Tower defense games, Oregon tennis tournaments
Saturday, May 10, 2008
This is a quick two-part post. If you are one to become addicted to games, I’d suggest not reading the first part. The second part is for summer Willamette Valley tennis tournament enthusiasts only.
Tower defense games
Last year a couple of my friends lost weeks of their lives trying to complete Xeno Tactic, a flawless tower defense game. There is a lot of strategy involved in building paths lengthy enough to keep the aliens busy, making sure the DCAs are set up in good positions, managing upgrade time and money, etc. Thus far, I’ve not allowed myself to play it because I’m sure I’ll be hooked. However, the guys at Weebl’s Stuff just launched a somewhat similar Flash-based video game that I was not able to resist. It’s called Fanta Factory Defender. In this game you build towers along the road to defend the Fanta factory. In Weebl’s words: “Defend the Fanta factory from the invading Enemies of Fun using your space army weapons.” I lost a couple of hours playing it today. Not realizing the time commitment upon initially starting the game, I began wishing for a pause button. But it is pretty fun (though only 20% as awesome as Xeno Tactic, according to my expert sources).
So, if you’re looking to kill a few hours, or days, or weeks . . . those two tower defense games can be quite addictive. I guess Desktop Tower Defense by Paul Preece has been the inspiration for many of the recent games in this genre.
(On a side note: What is the history of Fanta?)
Oregon tennis tournaments
Summer tennis tournament season is fast approaching and I’ve been trying to figure out which summer weekends to schedule vacations and trips to concerts and so on. But I always try to play at least four tennis tournaments over the summer. However, sometimes OregonTennis.com doesn’t have information about these tournaments (at least not months in advance). So, I’ve made some calls and figured out the summer tennis schedule for the Mid-Willamette Valley myself. I’ve at least got the 2008 dates of the four tennis singles/doubles open tournaments I played last year. They are as follows:
- Monmouth Independence Tennis Tournament: July 5-6, 2008
- Salem All-City Tennis Tournament: July 11-13, 2008 (Friday evening – Sunday)
- Albany All-City Tennis Tournament: August 1-3, 2008 (Friday evening – Sunday)
- Woodburn Open Tennis Tournament: August 8-10, 2008 (Friday evening – Sunday)
Usually registration closes one to two weeks before the start of the tournaments. The PDF entry forms should show up at OregonTennis.com a few weeks in advance of each tournament. For Salem and Albany, you can also contact (or stop by) the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, as those two tournaments run through the city.
That is all. Be extra nice to your moms tomorrow.