The Prestige

I saw The Prestige over the weekend and was entertained. It was a great movie, superbly directed with some dynamite performances, including a wicked performance by David Bowie. The movie hit a couple of sweet spots for me and I was almost disappointed that the movie wasn't even deeper than it was. In comparison to the American norm it is a widely intellectual film, but that is so, unfortunately, not saying much. I think that if Batman Begins wasn't enough to solidify Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale as a powerhouse director and extremely capable actor (respectively) then The Prestige should.

One of the jokes on the Internets is that The Prestige is Batman versus Wolverine, but beyond the Nolan+Bale pairing there isn't much of a "Batman" feel to The Prestige, which is good. There is also very little "Wolverine"; Hugh Jackman proves that with good writing and direction he actually can act three dimensional characters. (Note that that is not an implication of the X-Men source materials and more the writers of the film translations.) Unfortunately due to rights issues (DC/Time Warner versus Marvel/Assorted Studios) we probably will never see a real "Batman vs. Wolverine", but if it were to happen I think both properties might see justice from a Bale vs. Jackman match up.

I did see some slight ties to Batman that many might not have picked up on, and that is that escape magic (the infamous tied and dropped into a water tank) figures prominently across various versions of both Bruce Wayne and the various Robin sidekicks origin stories. I think that there isn't much coincidence in this fact, as it appears that Nolan is very interested in some of the same threads of illusion and mastery of mind over ...

Heroes and Assassins

Most everyone seems to like the geeky Japanese guy Hiro on Heroes. A fan site trying to be the definitive spoiler/conspiracy theory site has even named itself SuperHiro.org. Hiro is not only a great character, but Masi Oka, the actor, is a pretty neat guy himself. In addition to acting he continues to moonlight for his first job as a programmer for the special effects house Industrial Light & Magic. Masi Oka had a hand in the water effects for the Pirates of the Carribean films, among other projects. There is a Wired article on Masi Oka and I got a big kick from the article's tail:

Should Heroes' early success continue for NBC, Oka said he would love to be able to direct an episode in season three or four and bring all of his ILM cronies in to help out.

"I'd make use of my employee discount -- buy two effects and get one free," joked Oka.

In other news, the upcoming run of my Assassin's game code (Assassins! on 2006-Oct-27) currently has 67 people signed up, with about 16 hours remaining to sign up. This is the largest game since the code rewrite and already places it as one of the biggest games ever run by the council. Unfortunately, until the code rewrite no one kept much in the way of historical data, so I don't have any exact data on that and am relying on others' memories for this. (Thus the historical largest game I got back was "70-something players"...) I'm pretty impressed and I'm hoping the game will be a success (bugs will result in people yelling at me) and I'm interested in watching this "stress test" play out.

Small Victories of Reason

I haven't taken the chance to see An Inconvenient Truth, but tonight I had the opportunity to see the presentation tonight delivered by Al Gore at the Key Arena in Downtown Seattle. Of anything, someone reminded me how tonight's presentation removed me so far from where I was mentally and physically two years ago. Fortunately most of vitriol on my blog was lost to a server crash, but there still remain 3 choice pieces in my December 2004 archives that pretty well represent that era in my life. I'll leave those for you to figure out, but I'll answer if asked. Maybe I'll do a quick post-mortem writeup on them as in quick review they are quite interesting.

So, 2 years ago I worked for a company that I over time lost respect for in terms of corporate culture. I lived in a city torn usunder by an awful election in a State that tries to remind us every day of "United We Stand, Divided We Fall". I let that election get to me. I let it eat at my feelings and control my depressions. In October I set in mention irrevocable events that lead me to speaking my feelings loudly and publically and laminated my break with that company I was working for. The break was mutual, and as I far as I know there was no bad blood, I continue to use their services, but I never again wish to work in a corporate environment where I can't stand the corporate culture.

It would take the majority win, but second major election loss, and a few months time for me to recover. In December and January I cemented the decisions that have gotten me here: 2000 miles away, going to a speech ...

The Problem with GTA: Trying to Live in a Dead City

This is one of the topics I've talked about before, but after today's earlier posts I thought it would be appropriate to write about...

One of the big things that bugs me with GTA is the fact that the city itself feels too clean, too model, too dead. I'm not talking about the people or the vehicles, but the urban geography itself. There is no aspect of what makes cities truly alive: construction, deconstruction, businesses moving, opening, closing, renaming, dying, ...

I think a truly great sandbox game needs a good time frame. Most interesting so far for me has been Dead Rising, even if 72 hours is too short for real geography change, but the near-real-time feel is neat. (Speaking of real time games, I've been trying my hand at Shadow of Destiny and The Last Express on GameTap...) City of Heroes has done some interesting geographical shifts over the time frame of "the Issue", even if most of the really interesting have gone unnoticed (buildings under construction, then finished) due to little "ownership" in individual buildings (most of them have little "personality" due to the random placement of missions and ads).

So I mentioned that I was a bit disappointed in the lack of geographical depth in Sam and Max Episode 1 and part of that is that the mystical genre that I keep mentioning as something of my holy grail, whether it is massively multiplayer or single player I've sometimes thought of as the "sandbox adventure". I've been thinking about, refining, and debating ideas in this space since before GTA, even.

The plan would be build a good geography. Taking the time to build a good set, be it city, planet, whatever, provides a deep place to script intricate stories, which you ...

The Television Channels of Games

Kevin Bruner (Telltale's CTO) is always worth a listen if you get a chance.

The major thing that Kevin uses, and I absolutely agree, are comparisons to non-interactive media. There is a very wide variety of non-interactive media and no one talks about how one is better than another like people talk about "classic gaming" versus "episodic gaming". The difference is the same as between movies and television and television didn't kill the movie industry.

I think episodic content is something of a no-brainer. It may not seem like it right now, but most of what we're lacking is the gaming equivalent of "television channels", if just for accountability to a schedule, much less useful aggregations of "shows". GameTap is out there (and part of a company known for traditional television channels), and they seem to get it. Steam is out there and they are slow to be a "television channel" because they still want to be a broad distribution platform. It would be really interesting if Steam created a "premium content channel" and started to force accountability from its studios in that channel, particularly Valve. Certainly it would be the tail wagging the dog, but it would do Valve wonders to commit to an episode schedule.

Obviously there are a lot more opportunities for "television channels" to pull independents together or to pull niches together. I'd love to see GarageGames get interested independents together with committed season schedules.

"Casual game" growth has only benefitted the games industry as a whole, and I think that episodic programming will become yet another interesting slice of the spectrum.

(Promoted from being a comment to American McGee's blog.)

Sam and Max Episode 1

I practically fled from the building after work yesterday... I couldn't get out quick enough. There's nothing like months worth of anticipation for this first episode of Sam & Max. I quickly had GameTap fired up and started downloading the game. The download time I spent mostly flipping through the "InfoCard" on the game and watching the corny "making of" video that GameTap had recorded. I briefly noticed a few UI adjustments to GameTap and that there were a few other new and potentially fun games (FarCry), but my focus was obvious and I wasn't going to stray.

The game was good. Not quite the pull I was expecting from a pilot, but as an extension to the first game, or perhaps more appropriately as the next episode in the single-season animated series, it didn't disappoint. I was hoping for a larger variety of locations to visit, but I can understand why it might be useful to keep the first episode "cozy" to keep puzzles reasonably easy to decipher. Hopefully the next episodes will feel more open. I played completely through the game in a leisurely 5 or 6 hours, which was about what I was expecting. I'll keep encouraging people to play the games, because these are characters that I love, and I'll be looking forward to Episode 2.

I was really glad for the auto-save, which removed most of the worry of having to save. I was particularly happy for the auto-save when the game crashed on me. It was one of the few times in XP that I've seen the Watson dialog lacking the "Send Error Report" button, so I'm even more curious as to what sort of bug it might have been...

I had one other performance issue and ...

Answering the Questions that the Internet Asks

This month so far a number of search queries bringing visitors to my website have been pretty interesting questions, and so I thought I would answer them.

First of all, there have been a lot of visitors searching for the NBC Heroes blog. Those interested can check out Tim Kring's Blog (Creator) or Hiro's Blog (Character).

Question marks don't appear in search results, so I've added them at my own discretion.

worldmaker 2006?

No, I don't think that I am running for a congressional post this year.

gametap and earth and beyond?

I haven't heard anything about GameTap acquiring the rights to Earth and Beyond. That's an interesting thought after GameTap's acquiring of Uru, but I'm guessing that there isn't much of Earth and Beyond left... I think it would be much more fun to start a rumor that GameTap is adding Eve Online to their lineup.

petrosun stock opinion?

Don't buy. Obviously a front for the future Emperor of Earth.

louisville pronunciation t-shirts?

Those can be grabbed from the Greater Louisville, Inc store in the Louisville Convention Center. GLI's online store appears to be lacking in the tacky tourist t-shirts department, but I'm betting you could email one of the friendly staff members and they would be more than happy to hook you up.

pronunciation of the place seattle?

Generally the way I hear it is "See-ah-Tull", but I'm guessing if you say "See-Ttl-Ah" you might get some funny looks.

whats gamerscore do?

Gamerscore is the mystical voodoo karma of the tribe of aboriginal humanity that shamanistically humbles themselves before a deity they refer to under many names, but often "360". Do not be alarmed should some tribe member attempt to befriend you by bragging ...

Django CMSes (and lack thereof)

I wrote the below in reply to a comment on a blog post by James Bennett:

Knowing what you know of Django, and that you have used Textpattern in a previous incarnation, can you recommend a Free Django CMS?

Django. I know it sounds like a joke and I've heard a score of complaints that each and every person tends to implement their own individual Django CMS for their project, but to me that speaks to a lot of the strengths of Django. My personal website and the website I maintain for my student council (SpeedCouncil.org) both have very widely different needs from a CMS, and share very little code, but I haven't "rewritten" anything and there's no unnecessary duplication. The same absolutely cannot be said for the websites when I was using PHP.

Keep in mind too that the key piece needed for a CMS is provided largely out of the box by Django: the brilliant, well-designed, Admin site. 90% of writing or dealing with a CMS is "How do I input data?" and the Admin site removes that worry leaving you with the much simpler problem of "What data do I actually need for this website? What's the best way to store that data?". With Django's Admin I get the cool features that constrained PHP CMSes provided and yet I much more constrained data types, better data integrity, and an easier time to doing real cool data queries that actually make use of the relationship power of a modern RDBMS rather than treating the RDBMS like a glorified file store.

Obviously there are bits and pieces that you might want to borrow from others. For instance, I've borrowed Ivan Sagalaev's Tag library for my personal site. But such pieces are ...

They Killed the Electric Car! (Those Bastards!)

For a limited time, Google Video has the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? up. Watch it. If it goes down, rent it. Watch it. I think that with all of the material that I talk about, that has been ranted and raved about on even this blog, I could write an entire book titled The Betrayal of the Consumer: The Invisible Hand's Extended Middle Finger. A group of rich men in the early 20th created a set a decisions, largely in collusion and with underhanded tactics, that transformed the entire landscape of the country, and today we are continuing to pay hand and foot to their descendents, their cronies, their un-american alliances...

The Big Lebowski Phonetic Alphabet

I missed this year's Lebowski Fest due to the whole being several thousand miles away and what have you... Anyway, some telephone service provider has decided to attempt to replace the NATO phonetic alphabet with one much more fun to mindlessly repeat, like say a Big Lebowski Phonetic Alphabet.

Microsoft Intern Game 2006: Fire Lake Resorts

The write up for Fire Lake Resort has been posted. This was a crazy game weekend I took part of during the Summer the weekend before I flew back to Louisville from Redmond. The game is perhaps hard to describe if you haven't experienced one, but basically it was a series of puzzles (described on the website's write up) that took place over a span of just about 48 hours (straight). We competed in teams of generally 6 to 8. My team formed pretty well in advance and we got fairly involved into the pre-game puzzles and the application's "vacation resume". (My Fire Lake flickr group was created as a part of the vacation resume.) A good number of us all worked in the same building and thus worked in Business Solutions. The Crayola color name for our team was a Grayish-Brown color called "Shadow". I was informed that we in Team Shadow placed 2nd (of I believe 13) in the overall standings for the game, which is pretty impressive.

Support Creative Commons 2006 Campaign

I may add this somewhere to my template, but until I decide where, here's a button to help support the Creative Commons this year:

RSS Aggregators: I switched Again

RSS Aggregators are an interesting pain point for me. I'm never quite satisfied with my choices. I've used several over the years with probably my longest period spent using Thunderbird as combination email and RSS reader. The problem with an offline reader is it is hard to sync across computers. Thunderbird did however offer great keyboard shortcuts and I liked being able to quickly switch from reading new mail messages to new RSS items.

I didn't like Google Reader the first few times I looked at it, but the recent updates have been compelling enough for me to try using it regularly, and I was certainly greatful for the OPML magic offered by Thunderbird and Google Reader. I like the use of Infinite Scroll here.

Infinite Scroll was pioneered by Microsoft's Live Search, but since removed from traditional search. It was a neat technique, but caused more problems with traditional search than it enhanced. It still exists as a part of the Live Search Images searches. Infinite Scroll in terms of RSS reading allows me to simply scroll through all of the unread items, with Google Reader highlighting items as they scroll by and then automatically marking them as read as the scroll off the top. Combine that with ample keyboard shortcut goodness and I'm not missing Thunderbird all that much.

There are still a few things I find lacking though: search (funny for a Google product to lack a search bar, but Reader certainly does... I've had a couple instances already of trying to / search just like I would in GMail...) and this has been an annoyance to me since I started working with GMail even: no ability to sort New items oldest to newest. In Gmail that problem is only a minor ...

15 Sentences of Wikipedia Fame

Beyond some fairly mediocre contributions, I haven't made a huge dent yet in the English Wikipedia, and I've mentioned that before. One of the things I noticed a while back, but think is pretty cool is that the Spanish Wikipedia contributors have incorporated my ideas from my discussion on Django Architecture into the Spanish Wikipedia article on the Django Web Framework. I've been getting a fair amount of hits from that usage.

As a note to myself, and a potential way to guide potential contributions, I should join the Louisville WikiProject when I get a chance...

The "Killer" App for Microformats is an old friend?

Microformats are the forefront technology jewels in the "semantic web". They are meant to be easy to implement and thus quick to "flower". Right now there is no major consumers of microformats because there aren't many major producers of microformats because there aren't many major consumers of microformats... Today I was directed to Ray Ozzie's Blog (he's the new Microsoft Chief Software Architect, assuming that office from Bill Gates) where not only has he proposed what appears to be the killer app for microformats and making microformats truly powerful, but he also had his concept development group at Microsoft build it and release it under a Creative Commons license.

Basically, and I'm not going to give this paraphrase much justice so go read his blog, the leap that Ray Ozzie made was the simple one that one of the key inventions of the GUI era was the Clipboard and that the key piece to interesting and useful convergence (via microformats) is smart, ubiquitous (like RSS is becoming) "web clipboard". The name of the idea is Live Clipboard (following the Live nomenclature of Microsoft, backed by Ray Ozzie). For more, please check out the examples at Ray Ozzie's blog and the cool modern feedicons-like icon at LiveClipboard.org. This could indeed be big...

Internet Marketing 101

I deal with a lot of spam everyday. I have a finely tuned "spam sense" that works somewhat like Spider-Man's spidey sense, only much less useful in heroic situations. ("Duck! Here comes another c1al1s advert...") A corporate website of any form is an attempt to have a conversation with me. If you trigger that spam sense, you seriously damage my opinion of the conversation. Here's two big pointers that should have been learned 5 years ago, but may need to be refreshed from time to time:

• Always, always, always make any email distribution lists opt-in. In an application process, auto-checking an opt-in "on my behalf" is the exact same as an opt-out,, it is no longer an opt-in because if I ignore it or miss it I suddenly get unsolicited mail. Repeat after me: a preselected opt-in is no longer an opt-in, no matter how friendly the language next to the checkbox, it is an opt-out. My time is valuable to me... I will either spend the time to read and ponder your distribution or I will uncheck the box. I will not do both if you trigger that spam sense when skimming.
• Once I make a selection or choice: don't question the selection or choice and certainly don't try to do one last upsell to some "better" choice. The more upsells, the more it feels like you are trying to spam me to death.

Again, both of those points should be obvious, and are very easy to keep in mind. If your company violates them, your marketers and/or web staff (and I know which one I typically bet on being in charge of these decisions) have some 'splainin' to do as to why they hate your customers.

Place Pronunciation Fun: Seattle Area

I get a lot of flack at my lazy native pronunciation of Louisville. (If you don't what I'm talking about you can generally find a sportscaster that finds great national coverage-worthy humor in asking "Am I pronouncing that right?" a few times, particularly during national Derby coverage in May.) So, I feel vindicated in finding great humor in the fact that the place spelled Puyallup is pronounced more like "Pee-wollop".