Shacknews LoL

Reading Shackers

Be a doll and go read my latest short story, "The Lady Electric".

http://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/sf-fantasy/gary-b-phillips/the-lady-electric

If you're so inclined, feel free to rate the story at the bottom or tell me how much you hate it on here.

Gracias!

Summer Movies!*

This summer is shaping up to be the 1999 of summer blockbusters.

The sheer amazing coming out this summer is enough to blind lesser men.

Some trailers may be NWS.


Man of Steel - http://youtu.be/KVu3gS7iJu4 - It's Superman and it's amazing. Also he has two Robin Hoods as fathers; how could it go wrong?

Elysium - http://youtu.be/oIBtePb-dGY - Matt Damon meets District 9 and can full of whoop-ass.

Oblivion - http://youtu.be/IBVkUb_TWp8 - I didn't expect much but this looks fantastic.

Pacific Rim - http://youtu.be/A85EtOalcsM - Move over Michael Bay it's Guillermo del Toro's turn.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones - http://youtu.be/hc4CiTvQ-YE - This gives me a Constantine of Night/Day Watch vibe. Hopefully it turns out that way.

Only God Forgives - http://youtu.be/YqAeVosG4zI - Ryan Gosling and some seriously fucked up content. I won't be bringing a date but I'm still looking forward to it.

World War Z - http://youtu.be/4EC7P5WdUko - I'm still not sold on this but it's piqued my interest.

The Conjuring - http://youtu.be/Vjk2So3KvSQ - I love a good thriller and this appears to have all the right pieces.

Now You See Me - http://youtu.be/XJAuiVZQLZU - Only heard of this recently; looks fantastic. Morgan Freeman, Isla Fisher, Jesse Eisenberg, Michael Caine and magic. Hell yah.

The Great Gatsby - http://youtu.be/sN183rJltNM - Baz Luhrmann is always a must see, throw Leo and a classic literature into the mix and we have an instant winner.

Filth - http://youtu.be/ObE-AEO17Sw - It's well titled.

This is the End - http://youtu.be/i24fo2W5EaE - Emma Watson can have all my stuff any time.

Not to mention the sequels ...
Star Trek Into Darkness - http://youtu.be/5ec_rPApKCA
Iron Man 3 - http://youtu.be/kEIVPiTuYkQ
RED 2 - http://youtu.be/sCM3HhGUJsM
Fast & Furious 6 - http://youtu.be/dKi5XoeTN0k
Kick Ass 2 - http://youtu.be/7UMbwxbgv8U
The Hangover Part III - http://youtu.be/KLAkxSjs8ZY
The Wolverine - http://youtu.be/z-Yu9uwHLVI

And there are even more I didn't include
*No promises that all of these actually see release this summer.

So I know freakynipples has been posting off and on about his work with ImpactJS and developing an HTML 5 game. Ever since he posted about it several weeks back I have been on a bit of a binge trying to improve my understand of JS and looking at what sorts of frameworks and toolsets there are out there these days. I thought I was all fancy because I use JQuery and Bootstrap at work but there sure is a fucking ton of stuff way newer and fancier. I feel like the more I educate myself, the more I just realize I am behind on what is the new hotness in web dev.

Anyhow without getting into shit that you non-gamers won't really fucking care about, here are a couple of cool things I have run across in the past few days I think you'll like:

http://codingcookies.com/2013/04/01/building-a-roguelike-in-javascript-part-1/

http://ondras.github.io/rot.js/hp/

Yea, you see that right. That is a tutorial explaining how to use a JS library written specifically for creating ASCII roguelikes in the browser. Pretty fucking awesome. Pretty niche and specific but pretty awesome that such a library even exists.

Also, did you know that people still make new text adventures that actually look pretty fucking cool? Like this:

http://www.cabrerabrothers.com/

First time in quite a while I've seen someone wanting $15 for a text adventure game and I say "sounds good to me, take my money!"

Lastly, for those of you who just wants a place to start with javascript, here are some pretty good low-level tutorials I found on the Mozilla page:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/A_re-introduction_to_JavaScript

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Introduction_to_Object-Oriented_JavaScript

We get so many random posts with people asking how to start learning this language or that language, I figure someone will find it helpful.

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For all you GTA fans out there, GameTrailers featured a very nostalgic and very interesting retrospective on the origin and evolution of GTA. They were releasing these on a weekly basis, but since they just completed the series this week, I thought I'd package them all here. Each segment is about 20 min long, fyi. I learned some very interesting things about the series though. It's no wonder Rockstar won so many Game of the Year awards...

http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/aqdx54/gt-retrospectives-grand-theft-auto-retrospective--part-i

http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/09j87g/gt-retrospectives-grand-theft-auto-retrospective--part-ii

http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/36lakj/gt-retrospectives-grand-theft-auto-retrospective--part-iii

http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/lo72hv/gt-retrospectives-grand-theft-auto-retrospective--part-iv

http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/vgsg7i/gt-retrospectives-grand-theft-auto-retrospective--part-v

I love life hacking stuff like this:

http://shialabeowulf.tumblr.com/post/33670447154/99-life-hacks-to-make-your-life-easier

I wish my brain worked in a way that I could think of stuff like this. Some of it is old and I've seen it before, but most of this was new to me.

PROMETHEUS

I'm still annoyed by several of the characters in the film but I just watched the 2 most in-depth and intelligent analyses of the film in succession:

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7CChfYoO_I
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u94wR0NfewE&feature=related

I ask that you view them in order because, although they come from 2 different people they build on eachother very effectively.

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So...

http://www.snesbox.com

WITH multiplayer.

Thank me later.

-Dognose

Holy Shit this just make my internet connection feel soo much faster!!

Namebench
http://code.google.com/p/namebench/

Basically it benchmarks a ton of public DNS servers and finds the ones that are fastest. I got a 40% improvement over my ISPs crappy DNS servers.