Wanderings of the Meandering Mind

Backlog Resolutions

2011-12-19T12:01:00.003-05:00

I have an extensive back-catalog of video games. This is, essentially, my video game TODO list (in no particular order).

1) Replay Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Those were great games, and soon enough I'll be itching for a 3DS to play the next title.
1b) Maybe finish Super Paper Mario sometime.
2) Finish Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess so that I can then feel good about buying Skyward Sword and leaving it in my back catalog for a few years.
3) Finish Ninja Gaiden 2. It's freaking ninjas yo, and apparently there's another one on the way.
4) Finish Dragon Age, play Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. I like good voice acting and stories. Why can't I finished these games?
5) Finish Dynasty Warriors 7. It's so freaking good, finish it already.
6) Finish Bastion. This should really be my first priority before someone spoils everything for me.
7) Finish Metroid Prime 3. No, you don't get to replay 1 and 2, not until you finish 3. Seriously, how are you so bad at finishing these great games?
8) Play Okami. You have it sitting around from Gamefly. If you can't be bothered to play your Gamefly games you might as well cancel your subscription you silly person.
9) Speaking of which, you have a nice long list of games to play in the form of your Gamefly queue. Dear lord, there's like 20 of them.

Can someone add a week to the year? I seriously need 7 days to make a dent in this or something.

FIRE

2011-11-10T14:25:00.002-05:00

Okay Firefox. I know you're a very popular browser, but you seriously need to calm down with all the updates. I'm sure you think Firefox 8 is extremely exciting, but you seriously need to chill out. At the start of the year we were on Firefox 3. That version lasted a good two and a half years. Then you came out with 4 and gave it all of three months before 5 came out, and while we were still considering how strange that was you came out with 6. Now 8 is out and I haven't even finished coming to terms with the existence of 7.

If you're going to update constantly stick to classic version number conventions. Unless you have some divine software engineers working for you two months is not sufficient time to design and develop code worthy of a new whole number.

Today's Fortune: No Future

2011-11-10T11:03:00.005-05:00

Today's fortune cookie did not have a fortune in it. I can therefore only assume I have no future.

I mean, I suppose I could succumb to the wishful thinking that this was some sort of mechanical error on the part of the fortune cookie machines, but we all know that's impossible.

Yo Dawg

2011-10-24T12:49:00.003-04:00

To make money websites with videos will use advertisements. Generally these take the form of an advertisement you must watch before the video can load, or some sort of banner ad which appears over the video itself in a corner or a the bottom.

I just had both happen at once, an ad for a restaurant which also had a banner advertising the very same restaurant pop up to obscure the ad.

Insert appropriate meme here.

Blizzcon 2011: Day 1

2011-10-22T03:43:00.005-04:00

Blizzcon this year had a few notable changes from last year, but was otherwise very similar. Unlike last year they began letting people in as early as 9:30 and will presumably do so tomorrow as well. The change is welcome, as it gave people significantly more time to settle in and also allowed for some amount of exploration before the start of the proceedings.

I took a brief turn around the building before taking a seat for the opening ceremony, and immediately noticed that the WoW section of the convention was effectively cordoned off and hidden from prying eyes. It was pretty obvious that there was going to be a big WoW announcement, and given how much we already knew about patch 4.3 it was equally obvious that it would be the next expansion.

Mists of Pandaria seems like it has a ways to go before it'll be ready for launch, but what I did play felt pretty typical of WoW. Simple starter quests, fluid starter zones, and beautiful vistas. The only jarring aspect was the lack of auto-attacks on the Monk class. It didn't take long to figure out, but it was unexpected.

Overall, however, I'm not terribly excited about the expansion. Obviously I don't play anymore, but I never completely wrote out the idea of briefly reappearing in Azeroth to take a gander at what might have changed. In fact, Blizzard's changes mostly serve as a reminder that the game is no longer being designed for people like me.

In essence, Blizzard has given up on content as a means of progression, and is instead wholly focused on cosmetic or gear-based progression. You "progress" toward the look you want for your character by getting the hard to get cosmetic loot from Challenge Dungeons. You "progress" by getting better gear through valor points. It hardly matters that I can acquire the valor points by doing anything I want if in the end the only progress I truly make is always better gear. Picking daises for druids daily and killing evil overlords should not reward the same epic gear, no matter how many daisies you pick.

On the upside I was glad to hear about questing moving away from the linear mess it was in Cataclysm, and I'm sure many people will be overjoyed at the launch of a new ~~pokemon~~pet battle system.

The Diablo 3 boothes are sadly just the beta content, and doubly sadly no D3 beta keys were given out. The special rewards for the new yearly WoW subscription don't appeal to someone who has given up on WoW. It will likely stem the tide of canceled subscriptions somewhat, but it's too little too late in my case.

What is interesting on the Diablo 3 front was an edited trailer "The Black Soulstone" and the Diablo 3 art featured prominently on various promotional materials. The Diablo pictured in these materials is distinctly feminine which is extremely interesting when the trailer and tidbits from the beta are taken into consideration. My pet theory is that Deckard Cain's adopted daughter/granddaughter/niece/whathaveyou, being the daughter of the previous host of Diablo and a powerful witch, will be forced to revive him using her own body in some convoluted plan to protect the black soulstone and defeat Azmodan. I have no idea how Belial fits into this.

I have not yet had the chance to try the new SC2 Campaign or the revamped Blizzard DotA, but I have had some change to try the new SC2 units. It's hard for me to say how well they work given that I'm terrible at SC2 and there's very limited time to do anything, but they seem to do their jobs nicely. I'm only peeved that Blizzard seems intent on removing the Carrier and Mothership. What gives???

There were some extremely awesome SC2 matches today, and I very, very highly recommend the GSL finals. The level of play that went on, the back and forth battles, and the insane precision and determination of each player was absolutely phenomenal.

Tomorrow will likely be somewhat less exciting given there are no more big reveals to be had, but there will be plenty of SC2 matches to watch and the D3 Q&A so all is not lost.

Also someone in a minecraft/Paladin T2 costume fell off the stage during the costume contest. Hilarity.

Blizzcon 2011

2011-10-18T18:46:00.004-04:00

It starts this weekend; I'm going. I may not play WoW anymore but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a good SC2 tournament live, or a chance to play more Diablo 3.

Expect me to post some daily reflections and/or a big lump post at the end if my hotel's internet buckles under the strain of a million nerds.

Six Years.

2011-08-23T15:20:00.002-04:00

Six years. To call that a long time may be laughable in the cosmic scale, but my feeble human intelligence struggles to make a concrete notion of the abstract concept described by those two words. Six years, six rotations around the sun, six birthdays, six iterations of yearly rituals, six spans of time on a continuous, unceasing forward movement. Six years are all these things, but how do you turn that evasive concept into something with form? How does one hold six years like an apple, taste it, and digest it?

Six years ago I built for myself a computer for the first time. There's a strange pride in the delicate piecing together of carefully chosen parts, and it compelled me to put my work to the test. I installed World of Warcraft and sat awed at the smoothness with which my computer handled the rendering of that virtual world. It was a small triumph, but an important one for a computer science major standing amongst throngs of peers sporting their own custom built machines.

Six years of World of Warcraft came to an end yesterday, as I logged out for the last time and uninstalled the game. In that time I was a newbie, a veteran, a casual, a hardcore, an explorer, a raider, a layman, a leader, a nobody, and a community figure. I've been everywhere from bottom to top, and the experience has taught me as much about life, people and myself as anything else I've done. Closing that chapter of my life is neither easy nor unnecessary.

Six years from now I wonder who I will see when I reread these words.

Money and Power in Video Games

2011-08-02T10:49:00.003-04:00

Blizzard announced yesterday that Diablo 3 will have an auction house for players to buy and sell their hard earned treasures, which surprised no one. Blizzard also announced that players would be able to post auctions both for gold, the in-game currency, and also for real money. That surprised many people.

This announcement represents two major policy shifts for Blizzard. First, after years of fighting the underground item/character markets for Diablo 2 they are instead embracing and facilitating them. Second, they have crossed the line between only selling cosmetic effects and selling power/achievement, even if only slightly.

It's the second of these two policy shifts that has my attention. Selling power isn't universally a mistake (it works very well for the supercapitalist EVE Online) but is so frequently one as to warrant, at the very least, extreme care. Without absolutely perfect execution it can and will destroy a game's longevity and community.

This isn't unique to selling power, any game mechanic which trivializes accomplishment will undermine a game's community. There need to be goals, accomplishments and prestige in games for their communities to thrive. Most implementations of selling power, including what we know of Diablo 3, undermine these fundamental aspects of the game.

Diablo 3 is still something I'm very excited about, and it's extremely likely that I will be staying up to play it the night it launches. However, I worry that the community of the game will suffer for decisions like this one.

Fortune: Pack Your Bags

2011-07-21T19:37:00.002-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Pack your bags. You're bound for an exciting destination!"

Oddly, I'm actually going camping in a few weeks. I... crap I need to prepare for that don't I?

Today's Fortune: Wonderful

2011-06-30T13:26:00.004-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Something wonderful is about to happen to you."

For some reason all I can think of is one of those slimy villains who is so very congenial and pleasant talking to an unsuspecting victim just prior to some bizarre, deadly experiment is performed on them and they because a mutant cow person, mind slave or a pile of goo.

Today's Fortune: Direct, Reprised

2011-06-23T13:58:00.002-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "You are direct, and others often appreciate this quality in you."

The rest of the time they wish I would stop saying, "I told you so."

Today's Fortune: Soil

2011-06-16T13:38:00.003-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Not every soil can bear all things. Be practical."

Welp. There goes my spaghetti garden.

E3: Wait, E3 is this week?

2011-06-08T13:23:00.005-04:00

So all sorts of interesting stuff is being announced regarding the impending offerings of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Historically I've breathlessly followed their press conferences when new consoles were impending. Today I just walked obliviously into the fact that Nintendo announced their new console.

I'll comment more later when I've had a chance to actually watch the press conference. That said, I'm concerned Nintendo isn't taking usability into consideration these days.

The 3DS requires you maintain a perfect, motionless posture to properly view the 3D aspect. Any motion at all and portions of the screen go flat, resulting in a fairly awkward mix of 2D and 3D that strains the eyes.

The Wii U requires you look back and forth between two screens. "Ah," you say, "But did not the DS require the same?" No, it didn't. The two screens on the DS are equidistant from your face and directly next to one another. Looking between a touch screen in your hands and your TV 6-10 feet away requires actual neck movement and refocusing.

These concerns may be unwarranted and overblown, but they're my first impressions having just seen pictures of the console and its controller.

Oh, and I guess Sony is releasing a new handheld. It's name makes me think of a brand of vegetable juice. Meanwhile Microsoft is upping the ante with Halo 4: The "We couldn't be arsed to make something new so we're just rereleasing Halo again and printing money" edition.

Today's Fortune: Goodness

2011-06-02T14:43:00.003-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "You believe in the goodness of people."

This is true. I also believe in the inherent stupidity of people. In fact, this is objectively demonstrable. SEE: The internet. QED.

Today's Fortune: Wealth

2011-05-26T13:00:00.003-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Wealth is a state of mind."

There is actually some depth to this, but at the same time I can't get out of my head the image of a drunken hobo screaming "I'm king of the world!" while being dragged off the streets by police officers for disturbing the peace.

Salesmanship

2011-05-23T14:40:00.003-04:00

Despite the fact that I never bother to advertise the videos I post on youtube, I nevertheless bristle and snarl when someone with inferior videos and grammar freely flings their misshapen works to the public and receives more attention. I am not shocked that they receive the attention given the obvious correlation, but I am riled.

Whenever this happens I briefly consider calling to light my own work in a public manner, followed quickly by perishing such thoughts. To take such a course of action would be to lower myself to the same level as these attention seekers, trying and saying anything to attract the brainless masses.

Yet in spite of this resolution I am again incensed the next time I encounter this. I am not sure I can consider myself rational.

Velocirapture

2011-05-22T19:40:00.003-04:00

On the way to and from the Renaissance faire today I saw billboards advertising yesterday's Rapture, imploring people to hear the truth before it was too late. I'm glad I procrastinated.

Today's Fortune: Sincerity

2011-05-13T15:02:00.003-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "You are a true and sincere friend."

While flattering, I'm now considering the logical possibilities of "true" but "insincere" friends, and "false" but "sincere" friends. What would they even look like, and how would Hollywood try and cram them into a summer movie.

Today's Fortune: Future

2011-04-28T14:21:00.001-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "You do not have to worry about your future."

Is that a threat?

Today's Fortune: Leadership

2011-04-14T14:02:00.002-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Your leadership talents will bring you an incredible opportunity."

This sounds like the opening pitch to one of those Nigerian prince emails. Speaking of which...

Today's Fortune: Moved

2011-04-07T13:29:00.004-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Others are deeply moved by your presence."

I give this one the award for least amount of effort, not because no effort went into crafting this fortune but because I can apparently, without effort, touch the very souls of others simply by standing around in their general vicinity.

What is this I don't even

2011-04-05T10:59:00.001-04:00

http://amanita-design.net/osada/

This is possibly the most bizarre the internet has ever been.

Today's Fortune: Love, plus a Bonus

2011-03-24T12:34:00.003-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "You will always be surrounded by those who love you."

CIRCLE THE WAGONS, WE'RE SURROUNDED!

Bonus Grannyism: "Smile - it makes people wonder what you're up to."

Uh, thanks Sweet Leaf for that insight.

Today's Fortune: Adventure

2011-03-16T14:59:00.002-04:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Get ready for a daring adventure."

The question is, will this be my adventure or am I one of the NPCs that says, "Welcome to our village!" no matter how many times you talk to them?

To Isengard

2011-03-08T00:27:00.002-05:00

They're taking the hobbits to Isengard!

Face

2011-03-03T19:58:00.002-05:00

No fortune today. Instead, take this test: http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/fgcfmt/fgcfmt_intro.php

I got 71 out of 72 correct. I declare myself awesome, despite being completely unable to remember anyone's name.

Today's Fortune: Accomplishments

2011-02-24T14:25:00.003-05:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "You are admired for your accomplishments."

And here I thought I was admired for the stuff I hadn't accomplished.

Today's Fortune: Pleasure

2011-02-17T12:31:00.003-05:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Pleasure awaits your company."

This sounds less like a fortune and more like a bad advertisement for a gentleman's club.

eHarmony

2011-02-15T00:01:00.001-05:00

This about sums up my experience this far with internet dating.

Still trying. Happy Valentine's Day.

Today's Fortune: Misunderstanding

2011-02-10T14:33:00.001-05:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Avoid misunderstanding by keeping your ears open."

It's trying to be profound, but it ends up just coming across like a commercial for earwax removal.

Today's Fortune: Attention

2011-02-03T13:25:00.003-05:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "You are the center of attention."

I don't care unless I am the center of a lady's attention.

Today's Fortune: Direct

2011-01-27T13:06:00.004-05:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "The most direct approach isn't always the best."

And here I thought driving directly through other cars and red lights would get me home faster.

This one is actually close to real wisdom, which surprised me. It's fairly trite without context, but it's something you'd reasonably expect a parent to impart on their children in appropriate circumstances.

Today's Fortune: Trivial

2011-01-20T14:16:00.004-05:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Do not burden yourself with trivial matters."

This one confuses me. Normally when you hear a line like this you have one character freaking out about the details of various things and then their sensei or good friend says this and tries to calm them down. It usually ends with at least a glum, reluctant acceptance from the control freak or a complete breakdown.

So what, exactly, is the fortune cookie company expecting to happen while eating their food that warrants an intervention of this type?

On Paper

2011-01-19T18:34:00.004-05:00

Nintendo: We're releasing our new 3DS this year!
Me: Ho hum.
Nintendo: It's got 3D! Real 3D!
Me: Yeah yeah, and I have a back-catalog of games to beat on my current DS. Call me when the 3DS actually merits me spending money.
Nintendo: Paper Mario.
Me: ... what?
Nintendo: You heard me.
Me: I don't care about some remake.
Nintendo: This is no remake, it's a sequel.
Me: Super Paper Mario sucked, why should I care about a sequel?
Nintendo: Oh we know it sucked, so we went back to basics. This is just like the first two games.
Me: You didn't.
Nintendo: Oh we did.
Me: ...
Nintendo: :)
Me: ...
Nintendo: :D
Me: ...
Nintendo: XD
Me: You know what you've done.
Nintendo: Yup, we know.
Me: Someday, someday when you're lounging on the heaps of cash that you siphon out of my lifeblood you'll feel a twinge of guilt.
Nintendo: You're welcome.

Today's Fortune: Travel

2011-01-13T13:12:00.001-05:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "You are going to travel somewhere far away."

Note the complete lack of qualifiers dictating when this will happen, and the vagueness of "far away" as a term of distance.

Today's Fortune: Love

2011-01-06T13:04:00.003-05:00

Today's fortune cookie reads: "Someone loves you very much."

That's about as safe as fortune cookies get. I mean, everyone has a mom.

Grammar Crisis

2010-12-14T18:36:00.001-05:00

I came across the following link, and now have a minor crisis because while the sentences in question are certainly meh, I don't understand how the diagrams prove in more explicit terms their mehness. This is a crisis because there are elements of those sentences which makes sense to me and I am afraid that this means I'm a terrible writer.

http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/post/2068786394

Cataclysm: Second Impressions

2010-12-14T17:52:00.003-05:00

I've had more time with the expansion, a full week in fact, and some of my initial concerns have smoothed over significantly.

Since my previous entry on the subject I have come across a number of cases of simply good music which, though it wasn't always zone/area type specific, were memorable. While I feel a number of pieces remain below standards I'm much more willing to give them some grace as they constitute a lesser proportion of the game's music than I previously thought. It still stands that even though there is more good music than I supposed not all of it catches you in the moment the same way previous expansions have.

Archaeology as a profession is both mindless and addicting. My only frustrations with it so far have come from game glitches which have prevented me from pursuing it to my fullest abilities.

The greatest improvement and crowning achievement of the expansion, however, is that thus far the dungeon encounters have learned from all of the mistakes made in Wrath of the Lich King and offered an experience which is difficult in a way which rewards more than bigger numbers and optimizing spreadsheets.

The subtle difference in Cataclysm is that the challenges often require you to spend most of your time trying to squeeze your primary role in between other important actions. There are also a few straightforward numbers checks, but those are fine when they aren't the majority of encounters. Having to think on your feet, make decisions on priorities, and trust your own skills is extremely refreshing after two years of largely brainless play where failure means you should just come back later with different equipment.

We'll see if this bears out in the larger scale raids, but I'm very hopeful and optimistic.

Raging in a Civilized Fashion

2010-12-14T17:44:00.004-05:00

So one of my favorite games, League of Legends, was patched today and the community is reacting. That doesn't bother me; people will always have an immediate, visceral impression when encountering new information or changes to old information. What does bother me is:

"If it kills jungling its 100% terrible patch the game seems incomplete without jungle serving a real purpose. + All the warding and map awareness crisis control etc that a jungler brings."

I'm not sure this can be called language. Even if I inform you that "jungling" is a style of play within the game deciphering those two(?) sentences is mind bending.

Communicating an idea is easier when it doesn't require your audience to have repeated cranial encounters with a hard surface.

Cataclysm: Launch and Initial Impressions

2010-12-08T17:01:00.003-05:00

Cataclysm launched yesterday, an event I stayed home for. Both of the previous expansions drew me out of my hermetic cocoon to local video game emporiums in the dead of night. This latest installment offered a digital presale, allowing one to download the expansion ahead of time and be ready to play the moment it was all enabled at 12:01 PST on the 7th.

Well, in theory anyway. In actuality digital download combined with Blizzard's plan to delay the activation of Cataclysm content on all servers until 12:01 PST meant that rather than hourly waves of players shuffling in as their ability to race home from stores in their respective time zones allowed, the entire playerbase attempted to log on simultaneously.

The end result invites a host of titular puns relating to Blizzard's beleaguered login servers.

My first impression of Cataclysm is that the leveling experience is less immersive than was the case in Wrath of the Lich King. This impression is deeply colored as my first 24 hours of Cataclysm play all came in the first 24 hours of Cataclysm, whereas it took nearly a month for me to put a similar amount of time into its predecessor. Still, I can't shake the feeling that the Wrath of the Lich King leveling experience was more polished.

Oddly, I think geography is a major culprit. In previous expansions the high level zones were segregated from the old zones on a new continent. This empty slate made it easy to learn the new geography and feel a sense of progress as one essentially explored the uncharted land from end to end. It's an effortless process that happens naturally for everyone except those truly gifted at getting lost.

Cataclysm's content is completely different, scattered around the old world seemingly at random. At the same time, the expansion revamped old areas and essentially redrew the geographic map. The effect is essentially akin to dramatically altering the system of roads around your house and at the same time moving all the notable landmarks around, all overnight. It's a cartographic nightmare that creates the constant, inescapable feeling of being lost despite knowing exactly where you are.

That and trying to compete with a thousand other players for quest objectives makes it significantly harder to immerse oneself into a game.

As a final note, and pun, I'm less impressed with Cataclysm's music thus far compared to the previous expansions. The music in both Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King set tones and themes for each zone very effectively, with signature sounds for each. You could often tell simply by the music what zone you were in. Cataclysm has sadly been far more hit and miss, with the majority of music being at best nondescript.

Just so you don't get the wrong impression, it's been definitively enjoyable thus far. These are just the matters which stood out most in my mind initially.

Cataclysm Comes

2010-12-06T12:27:00.002-05:00

Less than 24 hours until the next soul-sucking release from Blizzard.

Grey Matter

2010-11-29T12:09:00.003-05:00

Megamind is worth seeing. It's not particularly revolutionary, but it's funny, mildly inspiring, and well done. If your kids are very young there are definitely a number of scary moments.

That's my "yes I'm still alive, really" moment of the month.

Observations

2010-10-19T02:00:00.004-04:00

A few things that have caught my attention lately:

1. I'm not really all that excited about new game releases. There's been a new Mario Galaxy, a new Dead Rising, and more in recent months, but the only games that have excited me are expansions on games I'm already playing. I suspect this is because I have a large back catalog of single player games I haven't finished, and it's tough for me to justify buying anything new when I have all these excellent games yet to play.

2. On that same note, I need to bring my Wii with me the next time I am out of town on business. I have yet to find a hotel that doesn't have chronic internet problems. Bonus points for only having wireless connections available, for said wireless connections to crap out every five minutes for forty seconds. For the love of Zelda just either provide internet that is reliable or just don't bother, you'd save me the heartbreak of constantly trying to get it to work and I could just go to sleep or drive in circles or something more productive than wrangling with a network as stable as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

3. I really don't mind losing games to mistakes I make, or even to mistakes other make. Yeah, it's not ideal and some would say it sucks, but that's how competitive games go, and how challenging single player/cooperative games should be. I really, utterly, and completely despise losing games to lag or other technical failures. It feels analogous to someone flipping a board game in your face, only you don't have an actual person to lecture on sportsmanship or blame for it. There's just this powerless feeling of futility to comfort you as you inwardly rage and boil.

Communication Fail

2010-10-13T19:38:00.003-04:00

How hard is X > Y > Z to understand? Someone tell me, because I used that exact format to try to communicate a concept on a forum, almost exactly as you see it there. Somehow I keep getting responses akin to:

"So basically X is the largest, then Y, then Z? What about if we're doing subtraction instead of addition?"

"Okay, so if I want to subtract one of these numbers from another of these numbers and get a negative number, which numbers do I subtract from each other?"

"Which is bigger, X or Z?"

Those are just the posts which seem to have bothered to read my maxim. I am going to cry myself to sleep tonight if I see one more person post who doesn't understand the concept of the "greater than" symbol.

Better than Christmas Presents

2010-10-08T11:05:00.005-04:00

Blizzcon in two weeks. My head shall asplode.

Surprise

2010-09-29T13:45:00.003-04:00

Here's a surprise!

Original Source: Time Killer

It can be a little hard to see what's going on since my blog is all black, but use arrow keys and space for fun and humor.

Behind the Times

2010-09-28T10:42:00.002-04:00

One of the odd things about living alone is that I no longer feel terribly inclined to play single player video games. When I'm playing, I want to be playing with people because I have plenty of time to be alone later.

The consequences of this are a giant backlog of games I haven't finished, and a strange indifference to new releases. Dead Rising 2 and another Front Mission game launch today, and the only reason I know is because someone posted a picture of a giant stuffed bear with an automatic weapon duct taped to it.

James Brown

2010-09-22T19:11:00.004-04:00

I've started exercising every morning 6:30-7:00 PDT, followed by a shower. I've gone nine consecutive days so far. The real test, however, will be whether I am able to keep this pattern going during travel/sickness etc.

In the meantime, I feel good.

Still Alive

2010-09-09T17:17:00.002-04:00

Duke Nukem Forever is actually being released. My mind has exploded.

I'm having random flashbacks to my childhood education. I think I can trace my obsession with logic to losing an argument over whether something costing a quarter in a penny store is expensive back in first grade.

Blizzcon in a little over a month. Bliss.

Omelas

2010-08-10T18:02:00.004-04:00

If you haven't read this short story, I suggest you do. It's a really good philosophical story with any number of potential angles to discuss it from.

StarCraft II: Launch

2010-07-28T18:16:00.004-04:00

Briefly, my experience so far has been awesome. That said, I need to point out something hilarious:

There's basically a war going on at Amazon.com over whether StarCraft II should be rated 1 or 5 stars. People are posting reviews essentially to counter the other group, and both groups are uprating their own reviews while downrating their mortal foes'.

Personally, if a repulsive man makes a beautiful work of art in a blameless way, I can still dislike the man without such feelings affecting the appraisal of the art itself.

Movies: Knight and Day

2010-07-02T16:55:00.003-04:00

The Bourne Trilogy of spy thrillers rank among my favorite films. It is probably their influence which makes Knight and Day, a romantic comedy/spy thriller hybrid, so amazing.

Knight and Day has all of the elements of an excellent spy thriller. There's the dashing secret agent, resourceful and clever, fighting against larger forces by himself. There are car chases, massive gun fights, intrigue, betrayals, and double crosses. Then, just to totally mess with the formula, instead of throwing in a femme fatale they inject a fairly normal woman who is totally unprepared for anything that is about to happen to her in the movie.

The twist on the formula not only works, it's simultaneously hilarious and engaging. While almost everything in the film can be mapped to various cliches from both genres, the combination of the two reminds me of such films as To Catch a Thief or How to Steal a Million. Knight and Day catches that classic up to the present day beautifully and seamlessly.

I highly recommend this film. It's only PG-13, it's over the top, and it's absolutely enjoyable.

Grace

2010-07-02T11:42:00.003-04:00

Some time go Roger Ebert, the acclaimed movie reviewer, wrote a piece stating his opinion that video games were not, and could not be, art. As one might expect, video game enthusiasts came out in droves to dispute this assertion.

More recently, Ebert wrote a follow up in which he had the incredible grace to concede two very important points, and essentially the entire debate. Having not played any video game his opinion, by his own admission, was effectively irrelevant. Moreover, because he had not and was not interested or willing to play video games, he could not make an informed argument against them being, or eventually becoming, art. In our modern age of stubbornly holding to opinions as though they were immutable and informed absolutes, this public declaration of ignorance stands as a beacon of refreshing honesty.

The honesty of this article comes in many forms and facets. It's not a matter of the article being forthright or factually correct, but the manner in which Ebert engages the discussion and, by extension, himself. He takes an honest look at the counter arguments, he takes an honest look at his own mistakes, and with honesty and humility admits the irrelevancy of his own opinion yet also acknowledges that it is still his honest opinion. This response is faultless, and a shining example of how to gracefully engage a debate.

Sadly, in today's world this careful, thoughtful and introspective approach is misunderstood. Many comments on this follow up from gamers indicate the exact type of predetermined observational bias which they decried as Ebert's error. Rather than reading and attempting to understand, they have read and attempted to directly translate.

It's an odd comparison, but I think it apt. Translators, at their best, are not concerned so much with wording as they are with communicating the meaning of one language and culture into another. That requires, above all else, understanding of both one and the other. A direct translation, however, is only concerned with running the words or text through a set of preexisting rules. The result of this second process is warped and alien, bent to the preconceptions or ignorance inherent in the rules themselves.

I find it odd that these comments even bother to declare that Ebert is a jerk, or that he's still a stuck up old fart or any other silly insults. The man admitted, as we had wanted him to from the moment the debate started, that he is not an authority on video games, that he can't declare them to not be art, and that he can not know whether they are or will become art. What more do we want? Is he to prostrate himself before the gates of E3, kiss the feet of Nolan Bushnell 7 times, and swear to never defile the sacred wakka wakka wakka ever again?

Gamers have in this article a great victory. Don't ruin it by being exactly the type of person we complained Ebert was.

In Disguise

2010-06-23T13:50:00.003-04:00

Transformice may be the single most amazing Flash game to ever be created. Why you ask? Watch:

Philanthropy Kills Kittens

2010-06-16T19:01:00.003-04:00

At least, that's what you'd assume if you read the comments about this amazing article. Seriously, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are pledging to give at least half their respective net worths to charity over their lifetimes, and are encouraging others to do the same. Somehow this warrants comments like (comment quoted verbatim):

"This is typical of billionaires with absolutely no vision for the future. This is the easy way out, they don't have to work they set up these organizations and write checks and reap the tax benefits. WHy don't these so called brilliant people set up an organization with billions to provide funds for entrepreneurs and small businessman to start companies, or grow their companies to hire people, create jobs and new product so we won't need charities and end this entitlement mentality. They can set up charities for those who really need it.

Yes, obviously Bill Gates and his wife shouldn't be lazy and just throw money at charities. They should set up their own organization that will provide new jobs. I have an idea, they can call it the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They should get right on that.

More poignantly, I understand that there's an entitlement mentality in the United States that many people find abhorrent (I do too!). I don't understand why this goes hand in hand with being oblivious to the many, many circumstances in which people simply need financial or meaningful support to lift them out of crushing poverty and other terrible situations. If everything was as easy as standing up on our own two feet, we wouldn't need parents past age 3.

Game Design: Choice, Options

2010-06-14T18:52:00.001-04:00

Choice is an important concept in game design. I would go so far to say that choice is the essential difference between movies and games; choice puts the audience in control.

There is a lot I could say philosophically about choice, its impact on gameplay, and how developers both use and abuse it. However, today I'm going to zero my focus on a very specific and limited aspect of choice, options.

Options are generally overlooked as an aspect of game design. Who cares about the player's ability to tweak graphical, audio, and controller settings when there's a game to be made? Yet, options define the player's experience almost as much as any other aspect of the game.

For example, a bad mapping of actions to the buttons/analog sticks on a controller can make a game unplayable. Despite this, with surprising frequency many games only implement the bare minimum for controller settings. In such cases you might find one or two preset button layouts with a single toggle for inverted look on the analog sticks. If a player does not find these preset layouts comfortable, intuitive, or enjoyable the game is ruined.

It is therefore critical to allow players to customize these types of user interface issues to their specifications. Just as a movie must be in focus, and a book must be printed legibly, a game needs to have a user interface that does not separate the audience from the medium. Options go a long way in attending to the huge diversity that exists in personal preferences.

So, let's examine a few examples of options whose presence or lack thereof added to or detracted from a game.

Case 1: Tetris

An interesting aspect of Tetris is the options it had available. At the time very few games had options, and those that did were fairly limited. Tetris, however, had options for changing music, adding a handicap, and even starting at a more difficult level. All of these helped the replayability of the game immensely. As spiffy as the music was, being able to turn it off helped preserve sanity after several hours of play. Once you got very good, being able to up the ante early on erased the slow, early part of the game. Tetris, and a few other pioneering games, redefined what it meant to have options.

Case 2: Smash Brothers

Smash Brothers is a game renowned for its customizability, with one exception. While all other items and settings have always been ridiculously thorough and deep to the point of insanity, each game in the series has overlooked adding an option to select which Pokemon will come out of the pokeballs.

This is a very, very small detail, and detracts only a little from the series, but has nonetheless remained a very obvious opportunity that remains overlooked. Two of the games even feature challenge modes where the developers restrict Pokemon themselves, tormenting players who with to have that power.

Case 3: Battle.net 2.0

Battle.net 2.0, and specifically RealID, is the catalyst for this entry. RealID is the ability to "friend" other players on a first-name (rather than anonymized codename) basis, allowing you to see them as online no matter what game they are playing. The ability to track good friends and relatives in this manner while you're playing games is a neat feature.

The problem with RealID is in its options. RealID is an all or nothing feature-set. You can't friend someone through RealID and not have them appear in your list of friends with their full name followed by their account name. You can't choose not to have your list of RealID friends visible to all your RealID friends. You either add friends through RealID and subject yourself to all the features you like and all the features you don't like, or you opt out entirely.

This failure to break RealID down into separate, optional features has been a major sticking point for many players. In fact, it has been such a problem during testing that the developers had to intentionally break other options in order to force players to test the RealID system. RealID simply wasn't something the testers wanted to use because they couldn't turn off the features they didn't like.

The thread which joins these cases together is a simple principle: options should allow a player to do something they want. Tetris players will often want to get to the exciting fast-paced portion of the game, and so giving them an option to skip to that portion makes sense. Battle.net 2.0 users may not want to identify their friends by their full names, or for their friends list to be readily visible, and so failing to provide an option to disable these features is a critical oversight. Players that can mold the game to their needs will always be happier than players who are forced into specific implementations.

So when deciding on options, be very careful when making assumptions about player needs. Considering everything individually, and whether it makes sense for certain things to be immutable or joined together. If a deadline is your reason to avoid implementing an option, so be it, but make certain that you have at least that as a reason rather than nothing at all.

Facts About Me: Sleep

2010-06-11T10:33:00.003-04:00

Here are some interesting facts about me and sleep.

When my sleep schedule is consistent, I tend to wake up approximately 45 minutes before my alarm.
No matter how much sleep I get 2PM feels like a great time to take a nap.
Traveling completely messes up my sleep schedule. The first few days in a hotel are usually fitful, and I become unreliable with alarms.
I get my second wind around 11 PM, a third wind around 12:30 AM, and past 2 AM I generally won't feel tired again until 4-6 AM.
The more sleep I get, the more likely I am to break into random song.

Life is Real

2010-06-02T10:46:00.003-04:00

These days the right side of politics tends to get a bad rap, and given their unofficial spokespeople it's not hard to see why. It is, however, dangerous to write off ideas from the right simply because certain polarizing figures regularly appear on national TV to again prove their ridiculous insensitivity and/or warped perception of the country. There are crucial ideas from the right which, independent from any hypocrisy, are important to the continued prosperity of the country.

One idea in particular that tends to get a bad rap is "unoffendability". In short, the idea is that left wing politics is far, far too sensitive to the possibility of offending people. It is unfortunate, but often this idea is characterized as thinly veiled racism/misogyny/etc., and more unfortunate still that in some cases it truly is.

However, in a great many cases it is not, and these situations should not be lumped into the same vile category. These are cases such as when schools in Massachusetts ban playing cops and robbers, or when kids are suspended for making a gun shape in their hands, or when a soccer league in Ottawa, Canada implements a rule where winning too well causes you to lose. The only factor at play in these circumstances is the possibility of an overprotective parent making a fuss.

This isn't about political correctness, but about denying children the opportunity to learn, to stretch their imagination, and to encounter the hard truth that life doesn't always cater to them. The wise see value in exposing their children to the hard truth that Grandpa isn't coming back, or that Fluffy isn't going to be okay. The sage understand that children must fall down in order to learn to pick themselves up, that injury often goes hand in hand with knowledge and wisdom. Throwing children in a bubble completely separated from failure, pain, and the reality of responsibility is the greatest possible disservice to them.

What the voice from the right decries isn't the idea of protecting children from unnecessary harm or emotional trauma, but the act of insulating them utterly. It's a basic notion that while some sheltering has a purpose, the extent to which it is being taken today is extreme to the point of stunting the ability of children to mature and develop the basic life skills they need to survive outside the safety of the home. As the father in Calvin and Hobbes often noted, minor hardships "build character".

When I raise my kids, I fully plan on being wrought with worry and concern as I allow my kids the freedom to get messy and potentially scrape knees, burn fingers, cry, and learn.

Recursion Mk. II

2010-05-12T17:53:00.002-04:00

Recursion Mk. II

Crossing the Streams

2010-05-12T17:45:00.005-04:00

I am tempted to set up a live video stream of my StarCraft II games. It seems to be the "in" thing to do these days.

The concept creates a tempest of confused half-thoughts suddenly ceasing as--livestreaming, would I really--my skill is barely--would that affect my computer--maybe I should play Zerg.

First Episodes: Shangri-La

2010-05-11T16:47:00.004-04:00

It seems as though I'm bound to make more of these. Thankfully, they don't come up only when a series fails to impress.

Today's exploration of anime introductions features Shangri-La. A few of my personal preferences will exert their bias in this analysis. Overall, this episode was enjoyable and served its purpose effectively.

Excellent: The opening scene. It is raining, and we begin the story in a prison. A young female prisoner is being released, and as she is escorted from her cell toward the exit her fellow prisoners cheer her on. They fall quiet as she stops. The prisoner boldly announces, "Today is the day that I, Kuniko Hojo, am released!" and her peers cheer with gusto as the guards look nervously on the confident girl. Cue intro sequence.

One of the most important tasks that must be completed in the first episode of any television show is the introduction and fleshing out of the main character. This usually must happen immediately, and very quickly, as we rely upon this character as our window into the plot, the world, and the other characters. For many stories, the main character is the vital anchor who keeps the audience grounded and engaged.

This opening scene completes the lion's share of this task without any exposition and with great economy of time. The beaming, confident girl is contrasted against the rain and the dank prison. She commands the respect of the other prisoners, and even the begrudging respect of the guards. The question, "How did such a girl end up in prison anyway?" draws in the audience. It does its job, and ends the moment it's done.

Bad: There is a particular character design that I generally tend to despise and hate in anime. The only exception was an isolated case where it was explicitly used to point out how its stupidity. This is the "very overweight girl who nevertheless asserts they aren't and try to dress and act in a perversely extreme cute way in order to make up for the fact that they don't meet cultural standards of beauty" character.

That's a fairly loaded archetype that the majority of my readers will not be familiar with. For their benefit, here is a picture for reference purposes:

The problem with this character type isn't that they're unattractive or outright ugly, it's that they don't have much, if any, inner beauty to speak of. Their only purpose in almost all cases is to deny reality whenever anyone points out that they don't meet current cultural standards of beauty. There is nothing else to their existence except to deny the truth about themselves, cry about it, and perpetuate a rather vicious stereotype.

There is one of these characters in this series. Thankfully they don't appear but for a minute in this episode, but I know any further episodes I may watch will ultimately be tainted by the dread of encountering this atrocious mockery of an archetype.

Good: World building. Shangri-La follows the important principle of building a world through emergence rather than exposition. A narrator doesn't explain to us that melting icecaps flooded the world, we learn this slowly as the characters discuss the state of their barely-above-water home. We aren't subject to endless droning regarding the complex carbon cap-and-trade tax system that's was implemented globally decades ago when the crisis happened, we experience it through a shady backroom deal between a desperate government and a hacker/loan-shark.

This style of world building is effective not just because people generally prefer action over exposition, but also because it allows for simultaneous character development. We learn more about a world by watching the people in it as opposed to being lectured about it. As a result we can move more quickly toward the introduction of the plot, the intrigue, and the meat of a story.

Meh: Shangri-La still, however, may have tried to introduce too much at once. Several characters and their surrounding organizations could have had their introductions delayed until later episodes, even if elements in the first episode alluded to them. As an ironic counterpoint to the Book of Bantorra's failure to explain enough, Shangri-La may have tried to show too much.

Uncertain: The end of the episode throws two big mysteries at the audience, one which demands immediate resolution and the other which obviously is a thread for the greater plot. This type of double hook could work well, or it could only make the next episode confusing.

All in all it was far better than the Book of Bantorra, but due my personal grudge against that secondary character's archetype my personal enjoyment was diminished. If it wasn't for that character, I'd probably not hesitate to watch further. If the series was otherwise flawless, I possibly could overcome the issue and continue forward. At the moment, I'm content to let it sit idly as I move on to something else, like finishing Turn A Gundam or Vandread.

Great Expectations

2010-05-11T16:40:00.002-04:00

Enterprising professional gamers are going to be running a StarCraft 2 Training Camp in June. However, they are obviously hacks. They put "sleep" on the proposed schedule.

First Episodes: Book of Bantorra

2010-05-05T18:22:00.002-04:00

Deciding when to give up on an anime series is a process which varies greatly from person to person. Everyone has their own rule or internal metric by which they judge. When discussing this you'll hear people talk about their "two episode rule" or that "it jumps the shark when this happens enough times". My personal rule is "when it starts sucking".

I recently tested the waters of a series called "The Book of Bantorra", and didn't make it past the first episode. The episode wasn't awful, there were ups and downs, but overall it failed the "sucking" test. What follows is a series of points, in what is mostly a chronological sorting, as to what was good, bad, or neither about the episode.

Good: The opening scene. The episode begins with your classic scary white room, where a helpless and defeated subject responds to a disembodied voice. This trope is fairly common, and has been used in many different genres of cinema and television for years. The subject in the room is like a lab rat, essentially meaningless to the disembodied, detached voice that observes them. Control is clearly entirely in the hands of the one and not the other, a fact emphasized by the defeated and disheveled appearance and demeanor of the subject. It's a clear, effective way to communicate the relationship between two characters or groups.

This episode uses this setup to good effect. The subject eerily discusses the philosophy of love and humanity with a voice coming from a vintage record player. This broken shell of a person states clearly that humans are to be loved, humans in pain are to be comforted, and outcast humans are to be rescued. The incongruity between this stated philosophy and their passive, defeated state builds until the subject announces, when prodded by their invisible overseer, that they are not human. As is standard, the voice asks "What are you?", and the subject replies "I am a bomb". This is all classic stuff and well executed.

Bad: The scene doesn't end there. Normally this type of scene would end after the revelation of the full brokenness of the subject. They no longer believe themselves to be human, but have instead been twisted and corrupted into something both sorrowful and terrifying. Tension is usually generated or heightened by cutting away following the subject's disturbing statement that they are a weapon, not a person. This may be fairly cliche, but it's still effective when done correctly.

Instead of following the standard route, however, the conversation continues. The voice asks the subject for their purpose, and the subject responds that it's to kill some unpronounceable two word proper noun which seems to indicate some specific person, group or category. This statement is repeated several times as the scene fades to white and finally ends.

This extension, unfortunately, muddies the scene. Rather than leaving the audience with the tension created by the depravity of the situation, the effect is lost as instead the audience is now wondering what/who this "Hamyuts Whatsamigger" is, and why someone would create a human bomb to destroy it/them.

Moreover, it diminishes the effectiveness of the disembodied voice. The moment the subject answered "I am a bomb" control was clearly established. The voice, if anything, would have responded "Yes, you are a bomb" followed maybe by some statement indicating the subject is a good, obedient boy/girl and will be rewarded somehow, or some other equally twisted perversion of typical authority/subject roles. Instead, the voice essentially tries to reassure itself that the subject is fully under its control, continuing to ask questions which establish this. In doing so, the voice loses some of its certainly and security, and thereby its authority.

Overall the scene was still effective, but it lost much by being extended.

Bad: The story unfolds with villains discussing matter over dinner. This is another fairly classic method of introducing characters and their relationships. Several villains discuss their villainy, their deviant philosophies, and their plans over a lavish meal on a luxurious cruise ship, indicating their excess wealth and power. This is not, in and of itself, a bad choice. The tool being used here is both solid and standard, and is not by any means to be shunned.

However, in this case the tool is misused. Introducing villains is a tricky art with many traps, and many of them come into play here. The end result is a set of three flat and uninteresting villains who barely even register as evil.

The first trap is context, or the complete lack thereof. Villains need the context of the world within which they exist to stand out as villainous. You can try to build part of that world using villains, but laying foundations in this way is an extremely difficult proposition. If it wasn't for archetypes and character design, it would have been difficult to tell these were even villains.

The second is flow. We just left a scene in which a mystery voice exerted dominance over a hapless test subject in a nondescript room. It isn't uncommon to follow this up with a villain or villains gloating over their success or passively recording their observations and moving on to the next in a long series of meaningless victims, if you transition to the villain responsible at all. Transitioning to a completely unrelated dinner discussion of even more abstract philosophical matters which doesn't include clear villainy simply dulls the whole thing. Are these people villains or the most wealthy philosophers of the Ayn Rand school in the world?

Finally, the topic of discussion is largely that of "True Man", a term that means nothing to the audience before and after the conversation (much like that Hamyuts Whatchamawhosits from the first scene). When the conversation ends, the audience is left wondering what the deal is, and doesn't get any answers before the good guys attack.

Good: Casma dies. The good guys, including this Casma fellow, interrupt by attacking the luxurious cruise ship from a patrol boat. Casma fits the standard "lazy, irresponsible but ultimate true and faithful ally" archetype very clearly, as the attack opens with him complaining about how much he hates actually putting his obvious specialty to use. When a man falls overboard off the cruise ship after the opening salvo, Casma selflessly dives into the water to save him. Then the man explodes, presumably taking Casma with him. I assume Casma is dead because he was A) at point blank range and B) we don't see him for the rest of the episode.

I call this good because it's extremely surprising. Killing off a clear archetypal character before they've have 30 seconds of screen time is bold and interesting. The moment Casma lay hands down on the patrol boat panting and complaining about work it was clear that he'd be around as a semi-comic relief character, shirking duty and work until. The moment someone's life would be in danger, however, he'd show his true colors and prove truer than anyone else. That they killed him almost immediately, having spent time and resources to design his character as a clear primary cast member, made all the other heroes look more vulnerable.

Bad: No one cares about Casma. The full extent of mourning for Casma consists of one, and only one, character calling out his name, followed by a brief expression of anger and frustration. This is a surprising complaint coming from me, as I tend to dislike long, overwrought and extended sequences of mourning for dead characters. Some of my favorite anime moments involve characters dying suddenly in the heat of battle without a moment to grieve, as there isn't any time for that on a battle field. The reaction to Casma's death is simply lacking.

It essentially makes the rest of the heroes look inhuman. Nobody jumps in the water to try and rescue Casma, or what's left of him. Nobody clenches a fist, fights back tears, or makes plain their sorrow. We have one character and one character alone who even comments, making the other half dozen on board heartless monsters.

This might have been excusable, except no mention is made of it later in the episode either. Not when they complete the mission, not when they return to base to discuss the success/failure of the mission, not when they get their next assignments. Casma drops off the face of the episode, presumably resting in pieces, and no one bats an eye. It's a shame, as he's the only character who had a name which you could actually be expected to remember.

Bad: World building failure. The Book of Bantorra, like many anime, has its own world with somewhat different rules than the universe as we know it. When you die, for example, your soul crystallizes into a book (which looks like a stone tablet). This premise is the cornerstone for all the other interesting differences between real boring life and this story world. Discovering how these differences and the reasons behind them is one of the fun aspects of this type of story.

Guiding the audience through the process of discovery is not an easy task. Throw too much at the audience and they're overwhelmed by the infodump, too little and they're left in a murky fog which obscures any other redeeming qualities. In this case, the guiding hand behind this series managed to do both.

It starts with the Hamyuts Whosacallums and True Man proper noun drops I've mentioned before. It's not uncommon for anime to drop terms in this manner and for the audience to remain in the dark as to what exactly they mean. As part of the discovery process the audience comes to understand and accept them. In Book of Bantorra you end up with a half dozen of these in the very first episode alone, none of which are fully explained.

A good example is the term "Meats". The term is used pejoratively to describe people who have lost all will to live and don't even consider themselves to be human. We don't know why they've lost the will to live, why the cruise ship has a small village's worth on board, what the True Man/Mock Man people want with them, why even some of the supposed good guys consider them to be subhuman, or what purpose they even serve. They just are, and we're supposed to accept that the existence of such things is normal. That "Meats" are literally everywhere in the story and remain poorly explained is detrimental.

When the story finally started explaining who the good guys are, it all seems out of place. The "Director" in charge of the operation callously doesn't care about the fate of the many, many "Meats" and/or Casma, all of whom died in the operation. At the same time we're being told this organization of "Armed Librarians" is extremely beloved of the people, shown to us by people asking one of them for autographs. The incongruity cracks the foundation the world's author is trying to build upon.

By presenting the "Director" before our impression of the "Armed Librarians" organization has been set, the audience is still free to ask without hesitation "is this organization good?" The ability to ask that question freely kills any tension or interesting dynamics which could have occurred between the two. Instead of trying to understand how to two could possibly work together, much of the audience is lost to the same cynicism they display toward corporations.

This is a fairly common theme throughout the episode. Before our impressions of something can be set, the story is already moving on to the next thing we need to know without pause, pacing, or concern that some of their heroes we're supposed to like are acting like pathological monsters. Vague terms and barely described concepts are thrown at us constantly, and in the end we experience a simultaneous infodump and information void. The result of this failed world building is shaky and shallow.

Bad: There's no main character. The character we can most identify with is a supporting cast member who, by virtue of being the only character with a heart larger than the Grinch's, spends a fair amount of time expressing his belief that "Meats" are still human, that they should be saved, and expressing anger, regret and sorrow when they all end up drowning. He's also the only character that even notices Casma got blown to pieces.

We're supposed to regard the "Director" as a Major Kusanagi type main character, ala Ghost in the Shell. However, of all the characters in the story we see the least of her (outside of the ill-fated Casma) and she happens to be the most monstrously uncaring of any of the characters we meet. When directly confronted by the only caring person in the show about the deaths of all the "Meats" and the general failure of the mission, she just shrugs it off.

Then there's the subject from the opening scene. He happens to be a Meat, and somehow ends up with a piece of some witch's soul that he encountered while drowning in the ocean. This witch, for reference, poisoned entire regions and made a killing off selling the cure, but still comes off as more human and caring than 95% of the rest of the cast because she at least expresses her love of this lifeless outcast. Of course, we have no idea why a fragment of the soul of a centuries dead witch would love a random drowning stranger.

So we're not supposed to consider the only person suitable to be the main character to be important, and the people who are supposed to be main characters are either extremely confusion or for all intents and purposes inhuman. This does the story no justice.

Bad: The episode ends in a mining town. This isn't inherently bad, except the miners are mining books, peoples' souls. Why the books are in the mine in the first place and not with the "Armed Librarians" isn't clear, nor is it clear why there's a well established mining town for this reason when the only book anyone seems interested in is the soul of the previously mentioned witch.

In conclusion, the first episode of Book of Bantorra feels like someone threw a bunch of archetypes, plot elements, and tropes into a hat and just pulled them out at random. The series as a whole may well be much better, but after the first episode I have little or no reason to care about watching the rest.

Recursion

2010-04-30T13:22:00.003-04:00

Fun Fact: Googling for "recursion" will give you a message asking "Did you mean recursion?"

I had a fairly surreal experience today. I was watched a trailer advertising an upcoming video game. While watching it, an advertisement popped up on the bottom edge of the video (one of those banner ads you click the X to close).

Ladies and gentlemen, advertising has now gotten to the point where they put advertisements in your advertisements so you can see advertisements while watching advertisements.

Messaging

2010-04-29T13:58:00.003-04:00

To put it simply, I like being talked to like I'm an intelligent human being, generally because I regard myself as such. Thus, when Republicans, Democrats, and blue furry creatures from Alpha Centauri go on the news spouting emotion grabbing nonsense I am insulted and tune out.

Thus, I like Republicans like Ken Blackwell who are well-spoken, willing to engage facts, and able to have an actual discussion/debate on the issues. I may not agree with them, but I feel much better about the prospect of such people having a role in government when they aren't obsessed with blatant fiction (or completely unable to disperse one, what the heck Democrats?).

Bronze

2010-04-26T01:58:00.004-04:00

I am good at video games, a fact known by anyone familiar with me. This fact is responsible for two traits of my character I am very knowledgeable about, and one I had little or no idea existed until very recently.

The first two are straightforward, though I won't go into deep explanation. To summarize, my stubborn, never-say-die challenges against players better than me is one trait, and the second is my inability to focus on any one pursuit/choice within a given game. I have known for a while the madness which spawned these characteristics, and they have long since ceased to surprise me.

Recently, however, my joining the StarCraft II Beta confronted me with an aspect of my character I had never seen before.

Despite my general quick acclimation to new games, good reflexes, past experience and stubbornness, I found myself fearful of actually testing my abilities against other people. I could not understand what was wrong with me. Why would I have any reason to be afraid to find out where I stood? If I was better than everyone, no big deal. If I was a terrible player, even better. I had no reason I knew of to be in a catatonic state of terror.

Eventually, after forcing myself through the obstacle, I understood. What I feared was the unknown, a genre I hadn't touched seriously in a decade. The fact that my brother proved head and shoulders better than me in both the original and StarCraft II didn't bother me directly, but it opened the door to doubts. I doubted whether I would be any good, whether I would learn and improve, and most critically whether I would live up to my name and history.

I was unknowingly wrapped up in the mythos of Me, the Undeniably Awesome Gamer. StarCraft II represented a grave threat to my understanding of me as a good gamer. I have failed utterly at other games and genres, but I never was particularly serious about them so they didn't matter (I'm on to you and your tricky oceans, Ace Combat). StarCraft II, however, whispered to me sweet, sickening invitations to prove myself a sham.

Afraid I would turn out to be normal, I shied away, forgetting that everyone starts a new or forgotten genre a complete nub and goes from there. As it turns out, everyone includes me.

Having gotten over myself, we'll see if I can't turn up the learning machine and become a kick butt player. In the mean time, I'll sit in the Bronze loser's league and nub it up.

Artificial Incompetence

2010-04-22T04:14:00.004-04:00

The StarCraft II beta is very much designed to be played against people. There is Artificial Intelligence you can choose to play against. However, Blizzard has perfectly simulated how a Ritalin driven child would play while being sedated and restricted to the use of only one finger.

They label this difficulty "Very Easy" and there are currently no others. I can think of very few friends of mine who, without ever having played StarCraft before, wouldn't be able to defeat one of these on their first try while blindfolded and forced to recite the Gettysburg address backwards. That's fine, it's labeled exactly what it is, but if you're an anti-social hermit the beta will not be for you.

Purchasing Power

2010-04-21T19:59:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Gamestop's current promotion by which one may obtain a StarCraft II beta key via a preorder, I am now in possession of the StarCraft II beta.

Wheeeeeeeeee...............

Nerd Cred

2010-04-20T13:02:00.003-04:00

My glasses broke at the left hinge just now. As as result, my computational index just increased by five units of nerd, due to my taping the glasses back together.

It Came from the Blog

2010-04-17T02:13:00.003-04:00

So recently there was a fairly unimportant topic regarding WoW that came up.

Lots of people talked about it, but you really don't care about any of them.

I read a lot of blog posts on the subject, partly because I found them interesting and partly because I didn't have time to sit down and read a book.

While I was reading these blogs, I began to notice something odd. It was present in most of the blogs and obvious almost from the moment I began reading, though I shrugged it off the first few times.

I noticed this, almost every sentence was separated out by two carriage returns.

Really, it looked exactly like this. Nearly a dozen blog posts where the sin of joining two sentences together was only brooked when one was sufficiently short.

I'm a person who's fairly big on writing and the theory behind doing so; these kinds of minutiae tickle my cerebrum in happy ways.

I can only describe this style of textual organization with one word, disjointed.

Reproducing the effect is difficult for me because I simply do not write in that style, but down to the very core of the text each sentence felt like a separate, lonely thought loosely connected to what came before and awaited after, drifting in a sea of confusion.

Some blog entries had the good grace to figure out halfway through that people were now in it for the long haul and one might be allowed to write complex sentences or even paragraphs -- sweet relief!

Not many did. This caused me great sadness.

Usually the last sentence was very short, as though the author petered out.

-----------------------------------

I can no longer maintain that facade, as doing so is causing my sanity preservation systems to suffer intolerable stress. Do the people of the internet truly think in minuscule, disconnected chunks? The nature of the byte is such, but surely not humanity. To continue would be to lessen myself as a sentient being, or at least deny my nature until I am forever broken.

Perhaps it is the modern education, or modern media, that has effected this madness.
We live in a culture of sound bites and flashy, brief declarative statements made without useful context or connection. The use of such constructs like paragraphs or even letters fades in the face of ever briefer bursts of communication. In concordance with our shorter attention spans, we are inclined to process data in smaller chunks.

Woe to us, however, if this permeates our psyches to the point where even our very thoughts become microscopic. There is beauty in the connections between ideas, events and memories, in the smooth flow of a whispering, fluid stream of mentality. Blending each instant of consciousness into the next is our assurance -- alas, the dreamless night that robs us of our security -- of our connection to our past and future selves. When thought itself becomes a series of brief flashes of notion, separated by clean breaks without context or binding ties, we lose the breadth and width of creation for a tiny, shallow world where nothing exists outside of the moment.

Perhaps I go too far in my waxing of philosophy, but even that askewed or even abusive misuse of the idiom warms me with ties to memories of my father chiding me for my malapropisms and many other connections which, in being stirred together in one motion, creates something both fearful and joyous. If I go too far, I at least have the confidence that my error only leads to dreams and abstract notions that encompass more and more of creation.

Still, I wonder if I am a time-lost relic, for as often as I am similar to my peers I am again so dissimilar as to wonder if I wasn't left on the doorstep of my generation by fourth dimension-traversing gypsies.

Saturday Morning Routine

2010-03-27T21:07:00.004-04:00

11:30 AM: Wake up.
11:33 AM: Realize that there are only 27 more minutes in which to have a morning routine.

This is a Haiku.

2010-03-27T21:05:00.002-04:00

Haikudesu.
Kiite kudasai.
Owaridesu.

Suspense

2010-03-09T18:28:00.003-05:00

So, Portal 2 is on its way this Christmas. At the same time, a sequel to Tron is on its way this Christmas. Oddly enough, the former prospect excites me while the latter prospect frightens me.

I think this is largely because the worst case scenario for Portal 2 is that it tries to be Portal. In such a scenario, you'll have the charm of the mind-bending puzzles, though perhaps you won't experience a plot that's quite as original, creepy, and involving. I can live with Portal 2's worst case scenario, and the potential jubilation the best case scenario represents is off the scale.

Tron Legacy is very different. The worst case scenario is an absolute disaster. The movie is clearly trying to be two things at once, a call back to arcade nostalgia and a flashy special effects film. Those are two very different beasts, and yoking them together will take a great feat of directorial and editorial strength. I suppose the best case scenario is that Tron 2 becomes the Starcraft of 3D special effects films, perfecting the formula and setting standards for decades to come. I'd definitely enjoy that, but I don't harbor a shred of hope that's what will happen.

Buckle Up!

2010-02-15T18:59:00.002-05:00

When I returned to my desk after standing up to grab a snack, I attempted to buckle my seat belt. It took me slightly longer than a half second to realize there was no seat belt on my desk chair.

Signs from God

2010-02-10T20:04:00.003-05:00

People often imagine that signs from God are giant, epic visions of Charleton Heston on the mountain. They are more usually mundane.

A good example, seeing a dime in your freshly washed laundry and thinking, "Heh, I may not have listened to my mother and checked all my pockets, but it's not like I've ever accidentally washed anything important." and shortly thereafter seeing that you just washed your key cards that grant you access to your gated community and underground garage. Better yet, they still somehow work.

Why do I bring this up? No reason, no reason at all.

Gaming Theory

2010-02-04T13:12:00.002-05:00

Pet Project Idea: Social Study through gaming.

The concept is to create a fairly decent game along standard archetypes. The better quality of the game, the better. The game should be designed, coded, tested, refined, and completed as would be standard for any game of its kind.

The twist is this: there will be a clearly labeled "WIN THE GAME" button on the screen at all times during play. Before the game starts, there will be a clear statement of intentions. Clicking the "WIN THE GAME" button will win the game instantly. It will also record the time spent playing before the button was pressed. This information will be gathered on a website for public display.

I think this would be a very interesting social experiment, particularly in gathering information about the habits and mentality of gamers.

Come 2030.

2009-12-15T14:18:00.002-05:00

Gaming itself is changing, and the ways in which this nascent industry is evolving are many. The future of gaming is multifaceted, uncertain, and even frightening.

First let us take stock of the three current spheres of gaming, PC, Console and Arcade.

Arcades are where gaming started, but are now largely relegated to gimmicks and unique control interfaces to continue functioning. The fall of the Arcade can be traced to the onset of home portable gaming. PCs were the harbinger, but it was console gaming that stole the masses away from the coin glutted cabinets of the Arcade. While Arcades maintained graphical dominance even into the fourth generation of consoles, the convenience, cheaper cost, and portability of consoles and eventually PCs as well overwhelmed the graphical edge of arcades. Shipping a new machine to arcades was more difficult than releasing a new video game to retailers. Today all Arcades can offer is a unique experience.

PCs today are relegated to a few niche genres and casual, browser-based games. PC gaming was to the Arcades as television is to movies, similar but overall an experience of lesser quality. This situation was turned on its head by the third generation of consoles, with gamers spending in excess to build PCs capable of graphics equivalent to or beyond what was affordable in arcade. This subculture of gaming riggers continues to this day, and still acts as the driving force behind hardware advances. Still, most PCs aren't built for such intense processing, and many people aren't interested in giving their children a reason to compete for time on the PC.

Consoles currently dominate the gaming industry. Consoles are the youngest sphere of gaming, created out of a desire for Arcade quality gaming at home. This feat wasn't possible on PCs back when the first Atari was released. PCs eventually were able to, but Consoles were far cheaper and matched Arcades. These factors continue to push the dominance of Consoles, even as the lines between them and PCs are blurred. Getting cheap, convenient quality is a hard bargain to pass up.

This is where we stand today. The detail is present because it gives some sense of from where and how the industry has traveled thus far. This is important in considering where gaming is going.

First, Console gaming is dying. This seems a drastic statement, but the situation is as I have stated. In two decades consoles as we know them will cease to be relevant. Consoles are already far diverged from the machines we saw in the 1980s. They are almost identical to PCs, save for their unique form factors and input devices. In a surprisingly short amount of time Consoles will be little more than prefabricated gaming PCs much like Alienware makes now. Proprietary installations will likely continue for some time, but it's only a matter of time before the homogenization of features and hardware begins to defeat the purpose of separate machines.

Second, there will obviously be a resurgence of PC gaming, though PCs as well will have changed. As consoles become more PC-like and the industry transitions back, demands will come for consistent, stable hardware on which PC gaming can be supported. All current Console makers will surreptitiously transform their consoles into gaming PCs, attempting to become the standard. Eventually one, or more likely Alienware, will emerge as the basic standard, with the others being only tangentially supported.

Third, a new sphere of gaming is fast emerging. While gameboys and the like have been around for years, only those with more than a passing interest would purchase them. Now, however, everyone has a phone or portable device capable of playing game, whether they initially intended to use it for that purpose or not. This sphere will dominate the casual market, and even introduce new genres possible only such a widely mobile and ubiquitous platform. Kids will catch Pokemon not by moving a virtual character around a virtual environment, but by walking to school, to the cafeteria, running around the yard and more.

Fourth, the future of Arcades will depend on future technology. In order to survive, Arcades need a new technology that is too expensive for home use. They might attempt to cache in on mobile gaming, acting as hot spots for events and special rewards. Failing a new technology, Arcades in the US will become an antiquity, something novel but no longer critical to the industry. They will continue to have relevance in Japan, but that will also diminish without a significant, unique hook.

Most importantly, by the time all this has come to pass a point will have been reached where additional graphical power is largely irrelevant. A difference will remain, but it will be largely unnecessary for story-experiencing purposes. Gaming will experience it's own "impressionist" movement, moving away from photo-realism and graphical superiority to more creative and interesting uses of computational power. Corporations, however, will act to squelch or ignore such titles initially as they will continue to trust in the staple genres and styles.

See you in 20 years.

Manga, ka?

2009-11-13T17:45:00.002-05:00

Reading humorous manga on four hours of sleep is an exercise in fits of laughter.

I think I'm going to read all hilarious manga while sleep-deprived from now on.

Headlining!

2009-11-12T18:49:00.005-05:00

My guild made the front page on Wow.com.

First, Wow.com. Next, the world (of Warcraft)!

Old

2009-11-12T15:26:00.001-05:00

Paypal thinks I'm old enough to have a teenager who might want their own Paypal account.

I'm not sure what to think of that.

Zoom zoom.

2009-11-11T14:41:00.002-05:00

My mother often complains about movies being too much like video games. It was for this reason that she didn't like the recent Star Trek film. At the time, I had a factual understanding of her complaint, though I lacked a visceral understanding. Academically speaking, her issue was that directors enjoy swooshing a camera in and around the action, but for people who don't habitually subject themselves to this kind of visual overload it's too much to keep track of.

Last night I totally went bonkers for the same reason as my mother.

After dining with my grandparents, we turned on the television to give ample time for digestion before desert. Choosing to edify ourselves through PBS, we watched as NOVA discussed human ancestry and anthropology, likely due to some recent discoveries in the field.

I can't really be sure, because I was horribly distracted by the director's incredibly annoying camera work.

Our new generations have grown up in an era where information is instantly available, where attention spans are ever shorter, and where video games now involve flailing in front of the television. I can understand that NOVA, as it was when I was a kid, has to expend some effort updating its methods of operation to match the changing times. To remain the same is to become a fossil.

That said, they should find better directors.

There are a lot of tools at a director's disposal. The more obvious the tool, the less often it should be used. Otherwise the viewer becomes aware of the tool and it ceases to be illuminating. Instead, it beings to obscure in proportion to how much it is abused.

The director of this episode of Nova had an obsession with two forms of zoom. Form one was to start close to a picture, just enough that most of the important bits weren't visible, and then quickly zoom out to a fuller view with an graphical blur and refocus, accompanied by an audible whoosh. Form two was to start zoom out from a picture, just enough that most of the interesting bits were too small to make out, and then zoom in with the same graphical and audible effects as the other form.

The intent was obviously to make pictures of skeletons and anthropologists exciting. However, the frequency with which these zooms occurred, and the short duration the technique alloted to actually look at the skeletons or interesting photos, created a situation where it was nearly impossible to actually appreciate whatever it was the director wanted you to look at.

I could almost have sworn there were two little kids fighting over the zoom function on the camera, all while talking in whoosh noises.

In addition to this visual repetition, the program itself was arranged with many, many repeated narrations. I can scarcely remember just how many times the narrator said, "For the first time in X years...", "Then, there was an amazing discovery...", and similar phrases. I could potentially see the worth in continually repeating the weird names of the skeletons, given that they aren't easy to remember of learn. But for the love of variety don't say the name with exactly the same inflection, tone, pitch and feeling every single time.

The whole presentation felt like a broken record being played over a projector with bits and pieces of a child's wild drawings thrown in. By the fifth amazing discovery I couldn't bear to watch it anymore. Not that I could have seen anything anyway what with all the blur-zooming going on. It might have been better if there wasn't that conspicuous whooshing noise there every single time.

Grr. Get off my lawn!

A Post

2009-09-15T18:31:00.002-04:00

A post written here
only because I wanted
to say that I live.

Waxing and Waning

2009-08-31T23:56:00.001-04:00

Oh wait. I have a blog.

Koei Hates Me

2009-07-30T18:44:00.003-04:00

It's effectively official at this point. All that's left is for Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 to come out for the final nail in the coffin.

For those of you who have not followed this saga, Koei addicted me to Dynasty Warriors with Dynasty Warriors 3. It was a lot of fun, though obviously had room for improvement, and I played it a lot in college. Good times.

There was one feature I particularly appreciated, specifically the ability to choose the original Japanese voice actors. It was a very welcome reprieve from the amazingly horrible performances by their English-speaking counterparts. In fact, this feature made all the difference for me. Playing with the ear grating English voice acting was at best a distraction, and at worst impossible to deal with. Call me a snob, but giving an ancient mystic the voice of a surfer dude is only a good idea when you're attempting parody.

I skipped the fourth installment in the series as I was still enjoying the third, didn't have much money, and heard the fourth sucked anyway. I waited with anticipation for the fifth, but was grieved to hear it would not feature the original Japanese voice actors.

Reluctant to purchase the game when I knew my ears would forever curse me, I eventually gave in and bought it for the PS2. The very next day it was announced that an Xbox version was in the works, complete with an option for the Japanese language tracks.

Cursing my luck, I turned to Samurai Warriors, also by Koei. This game had the original language track available and so I thought my troubles were over. It turned out that the game punished you for improving your character. If you recall the review I posted in this blog, I didn't view this odd mechanic favorably.

Fast forward a few years and I purchase my first console of the new generation, the Xbox 360. One of its features was limited backwards compatibility with Xbox games. Irony itself must have compiled that list, as the only Dynasty Warriors game present was the fourth installment, the only installment to lack an original language track on the Xbox.

Wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued with the releases of Samurai Warriors 2, Warriors Orochi, and Dynasty Warriors 6. All of these games looked promising, and all of them lacked the original language track. From the trailers and videos I watched, the voice acting remained as terrible as always. Dynasty Warriors 6 was notable for reducing the number of buttons to mash from two to one. I decided to simulate playing it by smashing my head against my desk.

At this point I had all but assumed that Koei was no longer interested in providing the original voice track. Despite the HD-DVD versus Blu-ray content war, they were content to avoid meaningless extras. I comforted myself with this thought and sought to move on.

Then they released Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. I had no interest in this game, and the demo didn't really impress me all too much. However, the game has its original language track intact and available.

Koei was toying with me.

I have spent considerable time on the internet attempting to find an answer to the question "Does Warriors Orochi 2 have an option for the original language track?" I was unable to do so for some time, so I added the game to my GameFly rental queue and waited patiently. My patience wore thin when after three returns they had still bypassed the game at the top of my queue for something in the middle.

In my frustration I searched one last time, and found an announcement for a PSP version of the game. The announcement made it clear that A) the 360 version has no original language track and B) Koei has been plotting to make me miserable all this time.

You see, the abominable PSP version is going to have the original language track. Not the 360 version with all its disc space, not any predecessors. No, the PSP version is the one they decide to bless with this feature.

Koei officially hates me. When Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 comes out and also sports this feature Koei's hate will be upgraded to pure malicious spite. I have no other explanation for my situation.

Today's Weather

2009-07-01T15:25:00.001-04:00

Internet discussions are fickle things, rife with hyperbole and frivolous gestures. Watching them is often like watching weather patterns; while always unique, they invariable follow one or more predictable trends.

Today's trend is fairly familiar, though not as common as others. The often combative nature of discussions tends to draw roughly even or at least equally vocal battle lines. On some occasions, however, this equilibrium either fails to be established or is suddenly broken and the facts and fabrications of one splinter come to dominate a discussion.

The rough weather equivalent is a hurricane. The eye is the heart of the discussion. Here nothing is moving; the conclusions and premises that came to dominate the thread are now sacrosanct and untouchable. Surrounded by the swirling vortex of self-feeding repetition, no rhyme or reason may enter and break apart the storm.

A fairly good example of this, and the impetus for this post, is the Slashdot discussion of Blizzard's announcement that StarCraft II would not feature LAN support. The discussion is now thoroughly swamped with comments decrying the move. Playing over the internet will be many times slower than LAN play they repeat over and over, along with various comments about past transgressions by Blizzard and how they no longer care about customers. A general "woe unto us" attitude has developed, and any suggestion that things aren't as bad as they claim does nothing to stop the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The gale of self-pity is reinforced by the number of posters who join in. As each posts their lament it is validated by and adds strength to the others. No matter how solid the argument brought against them, their perception of majority status or superiority prevents it from being properly considered. Instead, their own repeated statements, whether they have any bearing or not, appear to them as nullifying the offending argument.

Eventually the frenzy will die down and the discussion moves forward. Until then nothing can be done but to find shelter and wait it all out.

This phenomenon is easily identifiable at a quick glance. Typically you will see a handful of instigators posting in constant repetition to one another along with the occasional individual, all sharing the same view. The chain is only broken occasionally by single posts which are never followed up upon due to either being ignored or the futility of the situation being self evident. On the rare chance that someone attempts to put up continued resistance, flame wars are often incited and the discussion is lost.

But fear not. Real life moves on, or as a wise man once said sarcastically, "Collective nerd rage on the internet is inherently representative of majority opinions."

Worst Video Game Ever

2009-06-25T15:00:00.002-04:00

Leave it to a nutcase like me to come up with a game about office management of all things.

Seriously, while I was at work I thought to myself, "Hey, an interesting game would be one where you manage a software engineering project from start to finish, assigning engineers to important tasks based on their abilities, ratcheting up pressure through your managers, dealing with unexpected events and failures, and avoiding engineer burnout!"

I think I'm going to go into a corner and sob.

Information Ages

2009-06-22T15:28:00.002-04:00

My father, in response to my previous entry on Iran, made the insight point that a key difference between his generation and later ones is how we view democracy. His generation, he says, had an idealized notion of democracy, whereas ours is highly cynical and even fatalist regarding government. I have theories as to why this is, and why this is likely to continue for some time.

Take, for instance, the recent insistence of republicans that the current clamp down on Iranian protests and their subsequent use of social networking tools such as twitter is akin to what republicans have been doing during the Obama presidency. Statements such as these represent a fundamental failure to understand the basic functions of how the world works, or at least to put enough effort into ascertaining the facts of a situation to make a clear, level-headed assessment.

It's this latter possibility that highlights the generational gap. How we process and acquire information is fundamentally different. The new generations are growing up in an era where all the information they could possibly need is at their fingertips. In such an era, it's fundamentally baffling as to why any of these responsible, important people are able to so consistently get fundamentally obvious and crucial facts wrong. They may be busy people, but at least their support staff could have looked it up for them, right?

At this point we're experienced enough to know that most often people fail to ascertain the proper facts of a situation when they have a vested interest in a reality that is unaffected by those facts. Whether this is emotional or financial, the interest precludes proper judgement. So, when we see politicians arguing that it isn't the nicotene in cigarettes which causes cancer but the smoke, ignoring the fact that the contentions concerning nicotene have nothing to do with cancer but addiction, we have to wonder whether they're stupid, emotional, or financially tied to organizations who have an interest in the outcome of the legislation.

This is the source of the cynicism and fatalism. We know so much about the world, its people, and its awe inspiring wonder, and yet leading us are buffoons who can't tell the difference between climate change and weather change. We want to be rid of them, but we feel it's futile because there are so few of us compared to the generations that came before who voted these 5-6 term senators and representatives into office year after year.

Of course, our cynicism along doesn't account for the amazingly voter turnout numbers. Even in last year's amazingly heated election, nearly half of all voters never reached the polls. Voter turnout is barely a third of all possible voters in gubernational elections. This all started before I was even born.

I can only explain, in part, why my generation doesn't seem to care. Why most of the country doesn't seem to care except for presidential elections (and in 1996 even then), I can't say.

On Iran

2009-06-15T14:57:00.001-04:00

Iran is currently in a state of chaos. The results of their election, currently being contested under suspicion of fraud, have literally filled the streets with angry protests. There have been clashes with riot police, clashes with loyal supporters of Ahmadinejad, blood, tears, and fires. In short, social uprising.

First and foremost my heart goes out to the people of Iran. The tumult they find themselves in is surely frightening, dangerous and ultimately pivotal in how they may lead their lives over the next decades. My thoughts and prayers go out to them.

Secondly, these events throw numerous others on US shores into sharp contrast. From the Tea Party protests to the anger at AIG and similar institutions responsible for our economic collapse, a new light is clearly shed on their meaning and relevance.

For those of us who bother to keep tabs on the balance between Republicans and Democrats, the Tea Party protests represented a weak, pitiful attempt on the part of the former group to assert they had grass roots support and legitimacy on a level equal to or greater than Obama. The narrative they attempted to convey was that there was growing, angry opposition to Obama's socialist policies that would boil over into a political revolution.

Today we can see what a political revolution looks like, and it is impossible to do so without observing how little resemblence there is to the Tea Party protests. Revolution is infectuous, massive, and immediately garners forceful responses from those who oppose it. There is blood, violence, hope, despair, and most of all chaos. The entire country of Iran worries as to the outcome of these protests, no matter what their affiliation or beliefs.

Looking back as newcasters proclaimed the Tea Party protests a revolution, it seems at best a joke. One can declare a top a carousel because it spins and all that is proven is one's ignorance.

But that ignorance is important because it isn't limited to Fox News, conservatives or Republicans. The American people, as a whole, have forgotten what revolution is after nearly 250 years of independance. We have been so tamed by our freedoms that the idea of simply protesting something seems revolutionary. Consider the following quote:

"You know, you look at other countries, when they get upset they actually go on strike, they have riots. We just kind of send off e-mails in capital letters."

Jon Stewart touches on an oddity of American politics. For all the vitriol thrown about between parties and sides, however much ire one can draw from friends and coworkers over differing political views, few people put even a modicum of effort into expressing that intense emotion in a concrete fashion.

The massive economic collapse would, one thinks, have easily produced similar, massive demonstrations against the corrupt, disconnected executives who spearheaded our current situation. While we elected a very different president than our previous one, the uprising hasn't happened. Are we naturally more peaceful or naturally more apathetic? I have no special insight here.

Regardless, the American Revolution has long since ended, its memory faded despite frequent invocations. Revolution is not inherently good; the barriers and structures it destroys are not always deserving or necessary. However, it is a truly American quality to cherish and desire revolutionary spirit. One wonders where it has gone.

Post-war Japan

2009-05-07T10:29:00.002-04:00

Was the Japanese post-war economic miracle a bad thing, or am I justifiably confused when an article rhetorically suggests that it would be bad to follow that model of recovery?

100 Dalamations

2009-04-29T14:43:00.002-04:00

Oh wait, everyone's supposed to arbitrarily assign a grade to Obama today? I'm going with Pi, on a scale from paper to plastic.

I'm sure after all the reviews are in Metacritic will agree with me.

Who wants to Sing?

2009-04-20T13:38:00.003-04:00

Susan Boyle is a great singer and now very famous. She is also old and homely.

Everyone and their twin brother has been dissecting her miraculous conversion of an obviously skeptical and even hostile audience into a standing ovation complete with tears of pure bliss. The judges themselves noted this, and seemed chastened by their personal failure to look past the book's cover. The event has been called a real life fable.

I have, however, the unique perspective of having read a week's worth of commentary before watching the video. That hasn't made the video less inspiring or heartwarming, but has tempered my measure of it's after affects. Susan Boyle will no doubt become as famous and lauded as her cited idol. Given the momentum she has picked up, and her obvious skill, it's assured. Unfortunately, the world will still think ugly, awkward people are naturally untalented and should be ignored.

We need another 10 Susan Boyles at least. The good news is that every talent agency and TV show will now be looking for them in order to duplicate the incredible phenomena, and television viewers across the globe will be as well. The bad news is if they find too many everyone will probably get a little tired of ugly people surprising them by actually having talent.

Even with the good news, I don't find myself particularly hopeful. Vogue won't really see their subscriptions or sales drop, ugly newscasters aren't going to crop up, and supermodels aren't going to find themselves starving and out of a job (just starving).

I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but Susan Boyle isn't going to singlehandedly change how people think about being ugly anymore than Barack Obama was going to magically fix the economy, the world's opinion of the nation, and all our other problems just by being elected.

History Repeating

2009-04-15T19:31:00.004-04:00

Demigod is a new PC game in the style of Defense of the Ancients, much like how the famous Tower Defense games are moving beyond their minority status.

I've read a few reviews, all glowing, none of which were able to categorize the genre with any particular ease. "RTS-RPG" was thrown around a fair amount, and I suppose that's fairly accurate. The old genres of gaming are now so interbred that any notion of purity has been long since lost, so it makes sense to label them accordingly.

But the RTS-RPG is not new, however much the reviews may imply it. Demigod is not the first video game outside of the customized maps of Starcraft and Warcraft to explore the genre. Dynasty Warriors has been doing it for years.

Alright, so Dynasty Warriors is more like an Action-RTS mutt, but really the differences are smaller than you think. In fact, the core difference effectively boils down to how you control your avatar. Do you A) Mash buttons to attack and use special abilities or B) Select targets, auto attack, and hit the odd key for a special? To auto-attack, or not to auto-attack, that is the question.

We could drive down into the minutiae of it, but in the end DotA is Dynasty Warriors with fewer buttons to mash and a different camera angle. This isn't a bad thing, it's just the truth of the RTS-RPG genre.

Incidentally, I plan on trying Demigod. Maybe now that Koei and Tecmo have merged a better Dynasty Warriors may result, but in the meantime I need my massive army slaughtering fix. If all the reviewers are as horribly addicted as they claim, Demigod might just be it.

Earl Grey, Not

2009-04-15T16:34:00.003-04:00

I will begin by stating that the fundamental right of protest is not commutable, and am glad that the many people gathering today will be able to do so without fear of government reprisal. It is great to live in a country where such events can happen without people losing their jobs and/or lives because of their participation. I will continue by saying that I am nonetheless confounded by the odd schisms between the reasons for today's protest, the revolution, and reality.

The "Tea Party" demonstrations being held across the nation attempt to recall that first, pivotal prelude to the revolution. Unfortunately, nothing about the protest is remotely connected to the motives and atmosphere present in 1776. A cursory examination of the wikipedia article on the original event is more than enough to reveal the disparity,

The Boston Tea Party was not a protest of high taxes, or of taxes themselves. Rather, thousands of pounds of tea were dumped in the bay because of the old creed "no taxation without representation". The colonists weren't angry they were being taxed, they were angry that Parliament was making decisions concerning the colonies without allowing them to participate. Taxes were merely the most common, obvious way in which the government asserted its authority over the colonies.

Today's "Tea Parties" are protesting Obama's economic recovery plans. The basic talking points assert that he is only increasing the budget deficit (and thus the national debt), increasing spending, and increasing government size and authority. On the tax front the talking points assert that the Cap and Trade taxes, oil and gas taxes, and tobacco taxes will affect low income voters more than high income voters. Taxes are involved, but there's no lack of representation at work and thus the oddly common assertions that "this is what 1766 felt like" are off the mark.

However, the talking points are lost in the sea of posters, images and videos. The vast majority have little to do with any of the issues cited above, and instead focus on socialism, fascism, assertions of the Christian nature of the nation and attacks on Obama's character. Many posters claim that higher taxes have already cost them, despite the fact that the only economic recovery measures passed thus far have lowered taxes for all but a wealthy minority of Americans.

The sad, depressing truth is that these protests have become little more than an outlet for frustrated right wing supporters. The intelligent arguments that should, in fact must be made for the sake of the nation are being drowned in a sea of blind vitriol. What was already a somewhat incongruous use of the "Tea Party" concept instead drags that hallowed (arguably too much so) event through the mud. This is a shame; today could have been a landmark moment of revival and rebirth, one we very much need for our government to remain balanced.

Logical Connections

2009-04-09T15:23:00.001-04:00

Recently a friend of mine told me that the most normal looking pictures he has of me all feature me engrossed in video games. By his account, my "Strange" is less obvious at these times. While not under the influence of the Matrix, I'm an oddball of sorts.

Despite my apparent irrationality, as exhibited by the roles "Crazy Uncle", "Irrepressible Nutjob" and others, I am very fond of logic. When evaluating circumstances, situations and problems I like to believe that my methods are logical and sound, even if the results, while logical, are not optimal. If I can spend Saturday in my pajamas, I don't really need to do my laundry just yet.

The problem with thinking logically is that you invariably run face first into the fact that human society is not in any way, shape or form. Logically, $19.95 is little different from $20. Logically, turn signals increase one's personal safety by alerting other drivers to your intended actions and should be used as often as possible. Logically, one effect may have a number of causes, and the presence of the effect does not specifically prove the presence of any particular one of them.

Of course, it's statistically proven that products sold at one to five cents less than whole dollar amounts sell better to a degree that isn't logical. Turn signals are often regarded as a mistake that might let the other bastard cut you off. Consequents are affirmed daily. Overall, irrationality is commonplace, and trying to think about the world logically is often fruitless.

I say all this now because I often forget this obvious fact, and repeat the "face, meet wall" experience on a regular basis. The most recent occurence of this involved my asserting only if P then Q, followed later by Q, only to be asked if P had ever happened. This happens often and I'm always struck by how obvious it should be, only to remember that I'm equally if not moreso oblivious in other fields.

Grammar: It may save your life

2009-04-06T10:14:00.003-04:00

People on the internet scoff at those of us who hold ourselves to a higher standard. Spelling? Punctuation? What are they? Quality control is a lie designed to arbitrarily block your insightful and important thoughts from leaving your head the moment they are formed.

What these grammar skeptics do not realize is that their laziness may cost them their lives. Don't believe me? Just take a look at the Bible!

Judges 12:6

...they said, "All right, say 'Shibboleth.' " He said, "Sibboleth," because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.

As you can see, one man's failing resulted in forty-two thousand deaths. This isn't a "God kills a kitten" scenario, this is a "God kills you, your family, your friends, their friends, that chick or hunk who was totally into you, and everyone's pets" scenario.

I estimate it will only take 2 million grammar lazy people to wipe out the earth's entire population. Please, think of the humans.

Bad Game Designs: Rewards*

2009-04-03T17:20:00.005-04:00

*Rewards are not guaranteed to actually reward, and may in fact turn you into a zombie, destroy your prize heirlooms, eat your soul, or otherwise act as the opposite of a reward.

When a player accomplishes something, whether it be a quest, a level, or a tricky puzzle it is natural to reward their success with a prize or acknowledgment of some sort. This isn't always necessary, but often adds to the experience.

No one would argue that one should penalize a player for succeeding.

Despite this, I recently encountered a game which did exactly that. Upon reaching level 8 in Runes of Magic I was awarded an item which would upgrade my weapon. In fact, I was lovingly gifted an entire stack of this item, promising the potential for a sizable increase in my character's potential. The fine print did note that "there is a chance of failure which may downgrade the weapon", but any reasonable person would understand based on such wording that the chance of failure was small, and the chance of a downgrade even smaller.

Woe.

The stack, ten in all, resulted in one upgrade and nine failures. The very first failure removed all the good the upgrade had done, and the second removed the intrinsic good my weapon already had. If you're trying to encourage people to explore and enjoy new and interesting game features, such a mechanic is a dismal failure.

If I wanted to take one step forwards and two steps backward, I'd go play Ninja Gaiden on Master Ninja mode and stab myself after each death.

Alrof Loisp

2009-04-01T19:23:00.002-04:00

I feel witty. Oh so witty.

Oops?

2009-04-01T09:57:00.004-04:00

So the Justice Department has been held in contempt of court for withholding evidence from Ted Stevens' defense team. His case is being dismissed without retrial.

Even if he was a horribly inept, pork laden relic, the usurpation of due process and fairness is never warranted. He'd probably still be a senator if this had been done properly.

Food for thought.

Gaming Taxonomy

2009-03-30T12:33:00.003-04:00

As philosophical and analytical as I am, I must utterly cede all pretense of expertise to this incredible analysis of gamer motivations.

"Meandering Mind" suitably describes my jumbled, rambling thought processes. With enough discipline I might one day be able to mimic the precision displayed in the linked article, and perhaps I will make it a future goal. In the meantime, that blog has instantly become on of my favorite reads. If you are anything like me, you will enjoy it as well.

Media Rare

2009-03-26T14:58:00.001-04:00

There is good news and bad news today. I like good news a lot more than bad news, but I like bad news more than what qualifies as "news" on television these days.

The good news is that our President is on the job. He have a very nice interview to 60 minutes covering the vast scope of all the crises our country currently faces, showing exceptional resilience in the face of incredible obstacles. He also fielded an interesting online forum today, even answering questions a typical politician might deem unseemly. It's good to have a president that's willing to get his hands dirty.

The bad news is the "news" didn't really care about that, and instead got all riled up that Obama laughed once during his interview with 60 minutes. You can get the whole story on that here.

The key here is less that the media blew something out of proportion, but more that they ignored important issues by doing so. This isn't an isolated incident, but a daily, even hourly occurrence. Quite simply, the 24-hour news networks are to insightful coverage what Trivial Pursuit is to a dissertation on the transformation of the nation's zeitgeist. CNN, NBC and FOX are great at provoking and expounding meaningless trivia, but are not thought-provoking or informative.

This is not only a shame, but harmful. Given 40 minutes of interview to pour over, discuss, critique, and grapple with these networks decided that a few seconds of rueful laughter were more newsworthy. I ask a simple question, "How does this help or inform the public?" The trick is that from the perspective of the networks I asked the wrong question. Their version of the question would be, "Does this entertain the public?" The public doesn't want to be informed, they posit, they want to be entertained. Thinking thus, the networks have evolved themselves into a faux-respectable televised tabloid.

While I can't claim I'd watch 24 hours of Jim Lehrer's News Hour, it would do the country good if such a channel came to replace these worthless husks.