Yeah, we pretty much put it off forever, but we're finally going to put the series to rest and see what happens. And before we watch it, I have to record ( predictions for the ending! )

So I'm nearing the end of my college curriculum, which means that there's a lot more rattling around in my head than there was a few years ago. I know a lot more about art and about games than I used to, and I have a lot more opinions about art and about games than I used to. So I'll go ahead and preface this post by saying that this is not an argument for the "games are art" debate, so much as an application of ideologies and thoughts to contemporary culture. If I talk too much, or you think I'm totally out of my depth, feel free to say so.

( Before we can apply postmodernism as an ideology, we need to understand it as a history... )

( Screw the history lesson. What does postmodernism have to do with videogames? )

I recently posted about a letter one of my professors sent me, which essentially amounted to me getting an A on a presentation despite not having done the assignment properly. meepus asked me to post the presentation, and I said I'd go ahead and format the notes I presented as well as sum up my commentary on them in a subsequent post. Behold, this is said subsequent post. To save those uninterested the trouble of scrolling down on their friends list, you can find everything beneath the cut. The presentation was supposed to be 10-15 minutes long, including discussion. When I presented, I was able to fit into this window. The discussion, however, ran for about another 20 minutes. Hope you enjoy.

( Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is largely about the problem of God... )

Without New Game +, mind.



It's a tool-assisted speed run; the player essentially takes advantage of one to two frame windows while saving to load corrupted game data and clone items at the start of the game to the point where the entire game breaks down and lets them write other information into places it really doesn't belong. This lets them trip and obliterate flags and triggers that would normally detour you for a few hours. Author's explanation is here, and while I didn't understand most of what was said in it, the little bit I could grasp helped me understand to some extent whatever in God's name the player was doing.

This is easily one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen happen in a game ever, and I thought I'd share. Remember that one time I discussed Metroid and how it pretty much invented the speed run? See now the destruction that history has wrought.

posted as per tunaman's request

So I get to work yesterday when Elise texts me to let me know that the XBox 360 will not turn on. This on its own drove me up a wall, because my expensive equipment has this incredibly tendency of breaking down in situations where I've only just left home and will not be coming home to check on it for another 7-8 hours. After getting home, I ran the gauntlet of troubleshooting for the console in order to figure out what was wrong. It didn't take long to figure that the issue was with the power supply, as the indicator glows red once I try to power up the 360. I spent a good hour browsing all of the troubleshooting pages on Microsoft's support page, trying everything they suggested, before finally deciding that the power supply was most likely shot and needed to be replaced.

I hate phones. A lot. I probably could have very easily got a solution on its way by calling Support about this. Instead, I figured that since there was an email system set up for support I would take advantage of that; if I can get the same results by using an online system as with a phone, I'll opt for the online. Because I hate phones.

In my letter, I told them that the console wouldn't turn on, what the power supply was doing, and the steps I had taken in correcting the issue, which was essentially every single thing that they had listed on the troubleshooting pages. Today I opened up gmail, and was greeted with ( this response. )

( This is my response to their response )

I like iTunes. A lot. This is a significant thing for me to say, because I was an apprehensive adopter a few years ago due to a fear of having to reorganize my entire music collection. I realize that there are much larger libraries out there, but at the time, having to go through and check 20 gigs of music file by file to make sure it was imported properly was at best an irritation and at worst a nightmare. So thanks for making that business fairly simple business so long as a few key pieces of information are present.

As my collection of music has grown larger over time, I've noticed that the ability of iTunes and my iPod to keep up has not progressed quite as much. This isn't something that I immediately noticed; as long as I don't make my tags complex and simply label everything as the artist that released the album, or lump various artist releases together as a compilation, there's very little trouble at all. The problem is that I can't necessarily lump *all* of my music up in ways that are currently convenient for you to sort, and that creates trouble for me. Let me give you a rather long example.

Let's say that I decide I want to rip Soulwax's Most of the Remixes... to my library, and then proceed to do so. You've got this nifty little section in the song information for "Album Artist," which for this particular album is pretty darn convenient. Given that the songs on the album are originally written, recorded, and performed by one person or group, and that another person as remixed it into something new, it'd be nice to be able to search for either the original artist or the DJ to find the song, and this option allows me to do that. Obviously, for this particular album, the artist is Soulwax, which would make them the Album Artist. The original artists my be anyone from Muse to DFA to Gorillas, so obviously they'd be the Artists. So now when I browse iTunes, I can find either the whole album under Soulwax, or the individual tracks under the name of the artist that originally performed them. This is damn simple, so thanks for that.

Working in reverse is not so simple. Take Beck's Guerolito. Applying the above logic, obviously Beck would be the Artist, because he's the one that wrote and performed the songs. The DJs and artists remixing the songs for this particular album, like Soulwax, would probably fit nicely into Album Artist. Except not. When I do this and attempt to sort the album by Artist, or Album by Artist, or Album by year, the entire list of tracks is borked and out of order because iTunes is sorting the tracks alphabetically by Album Artist, which you'll notice I totally didn't ask it to do. And while I understand there's a quick fix made by reversing who's listed as Album Artist and who's listed as Artist, it really doesn't make much sense to say that the DJs are the original artists, and that Beck is just the guy releasing it. I mean, it's his music. On top of that, if I resort to this and drop it all onto my iPod, the album won't be showing up under Beck's heading if I choose to browse by Artist, but will instead be scattered about under the names of all of the DJs that appear on the album.

To make matters worse, when Album Artist does actually work, there's no implementation for it on the iPod. Like, no way at all. You can't browse by Album Artist, you can't sort by it, you can't even read the song notes to see who it might be. And yet the iPod is somehow crazily and paradoxically built, like iTunes, to sort tracks out by the Album Artist instead of the track number. What the deuce? If I pull up Beck, Guerolito, as an album, I'd like it to play in order. That's kind of the idea of listening to the whole album; I'm having a very hard time understanding why on the one hand, Album Artist isn't significant enough to be a searchable or even usable factor on the iPod, but then on the other hand I can't make my music NOT sort alphabetically by Album Artist when I pull up a full album. Am I crazy? Does this make sense to other people?

I know I'm not the only person in the history of ever to bitch about the Album Artist category and how it kind of ruins lives, so what gives? How about more custom sorting strings (or in the case of the iPod, any at all)? Or how about reconfiguring some defaults, like if I look at an album it's automatically sorted by track number unless I specifically tell it to do something else? Your smart playlists are pretty damn awesome at letting users set up certain criteria for what shows up on a list; why not give users the option to do that with sorting out their own libraries, too? "Sort by Artist, then Year, then Track#." Somehow I have the faith that your programmers are capable of making this apparently insane fantasy into something real.

That said, I have my doubts that you ever will; you've created a terrifically user friendly program. It is, in fact, so terrifically user friendly that it can't do nearly as much as some of us would like it to, and I get the impression that you'd rather keep things overly simple for new users than allow more familiar users to let the program do a bit more for them. It's cool, I get it. But it would be very, very nice if iTunes could do all the little things I'd like it to instead of giving me hell for asking.

-J

It's true. I'm still a little intimidated by its presence, but you can help by being my friend. My PSN handle is ThaJinx; what's yours?

So Saturday was Blog Like It's the End of the World, which is about exactly what it sounds like. Last year I had done a series of posts on twitter, and I wanted to do something similar this year with less repercussions. I know a lot more people in Boise on twitter now, so I didn't want anyone to be confused about what may or may not have been going on; the thought of using the #bliteotw hashtag struck my mind, but when you only have 140 characters to tell portions of a narrative, you don't want to lose 10 characters every time you update. I decided spamming peoples' livejournal friends pages would probably be a safer bet, because I could still pace the delivery, justify making the posts at all (like I'd lug a laptop around while trying to avoid having my brains eaten, right?), and not have to worry about pulling another War of the Worlds.

As a point of reference, I figured I'd do what I did last year, and put together a list of all of the updates. One of the things I wanted to play with was the idea that the event spans midnight to midnight, and that that's your bracket to tell the story. For that reason, I'm already looking forward to next year :)

• (Patient Zero Prelude) -1:32 AM


• Roused early by fire alarm. Not happy >:/ Heading downstairs now that I'm dressed. -9:14 AM


• Well shoot, there's actually smoke coming from a few windows. It's more a mess out here, though. Not sure what's up, will text once we get our bearings. -9:22 AM


• Police sirens coming from the north end, no actual cars in sight, but we can see more smoke; we're not the only place burning. -9:30 AM


• Fire team still nowhere in sight. Small groups of people running south from north end, burnt or bleeding. I have a very bad feeling about this. -9:39 AM


• More people coming in steadier numbers, all of them running. Heading to the car as quickly as possible; don't care to see what they're running from. -10:04 AM


• Car get, heading south and across the river. -10:24 AM


• Or...not. Wrecked at 9th and Myrtle. Coming to; seriously out for 20 minutes? Ugh, gotta move. -10:47 AM


• Running -10:54 AM


• Finally have a spare second to think. Car was hit by dude running a red light. Awoke bleeding from head, pulled loose by passerbys, told to run. So I did. -1:00 PM


• 6 of us are holed up in the Business bldg at BSU. One of them pulled a Ford Prefect and brought a towel, working on my head while the others barricade. -1:08 PM


• Realized I ran from other people that were running, hadn't considered what they were running from. Question answered: it's knocking at our door. -2:20 PM


• It's almost hypnotic to watch these...people...behind glass. Last time I was this close, they toppled my bus. I can't believe this is happening again... -3:00 PM


• So... -4:32 PM


• ...I should be worried about the sound of breaking glass on the other side of the building, right? ...crap. -4:35 PM


• They're in. I get the feeling we're on borrowed time at this point. 2nd floor secured as best as possible, moving to 3rd to maintain a buffer. -4:57 PM


• Mob confirmed to have entered 2nd floor. Started barricading 3rd to head up to 4th when we realized doors wouldn't hold. Planning to move to 5th soon. -6:38 PM


• The drawback, of course, is that this building is only so tall. It's 5th floor, then roof, then bust. -6:39 PM


• 5th floor it is. It's starting to rain outside. -9:28 PM


• They're going to take the 4th floor. We're getting thunder and lightning, so the roof is quickly losing it's appeal. Short on other options, though... -10:09 PM


• They're swelling against the stair access doors; borrowed time, indeed. Can see downtown Boise across the river, and it's glowing with fires. -10:29 PM


• The allure of the roof has increased ten fold: a chopper just passed over the city. Dumping everything we can in front of the doors before heading up. -10:54 PM


• It won't hold forever, but the door to the 5th floor can't get much more secure than it is now. To the roof we go; we've got a chopper to flag down. -11:12 PM


• The chopper is circling St. Luke's, but not settling down anywhere. Hoping they head this way before the barricades buckle; this may be close. -11:26 PM


• Heli doing once over of downtown, just in time for 5th floor door to cave. Putting as much weight on access door as possible, but there are too many. -11:42 PM


• THEY SEE US -11:52 PM


• Holding door best we can until chopper can get to safe distance for us to jump on. If you don't hear from me again, you know where I had my last stand. -11:59 PM

Holding door best we can until chopper can get to safe distance for us to jump on. If you don't hear from me again, you know where I had my last stand.

THEY SEE US

Heli doing once over of downtown, just in time for 5th floor door to cave. Putting as much weight on access door as possible, but there are too many.

The chopper is circling St. Luke's, but not settling down anywhere. Hoping they head this way before the barricades buckle; this may be close.

It won't hold forever, but the door to the 5th floor can't get much more secure than it is now. To the roof we go; we've got a chopper to flag down.

The allure of the roof has increased ten fold: a chopper just passed over the city. Dumping everything we can in front of the doors before heading up.

They're swelling against the stair access doors; borrowed time, indeed. Can see downtown Boise across the river, and it's glowing with fires.

They're going to take the 4th floor. We're getting thunder and lightning, so the roof is quickly losing it's appeal. Short on other options, though...

5th floor it is. It's starting to rain outside.

The drawback, of course, is that this building is only so tall. It's 5th floor, then roof, then bust.

Mob confirmed to have entered 2nd floor. Started barricading 3rd to head up to 4th when we realized doors wouldn't hold. Planning to move to 5th soon.

They're in. I get the feeling we're on borrowed time at this point. 2nd floor secured as best as possible, moving to 3rd to maintain a buffer.