Monthly Archives: March 2005

Mar 17 2005
Uncategorized

A letter. . .

Dear Best Buy:

We’ve been together for a while now.

This is not because I enjoy seeing you. If there were other stores with large assets like yours, I would be with them. You are the only game in town, and you know it. Congratulations on reaching the point where you don’t even have to try anymore. It’s not like you care. You pretend to, but you don’t.

You ask me if you can help me with anything, but in my experience, you can’t.

You are incapable of it.

Not in the entire history of our time together have you been able to answer a single question that I’ve asked you. You just sort of look at me with a blank stare and walk away, only to come back and say that you don’t know. I don’t understand why you even attempt dialogue with me.

I find you on the whole repellent, incompetent, and prone to being on the phone when there are more important things for you to do.

What you can do for me is best done in silence. In the future, just shut your mouth and give me what I want.

The only thing I like about you is that you are relatively clean and free of contagious diseases.

Sincerely,

Fil

P.S. Please hold that 30″ Toshiba HD for me, I should be picking that one up in the next couple of months. Thanks!

Mar 16 2005
Games, Technology

Library . . .of the FUTURE

I’m not exactly sure how this happened, but I was involved in our library’s “Symposium 2010: The Library in the year 2010.” I served as a member of the “Video Game Community” on a panel that examined the way that video games affect current and future generations of learners.

There were four of us and we took on the topics of “Why Game?,” “Games and Society,” “Gender and Gaming,” and “Games and Education.”

I got “Games and Education” as my topic. Which I wasn’t too thrilled about initially, but I’m happy at the way the presentation turned out. Instead of taking a macro overview of educational games, I went for a personal viewpoint. I talked about three games in particular, that I played. It was taped, and I’m hoping to get the raw footage pretty soon to digitize and post. I won’t go into the particulars of the presentation here, in the hopes that I’ll be able to get that tape. Sooner, hopefully, rather than later.

I didn’t get to bring up my social commentary regarding the sales of M rated games to the parents of minors during my presentation, but I think I did a great job during the Q&A afterwards.

For this panel, the symposium organizers invited experts from various disciplines, and more than a few librarians from local institutions attended. After the panel, there was an informal dinner where the panelists got to sit down and eat with these experts.

Firstly, I would like to apologize to all of the librarians I have yet to meet.

I was not looking forward to this part of the panel. I imagined conversations with librarians to be very dry affairs, temporal wastelands to be avoided, like lines at the DMV. I imagined droning on about the Dewey Decimal System, and waxing rueful over the “good old days” before the internet ruined research.

I could not have been more wrong.

The people (at my table, at least) were dynamic, technically savvy people who are trying very hard to keep information “alive.” I had some great conversations about user interface, podcasting, RSS feeds, and the digitization of collections.

So I had a good time, and the chicken was tasty and well prepared. Dessert was another matter. In retrospect, I should have gotten the apple tart.

Mar 15 2005
Games, Technology

Why I'm Waiting

It’s the 15th of March, and I have not preordered a PlayStation Portable.

I, myself, am rather surprised by that fact. I am a videogame enthusiast, am I not?

I love the technology, the stories they tell, the worlds that they create, and the experiences that they provide. I love the way people react to them, the way they get “sucked in.” Watching the news, I even love the way that people are driven to love or hate them.

Then of course, I love playing the games.

So why no PSP for me? I technically own three GameBoy Advances. (That is an awkward plural. I say “technically” because I’m counting the DS for its backwards compatibility.) There is also an original GameBoy Color and a Neo Geo Pocket Color.

I admit, I’m tempted by its large, brilliant screen, its multimedia capabilities, the WiFi, the graphics (Oh lord, the graphics!), and a myriad of other technical reasons. And of course, the games. There are some excellent looking titles at launch. Lumines in particular really calls out to me. I’m all about the music puzzle games.

It’s a compelling system, an ambitious undertaking by a company that really wants to take a bite out of Nintendo’s territory.

So why not? Probably several reasons.

There’s a battery issue. The PSP uses Universal Media Discs, not cartridges. There’s a tiny optical drive in there. That means a motor to spin the disc, and another motor to move the laser to and fro to read the disc. There’s also powering the laser. Granted, the UMD can hold a lot of data, but an optical drive is not something you want to have if in your system if your battery is not up to the task.

I’ve seen my laptop battery drop from 90% to 50% just by watching a DVD. I can only imagine what the actual battery life on the PSP is going to be like. Sony addressed this issue earlier, stating that battery life is a concern that developers will need to address. As of the last time I checked, the battery will last all of two hours if you’re watching a movie on UMD.

If you’re playing a game, it’s a little better. Four to five hours. If you’re using headphones. At half volume. With the brightness turned down to medium. Not using the WiFi capabilities. And if the game doesn’t use a lot of 3D graphics. So, I’m thinking two, maybe three hours for games. I must be spoiled from the 10 hours I get from the Nintendo DS, and that thing has two screens.

Sony has already stated that they’re going to release a bigger battery, and has pointed to their earlier product lines as examples. The Walkman, which initially had a horrible battery life, enjoyed longer playtimes as its technology improved. I think Sony believes that this statement is going to prevent buyer’s remorse. It certainly makes me feel better, but more so for not preordering one.

I would like to point out that they said, “We are going to release a bigger battery.” They did not say, “We are going to integrate a larger capacity battery for the US release.”

Then there’s the Square button issue. When the PSP was released in Japan, there were a few individual PSP units (approximately 5,000) that had a manufacturing defect. The square button would sometimes get stuck in the down position and not come back up. Sony eventually offered repairs for the unlucky early adopters, but there was a period of time when the company even refused to acknowledge the defect. Sony says that they have tracked down the problem and PSPs manufactured in March of this year no longer have this issue. (Plastic casing around the buttons not being trimmed properly.) With the US launch date in less than 9 days, I certainly hope so. I have never called Sony customer service, and I hope I never have to.

Then there’s the fact I have to buy a whole new form of memory storage. They give you a 32 MB Memory Stick Duo to start, because the “first one is always free.” But in order for you to play movies or music, (That you’ve ripped yourself) you’ll have to get a larger one.

Add the fact that this is Sony’s first revision of their first handheld multimedia system, (not to mention the first revision of its operating system) and you have a convincing argument that weighs very heavily towards the “wait until later” course of purchasing.

Oh, and initial reviews of the Japanese units pretty much agree that the headphones and remote suck. Just FYI.

I’m not saying that I’m never going to get one. I just feel that there are a lot of factors that make me want to wait until at least the second revision of the hardware.

I am an early adopter. I’m normally up there in the front lines, at the midnight, with my fully paid preorder slip in my hand.

But this time, I’m just not feeling the push.

Or, maybe I’m just waiting for the other colors that they promised.

Mar 14 2005
1 Comment
Uncategorized

Loonacy

One of the fondest memories I have of the Warner Brothers cartoons is the bit with the coyote and the sheep dog.

“Mornin’ Sam.”
“Mornin’ Ralph.”

You see, the coyote and sheep dog are just doing their jobs. They punch their time cards, they wait for the morning whistle, and then do what they do for a living.

For the coyote, this means sneaking around the sheep dog and trying to get away with stealing a sheep. (Ostensibly, to eat it.)

For the sheep dog, this means preventing sheep from being taken away, and beating the snot out of the coyote.

But they are coworkers. The sheep dog may be in the middle of punching the coyote’s lights out, but when that lunch whistle blows, they both stop, walk over to the lunch tables, and make small talk.

“How’s the wife?”
“She’s good, thanks. Coffee?”
“Please.”

When lunch is over, they both assume their positions and the coyote gets beaten into a confused pulp. Then at the end of the day, they walk off together and wish each other a good night.

This skit, more than any other skit from Warner Brothers, crawled into my mind, carved a small niche, and has refused to come out. I’ll sometimes greet other coworkers with “Mornin’ Sam.” Usually, they’ll respond with “Mornin’ Ralph.” If they get it.

The skit is larger than just the sum of all the ways a coyote can fail at stealing a sheep. Perhaps not quite a gestalt, but more than an allegory.

There wasn’t any marketing involved. It was a skit, meant to entertain. On another level, it may be social commentary. I think the skit is brilliant. I have never seen its equal. I am hoping that this particular cartoon will make it onto the Looney Tunes collections that they are releasing to DVD.

Now, there is a “reimagining” of the Warner Brothers cartoon properties in the works. It is set in 2772, because 2010 is less than 5 years away, and I assume that the year 3000 would be too “xxtreme!!”

From the article:

“We just said, ‘Wow, what a great way to take the classic Looney Tunes franchise that has been huge with audiences for decades and bring it into the new millennium.”’

It’s going to be called “Loonatics” and it’s going to be shown on Saturday mornings. I doubt that anyone other than marketing is leading the charge to bring them back, considering that one of the new leads is “Buzz Bunny,” Bugs’s descendant.

“Ehhhhhhhh. . . What’s up, j0?”

I hope I’m wrong. I’d like to see some wittiness, some charm, maybe some social commentary, but I’m not holding my breath.

Mar 07 2005
Technology

I feel like chicken tonight

Nothing screams factory farm like an automated chicken harvester. It’s called the E-Z Catch Harvester and the machine is both disturbing and amusing. Thankfully, the site provides a video and I suggest that you watch it, because there is nothing like seeing chickens eaten by a large machine, and then shot out of said machine into coops. You may say that I am losing a war with the nation of hyperbole. I say you should click on the link and watch the video.

The video is silent, which makes it all the eerier. I would have preferred some banjo, maybe something with a lot of fast picking.

Now they need to make something completely autonomous that plucks, slaughters, packages and freezes chickens.

My mother once told me the story of her grandmother walking out into the backyard, breaking a chicken’s neck, and walking back in to prepare dinner.

Now we have a 40 foot long robot that puts chickens into coops, that go to a slaughterhouse, that kills the chicken, that goes to the market, where you buy the chicken, that you make for dinner. (Yes, I know it’s oversimplified but bear with me.)

Have we come a long way, or have we fallen?

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