| It's late at night. I've been up studying for a major exam in a class that I actively dislike because of the course material itself. On a certain level, I'm mentally exhausted. At the same time, however, I'm wired (naturally, I might add, no caffeine added); it feels like there's a flywheel in my head that had been spinning very fast and now needs a bit to slow down again.
I often turn to videogames at this time. It's weird. While I couldn't jot down another sensible note on Leadership Skills or (gods help me) the transmission model of communication*, I could easily ace three races in Mario Kart. It feels like it's utilizing a different part of my brain entirely.
When it's really good, and you've practiced and you're feeling the flow, it turns into this very zen experience where thought simply stops. There's this peace and without thought, you move through the game with perfect grace.
It's a moment when I am completely interfaced with the machine. There's something happening there, communicatively, but I'm not certain who its with, or what it's about.
I'm trying to find a similar state with aikido. It's in there, too, this state of thoughtless inter/intra-action, my instructor has described it. I think here is something purer, what Abels (and others before him) call "No mind."
...and the wheels have slowed to a gentle tick. To bed.
*Despite being poorly formatted, that's actually a very good article that gets at some really fundamental comm concepts. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| | Subject: | Sale! | | Time: | 01:15 pm |
|
| So I'm trying to pare down the amount of junk in my house. Thus, I'm selling a few console games and other things. All games/movies are $5 unless otherwise indicated, but the prices are just a suggestion (I'm mostly just interested in getting rid of this stuff), feel free to haggle. If you see something you'd like, leave a comment or send me an email.
Wii
($1) Spiderman 3*
DragonBall Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
($1) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End*
PS2
Ratchet & Clank
Ratchet & Clank 2: Size Matters
Ratchet: Deadlocked
SpyHunter
We <3 Katamari
Animal Crossing
Final Fantasy X**
Area 51**
4x4 Evo**
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy**
Star Trek: Shattered Universe**
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter**
N64
($1) Gameshark
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
($1) Pokemon Stadium (2 copies available)***
Xbox
The Clone Wars / Tetris Worlds combo disc (TWO GAMES IN ONE OMG!!!1!1!)
Gamecube
Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
Pikmin 2
Gameboy
($1) Pokemon Blue
DVD
Airplane!
Young Frankenstein
Noir: Volume One
Odds and Ends
($1) 4 C-cell batteries, unopened
($1) 4 D-cell batteries, unopened
* I received these games for free from a friend who said they might be defective. Spiderman, I know, crashes towards the end of the first training mission, but I've never actually tried Pirates. It could well be that the games would be fine after having the discs resurfaced.
** I'm selling these games on behalf of a friend.
*** Pokemon Stadium originally came with a fancy Gameboy reader you plugged into the N64 controller so you could use your personal Pokemon. Unfortunately, mine stopped working and has long since been thrown away. If you do happen to have a reader, keep in mind that Pokemon Stadium came out in the Red/Blue/Yellow era and likely can't handle pokemon from the newer games. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| So I finally got around to playing Portal. It is pretty amazing!
The portal mechanic itself is great. It completely changes the way you look at a stage, particularly in the run on GLaDOS where there appears to be more than one way to get past things. I'm not really certain what more to say about that. It's significant and I'm having trouble articulating exactly why. The puzzles are fascinating and extremely rewarding when you figure them out. Partially, the satisfying nature comes from the fact that its puzzles are very novel. I've never encountered anything quite like this before, had little precedent for how to solve things.
The atmosphere of the game was incredible. When you first wake, it's obvious you are a captive, a test subject, but even in this situation there are certain norms we expect and Portal starts violating them immediately. From the very beginning, there's this feeling that things are subtly wrong. The observation rooms are empty. While the first few stages are spotless, you gradually start to find grime creeping over things. Even further in, you start to find the cryptic messages left behind by your predecessor, their hidden stashes of beans and water, strange hiding places and passages just behind the walls of the test chambers. As you get out of these areas and into the complex itself, the degradation and decay are obvious, ugly, and genuine. It's a stark contrast from the early stages.
GLaDOS herself... Well. She ties everything together. In fact, as I wrote the above paragraphs, I had a hard time divorcing these other elements from her. Everything feels like an extension from her core identity. When I beat a puzzle, it was like I'd bested her in a small but direct way. She is a very playful personality, and she finds your trial highly amusing in an understated and dark way. Until it all goes wrong.
The test chambers are her domain, her playground. She wants you to die, because that would be funny. But she's going to let you do it to yourself (mostly). The insane scrawl of your predecessor attests to the delight she takes from fucking with people, while simultaneously demonstrating the ways she has lost control. When you do something unexpected, it genuinely confuses and frustrates her, even frightens her. Things fail to operate the way they are supposed to, and you can feel her worry.
GLaDOS feels like she's been left alone for a very long time. I honestly felt bad in the final confrontation that has you systematically destroying her complex personality. I wish there had been a way to save her somehow, redeem her, something. As it was, the boss battle felt a bit anti-climatic. I was expecting something considerably more difficult, I guess, but something with more emotional tension as well.
Unlocking bonus puzzles made up for this considerably. God I love these puzzles.
On the subject of difficulty: this isn't a hard game in terms of most shooters. Its difficulty lies in forcing you to see the possibilities. You will die on occasion, but it's always your own fault, not something the game has done to you. The only area that reminded me of the kind of difficulty I typically associate with FPS games was a small room with sentry-bots who were very difficult to avoid. It required a bit more twitch than the thoughtful progression that had so far characterized things.
So yeah! Fascinating game. I've heard rumors of a sequel (the ending suggests GLaDOS is still alive (somehow) and that there are other test subjects kicking around somewhere), but I kinda hope they don't. I'm not certain there's really a whole lot more to be explored here. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| So I've been really enjoying the D&D campaign I joined earlier this summer. Last Sunday's session is a good example of why.
In the City of Starfall, there exists an organization which is also a building, referred to as the Sanctum Arcanum. Essentially, it operates as part Wizard University and part Wizard Guild. A while back, we learned that the leader of the Sanctum Arcanum, one epic-level transmutationist by the name of Aeolas [ey-oh-las], happened to have a rather unsavory addiction. Aeolas favored a particular wine (Tyrran, possibly) distilled from the pure fear and suffering of fey creatures. He not only drank a fair amount of it, he also manufactured and distributed the wine through elicit black-market channels.
Through a complicated series of events, our party came to know of these things and were tasked with catching Aeolas in the act and then apprehending him. This we did, through an even more complicated series of events, and the city leaders promptly stuck what was left of him in a solid Adamantium coffin which generated an internal anti-magic field and featured a rather complicated magical 10-digit combination lock. When word got out, the wizards of Starfall went fucking nuts.
Aeolas had not left a clear successor. The Sanctum was divided into two rival factions. There were those who followed Avorral, a senior wizard who up until now had a major role in running the Sanctum anyway. Then there were those who wore the green robes of Laconus. (We never actually bothered to find out why Laconus thought he would be better for the job. Our assumption was he just wanted to make a grab for power while things were chaotic.)
Our own party has two wizards (well, a wizard evocationist and a wild mage illusionist), neither of whom are affiliated with the Sanctum. Hearing about all the chaos, Sam, our illusionist, decided to issue a formal challenge to both factions, stating his own intent to become the Sanctum's leader.
When we try to actually enter the Sanctum, we discover a problem. The sanctum itself has no physical entrances. The only way in is via an elaborate teleportation grid in the building's ground-floor lobby. It seems someone had cast Arcane Lock on the sanctum, preventing any teleportation magic from working.
Shortly thereafter, the party as a whole decided to visit the local Magical Item Emporium. We get there and find the shopkeep - himself a member of the sanctum but largely independent of its politics - busy with two green-robed wizards in a back room. The shopkeep asks us to return in a few minutes.
Most of the party waited just around the corner (I opted to take a walk around the block). They watched the two green-robed wizards walk out and down the street. They followed the two wizards and watched them enter a building. Before the party really has a moment to decide what this all means, Sam steps forward to the door, dispels the ward locking it, then blasts it open with a telekinetic burst. The blasted door floors three wizards and reveals a room with over a dozen more. Sam immediately casts Horde Wilting on the room. Horde Wilting is a spell that sucks the moisture out of a group of targets. Essentially, Sam stepped into the blasted door-frame, stuck out his hand, and 8 wizards had their skin crack and shred and their bodies shrink and shrivel as steam shot out of unnatural apertures. They all died horribly. Horribly.
By this time, the rest of the party jumps into the fray to help keep Sam from getting killed. By the time I arrived, there were only 3 left, whom I promptly destroyed (a lightning bolt removed 1/3 of the torso of the first, killed the second with force missiles, disintegrated the last trying to escape from a second-story window with a 99-damage fireball).
The whole battle probably took less than 40 seconds. The building was in shambles, with large portions of it having been blasted away. All told, we brutally murdered 36 wizards. After everything is over, we ask Sam, "So... Why did we attack these guys?"
"Oh, I don't know. It seemed like a good idea."
Our lawful-good monk was appalled. His player was giggling.
We walk back to the Item shop and find the shopkeep standing outside. He asks what's been happening.
"Oh, you know those two green-robed fellows who were just here? They won't be bothering you anymore. And neither will their friends."
The shopkeep grins and informs us that those two men had just come and availed themselves of some of his wares "for the protection of the Sanctum." It seems we had just got back from completely obliterating Laconus' strike force.
We decide that the next course of action is to speak with Avorral. We head to the Sanctum and who should we find but Laconus! It seems he was just waiting for his forces to arrive, having no knowledge of their recent (and terrible) deaths. He suggests that now is not the best time, that Avorral and his forces have been sealed inside for their own protection, and that Everything is Under Control. We suggest to him that we believe he intends to breach the peace of the city and that it may be a very good idea to go and examine a certain building a few blocks from here, or what is left of it.
Anyway, we get into the Sanctum, talk to Avorral, Sam recants his challenge for leadership, recognizing Avorral's relative right to the position, and instead opts to exchange his help in dealing with Laconus' people for political favor and access to certain magical goods/knowledge.
What I find most interesting about the whole session is that we have now fundamentally altered the political landscape in Starfall. Sam came pretty damn close to usurping leadership of the Sanctum (the situation was such that we could have easily killed Avorral). Our party's ability to shape and change this world is amazing and wonderful. I'm pretty sure it's going to get us all killed one of these days. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| Hey everybody!
Iris and I are heading down to the valley tonight, but my lodging plans fell through! We're just looking for someplace to crash for tonight, preferably with a decent bed (Iris has a bad back).
Also, we plan to go to the fair tomorrow and would love to hang out with people.
Contact me and let me know if you have space / want to hang out. Email (koyetay@gmail.com), Twitter (twitter.com/koyetay), phone (907.799.1552). | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| this is not where I thought I would be
My job fascinates me
It is nothing that I had dreamed of
not as an angsty teenage poet
with a passion for theatre and video games
or further back as a shy kid with a big heart
writing short stories
about fabulous machines and super-powered talking dogs
I wanted to be a writer, a cartoonist, an actor, a journalist
I got to college and studied communication
I learned of people, how we work,
how to create and share meaning
And I dreamed of research, of study
Today,
I help small businesses
I create forms, gather information, organize
I attend meetings and take really good notes
I manage databases and processes
And derive satisfaction from simple follow-through
More often than not, it is tediousness itself
This is a life that would have horrified me
And I can't get enough
I can dismiss the monotony
I've learned what business is really about
It's all about people
The crazy human drama
Of driven people with incredible passion
People with ideas to change their community, their world
To make it a better place
People who suddenly grow timid and afraid
At the mention of the phrase “Business Plan”
I tackle the tediousness, I make the checklists
I create the procedures and the reports
I do it all gladly
Just to help others succeed
To make those dreams corporeal
with a simple spreadsheet | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Dead | | Time: | 05:55 pm |
|
| So! I got home last night after a very long day. I powered on my computer, then walked over to the kitchen. Came back with my food to find nothing on the screen. Checked the monitor, checked the connections, made sure the computer was, in fact, on. Everything seemed to be fine.
Tried to restart. Fans power on, disks spin up, but no BIOS beep.
So I guess my motherboard is fried, if not something more critical. Randomly. That's cool. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| Oh hello there.
So! I've been doing things and not posting here. Partially, that's due to general busyness of the semester (my god, Capstone is a lot of work), partially because I just got over the flu, but mostly because Twitter is fucking addictive. I hadn't really understood what the deal was until I tried it, but let me tell you, it is all kinds of fun.
Mostly, I've been busy with my research project for Capstone. If you're curious, I've put my research proposal behind the cut. This kind of writing is a little dryer than I like in certain places, but if you're curious about the ways that humans form attachments and what impact that has on their relationships with their pets (or just want to see what I've been up to), you might enjoy it!
( Pet Ownership and Attachment Style: a proposal for research )
For those interested, I'll probably post the results of my project at the end of the semester. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| 
The Bush presidency is ending in a few days. To celebrate, we're throwing an Inauguration Day LAN!
When: January 20th. Show up around five if you want to help set up, otherwise we'll hopefully be starting around 7:00PM-ish. Lasts until whenever!
Where: My house! ( It's right here! )
We Need:
A few tables
A lot of chairs
Powerstrips
The switch
Ethernets
Refreshments:
I still have cases of mountain dew left over from previous LANs, so I don't think we'll be needing any. Chips and suchlike are welcome. We'll provide some frozen pizzas or whatever, plus maybe some baked goods.
Alcohol, for those so inclined, will likely be available in limited quantities. Feel free to bring more, if you wish.
This can be as large as you all would like. I'm extending the invitation to anyone who wishes to come. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So Lucky Pull Tabs, the main gambling franchise here in Alaska, recently ran a half-million-dollar lottery to benefit the non-profit Standing Together Against Rape. Last Saturday, one Alec Ahsoak came forward with the winning ticket and claimed the prize.
Somewhere along the way, the media figured out that Ahsoak has 3 counts of child-molestation.
Today, Ahsoak was attacked by a random dude at the mall with a tire iron.
This shit just gets crazier and crazier. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Though it earned a special award from Yahtzee as the worst game of the year, my play-through of Sonic Unleashed did not find the game without merit.
It's best to think of it as two games in one. The dark/night "Werehog" levels and the traditional Sonic levels of the daylight are entirely separate, with no interaction between the two modes to speak of, so neither will this review.
( Day )
( Night ) | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| "The Nailing Game had an answer to my own presentation too, in which I had been expatiating on what a friend fondly calls my “Marxist bullshit” about how contemporary videogames recreate the structures of industrial labour and so lull us into rehearsing and normalising our own slavery to capital in our ‘leisure time’ – while also, in a diabolical twist, relieving us of our money."
-Stephen Poole
I lol'd a little. It's such a wonderfully ridiculous claim. Or possible ridiculously wonderful. One of those. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Hey guys.
I'm sitting on an uncomfortable couch in a hotel room in Licking, Missouri. Flew in to St. Louis with Iris and her family last night. We'll be spending a couple days visiting her grandfather (whose wife just passed and apparently has generally poor health) before heading to Jerseyville, Illinois to spend Christmas and New Year's with her grandmother. I've never met her grandfather before, but her grandmother is an incredibly sweet lady with a big house overflowing with books.
Heading to Champaign around the 3rd to spend some time with my mom, maybe spend a day in Chicago with my dad if I can get hold of him.
Anyway, flight was alright. Had a tight connection in... shit, where was it? O'hare. But we made it okay. Iris has trouble flying after a bad experience not too long ago and can sometimes go into a panic attack when flying, but she managed to stay sane this trip by sheer cognitive effort. She's hardcore like that.
Oh man, got to the hotel and there was cable television (which is a novelty for me, haven't consistently watched TV in over four years). Started watching some movie with Bruce Willis and that kid from the Mac Vs. PC ads (though I always think about him in terms of his role on Waiting...), which I eventually figured out must have been the new Die Hard film. It wasn't bad in a leave-your-brain-in-the-off-position sort of way.
Oh man. I'm seriously hungry. They stopped serving breakfast here about 2 minutes after I got out of the shower. Since my sleep schedule was completely fucked by finals and the week before (i.e. I didn't have any time to sleep), the jet lag may be pretty terrible for the first couple days here.
Speaking of finals, it's looking like I shaped up fairly well, though not perfectly. Still waiting on half of my classes, but I've already got two B's back, one of them in my senior level theory class, which was the most cognitively challenging class I have yet taken (god, I loved it so much).
It looks like I'll have fairly consistent internet access while I'm down here, so if you need to get hold of me, email is probably the best way. Hope all of you are having a good holiday! | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Ladies and gentlemen. I have braved the depths. I descended into the most vile of places. I peered into the heart of darkness and I did not blink. Weeks and weeks of research, study, craft, refinement, and no small amount of torture on this gentle soul have finally come to fruition.
Tonight, I present to you a thorough examination of that internet blight that is nevertheless an integral part of our culture, whether we like it or not. Using the theories of Dramatism and Social Identification Theory, I have completed my analysis of the collective identity that is Anonymous.
( tl;dr: oh god what have i done ) | | comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| A friend of mine started writing for Epic Default Productions, a geek culture blog. He posted about Microsoft's recent "I'm a PC" ad campaign and why he's generally against it. Below is my rebuttal, cross-posted from the comments.
Their image was (and is still) seriously damaged by Vista. Now, I don't think it's a terrible OS, personally, but that still seems to be a common perception by people who actually use it and are not power users (read: 90% of Vista users).
For a long time, Mac-users have looked at using a Mac as an extension of their own identity. They use a Mac because that's the kind of person they are. This has been true for a long time, but it had always been a small, elite, and generally nerdy part of the population that partook in that identity.
What Apple's more recent marketing has (very successfully) done is redefined who is encompassed by that Mac identity, redefined who a Mac user is, into something with way more mass-market appeal, particularly among young people.
Then we had the Mac vs PC ads. These took the identity thing a step further. (I'm going to delve into a bit of Communication theory here, so bear with me.) There are roughly 4 factors that lead to identification with an organization, but the Mac vs. PC ads focus on one of them specifically: out-groups. With an organization or group, there are those who are a part of the group and those who are not. If you give a name to the out-group, it highlights what makes the in-group different, what sets them apart from the out-group. It also solidifies what defines the in-group and makes the members of the in-group more homogeneous, more like each other.
The Mac vs PC ads said: this is what PCs are, this is how Mac is different. Explicitly stating those differences caused people who used Macs to all the more strongly internalize that Mac identity. It encouraged them to make Macs not just something they use, but a part of who they are.
Now, Windows has been dominant for so long because Windows is what everyone uses. Windows, for a long, long time, was synonymous with computers, particularly in the business world. That had very little to do with the individual user's sense of identity. It was about utility. You used Windows because that's what you use.
So then we have the Mac vs PC ads, which didn't really challenge the utility thing, focusing on this cultural identity stuff. And then we have Vista, which put a serious dent into the utility argument.
Which brings us to "I'm a PC." Now, this is actually brilliant marketing and I have to say I'm really impressed by the ad campaign. They've taken that utility aspect, the fact that Windows/Microsoft is a part of everyone's lives, from business to entertainment, and made that a central part of this Identity-based campaign. They're saying, Windows is a part of your world, your work, your play. The ads are saying Windows is a part of you and your life.
And the cool thing is, unlike the Mac ads which have focused on this young hipster image, Windows has positioned itself as the platform not just for the young and hip, but for everybody. The "I'm a PC" ads are saying, Windows is going to meet your individual needs, whatever they might be. It suggests a personal relationship with each individual, rather than Mac's focus on just this one type of person.
So yeah. Overall, I really, really like the campaign. It's brilliant marketing focused on the ways that Windows can develop individual relationships with each of its customers to meet their individual needs. Relationship marketing is really cool stuff, and I hope more companies follow suit with this approach. | | comments: 14 comments or Leave a comment |
| |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
koyetay's journal