so, as i've mentioned a few times previously, despite being mega-busy this year, i've still managed to get some pretty fantastic game-playing done after midnight on the nights i can spare a few hours of sleep. this trend has more recently manifested in my manic consumption of Warcraft 3 and it's attendant expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. Having been a huge fan of Orcs and Humans (ah, the old days), Tides of Darkness (even more fun), and of course Starcraft (which is currently my #1 game of all time), i really can't explain why Warcraft 3 came out in 2002 and i'm just now, seven years later, getting around to playing it.
i think part of the problem was that, at the time, i wasn't even that into Starcraft yet. i was, at the time, more obsessed with civ-building games like Medieval: Total War and shoot-and-destroy games like Unreal Tournament and Serious Sam, and mostly i was completely fucking obsessed with Jedi Outcast. actually, i still am. and why not?!
also, what really made me love Starcraft (at the time) was that the battles were so much bigger (actually, everything was much bigger) than in previous Blizzard strategy games. when the marketing push for Warcraft 3 became basically "this is sort of like Diablo, and sort of like Starcraft with smaller battles", i think i just lost interest. i've never liked Diablo and otherwise it sounded like Warcraft 3 would be a regression.
so in a way, i think it's probably better that i came to it when i did, now that i'm a bit better equipped to appreciate nuance in game design, and especially in RTS games. now that there have been enough RTS games released on the PC to (literally) build a second moon for the Earth out of, i've had time to figure out what makes an RTS really worth playing to me. and generally that means i will play Blizzard-made RTS games and not really much else (though i liked Ground Control and Kohan a lot). i can't really articulate what it is about their RTS games that make them so much more fun than others; it's just an immutable law of life, like gravity.
anyway, i really, really liked both Warcraft 3 and the expansion, and am now looking forward even more than before to Starcraft 2. it's also going to be really difficult to not go back and try to beat both games on the Hard difficulty setting instead of doing the work that will allow me to keep my job. but somehow i will persevere.
for now i'm playing the original japanese non-dumbed-down version of Final Fantasy IV, which has a free downloadable fan translation. it's pretty freaking good. considering it's really the game that solidified my obsession with video games, all those years ago the fact that i find a different version of it even more entertaining almost 20 years later (yikes, i'm getting old) is pretty great.
Nov 29, 2009
finals "week"
"week" in quotation marks of course because the last three weeks of pretty much every semester all glom together into one horrific jack-bauer-esque day wherein the standard human ideals of linear time and cause-and-effect become indiscernible and perhaps even non-existent thanks to lack of sleep and overabundance of brain-paralyzing work.
that said, i realized today that this is one of my favorite times of the semester, quite the opposite of the beginning of the semester, which is always my least favorite part. starts of semesters always involve tons of inane paperwork that you've filled out thousands of times before, getting to know your students' names and going through the whole process of introducing them to your class(es) - which you've also done hundreds of times before - memorizing your schedule, buying books, etc. the minutae is enough to drive me absolutely fucking bonkers every time. i mean, i end up with a to-do list with about 25-30 things on it a day, and each of those things takes about 10 minutes to do. that's pretty much my worst nightmare. end-of-the-semester, on the other hand, (or "EotS, OTOH") means there's one thing on the to-do list, and it takes about 3 weeks. sure, it's stressful to have all your grades basically come down to 20 page papers, and to have to write 3-4 of them in a three week period every semester, but there's something calming for me in knowing that (for the most part) i can come into my office every day for the next three weeks and have very little between me and a huge pile of books and notes that i need to transform into seminar papers through sheer force of effort and clever outlining. it's fun. the writing part is the part i like absolutely the best, better than teaching, or reading, or anything. it's why i became an english major in undergrad in the first place. it's just hard to find time for while you're doing a million other things and i have to be forced to do it even when everything else is done. that doesn't mean i don't love it.
maybe it's my long history of playing video games, but i like the idea of just having one last, huge, all-encompassing obstacle in my way. if i'd been in jurassic park, i would have died like nedry, not like gennaro: the tiny, swarming things eating me alive instead of the huge, lumbering t-rex.
i feel like i should be more stressed, but it's hard for me to get stressed about big things, just little things. i mean, ultimately, what happens if i do a shitty job on a paper, or don't finish on time? i mean, the absolute worst thing that could happen at some point would be that i don't graduate. and even that, on a larger holistic-life scale, is pretty insignificant. i mean, i fully intend right now to do this job for the rest of my life, but in reality it probably won't happen that way. i've lived (if i'm lucky) less than half my life at this point. i can't imagine i'll be doing the same thing 30 years from now that i'm doing now. the world just doesn't stay still for that long. so if i have to get a different job, i don't see how that's a completely life-crushing happenstance.
of course, i don't see getting fired or anything actually happening in reality, i'm just talking hypothetically, from the "why get stressed because what's really going to happen if you don't come through?" standpoint. i want to come through, i fully intend to, but if i don't...what? the world won't explode.
not for another 3 years, at least.
and even if it does, we can rest in peace knowing that john cusack survives.
that said, i realized today that this is one of my favorite times of the semester, quite the opposite of the beginning of the semester, which is always my least favorite part. starts of semesters always involve tons of inane paperwork that you've filled out thousands of times before, getting to know your students' names and going through the whole process of introducing them to your class(es) - which you've also done hundreds of times before - memorizing your schedule, buying books, etc. the minutae is enough to drive me absolutely fucking bonkers every time. i mean, i end up with a to-do list with about 25-30 things on it a day, and each of those things takes about 10 minutes to do. that's pretty much my worst nightmare. end-of-the-semester, on the other hand, (or "EotS, OTOH") means there's one thing on the to-do list, and it takes about 3 weeks. sure, it's stressful to have all your grades basically come down to 20 page papers, and to have to write 3-4 of them in a three week period every semester, but there's something calming for me in knowing that (for the most part) i can come into my office every day for the next three weeks and have very little between me and a huge pile of books and notes that i need to transform into seminar papers through sheer force of effort and clever outlining. it's fun. the writing part is the part i like absolutely the best, better than teaching, or reading, or anything. it's why i became an english major in undergrad in the first place. it's just hard to find time for while you're doing a million other things and i have to be forced to do it even when everything else is done. that doesn't mean i don't love it.
maybe it's my long history of playing video games, but i like the idea of just having one last, huge, all-encompassing obstacle in my way. if i'd been in jurassic park, i would have died like nedry, not like gennaro: the tiny, swarming things eating me alive instead of the huge, lumbering t-rex.
i feel like i should be more stressed, but it's hard for me to get stressed about big things, just little things. i mean, ultimately, what happens if i do a shitty job on a paper, or don't finish on time? i mean, the absolute worst thing that could happen at some point would be that i don't graduate. and even that, on a larger holistic-life scale, is pretty insignificant. i mean, i fully intend right now to do this job for the rest of my life, but in reality it probably won't happen that way. i've lived (if i'm lucky) less than half my life at this point. i can't imagine i'll be doing the same thing 30 years from now that i'm doing now. the world just doesn't stay still for that long. so if i have to get a different job, i don't see how that's a completely life-crushing happenstance.
of course, i don't see getting fired or anything actually happening in reality, i'm just talking hypothetically, from the "why get stressed because what's really going to happen if you don't come through?" standpoint. i want to come through, i fully intend to, but if i don't...what? the world won't explode.
not for another 3 years, at least.
and even if it does, we can rest in peace knowing that john cusack survives.
Nov 27, 2009
why everyone not using twitter is dumb.
okay, that's obviously a slight exaggeration. slight. but, people seem to be realizing the usefulness of the twitter platform more and more widely as time goes on. what i've seen with people's reaction to twitter is, i think, the exact same phenomenon that you see whenever a new form of popular media takes hold in the culture: whether it's the cinema, jazz music, the record player, video games, internet chat rooms, etc. there's also a mass of people who explode in consternation and condemnation of this new technology, usually linking it to the devil, or moral decline, or just sheer cussed laziness.
there's always a variant of this more general reaction with new social networking/information aggregating phenomena: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, (to a lesser degree) RSS. there's this idea that these things don't actually serve any useful purpose, that they're usually just abused by people who have problems interacting in the real world, as a way to cushion the impact of real life, or to overly-aggrandize their small accomplishments. sometimes there's some merit to these assertions, just like there's merit to most stereotypes, i'll admit that (okay, do we really need to see 110 pictures of your new baby on facebook? i mean, i want to see one, sure, but the others are probably fine just on your hard drive, just for you). but, what's at the core of these new technologies, what has always been at the core of them, is the development of a new way to aggregate, network, view, and share information. i mean, MySpace (although a bit anachronistic now) helped revolutionize the way companies advertised online, and more specifically the way artists made their music available electronically. facebook accomplishes a lot of the same things, but over an even wider (and less neon-colored) spectrum. RSS and twitter strip away the expectation for you to "put yourself out there" at all. you can just tune in to the stream of information and avoid the egoizing (if that's how you want to see it) completely.
sure, there are always bad, silly things that these technologies are used for, and often they're used for these bad, silly things but the majority of the people who use them. but how is that new? has that facet of human nature (i.e. give someone a soapbox and a megaphone and they'll probably use them, and stupidly) just sudden come to be thanks to the internet? i'm guilty myself of sharing lots of pointless, potentially self-aggrandizing things online that nobody cares about, i'm sure. but at the same time, MySpace let me share a bunch of music online when i was just starting out that allowed me to get feedback and get in touch with other starting musicians that i never would have met otherwise. it let me learn about bands i wouldn't have heard of by reading even independent local magazines. facebook straight up makes it easy to organize social events. i type up what i want to do, where i want to do it, who i want to invite, and BAM, the whole conversation can take place live, right there, much more fluidly and simply than even over email. twitter is just fantastic, like RSS in a tiny box that just gives me pop-up notices and if i don't think that "telling everyone what i ate for lunch" is important (it's usually not, unless it's gourmet grilled cheese) then i DON'T HAVE TO WRITE ANYTHING. if i'm following someone who tweets inanely 21 times a day THEN I CAN STOP FOLLOWING THEM. the information flow control is entirely in your hands, and it's pretty damn easy to learn how to use (except occasionally in the case of facebook, but that's another story), so you can filter out the bad and you can use the good to make you aware of everything you actually want to know. how many of those links you follow and how many twitpics you look at are then entirely up to you within the time constraints you have.
i'm trying not to just whine in the post (even though i'm failing), but things like twitter are (i believe) revolutionizing the way we interact with information, which is more and more becoming a foundational part of our day-to-day lives as more information becomes available and as we (professionally at the very least, if not otherwise) will become more and more responsible for that information. this is why i got into a lot of the stuff i'm currently studying, because it's not going to go away, it's just going to become more and more ubiquitous, and more and more the people who refuse to take part in things like twitter as they come into being are the people who end up having to (not choosing to) give up and join in a few years down the road when it becomes obvious that this stuff isn't going away.
i guess i'm also just naturally curious and figure you might as well get in on the ground floor when something cool comes along.
also, as an unrelated note, i am honest-to-god certain that the sangria's tofu vegetarian burrito is the best food i've ever eaten in my life.
there's always a variant of this more general reaction with new social networking/information aggregating phenomena: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, (to a lesser degree) RSS. there's this idea that these things don't actually serve any useful purpose, that they're usually just abused by people who have problems interacting in the real world, as a way to cushion the impact of real life, or to overly-aggrandize their small accomplishments. sometimes there's some merit to these assertions, just like there's merit to most stereotypes, i'll admit that (okay, do we really need to see 110 pictures of your new baby on facebook? i mean, i want to see one, sure, but the others are probably fine just on your hard drive, just for you). but, what's at the core of these new technologies, what has always been at the core of them, is the development of a new way to aggregate, network, view, and share information. i mean, MySpace (although a bit anachronistic now) helped revolutionize the way companies advertised online, and more specifically the way artists made their music available electronically. facebook accomplishes a lot of the same things, but over an even wider (and less neon-colored) spectrum. RSS and twitter strip away the expectation for you to "put yourself out there" at all. you can just tune in to the stream of information and avoid the egoizing (if that's how you want to see it) completely.
sure, there are always bad, silly things that these technologies are used for, and often they're used for these bad, silly things but the majority of the people who use them. but how is that new? has that facet of human nature (i.e. give someone a soapbox and a megaphone and they'll probably use them, and stupidly) just sudden come to be thanks to the internet? i'm guilty myself of sharing lots of pointless, potentially self-aggrandizing things online that nobody cares about, i'm sure. but at the same time, MySpace let me share a bunch of music online when i was just starting out that allowed me to get feedback and get in touch with other starting musicians that i never would have met otherwise. it let me learn about bands i wouldn't have heard of by reading even independent local magazines. facebook straight up makes it easy to organize social events. i type up what i want to do, where i want to do it, who i want to invite, and BAM, the whole conversation can take place live, right there, much more fluidly and simply than even over email. twitter is just fantastic, like RSS in a tiny box that just gives me pop-up notices and if i don't think that "telling everyone what i ate for lunch" is important (it's usually not, unless it's gourmet grilled cheese) then i DON'T HAVE TO WRITE ANYTHING. if i'm following someone who tweets inanely 21 times a day THEN I CAN STOP FOLLOWING THEM. the information flow control is entirely in your hands, and it's pretty damn easy to learn how to use (except occasionally in the case of facebook, but that's another story), so you can filter out the bad and you can use the good to make you aware of everything you actually want to know. how many of those links you follow and how many twitpics you look at are then entirely up to you within the time constraints you have.
i'm trying not to just whine in the post (even though i'm failing), but things like twitter are (i believe) revolutionizing the way we interact with information, which is more and more becoming a foundational part of our day-to-day lives as more information becomes available and as we (professionally at the very least, if not otherwise) will become more and more responsible for that information. this is why i got into a lot of the stuff i'm currently studying, because it's not going to go away, it's just going to become more and more ubiquitous, and more and more the people who refuse to take part in things like twitter as they come into being are the people who end up having to (not choosing to) give up and join in a few years down the road when it becomes obvious that this stuff isn't going away.
i guess i'm also just naturally curious and figure you might as well get in on the ground floor when something cool comes along.
also, as an unrelated note, i am honest-to-god certain that the sangria's tofu vegetarian burrito is the best food i've ever eaten in my life.
Nov 24, 2009
reading NOOOOOOOOOOW!!!
i'm finally teaching a lit class (sort of) in the spring. it's a reading/discussion based class, and the curriculum seems pretty open (basically i have to use books published after my students were born, so post-1990ish). anyway, i've tried to sprinkle the reading list with a lot of things that will inspire talk about some of (what i see as being) the prominent cultural concerns of the last two decades, like:
1. globalization (and what this does to our ideas of place, race, class, gender, etc.)
2. apocalypse and environment
3. the intarwebs
yes, that's a really freaking broad list, but the way i understand this class, i'm not supposed to be lecturing, but mostly just facilitating discussion; so i want to start broad and only narrow down when/if necessary.
anyway, i just sent my booklist off, so here's what we're going to be reading:
1. globalization (and what this does to our ideas of place, race, class, gender, etc.)
2. apocalypse and environment
3. the intarwebs
yes, that's a really freaking broad list, but the way i understand this class, i'm not supposed to be lecturing, but mostly just facilitating discussion; so i want to start broad and only narrow down when/if necessary.
anyway, i just sent my booklist off, so here's what we're going to be reading:
Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens (Novel)
Neil Gaiman, American Gods, (Novel)
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Novel)
Peter Chilson, Disturbance-Loving Species (Short stories)
Frank Miller, 300 (Graphic novel and film)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Novel and film)
Max Brooks, World War Z (Novel)
John Krakauer, Into the Wild (Novel and film)
Note: The film version of The Road may be cut from the schedule due to time constraints and depending on when it becomes available on DVD.
Note 2: I'm really pumped about using WWZ to talk about politics and cultural assumptions, etc. And also zombies.
I'm really excited to teach the class, though at the same time I had to sort of throw this booklist together when in reality there were about 20 more books I wanted to read before choosing which ones I wanted to teach. Apparently they usually offer the class in the fall only, which would have given me the entire summer to decide on books, but instead I got about two weeks. So I'm hoping my choices will work out. I'm just glad to actually be teaching about books. more on this later.
oh my GOD, who left this blog laying here?
i just found this old thing and dusted it off. seems to work okay.
it's thanksgiving break, which means instead of working 16 hours a day, i'm working like 8-10 hours a day. which means i might get to blog a few times. i spent the weekend in post falls at lindsey's parents house, which was really fun. that place always makes me think of rivendell, for some reason. maybe it's because every time i go there, it's on the heels of some sort of utter madness (the first time it was after the ohio-northwest crossing of 2009, the second time after an 8-day sinus infection). it might also be because there's a sort of relaxingly predictable rhythm to life there, which goes something like this:
1. wake up earlier than usual and eat breakfast (actual breakfast, not just cereal)
2. sit around for a bit and work on my own work (usually grading or something)
3. go do something outside that involves strenuous physical activity
4. return from said activity and make a huge heaping dinner of some sort (eating dinner at actual dinner time)
5. continue working (alternating with watching the history channel) in front of the fireplace
6. at some point in the late evening, go scrounging for food because i ate dinner at actual dinner time
7. eventually fall asleep in front of the fire, wake up, drag self to bed.
it's pretty elven (or elfish, if you want to make tolkien spin in his grave).
other than that, i've been pretty much just working on grad school stuff all semester. in the small breaks that i do have, i've been going out to dinner with people, or watching that 70s show in its entirety with lindsey, or playing some video game because i'm too exhausted to do anything smart. which means i haven't made any progress on any outside interests such as book-writing or song-playing, but i'm willing to put that on the back burner for the moment, as the end of classes is in sight (i only have to take ONE class next semester and teach one, and while i'll be doing diss stuff as well, i certainly won't be as busy as i've been for the last 1 1/2 years).
i'm getting some next effects pedals and such for my tube amp, so i'm hoping that'll inspire me to write some more songs, once i finally have time to sit down and think straight.
in geek-hobby land, it has in fact been a pretty awesome semester though, as i've gotten the chance to play a lot of games i hadn't previously played, like KoToR 1 and 2, all three prince of persia games (minus the new one, which i don't yet), and all three homeworld games. my new obsession is warcraft 3, which i somehow didn't play when it came out in 2002. i'm just now at the point of finishing up the expansion campaign, and am looking forward to playing the whole thing over again on the higher difficulty setting once i decompress from RTS land for a month or two. hanging high over my head also is the fact that i've still NEVER finished brood war, despite having played it for no doubt hundreds of hours in the last 10 years. but i think the next thing on the time-wasting, fun-having plate is a run through final fantasy 4-6, and 9-12. which will probably take the entirety of my whole life. i'm skipping 7 and 8 out of principle because, although i love both games, i hate replaying them because there are WAY too many "stop and level up here for 5-10 hours" sections in both of them. i've never played 10 or 12 before, so that should be a good time.
i'm teaching a (potentially) awesome class in the spring. but more about that in a minute.
it's thanksgiving break, which means instead of working 16 hours a day, i'm working like 8-10 hours a day. which means i might get to blog a few times. i spent the weekend in post falls at lindsey's parents house, which was really fun. that place always makes me think of rivendell, for some reason. maybe it's because every time i go there, it's on the heels of some sort of utter madness (the first time it was after the ohio-northwest crossing of 2009, the second time after an 8-day sinus infection). it might also be because there's a sort of relaxingly predictable rhythm to life there, which goes something like this:
1. wake up earlier than usual and eat breakfast (actual breakfast, not just cereal)
2. sit around for a bit and work on my own work (usually grading or something)
3. go do something outside that involves strenuous physical activity
4. return from said activity and make a huge heaping dinner of some sort (eating dinner at actual dinner time)
5. continue working (alternating with watching the history channel) in front of the fireplace
6. at some point in the late evening, go scrounging for food because i ate dinner at actual dinner time
7. eventually fall asleep in front of the fire, wake up, drag self to bed.
it's pretty elven (or elfish, if you want to make tolkien spin in his grave).
other than that, i've been pretty much just working on grad school stuff all semester. in the small breaks that i do have, i've been going out to dinner with people, or watching that 70s show in its entirety with lindsey, or playing some video game because i'm too exhausted to do anything smart. which means i haven't made any progress on any outside interests such as book-writing or song-playing, but i'm willing to put that on the back burner for the moment, as the end of classes is in sight (i only have to take ONE class next semester and teach one, and while i'll be doing diss stuff as well, i certainly won't be as busy as i've been for the last 1 1/2 years).
i'm getting some next effects pedals and such for my tube amp, so i'm hoping that'll inspire me to write some more songs, once i finally have time to sit down and think straight.
in geek-hobby land, it has in fact been a pretty awesome semester though, as i've gotten the chance to play a lot of games i hadn't previously played, like KoToR 1 and 2, all three prince of persia games (minus the new one, which i don't yet), and all three homeworld games. my new obsession is warcraft 3, which i somehow didn't play when it came out in 2002. i'm just now at the point of finishing up the expansion campaign, and am looking forward to playing the whole thing over again on the higher difficulty setting once i decompress from RTS land for a month or two. hanging high over my head also is the fact that i've still NEVER finished brood war, despite having played it for no doubt hundreds of hours in the last 10 years. but i think the next thing on the time-wasting, fun-having plate is a run through final fantasy 4-6, and 9-12. which will probably take the entirety of my whole life. i'm skipping 7 and 8 out of principle because, although i love both games, i hate replaying them because there are WAY too many "stop and level up here for 5-10 hours" sections in both of them. i've never played 10 or 12 before, so that should be a good time.
i'm teaching a (potentially) awesome class in the spring. but more about that in a minute.
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