Author: Jason

One Month To Go…

Dragon*Con

… until Dragon*Con.

I’m excited.  Are you excited?  I mean, how often do you get to go to a place and congregate with more than 35,000 people of similar interests to your own?  I do it once a year.  And how often do you get to be a part of making an event like that happen?  I’m hoping this year is the first of many.

This will be my first year working as staff and I couldn’t be more thrilled.  Sure, I could just go to con like I usually do and see some panels and go to some parties, but this year I’m helping make the magic happen… as long as by “magic” I mean “standing at the door counting people and occasionally telling them the room is full” which is likely to be the extent of my action.  It’s not like I’m running the panels (although, you never know) … I’m more of a Kleezantsun.  Yeah, I just went there.  But it is an apt description.  Dragon*Con is a convention for fans by fans.  It isn’t run by companies or marketing firms, it’s run by us.

Anyway, PBS is going to be airing Four Days at Dragon*Con on Saturday the 28th at 9PM.

Not as private as you may think

Random Thoughts

Are you a Facebook user?  Do you like posting photos and status updates?  Do you enjoy posting on people’s walls and having them post on your wall?

One of the main issues that I have with Facebook is the illusion.  You log in and you are presented with your news feed.  Over on the left you see the smiling faces of your friends that are online, and your feed is full of them telling you about random stuff.  And see all this friend-centered stuff and you think, “Hey, I’ve got something to say, let me update my status and share it with my friends…”  Who can really see that?  If you’ve gone into your privacy settings then it might just be your friends.  More likely, it’s your “Friends of Friends” or even “Everyone”.

You might have heard that horror story about someone who bitched about their boss and the boss saw it and it got them in trouble, so you haven’t friended your boss.  However, you are unaware that your boss actually went to high school with someone who is your friend.  You’ve got your status updates set to “Friends of Friends” which means your boss, who is a friend of your friend, can see that you just called him a twat, so maybe you don’t get that raise or promotion.

That photo you posted of your girlfriend meeting you at the door when you got home, naked with a beer and a steak… sure, the plate covered all the naughty bits, but you just posted that to your Mobile Photos album (since you uploaded it from your phone) and that album is marked visible by Everyone!  That’s on the Internet now.  Tagged and cached, for-ev-ver.  The next time your girlfriend goes looking for a job, someone just might Google her name, see that photo and decide her future based on it.  Maybe she doesn’t get the job… or maybe she does and her new boss treats her like a girl willing to have half-naked photos of her posted on the Internet… or maybe it doesn’t matter…

I prefer to err on the side of thinking that it matters…

A caution about privacy and the Internet might seem odd coming from a guy who blogs and mentions his real life now and then, but know that every tidbit of information I put into a blog post is carefully considered.  I ask myself, “Do I mind if everyone knows this?”  I have over 1,100 posts here and I’ve probably put just as many in the trash bin.  It’s actually common for me to come here, write out a diatribe on the latest frustration at work or amongst friends, let it sit in draft form for a couple of days and then delete it.  It’s one of the reasons I love blogging and haven’t been a huge fan of most social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, because they are immediate, there is less chance for careful consideration.

So, my Monday morning bit of advice this week is to go to your privacy settings in Facebook and make sure all your sharing is at levels you are comfortable with.  At the very least, be aware of who can see what you say…

Movie Round-Up: July 30th, 2010

Reviews

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore:

Do I even have to say, “No”?  I shouldn’t have to, but I will.  No.

Charlie St. Cloud:

This movie isn’t getting good reviews.  The few good ones call it a sentimental tearjerker, so if you are into those sorts of films, perhaps you’ll enjoy it.  For me, I don’t mind the tearjerkers, but I’m not going to pay $10 for this.  Someday the wife and I will watch it on Netflix.

Dinner for Schmucks:

I don’t think I could do it.  If my boss told me to come to a dinner and bring an idiot for us to make fun of, I’d probably start looking for another job.  However, watching other people do it?  That’s comedy!  To be honest, I went in to the screening I saw of this movie expecting it to be stupid, but it managed to be funny, heartwarming and creepy.  At moments it was downright hilarious.  You could easily find worse ways to spend your hard earned money.

Mindgames

Gaming

I cannot help but think of gaming applications when I see stuff like this.  Imagine playing an MMO using only your mind…

Space… the final frontier

Gaming, Stuff on the Net

I actually posted this on the D*C MMO site a few weeks back, but I really wanted to repost it here.  Do yourself a favor, switch it to HD and watch it in full screen.

EVE is a game I wouldn’t really recommend to most gamers I know.  It takes a certain couple of specific mindsets to really get into the game (hint: I don’t play either), but you cannot deny that it looks good for what it does and any fan of spaceship science fiction has got to find the imagery breathtaking.

Movie Round-Up: July 23rd, 2010

Reviews

Ramona and Beezus:

Based on the Beverly Cleary book Ramona Forever, obviously this is a family film.  From the trailer it looks to be fun and probably worth the trip to the theater with the kids.

Salt:

I really wanted to be able to come here and say you should run to the theater and see this movie.  I wanted to, but then I saw it.  Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t suck.  It has some good action and the plot twists are kinda neat (if a tad predictable), but I’m over my “My god! Angelina is so beautiful! Lust lust lust!!” phase.  Sometimes she is a good actress, and sometimes she isn’t.  She just didn’t get me to care about her character one way or the other.  On top of that, I’m getting to the point where I don’t buy her as an action star.  It could be my aversion to ultra skinny women, but her lack of a substance, to me, hurts because I can’t really get behind her toting around big guns and simultaneously kicking the asses of a half dozen guys when I think the kick of the weapons would knock her down or that any one of those trained fighters she’s up against could overpower her.  Anyway, if you don’t mind that and you just want to go see an action movie, this one is worth seeing, though I suggest going to an earlier show to get a cheaper price.  If you don’t need to see the movie, skip it, and wait for the rental.

Browsing the Aisles

Gaming

This month’s Gamer Banter: “How important is cover art to you?”

Back in the day, we’d go to the store as a family, and in the electronics section there would be the wall of Atari games.  The cover art was pretty much always like a million times better than the actual game graphics.  The art mattered, because that’s what got you to pick up the box and flip it over to see a couple of game shots.  Even into the Nintendo and early PC eras this continued.  The art of a King’s Quest box didn’t match the game, but it drew you in.

These days, I almost never go to the store to browse games.  I check websites, I browse Amazon.  I buy games there too, and the only time I ever see the game box is when I’m getting the disc out to put it in the 360 or installing the game on my hard drive… though Steam has pretty much ended the latter.

If I did, though, game box covers are like a movie poster.  It’s art, meant to catch your eye.  And much like movie posters the same layouts get used so often that I have become almost immune to them.  They fail to catch my eye.  And yet, now and then a movie poster comes along that I have to find and buy and I have to put on my wall.  But game boxes are so small.  Perhaps I might display a particularly good one if it was sold in a poster size, but so few are.

So to answer the question, the cover art is unimportant to me.  I barely even notice it.

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part of this, please email him for details.

Other takes:
Silvercublogger: Don’t Cover The Art, Unless…
The Average Gamer: Cover Art
SnipingMizzy: In the eye of the beholder
Extra Guy: On Books and Covers
Zath: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?
carocat.co.uk: Cover art? No, thanks!
Pioneer Project: The game box’s big moment
Man Fat: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?

Boneshaker

Reviews

Boneshaker by Cherie PriestThis weekend I finally turned the last page of Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker.  It took me nearly two months to polish this one off, and I feel like I both enjoyed it and didn’t enjoy it at the same time.

First off, the book contains two elements I like: steampunk and zombies.  The story is thus: In 1880s America (or there about), Seattle has been partly/largely destroyed by an event in which a machine ran amok, dug a giant hole under the city causing the release of some weird gas that makes people sick and turns them to zombies.  The remains of the city are walled up and a small industry has risen from the distillation of the gas into other products (drugs mostly).  People still live in the walled city, pumping in safe air from high up (the weird gas is heavy and sits within the walls like liquid in a bowl) and using gas masks when needing to venture outside.  The son of the man responsible, having never known his father, enters the city to learn more, and his mother goes in after him.  Overall, a well formed world is crafted by Priest and the elements of the tale are interesting.  If you really love zombies or steampunk, I recommend the book.

On the other hand, if you aren’t hardcore into either or both, I might wave you off.  Priest’s book is dense.  She is working hard to craft a world here, and sometimes I felt like that got in the way of the story.  Numerous times, for me, the book came to a halt while she took the time to describe objects and places and how things were.  In stark contrast, her action sequences were quick and lively, and made the non-action seem that much slower.  Because of this, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

So, I cautiously recommend Boneshaker.  I enjoyed it overall, but at times felt like I was slogging through it just to finish.