Nerdish Delight: Holiday in Cambodia

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up.  I don't want to be an archaeologist anymore but I do love exploring (although mostly just my own city).  So when I saw the news that a group of archaeologists in Cambodia discovered a 1200 year old city, I was really excited!  One of the news articles called the expedition Indiana Jones-style and while I do love Indiana Jones movies, I think it sounds more like the sort of thing I would read in a Michael Crichton book, like Congo.  (If you haven't read that book, and enjoy science-y murder mysteries, I highly recommend it)  They discovered the city using laser technology developed in the 1960s for measuring clouds.  Lasers!  Seriously, lasers alone nerdishly delight me.  But there's more.  After they detected the outline of the city using Lidar technology (which, using ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light, pulses lasers to "see" through dense vegetation, in this case jungle), they trekked through the jungle (which was full of live land mines, by the way!).  I'm picturing lots of khaki and machetes.  They also had a guide, who had never been to the lost city either, a one-legged soldier.  Does this not sound like something that would be happening in a book or a movie?!  And then they found the city, and were attacked by cannibals who hadn't seen humans other than their own tribe before.  And then the ancient city was destroyed because of ancient booby traps, obviously.  Oh wait, no that last part with the cannibals and destruction would happen in a movie, but thankfully didn't happen in real life.  In real life, it was pretty anti-climactic.  They just discovered a city, called Mahendraparvata, that hasn't been seen by anyone who is alive now, or anyone who has been alive in the past 1000 years.  That's all.  It also reminds me of Timeline, also by Michael Crichton, which is another book that I highly recommend.  There's quantum physics and time travel in it!

The other really cool thing about this discovery is that the ginormous temple of Angkor Wat, which I've thought was super cool since I was a little kid with archaeologist dreams, is part of the newly rediscovered city of Mahendraparvata.  It's like they just keep on finding more pieces in a puzzle (and I love puzzles!).  First Angkor Wat and then Mahendraparvata.  I have to wonder what they'll find next.  I love urban decay (and I'm not talking about the makeup brand) and I love ruins.  Ruins are really just extreme urban decay, from times when the urban landscape was very different.  My absolute favorite examples are Macchu Picchu (another one I've loved since I was teeny tiny) and Nara Dreamland (a much newer example of urban decay).

Oh and one more thing it reminds me of is the children's movie The Road to El Dorado, where they discover El Dorado, the lost city made of gold.

Nerdish Delight: Amazing Indie Games that Need Your Help

The other day I was looking at posts in the Indie Games community on Google+.  It's a really great community for indie gamers and indie game creators.  I came across two games that I really want to play.  They both have funding campaigns going on, one on Kickstarter and the other on Indiegogo.  I really want these games to get enough funding so I can play them at some point, but unfortunately I can't back them myself.  My hours at work are incredibly erratic, I'm looking at schools with web design programs, and I'm going through some lady problems that I won't go into (I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow).  All of these things are using up my money.  Plus rent, obviously.  So I am doing what I can with what I have.  And what I have is a blog, so I am blogging about these games.

The first game is called Pandora: Purge of Pride.  The campaign has 17 days left and is nearly halfway to their funding goal.  I would want to play this game for the art alone (but the gameplay is also incredible).  Seriously, look how good it is!

In Pandora: Purge of Pride, you'll play a Victorian woman named Pandora (in the picture above).  (High five for female protagonist!)  She accidentally unleashed the Seven Deadly Sins on her mansion and she must recapture them all to stop them from spreading.  When you capture Sins, you gain new powers related to the Sins.  For example, capturing Sloth allows you to slow an object down.  You can read more about the game on their Kickstarter page.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this game is the fact that is was created entirely by just four Interactive Media and Game Development Students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, who make up High Class Kitsch.


The second game is called 42 Light Years.  This game only has 7 days left, and is a little over a quarter of their funding goal.  It's another game that I would play for the art alone, but it also has great gameplay.  (If you know me at all, you know that art is a huge deciding factor in the games I play.)

This game involves the manipulation of time as the main mechanism for solving puzzles.  And as someone who loves Legend of Zelda games, that's a mechanism that I can really get behind.  Unlike in The Legend of Zelda games, the hero is not the one traveling through time.  Instead he can send different objects forward or backward in time in order to solve puzzles.  In 42 Light Years, you play a hero called Quarante who wakes up on an unknown planet and can't remember why he's there.  He has to survive and does this with help from a lifeform who gives him the Timeball, which allows him to do the aforementioned time manipulation.  You can read more about this game on the Indiegogo page.

And again impressively, this game was created by a team of just 4 members.  They are from Guatemala.

And if that isn't enough to convince you, these games both have really great perks for contributing funding.  Even if you can't contribute, if you like indie games, you should really check these two out.  These games are both very unique, and sound like they'll be shining examples of what an indie game can be.

Update: Everything is good with me health-wise and I have gotten more hours at work, so I backed Pandora: Purge of Pride.  You should back it too! Please? I want to play it

Update 2: Pandora: Purge of Pride reached its funding goal (and exceeded it by over $1,000!).  You can pre-order it here for $9.99.  There is also a demo you can try at the same link.

Introducing Nerdish Delight!

Welcome to the first Nerdish Delight post ever!  What is Nerdish Delight?  It's a post where I share some of the nerdy things that I've found around the internet lately that I find delightful.  These things include, but are not limited to: webcomics, video games, technology/gadgets, and science.

I adore the game Coma on Kongregate, by Thomas Brush AKA wittyhobos.  It is a point-and-click game, which is my absolute favorite kind of game ever.  It is not a difficult game.  That isn't the point.  It's beautiful and artistic and slightly creepy.  I also really like that the game doesn't just tell you outright what it means, but lets you draw your own conclusions.  I feel like that's something all good art does.

The Hubble telescope found a galaxy that supposedly looks like a Space Invader.  I think it looks more like a skull with glowing eyes.  To me, it would look like a Space Invader it it had the antennas and longer arms.  Nice try, galaxy, nice try.

A man had 75 percent of his skull replaced with a 3D-printed piece!  This makes me ask so many questions, but the first one is, 'How?!'  75 percent is a lot of a person's skull.  And skulls have eyes and noses and lips and ears on them.  I just don't even know how they did it.  I have always thought that 3-D printing was really cool, but I never even thought about something like this as a possible application.  It's super cool, but I wish that the article was more elaborate.

Here is a cool gadget in the world of 3D printing.  It's the first ever 3D printing pen.  It is by far the most affordable way to print in 3D.  The Kickstarter campaign for it still has 13 days left and over 2 million dollars has already been pledged, which is well over the $30,000 goal.  This thing is just cool.  I can't wait to see what amazing creations people make with it.  It works in a similar way to a hot glue gun.  You put in plastic and the pen heats and extrudes it.  The plastic cools so fast that you can actually draw in the air!  It kind of reminds me of that episode of Spongebob Squarepants with the magic pencil, only the drawings don't magically come to life and attack people.

And last, but certainly not least, is Codecademy, which I discovered through one of the people I follow on Google+.  I've been meaning to learn CSS and refresh my HTML knowledge for quite a long time.  I had found a few different sites that offered free online courses, but none of them that I really loved.  Enter Codecademy.  First of all, you earn badges when you complete lessons, and I am instantly drawn into any site that lets me earn badges.  (See Kongregate.)  They have lessons in CSS, HTML, PHP, jQuery, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and APIs.  I can't really comment on the other lessons because I haven't done them, but the HTML and CSS lessons are really good for beginners.  I completed the HTML lessons last week.  It was really interesting to learn about lots of basics that I was never taught and also some basics that I was taught incorrectly.  I have moved onto the CSS lessons, which are new to me entirely.  I have been picking up CSS really quickly and I wish I had learned it earlier.  Each Codecademy lesson is made up of a number of exercises based around a concept, such as tables.  The first exercises teaches you the absolute basics, including any new syntax, and tells you exactly what to type and where to type it.  The following exercises do the same thing, with more advanced steps and less guidance until you can do it by yourself.  If you can't remember how to do something, you can go back to the exercise that taught you how to do it, or you can look at the hint.  It's a really great free resource for coders and programmers.