Like everything else I do, my music attentiveness goes in sine waves. The reasons for this are inexplicable and I’ve given up trying to understand what makes me “into” or “not so into” a certain thing at any given point. But lately I’ve been listening to a lot more music and enjoying quite a bit of it. A byproduct of my inability to stick with anything for more than a few months at a time is that I tend to catch on to trends and “buzzes” later than I suspect I might if I had some sort of focus. Therefore a lot of these albums are going to seem old to people, but I’m just now catching up so bear with me.

• The Killers “Hot Fuss” – This album took a while to grow on me. I liked the funky-retro rock of “Somebody Told Me” from the radio play and the follow up single “Mr. Brightside” confirmed that they had the capability of a decent sound. But when I got the whole album nothing really stood out to me on the first few listens aside from the Duran Duran-inspired opening track, “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.” Three out of twelve isn’t typically good enough for me to declare an album worthy of note so I moved on. But I noticed that as the 12 songs on “Fuss” began to seep their way into my random iPod playlists, I started cranking up more and more of them as they hit the rotation. First listen of the anthemic, gospel-tinged “All the Things That I’ve Done” may have you scratching your head but it doesn’t take long before you’re crowing “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier!” right along with them in the mind-sticky breakdown. Aside from a few missteps (“Andy, You’re a Star”) the album is similar to a lot of alternative pop/rock coming out (see The Darkness) that looks back to the 80s for inspiration but unlike some comparable acts The Killers manage to avoid sounding like a cover band gone awry. A few of the hooks are buried too deeply under odd production choices (why the catchy synthesizers of “Jenny” don’t make a noticeable impression until a few bars during the solo is beyond me) and some of the album feels rushed (could they maybe have written another verse for “Mr. Brightside?”) but patience pays off nicely with this one.
• The Decemberists “Picaresque” – I have a difficult time classifying The Decemberists. They write acoustic songs that evoke pre-industrialized European bardsongs (“Eli the Barrow Boy”, “From My Own True Love”, “Mariner’s Revenge Song”) but occasionally they slip in a modern reference or a catchy pop tune (“The Infanta”, “16 Military Wives”). Their lyrics are often woeful—depressing even—but their literary style (and delivery) paint fascination into the melancholy and the previously mentioned catchy tunes help brace the downhearted subject matter just when it is necessary. The album is just shy of masterful, actually, providing a perfect foil for a moody fall day but their strongest musical accomplishments are the more uptempo numbers (even if you never listen to another Decemberists track, hit iTunes and get “16 Military Wives” right now) and while well executed, there are about one or two too many mellow acoustic strummers to be perfect.
• Arcade Fire “Funeral” – I can tell you right now that not everyone is going to like Arcade Fire. Their curious brand of pop is all oddball melody, light driving indie rock and introspective balladry with the most intense vocal delivery I’ve heard on an album. These aren’t necessarily loud songs, but Win Butler sings them as if his points were absolutely vital to be heard and understood, perhaps not just by the listener but by himself as well. The songs on “Funeral” are crafted as near to perfection as I can imagine and aside from a bland closing track “In the Backseat,” there isn’t a weak spot here. The “Neighborhood” tetralogy (broken up by the pretty but indecipherable French/English hybrid “Une Annee Sans Lumiere”… not entirely unexpected from a Quebecois band) is not a musical series but more a thematic one and each entry is amazing in its own right, culminating with #4, “Kettles,” a descriptive slower track which suggests the album may have hit its peak until the next song (“Crown of Love”) comes on and completely blows you away. While the album is singularly fantastic, casual listeners will find it easy to dismiss them as underground U2 progenies or mainstream Belle and Sebastian crossovers. Others may simply find their patience unwilling to tune to Butler’s strained delivery or the catchy but subtle hooks and arrangements. In truth, it’s their loss.
• The Postal Service “Give Up” – Ben Gibbard is part of Death Cab For Cutie, one of those indie mainstream acts whose shirts get featured in Hot Topic, songs get on lots of soundtracks and magazine reviewers love to crow about (or bag on, depending on the phase of the moon) but who don’t get on the radio or MTV much. Gibbard’s interesting but ultimately disappointing side project is The Postal Service. The music was constructed from bits of electronic mishmash and the songs were collaborated on by Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello via tracks mailed back and forth between Seattle and LA. Perhaps they were trying to do something a bit catchier than the notoriously grim DCFC and achieve real pop success, perhaps they were just interested in messing around. Whatever the case it ends up sounding more like the latter than the former. Aside from the standout single “Such Great Heights” (see also Iron & Wine’s brilliant and unintentionally ironic cover for an equally good but drastically different rendition) most of the songs here are un-catchy and while technically intriguing, the sum of the parts is somehow less than the promise of an “indie supergroup.” “We Will Become Silhouettes” gives probably the next best listen, but it’s a distant second to “Heights” and other tracks have flashes of brilliance but the collaborative process makes for a better story than a song and the end result is overproduced mush whose too-light electronic beats betray pop aspirations and whose meandering vocals (and bizarrely misplaced backing vocals) aren’t nearly as interesting as Gibbard wishes they were.
• As I Lay Dying “Frail Words Collapse” – I don’t mean to mislead you; while I listen to a lot of indie rock (see above), I have other musical interests as well. As I Lay Dying is death metal, plain and simple. They feature lead screamer Tim Lambesis going from a gutteral snarl to a wailing shriek over intensive double kick drums, grinding guitars and tempos that threaten whiplash. But As I Lay Dying is different than your typical death metal band growling about war or context-less violence; Lambesis is a spiritual guy and he sings about his struggles with love, God and hope. You can’t really call As I Lay Dying a Christian band (although magazine articles have characterized them as such); their lyrics are not overt enough to specifically not be about human relationships but the sentiments are, according to Lambesis, often originally directed toward God and the juxtaposition is obviously one that suits As I Lay Dying just fine. Chances are you’d have to read along in the liner notes a few times to catch what he’s growling anyway, but doing so provides surprisingly thoughtful sentiments and the delivery is masterful for this type of music. But the music is where it really happens. These are hook-y, dense riffs played at blistering speeds with only a few oases between (“Behind Me Lies Another Fallen Soldier”) when the band shows a hint of restraint and manages to weave in some softer textures, a feat that in turn makes the inevitable return to form that much heavier. As I Lay Dying inject melody into their metal, something that is irrelevant to their spiritual beliefs and allows “Frail Words Collapse” to avoid being an unexpected crossover aberration and transcend into punishingly beautiful metal. If you’re into that sort of thing.
• Imperial Teen “On” – Classifying music is always a dicey proposition, especially when it comes to music that isn’t Top 40 material. It’s easy to call heavy rotation tunes and artists who frequent weekend morning countdown radio shows and MTV (when they bother to play videos) “pop” because, well, they are popular. But indie fans like to use the term pop as a descriptor to indicate that some album or band employs the use of melodies and arrangements that would be popularly accessible, should they be given sufficient airplay or marketing muscle. So for lack of a better term you can safely assume that Imperial Teen’s “On” is a pop album, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that they’re in the same vein as Jessica Simpson. “On” is not complex, it’s full of simple but catchy tunes with dumb but not insipid lyrics that serve mostly to drive the clever and classic vocal lines sung by committee in old school boy/girl style. At times one almost imagines that Imperial Teen is what the Mamas and the Papas may have been, if they’d grown up on steady diet of The Pixies and ABBA. It works, and while “On” isn’t going to be one of those life-altering albums that allows for a deeper insight into the human condition, it is good for cranking loud with the windows down on a summer day, and sometimes that’s as deep as I care to go.

Been a while since I posted some random links. Think I might do just that.

• Some dude did some Photoshop work and came up with a sweet gallery of FPS-style pictures.
• Blockbuster is moaning about their profit loss, citing Hollywood’s inability to produce a flick worthy of their sky-high standards and online competitors. They don’t mention, I notice, their utter lack of regard for customer service.
• In good… er, news… Google News now has RSS and Atom feeds. Spiffy.

I feel myself drifting away from video games.

Call it a between-console-generation lull, call it the belated maturation of a stubborn man-child, it may or may not be a permanent drift, but it is nonetheless real and it is significant. Video games have been a staple interest in my life since… well, practically for as long as I can remember. From my earliest memories of Chuck E. Cheese’s dimly lit arcades to the hours spent in front of my brother’s NES to my well-chronicled passion for XBox, Counter-Strike and Game Boy Advance, being a gamer is part of who I am.

Or rather, it was, until about eight months ago. The last game I played from start until completion was Resident Evil 4 earlier this year. I’ve managed to play maybe a total of eight hours worth of video games since then and not for lack of spare time but for lack of real interest. None of the new portable consoles (PSP, Nintendo DS, Gizmondo) really interest me and while there are some far-off titles that have me vaguely intrigued (Zelda: Twilight Princess) nothing that is currently out or slated to be released soon holds much more than passing interest, if any.

What’s going on here?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I think I’ve narrowed down the problems that plague my enjoyment of my once favored pastime to five things the video game industry is doing wrong and one thing that I’ve done that has no bearing on anything else other than to redirect my attentions elsewhere. I guess I’ll start with that to get it out of the way.

0. Non-Video Gaming

My recent fascination with war gaming has probably more than a little to do with my reduced time with a controller lately. When you have 3,000 points of Warhammer 40K and 1,500 points of Warmaster plus three teams of Blood Bowl and a sack o’ Napoleonic minis to assemble, prime and paint that tends to suck up the free hours. This is not a complaint, merely an observation.

I might also observe before moving on to more interesting points that war gaming has provided me with a lot of the things that I feel are missing from video games, such as tolerable (enjoyable even) human interaction, strategic gameplay and creative involvement. Plus, hour for hour, I’d wager the two are comprable in terms of cost which probably explains why one had to wane for the other to flourish.

But my vide gaming hours being spent elsewhere doesn’t explain why that even when I do want for some downtime in painting, sanding, gluing and sculpting I don’t automatically reach for a controller any more. The reasons for that are in fact more due to what I see as failings on the part of the video game industry as a whole.

1. Stupid Human Interaction

I may be accused of assaulting a fallen equine here, but while the proliferation of online gaming is in my mind a Good Thing, it has so often taken the form of player versus player that the aspect has become synonymous with the whole. Don’t get me wrong, competitive online play certainly has its place and some games are ideally suited to it. The problem is that it has so overshadowed the cooperative possibilities inherent in online games that there have only been a handful of games which even bother to explore the possibility. Those that do (Full Spectrum Warrior, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory) do so in a way that betrays the lack of experience developers have in getting players to work together to achieve a common goal which typified competitive online gaming of ten years ago.

Games which sorely need cooperative play (hello, Halo 2) ignore it and games which could be developed with cooperation as a primary means are, as near as I can tell, never given a chance to see the light of day. I assume that game manufacturers are operating under the assumption that modern gamers don’t want cooperative modes in their games, and perhaps gamers themselves perpetuate this. The problem here is that gamers who feel they wouldn’t be interested in cooperative games don’t realize that a lot of the problems they complain about in player versus player (annoying opponents, unfair matchmaking engines, repetitive gameplay) would nearly disappear with strictly cooperative games.

In fact, many competitive games which have enjoyed a great deal of success incorporate passing nods to cooperation that suggest working together is not something players have no interest in: Witness Counter-Strike which more or less perfected team-based (nee cooperative) competition. Also note the extremely popular versus mode in the latest two Splinter Cell games in which two teammates work against an opposing pair. These hybrid type games (and their accompanying popularity) suggest that they are drawing from both the inherent fun of working with a friend (who may not even be in the same hemisphere) and the standard means of challenge of working against a thinking human foe, when in fact there is nothing being drawn from on the team-up side of the coin, and what should be half of a well-matched pairing is relegated to a novel concept due to nothing more than lack of previous example.

2. Misplaced Focus

I am impressed with modern graphics engines.

OK?

Now enough. Nintendo head honchos came under a lot of fire when the next generation consoles were being discussed because they started a mantra that went something like: “We’re not trying to produce the machine that generates the most whizz-bang graphics. We’re trying to produce a machine that generates the most fun.”

I have to applaud that sentiment, and loudly. I’m a graphics junkie as much as the next guy, but gorgeous visuals is really a small piece of the overall fun of a game. Observe The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Most of the graphics in that game could be produced, at least passably, by previous generation machines. The game was pleasant to look at, sure, but it was fun because it was deep and engrossing and simply a hoot and half to play through. Combat mechanics were precise, the puzzles were challenging but not frustrating, the story was interesting and the secondary elements (music, mini-games, controls, level design) were superb.

Now look at a game like Final Fantasy X, a gorgeous game by all rights… but a gorgeous mess. The digitized acting was cornball, the battle system was tedious and dull, the gameplay was stale and static, the level design was focused more on looking nice than being navigable. I wonder if the people who claimed to like the game were actually enjoying the game or enjoying their sightseeing trip sometimes.

I play some Nethack on occasion. We’re talking about a game that uses ASCII characters to represent a fantasy dungeon crawl. When the letter Z can inspire fear, there may be some decent gameplay happening. What Nethack gets absolutely, positively right is that it is deep… crazy deep. It’s frustrating, aggravating and endlessly enjoyable because you can do so much. Learning the game is part of playing. Chatting about the game is part of playing. Complaining about the game is a huge part of playing and it doesn’t get old. Sure it uses randomized dungeon maps to help keep things fresh, but a simplistic game with a randomizer wouldn’t be any fun, so they gave you so much to do you could play the game—just the first level mind you—for a year and probably never do everything possible. It’s a game whose source code is less than four megabytes; we have DVD-ROM games capable of holding over ten times that amount and we fill it up with licensed pop tunes and mammoth textures and don’t bother to worry about whether the game is any fun.

At this point in time I should have to be impressed when a game like Fable lets me change my appearance with age and experience. That sort of innovation should have happened long before reflective surfaces in quarter panels and ragdoll physics. I want a role-playing experience that is actually role-playing, that gives me a chance to develop how I want and achieve goals in clever ways without being tied to a rail for the sake of a few cutscenes.

3. The Funnel Factor

I have the sense that while game developers are busy seeing how sweet they can make their graphics look, they are ignoring the role of game designer to the extent that they are becoming like Hollywood in terms of originality.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not one of those people who bashes sequels just for being sequels. At least, unlike in the movies, video game sequels are often superior to their predecessors because usually (hopefully?) a good game gets refined and has a few mechanical defects tweaked and improved in later versions. But a sequel of a First Person Shooter at this point is just another First Person Shooter.

Because so many developers don’t want to have to come up with an original way to play a game, they continually fall back into a tired cliche until the number of genres in video games is funneled into a handful. Shooters (First Person), Strategy (Real Time), Platformer (Devil May Cry-style or Grand Theft Auto-style), Racing (Driving), Role-Playing (Full Motion Video-fest): any license or concept has been shoehorned into one of these styles or, if the developers are feeling really nutso that week, multiple genres.

I understand that there are limitations (odd as that sounds) with 3D. Cameras become a problem in three dimensional environments, field of vision and scope of action have to be considered. Controls are tricky, too, because 3D implies realism and while old sprite-based games might have gotten away with some abstraction of controls 3D gamers assume that controls will function in a way that is consistent with a world that, relatively speaking, operates under the same rules as their own.

But the problem with funneling all games into a handful of genres is that they begin to define the limits of what should be a more or less limitless medium. Instead of finding cool game concepts and building worlds and stories into and around that, people think of genres and find minor tricks and tweaks to set them apart that will fit with the theme of the day. Games have started to become detail-tweaks with every one subgenred down into their minutiae with literal differences such as “stealth action like Splinter Cell… but with camoflauge!” Is this the extent of the originality game developers have left? When individual death animations for each type of foe is a selling point, I’ve already halfway checked out. Wake me when someone does something worth mentioning.

What happened to turn-based games? Why does strategy have to be “real time?” Why are all massive role-playing games online multiplayer? Doesn’t anyone see the appeal of a massive solo campaign? Maybe a small-band cooperative online role-playing game? And I don’t just want to see top-down racers or even a return to 2D games, necessarily. Show me something unique; something that has a cool concept or a great license that doesn’t do something stupid with it. When Shadowrun is a first-person shooter, something is seriously wrong.

4. It’s the Writers, Stupid

Games have gotten more complex. I’ll give them that. Sometimes, complex is better. Sometimes complex can suggest the ability to delve into artistic realms. I don’t know if I believe it has happened yet, but I think that at some point games could be considered art.

I know it isn’t just games (watched any TV lately?) but writing is bad all around—and as bad as it is in movies and on TV, it’s 20 times worse in games. Writing dialogue and stories for games needs to not be something that just the mega-budget games can afford (or something that mega-budget games horribly abuse). Games need to all be given the benefit of a native-language speaking writer who actually knows how to write stuff. Ideally, it would be someone who knows how to write games. At least someone who understands the mindset of the gamer so we don’t end up with crossovers gone awry.

Movies are expensive. They cost about $9.00 per person around here for non-matinee showings and I grumble for days if I pay for a movie with crummy writing. Video games cost an average of $50. The math is yours to do if you wish, but anything past the price of a badly written hardcover book is too much to pay for this kind of thing.

5. Pushin’ Forward Back

My final beef with video games is games that continue to make mistakes that should have been resolved as soon as the technology or the innovation to correct them appeared. I’m talking about things like save-anywhere. Really, in today’s day and age of gargantuan quantities of dirt cheap disk space, games that require you to “find a stopping point” don’t deserve shelf space in the bargain aisle of Jimmy’s Vid Shack. People are busy, adults with responsibilities play games too, let us save where we are and come back later. No, I don’t want to collect save crystals or typewriter ribbons: I want to save where I am exactly and come back to the same point when I have time. No backtracking, no save-of-doom, no hassle.

This same concept can be applied to entire games such as the Tomb Raider series who, in spite of ever shrinking sales from gameplay that was broken by way of overexposure, continued to be rehashes of the previous games for years. Reluctant kudos go to Resident Evil 4’s design team for finally doing something about the oft-maligned “tank walker” control scheme of the previous games, but it certainly shouldn’t have taken five games to get the clue. I have yet to see a Tomb Raider game that does anything TR2 didn’t. Oh, I’m sorry, is it still possible to defeat a skilled Soul Calibur player with some random button mashing? Wow, that’s some great fun there—and a real incentive to practice, too!

Let Me Explain. No, There is Too Much. Let Me Sum Up.

I suppose that at some point I will probably find a new system or game or something that will attract my attention again. Perhaps I will one day be complaining as much about war gaming as I am now about video gaming. But with so many games being showcases for some 3D artist’s portfolio instead of something I really want to spend my time playing, I have a hard time wondering if I’ll have to wait a long time for video games to catch up to my expectations or if at some point I’ll just have to lower them to make do.

In the meantime, I’m keeping busy and while I’m not sure if I’m excited yet for the new systems to launch, I’m still open to trying a great game that flies below the radar and gets a lot of this stuff right. Got any ideas? I’m listening.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I went to bed last night no better in mood or disposition than I had been upon my arrival at home from work. My headache had subsided only momentarily and even a relaxing swim in the pool and a tasty root beer float from Jack in the Box hadn’t stopped my mind from wandering to the pending workday and the hassles it would contain. Normally I am not the type to concern myself with work when I am not physically there; this week has been different and it’s lasting effect has been to drain my leisure time of delight. I resent work in general as a result.

This morning came and despite better intentions, I slapped at the snooze alarm several more times than is typical. I dragged through my routine, feeling lethargic and unmotivated, still plagued by the nagging headache. My inevitable tardiness, a product of succumbing to my doldrums, did little to lift my spirits. As anticipated, the load of work that stood before me was daunting and I felt the throbbing in my forehead intensify several levels as I reviewed it. I had run over a piece of construction equipment on the ride over, so I retreated from my cube to examine my car for tire/body damage. While the car seemed okay the inspection process made my head worse and I realized almost simultaneously that I had left my keys inside on my desk and I had forgotten to bring anything to eat for breakfast (nor had I eaten at home because of my belated and last-minute dash to compensate for my sluggish morning preparations).

Walking the long way round to the front of the building my shoes got wet in the freshly watered grass and by the time I returned to my workspace I was so close to confronting my boss and requesting the day off I had my Windows PC powered off.

Then, I saw this.

Glee.

Okay, okay, I’ll admit that I’m almost thrilled to see that Apple is finally producing a multi-button mouse. Yet I’m still skeptical about the scroll wheel/trackball thing; I’m reserving full judgment until I try it out (thanks, Apple Stores!). My biggest gripe is that they don’t have a bluetooth model. What’s up with that? Granted the wired one would work fine with my iBook (on which I did not opt to include the bluetooth module) and possibly replace my RF-but-still-takes-a-USB-slot wireless mouse that I think is either broken or perhaps just the biggest battery hog this side of the PSP but either way is a right pain in the sitter. That still doesn’t help the situation with the mini where it has bluetooth capability but for now surrenders a USB port to a wired optical mouse that sits on one of those sliding keyboard trays.

It sounds like a decent setup except that when the tray is pushed all the way in (as I usually keep it when I’m in the room but doing something else like painting miniatures), if I need to just do a quick something with the mouse, its cord is trapped between the tray and the back of the desk, rendering it immobile. You’d think the situation wouldn’t come up that often but it does so enough that I’ve kicked the desk in frustration more than once.

Let me tell you, when you’re wearing flip-flops, kicking a desk is not pleasant.

So hey, Apple, for feet’s sake, get it together.

That is all.

I am looking for a companion to accompany me to a show I dare not miss: The Download Festival which features not only The Killers, but Modest Mouse and The Arcade Fire. If I have to explain why that is significant, consider yourself uninterested and ignore this entire post.

I already have a reluctant offer from Nik to go along for the proverbial ride, but I think both of us would prefer if someone who appreciates these particular bands would volunteer to join me. Tickets went on sale yesterday; I have no idea how quickly they may go but consider it well within your best interest to notify me soon if you are interested.

Don’t be alarmed; I return only to perform some badly needed maintenance/updates and post the previous snippet from this weekend’s family reunion on Nikki’s dad’s side out in Lake Tahoe (a place I had never been before and enjoyed quite a bit). I should also explain the Current Coolness which depicts a 2005 Honda Civic. No, I haven’t become one of those street-racer geeks or anything, but we did purchase a sensible new car a couple of weeks ago and for the first time in about four years Nik and I both have our own means of transportation!

Needless to say this is quite a development and aside from the fact that it has left us essentially broke, we have both enjoyed our freedom from the previously ceaseless juggling act of picking ups and dropping offs that so influenced our lives.

I continue to make no promises regarding my frequency of posts. I command you to accept what you are offered and consider it sufficient! I, on the other hand, will now return to sipping my Diet Pepsi and Minute Maid Light Lemonade mixture—a secret delight whose exact formula can never be revealed.

Kindly disregard my rudeness; it seems that absence has made me surly and my manner has descended to that of a savage from my lack of exposure to society proper. I shall attempt to re-enter your world slowly and in measured doses, so as not to frighten your children any further than they may already be.

Walking into the casino was like having my retinas physically assaulted by neon. The gaudy overuse of the brightly colored lights was offensive in the way that garbage trucks early in the morning are offensive: You may realize that they serve an underlying purpose, but it is of absolutely no condolence.

I originally assumed that, being a Gamer, casinos would sort of appeal to me. Ostensibly these gambling establishments are filled to the brim with games. What separates the games in a casino from games in an arcade should, by all accounts, merely be reward and perhaps price point. This is patently false. Instead of an emporium filled with low-cost games of skill, the games instead were completely chance based and high in price.

I suppose your standard video game could be accurately described as a sort of no-win casino game. You put money in, you fiddle with it for a bit and eventually you are left with only a vague sense of “entertainment” and less money than you had upon entry. The key difference is that with video games in arcades there is at least a passing nod given to user input and control. While the reality of arcade games may be creating the illusion that your skill at playing the game influences how long you get to enjoy it, at least that illusion is given some effort. The contrasting games of chance that are slot machines and video poker involve nothing more than zombie-like pressing of buttons and hope.

Hope in a casino is a strange beast. I observed enthusiastic clusters of people, dressed in their “night-on-the-town” finest and often displaying either too much skin or a repulsively flashy display of personal wealth (sorely misused). These people, upon entering the casino floor, were full of hope. They smiled and laughed and danced and nearly vibrated with excitement. The same exact groups would return to their rooms or cars later that same evening slouched, dizzy, confused and perhaps angry, searching vainly for something or someone to blame for their misfortune.

I like games because they entertain me in a way that makes the aspects of my person which I most value come to the forefront: Reflex, quickness of thought, creativity, strategy, planning, cunning, intelligence. On occasion (recently more than in the past) I even enjoy a physical contest. But while there are different games that challenge these different aspects (or different combinations thereof) games in casinos challenge only the mental fortitude to press on through a daunting onslaught of desperation. The more money one spends on a game that is dictated solely by chance and probability for maximized profit margins the higher that desperation climbs until it eventually becomes unbearable. For some I guess that point extends far past the point where genuine entertainment ceases.

But not for me.

The first night Nik and I lost a grand total of $5 in an hour. The second night we won a total of $6 and change in about an hour and a half. The term “High Rollers” is so inappropriate to describe our disposition in that environment that I occasionally feared being asked to remove ourselves and frequent another establishment. Where a couple who embodied our living antonym might be given a free room and any number of cost-free amenities for their free spending ways, we were—I felt—in constant danger of being tackled by security and dragged off the premises on the grounds of being entirely too cheap to warrant continued existence on their property.

In truth I was more than a little relieved that of my two baser instincts (that of being drawn to games of all sorts and that of being close to criminally tightfisted) my frugality won out every time. At no point did I ever put more than a quarter into any single spin/round/play and the few occasions that I did so caused the tendons in the back of my neck to tighten uncomfortably to the point where my neck involuntarily craned up toward the burning neon and blinded me. I may have won on several of those occasions, but I’ll never know as I would have spent the whole time shielding my eyes from the burning blindness.

I was ultimately able to apply some logic to my unanticipated (but wholly welcome!) apathy toward casino gaming by categorizing gambling games into two types: Those in which my internal cheapskate was able to justify participation that ultimately could only be categorized as “mindless diversion” and not any kind of game at all (slot machines, etc.) and those which may be more legitimate games but I would never entertain the notion of active involvement due to the extraordinarily high cost of entry ($5 minimum bet Blackjack, for example).

Frequently I catch myself engaging in a kind of internal mathematics where the things I am contemplating or presented with that require monetary commitment are plugged into algebraic formulas designed to equate the current scenario with alternate scenarios where the sum totals are equivalent or at least very nearly so.

For example, a $5 minimum bet Blackjack hand would last approximately 0.937 seconds and cost (obviously) five dollars. For five United States dollars and access to a functioning Ms. Pac-Man machine, I could be entertained for up to two hours. Comparing two hours of enjoyment with the statistical improbability of winning, what—$20? is something that my brain does not compute. Even trying to reason that with Ms. Pac-Man there is literally no chance of making a return on the $5 investment, I still feel that had I known of a decent video game arcade in the vicinity of the casino we visited I would have gladly exchanged the extra dollar I walked away with for two and a half hours of Galaga-based carpal tunnel damage.

You may have noticed I have been “absent” lately. Probably, you didn’t notice at all.

I read an article just now which I think managed to summarize why. I won’t link to it because its presentation was crude and vulgar, but the point was sharp and something I needed to hear. It comes down to this:

I’ve drifted from ironSoap (and writing in general) because there is too much that I want to say that I’m not comfortable publishing.

You may have noticed big gaps in posting dates. This may indicate to you that I’m exceptionally busy or procrastinating. That is not the case. Instead I have written and subsequently deleted without posting at least five lengthy posts. All of them contained some variation of the qualifier, “I can’t be any more specific about this here…” What purpose is the expression of ideas and thoughts if they have to be carefully monitored for potentially trouble-causing slips?

There are no deep, dark secrets being kept here. I don’t mean to pique anyone’s curiosity or feed an appetite for scandal. It’s mostly work stuff; people have been fired for writing about their jobs so I’ve always tried to keep my work out of my writings. But that’s what’s on my mind, that’s what I want to talk about and when I can’t I find it nearly impossible to be vague enough or to think of something else to say. It’s just not how I function.

I also have gotten to where I worry about what I’m writing being good enough, interesting enough or well-written enough to pass some kind of internal litmus test of postability. Doing that has sucked the fun out of keeping my site updated and now I can’t remember how to stop.

The article called this “blogger burn-out” and that’s what it is. I’m burnt out on this and it wasn’t something that was done to me it is a response to my own reactions to several years of posting. Which doesn’t mean I’ve stopped writing altogether. I’ve been working on a campaign for the guys I play Warhammer 40K with, making up rules and scenarios. I’ve been chatting more on IRC and IM with friends. I’ve written a lot of email. I’ve also been talking to people, like in real life with faces and expressions and everything.

This is not the end. Probably. Maybe this is a beginning. I don’t know. I do know that I’m tired of writing here about writing here. I won’t bother anymore until—or perhaps if—I have something I actually want to write about. Until then, adieu. My inbox is always open.

I didn’t see the hotel until I was already past the exit off highway 101, which runs along the San Francisco peninsula from San Jose to the Golden Gate bridge. I grimaced and pulled to the far right lane, hoping for a close second chance exit. Millbrae Boulevard is next, but it is about another mile down the road. The area is new to me, so pulling off and rounding onto a residential street (not a frontage road; inlets from the Bay run alongside 101 to the east) I was a bit anxious that the surface streets back south wouldn’t be a straight shot to my destination.

Four-day weekends are a rarity in the cube-dwelling universe. Usually when they happen a Significant Holiday is taking place which translates more often than not into plans being made with only partial consent of all parties involved. For once my alternating schedule of Fridays on and Fridays off had meshed with a fairly innocuous Monday-falling federal holiday and the result was four days without work. I hadn’t squandered the days; in the span from Thursday night to Monday evening I had planned a dinner with Dr. Mac, HB and , Ryan‘s wedding, some work for Bosslady; some quality time with Nik and, of course, KublaCon with Lister.

Kublacon was to be my second gaming convention. My first had been back in February where I had sort of re-entered the world of tabletop gaming after a long stint where my gamer tendencies had been forced to subsist on video gaming alone. My experience then had taught me things about myself, but more importantly it had been fun. Enjoyment is something I strive for; I have a valued opinion that too many people settle for activities that are only marginally interesting to them and then spend a lot of time complaining about how bored they are. Boredom is my arch nemesis. I feel life is too short to sit around wanting for something else to do so when I find something I like, I go for it.

The Hyatt Regency near the San Francisco airport is a tall, circular building surrounding an enclosed atrium, high windows stretching from the ninth floor down to the lobby level which splits into a dining atrium area and a convention or ballroom floor below. Already late from a stop to examine a broken server, I hurried in, lugging my backpack overloaded with heavy game manuals, dice and binders stuffed with graph paper. I descended the steps from the registration area and lobby to the ballroom foyer where the convention staff had set up their registration tables.

I am apt, in situations like this, to merely find the closest line that has formed and get into it before completely surveying the situation. Typically this results in me being in the wrong line, but one of these days I will select the correct line first and be halfway through before I realize I’ve accidentally done myself a favor. In this case, I’m not in the right line since I’ve pre-registered so I ducked out and wandered up to the alphabetized pre-reg table and was handed a bag with a convention book, a name badge on a shoddy lanyard and had a bright orange plastic wristband wrapped around my left arm. I was instructed to keep the band on for the duration of the convention, which is going to be interesting since I need to depart the convention at one point to attend a wedding and I’m not sure this gaudy orange is really going to make a great accessory for formal, wedding-appropriate attire.

I’m supposed to be meeting Lister here, so I begin to bumble around the convention areas, trying to keep an eye out for my friend. You might think that a guy like Lister, who stands probably 6′ 2″ or more and has a linebacker’s build, would be fairly easy to find. I suppose that may be true in a typical crowd, but gaming conventioneers are not typical in any way. Aside from the full-costumed LARPers and dozens of interesting games being played in the open gaming area, the Dealer’s room which is adjacent to the open gaming tables and will later be cordoned off with massive partitions set into ceiling tracks and it emits a steady beacon of hypnotizing energy that draws me in and keeps my head down and eyes locked on thousands of bargains, homebrews and rare imported games of all shapes and types. It is difficult to search for someone when you see three end-to-end tables stacked with polyhedral dice of all shapes and colors.

Eventually I am able to build up a tolerance to the retail floor and I began to walk the convention rooms, up and down several halls poking my head into various rooms, mostly full of staff preparing for the weekend’s games. Some of the rooms look interesting and I find myself getting distracted again. I had to make at least three complete circuits of the Atrium and Lobby levels before I finally saw Lister across the room in the beckoning Dealer’s area, and after a bit of maneuvering through the growing crowd I managed to make contact and exchange greetings.

My travels around the convention areas hadn’t even touched on all the places where games were being held or would be held. After a brief stop in Lister’s room to collect Whimsy and one of Lister’s gaming buddies (Audrick), we headed back downstairs to see about getting into a game of Necromunda. The miniatures gaming area had some impressive (and some decidedly non-impressive) terrain boards set up, but no obvious place to play our game. With a shrug we wandered back into the open gaming area where we all fell under the spell of the seller’s wares.

Less than half an hour later we had probably dropped $400 between the four of us. I had found a copy of Blood Bowl boxed set for $40 cheaper than retail, completely new and unopened. Lister located a fistful of historical games and assorted boxed sets on sale and Audrick had gone nuts with some impressive looking games including Twilight Imperium, a gigantic box which looked to be a sort of SF space-setting Axis and Allies. He also picked up a French game in a wooden box called Master Thief.

We ambled over to the open gaming area and tried Master Thief. The game is something like the kid’s card game Memory, with some interesting play mechanics and a very nice presentation including a wooden drawer box, plastic gems and velvety gem pillows. Each turn the players choose a different role (Smuggle, Jeweler, Master Thief, Detective, etc.) which determines the play order. Each role has a different action they can perform on the 12-drawer box. Some can put gems into the box, others can take gems out of the box. Most players can twist the box’s levels (think Rubik’s Cube) or flip the box over. Each drawer has two sides so the idea is to open a drawer with jewels on the appropriate side for whichever role you’re playing. The game is pretty fun and didn’t seem to be overly hard core, so I imagine that even casual gamers could really enjoy it. It certainly looks impressive and we got more than a few passerby stopping and remarking on the game.

The next game I was involved in was Twilight Imperium. When I thought the game was like Axis and Allies, I was wrong. This game is far more complex than that. It took us at least an hour and a half to get through the first turn (from set up to the end) and the next two turns weren’t much quicker. After more than three hours of playing we seemed to finally be getting a rhythm down, but the hour was advancing and we wanted to get in a big ol’ game of Warhammer 40K before exhaustion overtook us. I think I’d like to try the game again when enough time is available to complete the entire thing but my initial impression is that the beginning stages of the game are kind of slow. It plays in many ways like a board game RTS, with resource management and a lot of advance preparation before any real war maneuvers or tricky diplomacy can get off the ground. Perhaps it is different with other races being played or when each turn doesn’t take an hour due to unfamiliarity, I don’t know.

Our game of 40K was epic: The unlikely alliance of Space Marines and Chaos versus a massive force of Necrons complete with monstrous C’Tan and a huge Monolith. It was 5:00 am before we got back to our rooms and we’d only made it through turn three. I don’t think the Necrons would have managed to avoid one of their special rules which makes them the automatic loser if they are reduced to 25% of their original forces, but Strahd (our Necron-playing buddy) gave it a serious go.

The next morning began early. The annoying whine of the hotel alarm clock roused me at a quarter to ten, giving me fifteen minutes to prepare for the Blood Bowl tournament that promised to take up most of the day. I wandered down the stairs, trying to avoid the bottleneck of the single bank of elevators which simply could not accommodate the comings and goings of that many gamers in a reasonable amount of time. The stairs led, oddly, down into the employee’s area. I wandered the back hallways, past break rooms and laundry services, eventually finding my way to the kitchens before turning back and trying the other way.

Walking through the cold hallways which had not been given the same luxurious facades as the public-facing areas, I regarded the concrete walls with their chipping green paint marking obscure directions with unspecific arrows. The passing employees barely cast me an eye, hurrying with their duties to make the day pass quicker. I finally found my way back to the lobby level, opening a pair of swinging doors into the calm chaos of a hotel in the midst of a convention crowd. The dull hum of voices blended with the crash of dishes and food preparation in the atrium cafe. The gurgle of water in the decorative fountain/waterfall was nearly drowned by the din of squeaking luggage cart wheels, the clatter of dice on a table and the ding of elevator direction lights.

A young man passed by in a loose shirt and breeches, three hefty leather buckles of his boots held the hem of his pants tightly against his shins and his greasy hair pulled back into a pony tail bobbed as he strode with a purpose borne of defiant self-awareness. Unlike the previous con where I struggled with the outward geekiness of the fellow convention goers, I almost didn’t notice him. Just another gamer here to enjoy the entertainment, to try and have some blasted fun between long stretches of responsibility, dull work and uninteresting requirements. I gave him a quick smile and a tiny nod of my head. He didn’t react much.

Down at the Blood Bowl tournament I came very close to defeating Lister. I played with Strahd’s High Elves in a stripped down variation (Blood Bowl 7’s) of the game and after launching to a quick 2-0 lead mostly due to Lister’s poor dice rolling, he crept back with some better strategy and a fortunate last-second touchdown run to end the first half. By the end of the second half we were locked up 2-2.

My team took a heavy beating in the sudden death overtime, dropping four players out of the game before turn 6. With less than half a team and only two turns to go before a chance to get them back, Lister pulled off another of his incredible last-minute runs to score the winning TD.

Down in the loser’s bracket, I played against another High Elf team (which he informed me was something of a rarity). He mopped me up. The final score was 5-1, but it really wasn’t even that close. I rolled and played poorly and every time I could possibly have rolled some way to help myself, I rolled the opposite way. By the end of the match I had one player left on the field, two dead and gone, one out for the next game and one who had been permanently removed from the game in the first half. Somehow I still really enjoyed it, in spite of the savage beating.

Down and out of the tournament I wandered the Dealer’s area again quickly and found a booster for my new Blood Bowl team (Orks) at a ridiculously low price and packed up to go. I found out later that Lister had won the tournament in the end, and since I had come fairly close to beating him, it helped soften the trouncing I took in game 2. As I bid adieu to the players and my friends, I left feeling exhausted but enthused. A fun weekend that wasn’t over yet, and I still had a whole day of relaxing to look forward to. I spent Monday hanging with Nik. We took a walk in the warm—finally summer-like—afternoon sun, watched lots of TV and DVDs and enjoyed a rare down day.

It is rare enough to find one day of pure fun, and rarer I find the older I get. How uncommon then, to find four days without worry or hassle and filled with fun and friends and family. I often feel that I forget to notice the high points of my life as they happen, forcing me to live in retrospect of happier times and wishing I’d paid more attention then. Today, after over half a week of high points, I’m happy still, and appreciating now.

Now, who’s up for a game?

I took my time returning from the laundry room. The day’s scorching heat had eased into a pleasantly warm twilight and as the sun sunk and its light dimmed, I felt my spirits rise. My thoughts danced around plans for the weekend, the chores back at home that my casual stroll was intended to prolong and the random weirdness of mind-wandering free association.

The winding pathway between the laundry and my apartment passes several banks of doorways to other apartments in the complex. In one I have seen an older Middle Eastern couple, usually the woman, sitting or standing on their second-floor balcony and watching the world pass. Now I noticed them sitting in a semi-circle with a younger man, maybe their son, on the cool grass in front of their staircase. Their position didn’t strike me as particularly odd; plenty of people were out and enjoying the first decent indication of summer after a long, wet and rather chilly spring.

I regarded the small group, chatting idly, without much active notice. Their exact origin was uncertain; my ability to identify regional characteristics for my own race is limited, for others it is more so. I blame ignorance, although I have also never made it a priority to identify people based on their physical attributes: If a man is dark skinned, my concern as to whether his origin be Nigeria or British Columbia is middling; it shouldn’t matter where a person appears to originate, this age of globalized transportation has necessitated a sort of pseudo-nationalism rather than a firm one. It hardly matters most of the time in any case.

My casual gaze was suddenly met by the younger man. our eyes locked for a moment. Reflexively, I smiled and my head gave a slight nod. It was nothing special to me, a simple courtesy greeting to someone I had never seen before and assumed I would never see again. But that one brief smile sparked a chain reaction that I cannot shake from my mind.

In response to my passing acknowledgment, the young man broke into a very wide, toothy grin filled with exuberance. He nodded heavily, head back and then tossed down until his chin touched the front of his soft cotton tunic. His sitting mates turned and though I recognized them from around the complex, they—for the first time—smiled and nodded. My small smile cracked wider at the display of sudden joy I felt from them, and though I was still walking past them and they were soon at my back, my grin remained long past them and around the corner into the parking area in front of our building.

As I mounted the steps to our second-story apartment, the young man’s reaction to my common gesture stuck in my mind. I tried to imagine why he would seem so excited to be simply smiled at. I wondered if perhaps, after 9/11, he maybe hadn’t seen many people smile when he met their eyes. Maybe he had grown accustomed to seeing distrust and fear behind the worried glances of accidental eye contact before the gaze quickly darted away. Perhaps it had been a long time since he had seen a smile from a stranger. I supposed, on the other hand, that this man could simply be a kind and happy soul—the kind of person for whom life is always sunny and whose toothy grin is something of a permanent fixture. Maybe my simple nod and quiet smile hadn’t offered any reassurance but had merely started a common reaction he relied on often to show friendliness. It could simply be that his casual acknowledgment of me was just more overstated than mine of him.

It occurred to me that it didn’t ultimately matter. All I knew was that this man’s happy response to a thoughtless gesture had reminded me of how often I pass by people and give them a cold and unfeeling stare. I remembered the times when my smiles didn’t come because of some internal issue or laziness or apathy and my fellow humans were left to bask in the icy glare of problems they had no part in. How many times had I been the averted glance, the sketchy look or the uncomfortable stare? How often was I the non-smile that made people’s shells build that one added layer of cynicism and mistrust?

This one moment, probably meaningless to the man and his companions, reminded me of the power of the one brief smile, the quick kind word, the “please” or “thank you” that wasn’t expected. Usually I live in my cocoon of cynicism and for a time I felt cynical about even that. How stupid we are for forgetting that maybe if we just let loose of the grand gestures and big, self-serving charades of charity and focused more on simple courtesy, a sadly uncommon but so simple respect for each other: warts, contrary opinions, choices and appearance completely aside to give a short chance at connection, shared through a wordless nod of head and turn of mouth to someone with nothing else in common but being here on this rock as it hurtles through space and time, revolving around a ball of fire in an infinity of blackness.

It is an odd feeling to be disheartened and uplifted simultaneously. In that moment the fate of the world seems grim and yet there is in that second a glimmer of hope that is hard to recapture and easy to forget.

I gave Nikki a hug when I came back in, we chatted for a while and as the timer in the kitchen went off I gathered the laundry basket and stepped lightly down the stairs, introspective but not unhappy. The deep blue of dusk was threatening to give way to night and the crickets were out. I passed by the smashed patch of grass, now vacant, and felt the cool evening breeze cut the humid air. I sighed. And smiled, remembering.

Nikki begins her new job today, a fact which has little bearing on the rest of what I’m going to say except that it influenced our weekend and it should influence the next few months in as much as income ever does. For the curious, she—again—works at the city on a temporary basis, although this time not in the same building as I do, and in fact not even in the same part of town. You’ll have to trust me when I say it sounds more complex than it really is.

But I was talking about the weekend. Friday was technically not an off day for me, but it was Nik’s last day before this extended assignment where she would be home so I used a bit of vacation and took advantage of the opportunity to go see Episode III. After the movie we gathered ourselves and headed out to the Bay Area to meet up with Bossman and Lady to catch a comedy show in San Francisco. We took BART, which for the unfamiliar is like a combination L-Train and Subway which travels to mostly inconvenient locations around the Bay Area until you get to San Francisco where connecting public transportation is plentiful and frequent. Somehow, I always end up walking around after taking BART to the City though and Friday I wore my Doc Martens which virtually guaranteed a hefty hike.

I’m not sure why, but every time I wear those boots I walk a bare minimum of 1.5 miles in them. It’s not that they’re uncomfortable, quite the opposite. It’s just that I don’t wear them too much so my feet aren’t exactly acclimated them.

We were going to grab dinner at the Fog City Diner, a place I’ve been curious about since I was a kid and I saw some Visa commercial featuring the place. I remember the ad for a couple of reasons: One is that it was the first ad I recall which seemed to be for one thing (the restaurant) but was actually about something else (the credit card). I remember wondering if the Fog City Diner had needed to help pay for the ad since they were so prominently featured. The other reason I remember the ad at all was its vibe; it was a local place (I’ve always felt a strange sense of ownership of San Francisco, despite the fact that I’ve never actually lived there) and I sort of assumed the Visa ad was national. It depicted a San Francisco with style, class and a bit of attitude, too. It used the Fog City Diner as a proxy for the whole town with it’s slightly snooty exterior which betrayed a caustic wit and a calculated phoniness to the whole thing which was supposed to disarm the unaccustomed but welcome those in the know. I think it tried to give San Francisco a personality and to me, as a kid, it succeeded.

When we got there I recognized the “No Crybabies” sign on the door that the commercial made a point to highlight; we arrived on the dot for our reservation and were seated quickly near the back, overlooking the Pier buildings. My first thought upon glancing at the menu was that this could be a bad scene for Nik. Her choosy palate is well documented and somehow Bosslady had gotten the impression that the menu would be more classic diner fare (like a souped-up Denny’s). The truth is that Fog City Diner serves what I’d classify as gourmet food with a diner motif. The items featured might be loosely inspired by short-order specialties, but their preparation is definitely not grease-griddled heat lamp ready. The menu is basically two parts: Small plates and large plates. The prices of each are, for a casually upscale restaurant, pretty reasonable. To the adventurous, the menu is difficult to choose from. For the choosy, difficult in a different way. Nikki went with her only real option: Hamburger and french fries. Bosslady tried a chicken dish and Bossman selected two small plates; one with Mu-Shoo Pork Burritos and the other with Fried Green Tomatoes. I went with one of the small plate specials which was Lamb Chops and Potatoes.

I used to, when trying new restaurants, look for something familiar on the menu. The problem with this is the same problem I have with ordering steak at a restaurant: I can cook my own steak just fine. In fact, I have friends who cook steak even better than I do (coughHBcough) whose steak I would far prefer to eat than some random cook in some random restaurant. As far as tasty cuisine goes, I feel like I have steak covered. Likewise, when I used to find something familiar on a new menu, the possible outcomes I had were that it could be a bad example of that particular dish, it could be a decent but unspectacular example, it could be good but not the best I’d ever had or it could be the best example of that dish, ever. Considering that 75% of my options then were to have something that was not as good as similar things I’d had before, it began to seem like a wasted opportunity to pick the hamburger from every menu.

Of course that leads to a bit of a problem with decisions since I’m not exactly decisive. So my next issue began to be the long and arduous task of trying to figure out what I wanted. Usually what I want is a little bit of everything on the menu. Since I’m not independently wealthy, that’s usually not an option so I ended up staring at a menu trying to figure out what to order far longer than the waitstaff, my dining companions and the patrons at the bar enviously eyeing my booth were comfortable with. In establishments I’ve been to frequently, this is still an issue for me. But at least I’ve figured out how to get around it with new places: I either order the special of the day or I ask the server to suggest something. I figure that way I’m less likely to choose something that the chef is sick of cooking (specialties and rotating menu items are probably more satisfying work for a cook) and chances are the restaurant isn’t going to promote something that they do poorly. Plus that way I may end up ordering something I don’t get very often, like lamb chops. Which, I might add, are delicious.

My final assessment of the Fog City Diner is that it was good; good enough that I’d be happy to go back and try something else. Nikki did enjoy her hamburger but for $11, I think she’d much rather just have Nation’s (and I can’t really blame her there) so I may need to find another person or group of people to dine with before I return. Or at least stop by a Carl’s Jr. on the way.

Anyway, after dinner we walked up Battery street to the Punchline where Nikki decided to pick a table right up against the edge of the stage. Granted it was stage right and back toward the wall, but it was still as close as you could get on that side to the stage without actually getting up on it and taking a seat. I wasn’t thrilled with this decision.

Let me briefly explain the conundrum of attention which plagues me. On one hand, I secretly desire to be noticed, to stand out in the crowd. I want people to recognize me and listen to the things I have to say, to say kind things about my wit and talent and give me pointless rewards and accolades I probably only thinly deserve. But on the other hand, I loathe being noticed. I abhor the thought of fame and typically feel that what I have to say is insipid or trite and that my witless displays of ineptitude are more likely to be pointed out than anything else. It’s this odd tug-of-war between warring sides of my personality, one being the self-assured extrovert and the other being the self-loathing introvert. Environment seems to be the determining factor over who wins: In comfortable settings I can be charming, funny and outgoing. In strange surroundings I revert to wallflower and either way I half hate myself during and afterward.

How this manifests itself in entertainment venues is that I absolutely cannot stand the thought of having attention drawn to me. For example, I love attending sports events, yet I always worry that I’ll be caught on camera, broadcast around the country with my finger two knuckles deep in my left nostril or something. Or that I’ll have a big glob of nacho cheese chilling on my chin or something. I spend the whole time in mild paranoia, trying to identify the various potential cameras and track their focus so as to avoid somehow becoming the next Internet phenomenon with a WMV file downloaded hundreds of times per second called “Nose Picking Nacho Cheese Guy” or something.

This is not a camera-shy thing only, either. The last thing I want in a crowded comedy club is for the comedian to start razzing me or asking me to come onstage for some kind of humiliating “demonstration.” Nikki didn’t think of these things ahead of time, so we sat in the front and I was jittery and nervous almost the whole time. At one point an opening act actually began ribbing the audience members across from us and front center, and Nik finally realized my points about the wisdom of her choice were valid and demanded to switch places with me. I feel a little bad for not doing it, but I can think of no worse idea to avoid notice than to start shuffling around in the middle of some joker’s act. I made her hold firm (a mild punishment for her putting us in the position to begin with, I admit) but we escaped unscathed.

The headliner, whom we were actually there to see, was Mike Birbiglia. He was as good as I’d hoped (although some of the funnier bits from his Comedy Central special were absent, at least they were replaced with equally funny new stuff) and though he digressed into an anti-Bush segment which, as expected, had mixed results he managed to be funny during so even rabid conservative Bush fans were still on the hook enough to come back when he moved on to less divisive subject matter. The opening acts were pretty dull, the first being spotty with a few really funny jokes but long stretches of snoozers and the second really just trying too hard and ultimately failing.

We had to fight some of the A’s/Giants game crowd on the way home, which we mostly managed to avoid with a clever ploy of getting on the wrong train, going up two stops and getting back on the correct train there, ahead of the game traffic so we got nice comfortable seats while the drunken sports fans stood or, more accurately, swayed.

Saturday I watched The Bridge on the River Kwai as part of my movie history lessons (a self-imposed revisitation of classic films I never saw which has been an enjoyable assignment). I liked the film, it is a nice change of pace from typical war films in that it doesn’t include a lot of arbitrary fight scenes and somehow manages to paint both main character from the British army and the main Japanese character as equally nuts. Which is to say the movie strangely lacks a traditional protagonist unless you count William Holden as Shears, which I don’t, exactly. I did think the film could have used some additional editing; a lot of the Shears subplots seemed unnecessary and distracting from the much more interesting clash of insanity between Col. Saito and Col. Nicholson. Once the mission to take out the bridge was underway it was better and appropriately suspenseful to build toward the climax. Still, a good movie and it was nice to see Alec Guiness as something other than Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Nik and I basically spent the rest of the weekend taking a break from doing anything else; the coming week promises to provide plenty of stress and we decided it would be better to enjoy some relaxation time now than race through lists of chores and cry later for our weeks without any rest. This coming weekend we have a wedding, a convention, at least two trips to the Bay Area and possibly a party to attend so there will be enjoyment if not much relaxation and in the meantime we have to attend the responsibilities we purposely delayed, a dinner, preparations for the weekend and a continuation of an arduous task which I cannot speak of in a public forum. Plus I for one have a lot of painting to do before the con so as summer finally seems to try and settle in for a few months (Sunday was particularly beautiful), the days are just packed.

I, for one, am certainly not complaining.

Episode the Third

Yes, I mentioned above that I had seen Episode III. The general consensus as I hear it is that it is the best of the prequels and while not perfect, it doesn’t completely suck which is better than nothing.

I mostly agree with this assessment. As someone who was disappointed with the other prequels but not outright hostile toward them, my perhaps surprising take on Lucas’ supposed rape of our childhoods has been less than hyperbolic. My experience has been that most of the stuff I saw as a kid and thought was just awesome does not stand the test of time. I’ve seen Star Wars again recently and it is still a good movie, it just isn’t some kind of definitive SF masterpiece. It’s a solid flick with memorable characters and a happily detailed plot and backstory. As an introduction to a fantastic world, it works great. Empire focuses more on the plot at hand and does so magnificently. Return of the Jedi brings a satisfying conclusion to the original trilogy but stumbles at times along the way. Episode I on the other hand stumbles more often and ultimately doesn’t work because it feels like a technology test based on a sketchy outline of a plot; which it ultimately was. Episode II was better but still had problems with plot partly because that world that was introduced in the original trilogy is given a greater focus than the story trying to be told. Pivotal scenes that are supposed to develop key relationships seem like they were shot in one take while prolonged action sequences (which feel ripped from any of six dozen video games) are obviously given loving attention.

Episode III manages to find some of what has been missing since Empire. Namely, a focus on story. What Lucas seemed to forget for a while is that there is a really intriguing story that is, sometimes painfully, begging to be told here. In between all the Darth Mauls and bad casting and crummy acting and CGI-only characters, the redemption of Anakin Skywalker is a fascinating tale. Why it took so long to get to the point of it all is hard sometimes to understand, unless you cynically point to the merchandising tie-ins and endorsement deals.

Like the Matrix Trilogy, I feel that there is enough material in all three movies to make two really solid ones. Some sillier bits and less important subplots can be axed to make way for a better, snappier tale. If I ever had a chance to get my hands on the footage and developed a semblance of editing skill, I wouldn’t mind trying it myself, just to see what the result might be. Unfortunately we’re consumers and fanboys and we live at the mercy of creators who send us our drug of choice in measured doses. This dose is still not the jolt we got back in the early days, but it’s better than we’ve had in a long time.

I guess that’s something.

Dr. Mac, correctly, points out that my brother is now updating more regularly than I am. There is no competition simmering between Scott and I—at least not as far as website updating is concerned; fantasy baseball may or may not be a different story—I believe Dr. Mac’s concern is rooted in the simple fact that historically I have been more prone to keep people informed as to my goings-on than he.

A portion of the distance I have put between myself and my virtual persona is certainly related to recent events. Ironic that when I have nothing going on I have no problem rambling on for hours about soup, yet when relatively interesting things begin to occur, I clam up because I’m busy dealing with them and not particularly inclined to elucidate. Another segment of my rationale is due to a growing disenfranchisement with web development, design and maintenance in general. Put plainly, this has been both my livelihood and one of my many hobbies for years now and the obsession with languages devoted to marking up other languages has begun to lag.

Perhaps I mentioned my cyclic interests previously; honestly it has been long enough that I don’t remember what I’ve actually talked about in real life and what I’ve posted here. Time was the separation between the two was gossamer thin. But there is a high chance that this is a passing phase where I find updating while not exactly repugnant, at the very least a chore. Still, I enjoy the ability to keep friends and family somewhat clued in without having to resort to personally communicating with them all (at least in the sense of covering the bases—additional clarifications and ensuing conversations are honestly what interest me more anyway) and the comedy of spending four years nearly begging for more people to read what I write and pay attention to me only to casually dismiss the dynamic I set into motion of my own accord is not lost on me. Clichés are repeated ad nauseum because their point is commonly applicable; in this case “be careful what you wish for” seems appropriate.

I hope you will forgive me as I (mostly internally) try to reconcile my present frustrations and settle back into a comfortable routine. In the meantime my sporadic visitations will simply have to suffice.

A Casual Stroll Through May

• So here is, finally, the story behind the aborted move. This shall be even more spare than the Cliff’s Notes version because really it is old news and you probably know already anyway. Just days after we had put our Holding Deposit down on the new apartment, Nikki ended up quitting her job in the area due to some previously brewing issues with the management—relating to acceptable compensation for services rendered—which came to a head in the short days following our decision to move. Since we no longer needed to truncate her commute, we cancelled the move in what we thought was a temporary timeframe. Since then it has become more clear that it may not be in the cards for us to move out that direction after all. It is still something I hope could eventually happen, but in an immediate sense is becoming less likely as the days progress.
• For reasons I cannot disclose I was recently required to take a rather intense JavaScript test. I think I completed the test successfully, but I realized that coding JavaScript from scratch is not something I enjoy nor in fact do I think anyone should have to do it unless perhaps they are being punished for some heinous act. Seriously, JavaScript is teh suck and why anyone would mess with it when nearly anything that can be done in the language could be just as easily (okay, okay… infinitely more easily) done with a pleasant, well-designed and executed language like PHP boggles my mind. And as much as you might think you do, trust me: You don’t want to see my mind boggled.
• In my absence from updating ironSoap I have instead continued to do the miniatures wargaming thing. Specifically I have delighted in the thrill of abstracted battles via proxy-by-toy using the Warhammer 40,000 system. My army is now 2,000 points large (without additional wargear beyond that which is modeled physically) including a Rhino transport, a wicked-looking Defiler spider-like walker and a Dreadnought which resembles an evil ED-209 of Robocop fame and is fully metal (making it both a nice addition to my army and an effective paperweight). I have slowed my acquisition now that I’ve reached this plateau, now focusing on addressing some of the overwhelming need these models have for paint and creating some terrain. Kublacon is coming up in two weeks; I would very much like to participate in some games without enduring the raised eyebrows of fielding a force painted the awe-inspiring color of primer.
• The television season is winding down and my final assessments are thus:
  1. Alias: This show has disappointed me all season. The system reset was (in my opinion) an abysmal failure, the focus on one-off shows made it bland and uninteresting and the supposed return to serial form near season’s end has been a complete yawn-fest. I will give JJ Abrams and crew a last chance if they decide to make another season, but it will be on a short leash and if I start to get bored next year, it will no longer be a TiVo staple.
  2. Lost: Curiously, JJ Abrams’ other show is possibly my favorite on TV right now. I fear revelation because I have a sensation that each resolution will bring disappointment (last night’s comment about the island monster being a “security system” stirred the cauldron of mistrust I hold toward shows which thrive on mystery), but the thrill of the speculation has been worth the price of admission thus far. Still, this is season one and while I eagerly await the finale, I suspect that there is one more good season in this show and after that the writers are going to have to try extra hard to keep it from the minefield of possible plot traps they could fall into.
  3. Grey’s Anatomy: I was sort of pleasantly surprised to find myself more or less enjoying this show, especially since it plays out almost exactly like someone found a copy of the outline for Scrubs and wrote a show exactly like it only using a more dramatic tone. I mean, even the presumptuous voice-over narrative is intact.
  4. CSI: I’ve followed this show less closely than I have others this season, sometimes going for a couple of weeks without catching an episode. The shifted dynamic hinted at by the “shocking” season premiere has seemed to have little actual dramatic impact; are the teams now in different shifts not working together any longer? I didn’t notice. The show was never really about the characters (witness William Petersen’s press-based whinging over his successful show and comfortable paychecks), but recent seasons seem to have replaced a focus on the act of using science to solve crimes with a “gruesome and implausible murder scenario or gleeful examination of particular subset of society” motif. I’m not terribly impressed, but I am looking forward to the season ender which, as I understand it, Quentin Tarantino had his blood-stained hands on.
  5. Eyes: It may have been a good show, but they either cancelled it or simply stopped airing it in our market for the last four weeks because we haven’t had TiVo catch an episode of it since mid-April. It’s a shame, too… it was kind of interesting.
• I have yet to install Tiger on either the laptop or the Mac mini, but I did just install Windows XP for the first time at work. Fundamentally there is no difference once you turn off the ridiculous Luna theme and make it look less like a Fisher-Price toy, but Office 2003 includes an update to Outlook (which my work hatefully requires me to use) that is interesting in its 3-pane presentation. I’ve heard that Tiger’s Mail.app is absolute pants and I wonder if for once Microsoft has produced a superior product to Apple.
• Speaking of disturbances in the Force, Episode III has begun and I suppose it is my duty as a fanboy and geek to go see it. Unlike some people who hold nothing but contempt for the other prequels, I actually didn’t mind parts of Episode I although I thought as a whole it was too uneven to be classified as good and Episode II was enjoyable if flawed SF fun. The article about the prequel trilogy and George Lucas in Entertainment Weekly recently sheds some interesting light on the problems: Apparently Lucas’ original outlines included about 80% material that is dealt with in this one final installment and the other 20% was used as the basis for the other two. I think you can see where the math fails in that particular equation but hopefully Episode III will be sufficiently awesome to if not make up for, at least pave the road to forgiveness for Lucas. I do so want to like these movies.

I confess that as more time passes without updating, the easier it becomes to continue the trend. Day three or four without new ironSoap content feels uncomfortable, like underwear pulled from a dryer too early. By the end of the first week I feel nagging guilt and malaise over my slacking. My mind typically reels with possible topics to expound upon, but my fingers do not type. Several days after that is the crisis point: Rock bottom. I refuse to surf any site, fearing the grim reminder of my own neglected web-space. Leisure time is spent in sweaty, paranoid fashion, mind clouded with fear that some gentle reader may note my un-updating self doing something other than work—preferably manual labor.

Yet all I need to do is push past those few dark days and the light at the end of the tunnel comes sooner than I expect and the chorus of angels singing there fills my mind with blissful apathy. After all, if the faceless readership has suffered me this long, clearly—obviously—they don’t care. They haven’t noticed. I am meaningless and not missed and therefore free to wallow in the surf of my own choosing, perhaps under the grey-blue glow of a television sun, or gripping the smooth and luxurious handles of a console controller, or hunched in lounging relaxation over a table of unpainted miniatures waiting to be brought to colorful life.

My mind will, occasionally, return to thoughts of past days where fonts lit the virtual page and my thoughts manifested into drawling gibberish beneath my tapping fingertips. I had and have nothing of pertinence to speak, aloud or by means of digital data transfer and the magic voodoun of hypertext. Something though—possibly benign, most likely dark and sinister because I prefer the dramatic effect it has on my digressions—compels me back, slowly, subtly and without obvious machination, to ideas being communicated. Communication… over vast distances. Need it rend the Earth with its profundity? Do I demand excellence of such unattainable caliber from all others? Of course not. So why, then, not?

Ah, the sweet mistress of sloth! I tend to forget her apathetic coils and their illicit allure. She works in tandem with her brothers representing real, actual responsibility and the most devious devil of all, bartering in unrealized intention. The trio of life, laziness and procrastination have erected shelters in my psyche, once shanties; mere hovels. Now they have lavish mansions where they do their bidding beyond my control and chuckle behind my back as I blame them when secretly they and I know that we all wear the same exact skin over identical faces. We are, indeed, as inseparable as epoxy-bonded steel.

I do, fortunately, have a secret weapon to combat these brutes. It is a vacationing traveller, an occasional visitor who nevertheless bears a welcome grin and a pocketful of ideas; you may know her as inspiration or perhaps muse. I find that where she leads I must follow. Resistance, so they claim, is futile. Truthfully not precisely futile, but at the very least quite unwise. My fancies have always followed cycles whose patterns of comings and goings are incapable of being properly charted: Today’s enamored fascination is tomorrow’s blithe missive and yet several months down the road, I find myself back where I started, wondering why I stopped at all. The comparison between my patterns of behavior and those commonly diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder are not accurate, but they share common characteristics, the only separation coming from the time allotted to each ebb and surge of devotion which is measured in my case in weeks or months rather than minutes or seconds.

As such I return for now, but my fancies and failings may limit my intentions; it’s chronic and I am incurable. At this point you may either choose to simply deal with it and me or not. I like you, so for your own sake I might recommend that you opt for not because I know the caliber of my content. Should you choose to suffer me and should I find a way to stave my inclinations, I can only say that I have stories.

Oh, do I have stories.

There is—mildly putting it—additional news regarding yesterday’s announcement of a pending move. However, the details are now in a great deal of flux and without enough concrete facts to prevent several week’s worth of “Remember what I said? That’s changed again” posts, I’ll suffice it to say that the move is in a holding pattern, which does not affect the desire to simplify in the least (so continue to let me know if you’re interested in anything), but when I know more I’ll fill in the rest of the details here.

Instead of all that what I’d like to talk about for a moment is the Adobe/Macromedia merger.

By trade I am a web developer. By training I am a graphic designer. In the course of a given week I probably use at least six Adobe and/or Macromedia products at one time or another and I have experience with dozens of them. Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat and ImageReady are my bread and butter; I’ve also played with AfterEffects, InDesign, Freehand, Contribute, HomeSite, GoLive, PageMaker, FrameMaker, PageMill, Director and Streamline. I’m familiar with these companies; I’ve even applied to work at both of them at least two times apiece, probably more. This merger actually matters to me.

I can’t be sure how this is going to pan out. I doubt if Adobromedia know yet. But here’s what I hope will happen. I hope they’ll leave Fireworks alone. Fireworks is a funky little application because it’s sorta kinda Macromedia’s answer to Photoshop, except that it isn’t. In the world of digital graphic design there are programs which deal with vector art and those that deal with bitmap art. Vector art is plotted points which use complex mathematical formulas to render an image. A blue box in vector art is four corner points with their relative positions, a line value (thickness, color) and a fill color (blue). Bitmap art is a bunch of dots (pixels) each with a specific color which when combined create an image. If you’ve ever seen those things where they have all the people in a football stadium hold up a colored card and when viewed from above or across the field you’ve seen bitmap theory in action.

Because vector art deals with points and lines and bitmap art deals with tiny dots, there are usually two different programs to handle each kind of art. Generally if you hear someone referring to something as relating to Illustrator, they mean vector art. Something that relates to Photoshop is bitmapped. I’ll spare you the lecture about the relative strengths and weaknesses of each type, but suffice to say that vector art is generally somewhat cartoony due to precise outlining and typically solid colors but smaller in file size; it’s usually used for visual design like logos and banners. Bitmap art is great for photos since it can easily approximate the subtle shift in color from realistic images, but each pixel takes up a specific amount of space so images with lots of pixels take up a lot of room (or disk space as the case may be).

Fireworks is freaky because it’s kind of a hybrid of vector and bitmap art. The reasoning for this is only obvious when you consider what it was designed to do which is create and manage web art. Fireworks and Photoshop don’t really compete because Fireworks is never going to match Photoshop’s ability to manage digital photography. Photoshop is, in essence, a digital darkroom. But Photoshop is also not so great at dealing with the specific needs of web-based art; it simply wasn’t designed for that. As a concession to the throngs of designers using Photoshop for their web pages, Adobe started bundling ImageReady with Photoshop, but it feels exactly like what it is: A slapped-on concession to web designers.

Fireworks on the other hand was designed without much passing interest in manipulating digital photos the way Photoshop does. Instead you draw with vector points and Fireworks creates bitmap lines. Shapes and fill colors are simple to apply, shift and adjust because many times people designing websites are doing so in a similar manner to the way they would design a logo or banner; Illustrator is used extensively in marketing materials—check out a cereal box sometime for an example of something designed with Illustrator—and many websites are designed with this same mindset. But websites don’t natively display vector art so the end result needs to be bitmap. This is the brilliance of Fireworks.

Perhaps not surprisingly I got to know Fireworks really well. The ease of creating simple images (which is about the extent of my skill) is reminiscent of Illustrator which I find far more forgiving to someone of my meager artistic talent while the end result is instantly usable in my actual work which I find convenient, far more so than exporting an Illustrator file to Photoshop/ImageReady to optimize for web use. Fireworks, coincidentally, also makes a superb page layout mockup tool and has some nice features for automating the creation of imagemaps and you can even export slices of a larger image for template building with some HTML already generated.

I’d like to think that with a bit of Adobe’s help and some nice suite-integration, Fireworks CS 2006 could be a great middleman between Photoshop and Illustrator. It has a much better optimizing interface than ImageReady so it could replace that “program” and with a bit better support for native Illustrator files, it could be a great engine for creating web-friendly images from Illustrator designs which I’m sure would make the typesetter/web designer’s life much easier.

Of course what will probably happen is either ImageReady will get a few of the cheesier features from Fireworks and call it an upgrade or possibly they’ll try (and fail) to tack on some of Firework’s functionality to Photoshop and end up ruining it all. Optimism is for suckers. Meh.

As far as the other apps are concerned, I predict that Freehand will go the way of the dodo; Flash will stick around and probably (as someone else suggested) spell the end for Adobe’s SVGA viewer which basically sounds the death toll for that format; Dreamweaver will replace GoLive or whatever Adobe is calling their historically pathetic HTML suite and I suspect that if it hasn’t already Director will continue its slow fade into obscurity as regular programming languages become more viable than the application-specific Lingo and web-based presentations/interactive programs become more practical than standalone ones.

I want to be hopeful about this merge, but I worry because Adobe has always seemed to have its heart more in the traditional print design camp while Macromedia has been more web-friendly. It would be nice if the merger would strike a pleasant balance between the two, but I think that Fireworks’ fate may be the bellwether that determines which side has won or if that unlikely balance has actually been achieved.