Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category:
Odin Wonders Why Thor Doesn’t Have a Girlfriend (Texts From Superheroes)
Texts From Superheroes comes through again with an exchange between Odin and Thor and his “Midgard Girlfriend.”
Riiiight. She’s on MIDGARD. Of course she is.
Reminds me of this little ditty from the musical “Avenue Q.”
Ouya Football Game Raises Eyebrows With Kickstarter Campaign (And Why This Matters To Parents)
Ouya is an attempt to create an alternative gaming console. By “alternative” I don’t mean REM back in the day, I mean “a gaming console that isn’t an XBox 360/One, Wii/Wii U or PS1/2/3/4.” It’s unclear whether or not the thing will succeed, but the folks at Ouya seem to have cash because they’re offering some kind of matching funds to developers who can raise a certain amount of cash via Kickstarter.
One of these developers, MogoTXT, is causing consternation amongst the console cognoscenti, according to a story post at IGN. (Note: all of our information in this post is from the linked IGN article below. That’s our source. We’re not going to go into all of the details because they did all the work so you should go there and read their story if you want to know all the stuff.)
The game Gridiron Thunder (video below) raised sufficient ducats to get more ducats from Ouya, but they had very few backers, and many of the backers seem to have names remarkably similar to each other, as well as to MogoTXT CEO Andrew Won. In other words, some suspect… foul play.
Another intriguing wrinkle: how is MogoTXT planning to release a football (as in NFL) game without having permission to use the images of real players? Maybe they aren’t planning to use images of real players? We don’t know. In general, video sports gamers prefer to play games featuring their favorite superstars, or at least real dudes. I thought the license for this was sold exclusively to the good folks at EA, which they use to make a little game called Madden NFL.
The IGN story states that Gridiron Thunder is the second game to reach the funding mark required to receive extra moneys from Ouya. The other is Elementary, My Dear Holmes!, which sounds much more fun: “A point-and-click adventure game starring legendary sidekick John Watson on an epic quest to prove that Sherlock Holmes is just a jerk.”
By the way, Sherlock Holmes? Public domain. No rights issues there. Just saying.
Why are we writing about this? One, kids play video games. Two, Kickstarter is a real thing. By that I mean crowd-funding is a way to get the money to make a professional quality video game, as well as movies, watches, and who knows what else. Your kids are going to be asking you about Kickstarter. They may already have asked you about it. It behooves you to put crowd-funding on your parental digital radar. Yes, it’s one more thing to think about/learn about/be annoyed with. (What, the Facebook, the Twitter and the Snapchat weren’t enough? Now I have to learn about the Kickstarter too? Oy vey.) At least with this one, your kids could potentially find the money from people other than you to turn their great idea into a reality. That would be awesome.
That’s why I care if a Kickstarter campaign turns out to be skeezy. I would prefer that it NOT be skeezy. There will always be a certain percentage of skeeziness with anything involving the Interwebs. But the less skeeze the better.
Suspicious Ouya Game Kickstarter Campaign Raises Eyebrows via IGN
Grah! I Am Not Getting Anything Done
I am not getting anything done. This is frustrating.
I don’t think I need a book like Organizing For Dummies
Yes, there’s a book for that too. And it can bite me. (Technically it can’t, unless it’s one of those books from Harry Potter. But I digress.)
The issue for me is not managing time properly. The issue is not having any time to manage.
Parenting, as I’ve said often, is not easy. Raising kids takes time. Some of the things that one must do when raising kids are things that can only be done if said kids leave you alone for awhile. My kids are great. But I’m the type of person who needs multiple minutes in a row in order to accomplish anything significant. Starting a task — even, say, writing a blog post — and then getting interrupted (not always by kids) can and does derail my activity. This isn’t the case for everyone, but it is for me.
Then there’s relaxation. Downtime is a requirement for parents. It took me awhile to realize this, but trust me, it’s true. While it is true that the children eventually go to sleep and I could use that time to do various tasks, that’s not always a good idea. Because a tired dad is a cranky dad, and a cranky dad is no fun for anyone.
Eventually the stuff that absolutely must be done will in fact be done. Because that’s the way it is. This is how we do it. Letting important things slide is not an option. Starting and stopping and getting stymied is still annoying.
Dadding ain’t easy. See also: SAHD WAHD. Then call me a wahhhbulance.
Lee Daniels’ The Butler Is A “Father And Son Story” (DaddyTube) – UPDATED
In this video about the new movie The Butler, Lee Daniels says that he wanted to make the film because it’s “a father [and] son story, a love story between a father and his son”. The father is Forest Whitaker, the titular butler, and his son apparently gets involved in the civil rights movement. I did not know this. Now I do.
In general, the video makes a much better case for the film than the trailer. By that I mean I’m more interested in seeing it, in part because it’s about fathers and sons, and also because it seems to be about more than what was in the trailer. Not to pile on the trailer. I just think these interviews make the movie seem a lot more interesting.
Link below in case the embed doesn’t work.
Lee Daniels’ The Butler 2013 – Movie Trailers – Fandango.com.
UPDATE: Not of the “breaking news” variety, but I wanted to mention that the interviews were done by Brad Barton, and that he posted a longer version of his interview with Oprah Winfrey. See below.
Kindle Fire HD Limited Time Deal
Quick DaddyDeal for you — Amazon is selling the Kindle Fire HD for $159, $40 less than the regular price of $199. (We did the math for you. We’re nice that way.)
For the uninitiated, the Amazon Kindle Fire is a 7-inch color tablet. It runs Android. It is not an iPad. It is, however, less expensive, even when it is selling for its regular price of $199 rather than this $159 deal.
Usually $159 gets you the regular Kindle Fire, which has a lower-resolution screen (1024 x 600). The Kindle Fire HD has a higher-resolution screen (1280×800) — hence the HD in the name. More pixels means better image quality, nicer-looking videos and easier to read text. The Fire HD also has better audio, better wi-fi, and more internal storage than the regular Fire, sayeth Amazon. All of these are good things. Getting them for $40 less than you usually would is even better.
Gearheads / Android fans might find this little tidbit intriguing:
| System Requirements | None. Kindle Fire HD is ready to use right out of the box – no setup, no software to install, no computer required to download content |
“System Requirements: None.” When was the last time you saw those three words together?
If you are a member of Amazon Prime
Nothing against the iPad. We have one… OK, two, one is for the kids… and we love it. That said, $159 is a damn good deal.
No idea how long the deal will last, caveat shopper, disclaimers, your mileage may vary, the price may change… you know the drill. We saw this deal and wanted to share it with you. Because we’re super nice.
Now, a confession. Every time we hear the words Kindle Fire, we think of the Jimi Hendrix song “Fire
Now go get a Kindle Fire HD on sale before the deal disappears!
Kindle Fire HD 7″, Dolby Audio, Dual-Band Wi-Fi
Join Amazon Prime – Watch Over 40,000 Movies
Weiner Stuff Not About His Wife – There Is No Carlita Danger
Juliana Margulies was asked about the Weiner stuff, which makes sense because of the character she plays on “The Good Wife.” (For the record, I have nothing against Juliana Margulies. At all. Happen to really like her a lot.) My point is, when politicians do what Weiner did (and seriously, let’s hope that isn’t very often because WOW IS CARLOS DANGER CREEPY), nobody should make it about his wife.
Weiner’s wife isn’t running for office. She is not Carlita Danger. How is this about her? Seriously. She can do whatever she wants as far as I’m concerned. Do I wonder why she’d stay with him? Sure. But that’s between the two of them. It’s silly to blame or attack her in any way.
There’s also a doofy bit in the comments section of this story (which I should put in air quotes because it’s not really news, but whatever) knocking Hillary Clinton for “standing by her man” like Huma is. A commenter going by the moniker Beer Goggles (can’t make this stuff up) writes that he/she/it has “no empathy towards Power Hungry, TAMMY WYNETTE robot, Huma.” For our younger readers or those with poor memories, here is what Hillary actually said back in 1992.
Sorry, Beer Goggles. Not quite accurate. Good try though.
‘Good Wife’ star empathizes with Weiner’s spouse – WTOP.com.
