Weird
Someone apparently thought I would know about what the OSOGD would be up to at Pantheacon this year, but since I’ve not had really great experiences with Pantheacon (although the OSOGD is cool in my book) I haven’t really had the urge to go back. Anyway, here’s one person’s account of his experience at Pantheacon this year, which includes a bit about an OSOGD ritual.
Other news that interested me included a release window for God of War 3, Prince of Persia is getting an epilogue, the good ole’ Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down another “Moral Panic Law” regarding violent video games, and Karmic Koala is gonna have cloud computing built in.
The main reason I stopped doing these link posts is because when I go back later, the links don’t work and it’s a waste of a post. However, if I see something in the search history of the site, I might as well address it.
Laters, peeps.
No attention
Watching everyone talk past each other is probably the worst part of the SLoB/Divine Language/Green Tongue thing. That and wondering if there really are some sort of higher intelligences or if we’re just talking to ourselves from the future or the past or the infinite point or some such nonsense. See, there’s a whole series of reactions that seem to come off as protecting these hyper intelligences, at our own loss, not minding that it’s our progress that will take the hit. There’s a huge ball of schadenfreude in each of these Alien Apologists, and they love to see the system break down and die. Sometimes they are obsessed with eschatology, sometimes with class warfare, and others with just plain old purges and genocides. Sometimes they even kill each other for picking different methods of expressing this vector.
Of course, then there are the anthropocentrics, which aren’t much better. Material reductionists to the last of them, denying all forms of gnosis and any value assigned to it. Can’t really brook that position either. So I watch them all fight; a sea of rage and self-loathing bubbling up alternately from cultural programming and fierce rebellion, leading to nothing and ending only in empty strife.
flower
Flower is many things to me. In the simplest terms, flower is a game that allows you to fly (you are the wind) and cause flowers to bloom as you pass. You use the motion controls in the PS3 controllers, tipping the controller in the direction you wish to fly. Cause enough flowers to blossom, and an entire area will bloom: the grass becomes green and new flowers may appear. This is the initial premise, and from that it continues to build and introduce new mechanics, although all are based around the same ideas as the initial level. We’ve seen this sort of idea a couple of times before; it’s very similar to the healing of the land that happens in Prince of Persia, Okami, and to some degree the accelerated growth patterns of the Japanese PSN title Shiki-tei. For me, it is very reminiscent of the mystical Jewish idea of Tikkun Olam, the rectification of the world. In addition to these positive associations, there is the simple thrill of flying that causes joy to well up within me during a quick sweeping rush that gathers up dozens of petals. Flower is very good at evoking emotional response. One of the things that concerned me was the environmental message of the game. How would it be handled? I’m not anti-environmentalist or anything, but I do worry that often reasonable people who might be open to such messages are turned off by the heavy-handedness of the messengers. No such worries here. Flower delivers a potent message of co-existence between man and nature without getting preachy or trying to be too pretentious and technical about the whole thing. On the whole, I would characterize Flower as pro-beauty more than anything else. The other thing that concerned me was the lack of death which might leave the player feeling as though they hadn’t accomplished anything. However, there are things which can damage you and areas where you can only go straight ahead, meaning you must be very accurate with the controls to get as many flowers as you can and reap better rewards. It may be that I am just an overly cautious player, but some parts even made me feel as though I was playing Operation. It does get intense at some points and the gameplay does challenge. The game is not very long, but the addition of Trophies gives it excellent replay value, and I know I will be going back for more very soon after finishing this review. Ultimately, Flower is a game that champions the concept of “Games-As-Art” and, in my opinion, succeeds magnificently.
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Diaz is a Raised Platform
He said he didn’t know why
the rest of the avenue wasn’t
paved up to the intersection.
paved up to the intersection.
If the streets isn’t re-marked, he remarked
he worries
he worries
he worries
a crash may be inevitable
Tzimtzum
Aikeena used to speak of a “constriction of consciousness” in the collective mind. From my own understanding, it was as though the collective was limiting access to the qualities of genius and intellect that he valued. It seemed like a horrible thing, and to some degree still does. Genius being stamped out in favor of the hard-headed and the inept. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. However, I’m starting to see why we might have been wrong about this constriction, and why it might be necessary. First of all, I have to give credit to this post for inspiration. I’m not going to deal with the first part of the post, because as someone who has lived off the land for a time, I have really specific and idiosyncratic opinions that may not be useful for anyone who lives in different terrain than I do. However, ‘commodity chain food mileage’ and bureaucratic chains (from lender to mortgage holder) strikes me as a fascinating measure of the degree of separation that we have placed between each other. Our worlds had been drifting apart, or expanding if you will. Food eaten from another place ties you to that place (for example, Persephone and the 3-7 arils), just as land ownership does. But as the distance between us grows, we grow colder and less able to care about each other. Thus we have cold wars, weapons that kill at a distance, text messages and pagers (telephones and email are different), fast food (where the cook is always anonymous), and bureaucracy. No mess, no fuss, no name, no face. Just a statistic. Oh, but the things we can learn from statistics are marvelous! I do not say this in jest or sarcasm, you see, because it is true. Cold analytical study is a wonderful thing. Yet expansion cannot last forever without the loss of something essential to our humanity. Yes, as we grow closer, we will grow less intellectual, and yes, it is something of a setback, but what we gain from struggle and engagement, bloody and brutal as they may be, is a necessary unity. It is because we strive to be one that our battles become so destructive, so deadly. It is because we seek peace that the casualties are so numerous. Expansion leads to constriction leads to expansion. Eloi to Morlock to Eloi, and so on and so forth. The peddlers of uniqueness and the patrons of individuality will not like it, but in time their turn will come again, and step by step we will all continue to march forward.
Vaio UX
Awhile ago I wrote a post about the SSD installation (and subsequent driver reinstallation) done on the Vaio UX180P. While the function previously fulfilled by the UX was taken over by the iPhone, it still is a good computer for keeping in the living room to look up things on IMDB or checking Google Reader. I would note in retrospect that it was not necessarily a good idea to swap drives, as the ZIF connector sometimes loses connection with the drive, thereby robbing the machine of it’s operating system. My initial idea of installing Linux later on was somewhat stymied by the lack of power management. Oddly enough, I thought the main issue would be driver support for the proprietary features (special buttons, EDGE modem, etc…) but it turned out that most of those can be fixed up with a few dives into the terminal. So the UX is back to XP and running just fine, but I would gladly trade the little bit of speed gain that the SSD provided for the reliability that the machine had prior to the alteration.
