The Gimcrack Miscellany

A week ago I deleted my oGame account in a fit of rage. At the time, my rank was hovering in the mid 600s and I was about to start trying for moon shots. With thousands of rocket launchers, hundreds of levels of mines, 9 planets, and the almighty ability to start building Deathstars on the horizon, I was hit by a pro in 2 waves and lost everything.

I feel a little ashamed of the private message I sent him, which I most definitely will not post here. Judging by his lack of response, he’s either too good to respond to such a low-down, dirty message, or he’s Chinese. In either case it doesn’t matter because I proceeded to click the delete account button. When you click the delete button, oGame gives you something like 7 days to undo your decision by clicking the UNdelete button, just in case you were delerious when you clicked it or someone hax0red your account.

I did not click the undelete button.

I realize the point of the game is to attack people, but they’re not supposed to attack ME! It actually was a little dirty because I hadn’t been attacking anyone, didn’t have a fleet or very many resources stored up at the time for him to loot, and he did it in the middle of the day. His boldness infuriated me. All I had to do was click the oGame tab on my browser anytime between 11:00am and 1:00pm that day and see that he was on his way to kill me, and I could’ve fleetsaved. But this, by chance, happened to be the ONE day I happened to not check my oGame, by chance, over lunch break at work, coincidentally, by chance. It also happened, by chance, to be the first time, somehow, that anyone has attacked me at all in months, happenchance, oddly enough. Put those two together and you get one helluva coincidence.

I don’t like when people who are already experts, and don’t need any luck, get extremely lucky. It causes baby puppies to fall off cliffs and oGame accounts to be deleted.

Now that oGame’s out of the picture, I’ve started a new browser-based MMO game by the same creators - LOL. It’s called Ikariam and graphically it’s far superior to oGame. It’s got the look and feel of Age of Empires, and the setting to go along with it - taking place in the ancient Mediterranean Sea.

It works similarly to oGame. You build, research, and deploy buildings, technologies, and ships, respectively, but instead of space ships, deuterium mines, and hyperspace technology it’s catapult ships, taverns, and seafaring technology. There are a lot of differences besides the beautiful interface and graphics, however. One of the main differences so far is having to choose a research specialization from the get go. I’m not sure how easy it will be to research all 4 branches, if it’s even possible, but I know it will take a long time. It took 1.25 hours to research the first level, which was Conservation, and the level I’m currently on - Wine Press - takes 22 hours.

There is also more of a co-op feel in the addition of donations. You can donate to sawmills, vineyards, even the gods, to increase the wealth of your local island - which helps out the 10 or so other people with towns nearby. I suspect the effects of this new element will be quite interesting. What happens if you’re the only cheap miser not donating for the greater good? A stern warning from the other towns? An errant catapult or a wayward battalion of swordsmen “accidentally” showing up on your doorstep? I’m not going to find out.

I’ve only been playing for a few days so I can’t tell you how good the game is, or what it’s even truly about. When I started a few days back, there were only 3 servers to choose from (that number’s up to 5 already), as opposed to oGame which has something like 33. The game has only been around since Valentine’s Day this year, so I’m probably pretty high up in the ranks already. You should get in the game now while it’s still brand new! It’s really easy to create your account and get started, and there is even a “first steps” guide right on the main page which is well-written and gets you up on your feet in no time.

Best of all, it’s free!

So, what’s to stop the same thing from happening to me in Ikariam that happened to me in oGame? Nothing - what’s the point of your question?

Remember Finetune, Deezer, and TheSixtyOne? I’ve got another one for you, and it’s called SpiralFrog. This one lets you actually download songs and play them on your computer and MP3 player. The downside is you can’t use an iPod (here’s a list of compatible devices). I know I just lost most of you, but for the non-iPod n00bs who are still reading, I’ll continue.

They’ve got over a million songs available for download, including tons of music videos, so I’m assuming it’s basically the same library that most other subscription-based sites have (i.e. Napster).

Ha, there must be an expiration date on the music you download.

Nope.

Pssshh, you must have to pay a monthly fee for the site after a certain amount of time.

Nuh uh.

OMG, the song selection and music quality must be terrible!

Wrong.

Well then it must be full of spyware and hax0ringz and viri.

Stop it.

Ok, well then how in the world can you just download free music to play on your computer/MP3 player? Very simple, the answer is straight out of SpiralFrog’s FAQ section:

How come there’s no cost – what’s the catch?
SpiralFrog is an ad-supported Web site. We sell ads on our pages to advertisers who want to talk to you. And we give the majority of that advertising revenue to the music publishers and labels who own the music you’re downloading.

Most of our song and video downloads take a short, consistent amount of time to complete, during which we encourage you to keep discovering new areas of the Web site. Every page you visit allows us to serve more advertising, thus building the revenues we can pay to the content creators.

We do NOT ask you for a credit card. But we do ask for your time and attention. And, for that, we thank you…

Why didn’t I think of that? Well, I’ve downloaded the, uh, downloader, and created my account (took about 1 second to do), but I did run into a barrier or two that I was able to easily overcome thanks to SpiralFrog’s FAQs. There was a point at which I had to download a Windows Media Player plugin for Firefox, and I also had to update my Windows Media Player security settings by blowing away my DRM folder, restarting WMP, and going to a web page in IE (not Firefox) before it would let me download songs.

Once I got over those hurdles I downloaded West Coast by Coconut records, which I’ve been wanting on my computer ever since I started over at TheSixtyOne - and VOILA! It worked like a charm!

There’s gotta be another catch, right? Actually there is. You have to renew your account every 30 days. How do you do that? Log in and answer a few questions. OMG easymode.

As amazing as this is, I have to admit I only use iTunes + iPod to listen to music, so I will probably not be using this service. Hopefully there’s someone out there who reads this and goes, “oh snap, i have a piece of sh** Zune, this site’s for me!”

If that happens, I’ve accomplished my goal.

OMG it’s getting closer! TEASER TRAILER IS HERE:

I have goosebumps on top of goosebumps having goosebump children. That’s disgusting. Stop it.

This is just amazing. I haven’t been able to beat this chamber in less than 12 steps. I was sure that was the absolute minimum number of steps possible. This guy does it in 4 steps. Four. He makes a few mistakes, but it doesn’t cost him any steps because going through a portal and landing on the floor doesn’t count as an actual step.

Sorry about the bombardment of videos. Hey, I’m a child of the intarwebz.

– Edit –

Oh. My. Goodness.

Reference Burst Theory™ has just reared it’s magnificent head.

I’m writing this after I originally posted. Would you believe that my brother happened to post about Portal at the exact same time as me this morning? Neither of us saw the other’s blog post before writing our posts. There was no reason we were both inspired to post about Portal. There wasn’t a Digg article on Portal this morning or anything like that.

I just recently started playing WoW again and went to a site called WeGame (the best website since they started the intarwebs) to download screen capturing software so I could post my WoW gameplay videos online, and I happened to browse around and find some Portal videos. I have no idea why my brother happened to be on the same site at the same time and watch the same videos and then write a blog post about them.

This is insanity. What are the odds?!? ACK! GAH! UGH! BLECH! LOL!

Browsing around a website that completely wastes my day, I found a video of a Mario level - a level I’ve never seen before - that is supposedly one of the hardest in the game, whichever game this is. Apparently, some guy figured out it would beat itself if you didn’t touch the controller.

Mario Level Can Autoplay - Watch more free videos

I was originally on the site watching a video of the “Worlds Most Dangerous Swimming Pool”:

Worlds Most Dangerous Swimming Pool - Watch more free videos

Finally, here’s a cool video of an interstate manhole cover getting blow away by millions of gallons of water:

Water Gushes Onto Highway - Watch more free videos

These are all work appropriate, unless you work at a manhole cover factory. That’s what she said.

Kthxbai.

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