Mandy Realised Search Results

News: FOX News Outraged Over Liberal Eco-Minded Kids Games

We've all seen FOX News commentators get worked up about silly non-issues. It occurs more than we'd like, but what happened last week on popular morning show FOX and Friends was not only a misleading and pointless attack on video games, it was an unintelligible attack on a mediocre and forgotten game from 2007, along with a handful of recent indies that no FOX and Friends viewers, or any of their close family members, had ever heard of before this broadcast.

News: Australian Government Finally Comes Around on Video Games—Well, at Least a Little

The Australian government has a dysfunctional history with video games. Any regular Yahtzee Croshaw follower can attest to that. The Parliament has established a series of unfortuante regulations that make games both highly taxed and overregulated in price. Bringing any goods all the way to an island in the bottom of the world is expensive to begin with, and new games in Australia can tip the scales at $80 or more.

Octodad: An Award Winning Game… From College Students

Fatherhood is difficult, especially when you're an octopus. That is the moral of the 2011 IGF Student Showcase winner Octodad, available for free from its website. This hilarious little title was created by a team of interactive media students at DePaul University in Chicago, and is the latest in a stream of successful indie games to come out of collegiate video game design programs. In fact, it's so successful that a sequel is in the works.

How To: How Do You Handle Payroll?

There is a difference between what is possible, what should be done and what an owner manager may want to do. Decide how you want to handle payroll then determine if your desires and best practices are in agreement. Before I point out the decisions that need to be made, let me make two points. First, all personnel for your business do not have to be employees. Some entities can be run with all non-employee personnel or a combination of both. This is one of the reasons why doing a business pla...

News: Google Kills Gaming on Android

One of the biggest advantages iOS has over Android as a mobile platform is how readily and fully it has embraced mobile gaming. There are over 200,000 games available in the Apple store, compared to approximately 100,000 in the Android Marketplace. As an Android-using gamer, this has always bothered me.

News: How about...

My idea for a Yumi-fied how-to guide is this: Learn to juggle. I thought for the longest time that I couldn't juggle because of some personal deficiency. That, somehow, a connection between the two halves of my brain and my hands could not be formed and I would never be able to do it. I had watched people do it, I had even bought sets of special juggling balls (regular balls sold in a nice box) but nothing seemed to work. It seemed as though the ability to juggle was a gift possessed by some,...

Old Magic: A Rant

Running this World has prompted me to think about MTG on a deeper level than I ever have before. In attempts to contextualize it, explain it, research it, and understand the parts of it that I don't yet understand, I have come to an unexpected conclusion: I'm old.

Shadow: Why, God, Why?

Any time a feature is introduced in an MTG set and not replicated in subsequent sets, balancing issues are surely forthcoming. You wind up with one set that can do things the others can't, forcing players to counter that set with other cards from it, and generally limiting the creativity with which one can effectively play the game. Playing these types of cards is like playing trap defense in hockey or boxing like Floyd Mayweather: you might win, but neither you, your opponents, nor the peopl...

News: "Writing for Television" Class

I took a class in the fall entitled Writing for Television at Bentley University in Boston. Much of what I learned has helped me through my first year of creative writing. One of the keys to writing television that we learned in the class was that a television show follows the traditional three act structure that any story follows, except for the fact that in a television episode, many questions are allowed to go unanswered.

News: Crochet Break Coming To End

I've been on the inside of my box reflecting to what is on the outside. I live my life outside the box but occassionally have to get back intot the box to see what's going on... I have been on a 4 - 5 week non creative mode... Through this time frame... great people on Mikeyssmail have been still continuing to exercise their creativity... I'm so pleased to see that! Though many ideas come daily on what I could do next... I'm not motivated by just a simple request... I've allowed this same tim...

News: Unintended Bungie Jump

Alright, so while I can't claim to be a huge, oh my god there's Steve-O jump for joy everytime a new Jackass movie comes out, fan, I do enjoy watching the show. Now, there's a prank that I would never have the means nor balls to pull on someone I know, but those kind of pranks seem to be the Jackass bread and butter, so here goes nothing.I got this idea maybe a month and a half ago. The first step of this plan would be to somehow make one of your friends unconcious. I'm not asking questions a...

News: Parking lot beat down

Have the victim park their car in a normal parking spot. While they are in the place they parked at have another car (the prankster) drive up and swipe the back of the victim's car, leaving huge dents in both cars. Have the prankster wait, hidden, outside for the victim to come out leaving his car parked behind the victims. When the victim comes out he will see his car smashed and the pranksters car sitting behind also smashed up. The prankster will come running out of "the building" and star...

News: Book Review - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for so many reasons. For its fantastical sense of adventure, set against the real world action and tragedy of the Jews in Europe during World War Two. I loved the opening chapters of Josef in Prague – a city I spent several months in a few years ago and one of the most beautiful places I’ve been. Reading scenes set in Prague and descriptions of places I’ve seen made the story that much more personal for me.

News: Beef with Oyster Sauce

I have the honor of knowing a woman who lived in Taiwan for a couple years back in the day, as a missionary. One of the things she brought back from her time spent there was the Pei Mei Chinese Cookbook Vol. 1 published in 1969. You can grab a decent used copy on Amazon for about $15. I knew I wanted my own copy after my friend invited me over for a Chinese feast one afternoon, where we sampled no less than half a dozen dishes from the book.

Social Engineering, Part 2: Hacking a Friend's Facebook Password

Welcome to the second Null Byte in a series educating you on Social Engineering awareness and techniques. Today, I'm going to show you how a saavy Social Engineer would trick a friend into unknowingly surrendering their Facebook password. My intent is to warn and demonstrate how easy it is to succumb to phishing via Social Engineering, and therefore expose yourself.

How To: Hide the Facebook News Ticker in Firefox and Google Chrome

Facebook has been "improving" their interface in several different ways in attempt to combat the threat of Google+. One big change is the introduction of a news ticker in the top right corner that constantly feeds updates from friends and organizations you are connected with on Facebook. Not only do some people find the ticker annoying due to the constant stream of text flowing across it, but many felt unnerved by the fact that every “Like” or comment on a profile could instantly be seen acro...

News: Scrabble Showdown Game Show a Disgrace to Competitive Scrabblers Everywhere

Scrabble has invaded just about every medium out there. It started as a mere board game, but has since spawned numerous board game spinoffs and variations, an electronic version, mobile apps for just about anything (Android, iPhone, iPhone, iPad and Kindle), games for both PC and Facebook, and video games for handheld consoles like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Heck, it's even on the PlayStation and Xbox 360 gaming consoles. And it hasn't forgotten about film. You can see Scrabble featured in...

News: 15 Brilliant Google+ Female Photographers to Circle

In a previous article where I suggested 104 photographers to follow on Google+, I received a lot of criticism because over 90% of the listed photographers were men. While women are currently not a majority on Google+, they are a definite presence, and they are active. Today, I highlight the best female photographers I've found on Google+ so far. This time I'm taking a slightly different approach. Since the best way to get to know photographers is through their work, I've included one photo fo...

Atomic Web: The BEST Web Browser for iOS Devices

Over the past few years, I have downloaded several third-party web browsers for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and the one I have found most advanced and feature rich is Atomic Web. While many mobile browsers have their unique features, Atomic Web could well be considered the professional browser for advanced web users. With each version of the app, the developer has included features that make navigating the browser more user friendly and useful for bookmarking, managing and saving website...

Minecraft: I'm Going Home

Back in the Super Nintendo days, playing one RPG after the other, memorizing maps and mazes became second nature if you didn't want to look at the mini map or get lost often. I would make it a point to memorize corners and the overall structure of the dungeon or location, so that graphically I would know where I am at all times. It's not like today, where major games come out with 200+ page guides detailing every last inch or going online where you can download a map or look at Youtubes for h...

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: Of Coyotes and Chickens

In my earlier post about long-term strategies I promised I’d ask some of my neighbors who do what I call factory chicken farming (Let 1000 Chickens Bloom) if the coyotes that have shown up will change the way they play the game. The one guy who replied in any detail said that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do yet, but he thought that he was losing 50 chickens each time he harvested them pressing “Collect Bonus” using a coop.