Thursday, September 1, 2011

You Need To Stop

God invented digital photography so that we could delete crappy photos before they saw the light of day.  It was a glorious gift.  Stop fucking it up.  If you wouldn't pay the pennies to develop/print a photo then spare us all and don't put it on the internet either.  Edit.  Your.  Photos.

I'm not saying you need to break out fancy photo editing software to adjust color balances and touch up wrinkles.  The only thing I'm asking you to use is the delete button.  Just look at your photo and decide whether another human would ever care to look at it.  Does it fail to capture a moment or image that's even slightly interesting?  Are you the only conceivable target audience?  If so, don't upload it.

Do you not have the time to look at each photo and make that kind of decision for each one?  Stop.  Bulk camera uploading kill kittens.  If you don't have the time to review your photos then we don't have the time to look at them.

Is this a photo of a person?  Look at it.  Is it flattering?  If it was a photo of you, would you want it on the internet for everyone to see?  Would it be how you would want to be portrayed?  To your mom?  To your boss?  To prospective love interests?  If the answer to any of these is no then stop.  Do the person a favor and delete the photo.  Or at the very least ask them first before you blast it onto the internet for all to see.

Seriously, I don't know what is wrong with you people.  Not every captured image is sacred.  I'm not even going to berate you for spending more time capturing your shitty photos than enjoying what you're taking a photo of.  I just want you to please exercise some fucking decency and stop the digital diarrhea spewing out of your camera. 

Fable Coin Golf

I've had a couple people ask me if I could disseminate the results from my various Windows Phone gaming expeditions. I keep putting it off, but the fact that Fable Coin Golf is on sale this week reminded me to stop procrastinating.

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FableCoinGolf

In Fable Coin Golf you flick a coin from one end to the other of an obstacle course while attempting to accumulate the highest score possible. Each flick subtracts from your score, but there are also pits, ponds, and monsters to avoid. You earn points for most everything else you bump into, especially coins and exploding barrels. Generally the challenge doesn't come from simply completing the level, but rather doing it with enough finesse to achieve a qualifying score.

As that this is Fable Coin Golf, the courses and obstacles are all themed after the big Fable games. It's got a stage-craft vibe that is pretty charming. The fidelity of the visuals may be why the levels take longer to load than I'd like, but at least the end result is quite pleasant.

The controls are accurate enough to get the job done. When going for the higher scores you may curse the imprecision of touch controls, but for the most part it's as accurate as you need it to be.

One of the hooks of the game is that your scores translate directly into currency for Fable III. I played Coin Golf before I was too far into Fable III, and I actually took the time to gold star every single level. So when I transferred the money into my Fable III game I was instantly rich. I was suddenly able to buy every single piece of property I had ever seen, and I never had to perform menial labor ever again. This had the side effect of somewhat ruining the economy-based win condition at the end of the game, but from what I hear that does a fine job of ruining itself even without being preemptively filthy rich. Seen as an alternative to playing Lute Hero or any of the other in-game jobs, Fable Coin Golf is much more entertaining.

I like Fable Coin Golf, and would quickly recommend it to pretty much anyone. It did exactly what I want a phone game to do - short burst entertainment. With it being on sale this week, I'd definitely recommend picking it up if you haven't already.