May all beings be free from suffering
I’m consistenly alarmed (as in, lost and rendered useless) by how few people know English around here, but that’s good for them and probably just because I was spoiled by India. Things maybe aren’t as constantly surprising as I thought they might be but that’s probably because I got my astonishment out of the way before I got here (thanks for spoiling the surprise, Internet).
Made a big update to My Flickr Account, hightlights below:
A bit late but I was in India so forgive me. Ed Felten’s blog Freedom To Tinker is always a fascinating read about technology, law and encryption, but he’s also really funny when he tries:
How the Grinch Pwned Christmas: The Grinch, determined to stop Christmas, hacks into Amazon’s servers and cancels all deliveries to Who-ville. The Whos celebrate anyway, gathering in a virtual circle and exchanging user-generated content. When the Grinch sees this, his heart grows two sizes and he priority-ships replacement gifts to Who-ville.
Having parted company with my travelling partner Jenn Brea, I decided to see Pushkar, a stoner haven near Jaipur where alcohol and meat are illeagal but you can buy hash-based drinks in all the restaurants. I made some friends but got sick and felt lonely and missed Montreal, so there you go.
I’ve realized that in captioning my photos I’ve put a fairly detailed travel log into My Flickr Account, so if you’re looking for details feel free to sift through the images. There’s also lots of good monkey shots in there.
I’m now in Tokyo where the toilet washes then dries your butt for you, out of India where the sink drains onto the floor, go figure. Pictures of that to follow.
Highlights from Pushkar:
20 million people is too many it seems, Delhi was terrifying and pretty decrepit, though I might be biased because I was staying in one of the worst neighboorhoods. As soon as the conference was over (4 days in Delhi) I booted out to Jaipur, a “small” city of only about the size of Montreal, chosen primarily because my pilgrimage to Galta, a.k.a. monkey temple, required it.
We saw a few of the tourist sites but Galta was definitely the best, both because I was able to reunite with my ancestors and for the outrageous view it afforded.
I’m now in the hippie infested town of Pushkar, on the road to pretty much completely missnig christmas, sorry Jesus.
Highlights from My Flickr Stream below. (lots more monkey pictures there)
Flight to Delhi involved a stopover in Japan for the night, which was beautiful. So far Delhi itself is mostly terrifying but also enlightening.
I’ll be uploading the mass of my photos to my Flickr account to save this site from being overloaded, so head there to see all the details. Below are a few of the highlights so far.
I haven’t mentioned it here before but I’ve been working for the past six months or so on a website/project called Global Voices, doing a redesign and hacking the shit out of WordPress. It’s comprised of a group of international blog-fiends who each read just about everything that happens in their local blogospheres (like, all popular blogs in india) then file summaries and links to Global Voices. It’s a kind of filter that can give westerners a sense of what’s happening in the blogospheres they have no real access to, as well as giving links to the best in english blogs coming out other countries (it only covers “developing” areas under the assumption that technologically advanced areas have their perspectives covered adequately already). I’m working under Boris (also a web developer/designer), who hired me because I updated my flickr and was able to talk shit about semiotics with him.
All that to say that the maniacs who run Global Voices are having a conference in India (Delhi) and were nice enough to invite me as deputy-g33k, so I will be pretty damn gone from Montreal and probably the web for a month (I’m bumming around after the conference and stretching the free ride as much as I can). I’ll be checking my email and probably updating this site when I can, as well as putting up any good images my camera happens to find (Monkey Temple of Jaipur anyone?).
I hope everyone has a downplayed and non-commercial holiday season but don’t have faith in it actually happening, so just try to enjoy it despite the mall /shudder
I’ve been meaning to post about The Daedalus Project for awhile now but haven’t had the time. Nick Yee has been running it for several years, compiling survey data and analysis about how MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games, like WoW) are played, why they are played and how players live their lives ouside the game. I’ve used his research in several papers and always find it insightful and caring towards the complex and nuanced nature of MMO gaming. More than worth reading through the article list whether you’re a gamer or just know one (and if you don’t know any you will soon), if only for gems like the fact that 30% of all female players end up in real-life relationships started through the game, an astonishing statistic as far as I’m concerned.
Today’s update contained what is no doubt one of the best articles I’ve read about MMO addiction and how we talk about it. Yee is critical of the way the media is tossing around the A-word without giving careful consideration to how the games are actually used by the “addicted” gamers. Though you could almost always make this claim about the mass-media’s treatment of a topic you care about, the fact that most reporters likely haven’t even played a similar game points to the fact that a communication problem is pretty likely in this situation. He then points out how words like “dependence” better capture the behaviors which he likens more closely to shopping-addiction than the more physical and accepted as dangerous drugs-addiction. Most importantly, he proposes that the media and analysts are missing the other negative factors that influence someone’s likelihood of becomming dependent on a game. The social awkwardness or unfortunate circumstances that could drive someone to prefer a fantasy world to the real one.
Link to full article.
These are obviously important considerations to bear in mind but I think he’s missing an important element of the problem, the fact that the game itself is to blame if it’s absense would have prevented the problems that result from it’s presence (which sounds redundant but might need to be pointed out explicitly to make sense). To save your eyes from text-murder I’ll put my full response to his article (posted as a comment on the article) below.
Hit me so hard I had to share it. All the washed out scrolling backgrounds we stared at as kids would represent these kinds of wastelands were the violence of the games to be real. The desolation of the landscape and the weary look on Mario make me want to defeat Bowser more than ever.
(Found here by Boris. The artist, “The Phlash”, does a ton of anime-style murals around montreal, including the one that got artbusted).
Kathleen threw me this last night and It’s been raping my memory ever since. It’s almost patently absurd but catchy and hilarious nonetheless. I love the part where the frustrated motorist curses the joyful bus-riders and they tease his lamentable position, damn right! If only the metro was actually full of dancing hippies instead of downtrodden city-dwellers.
Link to video on YouTube, who should be thanked for allowing this kind of madness to resurface after so many years of obscurity.
(For people who don’t get french or don’t get this french, it goes like “The weather’s great in the subway, everyone is joyful, everyone has sunshine in their hearts” etc. on and on)
[Update: iPhone users should check out the free and amazing “Papijump” game in the iTunes app store. It’s basically the same thing as snake jump but making ingenious use of the iPhone’s accelerometer to control the character]
When I was still rocking my Palm Treo (an absurd cellphone-palmpilot-camera gadget) I had one game that actually kept me playing and had my friends grabbing the phone and trying to beat my score, SFCave (Internet Version, PalmOS Version). The premise was simple almost to the point of being mathematical (which I guess describes all the old Atari games as well). You’re a parabola that is falling, the one button makes you go up but will kill you if you hit the roof and you have to navigate through an increasingly narrow cave-path. Something about just having one button and the way the parabola is drawn just makes it a ton of fun despite the fact that it is effectively a one dimensional game (up/down).
Searching for snakes for some reason I came across this upgrade to the premise, Snake Jump (pictured above, works without downloads or anything), which adds a whole other dimension! Allowing you to move side to side and kill some bricks or something. Needless to say, you will be hypnotized.
Bonus: You can’t possibly spend more than 20 minutes on this. Praise games that lack life-destroying potential.
(If anyone with windows wants to try the THREE DEE version, I’d love to hear if it’s as fun)