Old-Wizard.com - Part 23

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Captain’s Log: 5 April 2008

Written by Zeromage No Comments
Last Updated:: April 5, 2008

Drank a few beers last night. Not too many, but enough. I think one of them was skunked because my inner gyroscope is fucked up. I keep falling to the left. My gammy leg probably isn’t helping that situation. Dude, speaking of which, what’s up with people that have two legs that are different lengths? How does that happen? Sounds like a communication error between the left and right brains. My top and bottom brains are having a communication problem. We can’t decide to stand up or fall over. Must sign up for hope. Can’t forget that.

So what about atrophied limbs on people? When someone has a bay arm and a man arm its fuckin scary. Probably all that McDonalds their parents ate. Nub limbs are creepy too. I’m not sure I could handle seeing a nub right now, let alone stroke one. They kind of remind me of alien tentacles, in a bizzaro way of course. I never said I was normal. I’m done with this. Time to do some work.
Top 10 Bands of the New Century

Written by Zeromage 23 Comments
Last Updated:: April 4, 2008

The passing into the new century was a landmark event for the popular arts. Critical reviews of their past forms became common place in their information mediums. Pop music specifically saw itself in need of a transformation into minimalized modes of execution. This insistence combined with the diminution of the major label as that which defined quality, led to more open ideas of what quality was. The two-edged sword of this phenomena created some great bands in the new century, along with bands who equated this new found freedom for an “anything-goes” attitude. This lack for a formal understanding of quality could lead bands into new sonic frontiers while at the same time leading these bands into below-average songwriting. As expression for the sake of itself became the only grounds for quality, anything and everything was fair game in being recognized as good. There were bands though who superseded this flexibility of quality by recognizing the power of songwriting, purely in itself. These bands who were able to combine the sonic territories of the new century with the invariable aspects of good songwriting are given a rank in this list. These next bands have the signature of the new century written all over them, although still imbued with the sense of traditional songwriting that leads to memorable melodies. With these next bands in mind, we will see that the sonic flow of history need not forget it’s invariable characteristics from the past.

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Top 10 British Bands of All Time

Written by Zeromage 116 Comments
Last Updated:: April 3, 2008

The British have given us much, from tea and crumpets, to Winston Churchill, to advanced naval technology, but their most conspicuous gratuity has been their pop music. Consistently, British music dominates pop music from other countries without ever seeming like they’re trying. Whether it comes to pure song craft, sonic innovation, or showmanship, the British always seem to know exactly about the modes of pop music. It’s not our intention to start a war of nations over who has the best music, and this is why our article is not a “Top 10 Music Countries”. Regardless of the caution in these preliminary remarks though, we do expect a certain amount of criticism from the most obvious omission. We asked ourselves what British music we listen to and enjoy the most and this became our list. If we were to base our list on more popular guidelines this omission would not be made, but as this article is focused on what we listen to the most, we could only answer honestly by what we listen to day to day. Here then are Old-Wizard’s top ten British bands of all time.

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DK v. Mega Man

Written by Zeromage 2 Comments
Last Updated:: April 2, 2008

Look what we found.
Singing with Dandy

Written by Zeromage No Comments
Last Updated:: March 10, 2008

Here’s a quote I read. “Some never participate. Life happens to them. They get by on little more than dumb persistence and resist with anger or violence all things that might lift them out of resentment-filed illusions of security.”

I gave it some thought and I came to the conclusion that you have to define life before you can live it. Does anyone have an earth-spanning definition for life? Personally when I was thinking about this this morning, I called it satisfaction. Life is being satisfied in what your are doing at the time without being bitter. If planning is your thing, and it makes you happy, then you’re living life in your own way. Overall, I figured it was best to probably ensure that everything I was doing I found fun. Fun is satisfaction to me. A few things that I labeled “dumb persistence” were work and boring subjects in schools.

I’d say that I am not living life as per my definition of life which sucks. Lesser people would tailor their definition of life to coincide with how they are currently living. Instead, I think its better to have a goal of living life that is Xanadu and eventually reaching it, sooner rather than later. For some people, having that crutch in life is normal, and they need it. Its not living life by my standards, but for them it suffices. It all comes back to how you define life. There’s the easy way and the hard way. How do I plan on reaching my Utopian goal? By removing the “resentment-filled illusions of security” from my life. I have to figure out a way to never have to work. Needless to say while I was pondering this this morning, it renewed by zest for writing my book, as not having to work removes the primary “resentment-filled illusion of security” in my life.
Top 10 Video Games of All Time

Written by Zeromage 55 Comments
Last Updated:: March 1, 2008

The Old-Wizard staff spends much of their time contemplating what the greatest games of all time are from every system in all ages. Whether it’s a drunken night, a sober night, a math night, or even a romantic night with our girlfriends, we at Old-Wizard can’t keep our minds off what the greatest games of all time are much to the dismay of our significant others. After long hard work narrowing down our top 100 favorite games, we finally became settled with what our top 10 video games of all time were. These were not chosen lightly as there were obvious omissions that made us question even defining what a top ten list of video games would look like. Would half of the list consist of Legend of Zelda games? In order to make sure that didn’t happen, we decided to include only one game from any franchise. We weren’t dismayed by this problem though, and put down what we thought were the ten best games ever. We think our descriptions of our favorite games of all time will speak for themselves in defense against other suitable choices. We know there will be games on this list that readers will agree with. We also know that that there will be games on this list that will make readers want to send viruses over to our server in hopes of never having to read these choices again. Regardless, we feel these next ten games will be remembered for years to come.

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Doomsday!

Written by bug 5 Comments
Last Updated:: February 26, 2008

Jesus Christos! Corpus Christi!

It is official; the Norwegian government has excavated the former apartment / love nest of Superman, and is now using it to store seeds.

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HD DVD is Dead!!!

Written by bug No Comments
Last Updated:: February 19, 2008

Today marks a day of a new technology crashing to the ground. Toshiba Corporation, the brainchild behind the glorified new movie media known as High Definition Digital Video Disc, or HD-DVD for short, pulled the plug on their so called superior technology. The ongoing and bloody battle has been raging for months where Sony’s technology known as Blu Ray was going head to head with HD-DVD. This was known to come to an end at some time, as the differences in the two mediums were virtually unnoticeable. The Blu Ray discs hold a bit more amount of data on them, which makes them technically superior to the HD-DVD medium. The only fall back that has been mentioned about the Blu Ray is that the protective coating on the bottom of the disc is mere fractions thinner than the protective coating of the HD-DVD discs. Users have to be more gentle and show more care for their Blu Ray Discs when handling them, which can be seen as a downfall. These are the main differences in the two mediums, and both of them offer the same exact high fidelity and the difference can’t be noticed by the human eye. When it really comes down to it, the amount of movie companies that were choosing HD-DVD were dwarfed by the amount of companies who chose Blu Ray. It was always a disappointment when a new movie came out to DVD, and the company chose HD-DVD instead of Blu Ray. Well now that has been laid to rest, and in the 34th round of fighting, HD-DVD is down for the count. Blu Ray is now the king of media, and improvements will be made to this technology to offer its viewers an even more intense viewing experience.
Legacy Weapon Deck

Written by Zeromage No Comments
Last Updated:: February 17, 2008

Ever since I first saw the Legacy Weapon in a friend’s five coloured deck I’ve always wanted to make my own deck based around it. Here’s what I came up with (It uses the colourless mana from Urza’s Lands and converts it with the Crystal Quarries in order to power the Legacy Weapon):

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Video Game Review: Quake 4

Written by Zeromage No Comments
Last Updated:: February 2, 2008

Made by Ravensoft, the classic franchise returns, and as usual, it’s Quake’s multiplayer that saves the day and will keep this game on your hard drive for months to come. Quake Four’s campaign itself isn’t as good, but it’s worth playing through anyway. The Quake 4 storyline picks up where Quake 2 left off (Quake 3 Arena didn’t have a single-player storyline): with the Space Marines fighting the Strogg (an alien race who are much like the Borg from Star Trek, only more Goth), this time on their home planet of Stroggos.You take on the role of Corporal Matthew Kane, a member of the elite Rhino Squad, as the Space Marines attempt to annihilate their alien nemesis. Unfortunately for you, your landing craft gets shot down in the middle of trench warfare, and you’re separated from your unit. Afterwards, it’s off to the races as one superior officer after another sends you off to retrieve someone, destroy key locations, and infiltrate deep behind enemy lines. Sometimes you’ll be accompanied by game-controlled team members – usually a technical officer who can repair your armour, and/or a medic who can heal you up to full health.

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