Designer Mike Thompson has created a lamp that is powered by human blood. His intention was to show how the importance of energy to human existence and how the overexploitation of aforementioned energy could bring about our end. In the process though, he appears to have created one of the most gothic forms of lighting we have ever seen.

Continue reading Possibly the most Goth lamp ever designed

For those of you who love horror fiction and roleplaying, yet also don’t mind a bit of academic/philosophical speculation, let me introduce a wonderful resourse: Collapse volume IV. This is a special edition of an academic journal on philosophy, this time specialising in horror fiction. Those of you who have a particular weakness for Lovecraftian fiction (such as myself) may be interested in Graham Harman’s article, “On the Horror of Phenomenology: Lovecraft and Husserl”, which starts on page 333.

Continue reading The Philosophy of Horror

For those of you who don’t know, Keith ‘Doc’ Herber was one of the shining lights of the gaming industry. Many people had their first taste of the Cthulhu Mythos through Herber’s work; he was the principal author on such classic gaming masterpieces as “Fungi from Yuggoth” and “Spawn of Azathoth” among many others. After a period of quietude following a split with Chaosium several years ago, Herber had recently reconciled with the company, and had established (with others) another publishing house known as Miskatonic River Press dedicated to the production of new scenarios for the Cthulhu Mythos. Many were they who were eagerly looking forward to the new creations of a veteran of the field. Unfortunately for all, he passed away in the night of 13th of March, being found by his wife the next morning.

Continue reading In Memoriam: Keith ‘Doc’ Herber

I’ll get right to the point – I love this game. It has an awesome visual feel to it – very Diablo in mood and atmosphere and the controls and game play are simple but effective. The graphics on the game, and the polished feel really add to the games appeal as well. Despite having great controls, this is also the first iPhone game to give me the beginnings of RSI (although I suspect that is more due to the hours I have spent playing it than anything else). Like some other games, I struggled at first, so I thought I’d post the lessons I have learnt playing the game in the hope that it helps a few others out there.

Killing Vampire ‘Bosses’

This stumped for a little while. At the end of a couple of levels, you need to kill the ‘Dracula’ boss (the vampire in the long red cloak). You can throw a lot at this guy and he’ll keep hurting you with his annoying green beam of hurty energy and not go down. This all changes if you are using the crossbow. Obvious, I know, but it didn’t occur to me that the developer’s would have thought of that (sorry guys…). One or two shots with the crossbow at the right spot, and the dude is out, leaving a nice glowing pentagram for you to collect…

Power Ups

This again stumped me the first couple of times that I played. There is a little green square that lights up when you earn a power up. Click it, and you are presented with a random list of power ups to choose from. I have my favourite combo’s, which look a bit like this:

• Bonus loot + Telekinesis = Lots of extra ammo and health. The bonus loot is really handy to get extra stuff dropping from slain werewolves and the like. This extra loot can be hard to run around and collect at times, so why not have it come to you. This is where Telekinesis comes in – the loot starts drifting towards you as you run around making the collection job a heck of a lot easier.
• Crossbow Master = Killing Spree. You get to fire three shots from your crossbow at once, and as crossbow bolts fly straight throw monsters and into the monsters behind them instantly killing everything that they touch, this is quite effective.
• Power Shot + Telekinesis = Safely keeping your distance. Power Shot pushes monsters away with each shot that doesn’t kill them to a safe distance. If you hit them again, however, any loot that they drop will be quite far away. Telekinesis (see above) is the obvious solution to this.

There are others that are useful to, like Fieldrunner (move quickly) Deep Pockets (carry more ammo) and Bloodlust (cause more damage when you are hurt).

Keep Moving

If you stand still, you are going to get swamped. It may be tempting to get your back to a wall, but that isn’t going to help you very much when you are surrounded by an endless wall of monsters. If you are worried about moving through packs of werewolves (and realistically, who isn’t these days…) then get the Ninja power up (allows you to deflect some of the attacks).

What the Weapons do

• Pistol – push back a little, require multiple hits per kill
• Shotgun – push back more, require two or so shots to kill, small area of effect
• Crossbow – no push back, usually one shot per kill
• Blunderbuss – no push back, like a grenade launcher, one shot per kill, area of effect
• Mini-gun – big push back, haven’t worked out shots to kill ratio (too dizzy from spinning the gun around wildly)
• Rocket Launcher – area of effect, great range, big damage

iDracula (iTunes link) $0.99 (AUD 1.19)

By the title of this blog you may think I am talking about people who spend so much time on Facebook that they become like zombies, Pale skin, unable to communicate in person except by grunts, but despite this rather patronising geek stereotype I am talking about the instances of Zombie culture on the worlds favourite social networking site.

When I first joined I was invited to install the VAMPIRES application, where, Zombies Vampires and Werewolves attacked each other on a daily basis. A simple concept, everyone else seemed to have it, and who could resist attacking a Catholic Schoolgirl vampire?

Recently I have been playing two of the Mindjolt applications games. Zombie Hell, and my personal favourite, Zombie Kitten. Zombie Hell involves protecting your house and ten inhabitants from waves of zombies by collecting cash, buying weapons and attacking the zombies. It reminds me of the old game SYNDICATE, or as much as a flash game can. Zombie Kitten fits my previous rules for a good game and would look familiar to anyone who played the 80’s Dr Who vs Daleks game.

But there is more to Zombies on Facebook than the odd application alone. After all the Zombie talk on Dice of Doom and replays of Simpson Halloween episodes I decided to do search for Zombies on Facebook. A quick search will show more than 30 Applications, over 500 events, 40 pages and over 500 groups.

The groups particularly interested me, titles such as “Real friends kill friends who become zombies.”, “All You People Who Don’t Believe In Zombies… you’ll be dead first”, and “EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ZOMBIES”, certainly tweek the interest of anyone who watched too much Twilight Zone as a youth.

Living in the Hunter Valley though I looked straight away at Australian Zombie Outbreak Defence, Newcastle and Hunter Region. This band of 30 brothers is officially classed as a Volunteer organization by facebook and discusses such important matters as possible outbreaks and bases of defence. Personally I think Christchurch cathedral is the best place to be in Newcastle, or failing that, I will just drive to a mine site out of town, away from food sources and with lots of explosives at hand.

In short, if you are worried about the Zombie apocalypse, Facebook could be the place for you to prepare. And people say the internet is a waste of time.. PPfftt, First to be brain food come the undead rising.

For those of you who really get into the whole spirit [*cough*] of Halloween, this one might be for you. For a mere $545-$595 USD, you can purchase your own friend corpse to sit around the house, watch TV with you and keep you from getting lonely. Extremely lifelike, these faux corpses are made to order and you can specify all the little details to make your new friend your perfect companion. Choices include skin colour, hair colour, type of teeth (broken or not) and the level of decay. The amount of detail is certainly enough to creep your friends, if not significantly worry your neighbours. Check them out here.

Of course, an investment of $600 USD is a lot of money to spend on a single day. Feel free to leave suggestions of how else you might use one of these during the year…

[via Gizmodo]

We all know the zombie apocalypse is coming and its only a matter of time. While I have made very careful plans for the days and weeks that are to follow (and made sure that they are thoroughly understood by my friends and family), many may leave planning to the last minute (either through skepticism, laziness or good old fashioned intelligence). For those of you who want to prepare the easy way, a gentlemen by the name of, uh, “Bunny in a Bear” has created an ‘in case of zombie attack’ preparedness kit. Now if only everyone could get hold of one these maybe we’d be ok…

Check out the entire kit here… [via WhackyArchives]

Dark Fantasy was a radio program which aired for a short stint from 1941 to 1942. The audio plays were written by Scott Bishop, an author who had penned a number of short stories of weird fiction for various magazines, and was later to go on to the more widely known radio production known as the Sealed Book. My first introduction to this series of shows was while listening to the Cthulhu Podcast, which included the story The Demon Tree, which was based on the old English myth of the Strangling Oak. I listened to this while on my evening constitutional. In the dark, with the trees looming, I found it instantly chilling. Some stories show a Lovecraftian influence, and some of the names of the characters and places show that Bishop must have been influenced by Lovecraft’s writings.

It is, of course, also filled with wonderful 1940’s radio theatre cheese, including warbling organ, sexist stereotypes etc. But that all adds to the flavour.

The whole series can be downloaded both free and legally from the good folks at the Internet Archive.