Triumphant Return

So, uhm, hey there Internet. It's been a while.

...

Y'know, I was going to do another "oops, I dun buggered up, but I'm back!" post here, but frankly they get repetitive. Let's just get right into things again.

New Job

Huzzah! I finally picked up work that isn't pissing about at wal-mart. It's just regular uniformed security work, but it's not without benefits. Not the least of which is that I'm typing this up while on the job. Does this mean I'm slacking? Does this mean poor lil' Andrew is liable to get fired? No, no, no. I'm doing what they fancily refer to as 'access control', the glorious job of watching an entrance of a building incase it decides to spontaneously combust or get up and leave. Since such occurrences are notably rare the management has taken the remarkably understanding position of allowing the security staff to find ways to quietly entertain themselves over the long shifts - anything to keep awake, actually.

What does this mean? Well, aside from the very obvious oodles of spare time I have to write blogs cropping back up, I also get to catch up on my reading, watching movies, and contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Hell, if I thought I had a dam thing worth saying I'd probably try to sneak the equipment in here to begin recording. Really, the only problem is a regrettable lack of Internet access, a problem that's apparently rare if not almost unique to my current posting. Here's hoping a future post will see that issue go away.

King Rat

I've had a corner of my room dedicated to a slowly growing pile of books for the last several months. Most of these belong to Josh, who'll occasionally add a new one to the pile and politely ask me if I actually ever intend to read them. Of course I say yes; I'm a voracious reader, I can consume a four hundred page book in a day if the mood stikes me, and any day now - you'll see! And then I promptly forget about them. And then the pile grows. I recently started storing them in a cabinet, partly because it was getting impossible to find desk space, partly because of the imagined guilty looks I could feel the books themselves giving me.

Finally, at long last, the new job. Twelve hour long shifts and a dead quite building to do them in. I went back to my shamefully neglected reading mountain and carefully sifted through the piles. I returned with King Rat, as perhaps some small OCD part of my mind noted that it was amongst the first given to me, and took solace in my much belated reading schedule picking right back up where it left off.

At first I will award it will the dubious merit of being one of those books you don't read on an empty stomach. While it's usually a rare and beautiful thing to find an author that will let you connect with the characters in such a way that you share in their pain and joy on a very personal level it becomes a touch depressing when you realize just how much more of the former there's going to be. The sense of longing conveyed is so exceptional to the point of being difficult to read. The defenses each character sets up in his mind to deal with the horrible situation is played out with such care that it never overwhelms the reader, but leaves them in a resigned state - grudgingly dedicated to continue until a happier time. A state of mind that reflects most of the cast perfectly.

It's these little pre-planned themes that the good authors set up that I just love. The meta-purpose of the book, to reduce the reader to a state that'll empathize with the characters in such an intimate manner is, in my experience, one of the best ways to write.

An interesting counter-point to King Rat is A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. At a cursory glance they share a number of obvious similarities. Both are based in the mid 20th century in labour camps run by oppressive regimes that don't care much for the prisoners inside. They tell stories of how the inhabitants just survived, with no real focus on heroism or justice, instead opting to create a more realistic story that readers will fall into, relating to the characters who act and behave much like they would themselves. They both create an atmosphere of dull resignation that permeates everything, creating an acute sense that the characters were broken long before the reader ever got there.

Most times when we open a book and meet our protagonists we go on a journey with them, and we get to see them develop into new people. In King Rat this has already happened for most of the characters involved. They've been broken down and won't see any real changes throughout the course of the book, the sole real exception to this is Peter Marlowe, through whose eye's we begin the understand the camp. Of course, as a character Peter is barely even important, he has an arc but he isn't what draws you back to the book, he's essentially just a tool for showing the reader everyone else. His normality is almost comical in the beginning, but he seems very human, more human than anyone else in the camp, and it's through him that the reader is drawn into everything else.

They say Ivan Denisovich is a great insight into the minds of the Russian people at the time of it's writing, both how they saw themselves anyhow they actually were. King Rat mirrors this for western culture, if maybe a more specific element of it. All told a very interesting read, tempting me to pick up the rest of the Asian Saga. Not right now - not while the book mountain looms unhappily back home, but soon. It definitely warrants a place on the grand reading list.

Barcraft

I find I rather enjoy the barcraft events. It's entirely surreal to sit down in a bar with a bunch of other geeks and cheer on video game matches, in the sense that such things simply aren't done by people like us. If it happens it's typically a rare event, a convention or held in a private place for a tourney. I feel the weirdness almost adds to it though. It's certainly something I'd like to see more of. Proving that us geeks enjoy eating nachos, drinking beer, and watching people fight on screens as much as anyone is probably not the noblest of goals, but it'll be nice if we can see it expand. 

I had a chat with Josh about what's happening to geek culture as it integrates into mainstream society recently. One of the potential concerns is how it may lose it's individuality as this happens, becoming more or less a series of stereotypes that we believe we should adhere to instead of 'genuine geekiness', so to say. Essentially following in the footsteps of movies, the crowd that truly examines and admires games would diminish in the face of an overwhelming 'casual' crowd, that'll enjoy a severely marginalized experience and take nothing deeper away from it. 

I see barcraft as a sign that we may avoid this fate. Following, of all people, jocks and sports fans in practice. Barcraft and events like it could allow us to form small socially accepted and persistent communities fixated on games and gaming. Its inside these communities that I could see the rest of our culture continuing to survive, if not more easily grow. Sports grow due to their depth, fans becoming more tied up in the game the more they understand it, and this is a mentality that lends itself to critical examination. Typically applied  to which of the fan favorites is more likely to win, but still - critical analysis and joy from said analysis. The key roots to enjoying games as an art form. 

Now I don't honestly expect bar crafts to transform into events to purely explore the artist merits of games - no, it's hard to drink to that. Difficult to express a high ideal when your face is full of nachos. However it will create a culture of people open to complex games, that will pass around new games and recommend favorite titles. 

It provides a link between the mainstream crowd, that will see us as nothing more than a new type of football fan, and the passionate crowd that wants to see games expand and take on new levels. The e-sport crowd may very well be the best thing to have happened to gaming.

So, uh, long time no see.

Whoops? I mean, damn, it’s been a while. I had this crazy idea that after I word-punched my way through a half dozen essays they’d die off or something. That doesn’t exactly work. I’m not certain whether to use zombies or zerg as an analogy for them, but frankly either works. Maybe even undead zerg.

Essays don’t stop coming, and the ones that you finish just come back in new and horrifying ways (cue the mid-term). A professor’s ability to make last week’s work this week’s horror is unprecedented and I’m almost certain unethical. I had this amazing notion that I’d just churn out blogs in the few meager breaks I have in my monolithic days – yeah, you can tell right off the bat how well that one worked. A man needs to eat, and no, there doesn’t come a day when he suddenly finds that lunch isn’t important, no matter how many you go through.

Thus I’ve been more than a bit quiet.

Well shit, that’s not news-worthy; all no one who reads this has already realized they haven’t not been reading in the last while, so I suppose I need to come up with a new gripe.

Oh, I know; Terry Practhett, the damnably fantastic man, has come out with a new book. In fact he came out with the (by all accounts) magnificent thing around October 13^th, but apparently not in Canada-land. We’re still heathens or something, I’m not certain, but whatever we are it means we only get to see it by November 22^nd. Granted, my next move (upon finding this out within the hour) is to simply download the ebook when I get home (T-minus 1 hour and 6 minutes), so I can’t really be outraged per se, but I am a bit irate. I like reading books, more so than Ipads. I’m always worried that I’m going slowly blind whenever I go through a book on that thing, and besides – they look like shit on a bookshelf.

Which brings me to the next issue; I’m going to end up buying the stupid thing in hardcopy anyways. While my ethics on the internet tend to fluctuate wildly depending on what’s being talked about it’s pretty firm on the topic of beloved authors. I don’t steal from them. They gained the entirely un-ironic adjective ‘beloved’, so they’ve managed to win enough respect for that at least, I’d hope. But that means I’m going to likely end up spending $20 for some 3 megabyte file off of Amazon or one of it’s clones and still have to fork out another $23 for the hard cover when they finally deign that us mere canucks can have the book. Joy.

By the way ebook dealers, thanks for lowering the price three fucking dollars, that’s making the Ipad worth it! At least I have, y’know, the entire rest of the Ipad to feel better about. Those poor bastards who bought kindles aren’t exactly laughing right now. I’d like to see some slow change of price in ebooks, but in an industry that honestly has something like four times as much theft as total sales I can’t image them hurting their already hilarious model anymore. On the other hand, it’s not like they lose anything because people steal from them – they’re computer files dammit, they don’t need to print out ebooks or anything. It makes me occasionally wonder if as many people would steal as much if the prices weren’t so insane for the product given, and indeed if the additional sales would make up for the drop in individual profit. The fact that no one has bothered to do this suggests they’re either all A) fucking retarded, or B) Did do it and it failed so terribly it was wiped from public memory. If it’s B, I must admit I’m sincerely sorry, though the lack of big gaps in my memory makes me doubt it somewhat.

Ah well, this has been a really twisty rant. You have no idea what it’s like to be regularly churning out inane crap for five months straight and then practically go cold turkey overnight. I have random crap to talk about; a backlog so fiendish I think it’s a hair’s breadth away from sentience. Barcraft, University life, TED, philosophies, ideas on law, and crazy shit I’ve been mulling over about human nature. No, it’s not normal topics, but instead the endless ramblings that skip through the landscape of my mind. Bizarre though it may be, I enjoy these things.

I’m already out of time. I must make a better effort to come back to this blog in the future – good gods, it feels a relief to have managed this much so far.

Videos are bloody expensive

Just as it says folks.

This shit is getting expensive. Between the adapters necessary, the possible cords, and the TV  that we need to even get high quality in the first place I'm starting to doubt we're going to have a rolling HD series anytime soon. 

Thankfully if we give up on any hope of producing in 720p there might be ways to get going for a meek $200 after tax, a number that bumps to near $300 if Josh can't brow beat an online ordering service into accepting refunds. 

Until we can get all that stuff sorted out we'll be taking another swing at PC games. No idea if we'll get anything like a series going, but it's certainly worth a shot. This time it's Dues Ex the Missing Link up to bat. Persistence in the the face of absolute failure; they will surely write poems of our forays into the wilds of the Internet. 

Videos up whenever we flail at them, hopefully this Tuesday. We'll see.

Video Capture Device

Apparently that's what we needed, and now we have one. Huzzah and whatnot, yes? Yes. 

Well, when I say have one I mean there's one en route. Lord knows when it'll show up, what condition it'll come in, how well it'll work or if a lion will jump out of the box when we open it, but it IS coming. Given it's our best chance at running reliable Let's Plays it's perhaps an understatement to say I'm eagerly anticipating it's arrival. 

I mentioned the various videos I'd like to see the others try and make and received the common response; a note of agreement and a vague commitment. We'd all like to be able to run these various videos, but we're starting to be more and more aware of our success rate at any large project we undertake. Thinking about this I was stuck by a bizarre idea; we need another Master of the IPod. A large communal project we all participate in that actually succeeds. It needn't be as big as designing a full game, nor as ambitious as starting up a whole series. No, I think we simply need a project that we stand a good chance of doing and will be proud of completing, then we must push to finish it. 

We need to undertake a project that comes near our limits but doesn't push them - not for the moment. Breaking this line of failures is the point here. 

But what? 

Making a short YouTube video isn't enough. It never drew us all in and seems to only be a small piece of a bigger production, it hasn't inspired the imagination. Completing a full Let's Play series might do the trick, but I'm worried that we'll lose enthusiasm somewhere down the road. 

I need ideas. I'm wracking my brain trying to find something appropriate, but it's failed me so far. We may have to just try the Let's Play and hope for the best. If we get it going within the first week of Silent Hill's release we may even get views. It's perhaps unfavorable to hope that some small number of views will invigorate us to greater achievements, but unless an epiphany comes knocking it's all I have at the moment.

Oh, studying

Essays and midterms galore!

Yes, there's a reason for my recent silence aside from incredible laziness. Essays, essays, essay. And still two more due before the end of this month! It's going to be a busy little while, I suspect. I admit it's somewhat difficult to write even when I find the time; not for lack of topics of course, but a form of mental exhaustion. There is some work put into formulating even something as casual as this blog. It's not significant usually, but several dozen pages deep into essays exasperated things quite pointedly. 

Regardless, I am here now; ideas must be spoken of. Videos have returned to the table for our little group, diminished in numbers though it may be. We've done absolutely nothing so far and may very well fail at doing things again, but I still take heart in this. The idea of producing our own little Internet channel has caught on, and even if we don't excel at it the notion wont die. It means that we'll keep trying, and that's incredibly heartening. 

We will give it another go and see what happens. The hope this time is to find a proper way to record from the television to make better let's plays. We find some of our best games are on consoles, and they're certainly easier to play as a group with how the room is laid out. I suppose our hopes lie on Trevor and myself to sort out the technical difficulties. It'd be nice to get a series or two rolling, I could easily see us putting the content together. 

I suspect we would have already succeeded at this had we actually moved in to an apartment as a group, it was a half formed plan a while ago. The lack of time to do things holds us back. It's irritating to think that we need to give up what time we have to hang out to do work, so the editing the videos slows down and ideas slowly disappear. A bizarre cluster of schedules wouldn't hold us back if we all hung out in the same house. Ah well, that's just a faint thought for the future at some point. We'll see how this attempt goes. 

Yay! ....Law....courses...

Law is terrifying.

I'd like to dance around the issue to put forward an appearance of confidence, but I don't think that's possible any more. I suppose I could clarify it to the say that the people I have teaching me Law are terrifying, but at the end of the day I'm going to regard the course and it's instructors as a whole any ways, so It's just quicker to sum it up like that.

Law is god damn terrifying.

I have the joyous luck to have stumbled into the one professor who takes pride in her exams and the jaw-dropping confidence obliterating difficulty they're rumoured to have. What's worse is I can't just pass these things as simply that; rumours. No, even the teaching assistants are warning us about how the mid-term will kick our collective asses up between our ears. And that's not a "Study hard or you'll do bad!" sort of warning, no that's them trying to tell us so we'll be less disappointed when it inevitably occurs. It seems that if you haven't been devastated by one of these exams in the past you simply cannot adequately prepare for one.

Which they then naturally used as a segue to how they'll attempt to make us fail slightly less. It was not the world's greatest hope-inspiring speech, I feel. My one tiny consolation is that I genuinely find the class interesting and am eagerly awaiting additional lectures - even if they do insist upon taking place at the crack of dawn on Monday. Though I admit I'm probably not the most popular person in the world for enjoying law. It's not exactly a hobby that recommends itself to the masses, even if my friends have managed to avoid killing me over the number of times I bring it up.

Ah well, at least the rest of University is going pretty easy. History will require a lot of reading, but the topics are interesting and the lectures entertaining. Psychology hasn't really begun to trundle along yet, but the professor is likeable, knows his stuff and appears eager to teach it; good signs all around. English is making me exam books closer than I usually bother to do, and prodding that tiny part of my mind that I somewhat shamefully confess gets excited at the notion of debates and intellectual discussion. How deprived for talk do you need to be to fall into that category? 

Regrettably the last course I'm taking, Introduction to Computers, is making a fair bid to outright kill me through boredom. Case in point I think my heart might have stopped for a while when she spent thirty minutes explaining what USB drives are and how they're used. And no, I don't mean how they function, what the components are - just literally what they look like and how to plug them into a computer. I don't think anyone deserves a lecture on that. Ever.