THAT JUST HAPPENED!

john oliver

I am a regular listener of the bugle. John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman's podcast. From time to time they ask readers to e-mail in. Andy's wife is going to have a baby any day now, and he was asking to mail in names for the Zaltzman spawn.

I e-mailed some names in. The tried and true King Arthur, Optimus Prime, and hella. John Oliver reads my letter at minute 26. It was a little thrilling for me.

http://podcast.timesonline.co.uk/serve.php/1916/thebuglefinal56.mp3

club nintendo finally goes live

Club nintendo is finally available for North America! When you buy a nintendo product and register it, you earn points to spend on the club nintendo site. Once you have enough points, you can order something neat to be shipped to you. It is a nice bonus, and sometimes they have very very cool stuff to offer. Sometimes.... not. But you know- they all can't be winners.

Here are some things that japan has gotten over the past couple years.

An snes style controller to be plugged into the wii remote for virtual console games.

Personalized Wii remotes and exclusive games

Children.

I'm looking forward to some cool free stuff!

PUMA! GITAROO!

Gitaroo man is my new favorite game. I just wish, like all Japanese rhythm games, it was a little easier. You play as a kid in a long line of gitaroo wielders who would rather learn to skateboard so he can get the girl of his dreams. When trouble arises Puma, his dog, throws him the gitaroo and he turns into gitaroo man! To save the planet with rock and learn to believe in yourself!



it gives me flashbacks of Elite Beat Agents. Which- is also worth a play if you haven't tried it out.

perfect

robocop is a death machine

some boring informative thing

a romantic song

nsfw

learning the man-ual.

Yesturday I put in some shelves. I even used those plastic dealies that come with screws so they don't rip out the wall.

full steam ahead

I just joined valve's steam network. I don't have any games, and don't really plan on buying any games anytime soon.... but i am accepting friend requests!

http://steamcommunity.com/id/nickfill

Apparently parallels 4 runs so well that it actually lets you play decent games. Valve puts great games out on the source engine which isn't a resource hog, so i'll probably be able to play those. I'm downloading the bioshock demo to see if it'll run right now, however i doubt i'll be playing crysis.

trashing electorics

The mentality of the modern consumer is to buy something until it wares out and then trash it to get another. Rarely do we ever replace parts or repair anything. I thought maybe i'd try to get a little more knowledgeable about electronics in the last couple years. The best i've done is bringing a dead hard drive back to life.

Today I did my fist soldering. Well... desoldering. There was a ball of solder on a board that i actually had to solder off the thing before the board would become active. After a lot of trial and error i actually managed to do it.

I have completely fixed up dan goats' old xbox 360 that he gave to me after it crashed. It cost me 15 (maybe 10?) dollars for a new cd rom laser and another 5 dollars for Wd-40. Now the thing is running like a tank after having constant problems with the cdrom drive. First it wouldn't spin discs so i dismantled the thing and sprayed the spindle/rails in the cdrom. Then the laser went slowly but surely. Replaced that today. xboxes now (after a price drop) go for about 200 bucks so i think it was a decent investment, and i learned a whole lot. Hopefully i just put at least 5 more years into the (very fragile) system.

The only thign to fear is the red ring of death.

birthday

Whenever i get a year older I kind of re-evaluate things. See what has changed. One thing i always try to do is psych myself up for beards. Every fucking year i think to myself. Yes. This is your year. Beardtown USA population Filardi. All year i see sweet hipster beards and lust after them. If i talk to Dane for more than an hour, he has a beard at the end of our conversation. Everywhere I seem to go, my naked chin mocks me in its nakedness. Once and a while i tempt fate. I try to grow one. Thinking- sure... maybe it just needs a couple days or something. I gotta give it time. Maybe i just have some slow face workers. The reward i get for that week of cringing looks on the subway is 8 weird half inch long hairs scattered on my face. I don't get a forest, i get a couple trees.

Imagine my surprise when i read on the huffington post today "obama: 'i can't grow facial hair." Maybe 2009 will be the year of the bare face with a few wiskers. If anyone can bring that bizare look into style, Obama can (yes we can).

My mother (god bless her!) picked me up a few things from amazon.

I'm probably most excited to read that John Hodgman book. Lately i'm on a daily show thats not the daily show kick. I've been listening to a lot of John Oliver's podcast with Andy Zaltzman called the bugle over at times online, and loving it. Then Hodgman showed up in another podcast i listen to called you look nice today: a journal of emotional hygiene and had some really fantasic and funny moments. He was pushing his book. I'll gladly accept the push. Daily show without daily show- i love it.

Incidently- you look nice today often jokes about a subject that I often feel is happening around me: not getting the MANual. Like- not knowing how to change a tire, or tie a tie. Not knowing dad things and feeling foolish. I guess I'm kind of at the age of feeling foolish with that stuff, getting over it and then learning it.

Birthdays are days of self evlauation milestones. I currently have over 50 physical games (this isn't counting intangible ones and zeros on the computer and console, or retro games beyond last generation of consoles) that i have bought and never played. This is getting out of hand. I atribute the huge splurge on games to acouple things. The last generation of consoles are on their way out over the next year or so. The ps2 is still holding on, but it won't be for long. So all those used games are going super cheap now. I can't resist the bargin, and with a finite number of used copies around I seem to panic and think to myself something along the lines of if I don't buy it now, it'll never be avalible again. Which- might be true, but probably won't be. Clearly, I am thrifty and paniced. I also atribute it to the fact that whenever i really start to collect or get into a new thing, i do it to a retarded extreme. The only thing that i've seem to collect at a moderate pace through most of my life has been comics. To change all this, or at least take it down a notch, I'm going to try not go into a brick and morter gamestop for video games for the next 4 months. It seems a little drastic to go from buying like crazy for a good six months (at least) to buying nothing, but i feel like i gotta get cut off. If i tell myself i'll do it in moderation nothing will change. Plus maybe now instead of buying games, i'll buy a few necessities that i always need but never seem to buy.

Speaking of- i got a pair of coffee mugs from the valve store. I don't know if this is a "speaking of games" or "speaking of stuff i always need but never buy for myself." Pretty much all the dishes in the house here are holly's. I'd like to pick up a few mugs at least considering my love of coffee. These do the trick.

The black mesa mug states "Delivering the Future" and the aperture labs one states "A trusted friend in science." Mugs are a nice low key way of displaying the pure nerd sensations i feel to valve without getting a really stupid nerdy shirt covered in text... although.... i do like that "good dog" shirt.

SO- nick filardi at 27: He is going to actually play the games he buys before he buys more. He is going to get the MANual. He is going to buy necessities. He is going to grow a beard, or bring weird wiskers into style. He might pay his taxes :)

how nerdcore should be done

sniper twins

H.P. Papercraft

http://www.youtube.com/user/fortaxreasons has some other great cartoon shorts like this one.

If you didn't laugh at it.... you're.... probably cooler than i am.

I can appreciate this, like i would a fine wine.

In case you've never seen it- the whitest kids you know will explain this picture.