Updates and a Pumpkin

So, yeah. In the same spirit as last year I keep insisting on not actually doing the Happy Halloween post until it actually is Halloween. But I ranted enough about it last year so I won't do it this time. Anyway. Not a lot of things to update you with this time I'm afraid. The missus and me had an (hopefully) awesome Halloween-themed party this Saturday. I got drunk enough to think I could stand on my hands.. which I of course can't. So I sprained my thumb or something. Needless to say, it hurts and I'm a little wiser.. a.k.a I know not to do that again, because well.. my motor skills aren't that great apparently. Anything else?

I have procured Batman: Arkham City some days ago too. I haven't had time to play it yet though so I'll have to get back to you when I have. But I am looking forward to it, and really want to try it soon, it's such a pain in the ass to avoid spoilers when roughly half of the websites I visit frequently are game-related. The other half being "stuff" (porn).

I'm also participating in Idols this year, because well.. they made it so east that I simply can't say no.. that and a friend asked me to join her. Also, how often will I get the chance to make an ass of myself on national TV?

That's it.. now go away! We're done here.. I have "stuff" to do..

Nah, I'm kidding.. I still have pictures to show you. This years pumpkin in all it's edited glory. Kudos to beije and his photography skills for the first picture in it's original state. I obviously added the pumpkin, which is why it looks to out of place.

Bow before your almighty ruler and king, Sir Pumps-a-lot!

Happy Effin' Halloween!

I am Batman!

Well.. obviously not. But I so totally could be.. if it wasn't for all the money he has, that I don't have. And the persistence to fight crime and injustice, whereas I am a bit more indifferent to that at times. Yeah, and also the upper body strength.. of which I have none. But if it weren't for those, and all the other various things—read Batcave—that he has and I don't, I could totally be Batman.

Although I could probably pull off an equally bad imitation of the "I am Batman!" -voice as Christian Bale's original bad imitation.. Or maybe I shouldn't judge so harshly. Don't get me wrong, I really really enjoyed Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, two films that thankfully did away with the campy humour and tried to portray a glimpse of the very deranged nature of someone who dresses up as bat. Many kudos to Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale for that. And obviously all the other people who participated in making it enjoyable to watch Batman again. Joel, you go back to your corner of shame.. you really ruined it for everyone.

 But despite the fact that I really liked the new Batman films (as well as some of the older—Tim Burton—ones) I can not get over the fact that the gravely voice Mr. Bale did just feels.. well.. a bit wrong.. a bit, well.. I was expecting him to start coughing at any second and excuse himself to blow his batnose or something. Kevin Conroy is still, in my humble mind, the one and only Batman voice.

Speaking of.. I really want to buy Batman: Arkham City, it came out last Friday and I had totally forgotten about it. I must have it. Soooooon.

Jamaican Blue Meh

Expanding my horizons and consequentially my world map of coffees I recently had the utmost pleasure as well as the "meh" experience of drinking two new coffee beans that was not in my original "Coffees of the World" -series. Links here, here and here.. for those that either don't know what the hell I'm talking about or those of you who just want to have their memory refreshed.

Since I started that journey I have not been able to look back, nor would I want too. I can't fathom drinking the piss-poor excuse we (Finnish people) usually have as coffee any more. I just can't. It's a bit odd though if you think about it since we (Finnish people again) annually according to studies drink the most coffee per capita. We're beating Norway for the first place with our 12,0 kg per year versus their 9,9 kg. By comparison USA only drinks 4,2 kg (27th place) annually and in the UK they drink a measly 2,8 kg per year and thus place themselves 47th on the list. So yeah.. we consume the most coffee in the world, yet most of them—excluding myself on this one—drink the equivalent of your grandma's armpit sweat. They drink the extract from that thing that you get stuck between your toes when you have worn your socks for too long. I just realised that there's probably fetish-sites for both those things, but I'm too scared of searching on Google to find out.

Seriously, all the metaphors aside.. they drink..quite simply.. inferior coffee. Why? But I shouldn't paint the devil on the wall too much now, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. By simply observing the increasing selection of coffees in the supermarket, it is noticeable that people are buying more "exotic" brands, not just the pre-ground *cough Juhla Mokka cough*. Obviously I say "exotic" because they are not that much more fancy but "Hey", you gotta start somewhere I suppose.

Holy shit I sound the like the biggest douche ever. Or something like that, maybe.. Point being, by all means, feel free to drink whatever you like the most and I won't judge you any more then you judge me. Fine if you really.. (really?) like pre-ground store bought coffee. Who am I to say you shouldn't, simply because I couldn't any more. But just don't fool yourself into thinking it's good coffee, it just isn't. But it's okay to like "less-than-good" coffee and it obviously doesn't make you into a worse person for that. As long as you don't try to make me drink it of course, in which case I'll berate you for 30 minutes.

Anyway, enough about that now. I was going to to tell you about my pleasure and "meh".

 Today, I had a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain [LK]. For those of you that have no clue what that is—I pity you—let me fill you in quickly with this copy-paste quote from it's Wikipedia link;

"Over the last several decades, this coffee has developed a reputation that has made it one of the most expensive and sought-after coffees in the world".

So there you go. The verdict; With low acidity and an okay smoothness to it, it's by no means a bad coffee. A clear wooden sort of texture and taste to it. But also quite "meh", as in not particularly awesome either means I also didn't think this was a good coffee. Will have it again? Of course, I can't base everything on just one cup, even though I'm doing that now. Besides I still have 80 more grams of it, and I do plan to get the most out it. If I change my mind and raise or lower it's score, I will let you all know. But for now, the famous Jamaican Blue Mountain is just going to have to settle for a 3+.

The other one I have tried recently, that was originally a surprise for myself, is Genuine Antigua, Dark Roast [RV]. How does one surprise oneself? Simple. I just picked a random jar of beans and decided to go with that. Well, lucky me as it turned out that I had just discovered a new favourite, with plenty of aromas of chocolate and other stuff I can't quite put my finger on yet, this is a definitive 5. I am also thinking about making this my "Roast my own beans" -bean. Well, at least my first bean as I am sure I will have more at some point. But I have been looking for the bean will get to take my roasting virginity, and I think this one is it. I seriously loved everything about this bean.

So yeah. I think that's it for now. Next on my "to-drink" -list is Kopi Luwak, the famous poop-coffee. So stay tuned for that, whenever it may be.

The Afterlife Is a Harsh Mistress

or "How I realised there's lot of games I have to play". Examining some of my earlier posts, for instance this one, dating as far back as May, 2010 I realised that there's actually quite a number of games of my "to-play" -list that I still haven't gotten around to. Although in the "Games, I'm eagerly awaiting.." I have played two of those. And sort of reviewed them too. Here's the one for Fable III, and here I talked about Halo: Reach. But I will be the first to admit that the one for Halo: Reach has almost not even a review, at least in comparison to proper real reviews. Good thing I'm not comparing myself then.

Anyway. So yeah.. what about the other two games on that previously mentioned list of mine?, I pretend you ask. Well.. Batman: Arkham City is coming out next weekend, and my bat-penis is still very stiff about that. I have given it some thought as to whether I should buy it right away, or not, but I haven't decided yet. And as for Fallout: New Vegas I promised myself I would wait until they release an edition that contains all the DLC's and since that hasn't happened yet.. I'm still waiting. For good reasons though as they just released the final DLC "Lonesome Road" a couple of weeks ago or so, so maybe I'm coming to the end of my waiting.

Of course there's been other games along the road as well. Such as Alice: Madness Returns, which I really should try to acquire. Then there was Dead Island that gave me a raging zomboner™ (zombie boner, pay royalties every time you use it) but failed to live up to its own trailer. Now, don't get me wrong, the game as it stands seems to be quite good. But I was hoping for an emotional survival story about a family torn apart by the outbreak of zombies.. or something like that. And unfortunately in all it's 4-player-co-op-melee-fest glory, Dead Island was not what I hoped and wanted when I first saw the announcement trailer. Which is too bad, because if someone makes that game, I will shower them in all my hard earned money. Or well.. at least the appropriate retail amount.

This brings me nicely to LIMBO, released originally on Xbox Live Arcade in 2010 and then later for Windows and PS3. Here, do yourself a favour and go buy it on Steam right away. It's fucking worth it just to consume your hard-drive space. I was eager to play this and since I realised how many games I had been waiting for, yet not played yet, this is where I started. Limbo is awesome! It's creepy.. it's scary and unfamiliar. It teaches you the ropes through failure.. hard, deadly failure in it's gruesomest form. Although I actually had a chuckle at one of my many deaths. And not to spoil anything but I will tell you about this death of mine.

In my path was a stone-block of sort hanging mid-air. On the ground under that block there was a semi-clearly marked protrusion indicated a button of sort, and yes, sure enough, the idea was that I had to jump on top of that button so that the stone-block wouldn't fall down and brutally murder me. Took me two deaths to figure that out. Managing to not get myself killed I pranced onwards with my journey only to notice an identical looking contraption ahead. Same looking stone-block. Same protrusion on the ground. So I of course pranced in my merriness and proceeded to jump on to the button. Only to have to stone-block come rushing down and brutally murdering me. Haha, Limbo, you get me good there! Turns out.. First stone-block, jump ON button to avoid certain doom. Second stone-block, DON'T jump on button to avoid certain doom. Pretty sneaky of them. But it exemplifies Limbo perfectly. Because the entire world you are in, is out to murder you as much as it can. No puzzle is exactly the same, so don't expect things to get predictable. The only thing you can know with absolute certainty is that if it doesn't get you murdered the first time, it will keep on coming until it does.

LIMBO gets 5 shit-stained underpants out of 5. Check out the in-game teaser if you don't believe me.

Permission Required

So. Sometimes I get these weird ideas to challenge myself. Sometimes it out of sheer boredom.. other times I feel stagnated in my creativity and forcing myself to be creative under pressure forces me to not censor myself as much. A sort of "Go with the flow" type of thinking I suppose.. or something, let's not get too deep and thinky. Usually the result is sub-par at best, in other words, not something I would post generally speaking. But. And it's a big butt.. I figured that maybe I should, with the whole not censoring myself in mind and all. And since I did get permission from the motif himself, I had even more reasons to post this.

So here goes. I challenged myself to dust of my Wacom Graphire 4XL and do a portrait of a friend with a size of 50x70cm @ 300 dpi. I only got to use two base colors (sort of). And after 45 minutes I had to stop, regardless of what it looked like. I do generally like to work quickly anyway, but 45 minutes for a portrait at a time when I haven't done anything like that in months, maybe even years, is quite a challenge. Not being able to correct any mistakes I might discover after the time has expired, was even more difficult.

Many thanks to beije, whom so graciously "volunteered" for this little experiment. Once I get the hang of this I promise I will do a better portrait, one that does you justice. Instead of one where you have creepy teeth. So, what I'm trying to say is "I'm sorry 'bout the creepy teeth, I'll do better next time".

Before.

After.

Freudman

I don't really have anything to say at the moment. So I figured I would enlighten your Friday with a Freudman.. trademark pending.. Let's not make this a regular thing though, I know how you all hate it when I start repeating myself.. and I'm not a fan of that either so it's cool with me.

Inflammable!

So in light of yesterdays promise, I thought (for a change) I would actually keep that promise. Here's a picture of yesterdays t-shirt project. The design is from the maybe to-be card "Inflammable!"—or Flammable!.. I haven't apparently decided yet—from my board game project "Island of Eternity". What?

Oh, yeah, I'm still working on that, with "creative" breaks here and there. At this point it does seem a bit ironic that I have (almost) always called it "Island of Eternity", for well.. for obvious reasons. This November it will have been in development for 4 years. Hmm.. maybe at some point I could do "Where it all started" for IoE? Who knows, someone might find it interested to see how it's evolved as time has gone by? Or maybe I'm just deluding myself?

Either way.. until then (whenever that may be) here's the picture I promised. Pretty awesome ye? Somehow it lends itself quite nicely to be put on a t-shirt.. merchandise possibilities perhaps? But for another day obviously.

I Was Totally Going To

I was totally going to blog about the awesome t-shirt I made earlier today. But I got too tired and I have to get up early tomorrow to go to work.. like every weekday I suppose, but still. So what this all mean for my many fans.. (all six of you) Well, obviously.. there won't be a picture in this post. But I'll try my best get one up tomorrow. On a completly different note, I also played a little Minecraft again today. I finally got OpenGL 2.0+ to work on my stationary computer. Earlier I only had 1.0, or something like that. Anyway.. point being. I couldn't play Minecraft before on my main computer, but now I can.. And it's even awesomeR with a capital R than I remembered. But for now and until another day. Good night..

So yeah.. I know I was totally going to, but I won't.

Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites

Dubstep.. Something I can listen to and like, because.. let's face it, it goes nicely with my brain. But this, is just really really cool. Reminds me again, that upon hearing Dubstep properly for the first time, my fifth thought was "hmm.. how could I do this with an acoustic guitar?". Well, Pinn Panelle gets closer to that then I have so far, so κῦδος (glory) to them. I found it to be mighty impressive.

Magic 45

Woot woot! I have no sold 18 more tees. That makes the total a whopping 45 and brings me a couple of steps closer to that million I was talking about earlier. But no sun without a little rain. Now they need me to sign a Customer Design Suggestions Agreement, which seems (at least to my untrained mind) a bit foggy on the design rights area (which I wish to retain).. So, I'm going to have to think it over for a couple of days before I decide anything. If I don't sign it, my design will no longer be for sale at shotdeadinthehead.com, which would be a bit sad.

I'll probably let all (five) of you know what I decide. Obviously I might just be be my stupidity and everything is in the agreement, in black and white, clear as day.. but my inner sceptic is saying "this smells fishy..", and I have learned to trust in him even though he's wrong from times to times, because so far the statistics are still in his favour. But until clarity has been achieved here's.. again (yeah I know) the list of all my designs.. feel free to feed me by buying one (or fifty). But even if you don't where still awesome friends, so it's cool.

EDIT: Apparently some of the designs are already not available any more. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm going to see if I can find out why.

Freddy Krueger
Chucky
Alien/Xenomorph
Ghostface
Hannibal
Jason Vorhees
Bruce (Shark(s) from JAWS films...)
Billy (Puppet from the SAW films.. John Kramer is called Jigsaw, the puppet isn't)
Leatherface
Michael Myers
Pennywise
Pinhead
Predator

Three Point One

For the impending deployment of version three point one I thought I would post some info here, as well as a link to the flickr set featuring all the latest and greatest screen shots of the web page. Go there why don't you, they're all in glorious 1280x720.. no cropping, no down-scaling.. in awesome 1:1 size. Enjoy!

Fixes
- Power Play % Algorithm corrected due to false inflation. Hover on stat for breakdown
- Rank classes simplified for better contrast. E.g. IV-A changed to insignia symbol
- "Ranks & Trophies" screen updated to reflect insignia instead of IV-A
- Passing % is calculated from ONE value only. Change from NHL 11 to NHL 12
- "Add Match" screen streamlined (too cluttered). Re-organised according to changes in NHL 12
- Added "exit;" clause to remove false error when adding match
- 1 vs 1 Stats. Adjusted background for symmetry

Features
- Recent games added
- 1 vs 1 Recent Games added
- Season 2009-2010 Comparison added
- Penalty Kill % stat, hover on stat for breakdown
- Shooting % stat
- Goals Against stat
- Back of card. Hover on "Games Played" for breakdown of number of games Home/Away
- A Brief History of NHL Stats. Gallery of previous versions of NHL Stats
- Surprise Feature (Card styles Modern/Vintage)
- Surprise Feature (4th Trophy Level for all trophies; Diamond Mask, Diamond Trophy & Diamond Whistle)

Skipped
- Rank Progression Chart, don't quite know how to do this one yet.

The Jersey (WIP)

I have managed to get some work done on update 3.1 on our NHL Stats web page. I have just gotten Recent Games coded, so now that's working. Nothing is online yet obviously but I'll be sure to post an update when it is.

So what else is new? A couple of friends went a bit overboard with our NHL stuff.. and ordered Authentic NHL Jerseys from USA for over 200€.. To not be worse than them I figured.. hmm? Surely I can do something of roughly equal awesomeness for 20€.. So a quick stop at my local H&M store later I had a long sleeved t-shirt .. and slightly later still.. transfer paper to print on.. And as it turns out, yeah you can totally make some of almost equal awesomeness for roughly 20€. Sure, mine hasn't got an embroided logo on the front, but I don't mind that.. especially not at a 10th of the price.

Pics or didn't happen? Yupp, sure thing, as soon as it's done.. which it isn't.. not quite yet at least, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little longer.