Time Tripper

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For the past four weeks my friend and I have been playing Time Tripper, a game Elias turned me onto. Time Tripper follows the adventures of a marijuana smoking soldier in Vietnam who travels in time and fights various tripped-out battles. The scenarios range from WWII, to cavemen, to T-Rexes, to really bizzare stuff like something called the Autozoo and King Pong (King Pong gives all new meaning to “tripping balls”).

While I sort of get the sense that Time Tripper is a paper war game aimed at beginners (and the D&D crowd), if you’re like me and grossly unfamiliar with paper war games, be aware that they aren’t the type of things you bust out when you can’t find Jenga for your next dinner party. In addition to being really complex, the rules are far from lucidly written (bear in mind we had two people trying to figure the game out).

If you are up to the challenge, the game is a lot of fun. Though it is a war game, its warped sense of humor make a really fun play once you figure it out, or half-way figure it out like us. If you don’t think you’ll be playing the paper version any time soon, DewKid.com wrote a Java version of the
game. While the Java version does all the calculations for you, its insanely tough (I can make it past 3 boards or so without getting killed in a good game). The coolest thing about the Java adaptation is the graphics for the counters. Now if someone would just do a version of the game for Facebook.

Time Tripping

Protocon 3.0 Rations & Movie

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Rations

There has been some concern about the rations that will be passed out at the start of Protocon 3.0. Because we did not receive enough in donations and dues this year, we were unable to use the catering services we have in years past. It would have been wonderful to have prime rib, steamed shrimp and Cool Ranch Doritos at this year’s annual Con, but the cost of such an extravagant meal could not be justified in these bad economic times.

As a result, the difficult decision was made to pass out rations and conserve all available money for other, more necessary purchases. While the exact identity of the rations will not be revealed until the start of Protocon, you may indulge your imagination by thinking of common soldiers during the Civil War. What does this mean for you? If you have special dietary restrictions, are a vegan, do macrobiotics, or want to eat prime rib, then you will need to provide sustenance for yourself.

For those attendees who opt for the rations, they will be eligible for the Hard Ration Award. Any attendee who survives the weekend on rations alone will receive this awesome, once-in-a-lifetime honor. Although it is impossible to speculate the worth of such an award, we would suggest that it would be equal in value to a certificate produced by the Liberian Mint.

Good luck!

Saturday Night Movie

The Swarm, a 2.5-hour blockbuster starring killer bees and Michael Caine, was selected as this year’s Protocon cinematic feast. However, if you have a better suggestion for the Protocon Movie, please let us know. Movie are selected on the following criteria:

  • The movie must fall into the genre of “cult,” “B” or “bad.”
  • The movie must not have been seen by two or more of the attendees.
  • The movie cannot be well known.
  • The movie cannot have been done by MST3K.

All suggestions are subject to personal approval by Tim. Please post your suggestions below.

Jabberwocky

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I watched Jabberwocky again this evening. It is still about as good as it was 16 years ago, which is not too good. The best part of the movie is its dirtiness and general squalor. One thing that struck me about it was the Evil Dead styled killing of Terry Jones at the start. Let me rephrase that. Raimi and company didn’t just take a page (or the whole damn Necronomicon) from Equinox, but maybe also some camera tricks from Jabberwocky.

Jabberwocky

Omni

the mindlab

This was published in the original MindLab.

Omni is TRUTH

“Ding Dong” probably sounds different to every ear. Maybe to Harry’s ear it sounds like, “Dear, Deer” and maybe to Sally Mae’s ear, “Doo, Doo”. Pigeons probably all hear the same “Ding, Dong” sound though, cause pigeons only have brains the size of raisins. I read that in Omni.

New site features

site news,

They aren’t much, but I thought I’d point them out.

First off, at the end of each post next to the categories and tags, you’ll see two little icons. The first is for Digg and the second is for Reddit. These are sites for sharing links. Someone reads something they like, they submit it to sites like Digg and Reddit and tell their friends about it. Their friends, if they like the link, click the “diggit” button to say the liked it, and it gets a point. Reddit has a similar ranking mechanism. The more points it gets, the more visible it is on the sites…

So, if you see an article you like, click the button. Submit it or give it your approval if its already submitted.

Secondly, I’ve added links to the feeds down on the bottom of the sidebar. There are feeds for the site in general, all the comments so you can stay on top of discussion, a ‘podcast’ feed of all the videos on the site, and the link to the same feed in iTunes, if you prefer your podcasts over there.

Next up, an iPhone skin has been implemented for iPhone users. If you don’t like the iPhone presentation and prefer the normal presentation, just scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “normal view.” If you want to get back to the iPhone view, look for the link at the bottom of the sidebar.

Lastly, the new WordPress supports Gravitars. Go to their site, sign up your email address (the same one you use in the comments form) and pick a picture. This little icon will then show up next to your comment here and any other site which is enabled to use them. If you don’t feel like it, that’s fine — you’ll get a little randomly generated icon instead.