Today a bunch of my friends and former coworkers launched (okay, prelaunched) a new social-focused games site called Bitmob. One of the first bits of content is this interview with David Jaffe (creator of the God of War series) that pisses me off for two reasons:

One: The “random facts” interview theme is something I’d been wanting to pitch to some outlet for awhile but hadn’t gotten around to yet, and now it’d look like I’m ganking their idea. Jerks.

And two: Jaffe relates this little vignette that would make such an awesome premise for a story that it makes me angry I didn’t think of it:

I once called my childhood phone number — about five years ago — just to see what would happen. The phone picked up — no one said hello — and on the other end I heard two little kids playing and calling each other Philip (my brother’s name) and David (me, duh). Did I call the past? I still wonder. And no, you can’t take the idea and use it for a movie or book. It’s mine! Mine I tell you!

Isn’t that great? Check out the whole article, it’s a fun read.

I’m kind of slow sometimes.

People often ask me for recommendations for things like games and books and music and other things we humans need to survive. So a couple weeks back, I spent an afternoon putting together a huge collection of lists of my favorite games, music, movies, books, and even food…and then promptly forgot to mention it here on the main page.

So, hey, lookie there in the left-hand sidebar! It’s a Favorites page! It has all sorts of recommendations of stuff I happen to enjoy a whole lot. I hope you’ll find them useful. If not, feel free to leave a comment on that page. As long as you’re okay with me telling you how wrong you are.

1UP has just put up two new previews of mine. One is for the gritty super-slash-antihero game InFamous from Sly Cooper developers Sucker Punch. And the other is the 256-player (!!) first-person shooter MAG, from SOCOM devs Zipper. Both games look great. Check out the previews and see if you don’t agree.

…but probably not from swine flu.

[Photo by Jane Coleman. Used with permission only retroactively, because I'm a dumbass.]

And so it begins, this year’s health scare, and already it’s looking to beat out SARS for the quickest spread of misinformation. It’s on every news site and front page: SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU DISCOVERED IN THE U.S.! SWINE FLU DISCOVERD IN OHIO!

Hmm, I wonder why. Perhaps it’s because, like during any other fad, the people who create “report” the news are making decisions based on what will generate the most readership, thereby converting into ad sales, which converts into money in the pockets of the people who make descisions about what news to report.

No, I see no problem with that process, why do you ask?

By way of perspective, some numbers:

Continue reading “We’re All Gonna Die!!” »

So, apparently Gmail has been having issues for the last four hours or so. And most of my various e-mail accounts rely on Gmail. So if you’ve been trying to reach me with anything urgent, please be patient — I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.

The other day, awkwardly named technology site TechCrunch ran an editorial by founder Michael Arrington asking, “Stealing Music: Is It Wrong Or Isn’t It?”

First, a definition: In the article, Arrington says, “Let’s put the law aside for a moment – this post is about doing the right thing.” OK, so the question Arrington is actually asking is, “Is stealing music ethically wrong?” That’s helpful, because it makes the answer particularly easy:

Of course it’s wrong, you fucking idiot.

Continue reading “Stealing Music” »

…of Nicolas Cage disaster flick Knowing:

“Rapture porn.”

I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking this way; Ty Burr at the Boston Globe positively nails it. Though his score of 1.5 stars is, I believe, too generous.

I am often disappointed by movies, but I am rarely disgusted, and almost never actually offended. Knowing pulled off a hat trick with its impressively bad writing, acting, and heavy-handed allegory. After that it’s hard to care how technologically impressive a film may be.

Avoid at all costs.

[I'm surprisingly busy with work for this time of year -- thankfully -- so here's another reprint: In My Day #106, originally published in The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Issue #106, July 2006]

If you’ve been playing along with the OPM home game (that is, our staggeringly awesome podcast — tune in at radiopm.1up.com today! [Edit: :( ]), you know that a few of us here have been bitten by the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion bug. So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why this game is so compelling. I mean, sure, it’s enormous, and sure, it’s real purty, but we’ve seen other big, beautiful games that haven’t captivated our interest (and that of millions of other players) like Oblivion has. But I think I figured out what that special something is that keeps people talking about the game: freedom.

Now, “freedom” is a buzzword that’s been thrown around since GTA3 made “sandbox” games the Hip New Thing. But consider what that means in the context of GTA: You can be a bad guy…or you can be a really bad guy. I mean, you can follow along the main story and steal cars and carry out hits and whatnot, or you can do all that plus run down pedestrians and beat grandmothers over the heads with baseball bats. What you can’t do is be a hero. (Well, you can be a goody-goody, law-abiding citizen, but that pretty much entails walking down the sidewalk and looking at architecture. Not exactly the most entertaining experience.)

Continue reading “Beyond Good, Beyond Evil” »

This happens often: I realize that something I do regularly could be done a lot more easily, efficiently, and/or quickly with the help of a simple tool. Realizing the obvious benefits of such a tool, I theorize that surely someone, somewhere in the world has already created it. So I take to the Googles to hunt it down.

Four hours later I’m angry, my forehead is red from all the slapping, and I’m completely disgusted. (Also, probably, hungry.) Because either this simple, obvious tool does not exist, or I — with all my intertube experience and Google-fu — cannot find it.

Here’s the latest example: I do a lot of writing for websites, right? But I’m a freelancer, not on staff, which means that most of my writing gets sent to an editor rather than inserted directly into the site’s content management system, or CMS. That means that I have to send over a document file of some type, a document file created in some sort of word-processing apparatus.

And here’s the problem: Every word-processing apparatus I’ve tried is positively horrendous at generating HTML, the code-level backbone of internet writing. Every single one, when you attempt to save a simply formatted text file as HTML, inserts all kinds of crazy formatting information that would be an absolute horror for any editor to have to remove on a regular basis.

This is bad for business.

Continue reading “Things That Should Exist” »

Just mentioned this on Twitter but thought it bore repeating here. The stock market posting its third straight day of gains today reminded me I’d read a very educational AP article last week about what “the bottom” of our economic situation might look like. You can read it here.

Here’s something I found interesting. The article says, in reference to the market recovering:

Other investors may look to obscure indicators such as the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the cost of shipping iron ore, grain and other materials. Rising rates can indicate demand for raw materials is increasing, which suggests a strengthening economy.

And here’s what the Baltic Dry Index looks like for the past 12 months:

I’m no economist, but it looks like there’s a pretty noticeable trend over the past couple months. I’m just saying.