Technically, the content posted here today could probably be refitted for a tweet or a facebook post, and would, pessimistically, reach a much larger audience in either case. But I haven't posted in a while, so....
A while back, I thought it might be fun to do a hipster meme / nerd thing mash-up.
"Dungeons & Dragons? I'm into Path Finder. You've probably never heard of it."
"I liked Game of Thrones before it became a TV series." (replace Game of Thrones with Walking Dead, as is your wont.)
The White Queen's new outfit in Uncanny X-Men is just so... gauche compared to the classic design."
"Call of Duty? Please. The shooter genre peaked with Gunsar Heroes."
It's when you look into the Foucauldian implications of religious dogma coupled with a military industrial complex that Battlestar Galactica really comes into its own."
And then I stopped, because I realized I was just describing myself, over and over again.
Later Days.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
Book Triad (Minus Two Books): Graham Harman's The Quadruple Object
In a shocking change of pace, I actually finished a nonfiction book. And the review turned out to be pretty substantial in itself (disproportionately so, given the book's main content is only 140 pages), I thought I'd just post that. Review of Graham Harman's The Quadruple Object, after the break.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Bibliophile Postponed
Good news! The library hasn't updated the new books list for this week, so there's nothing to report! Normally, that would not be good news at all, but I'm torn between preparing for my English 109 class this week and a roundtable discussion on fantasy and environment this Friday, so it's a full slate at the moment, and my razor-sharp intellect is needed elsewhere. Toodles, everyone.
Later Days.
Later Days.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Friday Quotations: DOOMed to Repeat Itself
“Wolfenstein 3D not only
offered a radical break from the normal deployment of first-person
perspective in gaming; it stalked the RPG through the corridors of
the medium, blasted it at short-range with a shotgun, and planted a
flag in the sucking chest wound of the corpse.”--Dan Pinchbeck, DOOM: Scarydarkfast
Later Days.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Those Things What Happen To Me
Random Things:
(Imagine this part is narrated by Albert Brooks using that voice he uses on the Simpsons) I got to campus today about 2 pm. I hadn't eaten yet that day (busy morning), and so I was hoping at least to snag a muffin. But I got to the library coffee shop and they were OUT OF MUFFINS! How can you be out of muffins? Who eats that many muffins? Where do the muffins go? Well, fine. I went with my second choice, and decided to get a chocolate bar from the vending machine. Only I hit the wrong number, and I got a Turkish Delight. That is the WORST possible chocolate bar you can get. What a day!
I gave a guest lecture this week on, among other things, personal video games and Anna Anthropy's Dys4ia. And honestly, it wasn't the best lecture I've given. The students just weren't responding like I was hoping they would. I think it's the subject matter more than anything. Not Anthropy's games, but trying to teach games at all in the lecture format. Given that I only had them for an hour, it was basically the only way to do things, but if I had more resources and time, I'd rather have taught it the way Samantha Allen describes here, taking students to a lab, having them play through it, and discussing it with them as they play, one-on-one or in small groups. There's something about actually playing the game that encourages an engagement that's a lot different from the lecture format. Now, some day, when I teach a videogame course, things'll be different. Some day...
On top of the afternoon muffin incident, I had to get groceries today, and I was half way to the store before I realize that I had forgotten my bookbag. Now, I don't have a problem with buying bags once, but the trick was that I was on my bike. Biking with grocery bags is tricky--the simplest thing to do is to let them ride on the handle bars, but whether that works at all depends on the shape of the bike. And on top of that, you've got to be careful in terms of balance. The best case is to get two bags and distribute them evenly. It'll still make the turns somewhat different, but it's fairly easy to do. Actually, it reminded me of the videogame Scribblenauts. In the game, you type in words, and whatever you type appears as something the avatar can interact with, provided it's in the dictionary. You type "cat," you'll get a cat. Type "cap" and you'll get a cap. And type "Zombie Abe Lincoln," you'll get... well, you get the idea. As the zombie example indicates, it does adjectives. And that's handy for levels where you have to reach something high. Winged boots works, as does winged shirt, and winged hat. But where the game's controls really shine is that the control is slightly different for each, because your center is moved from the usual center of the avatar to the center of whatever winged object you're wearing. It's still your avatar you're controlling, but your focus shifts a little. And that's what biking with grocery bags on your handle bars is like--the same, but with a shifted focus.
That was a lot of words describing something complicated to explain something simple. I think I need to lay down.
Later Days.
(Imagine this part is narrated by Albert Brooks using that voice he uses on the Simpsons) I got to campus today about 2 pm. I hadn't eaten yet that day (busy morning), and so I was hoping at least to snag a muffin. But I got to the library coffee shop and they were OUT OF MUFFINS! How can you be out of muffins? Who eats that many muffins? Where do the muffins go? Well, fine. I went with my second choice, and decided to get a chocolate bar from the vending machine. Only I hit the wrong number, and I got a Turkish Delight. That is the WORST possible chocolate bar you can get. What a day!
I gave a guest lecture this week on, among other things, personal video games and Anna Anthropy's Dys4ia. And honestly, it wasn't the best lecture I've given. The students just weren't responding like I was hoping they would. I think it's the subject matter more than anything. Not Anthropy's games, but trying to teach games at all in the lecture format. Given that I only had them for an hour, it was basically the only way to do things, but if I had more resources and time, I'd rather have taught it the way Samantha Allen describes here, taking students to a lab, having them play through it, and discussing it with them as they play, one-on-one or in small groups. There's something about actually playing the game that encourages an engagement that's a lot different from the lecture format. Now, some day, when I teach a videogame course, things'll be different. Some day...
On top of the afternoon muffin incident, I had to get groceries today, and I was half way to the store before I realize that I had forgotten my bookbag. Now, I don't have a problem with buying bags once, but the trick was that I was on my bike. Biking with grocery bags is tricky--the simplest thing to do is to let them ride on the handle bars, but whether that works at all depends on the shape of the bike. And on top of that, you've got to be careful in terms of balance. The best case is to get two bags and distribute them evenly. It'll still make the turns somewhat different, but it's fairly easy to do. Actually, it reminded me of the videogame Scribblenauts. In the game, you type in words, and whatever you type appears as something the avatar can interact with, provided it's in the dictionary. You type "cat," you'll get a cat. Type "cap" and you'll get a cap. And type "Zombie Abe Lincoln," you'll get... well, you get the idea. As the zombie example indicates, it does adjectives. And that's handy for levels where you have to reach something high. Winged boots works, as does winged shirt, and winged hat. But where the game's controls really shine is that the control is slightly different for each, because your center is moved from the usual center of the avatar to the center of whatever winged object you're wearing. It's still your avatar you're controlling, but your focus shifts a little. And that's what biking with grocery bags on your handle bars is like--the same, but with a shifted focus.
That was a lot of words describing something complicated to explain something simple. I think I need to lay down.
Later Days.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Bibliophile: Returning Full Circle At University of Waterloo
“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecher
First: I wrote something this week that got published at First Person Scholar. Funny how often a site where you sit on the editorial board publishes your stuff. Check it out!
Second, have I got a surprise for you. This week, we'll be looking at the new books from.... my home town university! Yes, after many, many months, my alma mater has updated its new books page. After so many trips to universities so far away, we may finally return home. And now, since we've eased up on the rules, I can even grant it a name: welcome, everyone, for a very special Bibliophile, in which we examine the new books at the University of Waterloo. After the break.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Friday Quotations: "sightless worlds where y'limbs are given life and hate"
"Sh smiles. Her teeth aren't chattering because she is cold... they are moving about inside her mouth, her gums twisting as the teeth shift about. They rise and recede as you watch, chattering as they rattle against each other." --Planescape: Torment.
Planescape: Torment is one of my favorite games, and the quotation above is a reason why. One small subquest you can go on starts when you run into Ingress, a woman with a troubled past. Forty years ago, she was whistling a certain tune while she walked under an arch formed by two dead trees, and found herself in Sigil, the City at the center of existence. In Sigil, every enclosed space is potentially a portal that can lead you elsewhere when you cross its threshold, as long as you have the right key--and as Ingress learned, there's more than one definition of "key." She tried to get back home by opening portals, but couldn't find the right one--and some led her to places so warping that she herself isn't quite sane or human any more, as demonstrated by the quotation above. It's a nice moment--her teeth keep chattering during your whole conversation with her, and she slowly reveals more and more, until you're willing to dismiss her as insane, especially when she says that her fear of winding up somewhere worse has kept her from going indoors for the past thirty years, or even leaving the Square she's in--no crossing thresholds of any kind. And then she opens her mouth, and you realize she may have the right idea...
Good times.
Later Days.
Planescape: Torment is one of my favorite games, and the quotation above is a reason why. One small subquest you can go on starts when you run into Ingress, a woman with a troubled past. Forty years ago, she was whistling a certain tune while she walked under an arch formed by two dead trees, and found herself in Sigil, the City at the center of existence. In Sigil, every enclosed space is potentially a portal that can lead you elsewhere when you cross its threshold, as long as you have the right key--and as Ingress learned, there's more than one definition of "key." She tried to get back home by opening portals, but couldn't find the right one--and some led her to places so warping that she herself isn't quite sane or human any more, as demonstrated by the quotation above. It's a nice moment--her teeth keep chattering during your whole conversation with her, and she slowly reveals more and more, until you're willing to dismiss her as insane, especially when she says that her fear of winding up somewhere worse has kept her from going indoors for the past thirty years, or even leaving the Square she's in--no crossing thresholds of any kind. And then she opens her mouth, and you realize she may have the right idea...
Good times.
Later Days.
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