Thursday, December 26, 2013

Videos are the future I guess

I just wanted to let you dear readers know that thanks to my new capture equipment, I may start doing gameplay videos and live stream type stuff over on my YouTube and Twitch channels. Still working everything out, but keep your eyes open for more content soon.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

I Have No Console, and I Must Buy One

Twine is a free, super easy to use program that lets users create little "choose your own adventure" type stories. Most people seem to use it for making weird little art games, but I thought it might have potential to make more engaging and accessible long form articles. So as a test, I taught myself the program by making this "interactive opinion article" about my thoughts on the current video game console war.

Play "I Have No Console, and I Must Buy One"


Sunday, December 8, 2013

New Look

As you dear readers may have noticed, I changed up the blog a little bit. In addition to the new design, there are now new pages for contacting me, reading my resume, and checking out my published work. I just finished up my internship at PC Mag and I'm feeling pretty professional. Hope you enjoy the new site!

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

PC Mag...again

Hey! I have an author bio on PC Mag now. Everything I write for them will be archived right here.

http://www.pcmag.com/author-bio/jordan-minor

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Why Did I Eat This?: McDonald's Mighty Wings

I’m living in New York City now, home of countless wonderful little authentic restaurants. I’ll get to those later though. This post is about McDonald’s new chicken wings.


-How weird is the idea of McDonald’s food with bones? Not even the elusive McRib can claim that, just weird, bone-shaped portions of meat.

-The Mighty Wings name recalls the Mighty Kids meals, Happy Meals but aimed at nebulously older kids for some reason.

-They are big though, a lot of that is due to breading, but the breading is decent. I probably like more breading on fried chicken than most but this has a nice spice to it. Not Popeye’s level, or quality, of spice though.

-I was expecting an ocean of grease based on early reports so I was glad to discover it’s more like a mid-sized lake.

-I haven’t had chicken McNuggets in like a decade, but these wings basically taste like how I remember those tasting. That’s not good.

-Even with the included buffalo sauce, these aren’t really Buffalo wings. They’re just subpar, typical McDonald’s fried chicken now with bones in them. As a proud member of #TeamBoneless nothing about that is appealing.

The fact of the matter is, the only chicken creations from a non-chicken-focused fast food place that were ever any good were the Burger King chicken fries. Their unjust demise continues to leave a gaping void in the culinary universe that these McDonald’s wings, despite their supposed “might,” can’t even begin to fill.


3 stars

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Chicago's Gaming Renaissance

This in-depth feature story on Chicago's gaming scene is the big thing I've been working on for a while so I'm happy to share it with you all on Kotaku.



However, next week I'll be sharing another big career announcement.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Sunday, June 30, 2013

The New Normal



If it wasn't obvious before, regular updates on this blog are pretty much done. If you've still been following it thanks for the support. It's been fun. Stick around though. I'll be posting whatever big new things I'm up to on the internet like cool articles, stuff from my awesome secret Fall internship, and, of course, episodes of Followers premiering in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned

-Jordan

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies

Surprise! Original content coming at you! Book review! Exclamation point!


In Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies, State University of New York journalism professor Howard Good entertainingly examines journalists’ ethical problems through Hollywood movies. While it initially seems like a strange conceit, melding the two topics is an effective choice. The films provide a useful context for readers less familiar with journalistic integrity. It doesn’t take a seasoned reporter to know that the blatant plagiarism in Shattered Glass is wrong.

Other examples include Broadcast News’s battle of style over substance, Mr. Deeds’s deception dilemma and Wag the Dog’s exploration of political media manipulation. Each chapter uses a specific film to make a specific point, and overall the book is a teaching tool with plenty of additional reading provided after each assignment.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Stuff I Did This Week 4/12/2013



Two interesting reviews this week

Black Operations got a 4 1/2 star rating as well as a rare (for me) editor's choice award.

However, as a piece of writing, I'm more proud of the Tribe Survival Review. Too bad it's such a mediocre game.

Monday, March 25, 2013

So I Saw Spring Breakers...



Spring Breakers is a movie I think everyone should see, and not just because it’s perfectly timed for spring break season. Whether your reaction to its incomprehensible art-house sleaze is positive or negative, it’s worth having an opinion of just the same. You may not get it or if you do you still may be put off by it. However, I loved it and that’s because it deals with so many of my own personal cinematic fixations. It’s almost as if Harmony Korine made it for me.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Monday, March 11, 2013

NND



National Napping Day is a thing. A pretty nice thing. See you next week!

Friday, March 1, 2013

Stuff I Did This Week 3/1/2013

Check out this first trailer for Followers at the new NU Channel 1 website.


And I did an interview with Red Letter Media, the guys behind Mr. Plinkett and those awesome, hour-plus Star Wars prequel reviews.





Also I wrote this review.

House of the Lost Mini Review

Monday, February 25, 2013

Mind Dump 8-bit

Back from the dead!

While learning about the PS4 was great and everything the real lesson of that press conference was that the police aren’t there to protect us.

I’m constantly thinking about games and watching the Oscars last night got me thinking about art too. While increasingly cinematic games like Assassin’s Creed, Deus Ex, and even Warcraft seem like easy targets for film adaptations, my definition of an art game is still a game where the narrative of the interactivity is what matters.

Examples include: Frog Fractions, Curiosity, the Kanye West Twitter game, the upcoming Team Meat joint Mew-Genics and, of course, No-Apps The Game.

What if they made a summer camp where the kids could learn about game writing? That’d be weird.

Fire Emblem Awakening is pretty great.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

2 Years 2 Furious

Jordan's Obligatory Blog where the pictures make no sense and the links break after a month.

Wow, I've been writing this dumb blog for two years now. I admit, it's been a little light on real content recently due to my other commitments but at least it's not Tumblr.

So like year here are the all-time most-viewed posts, a nice mix of new blood and old classics.


My Little Pony vs. Monster High: Capturing the Key Demographic- 3260 hits

Cool Post Bro- 1824 hits

Jordan's Obligatory E3 Predictions- 1179 hits

Mind Dump 3- True Stories Bro- 1054

A Toy that Eats Other Toys and Other Great Villains- 649 hits



The saga continues...

Monday, January 21, 2013

Math

                                                                                                      
MLK Day + Obama Inauguration + being less sick =




Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Uh Oh Politics: RIP #MintTheCoin



One of my biggest shortcomings as a political observer is my apathy towards and inability to understand a lot of economic matters. However, when the idea of minting a trillion dollar platinum coin straight out of a “Simpsons” episode was proposed as a way of dealing with the debt crisis I was instantly on board. Not only would it solve the problem it also would affirm my long held belief that money is essentially meaningless. Plus, the whole “it’s legal in that it’s not illegal” aspect of it just sounds like such a crazy scheme that I would love watching Republicans get blindsided by it. It’s like the 2008 election episode of “South Park” in that everything was just a dumb set-up.

But alas, according to the Treasury Department, it shall not be.


I need 1,000,000,000,000 coin coffins.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

If anybody wants to know what I thought about Django Unchained



Great soundtrack.

Great dialogue.

Like Inglourious Basterds it's a revenge fantasy but a great one.

It's very violent but honesty it could have been worse. Maybe I just really wanted to see white people get torn apart by whips.

Its story structure is a little meandering but it's so entertaining who cares?

It's probably the best movie I've seen this year.

As for the heavier stuff...

They say the N word a lot but come on, it's 1850s Mississippi. If you can handle "The Boondocks" you can handle this. Not everyone can though.

As for the other potential racial/sociological issues, there's a serious discussion to be had about how problematic they may be. Honestly though, it's provocative quality is appreciated and its heart is in the right place.

Plus it's just awesome.