Tuesday is the Triumph Day

Rock Band Weekly: 'Still Alive' free tomorrow on XBM, April 17 for PSN

Tommorow we get to download the Portals credits song for Rockband.  Yeah!  Rejoice!

The Phun Invasion

This weekend my home was taken over by a free PC game that I found called PHun. It is a 2D physics simulator that animates and applies physics to anything you create. For instance, you can use the brush to draw any closed shape, and then it will fill-in and fall with gravity, be affected by wind, air friction and even bounce. You can liquify anything and make complex objects. You can pin objects in space, add motors, and the results are fantastic. My passion is for making infinite ball machines (like an obstacle course for ping-pong balls that never stops.) But mostly we built walls of blocks and made up ways to knock them down.

http://www.phun.at/

It can be taxing on your CPU, especially if you use water. My kids are 7 and 4 and both could use the program, but making advanced shapes and engines requires dad. I was literally running back and forth between two computers where they were each working on their Phun projects.

Here is a video of a typical type of thing we did this weekend (video is not mine.)

The Cake is a Lie

After annoying my clan mates last week I figured I better come clean. Here is a site full of quotes from the game Portal -- only the best game of the year -- that shipped in The Orange Box by Valve. Anybody have any favorites?

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Portal

Mine is:

"That thing you burnt up isn't important to me. Not any more. It's the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit; it makes shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero."

Oh and here are the lyrics to the credits: http://www.sweetslyrics.com/526302.Valve%20-%20Still%20Alive%20(portal)%20.html

And of course the darn video:

lolcats can suck it! I like Pinkey.

Games For Zune

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/20/microsoft-announces-games-for-zune-via-xna-studio/

From the article:  "Looks like games are coming for the Zune after all! Microsoft just announced XNA Studio developers will be able to use the Zune as a multiplayer wireless mobile gaming platform. Details are sparse at this point, but it looks like it's going to be second gen Zunes only, since it was specifically mentioned that it'd take advantage of the touchpad controls. We'll let you know more as we get it."

Pretty cool stuff.  I love my zune and I really dig the XNA toolkit idea.  Glad to see future possibilities like this.  I may dork around with the xna toolkit some day.