Random Dialogue

When I started reading Dilbert author Scott Adams’ blog, I figured I’d get the occasional amusing anecdote about doing regular cartooning work. Yay for wrongness! From today’s post:

As President, I would rarely take sides on the major issues. My job would be to bring the best arguments on all sides of every issue to the citizens and help them make up their own minds. My administration would make it a top priority to improve how the government communicates with its citizens. And that might require making the information more entertaining or at least easier to digest. As a general rule I would say that if the citizens don’t understand both sides of all important issues, I have failed as President. If the people need simple charts and graphs, I’ll provide them. If they need puppet shows, I’ll stick my hand in a tube sock and hide behind my desk. Whatever it takes. 

His arguments never fail to at the very least make you think. A really great read.

There was a snafu where, if you’d already commented on the site before, the security field box would be covered up along with your author information. This made it hard to, you know, actually comment. This should now be rectified.

On a d20 -

1-3: You spend roughly 8 hours playing through SiN Episodes: Emergence to review it for Slashdot. You end up enjoying it enough that you think you’ll pick up the next one. (You’re still really looking forward to Episode One.)

4-7: The tape deck adapter you use to listen to your iPod in the car breaks, making you think you’ve fubared you nano’s headphone jack. You order a replacement, thinking ahead to trips later this year.

8-10: You use your unbroken iPod to scour the netwaves for more podcasting goodness. Your trolling comes up with Evercast 2 and the Virgin Worlds podcast. Both are welcome additions to your growing stable of listening goodness.

11-15: You spend roughly 20 hours over the weekend playing with Canvas, Kiwi, and K2, only to discover the simplest approach to a well-establish blog is often the best. Your attempts to improve your brother’s site meet with only limited success.

16-18: Words are your friend. You spend a lot of time staring at the inert paper words in Player’s Handbook II, and the glowing pdfy words of Uncloaking the Xbox 360.

19-20: An unpleasant discovery: Your long hair retains the smell of fried grease after several washings. Take a -1 penalty to Charisma for four days.

On Saturday the 27th of May, I, my wife, and several of our friends hit up a 2pm matinee showing of X-Men 3: The Last Stand. I and Brian would have probably had to give the movie a miss, had things gone according to plan. We weren’t even supposed to be up here that day.

Instead, we were supposed to be in Chicago enjoying the Play! Videogame Symphony. Thanks to some overeager spambotting of my Games.Slashdot email address, I was unable to communicate in time with the PR folks who said they were going to organize my tickets. Without assurances of tickets, Brian and I stayed in the Madison. X3 was supposed to assuage our annoyance by providing an afternoon of forgettable action. I, at least, would have been better served taking my chances with Chicago.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead.

Read the rest of this entry ?

Thank you for bearing with me as I’ve worked through the stuff that I’ve written for the site. Everything is now within the blog system proper, and I’m going to work through the archives finding clues as to where (temporally) to put these posts. The Young Wizards reviews, for example, were written in January of 2004.

I dumped some of the crap I wrote for E2. As the months and years pass between then and now, I look back on the authorial attempts I made back then with a mixture of pity and awe. At least it, you know, got me more into writing. My movie and book reviews are also somewhat embarrassing, but in a less ‘hide this from the company’ sort of way. My half-formed opinions and stillborn thoughts will remain on the site as a testament to … I dunno, how I learned to string words together?

The black, I’m sad to say, has grown on me considerably. The duality of RD.net and mmognation.com is kind of nice, in a synergistic sense. On the white side, I’m free to say whatever stupid thing I want to about Massive games. The occasional passer-by takes note, but that’s about it. Over here on the dark si(t/d)e, I’m hemmed in by the knowledge that everyone reads what I write. Everyone that matters to me, anyway. So I mind my Ps and Qs, and enjoy my dark little corner of the internet.

This reshuffling of my site’s deck of cards has inspired me to go back and take a look at all those untitled, uncategorized posts that are languishing in the belly of RD.net. I’ll try to give them a little more luster, work to move more of my pictures to Flickr, and generally make as much use of this very observable space as I can.

So say we all.

Published by Villard Press
Written by Mil Millington.
384 pages; $10.36; black and white with softbound cover

If you’ve been following the reviews, you’ll notice it’s been a while since I read a novel. That may be why this book was so highly amusing for me. Some of you may be familiar with the website that Mil runs. Be aware, this book is only very loosely based on the site. There is no repeated content from the site and much of the book has nothing to do with the arguing. That said, Mil’s highly amusing writing style translates extremely well to the narrative form.

The plot centers around a hapless gentleman who is flung into a series of events surrounding the dissapearance of his nominal boss, who leaves him with a few messes. Like Mil, “Pel” has two children and a loving, though psychotic, girlfriend. Triads, ancient corpses, computer technicians, administrators, and frightened builders all play an important role in a highly amusing tale.

The only issue I have with TMGAIHAA is the unfortunate fact that Mil suffers from Stephenson Syndrome. The ending of the book came on ubruptly and somewhat randomly, leaving you feeling somewhat let down and definately wanting more. If you need a good vacation book, TMGAIHAA will fill your needs nicely.

Published by McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Written by Brad King and John Borland
273 pages; $24.99; black and white pages with hardbound cover

There have been several books written in the last few years detailing geek culture from a few different angles. Books like “Masters of Doom” or Jon Katz’ “Geeks” have given geek culture a mirror to examine itself, and other folks a chance to understand that your average gamer and dork is just a normal person with odd predelictions. Dungeons and Dreamers explores the history of online gaming for the most part by following the life of Richard Garriot, the creator of the Ultima series. His life is something of a microcosm for the gaming industry at large, and his interactions with emise graces of the gaming world like Steve Jackson or Will Wright allows for the writers to very naturally explore all avenues of online gaming.

Besides Garriot’s work with the Ultima series (online and off), the FPS genre’s travels from Wolfenstein 3D to the world of hundreds of Quake clans is examined with some detail. The sudden and explosive growth of First Person Shooters as a phenomenon is truly shocking, and is a good yardstick for how far geek culture has come in a short, short time.

If you’re even tangentially interested in the history of online gaming, Dungeons and Dreamers is an exhaustive survey of the work. Something that I found especially enjoyable about the book was the unassuming tone it took in describing the realities of geekery past. Much discussion of geek history has this put-upon angst that is pretty off-putting. This book is very assertive about the past and about the realities of the profitability of gaming. This book isn’t about poor little misguided, socially maligned kids. It details the history of a proud industry that in many ways is still in it’s infancy. I had a great time reading it.