art
Get over here and play a video game…
Cool stuff in my email…
From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:
The Art of Video Games exhibition opens in less than two months (on March 16, 2012), so things are getting a little hectic around the museum and I have a lot to share.
Early in January, the exhibits team did a round of testing for the 5 “playable” games that will be in the exhibition (Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and Flower). The most challenging aspect of these games is that we are running them through original hardware and/or operating systems…
…Fabrication is well underway for the 20 “genre kiosks” that will showcase 80 video games through screen captures and video footage. These are the 80 games that won the public vote in 2011. We were very excited to see how these were coming along!
You can see more photos of the game testing and kiosk fabrication on Flickr. We’ll continue to add images as we get closer to the opening – including photos of installation in the galleries (I can’t wait!)
– Georgina
Exhibition Coordinator”
- Kit
If you wear those golden earrings…
If I could get Scooter to take a nap I would go veg on the couch and watch Iron Man…again. It’s that kind of a day.
OMG! Captain America earrings! I must have a pair of these. Heather at H-chan Clothing on Etsy also has other Avenger and X-men earrings as well as little sumo domo-kun ones.
There is still time to cast a vote (or many votes) for Viv and the Revival in the ESPN Who’s Next in music promotion. You can continue to vote until Thursday.
I have a new review up on GamingHUD for Margaritaville Online.
So I had moved my office to the sunroom but it was just too noisy to work there so I have moved it back to my coffee bar the breakfast room. And when I say I moved, of course mean Kahuna moved all the heavy furniture from room to room and I followed along behind with you know…a book or a CD. Now I can stare at my coffee pot when I am deep in thought.
Ummm…Coffee.
- Kit
When I paint my masterpiece…
Kit’s Awesome Vid of the Day – The Making of Soul Caliber V Graffiti Wall
- Kit
This magic moment…
Aikonia is a fantasy webcomic written by Timothy Hely, illustrated by Katie Tiedrich and edited by Andrew-David. They have a Kickstarter page to raise funds for a comic book version of the webcomic.
With this campaign, we hope to raise enough funds to print and distribute the complete first chapter of the webcomic as a full-color, 8″ x 9″, 48 page, staple-bound comic book…”
The project runs till November 4, 2011. Check out the video below for more information or pop over to the Aikonia Kickstarter page.
- Kit
I feel the earth move under my feet…
My feet are so cold.
So yesterday as I was rocking the kidlet for her nap, the entire building started shaking. After determining that it was sunny outside, the washer was not overbalancing, Optimus Prime had not crashed into the building and that even the incredibly annoying downstairs neighbors were not capable of MOVING THE ENTIRE BUILDING, I was left with…er..earthquake as the only possible cause.
I have ridden out hurricanes, tornados, mountains of porch destroying snow but this was my first earthquake. Scooter is convinced the shaking was caused by a volcano. She and the ‘Bit were both pretty mellow about the whole thing but Crumb the destructo cat ran wildly around with her tail puffed out for a couple of minutes before the earthquake hit. As mentioned on Twitter, I did save the coffee along with the other cracker jars of coffee-type neccessaties but it was never a dire thing. The jars shift around on the top shelf of the bakers rack pretty much anytime we walk in the room. With a hurricane headed in this weekend I am considering duct taping them to the shelf. You know, just till the worst of the wind is over.
To round out the disaster list, check out Tom Benton’s Flood, on the 1951 Kansas City flood, over at The Task at Hand.
Even after coffee my feet are still cold.
Paw and Claw Designs – Trust me, sometimes you NEED purple gaming dice earrings. Kitten also makes gaming dice pendants as well as a selection of slightly more traditional silver and bead earrings. She offers different options on her jewelry (like sterling silver or surgical steel) and takes custom orders.
This week marks the 2oth anniversary of the US release of the SNES. Check out GamingHUD for an entire week of articles, reviews, videos and geek-ly reminiscing on this early Nintendo gaming system.
Ahhh. Warm socks. Off to find lunch-type items and consume them.
- Kit
But it’s all, in the game…
This is probably my favorite comic by Katie. I wanted to stick it up in the blurb corner but shrinking the graphic left the writing illegible.
You can find Katie on her website Awkward Zombie, or on Twitter as @katietiedrich
- Kit
It came like lightning from out of the sky…
Well, hello there hurricane season.
Dean Gillett interviewed MUD and game developer Kavir (Richard Woolcock) for GamingHUD. Whether you play MUD’s or not this is a good look at the game development process with little bits of online gaming history thrown in. From the interview:
The general design goal of God Wars II was to create a game with the same theme and playing style as the original God Wars, as that had already proven successful – but to also design the architecture from the ground up to properly support the more advanced features I’d wanted to add over the years. Some of those features were dropped or redesigned because they didn’t fit the gameplay, or because they added realism at the expense of fun. But in general, I think God Wars II has successfully combined what I feel are the best of both worlds – a clear theme and fun gameplay, supported by detailed and innovative mechanics…”
Baking bread today although “baking” and “bread” are both slightly misleading as wonderful bread-to-be is still in all its component parts. Obviously more coffee is needed to convince all the ingredients to form an actual bread-like substance.
Yes! From Kahuna and Kotaku.com – A look at the new character race graphics in Skyrim.
The Argonian (shown in pic on right) is all kinds of awesome.
That is about all I can manage without more coffee. And possibly lunch.
- Kit




I have been trying to write the review for Blurred, by San Francisco singer/songwriter Alex Wise for a few months now but can’t seem to finish it. This is difficult for me to say but I get about halfway through the process and find myself so homesick I just can’t continue. The past few years have been full [...]
Now that Scooter is back sleeping nights I proclaim this ’dig myself out from under the mountain of un-reviewed music‘ week. Kicking off the week o’reviewing is Arc & Stones, the debut EP from Brooklyn band Arc & Stones. The guys are Dan Pellarin (vocals), Ben Cramer (guitar), Joe Doino (drums) and Eddy Bayes (bass). I had [...]
So, I was in the mood for some blues and whoosh – blues appeared. Other people get coupons, bills and news updates in the mail while I get blues music. Cool new blues music in the form of the debut release Telegraph Taboo from the Chicago-based band Nick and the Ovorols. This is not a pretty album. The vocals on a few tracks [...]