Free comics!?!? No way! Check out the video below to find out more.

Here are a few places participating in Free Comic Book Day in the Orlando, FL area:

A COMIC SHOP
114 S. Semoran Blvd.
Suite #6
Winter Park, FL, 32792
(407) 332-9636

SCI-FI CITY
6006 E. Colonial Drive
Orlando, FL, 32807
(407) 282-2292

COLISEUM OF COMICS FASHION SQUARE MALL
3201 E. Colonial Drive
Orlando, FL, 32803
(407) 228-1210

COLISEUM OF COMICS AT MILLENIA
4672 Millenia Plaza Way
Orlando, FL, 32839
(407) 363-7676

MIKES COMICS AND COLLECTIBLES
8110 S Orange Blossom Trail
Orlando, FL, 32809
(407) 854-6222

PALLADIN TECH & GAME
12001 Avalon Lake Dr
Suite D
Orlando, FL, 32828
(407) 249-1001

Visit Free Comic Book Day to find a location near you.

“Halo 4″ for XBox 360 is coming November 6th, and Conan O’Brien and Andy Richter have been cast to play ridiculously key roles in the latest installment of this epic video game saga. (YouTube Description)

Watch it cause you love Halo. Watch it cause you love Conan. Watch it cause you love us! Ok, maybe you don’t have to love us… just like us… a little. Our wedding photo (taken by RF Photography) was included in the skit below! We’re so excited! It’s crazy. And yes I’m totally going to ignore that Conan said “that’s sad.” cause we’re too happy! Whoo-hoo!

I intended to post info about Mass Effect 3′s Resurgence pack today but I saw this video and thought it just HAD to be shown.

9 year old Caine Monroy, built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto parts store. Caine’s first Fun Pass customer helps organize the best day of his life.

I have to admit, it made me laugh and cry at the same time. The video explains everything. Watch it!

Caine’s Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

Now there’s some ingenuity for ya! Imagine what this kid could do with a formal education in engineering? What do you say we make that possible? Donations to raise money for Caine’s college fund are currently being accepted on CainesArcade.com

Source: BoingBoing

Texas based Chaotic Moon is developing a “Smarter Cart” for Whole Foods. This awesome new shopping cart utilizes a tablet and Kinect scanner to keep track of the items you put in the cart, see if they’re on your shopping list, AND handles the check-out process for you! I’m gonna let that sink in until you see the other surprises here…

Remember when we posted the “Best Microsoft Ad EVER?” We all know that the Kinect is just a start toward the technologies to come. The video in the post previously mentioned shows many adaptions that the Kinect prove useful, but this here is another to add to that list.

“Microsoft says more than 300 companies are working on commercial applications for Kinect on Windows. Other demos today included an application that gave an immersive virtual tour of a new vehicle, and another that let kids interact with a wildlife show.” -GeekWire

I can’t wait to see more.

Sources:
Mashable, GeekWire

Every time I hear, say, or see MEGACON… I hear it in the voice from the radio commercials… If you haven’t heard it, you’re missing it. Penny Arcade needs to get that guy on their shit. I can hear it now… PENNY ARCADE EXPO *echos*

This year was my first visit to MegaCon. I volunteered for it. I WORKED the entire time I was there. I had no time to actually enjoy it… and I can say I had MORE fun doing Crowd Control than the time I spent at MLG. Do you understand that? To some that’s absolutely absurd… To me, it was amazing.

Don’t ask about the MLG event… I meant to write a post about that, but realized it would have been nothing but negative words for it. Don’t get me wrong, I met some wonderful people there (i.e. Randall Wong, Stan Press, Zach Wigal, and BravoMLG), but the event itself left a little bit more to be desired…

I’ve been to PAX twice, but that’s centered around gaming… Now MegaCon was something else. It had gaming related stuff there, but as you all know it is centered around comics. I haven’t been to ComicCon yet, but I imagine it’s like a miniature one of those.

As I said previously, I volunteered for this event. I didn’t have the money to put up and I’ve volunteered for Otronicon before, so I figured I’d help out… get some more good deeds under my belt. Now, I understood that I was there to work, but this was a whole new ball game. I was put in charge of Crowd Control; The line to get purchase tickets. Friday wasn’t so bad… but I was NOT aware of what Saturday had in store for me. Friday was cool, the line looped around a long hall twice. Saturday? Looped the hall three times, went out the door and into the main lobby to the far back of the building, came back to the front door, serpentined 6 times across the lobby, then went all the way to the other side of the West Concourse building… Yeah. AND I did that shit with only one person helping me from the start. But, I didn’t let it beat me. I took charge of the situation and HANDLED IT. I lost my voice, killed all of my muscles, and left draggin ass, but I managed to come out on top.

Here’s an Idea for you…

Friday's Line

This was my handy work…

Saturday's Line

MMM Hmmm…. It was like that.

“I thought you said you had fun?!” you say? Well, that was NOT my fun. After I made sure that line disappeared, I was then assigned to do crowd control for Mark Meer in the Star Signing area. Don’t you DARE think, “Who’s Mark Meer?” If you’re a gamer you should know who this guy is…

I’ll give you a hint…

Now, playing rent-a-bodyguard for the voice of Commander Shepard was no joke, but there were voice actors there from Anime that had lines like the ticket line. I had to go back and forth for Mark and Todd Haberkorn (Hetalia: Axis Powers), then Chris Sabat (Dragon Ball series: Vegeta, Piccolo-also the Halo Wars tutorial instructor) as well. I had helped with Laura Bailey (also Rayne from Bloodrayne and Alicia Valera from Gears of War 3) and Travis Willingham (also Sergei Krozin of CoD:Black Ops and Guile from the most recent Street Fighter games)of Full Metal Alchemist too, but didn’t interact with them as much…

As I said, most of my time was spent corralling humans and making sure they did’t cut or disrupt everyone else. When I had an opportunity I made sure to snap a few pictures of cosplayers roaming around the front lobby. I wanted to be able to share some of the awesomeness I saw there. So, all of the pictures I took are on our Flickr. As a heads up, there are a few that were taken after I had left the convention center (explaining the Belly Dancer and night club shots…).

Night Club? Yes! Night Club….. On the Saturday of the event, flyers were passed around advertising something called “Arkham Nights”. All the cool people said they were going and I wanted to see this for myself, so…. I went. Backstage night club in the Rosen Plaza Hotel hosted an Arkham themed party. They had Joker cards hanging from the ceiling, every employee was dressed as a different villain, Batman was pegged to a throwing knife/axe board, and EVERYTHING was themed around a party in the heart of the Arkham Asylum. This party was seriously badass! Even the MegaCon owner showed up and spent some dough.
I got a few shots while in there… but it was a dark, foggy night club…. I didn’t get much.

So, with all the awesome that came out of that weekend, I told the Volunteer Director that I’d be back next year. He thanked me for my awesome service and made me write my email address in his “Special” notes for the rockstar volunteers. Yes, I was one of the more respected workers this year, and I’m very proud of that.

If you plan on checking out MegaCon next year, be sure to find me! I’m almost certain I’ll be wearing one of those bright neon yellow shirts again…

Ryo here, this will be the first post of a very sporadic series of updates about a personal project I intend to undertake. The idea behind it is I have always wanted to own an arcade cabinet since I was a kid playing Joust and Galaga. That dream is still alive, just much more toned down because those machines are expensive.

Now instead of buying one of the licensed machines, I am going to build a cabinet myself and stick a computer in it running M.A.M.E. That will let me have the look and feel of a real machine at a fraction of the cost. Another added benefit being that multiple games can be loaded up on the computer for hours of time consuming enjoyment.

The reason the updates to this project are going to be sporadic boils down to the fact I am broke quite a bit of the time. I’ll take pictures of my progress as I go along and post them here along with any building tips I happen to discover.

The first phase of the project is actually just building an arcade stick for use on my computer so I can get some practice with cutting the wood and mounting all the pieces. Wish me luck, readers, and if any of you have any tips I will definitely take them into consideration.

Last day of PAX. Our plan was to wake up early and catch the Halo 4 presentation at Halo Fest (which started at 10am). Plans fail. Especially that one. We got up… buuuut we hated the idea of walking there that early in the morning. Fortunately for us, they were streaming it live on IGN. I wish I could say it would have been better live, but I can’t. We were completely unimpressed with what they had to show, honestly. It almost felt like an apology, like they were justifying Halo 4. As if they were saying “We know we’re not Bungie, but hear us out. Here is why we made these design decisions.” All that would have been alright if it had been mixed in with with stuff we were eager to see. All they gave us was some moving concept art towards the end. That being said we were really glad we didn’t walk 45 minutes just for that.

When we finally made it to PAX we began our mission: Collect as much SWAG as we can in one day. Considering we came home with a Legendary Halo backpack full to the brim, I think we did pretty well. Though unlike our last PAX experience where we could stop by a booth and grab some swag, this time we had to jump through hoops. Wait on line, play this, sign up here, tweet this, facebook that, complete this list of objectives. They really made us work for it. I had to DANCE for some of this stuff…. Don’t ask. And, I understand that getting a t-shirt should be harder than grabbing one on the way by… but standing in line for 3 hours to play for 5 min to get a shirt kind of sucked.

Sick had set her sights on one piece of swag in particular: The coveted Skyrim Hat. On both Day 1 and Day 2 the wait was 3+ hours long. I dreaded the thought. Especially since she wanted more than one. I got in line while she wandered. I waited in this god-forsaken line for an hour and a half. When I got to the front of the line, ready to play, I asked if I could have a hat for my wife too. “Where is your wife?” the guy asked. I said, “She couldn’t handle waiting in this line anymore and sat somewhere else.” He told me to ask the girl handing them out. So she gave me a second one and I stuffed it in my shirt so nobody would question it. Now, THANK GOD they didn’t know what Sick looked like, cuz SECONDS later she walks over and waves at me with one of those damn hats ON HER HEAD! WTF?!

Apparently she had struck a deal with the chic giving out the Skyrim hats. She traded the Dance Central 2 bandana we had collected earlier for it. Remember me having to Dance? yeah, she traded THAT. And then she asks me if I could go get another bandana. WHAT?!

The best part was my 15 minutes of gametime with Skyrim after the hour and a half wait. I created my character in two minutes, ran straight through a village then 10 minutes past it, killed two wolves, passed a rock cliff, and then shit myself. On the other side of the rock wall was a Giant…Giant. There was no other descriptive word I could give it. It was a fucking GIANT. It scared me, I lit it on Fire, then it squashed me. INSTANTLY. Ahh! *Burn* Squish. Done. GAME OVER GUYS!

THIS is what squished me…

Well that was fun.

I should probably back track a little… While standing in line to play Dance Central 2, Sick asked “Hey! Isn’t that the girl that makes all the Dance Central youtube videos?” Sure enough, Mighty Me Creative was helpin’ out at the Dance Central booth. She was surprised we recognized her. We took a picture with her shortly before I got on stage.

Us with Mighty Me

Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to play all the games, but here’s a short list of all the games we’re pretty excited about:

• Rocksmith- I didn’t get a chance to play this, it was just a presentation. It’s basically a game that will teach you how to play guitar. Being able to connect a real guitar to it is down right AWESOME!
• Orc’s Must Die- MUST buy this game. I saw this game the first day when I was on “Recon”, but I did not actually play until the third day. I played for 3 minutes… Hooked! It’s a Third-person Shooter/Tower Defense. Good Stuff. Check out SixOkay’s Interactive Trailer
• Dance Central 2- Now THIS is the #1 Game we’re waiting for, Hands Down. We dance up a storm with the Dance Central, and #2 has a MUCH better Track List. Oh, yeah…. and my dancing…. See below…
• Gears of War 3- OK, this post is a little late… aaaand I’m already tearing this up. You should be, too.
• FireFall- Now THIS game makes me want a gaming desktop. I don’t have one. I is sad panda…

I saw a great number of games that looked absolutely amazing, just to realize they were for PC only. But there were a greater number of awesome console games shown as well. It’s going to be a hard run for Game of the Year this year, indeed.

What PAX 2011 games are you most excited about?

Be sure to join us tomorrow for your chance to win the PAX swag we grabbed.

Note: Sick and I made a cameo appearance in Whisper Studio’s PAX Prime Video. Be sure to check it out.

I realize this post is coming in kind of late, but please keep in mind it’s meant to be a recounting of our experience and not necessarily reporting or coverage of PAX itself.

So many of you may know that we had a close call with us making it to PAX this year. First thing we want to do is thank everyone who helped us make it this year! But a special Thanks goes to Kete from The Running Riot and Safia from LipStick MixTapes for being our top contributors!

Even More thanks (More thanks than we can express!) goes to Christi and John for their hospitality! They showed us there’s much more to Seattle than coffee, PAX and Pho.

Yes, I said Pho… before PAX started we met up with Scott Bradford and Rukari Austin just cuz we could…. and to have some Pho. Many laughs and funs were had by all. This event would mark the first time Sick and I have ever had Pho. It would also be one of those times I learned NOT to eat a raw Jalapeno from a Vietnamese restaurant… to THEN add that “special” red sauce to my Pho. I enjoyed that meal twice…

So. The first day of our PAX experience was dampened by Sick having to finish up some crunch work for a client, but that didn’t stop me from wandering… I scoured the event to do a little recon so that when Sick and I did come back together, I knew where to go for certain things. That recon mission was short lived, though. I went up stairs, gave it a single pass, then went to find out where “HaloFest” was going down.

I realized that I’d rather find people than booths. PAX, for me, is more about the community than the games. Don’t get me wrong, the games ruled… But you guys rule more.

Sick and Christi caught up with Venom and myself at the Dragonfish, epic food was had. This was late afternoon so the PAX festivities were shutting down for the day. We made a last trip to the Convention Center lobby to collect a few more people. This is when We ran into NSSteph and Trixie360. After chatting with them and getting a LARGE GEM from Steph, We hit up HaloFest until they shut it down for the VIP shindig that evening.

This is where the REAL shit happened. 343i and Microsoft set up a party commemorating Halo’s 10th Birthday with Drinks, Memorabilia, stations to play the incoming new maps and title update for Reach, a MASSIVE cake, and a Commissary to pick up Halo essentials. The HaloFest VIP party was kicked off with a small introduction and Stepto telling everyone there what he thought of Halo before it had come to Fruition. After the intro they let everyone disperse to mingle and play.

It was here at the VIP party that we had a chance to meet MANY people including Marty O’Donnell, Steve Downes, and with a personal request from Pete Stacker to be in a picture with him. We got a chance to speak with each of them, but it was especially exciting to get the opportunity to tell Marty in person that we had a 4-String Quartet playing HIS music at our wedding! We couldn’t believe nobody told him that… and Neither did he! But the excitement we all felt at that moment when Sick told him… was awesome! It could have been a MasterCard commercial…

Incredible Halo Themed Wedding : $**,***
Four-String Quartet playing The Halo 3 OST: $*,***
Telling Marty O’Donnell this in person : Pricless!
For Everything else…

Us With Christi and Marty

Us With Steve Downes

Us With Pete Stacker

The highlight of the first day was meeting all the folks in the community we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting before.
And again, this, I think, is the greatest part about PAX…
Oh yeah, and the Pictures!

More on PAX ’11 tomorrow!

At the Open Mobile Summit in London, Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio’s head of marketing and business development recently announced that the masterminds behind Angry Birds will be releasing a Cookbook. Yes, that’s twice I said, “Cookbook.”

This particular cookbook will be heavily focused on egg dishes. Many, many ways to prepare… eggs. That means we are going to have THIS problem…

And weren’t we trying to prevent this exact thing from happening?!

Personally, I have had enough eggs. Maybe, if they were cooked differently from time to time, I could enjoy them a bit more. But, You know what I want to cook?
B-A-C-O-N! I want to see those damn pigs suffer for what they’ve put me through. I can’t tell you the amount of time wasted trying to smash each and every one of them. Also, Bacon is absolutely freaking delicious… and then there’s this.

So, if you are a fan of Angry Birds, and a fan of eggs… be on the lookout for the Cookbook that’s going to be self published by Rovio for your egg cooking needs.
And, for all we know, the bacon focused book may be on it’s way after the egg one hits the market. Let’s all hope so…… I love Bacon.

Source: Mashable.com

Portal 2 was released on April 21, 2011. I have beaten the crap out of it, and want to do it OVER and OVER again. Others have taken to different means of satisfying their craving for it…

“PORTAL” by Kurnel Porkchop on 4.29.2011

“It’s been a long time…” by eliteblade46 on 5.02.2011

“We’re in SPACE!” by Snipe Remiix on 5.06.2011

Want to be included in our next Screenshot Sunday?
Send an email to Screenshots@AMatchMadeInHalo.com with a link to your image or fileshare on Bungie.net