1. Legos are certainly allowed to be the Legos of grown ups. Legos really don’t stop being awesome as you age. Especially if you have a box huge bucket of them with lots of specialty pieces mixed in.

2. Age aside, Legos and Minecraft are certainly ok for nerds and non-nerds alike. I bought Minecraft when it was still in Pre-Alpha stage (Indev) – nerd. But as of this posting Minecraft has over 3.5 million paying users and over 14 million registered users in its Beta stage and has a massive conference planned for this November when they will release the first “official” version. I’m not really sure if they still call it ‘official’ when the game has been available to the public for years now as they’ve been developing it. Suffice it to say, Minecraft is way beyond some niche nerd group or even hipsters that call themselves nerds.

Alright, now that I’ve perhaps answered a few disagreements with the title of this post, let’s move on so I can give you much more to disagree with.

Perfect for display on the mantle

I don’t know when the last time was that you actually played with Legos, but they’re still awesome. If you’re like most Lego-interacting adults, you might have bought a Lego pack and spent a riveting Wednesday evening assembling the 600 piece machine – a wholly worthy endeavor. But when was the last time you held a yellow-headed Lego dude in your hand and fought his arch nemesis or walked through a world you created for him? It’s been a while, ya? So we still “play” with Legos, we just make different stuff out of them – usually more complicated and much less imaginative stuff. The problem is that we have lost the perspective of being IN the world we’re building. Watch any kid with Legos (or any toy really) and they’re usually being the character – often with their eyes right down on the level of the toy itself.

Hey you can’t blame them, it is way more fun to experience our creations in the most immersive way possible. Enter Minecraft. In case you have not played it yet, imagine a world made of Legos and you are living in it, allowed to destroy and create whatever you want. That’s the simple explanation. Now pretend that there’s also water and monsters and gadgets and animals and night and day and weapons and weather and your friends* (if you’re playing online) – Now you’re getting closer to Minecraft.

The beauty of Minecraft is in it’s balance of real world (physics, weather, biomes/climates, nature) and ultimate creative freedom. If you want to, you can dig up a bunch of dirt and built a single column tower to the sky. Or you can take the time to mine enough stone to build a 1:1 scale model of London’s Tower Bridge.

Would look good in Legos or Minecraft

As Notch, Jeb and the rest of the Mojang team continues development on Minecraft, we get to see an already great experience fill out with more and more to do. Recent additions include villages filled with NPCs (non-player characters), new monsters, and XP points. Many of these pieces are pointing towards the role-playing aspect of the game getting a great boost before the full release in November.

Maybe you’re not into the RPG thing with monsters and NPCs (“what are those?”). If you’re not into that, but still like creating things and interacting in a 3D world with your creations – there is Creative Mode on Minecraft. In creative mode, you start with a clean slate of flat grassy plain on which to build at will from your infinite supply of any of the blocks in the game. Make Tower Bridge, make a rollercoaster, make whatever you can dream up! All without the fear of having to survive against the monsters and your own hunger (in the game – you still have to eat in real life while you play.)

Come play – Try it out! I’ll be waiting for you.

Edit – The default graphics of Minecraft aren’t that great, but there are tons of texture packs that you can install to make the graphics much better. If you need help with this, just let me know – I’d be happy to help.

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UPDATE: This list will be for movies from your college days or before, if you’re my age  (ie around 5+ years ago).

** I’ve nixed a few great movies simply because they’re just too recent. I’ll make another list/poll for those. Since the conversation started with Garden State (2004) – that will be the cut off. Also, anime has been nixed (because I’m close minded).

In a recent conversation with some friends, we stumbled upon the fact that my girlfriend fiancee wife had never seen Garden State. We were all flabbergasted. As we investigated further, we came to find out that she had missed out on many of the rest of the groups favorite movies from years past. It turned into a quick-fire survey where we were all shouting out movies, most with her shaking her head “no” to. I quickly got out a paper and pen and started writing down the movies we were throwing out with much nostalgia, noting the ones my hypo-cinematically-exposed lady friend had not seen.

(Edit) I quickly lost the list before I was able to transfer it to this blog. So help me out by posting the movies that you feel are staples in your DVD collection or ones that you would be surprised to find out if one of your friends hadn’t seen it yet.

(Edit) I’ve made the list into a poll – feel free to vote for your Top 20 “Should’ve Already Seen” movies – View Results link at bottom.

It hits all the requirements: Simple to learn, hard to master, addicting as all get out!

If it doesn’t work you can play it here: Curveball

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“Easy to play. Hard to master.” is what they say.
(I’d suggest muting the sound though – it’s annoyingly loud)

Show/Hide Game (Music will start/stop playing.)

If it doesn’t work you can play it here: Canyon Defense

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Here by popular demand is the first of an on-going series – “Games to pass/waste the time”. I have played this one a few times and it’s so simple, yet, shooting down dragons just doesn’t get old. If you can beat level 15 – You’re better than me.

Edit: As it turns out you can’t play past Level 3 unless you actually play it at Addicting Games. So try playing it at Addicting Games – Dragon Slayers 2

(Sadly I am having trouble getting it to run on my laptop)

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I’d say I’m a spy movie junkie. I love the espionage, the con-ing, the martial arts expertise. It’s awesome! If it didn’t take years of training with no room for family or a real social life, I would probably have gone that route long ago. But alas, I didn’t, so I watch the movies to quell my desires to slip past teenaged security at Target and make my way into the “Employee Only” break room and slip someone’s lunch into my coat pocket.

These are my top choices.

Movie	The Awesome Spy (Actor)	Comments
1. Bourne Supremacy	Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) Kirill (Karl Urban)	It’s all there on this one
2. Bourne Ultimatum	Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) Desh (Joey Ansah)	Parkour on the roof and using a book with deadly force
3. Body of Lies	Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio)	Suspense at every turn. Plenty of espionage and tight situations in which DiCaprio has to rely on his stellar spy skills.
4. Spy Game	Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt)	Old spy takes promising new spy under his wing. Espionage on the field and in the office.
5. Casino Royale	James Bond (Daniel Craig)	Gadgets, Parkour, Crack shooting, amazing cars, out witting the bad guy… and of course a ripped up spy dressed to the nines.
6. Bourne Identity	Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) The Professor (Clive Owen)	Dozens of passports, Spy vs Spies, nonstop suspense
7. Mission: Impossible	Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)	Micro-gadgets, mystery, real looking faces for disguises
8. The Saint	Simon Templar (Val Kilmer)	Multiple disguises and accents. Contraptions and specialized gear.
9. The Recruit	James Clayton (Colin Farrell)	Spy training course
10. True Lies	Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzeneggar)	Comedic elements and completely far-fetched, but tux under a wetsuit, Harrier jet, using spy resources to humiliate a used car salesman – fantastic!

To peruse a list of modern spy movies, check out this list:

Spy Movies at the Box Office – Box Office Mojo

Update: I’m thinking Munich should be on this list. A bit more of a realistic look at spy activity.

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