Desktop Tower Defense

I recently came across a new Flash-based game called .  This is quite a fun game, and it requires some strategy to get high scores.  The basic premise is that you build towers to keep the “creeps” (aliens/robots/ships/whatever they are) from getting across the screen.  Actually, that’s the whole premise.  But there are 6 different types of towers, each with unique strengths and weaknesses, and there are variances among the “enemy”.

If you’ve ever played Age of Empires (AoE) or Empire Earth, you should be familiar with building towers for defense.  If you’re like us, you’ve tried to build a “Path o’ Death” that the enemy could not get through, so you wouldn’t have to do any work while your defenses protect you.  In this game, all you do is build a path of death.  It may sound simple, and the concept is, but making it work on the advanced levels isn’t quite so easy.

A little trivia on this game : it was developed by a Visual Basic programmer who had no professional experience with game development, yet now he’s making, by his estimate, high four figures per month for this fun, little game, all from ad revenue.  (Perhaps this is what I should be doing!)  This shows that you don’t need fancy graphics and high-dollar budgets to develop a fun, profitable game.

Feel free to post your high scores (along with what difficulty you were on) in the comments section.   Instead of having to create a screenshot if you get an outrageously ridiculous high score, you can submit it to the online scoreboard (except on the Easy setting).  It’ll prompt you to enter your name, and when you get a chance to enter a group, put : Buffet_o_Blog.  (If it doesn’t prompt you, then your score wasn’t high enough to be considered and you will just have to practice more.)

Have fun!

how to fall asleep quickly, according to TV

Does your restless mind keep you awake?  Do you lie awake at night, wondering how to fall asleep?  If that’s you, then you should let some butterflies into your room at night.  It works in the commercials — those people go to sleep quickly, instantly even.  Although the butterflies are glowing, like they’re radioactive.  I don’t know where you can get any of those, though…  Even if you could get some, it might be a violation of federal law to use them in a manner inconsistent with their labelling.  And helping you fall asleep is probably not one of the intended uses for mutant butterflies.  Although those commercials have been on TV for a while now, so maybe they’ve found some loophole or something.  But I still don’t know where you can acquire any of those mutant butterflies…

a new sighting of Nessie

An amateur scientist has shot video of what he suspects to be , the Loch Ness Monster.  The legend continues…

Follow this link for a video news report, including an interview with the man who shot the footage.

I could provide more details from the news story, but this isn’t a news service.  However, this is worth mentioning here because we have something that the leading brand news sites don’t have : a story about a group of explorers that find Nessie.  Yes, in our current free-for-all story, the Explorers Extraordinaire have found Nessie, along with several other unexpected things.  The events occurring in the story might not all be validated by scientific research, but they are funny.  🙂  Okay, so maybe none of it has really happened, but that’s because it’s fiction.  But it’s a good read.  And, at the time of this writing, it’s still not finished, so anybody can contribute the next piece of the story.  You should check it out.  It’s a good time.  It’s funny, random, and very much unpredictable.  It’s also fresh, original humor that you can’t find anywhere else.  And, it also makes you wonder what might be in the depths of the Loch, in the unexplored regions…

new cookie dough technology

This morning some of my co-workers expected me to get to work by 8:00 AM, so I didn’t have time for a fair and balanced breakfast.  That meant no cereal and certainly not anything more elaborate.  I didn’t want to skip out on breakfast, because it’s one of the three most important meals of the day.  cookieFortunately I found some raw cookie dough in the fridge.  Of course there wasn’t time to cook it, but it turned out that this was some of that new “slow-bake” cookie dough.  Now, by the name, you might think it would take longer to prepare, but the irony is that it’s much quicker.  See, it bakes at 98.6 degrees.  You don’t have to wait on the oven to preheat, because your stomach is already preheated to this exact temperature.  So you just eat the raw cookie dough, and nature naturally takes care of it for you while you go on about your business.  It’s quite convenient!

BTW, of course I had milk to go with it.  You’ve got to have milk with chocolate chip cookies!  It was 2 percent milk.  (Yes, that’s because I’m overweight.)  Hopefully these were some specially-formulated low-fat cookies.  I didn’t have time to read the nutritional info on the package to verify this, though…