Wherein Rand discusses the situation in Japan, and programs by several to raise funds for relief efforts in Japan.

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Show Notes:
The Reporter article about Takeda and Ono’s fundraising efforts.

MonotoneTim and Extra Lives, Tim Troppoli’s Twitter and official Twitter for Extra Lives fundraiser.

Wherein Rand discusses some miscellany topics, and presents his review on Pokémon Black and White Versions.

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Friday Night Trivia returned last night with the 27th edition, and can be downloaded here (or automatically downloaded, if you’re subscribed to the RSS feed in your program of choice).

Joining me were CharlieP79, Darth Skeptical, DaveAC, and Ian The6thDoctor. Category topics ranged from geography, to comic books, to classical music, and more. It was an excellent episode, if I do say so myself, and well worth a listen.

FNT will return this coming Friday, Christmas Eve, with a holiday-themed episode. Hope to see you there.

With my fall semester drawing to a close this week, I’ve scheduled some live episodes of my two podcasts. Radio Free Caemlyn will go live the last three Fridays of the year, at 9:30pm EST each of those evenings. Join yours truly, Lord Quizmaster, for fun, frivolity, and obscurity.

Besides that, my flagship show, The RaT Project Live, will be on the air at least twice this month. Next live show is 18 December at 8pm, where the topic will be, “What Makes a Villain Memorable?”. This topic looks at villains from across all forms of media (books, comics, animation, movies, video games, TV shows, etc) and debates what qualities set a memorable villain apart from all the others. Feel free to mention your own favorite villains, and explain why they are favorites.

Following that, The RaT Project Live will go on the air on Sunday, 26 December, at 8pm EST, when I’ll be hosting my second annual “Game of the Year” episode. Join Rand and guests as they look back at all the video games that came out this year for PC, PS3, XBOX 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, and PSP. Also up for discussion are new trends in the gaming industry that arose this year, including Kinect and PlayStation Move, OnLive, and many others.

Hope to see you on the live shows.

So, for those playing along at home, here’s the schedule for upcoming live episodes:

17 December, at 9:30pm EST: Radio Free Caemlyn: Friday Night Trivia XXXVII – Riddles Before the Solstice

18 December, at 8:00pm EST: The RaT Project 95 – What Makes a Villain Memorable?

24 December, at 9:30pm EST: Radio Free Caemlyn: Friday Night Trivia XXVIII – Yuletide Obscurity

26 December, at 8:00pm EST: The RaT Project 96 – Games of the Year 2010 Edition

31 December, at 9:30pm EST: Radio Free Caemlyn: Friday Night Trivia XXIX – At Year’s End

1 January, at 8:00pm EST: The RaT Project 97 – Untitled Episode

I watched it last year, and I’ll be watching it this time. LoadingReadyRun returns for this year’s Desert Bus for Hope marathon this weekend, starting at 9pm EST on 19 November.

The marathon, which has various members of the comedy group play an extremely dull minigame from the never-released minigame collection Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors for the Sega CD, is an effort to raise money for the Child’s Play charity organization, which buys video game consoles and games for children in hospitals.

Along with just playing the game, the members of LoadingReadyRun will also have a webcam feed showing what’s going on in their headquarters, known as the Moonbase. Last year, people could make challenges for LRR members (if that challenge was accompanied by a donation to Child’s Play). Challenges could be anything from having someone sign a song, to acting out a skit, or reading something. It was up to the donor’s imagination (and within good taste and humor).

The marathon will last as long as donations keep coming in. Additional gameplay hours will cost a certain amount, with additional hours having a certain percentage cost added to the previous hour that was unlocked. A difference from last year, where the various “drivers” would take four-hour shifts, is that four members of LRR (James, Jeremy, Morgan, Bill, and Kathleen) will be taking 24-hour shifts. That’s right, 24-hour shifts of Desert Bus.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Desert Bus was, as mentioned earlier, a minigame from the canceled Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors for the Sega CD. In this minigame, you drive a bus from Tuscon, AZ, to Las Vegas, NV, at a constant speed of 45 mph. You can’t slow down, and you can’t drive any faster. You drive along a straight road, with no other traffic, and the bus veers slightly to the right, meaning you have to constantly correct the bus with the controller. If you go too far off the road, the bus stalls and a tow-truck will eventually appear and tow you back to whichever of the two cities you started from. All of this plays out in real time, meaning that a one-way drive takes a continuous 8 hours of game play to complete.

This is the fourth annual Desert Bus for Hope marathon, and the full press release for the event follows under the cut.

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This episode has been on the feed for at least a week, but I’m only now noticing I don’t have a blog post up about it. So here we go, some notes on episode 35 of Radio Free Caemlyn.

On the evening of 31 October, 2010, I was perusing the /v/ section of 4chan. Some anon had started a thread wherein they asked fellow anon to visit a certain website and record themselves saying the following quote from Fallout: New Vegas, “Patrolling the Mohave makes me wish for a nuclear winter.” Most anon followed the directions and recorded themselves saying that particular quote, but a good many deviated from that rule and said other things. A lot of the results were quite hilarious, so I decided to rip the audio with Audacity and piece them together in a podcast, with music backing.

This is the result.

Anyway, it was fun piecing that together. Hope you enjoy the result.

The latest episode of The RaT Project is available to download, either automatically if you’re subscribed to the feed in iTunes or whatever feed reader you use, or direct download is here.

The RaT Project returns with a new episode, this time a brief studio episode wherein Rand recounts the Jadusable saga that had all of the /x/ section of 4chan in an uproar recently.

Jadusable’s YouTube account can be found here. The site associated with the story (and where you can find Jadusable’s letter from earlier today detailing why he’s putting this on hiatus) can be found here.

The RaT Project Live is still on hiatus for a while. Expect the show to return here the end of the month, with any luck.

Anyway, please subscribe to the show in iTunes (or whichever program you use to keep up with podcasts). Also feel free to leave a rating on either the show’s TalkShoe page (and please leave feedback there, too), or in the iTunes podcast directory.

After too long of a hiatus, Radio Free Caemlyn will return to the airwaves with an all-new night of trivia. On 10 September, at 9.30pm EST, Friday Night Trivia XXIV goes live, and begins a modified format.

The winner each week can, if they want, host the following week’s trivia. So now there’s a new incentive to win.

Join in this Friday night as Ian “The 6th Doctor” from Cultdom Collective podcast steps up as host of Friday Night Trivia. What topics will he come up with? Tune in to find out.

Hope to see you there. TalkShoe ID 72402.

I’m back at University now, and I’ve not yet had a chance to drop by the IT Dept. to resolve an issue crucial to me continuing the podcasts live on TalkShoe. Here’s the thing: I can’t connect to TalkShoe via a SIP client, which is necessary for me to host shows on TalkShoe. There is a port forwarding issue, wherein the necessary port is blocked by the Uni’s network.

Add to that the fact that I don’t yet know where on campus the IT Dept. has been moved to. This Uni is notorious for moving places like that around campus as they tear down old buildings and construct new ones.

I should have the issue resolved by the end of this week, though. Friday Night Trivia may not take place this Friday, but definitely next week.

This weekend’s shows start Friday night as always with Friday Night Trivia over on Radio Free Caemlyn at 9:30 EST. There’s a twist to the formula this week. On Friday Night Trivia XXIII – To the Other Side, Darth Skeptical takes the helm with questions, and I’ll be on the side of everyone else called in. Be sure to join in for that, as I’m sure Darth’s got a fun night of trivia planned.

Saturday night on The RaT Project, starting at 8PM EST, the topic is favorite video game characters. So be sure to call in and mention your favorite video game characters. I look forward to that discussion.

Now an advance notice on next weekend. There will be no Friday Night Trivia on August 20th, as that is when I’ll be moving into my room in a residential hall at University. I doubt I’ll have my computer set up in time for trivia, so I’ve went ahead and canceled plans for FNT just in case stuff comes up that night. That weekend’s RaT Project should still go on as planned, but don’t be surprised if that gets canceled as well.

That’s that. Hope to see you at Friday Night Trivia and RaT Project this weekend!