Last Ditch Campaign Search Results

News: Advanced Cracking Techniques, Part 2: Intelligent Bruteforcing

Following the first part in this series on advanced cracking techniques, we are going to go over how we can intelligently crack passwords using the old-fashioned bruteforce method. These unique cracking techniques aren't widely used, because most crackers are Script Kiddies who have no idea what the concepts are behind cracking passwords, thus, word won't get around too quickly.

How To: Make Icosahedral Planet Ornaments

In honor of the new Astronomy World, I thought we should look at a few planetary icosahedrons. The icosahedron is the most round of the Platonic solids with twenty faces, thus has the smallest dihedral angles. This allows it to unfold into a flat map with a reasonably acceptable amount of distortion. In fact, Buckminster Fuller tried to popularize the polyhedral globe/map concept with his Dymaxion Map.

Scrabble Challenge #18: Can You Win at Scrabble Rack Attack?

As touched upon in the past, knowing all of the possible words you can play is key to being a better Scrabble player. If you don't have the vocabulary, then you can't compete against the best of the best, and you'll never even get the chance to spar against professionals such as Nigel Richards, Joe Edley, Andrew Fisher, and Wayne Kelly.

Community Byte: Hack Our IRC Bot to Issue Commands

Last week's Community Byte we got off to a great start! We had a few people build our IRC bot, and all went well. We had some great contributers, ideas, and people willing to learn. So, needless to say, we will be having another. Let's try to get a few more people involved this time!

How To: Use the Enchantment Table in Minecraft

Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. For about the past month, the folks at Mojang have been leaking pre-releases of Minecraft 1.9 and they've added many exciting things. Additions to the game include: potions, new mobs, a new biome, new realms, and something called an enchanting table. I went over how potions work in one of my previous articles and, while they are fun to play with, boy are they confusing!

Afterfall: InSanity Game Only $1 in Outlandish Plan to Reach 10 Million Pre-Orders

Nicholas Entertainment Group (NEG) is a Polish independent game publisher that recently got their hands dirty with development. Their first game (with Intoxicate Studios) is the forthcoming horror first-person shooter Afterfall: InSanity, which comes out next month—dangerously close to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and Assassin's Creed Revelations release dates. That's some stiff competition for small company, especially since it's a $35 debut game.

Scrabble Challenge #10: Would You Play a Phoney Word to Win?

A phoney word in a game of Scrabble is basically a non-valid word, either played or considered being played. Why? To fool the other player and go from losing to winning. It's perfectly acceptable in Scrabble play, but only if you don't get caught. If the other player challenges your play, then you'll be forced to remove it and your turn will be skipped. That right there—not fun.

News: Double Fine Improves the Psychonauts Meat Circus!

Anyone who likes shooters is going to hate me for saying this: the best game of the 2000's for me was Psychonauts by Double Fine Studios. It came out in 2005 for the original Xbox, achieving critical acclaim, but never selling very well due to its sheer kookiness and poor marketing. Over the ensuing years it has become a cult classic, with downloadable re-releases on Xbox 360 (sadly no longer available). PC has allowed gamers who missed out on the original to bask in its ageless glory.

Scrabble Challenge #8: Is the Highest Scoring Move the Same in Words with Friends?

As much as I love Scrabble, the iPhone and Android versions of the game are just not as much fun or as fast paced as Words with Friends. I play both, but I'm most active on Zynga's version of the mobile word game because it's quicker to make moves, doesn't take as long to update, and gives more immediate competition, due to the fact that it's not as intimidating as Scrabble is to a lot of my friends. It's laid back... which means I have a bunch of games going, and I like that.

News: Moshi Monsters Rise from Indie Game to Kiddie Empire

Four years ago Mind Candy was a pretty small game company. They were best known for their revolutionary but short lived ARG Perplex City, and had no other successful franchises to fall back on when that ended. Their plan to save it? Start a free online social game for children ages 7-12 called Moshi Monsters, where kids can create monster pets, raise them, and socialize with one another in a controlled, safe environment.

News: The Good and the Ugly of Console Controller Add-Ons

Video game controllers are our windows into the soul of the machine, our sole means of interacting with them. More often than not, consumers seem displeased by their controllers; it's comforting to blame sticky, poorly laid out buttons for messing up your game than your own lacking skills. The original "fatty" Xbox controller was so large it caused mass consternation and prompted Microsoft to replace it with a smaller version in a matter of months.

News: It's Humble Indie Bundle Time! 5 Games for 'Name Your Price'

Since the beginning of last year, every six months or so the fine folks at Wolfire Games have gathered indie developers together to release a combo gaming pack called Humble Indie Bundle. Not only are the included games good, but the way one buys them is what makes Humble Indie Bundle one of the coolest products in games. Even better, Humble Indie Bundle #3 just came out last Tuesday and is available here for two weeks only.

How To: Get Your Suspended Google+ Profile Reinstated

Last week, we discussed whether Google should require you to use your real name for Google+ profiles. Google is working on eliminating fake profiles, and in the process, they've booted some real people, including actor +William Shatner. If you find out that your Google+ account has been suspended, you can appeal the suspension and get your profile reinstated.

News: Glitch Gets Better with Katamari Damacy

Stewart Butterfileld is one of the last great old-fashioned tech billionaires. He founded Flickr, and then sold the company to Yahoo! for a stupendous amount of money in 2005. Like Mark Cuban and others before him, he was left wondering what to do with the rest of his long and fabulously wealthy life. Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks and turned them from unabashed losers into beloved champions. Butterfield decided to try his hand at game design (something he had attempted with the ambitious ...

Realm of the Mad God: A Free Indie Browser Alternative to World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft has been on top of the world for seven years. No other MMO has come close to challenging its dominance of the genre, and it has generated billions of dollars for Blizzard. They have spent a lot of money adding more and more content, to the extent where the full game with all the expansion packs takes up 65 GB of hard drive space. It is a beautiful game; well balanced, and a milestone in the history of the medium.

Takoyaki: Decadent Japanese Street Food with Foie Gras and Caviar

Takoyaki, a very popular Japanese street food, is a spherical dumpling with grilled octopus. What's fun about cooking is that you don't always need to follow the classic recipe for things. I wanted to take this humble snack and turn it into something a little more decadent. Mine includes scallop, foie gras, dried mushrooms, and caviar. Here's what you'll need:

News: Has SimCity Been Destroyed for Good?

Yesterday, Electronic Arts had a nice sale on Steam for 40-60 percent off some of their Sims titles, which included The Sims 3 (along with its DLCs) and SimCity 4. I've never been a big Sims fan, especially with the slew of virtual people games in the last decade, so I didn't realize until now that Maxis had stopped making their SimCity games; They haven't released any city building Sim games since SimCity 4 eight years ago. There was SimCity Societies in 2007, but it was made by a different ...

News: Hetero, Gay or Bi? Bed Your Soulmate in Dragon Age 2

When you grab a video game off the shelves, finding love is probably not your end goal. Most games focus on letting the player shoot guys, order other guys to shoot guys, or build houses. Mass Effect 2 comes closer than most titles to offering virtual romance, but the relationships are shallow and strictly heterosexual. I found whoring my way around the Normandy much more satisfying as a gameplay option than developing an emotional connection to another character.

News: Groundhog 102

30 January 2011 Zynga’s new Groundhog Mission in FrontierVille allows two groundhogs to show up on your homestead at once. They’re very hard to kill; it takes at least 20 clicks to clobber each one.

News: What changes need to be made before USA vs. Algeria?

Posted with permission via HereComeTheYanks.com I will get this out of the way early and then not mention it again...the referee for the USA vs. Slovenia game was awful. He missed key plays and called back the goal that would have sent the USA to victory. Nothing he did was good...as evidenced by FIFA's (supposed) forthcoming grade of a "poor performance" and relief of all further World Cup center refereeing duties. He was horrible, and cost us the win...for the most part.

News: Sound Advice

Last week I talked about the video / image side of things, and as promised here is the audio side. Sound is integral to all studio productions, but for most student and low budget production, it's the last thing filmmakers seem to think about, and one of the most noticeable problems with low budget stuff. Sound IS half the experience, and yet it is usually all but forgotten come production.

News: Parent "Agents"

I’m seeing a flood of posts on youth football forums and even getting a few e-mails from youth football coaches complaining about “player agents” also known as parents. Most of these unhappy coaches are dealing with parents that have non-issues, have an agenda, are misinformed, don’t know much about the game of youth football or are just people that gain great pleasure from complaining. The 80/20 rule is more like 95/5 in youth football, 95 percent of the problems are caused by 5 percent of t...

How To: Split data in mulitple columns quickly in Excel

Don't fret if your boss has sent you a long Excel list of employees and asked you to separate the first and last names. In this video tutorial you will learn a neat trick to take a person's name in one column and separate the data into two columns, one for first name and another for last name. Learn the quick process without retyping or cut/paste! Split data in mulitple columns quickly in Excel.

How To: Eat for maximum energy

Candy bars are tasty but all they do is spike your blood-sugar momentarily leaving you with and energy crash. For high, sustained energy you will need a balanced diet full of complex carbohydrate and protein.

News: Stay at the White House in This Week's Replication Challenge

As most of you already know, the White House is the seat of the Executive branch of government in the United States. Constructed in 1792, it is one of the oldest buildings in the U.S. During the War of 1812, it was burned down and later rebuilt. The White House was inspired by a few foreign government buildings and is somewhat Greek in appearance.

How To: Make Your Own Photo Snow Globe

As the holidays draw closer and closer, stores are getting more and more crowded, and of course, many have put off their Christmas shopping until the very last minute. Why not avoid the mall rush this holiday season and make a personalized do-it-yourself snow globe to gift to those closest to you? This is also a perfect opportunity to put of those cell phone photos that you've been snapping to use! What You'll Need