As a user of twitter, google reader, picasa, youtube, and blog writing, I was initially intrigued about the concept of Google Buzz. It is basically an aggregated update about what google thinks makes up my online ‘life’. Photos of me, articles I like, random twitterish thoughts all can be pushed to people who subscribe automatically. Then they can comment directly on them or pass them on to their subscriber list. (more…)

Street Fighter 4 A-
by Capcom from Feb 2009

I’d really like a cybernetic left thumb. Perhaps one of my eyes. But specifically the thumb would be for long street fighter 4 sessions. However with a sore thumb, I must say, Street Fighter 4 is amazing and I am surprised at how much fun it is to wave a color changing scarf.

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Google is generally the company who does things right. Features you want are there, or you’ll change what you want to match their features (hooray for gmail labels!) Things are organized cleanly and logically. Performance is generally pretty good, or some things like mail can be scaled down if you’re mobile or bandwidth handicapped. Their search has become the verb for searching. I’m not sure why its the best, or if the search part of google is all that great (lots of room for improvement IMO), but google is .. google.

When chrome came out, I tried it, and wasn’t too sure it was really even necessary in the browser market. It looked pretty similar to firefox, internet explorer with slight rearrangement. The performance could be better or worse but comparing half a second or a full second is hard for me to judge, especially when my internet connection could be attributed to any delay.

I switched back to firefox because of some features (plug-ins) that I found it hard to go without. FoxyTunes to control my music, and volume is fantastic. Greasemonkey lets me do some advanced script things on certain websites. FireFTP has become my ftp app of choice which is quite bizarre because firefox doesn’t really have anything to do with ftp. FireFTP is just an application inside of a browser I guess? It isn’t perfect but its there , and quick.

But here I am writing this blog on Chrome, so why did I abandon my old foxy browser? It was boggin me down. Too often firefox would take forever to close, or take forever to start up. Could this be due to my plugins? very likely. Also on some evil website with heavy multimedia or scripting usage, my firefox grinds to a halt and crashes too often.

What is google’s solution? Tabs are separate tasks, and don’t crash each other. Also, a few nice features I had in firefox, like a 9 panel multipage preview screen, is built in. The download manager I love in firefox (popup windows are so 2003) is built in chrome, and probably even better.

But the biggest thing is that Chrome is just better on my underpowered laptop, it doesn’t hog giants amount of memory to slow down my games on my desktop, its just less intrusive. I never have to scream “bah Chrome is acting up!” like i do with firefox. I never (not yet) have to go in task manager and kill chrome from doing whatever startup or shutdown crap its doing. So, all in all, I’ll have to find new way to use FTP (using a cygwin shell is more fun anyway) and also to control my music I’m starting to use the magic buttons on my keyboard more, or the taskbar miniversion of WMP11.

I hope some new features get added into chrome, I saw a sky blue browser and i want it painted black! (and some music control would be nice again…)

Another day, another blog redesign. I might like the old one better, but this one is new, and I had fun with borders! Engineers without borders don’t know what they’re missing, I even busted out a wedge and a ridged border.

I’ve thought about as a backup occupation or extra income, I could do some freelance webdesign/graphic stuff. Amateur level though, just hackin up wordpress themes and css files. It’s hard to make other people happy I find.

This was my source theme of rip-off, and one evening later, I have a new splash of coat! Much faster than painting my room It reminds me of the freezing rain I had today. Luckily winter is almost over, so the blue won’t conjure too many thoughts of cold misery.

People don’t live in ‘reality’ 100% of the time. I think a game can be made for every non-reality desire. And I think it can cross over into real world too.

I love games, and I’ve been listening to a bunch of game developer conference lectures and they love games too.

One thing I like is that Jane McGonigal said she wants to kill television. Me too. It is a one way static medium. Just like radio shows died because they lacked visuals. Television too should die because it lacks interactivity. I don’t care if you want to watch pop singers compete, it should still be a game. You should still have the option to manipulate it, give your input, see output changed, even participate. Instead of watching an action show, why can’t you play one, or if you aren’t feeling particularly active, make it more automated and dictated. How about comedy? Can you make a comedy game that is intelligently written and fresh like a tv show? Some ‘funny’ games have come out, but they just insert laugh gags that will get stale, that is not what a tv comedy show is about. Can we do interactive humour? Or a comedy writer-written non-player-character? What would it be like to have a role in an episode of the office? Maybe too many people are unfunny and lack confidence and skills to participate, but I think we should try to make that a game. I run improv drama games at camp and it _can_ work. Lower expectations, have some guidance and boom, its a fun game I’d play it.

What about killing the telephone too. I find it hard to gab on the phone, looking at a wall, but if both parties were engaged in a common activity, or could see each other, or representations of each other, I think it works a lot better. I wish emotional feedback could be more accurately represented than emoticons! Although I hate social ‘games’ that have no meat. Its hard to do it without being unbelievably bad.

Can we kill music in its static form? It already is sorta happening with guitar hero and rock band. How else can it be made interactive. Dance games too, add new elements to music. These things if made easier could turn music into a game at all times, last.fm tracks music played, it could sort of be a game too.

What about cooking? eating even? Or running? (gdc lady suggested nike plus be a MMO)
Dating/Flirting already is a game, can we track it? Or create a system around it to make it better? easier for people to find what they want? e-dating does this, but do people consider this to be a game? There are also a lot of these elements in games, but do people consider that flirting/dating?
Where does the line between game and reality cross?
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I love games though for a few reasons

• Games connect you with people, real or imaginary. … although too many are uninspired and lifeless, but this is a problem both in real life and imaginary land.
• Games have character, they conjure up feelings or experiences otherwise impossible.
• Games have environments, new worlds, wildly changing, thoroughly detailed and immersive.
• Games have Mario, who I think I almost consider as a friend?
• Games have Megaman, who I think is just unbelieveably cool looking, arm is a gun, can slide along ground, swing a sword, adapt to new guns, upgradable parts, you can see his face and big smile. “ya!”. A sweet soundtrack, I want those things!
• Games have trackable progress, leveling up
• Games have “showtime moments” boss battles, adrenaline rushes
• Games have definitive victories, beating another player
• Games can give complete conclusion and accomplishment, beating the game

I wish I had these feelings in real life, or I wish I could conjure them in someone else. Reality or gaming-world.

I like making games.

SNES is my foundation for my love of video games. This video brings me such joy and inspiration

How do I spend a nice sunday afternoon trying to destress from some life issues? I play a game, a shmup or shoot em up vertical spaceship scroller. One renown for its difficulty and complexity. There are no fancy weapons that let you shoot sideways or sidekicks who save the day, no shields to save your but and the “bombs” to drop are earned.

That’s right, you earn bonuses by eating bullets the same color as you, and dodging bullets the opposite color as you. Sounds easy to keep straight right? No, cause you keep switching colors to enflict more damage. Also, in order to get any points at all really, you have to kill a batch of all the same color at once. That means while there is a black guy flying at you, you can’t kill him yet, because it would mess up your streak of whites to kill. So he flies on by, shooting at you, narrowly missing. It’s a cop who is on duty to catch sex offenders letting a drug dealer go by, but alas, he will switch to drug busting duty in a mere few seconds! Just this second that drug dealer is lucky, the next drug dealer is going to get a face full of bullets. and the cop will eat the drug dealers bullets for its bomb bonus, ya thats right, Eating bullets only to use it against you. That’s what ikaruga taught me.
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Blizzard is the master of april fools. This video is just plain awesome
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/moltencore/

I however am not a master of april fools, this is what happened to me…

I have used net send in the past, its a nice nifty built-in way to use instant messaging from the command prompt. However it is disabled in SP2 for XP. At work, most people have SP2 if they have a new computer, but plenty do not.

Today at work I tried to net send to someone who had it disabled. I wasn’t completely sure my net send was thwarted so I specified the domain ‘workgroup’ when I sent it to the one person next to me in the office. But no, it didn’t go to him again because he had it disabled.

Instead, a puzzling/alarming message from me went to everyone with a slightly old not-updated pc in the whole company.
Message from SheridanT to Workgroup: “somebody set us up the bomb”
A window similar to the below picture, popped up on the screen of dozens of people I’ve never met, amused fellowe geeks, confused artists, and bosses, lots of bosses.

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Wordpress 2.5 looks faaaancy … on the inside. On the outside its the same. You want to get wordpress 2.5 if you want to write like me. I’m telling you.

If Super Mario was a real human with skin… and ugly