Best Device writeup

For my New Media Apps class, we were tasked with looking into the future and trying to find the "next big thing."

Honestly, all my techie nerd friends and my own research didn't turn up a thing on the horizon people haven't been buzzing about for years. The iPad3? It's not new. I hate to tell people this, but the iPad 2 was not really a huge improvement over the original iPad. Yeah they slapped a camera on it. Big deal. Essentially it serves the exact same purpose: a bigger touch surface for people who want a little more processing power out of their smartphones. The latest and greatest in Tablet technology will still essentially be a tablet computer. The inherent functionality will not change; it'll simply have more bells and whistles.

The only, only, only thing I could find was unfortunately what our example was for the assignment! Google's HUD glasses they are working on are, to them, hopefully the next big thing. Basically, it'll be the android platform draped right over your eyes as opposed to a handheld device.

I have to say I see a lot of problems with this ever catching on. For starters, it'll lack the textile feel holding a tablet/smartphone/whatever has. I can't even fathom how the interface will work. Do you look at one of the displays as a button and blink twice to double-click? Voice activated, maybe? I imagine that would only end in tears as the inevitable rise of the evil AI soon takes over the world. Understandably, Google is very tight-lipped on the subject.

The only things we know for sure are it's going to look like a pair of Oakley's, and they are supposed to come out "sometime this year." (Too bad this is not in development by Valve, because then we know that'd mean they'll for sure hit the shelves by 2016.)

Let's get in to the rubric's talking points:
Convergence- Access seems like it'll be a tricky thing. It will run off the Android platform, though, so chances are it'll have 4g speed capabilities in terms of internet connection and interactivity. Considering an actual pair of simple Oakley sunglasses can run up to $210 dollars, I can't imagine Google glasses will be affordable to anyone but the most dedicated tech trendsetters. I suppose this ties in to fair value. As it's an unreleased product, any attempt to name the potential price is pure speculation and the entire question behind fair value (ie: is it worth the dosh?) is unanswerable.

The potential utility of the glasses is obviously why it would be "the next big thing." A New York Times article by Nick Bilton published just a few days ago on the 22nd mentions a few things they could potentially do with this technology. 1) Augmented Reality courses. Bilton seems to focus on this one quite a bit because I think the novelty appears to him, but basically it would display virtual obstacle courses for you to navigate, much to the hilarity of everyone not also wearing the glasses. 2) Google Goggles. If you don't know what that app is, in short, it's a thing that lets your smart phones/tablets display information on buildings and what not as you point your camera over them. In essence, just looking at something will turn on a google search for it's history. 3) Facial recognition. That cute girl you saw at Jim's sexy party and forgot to ask for her number manages to show up in your life again at some coffee shop, it would let you know you've seen this person before and potentially where at, and how many facebook friends you have in common.

Consumerism-
Choice: We still only have theoretically what these glasses will look like, but I can't imagine Google would be simpleminded enough to not release multiple looks and styles. At the very least, colors. The thing about eye-wear is that it's even more of a fashion statement than the bejeweled rhinestones adoring the back of your tablet's gel covering and ignoring that would be folly. Also, chances are if this comes out at the time Google hopes to get them out, they will have the monopoly on smartvision (or whatever you'd want to call it) for some time as to my knowledge, Apple or Facebook or Microsoft or Sony do not have any plans to create something similar.

Convenience I imagine is one of the strong points of this potential product. Imagine this scenario- Stick on my GoogleShades, walk down the Boulevard looking for a place to eat. I could just eyeball every building I passed and get how the community rates the food joint, discover historical facts about landmark buildings (as many as we have here in St. George), and discover services I didn't even know existed because of all the little tiny hole-in-the-wall stores that dot that particular street. I personally think that'd be pretty cool, and a helluva lot easier than trying to do this using the Internet. Or perhaps it'd give me a 3d layout of my truck's engine and help me pinpoint problems within it. Or a million other practical uses. I'd be all over something that helped me understand the world I live in a little better.

Performance is difficult to judge. Again, unreleased product. Still, Android phones and tablets seem to work fine and I can't recall at any point in my life using a Google product or service which was launched prematurely to the point it wasn't as ready for public consumption as it needed to have been. Funny thing what a bajillionty dollar corporation can do eh?

Interactivity:
Individualism will be an interesting idea when it comes to these glasses. Will it have one standard display for the HUD, or will there be many? Can I switch between how the Terminator sees things vs. how Tony Stark does in his Iron Man suit? What colors does it come in? Where exactly can I stick my "Team Jacob" stickers?

Controls for now seem a bit goofy. I recall when people first started using BlueTooth headsets and seemed like they were talking very loudly to themselves. (This reminds me of a time this crazy dude with dreadlocks was browsing the store I worked at the time talking to himself and I actually had to peak to see if he was wearing a headset. He was not. Guy was just talking to himself for reals.) It was new, and people didn't know how to react to those utilizing the new tech. Imagine now seeing a guy with a hoodie and shades, tilting his head about, dodging invisible objects, and issuing verbal commands at nothing. I hope it ends up being as creepy to utilize as it seems on paper because it would be worth it to me just so I could act like a crazy person and a creep and blame it on my glasses.

Security is an interesting concept to look at in terms of the digital age in general. Applying it to this specific product, though, I am not sure there's anything to say beyond what any other ditigal internet-ready device already has to offer. It's Google. I imagine having a thing on your face to allow their mind-aliens to sorcerer away your every thought will be just as bad as utilizing Google Chrome. What do you expect? It's the internet.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
I see this product being kind of a failure. I know a vast number of people who dislike wearing glasses in general, let alone ones that actually add more crap for your eyes to process. I can't help but wonder if it's worth the R&D. Are people really going to switch their touchpads for a device which requires audial and physical motion to use? I don't see it. If anything, the Google glasses will have a much more limited market than smartphones and tablets. I can see it being developed more for a military type environment than for the every day consumer and I fully expect that's what will end up happening to it. I think at this point, consumers are not yelling "speed up and give me more" but "slow down and let me figure out the thing that came out 3 years ago so I can figure out the thing that came out 2 years ago."

The "Art" is in the making

I've always been fascinated by art not necessarily intended as high-brow art. What I mean, is stuff like the street vendor doing a bunch of tricks to wow the passers by into buying his wares, or re-purposing children's toys or garbage into really neat things.

That's all the introduction I'm gonna give. Without further ado:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/retinence/6787051822/in/photostream

Guy made a Gyrados (a type of Pokémon, for those less nerdly inclined) out of LEGO blocks. Pretty damned incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukyDrkwvJXQ

Dude makes candy art. Street vendor in China (I think). In this, he makes a caramel lolipop Dragon thingy. It's so cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Noble_and_Sue_Webster

These people don't just turn trash into statues: they use them to still look like garbage heaps but the images projected onto a surface behind? That is art. This is such an Inception-type way of doing things. Pretty freakin' amazing.

I am disgusted with South Dakota.

Did you know children are kidnapped in a federally funded foster care program in South Dakota?

And did you know the vast majority of these children are native american?

A good friend of mine linked me to this article today. It's an NPR article written by Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters about perhaps the most fucked up thing I've heard about in years.

I don't even want to sit and comment on the article. Go read it right now, and you will be disgusted. And the worst part is, I'm even more disgusted at the rest of the country for the things they get offended by now. An ESPN article on the New York Knicks is under attack by the Asian population in this country for the headline "Chink in the Armor," feeling it was a derogatory comment toward Jeremy Lin as it was the first loss the team has had under his miraculous unexpected bursting on to the scene.

I mean grow up, people. Oh noes, they used the word chink and this star happens to be of oriental heritage! Clearly this is racial insensitivity and not someone using an extremely common figure of speech referring to weaknesses not visible to the naked eye!

Man this makes me upset. I'm going to go bash my head into my keyboard as I play Dota 2 the rest of the day now.

I made a font.

This was an assignment for class, but it was fun. Decided to make a font with a sci-fi feel to it. This is what I'd use on the cover of the novel I've been kicking around in my head the last decade or so.

I apologize for the crappy quality of the picture (took it with my phone) and am planning on digitally cleaning it up. I'll add that in here once that gets finished.

Trying to classify this font is difficult, as it's not entirely traditional. It's not the type of thing you'd use for an extended lengthy writing of any kind because it'd be very difficult to read. That said, I'd claim it to be a sans-seriff font. There are lots of bells and whistles and detail throughout each letter/number, but they are not "stroke" details. They are like added bonuses rather than something which looks like it originated in cursive. The letters are asymmetrical, but I attempted to keep lines and extra bits in an orderly fashion to match up with how they'd look on any other given letter (the lines on "b" and "d" for example). If it belongs to any style of font, it'd be modern, due to the contrast between thick and thin parts of the lettering.

As I mentioned, the goal was to make something sci-fi. I wanted to incorporate an alien feel into it, so I made they as crop circle-adjacent as possible while still remaining legible. There's also a uniformity in the lack of uniformity. It just looks spacey, don't you think?

addendum:
Here's the "new" version in which I just used the paint tool in GIMP to go through and help define the letters/numbers a little better.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I feel like my patience as a gamer is completely gone. I have none at all any more when it comes to certain types of games. First person shooters, especially, are not the type of thing I will display any sort of patience toward. The reason being the genre is extremely limited, and if it fails on some basic things it really doesn't matter how "inventive" the act of running and shooting other enemies are.

I bought "Gotham City Imposters" last week, and was really happy with it because of the art aesthetic and general silliness of the presentation. Then I tried playing it. Rage immediately set in.

Fun thing about playing games through steam: I can tell how long I've had a title open for. In this case, two hours. I can also tell you in that two hours, I've maybe played three total matches and only one of them was completely full while the others were both lopsided with 4 on one team and 2 on the other. The rest of the time was spent searching for a match.

That's right. The matchmaking process takes significantly longer than the actual play time.

This is criminal. I want to go to that dev team and slap every single last person who worked on this game in the face. They failed the single most basic need of every successful video game: playability. If you can't utilize the verb signifying the act of using the product, you failed. You cannot sit and play, because most of the time is spent sitting and waiting. Doesn't matter how much "fun" the actual gameplay is if the player can never really access it in a reliable way. In fact, knowing there are some fun, inventive things in the gameplay makes me hate this game even more.

So this review, I am not going to tell you about the graphics, the sound, the neat features and any of that. In fact, I feel I would lack journalistic integrity if I commented on the contents of this game. It is a waste of your time to read about features you can only ever dream about playing, right?

Gotham City Imposters gets a Not Playable out of 10. The devs have already released a statement saying they plan on a lot of "cool features" in the upcoming "free DLC" next month, which include (get this!) improved matchmaking, joining into matches already in progress, and the ability to mute players.

That is not DLC. Those are basic gameplay features required to create an enjoyable experience. You've already lost me, Monolith. Trying to tell me your game update to gameplay problems is "free DLC" rather than a bug fixing patch AND it's going to take an entire month from the date of launch, problems any good video game developer would have encountered and fixed with any sort of playtesting whatsoever, makes me think you're a team of incompetent developers.

Mass game reviews: Heavy rage incoming!

I am an avid Steam fan. Steam is the digital video game distributor of choice for me and last I checked, the vast majority of PC gamers. Among the many, many features of the app is a "recommend" button, which allows you to use something like 500 characters to write a short blurb that all your friends can see if they ever view a game's store page.

I figured I'd just go copy/paste all the ones I've written so far down here, and I'll even go a step further and lump them into good, mixed bag and just plain bad categories.

Let's start with the good stuff.
These games are good!

Everyday Genius: Squarelogic--
Ever do a KenKen puzzle in a paper? This is basically KenKen on steroids, because there's all sorts of extra modes that aren't available in print formats. If you like logic puzzles, and are capable of basic math, you'll be enetertained til the end of time. I wish I was joking. There are more puzzles than I could ever possibly finish in it, if you REALLY want to finish them all.

Mass Effect 2--
Mass Effect 2 is easily in my top 5 games of all time. It took all the boring, re-hashed, pointless RPG elements out of an already stellar title, streamlined the combat, and still has all the FUN parts of RPG games (that is being the most badass space captain of all time), making it seriously one of the most well-developed, fun, replayable games ever made.

Delve Deeper! --
WE MUST DELVE DERPER.

In all seriousness, it's a pretty fun game. It seems like a board-game concept that simply would have been too hard to set up in person. If the online support worked better, I'd make everyone I know get it. As is, it's a little slow but still quite enjoyable.

Dragon Age: Origins--
Dragon Age: Origins is the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, one of the greatest game series ever in my humble opinion. It starts off pretty slow, but once you get out of the starting city, it's hard to set it down. Get the Ultimate Edition that has all the DLC because it's not worth the price to get the DLC seperately. There's a reason I've beat the game at least 6 times start to finish.

Torchlight--
This game really needs multiplayer because it's a streamlined Diablo clone. It does itemization right. It does graphics right. It does endless dungeoning right. Fantastic buy.

Jamestown--
Remember when games were awesome? Yeah this is like those old-school times.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2--
BC2 is great for the same reasons that all the battlefield titles are great: teamwork matters. It's got a lot of balance issues, though. For starters, there is no cover. Everything is destructable, so engineers can spam rockets all day long and you suddenly never have anywhere to hide except behind the massive amounts of dust covering everything. It's a step backwards from BF2142, easily the best title in the franchise in terms of balance and gameplay.

Peggle--
It's amazing a game seemingly so totally random is so amazingly fun. Yet again, proof simple is best. I've spent more time with this Popcap game than any of their other titles.

Killing Floor--
Killing Floor is a pretty simple game: kill zombies, get money, defeat each wave, buy bigger guns, kill more zombies. It's a blast to play with friends, and the difficulty is just right. Not too hard you get frustrated, harder difficulties mean you have to try but you can still ravage if you know what you're doing.

King's Bounty: Armored Princess--
King's Bounty: The Legend is good. Armored Princess is great. It streamlines a few of the minor hickups with The Legend, has better combat, tons of units so there's nearly endless versatility to your army choices, and is more of the Heroes of Might and Magic battle goodness you love.

King's Bounty: Crossworlds--
King's Bounty: Crossworlds contains a reworked King's Bounty: Armored Princess and is worth picking up for that alone. The extra modes are fun and challenging, although not terribly long. The gameplay depth is there (seems like hundreds of different types of units), and I for one love the undless customization. If you remember old-school Might and Magic titles, it's a must get.

Dawn of War II: Retribution--
Do you like Starcraft?

Well you're wrong. This game offers more depth, and an inherent deeper level of coolness. Space Marines are hulking monsters with chainsaw swords rather than some weird future version of the Confederate States of America. Orks are inherently cooler than your typical fantasy orcs, because they spell it with a K. And leave it to the Warhammer universe to make elves cool rather than emo forest faggots. And there's still 3 whole totally different unique races left (Chaos Space Marines, Imperial Guard, and Tyranids for the record.) And it's all fairly balanced!

Plus, Last Stand mode is a whole awesome experience in and of it's own rights. It's like Tower Defense except fuck towers. They are for pussies. Real men fight off endless waves of unkillable ultimate threats to the universe with their own bare hands.

Trackmania Forever--
This game is ridiculously fun. And it's free? Seriously? Awesome. Download it. Now.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale--
Without a doubt, this game totally captivated me. At first, I was sucked into the Rouge-Like style dungeon crawling, and then I was totally enraptured in the business selling part of it, and then I loved the combination of doing both. Only qualms is the controls on Keyboard are not so great; I recommend getting a controller.

Bloodline Champions--
This is seriously the most fun with a F2P game I've ever had, and I am a sucker for anything I don't necessarily have to spend a dime on. Take your typical MOBA game (think Dota or LoL or HoN) and then remove everything but champion on champion combat. It is like Diablo 2 PVP if there weren't items or levels or other monsters to kill. I'm seriously hooked, hardcore, and the best part is unlike other MOBA games, it's a lot easier to get into due to it's straightforwardness of combat.

Cave Story+ --
Like one of the major publications that reviewed this game, I agree if this was released back on the NES, it'd be considered one of the classics of all time. It's that good. It ranks up there with Metroid and Zelda and Mario, except it's not buggy like all those games were. Fantastic story, fun gameplay, and a memorable experience.

Batman: Arkham City--
I am re-writing my recommendation for this game. It is seriously awesome. I still love it despite having lost maybe 10 hours of my life re-doing stuff I'd done previously on a save file that just up and vanishes. So I will give you this warning first: MAKE SURE YOU BACK UP YOUR SAVE GAME FILE EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU EXIT THE GAME WITH YOUR SAVE INTACT.

Despite that one major glaring technical flaw, the game itself is already in my top 5 of all time list (Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, BF2142 and now this.) It is every single possible thing you could ever want in an action adventure game. There's mental puzzle solving, twitch reflex combat, a great plot, fun challenge modes, and a significant amount of gameplay time. And you get to be Batman, in a very visceral way. You honestly /feel/ like you're Batman, because you do the sleuthing and the kicking of ass and the sexual tension toward all the women in your life.

Dungeons of Dredmor--
This is a delightful Roguelike. It's just the right amount of challenging. Remember, the goal isn't to win. The goal is just to do better than you did the time before. In terms of the aesthetics, it's very reminiscent of old Monkey Island games (and references them a ton). I laugh constantly at all the little nerdy references in it, like random creatures taunting me with "you n'wah" or how starting with Archaeologist gives you a Fedora and every skill in the tree is an Indiana Jones reference.


Sonic Generations--
Probably the best Sonic game to come out in the post-Genesis era. They realized what the strong point of the franchise was. It's not the super fast thing which keeps people coming back, but replayability through good stage design. My only beef is the game isn't optimized terribly well. I can run the classic stages just fine but the "new" style Sonic maps eat my processor.

Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Flame--
Fun and cute little side scrolling RPG. It's got some flaws (the controls aren't as tight as they should be, the pacing is kind of bad) but the combat is fun and some of the gameplay concepts explored are well done.

Pineapple Smash Crew--
This game has the best music ever. It's also quite fun. I am amazed at the high quality of games designed by a single guy, while games with huge ginormous dev teams end up being crap so often. It's mind-boggling.


These games are okay!


Team Fortress 2--
I really hope you like MMO mechanics at work in your first person shooter. I miss when TF2 was about playing as a team to overcome objectives and beat the other guys. Now it's about logging in the longest and getting a bigger hat than the other guys, all while playing horrible unbalanced maps that favor cheesy tactics.


Atom Zombie Smasher--
The game is fun, but it's rather confusing. It took me more or less completely failing 6 times to get the hang of how to play, but I still got smoked all the time. I was playing on a simple difficulty too so it's either I don't get it, or it's inherently too difficult to play.


Alpha Protocol--
Fantastic game with one major flaw: the gameplay. If I could do all the espionage stuff without having to deal with the horribly buggy AI, unfair enemies, really poorly concieved bossfights, I'd be enjoying this immensely. Obsidian pisses me off. Some of the best dialogue and roleplaying in their games, but just trashy programming. It's a damn shame.

These games are bad!

Magic: The Gathering - Tactics--

Yet another one of my non-recommendations: This game is fatally flawed. I have encountered two bugs in three matches which forced me to quit the game because the match locked up. Considering this has actually been out a year, these kinds of fatal flaws are inexcusable.

Defense Grid: The Awakening--

Why did I pay money for something I can do for free on nearly every imaginable flash games website known to man? There is nothing new, unique, or exciting enough about this title to differentiate it from every other tower defense game.

Terraria--

To be honest, I don't get the appeal. I thought I'd like it at first, but after a half hour of having no aim and drive to accomplish anything, I haven't booted it back up since. Not to mention the fact it relies on the archaic direct IP address connection method, meaning good luck doing the multiplayer if you're as network illeterate as I am.

I am fairly certain it's an autism simulator, appealing to people who want to see how many colorful shaped blocks they can line up in a row.

DC Universe Online--

I don't really care how it plays, or what the end-game content is: This game was ruined for me by the time I finished the starter quest. Why? I spent an awful lot of time and thought into creating my character, just to find out each piece of gear alters the look of your guy. So my dweeby-looking guy without a shirt, wearing just a cape and skinny pants? Already didn't match how I wanted him to look maybe 30 minutes into the game.

Counter-Strike: Source--

There is nothing redeeming about Counter-Strike. What a horrible franchise. You can't tell when your bullets connect with the enemies. There's a nonsensical buy menu for guns, meaning the better team stays on top the entire match because the other guys will be stuck with Glocks as the others charge around with M-16s and AK-47s. But you all know this because it's been around since 1998.

Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition--

This game makes no sense. The tutorial doesn't even explain the basics to you, and ever after reading how you're "supposed" to play it on tutorials online, I lose every single round by 5 points or more. It fails the basic test of being understandable to those without a PH D or an entire rulebook in front of them. I want to like it but I cannot.

Gotham City Imposters--

AVOID AT ALL COSTS. The matchmaking is player to player only, which means with a total player base of less than a thousand people (the peak is 895 over Steam, for christ sake), you will never actually get to play it. Worst $15 bucks I ever spent.

Serious Thoughts, with Serious Face.

I thought I'd start writing down some of the more random things I think about and hope you all get a laugh out of them. Enjoy.

--------------
Why don't we consider coins to be real money? I see a soda machine and think, "Damn, a dollar. That's a little too much for me. But wait, I have 4 quarters! Time for mountain dew."

How come women don't like Narwhals more? They love dolphins, and they love unicorns. Narwhals are basically the unicorns of the sea. Someone needs to get on this trend before it blows up.

I wish I was Spiderman. Not for the typical reasons people wish they were a super hero, though. I want to be Spiderman so I can take a decent shower for once in my life. Spider sense, tingling! The water spout is about to turn liquid lava hot for no reason whatsoever. *jumps and sticks to ceiling*

Every time I think about really dedicating myself to music, I realize people like Lady Gaga make millions rehashing the same four chords and pathetically simple beat in every song. I don't know whether to be encouraged or discouraged by this.

-----------
I am sure more will come later.

Movie Review: Man on a Ledge

This is a prime example of why I don't go see movies alone. When you are stuck in a bad one, at least it's tolerable with a friend who shares your twisted sense of humor.

I went to go see this the weekend before last with my friend Ryan. For those who don't know, Ryan is where I stole a lot of my fake bravado from and he clearly does that whole act better than I do.

First thing I need to criticize is the title, or rather myself for going to see a movie like this. You can tell the plot for the writers went as far in pre-production as the title of the movie and that's it. That was their entire inspiration for the entire film. I bet the pitch meeting went something like, "Hey we should put that dude from Avatar who is actually a pretty decent actor in yet another really terrible role where he's a guy standing on a ledge of a huge building!"

They don't get around to explaining any single solitary major plot detail til roughly 40 minutes in. I understand you want to create suspense, writers, but leaving the audience in the dark on what should be outlined from the get-go is not the way to do it. The audience shouldn't be wondering why this guy is out on the ledge if he's the protagonist. I'm going to ahead and spoil it for you: He was imprisoned for 2 years for a crime he didn't commit.

Yes, something that simple is not explained to you until 40 minutes into the movie. What the hell, right? The details of the crime are actually kind of a neat premise (the bad guy pinned this other guy for stealing his $30 million dollar diamond which he still actually has so he could sell it himself and still maintain face in the public eye) but by the time it's revealed, they already lost the audience.

The guy is out on the ledge to begin with just as a distraction while his brother and brother's girlfriend go to steal the diamond for reals in order to prove this guy's innocence. Okay, whatever. It's dramatic and is therefore very Hollywood so I'll give that a pass. However, the brother and girlfriend are going to steal a $30 million dollar diamond that has like... the single sorriest excuse for a security system ever. Air vents big enough for a person to crawl through, check. Easily beatable cameras, check. They beat a heat sensor by spraying it with a fire extinguisher. I've never seen a fire extinguisher shoot liquid nitrogen before, but I guess that's what the writers for this movie think is inside.

And then they have these crazy gadgets and explosive to break into the vault itself. This is the kind of shit the Impossible Mission Force wishes they had, and a guy recently escaped from prison, his poor as hell brother and his girlfriend somehow have the hook-ups to get their hands on this kind of technology? The dude before getting arrested was just a cop, too. It's not like the police have this kind of stuff handy.

I feel bad for the actors. It was fairly well acted, truth be told. Except for one character, who does all this crazy, backhanded mysterious stuff then has a random act of selflessness at the end that gets him killed.

The part that just totally killed the experience for me was the whole extinguisher beating a heat detector, as I previously mentioned. That was probably 50 minutes into the movie, which is a really poor time to start dropping ridiculous things into it. Up until that point, nothing had happened that required the audience to suspend disbelief. It isn't long after this segment we're basically asked to expect a huge corrupt corporation has terrible security and some people who don't have a dime to their name have Batman gadgets. Oh, and at one point he leaps off the building to no harm at all on one of those giant mattress thingies they use, and no one thinks to apprehend the guy. He just kind of rolls off and charges toward the reason he jumps down.

You think by now I'd learn not to go see movies where the entire premise of the film is outlined in the title. At least "Snakes on a Plane" was intentionally bad. This one is just sorry.

Bad design is so much more fun.

Bad design is honestly more fun than good design. Good design simply is good; often there is not much to say because just looking at it instills a sense of satisfaction on some level. Bad design, we get to point out just why it is inharmonious.

For this assignment, I figured I'd stick with my modus operendi and do something video game related. In this case, cover art. Once upon a time, we didn't have this new-fangled "Internet" contraption. All we had to go by when it came to picking out if a game was good or bad was the cover art. Surprisingly, the vast majority of it in the late 80s and early 90s was atrociously bad despite the game itself being quite good.

Let's start out with the good design. I present to you the box art for Batman: Arkham City.

I love, love, love this art cover. Ignore the X-Box 360 garish neon green for a moment (Seriously, Microsoft, could you pick a more austentatious ugly color for every game for your system?) and just look at the image itself. It's just well put together and draws your eye. Gestalt principles at work here I believe are the Law of Pragnanz and the Law of Continuity. The entire artwork is in grayscale except for the red of the blood on Batman's fists and under his nose. (The bloody nose is actually foreshadowing, as well. Great job by Rocksteady capturing such an integral moment in the game's plot just in the artwork.) It immediately draws you in. It's incredibly simple from that regard. No one even really notices the Wayne Enterprises building in the background of the image at first glance because the figure and pose of Batman is so striking.

As for continuity, we actually begin this one by looking at the white space between Batman and his logo. While that seems at odds, trying to draw your eye in both directions, it works for this reason: the logo is simple enough it immediately lets you absorb it and then focus on the rest of the image. There's a circular loop one's eye draws, without really causing stress.

Contextually, there's a lot going on here. As I already mentioned, the cover foreshadows a great deal into the game. (I advise anyone to play it, not just Batman fans. It's really quite good.) Second, Batman is a known pop culture entity, and currently relevant. His last movie was a huge success and there is a considerable amount of hype for the next one. This means the art designers can play off public perception: All other Batman related things as of late are dark and gritty. Inside the game, it is that way. However, the art is very light. It's a dark grim city, but the contrast was jacked up so high even the grey sky appears white. It's very opposite of how we think of Gotham and of Batman.

It's also eye-catching on any given game store's wall. It isn't a busy cover, unlike so many other titles, so it actually catches our eyes more. Plus, it is mostly greyscale and light, so it sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the neon green of the physical case of it and every game nearby. If every game used that same color scheme, it obviously wouldn't be as effective. It is highly stylized, a signature feature of the modern Batman brand.

NOW ON TO THE FUN PART: Bad design.

Check out the cover art to the Sega Genesis game, Strider. The original arcade game came out in 1989 and the Sega Genesis release came out just a year later toward the end of 1990, so keep that in mind.

What is going on here? I can't even... what is th-... Wow. I mean wow. It was ugly back then. Looking at it now 20+ years later, it's just a glaring eyesore.

There are so many things wrong with this, most notably the fact the only thing this has to do with the actual game itself is the main character wears purple. Let's talk about gestalt principles.

The Law of Proximity has an effect. Strider's character is leaping out of the box and the bad guys are all in the background, grouped together simply by standing together. The law of continuity is also in effect because we are drawn to what seemingly 3-d object is "closest" to us then we go ahead and look back at the rest. There is at least the left to right flow going on.

The whole 90's art style was ugly. There is no contrast in the image at all. You go from this ugly purple super space man outfit this oddly Russian looking guy is wearing to a floating pink city to more purple jumpsuits, just on bad guys this time. Then, you've got this really cheesy 'motion' effect on the sword, like he's slashing it, but the guy is in such a hero pose it seems odd and out of place. There is no way a guy standing like that making that face is also performing a combat action. It's simply not believable.

The worst part is how it has so very little to do with the game. Part of the coolness factor of the title was the weird tonfa-like plasma saber the Strider in-game used. This guy is wielding a very non-descript broadsword? Weird. He's also blond, instead of Japanese. Again, this is odd. Unlike old NES titles, people had a fair grasp of what Strider was supposed to look like because graphically, the game was ahead of it's time. Let me show you a few screenshots.

He is not some Aryan-looking body builder. Guy is a lithe ninja, with brown hair and his garb is more traditional ninja type affair, not some muscle suit. And again, the sword. (How could they get that wrong when it was such a key feature of the coolness of the game? URHHGGG.) Also, it doesn't look like he's stuck in the Tetris castle.

The worst, worst, worst part of all this is the game already had really good concept/"cover" art for it's initial Arcade launch. Check out this flyer, the type of thing you would have seen on the sides of the Japanese arcade cabinet:

I think given the time period and local (remember, Japanese game) this type of thing worked. Weird, yeah, but at least you got a sense of what the game was about: a ninja killing a bunch of cyborgs. You also had complimenting colors, with the blue suit of the protagonist against the fiery oranges and reds of all the bad guys displayed, so there is a visual pop.

Positive thinking leads to a lot of negative thinking.

I enjoy my life right now, except for one major area but we'll get into that later. I'm enjoying school. I've finally picked up a creative hobby in playing my guitar. I am a pretty deep thinking person, because I know I am engaging to talk to. I'm also just about the most loyal person ever, never lie to anyone, and am very helpful to anyone who asks for it. 

That doesn't stem out of my pathological need to feel needed, either; I am just a helpful person because why not? If anything, my helpful nature stems from boredom. Someone needs me for 3 hours to paint their house or something, why the hell not? I'd just sit around and watch TV or pluck at my guitar or play video games. It's FUN to go out and do things to benefit other people, at least for me.

So why do I feel so alone all the time? I'm doing everything in my power to exude that confidence everyone always talks about, to put forward uplifting messages to other people around me. And none of the rewards that are supposed to come with it happen.

I still sit alone for 80% of my conscious day. I try to find solace in that solitude, but it's really difficult. Yeah, it's nice sometimes, but when it's all the time and has been all the time for the last couple years, it's really painful. Solitude by choice is nice; solitude despite every effort to make otherwise is not.

It's baffling. All the older people in my life tell me they think it's baffling, as well; that they don't understand why I'm so unpopular with my peers.

It's not lack of confidence. I know if anyone gave me a chance, I'd be their best friend or whatever. I'm a caring, giving person. It just sucks it's one of my best qualities and I never have a chance to showcase it. The reason I always search for input on how to better myself is more out of pure lack of understanding. In fact, I'd say my confidence leads to my apparent lack of confidence. You try spending several months holed up in your room invisible to the people you care about most, and tell me it makes any sense to you.

Maybe that's the problem. I have to quit asking for advice, because fuck you. I don't need advice. I'm awesome, goddamn it. Maybe everyone just gets mad at me for getting mad at them they are giving  me advice I already try to follow.

It'd be cool to be Greek.

I'd love to sit around and philosophize all day. It's pretty much what I do already, but it'd be so much cooler if I was a public nuisance like the students of Socrates. That's something history tends to downplay, is he was criticized heavily in his own day for "corrupting the youth," indeed what he eventually was put to death for.

I'll be straightforward: this post is mostly so I can deal with my own thoughts. Come along for the ride if you want.

I used to laugh at the whole concept of a midlife crisis. It seemed so silly to me. Men get in their fifties, then basically lose their minds because they throw away everything that was important to them, uprooting their entire life. The whole idea wouldn't hang around if people didn't see it in every day life.

The stereotypes are usually pretty stupid. "Oh, dude has a Porsche and is over 50? Mid-life Crisis." No. That's just because any male with the means to do it would drive a nice car. Period. I can't think of a single person I know who is prudent enough to at the very least not desire some form of luxury car. That one is based in logic.

Wanting a sweet car is not a crisis. Throwing away the people who loved you is, and frankly that is the one which happens far too often.

There is a man I know and love and respect, and I think he's gone to the dark side. I think this iteration of his mid-life crisis (he's really been in one for a decade or longer, to be honest) is scary. He's radically altered his appearance, quit his business that he quit his original career to build, and is incapable of being in the moment to enjoy time with his family. These aren't just signs of a guy being unhappy with his life; they are signs of a man hiding an alternate life.

If this person has cheated on his wife or really in fact doesn't "love her anymore" as the rumor mill goes, then my entire concept of reality is shattered. His wife is easily one of the best women I've ever known, ever. His children are all good kids if a bit slow on the getting through life part. I don't know how that couldn't be his number one priority any more.

This man got caught up in being a health guru. I'm all for wanting others to live in a healthy manner and improve their lives, sure. It's frightening the ego-boost and self-gratification this guy started to feel doing this, though. If you hadn't figured out by now, I know this whole family really well. They are some of the only people I communicate with on a regular basis. I've personally witnessed the entire family together in the living room, watching TV (some sporting event, usually), chatting it up and he just checks out. Sits in his spot on the couch and texts people the whole time. In fact, the only thing he tends to add to the conversation is about what some "friend" of his somewhere else in the world thinks about that game's events. The rest of his family will have conversations about him while he is present and he is oblivious to it.

I think an intervention is in order. This is at one time a God-fearing man. I bet he'd tell you he still is, but actions speak louder than words. Sunday Christians piss me off. I feel I am closer to the divine the cold, bitter, alone man that I am on Sundays than people who go to church just so they can ignore all the people hurting in their lives the rest of the week.

Since I heard this whole rumor of trouble in paradise, I haven't been able to turn off my brain except during restless sleep. I've wondered if this will happen to me. I've seen it happen to so many otherwise good men. Will I turn 55 and suddenly be so angry life didn't turn out the way I wanted I throw a bunch of people under the bus to try and satisfy my ego? The worse thought is if I'll even have anyone in my life when that time comes around to even hurt.

This one really hits close to home, guys. I'm not sure this broodiness is going to leave me any time soon. Only reason I mention that is because I'll be extra emo and analyze every little thing to be skewed against me for a bit. Example: Was planning to ask a girl in my only class Tues/Thurs to lunch afterwards, but she was quick to get out the door and never responded to my text afterward. Something this innocuous is already causing panic attacks. Let's all hope this situation ends up resolving itself in a way that doesn't cause a splintered family.

Contrast, Balance, Harmony: Fun things you can do on Flickr

You have to love assignments where you are basically told, "Find any image and talk about it." A class where I can just use what we talk about and apply it to whatever moves... me? Not just some random crap we're told to talk about?

Awesome.

First thing I did was get on Flickr and browse around. They have this nifty feature which displays the top photos from a year ago, and I ran across this image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjintjelaar/5381410226/sizes/l/in/photostream/

(I apologize for not embedding the image, but Flickr's new policy is any link to their images also goes to the site. I don't know HTML well enough to just lift the photo off the page.)

I can't take my eyes off it. I'm blown away by the fact this is an actual building and not some optical illusion penned up by an artist. The sky might be artificial (I can't really be sure, but the artist mentions he used some post-processing stuff) but either way, the building itself is somewhere in Utrecht, Netherlands.

In terms of the three key terms we're dealing with, there is great contrast between the sky and the building itself. First, we can talk about the lines of it. You have straight vertical lines on the building, with the wire-mesh looking stuff on it. When it breaks into the sky, the wavy shape created by the paneling on the building gives almost an oceanic feel when juxtaposed to the diagonal streaking clouds.

The biggest contrast comes by way of light, I think, and it's also the greatest source of harmony in the image. This wire mesh paneling on the side of the building already gives us a cross pattern simply due to the layout, but combined with how light reacts, it is hard to look away. It's almost like the center of each panel glows and radiates, growing darker toward the ends. The fact it's not solid texture but one of this meshy pattern adds extra power to that glow, as in the direct center of each panel it's still pure white, like the light is so concentrated in those areas it fills in the gaps with light.

The photo is also balanced using the tools discussed in class. There is great symmetry, as every possible thing to draw our eye to it is duplicated throughout, and the rule of thirds comes in to play with the sky taking up the top third of the image with the bottom being of the building itself. I feel like light is the focal point of this image and even that is weighted out in a balanced way, the focal point in each panel being the center and even the sides of the image both have levels of light reduced at a near identical way.

Last, we've got harmony. Thematically, it's hard to say there's anything more than simply stating "That is a pretty impressive looking building." That's why the stripping of any color in this image lends it power. The focus is on the light and the form that light highlights. The vertical line energy of this skyscraper leaps out. I suppose I don't really know what to say here other than nothing feels out of place and yet you still can't take your eyes off it.

Addendum: I'm not sure what I take out of this psychologically, socially or culturally. As I mentioned, the building is located in the Netherlands, but it's a modern enough building I think it could exist in just about any first world country. Psychologically, there is a clear sense of might that I take away from this. The building just seems important. I imagine it's owned by Big Important Firm, LLC.

American Culture: How Ignorance is a Virtue

I am a vocal person. I don't think this is in question by anyone. I voice my opinions, as I feel most people should do, simply for the sake of voicing them. I think hard about everything. I'm a very analytic person.

Which makes me incredibly unpopular on web forums.

It baffles me. The point of most web forums is to talk about something. Yet when I make a thread starting with well-though out subject matter and am able to make it concise enough to still read as conversational (seriously, no one is going to comment on your Wall of Text), I just get "cool story, bro" or "u mad?" or various other meme'd responses. It's tiring.


WARNING: LOTS OF VERY TECHNICAL TALK ABOUT A VIDEO GAME  YOU PROBABLY HAVEN'T PLAYED

For example, I've been playing an exceptional amount of Batman: Arkham City. (While I'm on the subject, get the game. It's incredible.) On the game's actual forums, in the section to talk about the game, I made a thread detailing why Catwoman is a horribly thought out character from a gameplay perspective. It didn't generate any discussion. Just was a bunch of people telling me I was stupid, or a rage-head, or whatever.

My point was to ferret out poor gameplay design. We've been talking about usability in my New Media Apps class, and I always adapt the principles to things I know more about simply to increase my own understanding of it. So, I did this with Batman's 4 playable characters in Arkham City. Obviously, Batman is the highlight of the game as he's friggin' Batman. I mean, duh. He's the focus of the game, and while you can play as Catwoman during very brief scenes in the main story, he's pretty much all you play in it. The game was designed around him and every gadget as a result has a million more gadgets and tricks he can do than the other characters, who are only playable in the various Challenge missions.

Then you have the two DLC only characters, Nightwing and Robin. (Nightwing, for those who aren't Batman fans, is the original Robin all grown up, a guy by the name of Dick Greyson. The second Robin was a dude named Jason Todd and the Joker killed him. The third Robin is a fellow by the name of Tim Drake.) We'll start with Robin as Nightwing was introduced PURELY as DLC while Robin was a character people who pre-ordered the game from some various outlet could get for doing that.

First thing you notice: No cape. That means no gliding. That means getting around the stage is a little bit harder as it limits your mobility. It's minor, but still worth noting. Secondly, his super x-ray vision mode (every character has it in some way) doesn't highlight any of the interactive scenery (grates, vents, gargoyles, etc). It's a problem he shares with Catwoman though his is a little more noticeable because everything turns a washed out grey color where it's still possible to make out the shapes of what you're walking on due to the more defined red hue of thief vision.

The reason this pisses me off is because the game trains you through the single player and the use of Batman to pay attention to different colors. Detective Mode for Batman turns everything a see-through light blueish color, and highlights everything in definable ways so you can still navigate effectively and know what you're dealing with. Grates, doors, Gargoyles, etc. are all orange (a complimentary color to Blue, so it pops) and enemies are easy to identify. Armored enemies have a different color than unarmored enemies. Armed enemies are different colored than unarmed ones. Basically, it allows you to take stock of the situation.

You can still tell where guys are with Catwoman and Nightwing, but that's it. It hinders your ability to make smart decisions. I can't tell you the number of times I waited patiently behind some wall for a lone enemy to walk passed, hoping to take him down silently. Then I can't. After mashing the Y button a couple of times, I get shot by someone who eventually takes notice (you can't sit still long in these missions) and it drops me back into regular vision. There, it's easy to tell the guy is in Armor. Can't tell that while you're in thief mode with these two characters. I can't for the life of me figure out why they removed all the same visual cues they give Batman and Robin. The difficulty it adds is entirely artificial and contradicts how the game has been training you to think.

Thing is, I still love Nightwing. They gave him some pretty boss gadgets and he still has a batclaw so he can grapplehook around with ease. The gimped vision mode is easily handled by just dropping into regular sight before you attempt to actually take anyone down. He has this electric blast thing which shocks enemies around you, which you can do two things with: Drop down from above to send them launching, or just when you're surrounded to give you enough of a window to start running away to hide again. He also has a limited use Stun Dart launcher, which is pretty self-explanatory. Other unique attack he has is his stick weapons. He'll chuck it and it bounced around to take down multiple guys at once, making it a better mid-ranged utility than a standard batarang.

Next, we've got Robin. He's got the slowest attacks in melee because he slaps people with a metal pole. It's really not all that noticable in just regular combat missions, but in the stalker mode, that extra two seconds it takes to beat a guy down is all it takes for the other dudes with guns to see you and start shooting. Annoying. They also replace the Batclaw with a Zip Kick. The difference is you go toward them instead of pulling them to you. In combat scenarios, it's tactically different but still an advantageous thing to do. In stalker missions, it just gets you killed and also lacks the functionality of pulling guys over ledges to knock them out. You can still kick dudes off ledges, but the positioning to do that is tricky, requires a lot of set up and therefore time (which in a mode where the goal is to beat it as fast as possible makes this useless), and is generally inferior to attempting to bash guys off the ledge with his other unique item, his Bullet Shield. I have two beefs with the shield: Really utilizing it means being shot at, something you don't want to ever have happen to you in a mode about sneaking around unseen to knock dudes unconscious. Secondly, the targeting on it is totally bad. Sometimes, I aim at a guy and Robin will try to tackle some invisible dude 5 feet to the left of him for some reason, which usually means the guard I was trying to knock out notices me and gets a few shots off. Remember, this entire rant is about usability: something which does not function in the manner of which you employ it is quite frustrating. Robin is in every other way just like Batman so at least there's that.

Then, we have Catwoman. For some inexplicable reason, she has a significantly smaller health pool than the other characters. I can understand this from a settings standpoint (Batman, Robin and Nightwing are all geared out superheroes using Batman's crazy funding for bullet resistant armor, blah blah) but from a gameplay perspective, it's pointless. It doesn't really add to the immersion of the game, which is the only reason I can see a designer trying to do this.

The smaller health pool is highlighted by the fact she has significantly less tools at her disposal. Nightwing and Robin both have 5 total gadgets, Batman has like 11, and Catwoman has a whopping 3. She's got her whip, and luckily that is a rather good tool. You can both just trip a guy or strip his gun from him although both accomplish the exact same thing of stopping a guy from attacking you literally the exact same amount of time. I'm not sure why they bothered to make the distinction of being able to do both. Next, we have her Bolas. You think they'd be able to trip a guy or something, but no. Functionally, they are like the Batarangs employed by every other character, except way slower. Lastly, we have some caltrops which would be useful if they didn't make a really loud noise, therefore causing guards to look for them, therefore making them sweep them away, therefore making your caltrop a waste of time that only helps enemies spot you. The only way to really "use" them is to drop them behind an enemy, because that will cause him to trip and fall over. Bolas accomplish the exact same thing, however, and have a nifty auto-aim feature so you can't miss like you can with the caltrops.

The only thing she's got going for her is she is more fleet of foot than the other characters. It never really comes into play to help you survive, though, simply because she dies in two hits while everyone else can take around 5.

To top it off, earning the medals on challenge missions for her are significantly harder than any other character. For those who haven't played this game, the Predator missions are basically single rooms with a bunch of armed guards, and you need to take them out silently as quick as possible. The thing that makes them challenging is it forces you to do 3 specific tasks in order to earn medals. They range in things you're probably going to do anyway (take out a guard with a silent takedown, for example) to the stage-specific (knock a guy off the trains on the subway map) to the downright absurd (blow up a single wall panel into three different enemies like you have to do on the museum stage as Robin.) There's usually one medal on every map which requires a lot of set up when it comes to manipulating the enemies into going where you want. It's very easy with Batman as he has a Sonic Batarang which gets the nearest guard to wander over to it and investigate it's loud beeping. It's also fairly easy with Robin because he's got access to a remote controlled shuriken thingy which you can use to punch enemies around a stage. Nightwing would have a helluva time with it, but none of his challenges (literally not a single one) involve you needing to take out more than one guy at a time with any attack. Hit, yes, take out, no. You can do all the ones which require you to throw and bounce his Escrima Sticks into 3 guys by taking out any other guard and then patiently waiting above til the unconscious body is discovered by a patrol, because one guy will always call 2 more dudes to any discovered unconscious body. Same goes for the one mission which requires you to drop on top of 3 guys at once with the electrical blast.

Catwoman needs some really tricky positioning thing on every stage due to the fact she has a much smaller selection of medals to even earn. And she has no tools to really help her get enemies to go where you need them to go. Caltrops rarely even work and even then, it just trips a guy for a couple seconds, so it doesn't really help you maneuver them into position. Bolas just knock guys over or alert them to look near wherever you threw them from, but the they resume the patrolling path they were already taking. Her whip, also, just trips people, and it's short range so you can't exactly do anything with it other than take out dudes you are already very close to.

END OF NERD TALK
In summation, she dies the fastest, has the least amount of ways to prevent her from taking damage, and has the most absurd, difficult-to-accomplish medals to earn. She is the worst possible character in literally every single possible way. Her usability is extremely limited. I cannot for the life of me figure out who thought it was a good idea to roll up the worst possible qualities in every aspect of the game and stick them on one character, and expect people to enjoy playing her as much as any of the other characters.

It has to be a lack of foresight. Has to be.

This all works back around to my original point: People don't take the time to think about things any more. When someone else shows an analytic perspective, they would rather just troll them. Oh durr hurr, you used big words so you must be a nerd! You... you nerd!

Seriously, Rocksmith is the coolest "video game" ever.

Can I gush for a moment?

Of course I can. It's my damn blog.

I've been playing Ubisoft's excellent, excellent Rocksmith more or less non-stop since mom got it for me as a Christmas gift. Link to their website is here, so I'm going to assume you click it and watch their intro video to get a hint of what it's like.

Part of the appeal is being on a console system, but calling it a "game" is a misnomer. It's a guitar trainer, utilizing something no other guitar lesson teacher trainer person or program can ever give you: immediate audio-visual feedback. The game more or less turns your home entertainment system into a glorified amp for any electric guitar, including an actual amp mode which lets you throw on up to 3 custom pedals to change the sound. (Significantly cheaper than actually going out and buying a ton of pedals!)

Let me re-iterate that: ANY electric guitar. If you've got a quarter-inch plug in for your guitar, you can use it with the game's cable. It's got a quarter-inch on one side and a USB plug on the other. No special guitar needed. If you've got a $600 dollar sexy Gibson something or other, use it. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

The way it teaches you songs is pretty intuitive, as well. The better you play, the more of the song it throws your way. We'll use the first song the game throws your way as a sample: Satisfaction by Rolling Stones. The basic riff of the song is simple going 2-2---245-5-54-42-2 on your second string (I really need to memorize which all the strings are in their default basic tuning). It'll just have you play the 2 and the 5 beginning each segment. Then it throws in the 4 on you. Then after you prove you have that part down, it throws in the hammer-ons and pull-offs.  I am relatively certain the game tracks if you're playing correctly even if it doesn't show the notes to you, because songs where I already knew how to play them leveled up a lot faster even when I "missed" notes than songs I played perfectly but just the notes it showed me on screen. Perhaps it's just rhythm and timing were better so it just seemed that way, but it's worth mentioning my observations either way.

The song selection is pretty awesome. I haven't encountered anything which has made my ears bleed yet, something Rock Band definitely struggles with at times. (Seriously, no more death metal on the basic disc please!) Currently I'm working on a Kings of Leon song called Use Somebody. I'm like 97% on the song and I've got all the segments maxed out. Makes me happy. It's the type of song I think I could sing while playing too, so that's cool. It's also Kings of Leon so girls will squee if I could actually play it well (or so I imagine.)

Lastly, there's a bunch of mini-games to help with various aspects of guitar-playing. The first one is called "Ducks" and it's basically a guitar version of Asteroids. Little ducks come down lanes designated by frets and depending on the color, you pluck that string and that note to fire a little laser to shoot them down. Starts off easy, then gets really fast to the point you can't go look down at your hands to find the right spot and expect to be able to look up again without missing several other ducks. The trainer for scales is pretty straightforward, simply having a little guy ride along on the note and if you don't play the next one in time, you dude falls off. The more you play in a row, the faster it comes to you. My personal favorite is Chord Zombies, where zombies rise up in different chord shapes and you have to play that chord to shoot them and keep them from eating your brains.

There are some pretty glaring flaws I hope get patched soon. For starters, there's a "lives" thing in the trainer modes for specific segments of songs. That to me seems kind of superfluous. It'd be better if it just repeated that segment over and over til you got it, because I mean that's what anyone would do if the game was present or not. Kicking you back out after you fail a segment 5 times in a row is counter-productive. I've seen enough hate toward that particular idea on Ubisoft's forums I think it's going to be axed whenever a future patch hits.

Most glaring as a flaw (and it's something you can't code around) is HDTV audio lag. If you are like me running through just an HDTV, there's about a half-second delay in the audio between when you hit the note and it comes through the speakers. When you're really jamming to a song, you don't really notice it but while learning a song, it's frustrating. Apparently hooking audio from your Xbox of PS3 directly into home theater speakers solves this problem but that's another $30 cable and however much more on speakers if you don't already own some. The other solution is to simply use an old standard definition TV, but then you have to deal with that ugly blur from yesteryear we have almost already forgot existed as a society.

You guys all know me by now: I don't like assigning a number to my game reviews. Numbers are so arbitrary and fluctuate on the day (I know people who give 8's to games they like significantly better than games they've given 9's to.) For the purpose the game was intended for, it's near perfect. Anyone with a guitar and a modern console should at the very least look into it. It's cheaper than a month of guitar lessons and arguably more effective!

What is Beauty?

Fun times, all 3 people who actually read my blog beforehand: I get to use it for two classes this semester! For assignments and everything! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!


First thing we were asked in Visual Communications is to define what we appreciate as beauty.

Boy, that's an unfair starting point. Haven't poets and theologians and artists and philosophers been arguing what beauty is since the dawn of recorded man? It's a good thing there's the caveat of what I find attractive, because we could be here all day otherwise.

As opposed to just 23 and a half hours.

The first order of business for me is to make one of my famous proclamations. As anyone who's into English as a language in the slightest degree can tell you, the most powerful thing in our language is the simple declarative sentence. So here it goes:

Beauty is.

I realize that's rather abstract and vague and grandiose, but so then is my concept of beauty. Everything is in it's own way lovely. I suppose the only extra information I need to add is "as long as it is not destructive." And I suppose even then, that's not entirely true. As a fan of MythBusters, some of my favorite things are large explosions, taking matter and then scattering it elsewhere in tiny, small pieces.

At the end of the day, out of all the things that interest me most, the thing I always come back to is women. Am I sometimes misogynistic? Yes. Am I sometimes resentful toward the fairer sex? Yes. I am many unfavorable things in the subject of gender relations, but at the end of the day, I believe I see deeper into people than they see into themselves. I have a gift of summing up a person's character upon moments of meeting them. I am very rarely wrong in these assertions. What this has to do with women: I see marvel in just about every woman I know. A get up and go attitude, or a desire to maintain pleasant physical appearances, or the thirst for knowledge, or motherliness, or maybe just the depth of soul behind beautiful eyes. Sexist? Probably. I prefer to think of myself as the hopeless romantic jaded by my own failures.

I also find beauty in grand schemes coming together. It's probably why I'm such a huge fan of football as opposed to the other major sports. Most people probably just see the big pass or the great run. I see the blocking, the distractions in alternate route-running, the simple play calling, the way that team drafts new players. The whole thing. It's all amazing and wonderful to me. It's why I love the music I do. Often discordant, it still works when tied together with a funky bass groove or an off-beat syncopated drum beat.

Oddly enough, I also appreciate simple. I know that seems like a direct opposite of what I just listed, and I suppose to a great degree it is so. I suppose we'll classify this dichotomy as "harmony." Not bland. Not exquisite. Just right. I suppose an example of this is my taste in clothing. If I could wear the same thing every day, it'd be my brown chord pants and a plain white T. I don't need patterns, but there is just enough texture in chords so it's not flat. Both are rather neutral colors, too. I like earth tones. You won't see me wearing bright oranges or yellows as I prefer darker greens, clay reds and brown.

I could go on and on, I'm sure. Let me just sum my tastes up this way: I have many of them.

The world is going to end, and I'm upbeat

I've got to tell you, the feeling is kind of neat.
A new look on life, my god is it sweet.
A part of me feels complete.

Okay, now that the bad song writer is out of me, I do feel pretty good lately. Yay upbeat blog posts!

I think a large part of it has to do with coming out of a really bad depression. My closest internet of the last two years turned out to secretly loathe me the whole time. One of my only real life friends ended that friendship Christmas night when after her boyfriend raged out and punched her in the face, she didn't understand why I was upset she'd rather get stoned than spend time in a loving environment.

Something in me snapped when she snapped at me. I just didn't care anymore. About any of it. I am a good guy. I was doing a good thing for someone. I've been doing good things for people for a long time, and I've never got any recognition for it. And you know what? I realized that's fine. I was doing it for the hopeful return of their love and affection. Now I am just doing it because it's the right thing to do. People don't have to recognize it any more. I am okay with being unappreciated.

And it's liberating. I feel like Salieri at the end of Amadeus: I am the king of mediocrity. I don't look at it as a bad thing any more. I'm capable at whatever I do. Great? No. Good? Yes. I'm never going to be that number one choice, and this realization is not sad. It seems like something I should be sad about, but I am not. I just feel like I've finally accepted my place in life, and everyone who doesn't want to be a part of my good life can just go ahead and not be in it. Their damn loss.

Maybe I secretly really do "hate women"

That's a terrifying realization to myself. I have made that comment as a casual aside a million times in the past in order to vent my own frustrations about my failures in the dating world, but maybe it really is true. Maybe it's not the frustrations of a good-hearted guy down on his luck as I view myself, but the honest truth.

I've spent the last hour or so reading articles dealing with women voicing opinions in the internet and the amount of crap they have to deal with. Specifically, Margaret Robertson's post I found through Kotaku and one she mentions immediately in that post by a guy named Mark Sorrell.

And I feel like crap right now. I'm not the type of guy that ever sends unsolicited messages on X-Box or any other gaming medium targetting women. Or anyone, really. In fact, the only messages I send on X-Box Live other than ones to friends have been to opponents in a game I particularly enjoyed playing against. Whether I won or lost, when the competition was good and friendly, I make it a point to send a "GG dude! Helluva game" message or something along those lines. I believe we need as a culture to make a more concentrated effort to display sportsmanship online as we would in person.

But I know I've said derogatory things before. Just the other day, I was playing Left 4 Dead 2 with one of my only real life friends and a few people he knows. One of them was a girl, and immediately the flirtatious side of me came out. It wasn't in a direct way (I've learned better) but I was monitoring what I said an awful lot more than I usually do and was making a conscious effort to be more witty and funny than I usually am. I believe I made a lot of jokes about how the only type of women I could get were the really fat, blimp-like ones.

It was funny in context, but now that I'm looking at it out of context, I'm mortified by the sexism I've displayed. It's subconscious. I have a really low opinion of myself normally, so the way I self-deprecate is by making fun of obese women, by implying they are low enough on the worthiness meter in society even I could get with them and it would be welcome on their parts.

I'm better than that. God I feel so awful right now, but I guess I need to take heart in that. Hold on to this self-anger and utilize it to be a better man going forward, right? That's all anyone can do when they've been faced with an uncomfortable truth about themselves. So what I'm doing, with my eyes open, is telling myself I am better than that so when the opportunity to actually put it on display arizes, I'll go "I am better than that" and hold myself to higher standards.

At the end of the day, this is all I've ever really asked of anyone. It might seem like I ask a lot of people, because I'm a very opinionated a-hole most the time. But I'm ultimately an extremely forgiving individual. The person I whined about in my last post? I can legitimately say I hate her right now and am glad she's out of my life. But would I forgive her in a heartbeat if she decided to actually mend this rift? Absolutely. I'd  be wary for awhile, but I am an trusting enough person to say what the hell and go for it. I suppose the reason I am so hurt by her decision is she is not the same way.

I am getting off-topic: Let's talk about women on the internet for a second. Did you know women who express opinions for a living get hate mail based entirely upon their gender and nothing about the contents of their work? I had no idea. And some of the stories I've heard go as far as to say they've been mailed their own address (not publicly listed on any profile they were aware of owning online) along with vivid descriptions of horrific sexual fantasies these nutjobs want to carry out on said opinionated women. I'd spoken very, very briefly with my friend Jill about this, as she is a gamer into the Modern Warfare franchise specifically. According to her, she gets hate mail or sexual requests every round she speaks through the mic.

Considering how emotionally twisted I get from some of the things that occur to me in my life, I can't even imagine. If you're a male gamer, and you're reading this, I encourage you to examine your own behavior. Ignore what you perceive as the norm for a second. Let's throw away stupid ideals such as "It cannot be changed." We're going to Glen Beck this and ONLY talk about you. If my post gets even just one other person to examine their behavior toward other people, then this was the best 20 minutes (give or take) I've spent in the last month.

I suppose from an entirely selfish standpoint, I want it to be acceptable for "normal" girls to play video games. Let's face it; the perception is only nerdy girls or "fat, ugly" girls or lesbians or to sum it all up, "fringe personality" girls play video games when the truth is everyone in today's society plays them.

Anyway, I'll finish ranting about this topic later. Gotta run!

No, seriously, I hate that I love women.

This is probably the most misogynistic thing you'll read all day, and I apologize about that. I could pretend I was politically correct, but y'all know me. I leave politicking to people with no souls.

So, anyone who knows me or followed my blog when I originally started it knows there's a girl in northern California I care about a lot. The relationship has been entirely long distance, and I recognize that's probably weird to a lot of people I care as much about this person as I do because of that fact. Thing is, I didn't expect her to question it.

That stings on a level I have a hard time understanding. Let me go and explain the entire situation as best I see it.

About two weeks before the new Call of Duty came out, she text me saying "I'm bored!" I told her "I'm just chilling playing games on Xbox with some friends of mine. Join the party and come chat with us?" So she did. And things went pretty well for awhile. She got along with my friends. That made me happy, and hey it was a way to actually talk to her rather than texting all the time.

Fast forward to the release of the game. We all played it quite a bit that first week, and I'm a highly competitive guy. When I struggle, I get whiney. I'm not proud of it and it's something I work on constantly. However, it's super difficult when everyone on your own friend's list is harping on you. Friendly ribbing is part of the game, and for the most part I took it well and it didn't really bother me. But when it did start to bother me, I got vocal about it. One night, I told them "Okay seriously guys, enough is enough. Could you please tone it down and maybe not rip on me quite so much for a bit?" After about 20 seconds of silence, I just said "Fuck it, I'm done for tonight."

Then in classic brainless hurt emotional wreck Casey fashion, I shot her a text saying something to the extent, "I expect that kind of behavior from them, because they are just video game friends and I don't really know them. Plus, they occasionally throw in 'Just kidding' or similar messages to lessen the blow when it starts to feel really personal. But you? I expect you to at least acknowledge when I ask a request." She didn't respond.

She also didn't respond for about 3 days when I tried to hash things out with her.

She also didn't respond on X-Box Live anymore. She started inviting the other guys to a party, but set it to invite only and no one ever threw me an invite. Yes, they were all playing the game. Yes, I wanted to get in and play with them.

This goes on for like a week, then I get word from the girlfriend of one of these guys (this particular guy and his girlfriend are real world friends of mine from Las Vegas) she overheard the Cali girl, and I quote, "talking shit about me." When I asked further, apparently she told these other guys she didn't know why I cared about her as much as I did because it's all been long distance, and that I was a stalker, and things to that extent.

Wow, right? Yeah, I'm a stalker. Before all this drama went down, we were both talking about what Christmas gifts we were going to send each other. I'm pretty sure she in fact started that whole conversation. There's absolutely no reason for me to care as much about her when I was there for her to talk to into the long wee hours of the night and morning when her marriage was failing. Another fact: she told me I was the first person she called when the official decision to split from her husband went down, even before her own mother whom she lives with.

There are so many little things like that I can point to in this 2 year relationship. I'm pretty sure at one time she cared about me. So I don't understand how anyone who ever cared about another could just shut down so completely when the other is trying to find out what the hell is going on. I didn't hear from her in a week, she wouldn't return texts or phone calls or messages on other online services, and then I start hearing things which seem to confirm my paranoia? I think anyone in that situation would be trying to find out what the hell was happening. If it was reality as it seemed in my head, the situation was extremely fucked up. She basically stole my group of X-Box friends (by the way, none of them really talk to me anymore and I still don't know why they suddenly shut down toward me too) and then said some really hurtful things which suggest she'd been feeling resentful of my attachment to her for quite some time.

Finally, after leaving a few voice mails, she text me back saying she wasn't going to talk to me anywhere because I believed some "mystery source rumors." She wouldn't actually talk to me, but would argue with me via text. I hate that. When things are shitty, I want to TALK. When you can hear the other person, it makes it so much less painful because when reading the types of things that come out in arguments, they always sound way harsher than the vocal inclinations would let a person understand.

During the course of the argument, I felt like she wasn't directly responding to any of the things I had to say, and was just turning everything around on me. I'm the badguy for wanting answers. I'm the badguy for not being able to read her body languages from a thousand miles away to just inherently understand she wanted to be left alone. She didn't understand there's a responsibility people have to say the very simple things like "I want to be left alone today, I am not feeling well" or whatever. Like I wouldn't understand that. I don't understand the silent treatment, especially in this case because I still don't see what I did wrong.

Well, up til the argument came to a head. I may have accused her of treating me like her ex-husband and another guy who liked her a lot that both started treating her really poorly, and that this type of treatment is what leads people to do shit like that.

Do I feel I am wrong in this assessment? No. Should I have said it? Probably not. But then again, she can point out my flaws whenever she wants and I'm just supposed to grin and bear it and laugh it off or solemnly swear to be better, but if I point out any of her flaws, goddamn it I'm on her shitlist along with her ex-husband, this other guy, a former "best friend" female friend of hers, and a few other people she likely will never talk to again and will retain anger and hatred toward for years to come.

It's been two weeks since this all went down, and it still stings and makes no sense so I try not to think about it as best I can.

AND IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHY I AM LEVYING THIS SITUATION ON THE ENTIRE FEMALE POPULACE:

I've tried so hard the last two weeks to get out of my house to spend time with just a female friend. No agenda. Just want to spend time with the fairer sex. Shit, I'd spend time with anyone. I need out of my house. The only social interaction I've had recently circles around video games and football. Not that I mind either of those, but occasionally I need something deeper even if it's just delving into the problems of another person. I've sent a gajillion texts to gajillion people who normally respond when I try to say hello and absolutely nothing. People are going to blame it on it being near Finals, but really? You expect me to buy that? Go observe people in the wild for two friggin' minutes. Everyone checks their phones constantly, whether they are in conversation with friends or not, and usually clack out a reply. If any of them actually responded, I'd believe whatever they slung my way. Not out of ignorance, but because I believe in the naive ideal friends should trust their friends unless given a reason to distrust them.

And so I've had to sit with this guilt and anger and frustration of being alone, of losing one of my best friends I've ever had, of losing a girl I love, alone. I have had literally no outlet to even try and feel better about things. I haven't had a single day since where I haven't felt shitty about myself, because I've had no one to tell me otherwise. You can try and tell me all you want I should just buck up and tell myself I'm a good person and just role with it, but I'm too observant to believe those lies. Good, worthwhile people don't sit alone in their house for two weeks at a time when they are trying as hard as they can to get out and socialize. Good, worthwhile people have people who love them and seek them out to talk or do things with.

I'm a giving person, and no one wants anything I have to offer. This is the source of my endless low self-worth.