The Photo of the Week #001 - Biggest manhunt in Arizona's history

During my wanders through Flickr pages I stumbled upon this picture from freeparking collection. This wanted poster comes from boxes of family photos that the user inherited and which are really interesting especially those depicting scenes from the far west.
The poster shows the reward due for the capture of the men involved in the "Powers Affair", the biggest manhunt in Arizona's history.

An account from wikipedia says:

"In 1909 Jeff Powers and his family homesteaded in Rattlesnake Canyon and began mining nearby. When two of Powers' sons, Tom and John Powers, failed to report when drafted into World War I, Sheriff Robert F. McBride of Graham County delivered a letter to the Powers' asking them to come in for prosecution, but it was ignored. Several weeks later, on the night of February 9, 1918, Deputy U.S. Marshal Frank Haynes, Sheriff McBride, and Deputy Sheriffs Martin Kempton and T.K. Wooten arrived at the Powers' cabin near the Powers Mine. They carried arrest warrants for Tom and John Powers for draft evasion, and warrants for Jeff Powers and his hired man, Tom Sisson, for an unrelated charge. Just before dawn on February 10, as the Powers camp was preparing breakfast, they heard two of their horses gallop by their dogs began barking. When Jeff Powers stepped outside with his rifle Deputy Sheriff Wooten yelled, "Throw up your hands! Throw up your hands!" A furious gunfight ensued, leaving Sheriff McBride, Deputy Sheriffs Kempton and Wooten, and Jeff Powers dead. Marshal Haynes escaped to nearby Klondyke, Arizona, while the Powers boys and Tom Sisson fled south to Redington on the San Pedro River, leading to the biggest manhunt in Arizona's history. They entered Mexico south of Hachita, New Mexico, where on March 8 they surrendered to a U.S. Army patrol that had picked up their trail and crossed the border in pursuit. At their trial, all three men were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Sisson died in prison at the age of 86, but the Powers brothers were paroled in 1960, forty-two years after their conviction. They were pardoned by Governor Jack Richard Williams nine years later."


The photo is by freeparking published under this Creative Commons license

B-Movie cast 96 is out! - I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

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The Treat of the Week #013

When smoking wasn't evil, advertisement from a tobacco friendlier time.


This is the title of a collection of tobacco posters published on Flickr by juffrouwjo.
I just hate cigarettes and I shiver when I think of a dozen years ago or so when you couldn't go to a bar or a restaurant without having your lungs filled of the pestilential smoke of the other patrons.
This flickr set reminds us of those days when wasn't smoke only accepted but also considered the natural companion of the healthy, sexy and moder men and women.

Have a look at the complete set here.

The Linux Game Box #5: Madness

In this installment of "The Linux Game Box" we are going to talk about Madness, a roguelike game that demonstrates how it's still possible to give the player a fun experience only with the scarcest need of technology.

Title: Madness

Genre: Roguelike

License: MIT License

Website: http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~pm262952/madness/

Installation requirements --> 9

There's no need for installation in Madness. Windows users must double click on madness.exe. Linux users just have to open a terminal and run  python madness.py

Gameplay fun --> 8

In madness you control an adventurer that must explore 10 dungeon levels and defeat the evil dungeon master. Each level is dark and packed with monsters and objects like armor, weapons and potions. Like in a skeletal rpg your character will level up and get stronger. Unlike many games, the most precious resource in Madness is sanity. The sanity level will constantly fall no matter what the player does. When it reaches the level or forty or so a message will inform you that the colors around your character are getting more vivid. Then imaginary monsters like butterflies and ponies will begin to appear in increasing numbers. As the game help states "not all what you see is real. And not all of what isn't real is harmless...". This is an intriguing mechanism that gives the game a clear touch of fun. 

Graphical appeal --> 7

Graphically the strongest point of Madness is its originality. As it happens with roguelike games, the graphics is all made of ASCII symbols. Walls are made of #, your character's a @ and the monsters take the shape of their initials like the r rats, B bats and colored b butterflies.

Sound delight --> 0

Sound is non existent.

Story enchantment --> 3

The story has no practical use for this kind of game though is almost non existent. You don't know who you are nor why you're stuck in a dungeon and can only descend through levels to fight an unknown and unexplained enemy.

OVERALL SCORE --> 5.4

Madness is a skeletal game that manages, after all, to supply a fun experience. It will not last for long though because the mechanics are to simple and the graphics too scarce to keep a player busy for long. However I suppose this wasn't the intent of the creator. As a matter of fact Madness was made by hmp (humpolec[at]gmail[dot]com) in seven days during the 2010 seven-day roguelike challenge

One Indie Comic Jem #000 - Rice Boy

As you would probably know if you ever happen to flip through my blog, I'm a fan of the free and/or open source content in all its forms. I truly believe that the so called (often inaccurately) open movement can represent a more evolute state of the market - a glimpse of future. There are fields were independent content excell in such a way that is not possible to distinguish an indie product from a professional high budget work, for what that quality matters. 

For this and other reasons I want to start a series of post to present the best web comics that can be found online, at least from my geeky perspective.

The One Electronic
(Aka Terrin Oculon)

I want to start this series with a web comic that represented to me a true inspiration. From this comic I elicted my nickname and my avatar. This work of art is called Rice Boy created by Evan Dahm. Rice Boy is a fantasy story that takes place in Overside, a complete world shaped as a disk accurately described and populated by Evan of several species of creatures that dwells the three big continents of Arica, Wusterim and Grenth. Rice Boy is all about an epic and somewhat saint struggle between good and evil forces. But apart from the theme which traces out the most ancient archetypes of human civilizations, Evan creates its own cosmology, mithology, bestiary, geography and civilizations with accurate history. All this it's a genuine work that cast the base for different sagas and short stories that take root and develop from Overside. 
So much work has been done by Evan that a wiki is also available here to explore and keep reference of the various aspects of the comics.
Evan graphic style is also really intriguing. With its strong and net colors and the somewhat naives shapes, the drawings boost the sense of visionary and out of the world sensation conveyed by the comic as a whole. So does the narration which reminds me, at certain times, of the classic Greek poems I used to read at school; a flavor which enforce the epic journey of the character toward their fate and the fate of the Overside.

Map of Overside

Right now Evan web site http://www.rice-boy.com/ contains, apart from Rice Boy, also Order  of Tales that takes place hundreads of years before Rice Boy, and a bunch of short stories that explores the same world. 
Evan has published a volume containing the Rice Boy saga, two books for the Order of Tales story. All these books, plus other items like sketchbooks and posters can be found at the store. 
I invite you to read Rice Boy and the other Evan Dahm's works. At the beginning of this post I called Rice Boy a work of art. Read it and I'm sure you'll understand I was right.

One page from Book 2 of Rice Boy

High Plains Invaders

Just finished to watch High Plains Invaders and I feel like giving a fresh comment about it.
HPI is a 2009 Canadian movie made to be run on cable tv channels and similar. It was filmed in Romania by a Romanian company.
The plot is simple and straighforward: aliens bugs assault a Colorado town of the late 19th century and a bunch of citizens struggle to survive and then, later, to wipe the alien menace out of planet Earth.
As I said the plot hasn't anything original about it. The bugs looks like the babies of the aliens from The War of the Worlds, except they're not machines and don't shoot laser beams but uranium rocks.
The characters aren't bad after all. I especially liked that of a female bounty hunter that, even if unlikely to fit the historical period, has an enjoyable -even exaggerated- attitude of a though woman and speaks like a mob leader. Jules, the scientist, is interesting because he isn't the classic I-know-everything savant and sounds instead quite shocked by something his scientist brain can't compute.
All in all High Plains Invaders isn't bad. It's an enjoyable movie for a relaxed evening. If you like the western genre and sci-fi movies like me, then High Plains Invaders is worth a rent. Just don't expect to go anywhere off the beaten track with the storyline.

B-Movie Cast 95 is out! - Mesa of Lost Women

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