Posted three new game reviews: Halo, Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon, and NHL 2002 for Xbox.

Also, a minor update to ReBait.

FRIDAY, 8/9/2002, 12:01 am HST by Penfold

Just a bit of pre-dating action.

Next time you need to build your own PC, maybe these guys can help.

A few months ago, there was a mad influx of crap mail from crushlink. Salon takes a look at the company and its methods here.

Enviromentalist are up in arms (and litigating) over the Navy's testing of a new sonar system which can hassle the shit out of whales. 215 decibels of sound, and you thought car stereos were bad.

Submitted by Mike G.

Coffee cup inflation

Sweetheart, incidentally, supplies 7-Eleven with its 44-ounce Super Big Gulp cups, which are a blatant example of America's swelling desire for huge beverages. To satisfy this near-bottomless thirst, Deignan says the company is considering producing an 80-ounce cold drink cup.

Want to imortalize yourself on the internet? How about using google art (take a look at this).

You create the ASCII art, and the page does the rest. Check it out here.

BASTARDS, bastards them all

NEW YORK -- ESPN is reducing the number of NHL games on its schedule by 30 percent.

Regular season games on ESPN and ESPN2 drops from 102 to 71 next season. The network showed 128 NHL games in 2000-01.

THURSDAY, 8/8/2002, 2:45am HST by Raul

Sega, which left the console business to develop games full-time, is releasing Toejam and Earl 3: Mission to Earth, until recently subtitled All Funked Up, in October. The original Toejam and Earl games were Sega Genesis cartridges that focused on exploration and cooperation. TJ&E 3 is being released exclusively on Xbox and will feature many of the gameplay concepts that made the first game successful. It will also feature a third alien (undoubtedly to appeal to females), Latisha. Check out a preview video here.

Call me a odd if you wish, but I haven't anticipated a game release for any platform like this just about ever. I guess you just had to be there to understand, but TJ&E is an icon of one of the happiest times in my life. I never played #2, which was a side-scroller, but I heard it wasn't as good as #1. And it's the promises of the developers that #3 is going to be like "coming home" to TJ&E 1 that have me jazzed up.

Make sure you check out the master site above, and especially the sections about the older games. Click on Earl for an archive page of sounds from the original game. Click on Toejam for the original theme music, also linked below. I don't normally do animated Gifs, but I couldn't resist!

Other media:

• The Official Sega TJ&E 3 Site
• The trailer of TJ&E 3, from E3
• The original Toejam and Earl theme (0.99 MB), mirrored for posterity. Gets me downright misty-eyed ;)
• The Ultimate Guide to the original Toejam and Earl -- a very well-done site.
• The Gampro preview which first alerted me to this title.

This is a truly hilarious site. Eric Conveys an Emotion is about, well, Eric conveying emotions submitted by readers of his site. The site has been around since 1998 but Khosk just clued me in to it ... I had to laugh out loud at some of the pictures.

Well, I bought an Xbox, so from now on you may see some Xbox-oriented articles and game reviews here. To anyone thinking about getting one, I can say without a doubt to go for it. It IS the best gaming system out right now and the price is just too good to pass up.

Here's a couple of links to kick off our relationship with the Xbox:

• allXbox, a community site with reviews and a truly oustanding 'zine.
• Gamepro's Xbox area, with short-n-sweet reviews and lots of good info.
• Gamezone's Xbox area -- loads of reviews.

Well here's a bit of interesting visuals from Sandia laboratories, which is involved in MEMS research (MicroElectroMechanical Systems). They're building machines so small, they are dwarfed by dust mites! Remember the microwankel? From Gspot.

Central OC

Owensboro, KY -- An enterprising young man has managed to run his appliances faster by overclocking the electrical system in his house. Toast gets done faster, beverages get colder and clothes spin dry at the speed of light, well, almost.