED it, but I guess that's really no big shock. I was kind of planning on loving it from the get go. It was really entertaining and well done. Also, the casting was really spot on and "women friendly". Easy on the eyes, as it were.

There was only one thing that bothered me about the movie. There were so many shots where they was this bright glare on the screen, like they were shooting light directly into the audience's eyes. It was a good sort of mood setting effect at first, but they used it often enough that it became distracting to me. Not so easy on the eyes, as it were. You can kind of see examples of what I mean in the trailer at 1:13 and 1:25



Other than that, I really had no complaints. It was fantastic to see Leonard Nimoy doing his thang, too.

After the film, we had a Soul Caliber II tourney at our house. We bought it used at game stop for like $5 the day before. It was fun to share. Turns out Sayid Jarrah is a character in the game!

Blue Shell'd and Lightening Bolted

This entry of my text vlog is about video games. Here is some mood music* to help set the tone.

*WARNING: mood music may actually cause bleeding in the ears and thoughts of self-harm.

My parents got Paul and I a Wii for Christmas. We've been loving it, and have totally been using it to its full procrastinatory, unproductive potential. We seem to get into these obsessive love affair relationships with each game we buy, monogamously playing it until a) the fun quota has totally run dry, b) we unlock all the characters and surprises or c) we buy another game that totally steals our hearts. January and February were totally dominated by Super Smash Brother Binges. March and April have been the era of Mario Kart. Paul always plays as Baby Peach on the Bullet Bike, and I always play as Dry Bones on the Magikruiser

I was/ am a huge fan of Mario Kart Double Dash, for GameCube, and I was extremely excited to get my mitts on Nintendo's new offering. I was a little disappointed at first that the whole "two person team" angle of double dash had been taken away, but the awesomeness of the new features totally assuaged my doubts.

1. In addition to Karts, you can also race with motorcycles, which makes for more dynamic gameplay. Also, it allows the ability to pop sweet wheelies for a speed boost.
2. If you follow close behind your competitors, you can pick up a backdraft off their kart and blow past them.
3. The added capability to do stunts when you go off jumps.
4. The ability to play online with real people all across the world

I also really liked that in addition to some really cool new levels, they also had many re-imagined levels from previous incarnations of Kart. You can play levels from SNES, Gamecube, and DS versions of the game. I think that the ambiance of the levels, the atmosphere of the races, is a huge part of what makes Kart such an addictive game. All the little details in each level, coupled with really excellent music choices, really does let you get sucked in to it. So without further ado, I proudly present:

Caroline's Top 5 Mario Kart Wii Levels

5. TOAD'S FACTORY

Who knew that Toad was a burgeoning industrialist? What, exactly, he is mass producing in this factory is unclear, but it seems to create a lot of brown sludge-like byproduct, and requires a great number of big stamp-y hammers coming down from the ceiling to squish stuff. Those are just a few of the obstacles you have to avoid while tooling around the warehouse. This level gives you lots of opportunities to use your drift to get power boosts, and lots of jumps to do tricks off of. I also really like the variability of this level. Platforms and conveyor belts switch up how they work on each lap, which keeps you on your toes.




4. DS PEACH GARDENS

This course has you racing through an immaculately manicured hedges and lovingly landscaped flower beds. I like to imagine that Peach invited everybody over for a nice, civil tea party, which eventually devolved into underground street racing. I never played the original DS version of the level, so I'm not really sure how it compares. I do really like the maze-like quality of this level. There are definitely right and wrong ways to go through each section, and it tends to spread out the players through the course. Items are well spread out too, and often hard to get at, precariously trailing behind giant chain chomps. I really like the music in this level too. Its an accordion or a zydeco or something, and it sounds like something you'd hear outside a Parisian Cafe or strolling by the Eiffel Tower. Oui!


3. DS DELFINO SQUARE

This level has some of the best verisimilitude in the game. Instead of racing through castles and jungles, this course provides an almost realistic premise, racing through the streets of a coastal city, as the locals cheer you on from their banana stands. The tight alleyways you have to race through make this one challenging, as your proximity to others makes things chaotic, but it's always fun. This level also has one of the most beneficial secret shortcuts in the game- But it takes skill to use without killing yourself. I haven't actually done it successfully yet. It comes right after you go around the first corner on the docks, nestled in between two fruit stands. You can only use it if you have a mushroom, otherwise you'll get stuck in mud. However, I find using the mushroom makes me shoot out of it way to fast and fly off the pier. I guess I need more practice.

2. GCN DK MOUNTAIN

DK Mountain was my absolute fave level in Kart for Gamecube. Obviously, I kick butt at it. So of course I was so excited to see it return for the Wii version. The level is basically the same as its predecessor, but with new opportunities to do tricks off of jumps and look cool. I also like that at the end, you can get some crazy air without even trying driving on the windy suspension bridge. Anybody who is reading this is welcome to come over to my house and challenge me to a race down DK Mountain, anytime!


1. MAPLE TREEWAY

This level is awesome, and has a lot of really neat things going for it. Racing across tree branches, a beautiful autumn theme, and a soundtrack that you'd want to go apple picking to. Plus it's got these cute caterpillar guys! Sure they'll get in your way and trample you a little...but look how cute they are! Aw...
There are a few cool secrets in this one too. If you drive through the little leaf piles, sometimes secret items come popping out. Another perk of driving through the little leaf piles in the nice, satisfying woosh sound it makes. Whoever did the sound effects for this game deserves a prize. Also, there's a really fun shortcut, right after you go down this netted ramp (pictured above). Veer to your right and you can get an item, plus the opportunity to do a sweet trick as you cross the finish line.
Mayhaps I just like this level best because fall in my favorite season; with my birthday, wedding anniversary, and Halloween all contained within. Either way, it's a fantastically designed and absorbing level. I give it my highest honor!


If you read all of this after I subjected you to Blackout Band, bless your heart!