Did you ever browse around in a comic book store as a kid adn find the Marvel “What If…?” comic books? Books that were about reknown comicbook characters but “What if…?” something abotu them was different… Pat of their backstory, part of their powers, or results of one thing or another that has happened in their comic books…

I won’t go into the geekdom of the what if concept and the different stories that were based on this. Lets just say it as a venerable butterfly effect — the flapping of wings on a different continent were part of the reason why a typhoon formed in the Pacific Ocean.

One small happening causes a huge domino effect and results in something seemingly indirect and different to happen. That kind of thing.

Today I came across (by way of Dave Lowe) a joke observation from the Back To The Future saga and the original movie. It was composed as a (profane) letter from Doc Brown to Marty McFly regarding one of Marty’s choices on the eve of November 12th, 1955. It’s funny as hell but it leaves you wondering just how different the story would have turned out if Marty McFly had done things differently.

So I got me a “What if…?” like this regarding a movie that I love. It’s (the film’s) basis is pretty simple and was the framework for plenty of different action movies from the late 1980′s through the 1990′s.

The movie in this case is Die Hard.

What if…? What if…?

What if Lt. John McClane of the New York Police Department… had shoes on while dealing with the terrorists at Nakatomi Plaza?

Of course there is no definite answer to this with the HOW or WHY. I thought that is part of the magic of the “What If…?” Does John make sure to slip his shoes on instead of doing the stupid fists-with-your-toes thing? Does he grab his shoes when he hears gunshots and ducks out of the room? Shit, does John slip back onto the 30th floor, grab his shoes and socks and slip back out?

How does this change things? Does he employ different tactics, or is the only notable difference in the scene where John is pinned down on the computer floor and the henchman Karl shoots the glass around the office to smithereens?

What if…?

It’s so simple, it’s so stupid but it opens up a huge can of worms. Nothing might change and everything might change in just one minor action. Maybe McClane gets blown away because he has more confidence and takes on the terrorists head on? That’s the most cynical thought I have regarding this every time I think about it — we don’t get John-McClane from the first three Die Hard films, we get the Ah-nuld wanna Be from Die Hard 4 and see him suffer (and die) in the fashion that we saw John proved mortal in the first Die Hard film.

Maybe events fall a certain way so that Ellis doesn’t die — all because John McClane was wearing his stupid shoes instead of making fists with his toes! Maybe Al Powell doesn’t buy Twinkies at the gas station but opts for Ho-Hos instead? Holly doesn’t opt to restrain Joseph Takagi during Hans Gruber’s monologue — resulting in… Takagi giving up the password for the vault and living for another hour or more?

Humor me. What if John McClane tried to save the Nakatomi Hostages while he had shoes on? And would it have been worthy of a feature film?

Happy trails, Hans.

I have fits of giggles every time I see this.

I’ve been re-playing the old Quest for Glory games from Sierra Online the last few days. The redesigned Trial by Fire from AGD Interactive, Wages of War and Shadows of Darkness. So I’m really re-living my love for the game.

Re-living it so much that I took the Famous Adventurers Corespondence School’s Admissions test:

My name is Forge of Armongaar and I am a Paladin.

What kind of Hero Are You?

www.theschoolforheroes.com

The odd thing was that with my love for the game, I wanted to finisht eh series and re-play the fifth and final game of the series: Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire.

After I installed it and played for a few minutes, I couldn’t believe how much I hated it.

The three previous games I had played (I skipped the original game, but the design I am about to talk about holds true for that game as well) were graphical/art driven adventures. Dragon Fire, however, is a bridge game for Role Playing Games in general. Everything is developed in computer-animated 3-D… Not the quality you would see if you were playing a MMORPG now, but a very early version of such interfaces.

I just wasn’t satisfied with the product, which I had played before, this time around. Not after playing the other adventures back-to-back-to-back. I expected the cartoonish 2-D fun and instead I got early 3-D boxiness that just didn’t fit in the overall scheme.

**shrug**

Anyone else catch the change to Yahoo profiles? Maybe it’s been around for a while but I only just noticed the fact that the feature has turned into a psuedo social network.

Of course, they need to still do a lot of work and cut out a lot of BS — The Yahoo 360­° thing remains bullshit (and solely a source of spam) and a lot of Yahoo features are redundant (as I could see from a list of Yahoo features listed on the “All Yahoo Sources” area of the profile setting update messages.

Almost a year ago, Tommy over at Sticks of Fire and Brett Glisson worked out a deal where Tommy…  well, he bought / took over Brett’s brainchild TampaBLAB.  For the uninformed, uninititated or the plain flat out uncurious (helloooo Bush family!)  the TampaBLAB is an aggregator / blog reader.  It shares new posts from blogs in the greater Tampa Bay metropolitan area.

It sounds really complex but really, it’s not.   It’s simply like this:  You have a blog, most (if not all) blogs provide feeds — ways to syndicate or share their content with other web sites.  If you’re a  blogger living in the Tampa Bay area and you wanna’ share your blog with the rest of the Tampa Bay blogosphere, you submit it to TampaBLAB and lo and behold — every new post you write gets published at the BLAB (not in it’s entirety, mind you, just a lead in).

Of course, someone has to be in charge of the BLAB (acronym for Bay Local Area Bloggers).  Tommy didn’t have the time to update the theme and add newly submitted blogs, nor maintain the main blog page on the BLAB.  That’s where I’ve come in…  Running the day to day and keeping an eye on things…  Dropping defunct blogs that haven’t updated in a long while…  Adding newly submitted sites.  Occasionally posting on the BLAB Blog and fixing technical SNAFU’s that show up from time to time.

…Well, more often than not with thanks to the number of upgrades WordPress has gone through in the last few months and compatibility issues that arise because of it.  But that’s techno-jargon you could do without.

So it’s been good so far, a little slow. Know someone who blogs in Tampa Bay and wants more readers? Suggest they submit their site to the BLAB. Brand spanking new blogs with no posts need not apply, though… Sorry. Blogs come and go so quickly that we can’t accept the newest of new kids on the blogging block.

Also, I’m trying to figure out if I should make the Skyway theme that’s employed at the BLAB available to the general WordPress-blogging public for download. It’s cute but not cutting edge, you know?

Copy Editor: “RUMORS OF OUR DEMISE HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED“; bold faced and centered across the front page. Print it.

Janet Coats: What are you doing?

CE: Refuting the rumors that are going around that the newspaper will be ceasing publication in the coming weeks. It’s really heinous stuff and we have to re-assure readership with…

JC: You can’t print that headline.

CE: Well, no, I guess we can’t now that I look at it. It’s kind of long… We could, well, you know, find another phrase to use…

JC: No, you can’t print a headline like that — in bold — at all. Ink isn’t on sale this quarter and stockholders are upset as is that Mother Corporate‘s share price is down. You need to pare down that statement to the bare bones.

CE: Well, all right, we’ll –

JC: Look, “exaggerated” is too big a word to stick in there. No one who still reads a print edition of a newspaper will understand it… That’s got to go.

CE: Oka–

JC: And then pare down the most common words you are using: of, our, have… They have no relevance in this age of buzz words. Change the typed out version of the word “are” to “R”… See, it’s looking fine. Now nix the -ly on greatly and we can save all of another penny on ink! This will so please everyone back in Richmond!

CE: But –

JC: Just LOOK! It’s a bold statement in itself without actually being bold! It’s hip and now! Print it! Ship it!

CE: “Rumors r great”?

JC: Don’t QUESTION it, just DO it. We’re in the Internet age! By now the Times has already posted three stories on their blogs and out on the rest of the Internet, there are thousands of new, fresh stories! How can we be with-it with you lolly gagging in your old ways?! HOP TO!
—

Life. Printed Inanely.

Here’s a quick way to either get on my bad side or get yourself flat out removed from my friends list on Facebook: Use status updates for advertising and only advertising.

I hate to break it to bloggers across the Internet but Facebook has a tool built in called Notes and that gives you the ability to import your RSS feed from your blog onto your profile.

Your status? That’s about you. That’s not for blog headlines, requests for people to become-a-fan-of through Facebook Pages or some other promotional crap like that. If you need help marketing your blog or site, there are plenty of tools out there on the web and plenty of better (less annoying) strategies regarding social media.

I add friends and networking contacts because I’m friends with them or they are colleagues. Sometimes it’s because I am a fan. But it’s a real big pet peeve of mine for someone to find the only use for their Facebook profile as a large EAT AT JOE’S advertisement.

One fo the tough things I have to do when handling graphic design is trying to eyeball graphics out to see how aligned the graphics are — or how pleasing to my eye things look in their final arrangement. It can drive me crazy.

That being said, I got a kick out of this Eyeballing game. It’s basic geometry and a lot of alignment spotting. Though my average is quite high, it was better than I figured it to be.

Just a little update regarding those crazy college kids who are playing Metroid to raise money for Child’s Play: After 24 hours of play, they have earned $366 dollars. Their goal is $500.

It’s kids being kids for the kids. Stop by the site and help’em out by donating.