One of a Search Results

How To: Make a Self-Watering Greenhouse

I've been hell-bent on complete self sufficiency for a long time now. There was a point where I was living in a self-sustaining community in the mountains in Colorado, and we had a very large greenhouse there. Dragging the hose around to water plants was a real pain, and that stuck in the back of my mind even after I left the place. It would have been much easier to integrate watering into the frame at construction time than doing that hose dance every day.

News: Iconic Indie Game Publisher Interplay Struggles to Make a Comeback

For more than a decade, Interplay was arguably the best video game publisher in America. Their list of games is a who's-who of the most creative and forward thinking games of the '90s, including everything fromOut of This World to Alone in the Dark to Earthworm Jim to Descent. They've been around since 1983, but have fallen on hard times since 1997, when they became a public company. They were acquired by a French publisher who then went bankrupt. They were forced to close their internal deve...

League of Legends: Dominion Coming Soon

If you’re unfamiliar with League of Legends, you’re either not into PC gaming or you haven’t spent much time on the internet. Riot Games officially released League almost two years ago, and since then it’s become a huge hit. In fact, the Santa Monica based company recently announced that the DOTA inspired game has 15 million registered users, 4 million unique logins each month, and 500,000 people playing the game at any given moment.

News: Next Professor Layton Game to Include 100-Hour Long Bonus RPG

Games have been getting shorter in length over the last decade. RPGs like The Elder Scrolls series are still tremendously long, but most single-player game experiences have gotten shorter as production values, costs, and manpower requirements to create them have gone up. It seems that elite Japanese developers Level-5 and Brownie Brown have decided to completely disregard that trend for their forthcoming collaborative effort Professor Layton and the Last Specter, which will feature what might...

News: If Cats Could Play Scrabble...

Do you think humans are the only ones who like the challenge of a good word game? Well, think again, because homo sapiens aren't the only ones up for stimulating their brains. Other species on planet Earth like to play Scrabble, too, and they're the ones most likely to actually play the words HOMO and SAPIENS in a game, both totally legit Scrabble words... by themselves, of course.

News: Has Chain World's Journey from Game to Religious Icon Ended?

At GDC 2011 this past March, three of the world's best game designers participated in a contest called Game Design Challenge. Each presented their vision for a game that fit the prompt "Bigger than Jesus: games as religion" before an audience, with applause to determine the winner. Jenova Chen, John Romero, and Jason Rohrer all spoke, and Rohrer won in a landslide with his revolutionary game called Chain World.

Tartine Bread: The Beauty and Artistry of Bread Making

Unfortunately, I'm a little behind schedule on my pizza dough making mission, but I promise - more experiments coming soon! In the meantime, here's a beautiful video about the nuance that goes into bread making, as demonstrated by famed San Francisco baker Chad Robertson of Tartine Bread. Bread and pizza dough go hand-in-hand, and I've been thinking about picking up the Tartine cookbook for some time now. As I mentioned above, the nuance that goes into the process is really pretty remarkable....

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: Friday Indie Game Review Roundup: Old-New School

This week's FIGRR is all about games that are old-new (or new-old, if you like) school. Each celebrates a different vital, yet largely taken for granted, aspect of video game history in the decidedly new-school world of indie games. Their titles betray them. Blocks That Matter is all about blocks. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is all about item shops. Neither are particularly sexy aspects of gaming, but both are ubiquitous elements of great games that can stand on their own.

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: UK Newspaper Runs Series of Yellow Anti-Video Game Articles

The United Kingdom has long been known as an international hub of yellow tabloid journalism. The News Of The World, one of the nation's largest tabloids, is famously in court right now because of the deplorable methods it used to acquire salacious information about interesting people. It appears, given their recent string of video game related reportage, that daily newspaper Metro has also had its fair share of morally dubious reporters on staff.

News: Human vs. Computer Scrabble Showdown

Just came across this image in Google, and thought it was cool. It's from what was apparently the first ever Human vs. Computer Showdown in Toronto back in 2006. Former world Scrabble Champion David Boys, of Montreal, was defeated by computer super brain "Quackle".

News: Easy Skype iPhone Exploit Exposes Your Phone Book & More

Like the recent XSS 0day exploit found in the Mac and Windows versions of Skype, a similar one has been found in the Skype app for iPhone. The vulnerability allows an attacker to send a message that contains malicious JavaScript code in the "Name" parameter. This code can steal your phonebook, crash the app, and potentially do a lot worse. The URI scheme is improperly identified for the web-kit browser. Instead of going to a blank browser page, it defaults to "file://". The code could steal a...

News: Freemium Games Start Their US Invasion on the iOS Front

For more than a decade, free-to-play games with microtransactions (also called In-App Purchase or IAP) by which players can pay real money for in-game content have been the industry standard for online success in Asia. Mainstream American gamers have long resisted these "freemium" games, with World of Warcraft and other subscription based online games reigning supreme, and being seen as more AAA than their free-ish counterparts. Casual games developers have encountered no such problems, and m...

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: Skype Introduces GroupMe - Similar to Google+ Mobile Features?

On the same day that Google+ introduced mobile hangouts to the world, I received an email from Skype introducing GroupMe, which sounds suspiciously similar to Google+'s messaging feature on mobile. GroupMe allows you to do group messaging, have one-on-one conversations with your contacts, and also ask "Questions", which is currently in beta. These new features are all supported in Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7.

How To: Bypass Windows and Linux Passwords

If you're interested in bypassing Windows and Linux passwords, there is a great tool from the good people at Kryptoslogic. Have you ever forgotten your administrator password? Have you ever bought a used computer with a password on it? Well, Kryptoslogic have created a boot-disc call 'Kon-Boot', which allows you to bypass any Windows 32 or 64 bit OS, as well as Linux passwords. There is both a paid and freeware version available.

News: Free Protein Folding Game Cracks HIV Molecule Riddle

Foldit is definitely a niche game. The sole gameplay mechanic is attempting to fold complex proteins into smaller and more efficient shapes following the rules of molecular physics and biology. Points are awarded based on how small one can make the protein. Online leaderboards track players' relative progress and allows them to view and manipulate other players' completed designs. It's original, certainly, but no developer is going to ship a million units of a game about molecular-level prote...

News: Ni No Kuni Coming To The US!

There wasn't a lot of huge news for Indie Games Ichiban to come out of TGS last weekend, but this is a whopper: Level-5 and Studio Ghibli's epic RPG Ni No Kuni is officially coming to America next year. No word on the 3DS version, but the PS3 one will be released in 2012 in North America in English, according to a press conference by principal developer Level-5.

How To: Manage Your Time Planning a Scavenger Hunt

When you're aiming to set up a scavenger hunt, you might be pondering how much time frame you are committing oneself to. It's a great thought, and one which does not have a single size that matches everyone's resolution. But this unique guideline will furnish the facts you need so that you can figure out just how long implementing a scavenger hunt or clue hunt will take. You might want to be aware of a small amount with regards to which variety of quest you are preparing. Is it a common scave...

How To: Modify Your Guitar Pedals

Guitar pedals add character to your playing. However, musicians still say that certain pedals by themselves don’t live up to its promise of a perfect sound. Therefore, instead of replacing your guitar pedals with new and expensive ones, you can modify your pedals using different DIY kits available online and at local music stores.