Rush is one of my favorite classic rock bands, and last night they actually appeared on The Colbert Report. This, in my opinion, makes that one of the best episodes of the Report ever. What makes this even more epic is that this was apparently the band’s first American TV appearance in 33 years. I’m not really sure what made them decide The Colbert Report was the best choice for such an event or how Comedy Central got them to do it, but frankly I don’t care.
Throughout the episode, it was made very clear that the show’s director, “Jimmy” (Jim Hoskinson), is “the biggest Rush fan in the world” and all the way up until the last segment (when the interview and performance took place) there were a slew of gags related to this, primarily Jimmy replacing the show’s opening theme music with the song “Limelight” and later replacing words on Stephen’s teleprompter with the lyrics to “By-Tor & The Snow Dog”. Below are two clips.
I’ve known for well over a year now about the upcoming Will Wright game called Spore. I’ve known what it’s about - you start off as like a single-celled organism and go through the entire evolution process right up to an intelligent creature and beyond. I’ve also known that the buzz around the Internet about the game has been pretty good. Lots of people seem to be eagerly awaiting the release. But even though the concept sounds pretty interesting, I for whatever reason haven’t really been all that captivated by it.
That is, I guess you could say, until now. Last week EA released a free downloadable demo for the Spore Creature Creator. I decided I would give it a shot and I’m really enjoying it. The things you can make and the things you can do with the things you make all lie somewhere on the edges of hilarious, cute, depressing, and awesome. I’m blown away at the amount of different ways you can shape and modify your creature and seeing how the different physical traits you give it respond individually to the different actions you can make it perform is really cool. There are also some really great features built right into the game, such as the ability to take pictures (including “animated avatars”) and record video. The video recorder even gives you the option of automatically posting the video on Youtube and THEN lets you send the Youtube link to friends via e-mail. Here’s a short clip I recorded of my first creature:
I think I’m officially excited for the full game to come out.
Update: It seems I totally forgot about taking pictures. The computer did come in last week and I managed to get it all put together and up and running. There were some complications but it all worked ou in the end. I’m extremely satisfied. But I guess I just became more involved than I anticipated, hence the slow update. I might still take some pictures of the final product later, but don’t hold me to it.
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So a couple days ago I finally placed an order for my computer. I ordered all of the parts individually from newegg. This will be my first time putting together a computer myself, and I’m freaking excited. A couple weeks ago, Windows XP on my 2.5-year-old laptop decided to stop working correctly, which was enough incentive to break down and get something new and much nicer. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for more than a year now and it’s finally happening. It’s going to have a huge (to me) 22″ LCD monitor, a GeForce 8800GT video card, 4gb RAM, a massive 640gb hard drive, and blue lights in the case. You might thing it’s excessive, but I wanted to push the limit and get something really nice that will last me a long time. Being my own creation, I wanted something I’d really enjoy, rather than a stock factory-build machine out of a box.
I will continue to use my laptop for school and on trips. Fortunately, all of my documents (music and pictures mainly) are there so I haven’t lost data. I can run a Linux distrobution and everything is peachy.
The monitor and a majority of the components should arrive tomorrow, shipped from a Memphis warehouse. The case and a couple other things should be in Thursday, as they’re being shipped from California. I plan on taking pictures of the building process, and if I do I will be sure to share them here.