09.05.07

Compromise

Posted in Rants, Site News at 6:28 pm

Just a little update to the whole ‘lockdown’ thing from last Friday. I have elected, after examining and taking into account feasibility and my own sanity (seriously, I was not in a good mental place when I said that stuff– cold turkey, what the hell was I thinking?), that I will allow myself only one new game purchase per month until further notice. September is excluded– no purchases at all this month, as I’m going to restart the GameFly subscription around the 15th (definitely– MySims is probably only going to be worth a rental). But the schedule right now appears to be:
October: Tabula Rasa
November: Eternal Sonata
December: Smash Bros. Brawl
I’m still forbidden from purchasing anime, music, or movies (going to see a movie is still OK), and I can’t buy anything that would add to the Reclamation List (not even if I see both Lunar games for $20– well, I might make an exception for that). But this limit will work out fine. Especially given that I’m burning through my backlog a bit faster than anticipated.

Catch you tomorrow, folks, with good news.

The End Is Near

Posted in Rants, Site News at 7:22 am

I got to thinking this morning about my little experiment with regards to this here blog. My constant/daily/incessant updating has been sort of good for me, in that I have managed to become even more verbose than I normally would. On the other hand, of the (so far) 270-some entries this year (I’m guessing that I only double-posted twenty or so times), 90% of them are “I got nothing” or Bailout. That’s not going to stop me, of course, from at least finishing out the year. But I’m not entirely sure if daily updates are going to be the norm next year or not… certainly it’s done wonders for maintaining a consistent frequency of updates, but if the quality’s not there, what’s really the point? My biggest fear, really, is that I’ll say “All right, updates weekly now” and then let those slip. At least daily means I have an obligation at all times, and that it nags at me unless I do it.

Wow. I’ve given myself OCD. I don’t think that’s ever happened before.

Anyway. Good Things from last week are still on track (but lately it seems like the object ON the track is no longer capable of autonomous motion and instead is being pushed by an anemic sleep-deprived lemur), and by Friday I will definitely be able to do the big, completely non-climactic reveal. So, yeah. Also, the RPG project from yesterday… is still going on, but kind of paused while I get up the courage to actually ask folks at GASP to see if they want to help playtest it. I’m still writing on it, occasionally, but the game mechanics are going to have to just be on hold for a bit.

This morning, I went through the usual feeds and came across, of all things, a year-old SomethingAwful thread about “words you learned from video games”. Despite the fact that it’s SA, it actually had some interesting mentions. “Sepulchre”, “dire”, “synthesis”, etc. were some of the big ones. I think, actually, that a lot of my wordiness comes from games and from books, but that’s not to say I don’t indulge in a little bit of linguankery on my own. (See? I can’t help it, even in metaconversation.) Case in point (as if it really needed another one): on my way in to work, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a bottle of soda. The clerk responded with the usual “Have a nice day!” as I gathered up my change, and (without thinking) I responded with my usual “I shall.” The clerk immediately said, “What did you say?” I looked at her, probably kind of funny, and repeated, “‘I shall’.” It was her turn to give me an odd look, and she said, “‘Shall’?” The notion that this girl had probably never heard the word ’shall’ actually spoken in an ordinary, throwaway conversation then struck me, and I said, abashedly, “Sorry… I’m kind of a word geek.” She smiled and said, “No, it’s cool.” And that was the end of the conversation as I left in a hurry, to avoid her seeing my rapidly reddening face.

I honestly don’t know what that says about me, her, education in general, or the sad state of linguistics and grammar. Mostly it probably just reaffirms my predilection for excessive vocabularic employment.

09.04.07

He Got Game

Posted in Gaming, Site News at 2:21 pm

So, yeah. Not much to say; I haven’t played any games since last night (due to the whole ‘work’ thing) but for right now, I’m still trying to pick out what I want to do next on my backlog list. Everything’s pointing to either Radiata Stories or Kingdom Hearts II… more leaning to RS. I’m probably going to keep working on SRT on the side, but right now the last thing I want to do is stare at a portable system for hours on end at home.

I’ve also started a new project (yes, after all that talk about clearing up old projects, starting a new one is sort of contradictory– this one is supposed to be a long, large-periods-of-non-productivity haul), a role-playing game. I’d had some ideas about a tabletop game back at the end of high school, but those got scrapped as I realized my system was overcomplicated and my attempts at worldbuilding sort of fell flat. I’ve drawn up the basics of a relatively simple system (hybridizing d20 and White Wolf, to a certain extent) and am fleshing out some of the content and skills available. I’m also working on a very cohesive theme for the game (human evolution, done in a more feasible style than Marvel’s mutants), and looking at it as part-game, part-thought-experiment. If I feel brave enough once I get a draft written, I might start playtesting it at GASP. But that’s a couple of months off; right now it’s in an extremely embryonic form. More as it develops.

Though I can say this now: I have a lot more respect for indie game designers now.

09.03.07

GAME CLEARED: Luminous Arc (DS)

Posted in Game Cleared 2007 at 9:40 pm

At 10:16p, I defeated (spoiler, hover over to read), the final boss of Luminous Arc on the DS. This is the thirteenth game cleared in 2007. The next game that is closest to completion is Super Robot Taisen: OG (GBA), followed by Band of Bugs (360) and (nothing else started). Final clear time was 22:43 over 19 days.

The Kerfuffle Goes On

Posted in Appleology, Rants at 8:44 am

Unrelated, actually, to the Appleology rant that is every paragraph of this post but this one, but what exactly is a “kerfuffle”? I gather from the context in which I’ve heard it that it’s a to-do of some sort; synonyms include “dustup”, “commotion”, and “spectacle”… but kerfuffle? Who the hell makes up a word like “kerfuffle”?

Ahem. Anyway, Wednesday is another Apple press event, and the blogosphere (there’s another non-word) has tagged this one with the moniker “The Beat Goes On” (after the last line of the invitations sent out). As per usual, speculation is positively pandemic among the Appleologists. Some are claiming that the Beatles will finally make it onto the iTunes store; others are claiming that a “fat Nano” will be introduced that has a widescreen display; still others are actually saying that Apple losing NBC support for the new season is going to be completely rendered moot by whatever it is they announce in 48 hours or so. All are wonderfully tantalizing, but if there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that Apple always has something secret up their sleeves for these events. Maybe not something useful-secret (I’m looking right at you, redesigned iMovie), but something secret nonetheless.

Let’s tackle these in order. The Beatles have been the sort of Holy Grail of downloadable music, and many folks were pretty shocked when Sir Paul’s tracks started showing up on the iTunes store earlier this year. This is, of course, because of the old (and long-since settled) dispute between Apple Computers and Apple Corps Music, the Beatles’ record label. Lending some amount of credence to the theory is the fact that EMI, which controls the Beatles’ library, was the first label to sign up for the iTunes Plus (read: no intrusive DRM, just some watermarking) distribution model back in late May. Well, it’s been three months and EMI is still in business, so that ought to shut up any naysayers in the RIAA about electronic music sales killing the industry and devouring artists’ children. (Unrelated: MP3 HUNGERS! MUST EAT MADONNA’S BABY! RARGH UMM NUM NUM) Anyway, since it has been just about ninety days, I’d say that the ink is barely drying on the contract to let the Fab Four onto iTunes. All you need, apparently, is patience.

Moving on, then, to the Fat Nano. If you’ve been following my Google Reader shared stories (and I certainly don’t blame you if you haven’t– I certainly wouldn’t want to right now, but I am working on that, kind of), you’ll have noticed that there’s been a few concept photoshops of a redesigned iPod Nano. This so-called “fat Nano” is so named because of its wide screen. It makes the Nano look squat and stubby, and while it does retain the basic design of the old-school iPod Mini, it has one key drawback: it looks fat, squat, stubby, and ugly. Personally, I do not think that this design is the real deal for three reasons. First, Apple has been known to let red-herring concept drawings loose internally to see who will leak them, and this might be one of them. This could be countered by the fact that Apple sent a C&D letter to Engadget when they first posted the photo, but the terms of the letter said that it was Apple’s intellectual property; that’s a pretty broad definition and doesn’t prove that that’s the real one. Second, I’m sure someone at Apple has the sense to see that the new Nano design is not aesthetically pleasing (in the immortal words of Mr. M. Doughty, “fly”). If I were in charge of the redesign, I would have rotated the screen 90 degrees so that it elongated the Nano further, rather than widening it. Now, this does run into some problems, especially as there are other video players out there with similar configurations. But Apple might want to risk it– after all, a settlement might be cheaper than lost sales due to an ugly product. Finally, there’s the obvious answer: what the hell does the Nano need a widescreen for? Seriously, the Nano is not intended to be a video player. I don’t like playing video on my full-sized iPod, and now you’re telling me to watch it on a screen that’s even smaller? You must be joking, right? The Nano is and should remain Apple’s primary music-only player. Cover Flow, while pretty, is mostly irrelevant for the Nano.

And now, the NBC thing. Last week there was a bit of “he-said, she-said” between NBC Universal and Apple with regards to their content-providing contract. The end result of all of the argument, and the thing which people saw first, was that Apple wasn’t going to carry the new season’s NBC shows, and that mid-season, all existing NBC content would be gone from the store. (It’s unclear if this affects “classic” NBC content, like Dragnet, or Sci-Fi Channel/USA Networks content, like Dresden Files or Monk (Universal controls both channels). I’ll do some more digging on this over the next few weeks.) Reaction from the consumer base has ranged from content-deprivation outrage (”How dare you not let us buy your stuff! I’m a paying customer, give me more Office!”) to torrent-fueled indifference (”Thanks for not letting us buy your stuff. We’ll still get it, we just won’t pay for it now.”). In principle, I agree with both sides; by and large the iTunes sales model has proven to be sound enough to warrant further trust (and come on, they released the Apple TV this past year, do you think people are going to stop buying shows?), but if it is not available for legal purchase, then there are alternatives. In my case, it’s called “my DVR”. (Come to think of it, there’s nothing really all that interesting coming up this year on NBC– “Chuck”, maybe, but that’s going to get cancelled because it might be interesting, just like “Raines” was.) As time wears on, this will develop, but Apple would not have let it go if there wasn’t some grand strategy in the works that will make NBC Universal come crawling back. That revenue stream is going to dry up around December or so, and Universal is going to be left holding the bill, looking for another vendor– and who else is there, really? Microsoft? With the juggernaut that is the Zune Marketplace and the Xbox Marketplace (where if it ain’t a game, it ain’t getting downloaded)? Don’t make me laugh.

Yeah, I’m disappointed in Apple that they couldn’t shoot straight with us on the details of the kerfuffle with NBC. Apple claimed that NBC wanted more money; NBC countered by saying “no, no, there were other things, we weren’t going to ask the consumers for more money, just Apple” (in development costs, licensing fees, etc.). The root of the problem is with Universal; most folks know that Microsoft has to pay a chunk of the revenue from every Zune sale to Universal, who unilaterally declared that all non-DRMed music on those players was “illegitimately obtained”. Sure. Let’s gloss over the three days I spent in the summer of 2005 meticulously ripping all of my purchased CDs to AAC/MP3 so that I could listen to them wherever I was, either at home (on the disc) or on the road (on my iPod Mini). I obviously don’t speak for everyone, but if I’m using a poor sample size, then so is Universal. This dustup between Uni and Apple is their way of saying “All right, now you wouldn’t want to lose more money, would you Apple? All we ask is a simple offering of cash and recrimination against your users.” Apple’s done some pretty dumb things in the past (Newton, anyone?) but sticking to their guns on this one certainly isn’t one of them.

Besides, Heroes was boring. (I actually had to remember if there was anything on NBC that I cared about.)

That’s about it, folks. Catch you later, likely with that Game Clear notice (I’m on the last handful of missions in Luminous Arc).

09.02.07

Silent Sunday

Posted in Site News at 6:56 pm

Nothing of any real interest happened today. Sorry, but I’m making a lot of progress on a couple of projects and needed this weekend to relax a little. Tomorrow I might have something for you (or at the very least a Game Clear notice).

09.01.07

Reboot

Posted in Rants, Site News at 6:00 am

Yesterday’s second post might have seemed like an odd juxtaposition, especially after I’d spent the past couple days hyping up the fact that Good Secret Things were Happening. Those Things are Still Happening, but they were also accompanied by a particularly difficult revelation.

I have too many open projects.

The Reclamation List was an easy project that was ongoing, but it sapped away money from the Rabbit project; I’m still working on the Netjak project, but I have other (paying) projects that I’m working on as well; I want to write more Metal Rogue, but I also need to send out more letters for Inconsequential– well, scratch that one (more on that later). You see what I mean?

The fact of the matter is, this weekend is an excellent time for me to just re-evaluate what I need to do, what I want to do, and what I should drop. I’ve already started that– the suspension of the Reclamation project was just the first step. I’m going to spend some time this weekend (probably Sunday afternoon or Monday) wrapping up a paying code project (self-assigned, but I think some folks might want it enough to donate). Finally, I’ve done some internal and private work to clean up a few bad habits I have still hanging over me; expect the fruits of that to be visible around December or January.

What it boils down to is that I’m not perfect, and I’m upset that I’m not perfect. Rather than just beat myself up over it (my previous modus operandi), I’m going to actually do something about it.

Catch you folks later.