Tag Archives: General Geekery
I’ve been looking for a way to discuss why I’m unlike most other bloggers. This is in the sense that I often write without taking sides on a particular issue, or in other cases write something simply to point out inconsistencies or other points of view that I can think of related to that particular topic.
Then my friend Bianca emailed me a link to this 18-minute video from TED Talks, which I think everyone should watch.
Go ahead and watch. This post will still be here when you come back.
Done?
Okay.
Now it would probably seem appropriate now to make an assumption that I write without taking sides because I accept that there’s often more than one side to a story and that people can oftentimes have both categorically correct, reasonable points, or categorically wrong, unreasonable points in their rhetoric.
You would be correct in that assumption… 49% of the time. If you’re wondering about the other 51%, it’s a matter of the exact opposite idea.
Approximately 51% of the time, I write without taking sides because I do not wish to be wrong. By not taking sides and accepting that most things are relative or free to interpretation, I can write opinions without having an opinion and without getting objections to my ideas.
Of course, I could be wrong about the percentages: I do not stop to count which write-ups I’ve done have been made out of acceptance of opposing views or the fear of being wrong, but I can be sure of one thing: I am also uncertain of that uncertainty, as strange as that sounds.
It’s also highly possible that I write the way I do because I see both the fear of being wrong and the possibility of more than one side having merit, but cannot determine how much of the mix is there when I write. In fact, thinking about that possibility now, it seems to be the more likely bet.
That said, I’m writing this post to remind myself that it’s okay to take a side and to be wrong. I just have to accept my misconception, learn from it, and improve myself in the process.
The problem, I would suppose, is that not everyone is as open as regards being wrong. Without naming anyone, I do realize that some people are set in their ways. Still, there’s no reason to become enemies over differences in opinion, so long as everyone can learn to mellow out and talk diplomatically.
It’s alright to be wrong folks. Just saying. 
While this is specific to America, it does set a wonderful precedent for video games in general. Icrontic reports that the National Endowment for the Arts has added “digital games” as a form of art that will be eligible for grants from the US government.
Here’s the pertinent portion of the text from the link Icrontic got:
The Arts in Media builds on the success of The Arts on Radio and Television. All project types that were previously eligible remain eligible. In addition, the expanded category now includes:
- All available media platforms such as the Internet, interactive and mobile technologies, digital games, arts content delivered via satellite, as well as on radio and television.
- Media projects that can be considered works of art.
What does this actually mean for developers? It means that if a developer wants to create games for people, doesn’t want to charge money for them, but still wants to be able to eat, there is an option. One can apply for a grant, and potentially get paid by the government to be a creator, just as painters and sculptors have been able to do for many years.
And for the public it means that we may begin to see some video games of the ‘public’ works’ variety, games which are released for the world to enjoy, which may have good production values, but which are also not part of the commercial video games world. What these games will look like, we have no idea at this point, as it’s a completely new thing. The projects that receive funding are chosen by the agency, and there are not many guidelines or descriptions for what kinds of projects will be accepted.
Of course, that means that while grants are available, video game proposals may still not get chosen. The point, remains, however, that it is a step towards having society see video games as a new form of art, and that should give us pause.
Insert statement about game forums generally being a Star Wars Quote about scum and villainy and hives.
Counter written introduction in order to place emphasis on important point of post.
Post point about the coolest forum threads being meta, and how Rift now has its own meta-thread about negativity and doomsaying from players.
Mention that the Dev Tracker subcategory has a lot of mentions from amused members of Trion staff.
Smile.
Post the written post hoping that people will find this very short, meaningless post interesting and worthy of comments and love.
Feel lonely about the fact that time is spent writing such a post which has no inherent value other than self-referential and self-deprecating humor.
Cry in bed.
Slee…. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..
I’ll keep this simple and straightforward.
Part of the list of things I want to do in my life is to record a song and to make a podcast… even just a one-shot.
I’m partway through that goal, as I’m learning how to record and use Audacity for my needs.
My problem is that I personally think my voice needs a lot more work for singing, though that hasn’t stopped me from trying. I just can’t hit super high or super low notes very well.
Anyway, below are links to two short songs I’ve recorded.
The first, which has already been listened to by a couple of folks on Twitter, is called Reach Through the Screen and Punch His Lights Out, and is basically a dramatic re-singing (does such a thing exist on the internet?!) of the opening line of Beau Hindman’s write-up on Massively of Star Trek Online.
The second song is actually an excerpt of a four minute song that I have the instrumentals to called Heart Breaker, performed by Maki Ohguro and Koji Kikkawa. It’s been repurposed (for lack of a better term) to talk about bloggers and readers and is now titled Blogger x Reader, though this excerpt is the blogger side of the song. When I improve my recording techniques, I’ll go and release the second half or the whole song on Mediafire.
After the break are the lyrics to Blogger x Reader Part 1. Enjoy! 
One of my Google searches for upcoming games in 2011 had me stumbling back into the NSFW recesses of Sankaku Complex, where one article they had was a huge 1.2 MB picture of a list of multiplatform and exclusive games to the PC, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360. While Sankaku Complex said it asserted the dominance of the PS3 over the two other consoles, it seems fairly evident that the PC would be the place to go if you really want a lot of games.
I can’t seem to find the original author of the picture but I’m guessing that this listing is perhaps incomplete to a certain extent as well, seeing as it’s a day or two old and something new must have happened between the posting and now that would require a minor update.
Added to the picture above is a link to a blog by Adrian Werner, who also has another extensive list of PC-specific games to look forward to for 2011 and beyond.
Anyway, the point of this post is that there are a ton of great games to look forward to, and it’s an exciting year for me, for a lot of reasons. I’m hoping 2011 will be much better than the year before it, and I pray that good things happen to all of us, regardless of our gaming preferences.
As Stargrace of MMOQuests would say, “Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTysXITBCmk]
Here’s a little dose of awesome for you today, courtesy of the Overly Positive blog. The man in the video above, Ted Williams, used to be a homeless man.
According to this report on the Today Show, it seems someone representing the Cleveland Cavaliers has offered the fellow a job and a house as a result of the above video going viral.
Definitely some good news.
EDITED TO ADD:
More Ted Williams coverage-
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIWWbsT43o8]
Full Playlist of the Ted Williams Interview: http://www.youtube.com/user/Bunomous
This is an automatically generated post made by the code masters on WordPress for the benefit of average joes like me who don’t know how to read web statistics and who have no clue regarding the stats behind the Taj Mahal.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 34,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 323 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 385 posts. There were 49 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 5mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was November 29th with 713 views. The most popular post that day was Mount and Blade + Mount and Blade Warband Steam Sale Gives Wrong Key?.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, Google Reader, everquest2.com, biobreak.wordpress.com, and ffxivcore.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for ffxiv level cap, dante’s inferno beatrice, arcade gannon, recettear tips, and ffxiv updates.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Mount and Blade + Mount and Blade Warband Steam Sale Gives Wrong Key? November 2010
17 comments
FFXIV Updates Include Hardware Mouse, Level Cap, and a Video September 2010
4 comments
Beatrice Portinari is Not the Whore of Babylon January 2010
1 comment
Square Enix: Making Playing FFXIV More of a Hassle Since 5 Minutes Ago August 2010
31 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,
FFXIV Updates: Market Wards to get Changes September 2010
6 comments
Japanator recently came out with an article I would have normally read, liked, but not written about, but then I decided to follow the breadcrumbs, so to speak, and found myself salivating over this upcoming album.
The RnB group Boyz II Men will release a new album filled with English covers to J-Pop songs on December 22, entitled Covered – Winter - and will feature two songs that I absolutely love.
The first is Utada Hikaru’s First Love, which was on my high school and college playlists for a rather long time. The second song I’m excited for is a rendition of the English cover of Itoshi no Ellie/Ellie, My Love, which I’ve written about previously.
I’m hoping to find out more about this cover album once it’s been released. Hopefully there’ll be reviews for the songs on the net.
This is not a geeky post, but I find myself irked enough by the circumstances of this particular event to want to vent and further elaborate on some thoughts I put on Twitter.
This is essentially the tale of three people: an anonymous person, a news reporter, and a Philippine celebrity/socialite/columnist who shall not be named.
In the Philippines, there is a national lottery whose grand prize had recently reached 741,000,000 pesos (a little under 17 million US dollars). The anonymous person mentioned above won that lottery. The reporter wrote an article on the piece for a local newspaper, not knowing that he would wake up the next day in the weirdest way.
You see, the celebrity in this tale, through some strange twist that has yet to be fully explained, mistakenly thought the reporter who sent in the draft to the newspaper was the winner, and tweeted the reporter’s name as the winner to his followers, who then spread the word, allowing a small mistake to snowball into a potentially dangerous situation.
The repercussions of the celebrity’s act are as follows, taken from this write-up by the reporter himself:
What was appalling was the hundreds of people falling for the false information. They even set up a fan page on Facebook encouraging me to spend the money wisely, while not taking seriously the clarifications from the Inquirer Twitter account (the newspaper that the reporter works for) and “Mr. Bigshot socialite” [Last Name Redacted] himself.
My mother called me up Tuesday afternoon saying the classmates of my sisters appeared to be convinced that I won the jackpot, no matter how much they denied the information.
With the desperate times as indicated by the surge in petty crimes in the streets, I feared for our safety.
I commute to work from our house and the dangers of public transport are as obvious as the color of the sky. My family, likewise, does the same.
I’ve taken precautions to salvage what was left of my identity in my social networking accounts, claiming a copyright infringement on my part for the unauthorized use of my name on the Facebook pages (including the one that’s supporting me for the sake of a level playing field).
There are two added wrinkles to this story.
The first wrinkle is that the celebrity has already apologized for his careless tweet, but responds to certain tweets sent to him at times by adding stupid (in my opinion) hashtags which read somewhat condescendingly towards his detractors or makes fun of the situation at points. For instance, the hashtag #sorrypotaolangnagkakamali loosely translates to “I’m sorry. I’m only human and make mistakes.” A tweet after the apologetic retractions noting that someone has won the jackpot has the hashtag #nagtagonasiya (He’s gone into hiding) which makes it seem as if he’s not sincere or making light of the repercussions of his actions.
In addition to the fear that has crept into the lives of the reporter and his family, I can only imagine the anxiety coursing through the actual winner’s mind. As of yet, no one has come to claim the jackpot.
The second wrinkle to this story is the simple realization that people (including myself at certain times) can be so swayed into believing words crafted with presence of someone whom we respect or idolize (or in the case of Twitter, literally follow) that we have a tendency to not check the facts. For one thing, I don’t think any lottery company would ever divulge the name of a winner for security reasons. Furthermore, very few people probably tried to ask what the celebrity’s source was after reading his tweet.
It’s a cautionary tale, to be sure, and it’s one that reminds me to keep my guard up when faced with the deluge of information available from various sources in this day and age. I certainly hope the celebrity, the celebrity’s source (if one exists), and the people who are still of the belief that the reporter won the jackpot can realize the need for critical thought and examination in this day and age.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u4kNEvp7xA]
A bit of filler for you today. As I was looking for something Harry Potter related, and stumbled across a video I used to have on an old computer. This is the Japanese Spider-man adaptation from 1978, and he has a giant robot who isn’t named Spider-bot or some crazy stuff like that.
OH NO… The robot’s name? Leopardon. That’s right, a giant yellow leopard robot for Spider-man.
After the jump: the full song, from Youtube. Look for wonderful mistranslations of the song in the comments of the two, such as “He toss a genie!” and “Give me a Nazi.” Enjoy!
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