Joseph's Day Out

I was up at the ungodly hour of 5 AM this morning to catch Lance Armstrong in the final stage of the Tour Down Under. Unfortunately, I don't get the sports channels and was greeted with instructions on how to upgrade my Foxtel cable plan instead. So I sensibly went back to sleep.

When I finally crawled out of bed just after high noon, I was in the mood... the mood to drive. I started to drive towards Fremantle but when I got there I kept driving. This is what I kinda call 'using the force' to drive. I usually use it to try and get somewhere in particular, but I used to use it while bike riding to just get lost.

I eventually wound up at Point Peron aka Cape Peron. I got to see two dolphins jumping around in the water which was pretty damn cool. There is also a pillbox style observation building on the hill built during World War II. I tried to get pictures of the dolphins and the pillbox, but the sun wasn't cooperating with the iPhone's camera which is pretty much crap. Here is a link to a picture of the pill box that I googled.

It was still kind of early so I tried to use the force to find somewhere else interesting, but I found it was taking me back home by a much more efficient route than the way there. So I swung back through Fremantle and had a late lunch at Joe's Fish Shack. Yes, that's 'Fish' not 'Crab.' I was hoping to get my favorite BBQ Dungeness Crab, but they don't even serve crab which is probably why the changed the name around. I went in looking for the souvenir shop thinking I might be able to buy a "something smelt fishy at Joe's" t-shirt, you know like the "I got crabs at Joe's" t-shirts they sell at their normal restaurants. They didn't even have a counter of over priced 'Joe's' themed merchandise! Can you believe it?

Update!

I haven’t posted in awhile for a number of reasons, the foremost being the computer I usually sit and type things up on died over Christmas. Well, it turns out that it was just the video card that died and I’ve managed to get it up and running again.

I’ve had some people ask me recently about the Watchmen Movie legal case as it was supposed to go to court again back on the 20th. Good news is that Fox and Warner Brothers settled, and the movie is still on track to come out on 03/06/09. Here is a link to a Variety article, pardon the giant ad that pops over the screen.

There is a semi-interesting bit at the end of the article about moving release dates of movies opening on the same date as movies from the other studios so they wouldn’t compete and using actors contracted to the other studio. I really love the statement "Warner Bros. and Fox, like all "Watchmen" fans, look forward with great anticipation to this film's March 6 release in theaters." Which translates to, "We are sorry to have upset you with this fight Mr. Fanboy, please see our movies."

My friend Brad also pointed out if you keep with the whole counting down to midnight on the clock theme, that release date is pretty cool.

I’ve been watching the Watchmen Motion comics on iTunes and although I like it, I really wish they hadn’t edited it down. They didn’t cut it down very much, you would hardly notice, but they cut out a few of my favorite lines. There was also some critisim on the iTunes feedback about one guy reading all the voices, and as major fan of Audio books I agree. With a production like this they should have dramatized it with several actors. It isn't a straight audio production of somebody reading a story where is okay to have one narrator.

I have also been listening to Comic Geek Speak's Watchmen Footnotes episodes. Just eating up anything "Watchmen" until the movie comes out.

Another thing I’ve been doing is messing around with an Interactive Fiction editor. At first I started to use Adrift, which I had experimented with back in 2004. Although there have been a few bug fix releases, there really hasn’t been a new version since 2003. I quickly found myself having the same problems I had before all over again. So I switched over to Inform7 which appears to be much more powerful.

I also tried wearing my beard differently; I shaved my jaw line so I essentially had a goatee with full sideburns, pointed in. Nobody really commented on the change though so I took that as a bad sign and reverted back to my normal shaving routine. Speaking of which… I went to buy new razor blades and found that a pack of Gillette Mach3 blades cost something like (actual numbers may be a bit off as this was a month ago) $24 AUD. But at the same time they were selling the new Schick Quattro Titanium Freestyle razor on sale for $14 AUD. The blades for it were also on sale for that price. So I was able to buy this new razor with 3-blades, a 4th edging blade, and a battery operated hair trimmer and another box of blades for 4 dollars more than a box of Mach3 blades. Too back the Schick razor SUCKS! It isn’t giving me anywhere near as close a shave as the Mach3 did. Now I have to wait till I go through all these blades and buy a whole new Mach3 as I threw the old one out. BTW neither Gillette or Schick are getting links to their websites because both of them pissing me off with their auto-redirecting to Australian versions of their sites and requiring special version of flash players.

Finally, for my "in the news section" South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson, who has been blocking an 18+ rating in Australia has given an interview where he explains his rational. It basically boils down to the same old untrue crap about how games are more interactive and you are "rehearsing harmful behavior," "desensitizing children towards violence," and that video games are "addictive." He states that only a few very video games are denied classification (read as banned in Australia) each year. What I don’t think they is realizing is that a large number of games that maybe should be classified as 18+ are instead being classified as 15+.

Oh, one last thing. Every few months or so I would look up Fez which I blogged about last February. They have finally put out a press release announcing their publisher on their new website. They put up a new picture the other day comparing the old graphics to the new. I don't know what to think about the new graphics, they look like old school console graphics which leads me to wonder about what platform they are going to release on.

Happy New Year MMIX

There was a man,
whose name was Lang,
and he had a neon sign.

Now Mr. Lang was pretty old
so they called it,
"Old Lang's Sign."

Will We Watch the Watchmen?

I posted a in-depth write-up that linked to basically everything you wanted to know about the Watchman legal dispute between Warner Brothers and Fox back in August.

Now Variety is reporting that on Wednesday Judge Gary Allen Feese issued a ruling that says, "Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the ‘Watchmen’ motion picture." The judge said he would issue a more detailed ruling soon.

An earlier Variety report said that Fox wasn’t looking for monetary compensation either, they may seek to prevent Warner from EVER releasing Watchmen.

The quote from "a source close to the litigation" said, "When you have copyright infringement, there are some damages you never recover."

So far Warner Brothers has not backed off a release date of March 6, but Warner spokesman Scott Rowe declined to comment on the ruling.

Game Damage TV pilot

My friends Yug (aka Guy Blomberg) and Matt (aka Matt Burgess) over at Australian Gamers and their friend Yahtzee (aka Ben Croshaw) of Zero Punctuation fame have put together a video game review TV show pilot called "Game Damage."

You can view the pilot over at their site www.gamedamage.net. Please spread the news and link around, as the more word of mouth they get, the better the chance they have of getting it picked up.

Here is their emotional plea for your support:

It's taken us a VERY long time to get to this point, but we're proud to say we have uploaded the pilot for our potential gaming TV show 'GameDamage' onto the interwebs.

Goto http://www.GameDamage.net to check it out!

The 23-minute show is a pilot episode to stir up interest. Game Damage represents a new face of gaming media; fronted by three proven individuals with a genuine love and enthusiasm for games, it combines light and squashy gaming humour with a delicious crunchy centre of reviews, previews and 'discussions' on the many facets of the subculture (read: shouting arguments).

But creating a series with this level of professional quality (ha ha) doesn't come cheap, and if we're to live the dream we need all the exposure we can get. Gamers, non-gamers, come one, come all to http://www.gamedamage.net, watch the video, browse the site, join the forums and tell us what you think. We promise to at least pretend to listen.

You know I say, "My friends over at Australian Gamer" but the only time they answer my emails now is when I disguise them as porn advertisement spam. What is up with that?

How I Would Do the WoW Torture Quest

The World of Warcraft torture quest, The Art of Persuasion, keeps popping up on news sites, so I thought I would finally throw my two cents in.

Here is Richard Bartle's original post that started the debate,and his follow-up post to the responses it got.

In the quest, Librarian Normantis wants you to torture an Imprisoned Beryl Sorcerer so that he reveals the location of Lady Evanor who has been abducted. He says that he can’t do it himself because the Kirin Tor code of conduct frowns upon it. He gives you the Neural Needler and you have to stick the guy a few times with it while he; at first taunts you, then says that he knows nothing, begs you to stop and then finally tells you where Lady Evanor is being held, though hedging that by saying that trying to save her is folly. If you are so inclined you can keep poking him while he tells you he doesn’t know anything else.

Bartle was saying that Blizzard failed with the torture quest because it was nothing, it didn’t mean anything, and it was just another couple of mouse clicks in a quest chain. It wasn’t just that you torture the Sorcerer that is the problem; it was the actual quest design that failed because it didn’t take advantage of the torture concept. A lot of people seem to miss this point. And comparing it to hundreds of non-player characters (NPCs) you actually kill isn’t valid; because it is not the same thing.

The textbook way this should be done is to offer the player a choice with a reward for torturing the NPC but also a negative consequence. Is the reward worth the negative consequence?

Let’s look at a perfect example already in WoW, raising your reputation with the Blood Sail Buccaneers by killing citizens of Booty Bay. Which you can read about here.

The reward for doing so is the Bloodsail Admiral’s Hat (item level 60, 63 honor, +25 stamina and right click summons a Bloodsail Parrot non-combat pet) and the title “Bloodsail Admiral.” It is basically just a cosmetic reward, albeit a rare one that you aren’t going to see a lot of people doing. Let’s not forget that prestige is also a big reward in these types of games.

The negative consequence is ruined faction with Booty Bay, and even damage to your reputation with other goblin factions. Basically, you can no longer get quests or buy items from NPCs in those towns. I should also note that if you are trying to cash in an in-game reward from the WoW trading card game, it’s very difficult because the NPC you use to enter the trading card code is in Booty Bay.

Is it worth it? Not for me to say, that is for each player to decide. The point is there is a choice with both a reward and consequence.

Now let’s take that basic example apply it to the torture quest. We will make it a choice.

Same setup, Lady Evanor, an important leader of the Kirin Tor, has been abducted. Librariam Normantis had captured a Beryl Sorcerer who may know where she is being held. He is unwilling to torture the captive himself and presents that option to the player.

The player has two response options with Librariam Normantis; one where you agree to torture the prisoner and one where you don’t. Both cases offer you a quest – one quest to torture the guy which has some nice item rewards to choose from and the other quest where you don’t torture him and get no reward, but go off to complete a bunch of other quests to kill the bad guys without the aid of Lady Evanor. Both quest lines can come back together in the end or not, it’s just you have to decide if you will torture the guy and get the item reward.

Problem is that is a cowardly way out. 99.9% of the players will poke the guy till he squeals and then take the reward. 0.0099% will do the same and just tell everybody they didn’t and only 0.001 will take the moral high road and say no. In the end it doesn’t mean anything because not getting the item reward isn’t enough of a choice.

We have to make the consequence something real. We also want to put the weight on the torture, making it the negative choice that the player deliberately does. So let’s say there is no torture quest offered in the chain.

Instead Librariam Normantis tells the player that Lady Evanor has been abducted and they have captured a Beryl Sorcerer who may know where she is being held, but he isn’t talking. He mentions that they found the Neural Needler on the Sorcerer when they captured him but that the Kirin Tor does not condone torture. The life of one person, even Lady Evanor, isn’t worth the loss of the moral high ground. He stressed that the Kirin Tor will not stand by anybody who performs or condones such torture. He then gives you another quest, based on some clue he has devised from the Sorcerer, a Sherlock Homes based “rare mud on his shoes” thing, and is sending you off to investigate. I would make this a Nexus dungeon quest that shows a decent reward.

However the Neural Needler is right there on the table next to the captured Beryl Sorcerer, it is even giving off a little pulsing spark. If you click on it, you get the option to use it on the prisoner to get him to talk. The text makes it clear this goes against the wishes of Librariam Normantis and the Kirin Tor and that you will not be able to deal with them afterwards. That’s it. No reward is shown for using the Needler, but still the temptation is there.

If you use the Needler you automatically fail the previously offered quest and can’t get it again. You also lose a large amount of Kirin Tor faction preventing you from getting any more quests from them. However you do get a quest to go rescue Lady Evanor based on the information you gain from the torture.

I would leverage this in several more quests later on, playing up on the “one life isn’t worth sacrificing your morals” line from Librariam Normantis. What about two lives, a dozen lives, or the lives of all the Kirin Tor?

Resume & History

Although my Internet connection appears to be working, I can't connect to WoW. I can't even get to their homepage. Well that isn't completely true, I can kinda connect but both the game and the web page take forever to load and I get disconnected soon after.

I spent the day updated my resume and history pages and getting them up on Google Sites. The Resume and History links over the right now link to the updated version. The resume is pretty much the same except I am now Creative Director at Interzone. The history page was just updated to talk about Fury's shipping and me going from Auran to Interzone.

All I have left to do now is get this blog's graphics files up onto Google Sites and I won't have to worry about Hostopia, the actually people who ruined joseph.hewitt.org, not NetIdentity, whose email hosting I will still try to keep.

Anyway, I'll do that later. I think I am going to play some more Left 4 Dead, because Zombies aren't going to kill themselves.

Time Travel

Ever wonder what you would do if you could travel through time. What if, here at the end of 2008, you knew things from the future? Like what if you knew that Slumdog Millionaire was going to nominated for 10 Academy Awards and win 8, including Best Picture? What could you do with that information? Is there big money to be made betting on the Academy Awards?

What about MTV's Video Music Awards? I heard some people think Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time, but I'd put my money on Taylor Swift having the Best Female Video.

Okay, forget those entertainment awards, I know you can bet on sports events. So knowing that the Steelers will defeat the Cardinals by a score of 27-23 in Super Bowl XLIII would probably be worth a few pennies.

But of course the big news is the aliens that will land on the White House lawn in early October 2009, and I'm pretty sure I can make big money off all the waves that even makes in the financial markets, if I only had some seed money. How can I convince somebody to give me a large sum of money before October?

2008 Aurealis Awards Finalist

I forgot that the Finalist for the 2008 Aurealis Awards went out last week. I was the Convenor for the judging panel of the "best illustrated book / graphic novel" category this year.

Winners will be announced at the Aurealis Awards ceremony at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Brisbane on Saturday 24 January 2009.

Click here to book your ticket for the awards ceremony online.

I am still considering if I am going to fly back to Brisbane to attend the award ceremony this year or not.

Anyway, here is the list of finalist:

best science fiction novel
• K A Bedford, Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
• Marianne de Pierres, Chaos Space, Book Two of the Sentients of Orion, Orbit
• Simon Haynes, Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch, Fremantle Press
• Kim Westwood, The Daughters of Moab, HarperVoyager
• Sean Williams, Earth Ascendant, Astropolis Book Two, Orbit

best science fiction short story
• Simon Brown, ‘The Empire’, Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
• Nathan Burrage, ‘Black and Bitter, Thanks’, The Workers’ Paradise, Ticonderoga Publications
• Trent Jamieson, ‘Delivery’, Cosmos, #21
• Margo Lanagan, ‘The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross’, Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
• Tansy Rayner Roberts, ‘Fleshy’, 2012, Twelfth Planet Press

best fantasy novel
• Alison Goodman, The Two Pearls of Wisdom, HarperCollins
• Sylvia Kelso, Amberlight, Juno Books
• Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels, Allen & Unwin
• Juliet Marillier, Heir to Sevenwaters, Macmillan Australia
• Karen Miller, The Riven Kingdom, Godspeaker Book Two, HarperVoyager

best fantasy short story
• Thoraiya Dyer, ‘Night Heron’s Curse’, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, #37
• Karen Maric, ‘The Last Deflowerer’, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, #32
• Angela Slatter, ‘Dresses, Three’, Shimmer, Vol 2 #4
• Cat Sparks, ‘Sammarynda Deep’, Paper Cities, Senses 5 Press
• Kim Westwood, ‘Nightship’, Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager

best horror novel
• Jack Dann, The Economy of Light, PS Publishing
• Nick Gadd, Ghostlines, Scribe Publications
• John Harwood, The Séance, Jonathan Cape

best horror short story
• Lee Battersby, ‘In From the Snow’, Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
• Deborah Biancotti, ‘Pale Dark Soldier’, Midnight Echo, #1
• Trent Jamieson, ‘Day Boy’, Murky Depths, #4
• Kirstyn McDermott, ‘Painlessness’, Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD), #2
• Ian McHugh, ‘Bitter Dreams’, L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol XXIV

best anthology
• Bill Congreve & Michelle Marquardt (editors), The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fourth Annual Volume, MirrorDanse Books
• Jack Dann (editor), Dreaming Again, HarperVoyager
• Jonathan Strahan (editor), The Starry Rift, Viking Children’s Books

best collection
• Robert Hood, Creeping in Reptile Flesh, Altair Australia Books
• Sean Williams and Russell B. Farr (editor), Magic Dirt: The Best of Sean Williams, Ticonderoga Publications

best illustrated book / graphic novel
• Steve Hunt (illustrator/co-author) & David Richardson (co-author), The Cloudchasers, ABC Books
• Shaun Tan, Tales from Outer Suburbia, Allen & Unwin
• Colin Thompson, The Floods Family Files, Random House Australia
• Julie Watts (author) & Graeme Base (illustrator), The Art of Graeme Base, Penguin/Viking

best young adult novel
• Isobelle Carmody, The Stone Key, Obernewtyn Chronicles, Volume Five, Penguin/Viking
• David Cornish, Lamplighter, Monster Blood Tattoo Book Two, Omnibus Books
• Alison Goodman, The Two Pearls of Wisdom, HarperCollins
• Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock, Penguin/Viking
• Sean Williams, The Changeling, The Changeling series book one, Angus & Robertson

best young adult short story
• Deborah Biancotti, ‘The Tailor of Time’, Clockwork Phoenix, Norilana Books
• Dirk Flinthart, ‘This Is Not My Story’, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, #37
• Trent Jamieson, ‘Cracks’, Shiny, #2
• Kevin MacLean, ‘Eye of the Beholder’, Misspelled, DAW Books

best children’s novel
• Simon Higgins, Moonshadow, Eye of the Beast, Random House Australia
• Sophie Masson, Thomas Trew and the Island of Ghosts, Hodder Children’s
• Emily Rodda, The Wizard of Rondo, Omnibus Books
• Carole Wilkinson, Dragon Dawn, Black Dog Books
• Sean Williams, The Changeling and The Dust Devils, The Changeling series books one and two, Angus & Robertson

best children’s illustrated work/picture book
• Anna Fienberg, Barbara Fienberg & Kim Gamble, Tashi and the Phoenix, Allen & Unwin
• Richard Harland & Laura Peterson (illustrator), Escape!, Under Siege, Race to the Ruins, The Heavy Crown, The Wolf Kingdom series, Omnibus Books
• Ian Irvine & David Cornish (illustrator), Thorn Castle, Giant’s Lair, Black Crypt, Wizardry Crag, The Sorcerer’s Tower series, Omnibus Books
• Sally Morgan with Ezekiel, Ambelin and Blaze Kwaymullina & Adam Hill (illustrator), Curly and the Fent, Random House Australia
• Richard Tulloch & Terry Denton (illustrator), Twisted Tales, Random House Australia

Merry Christmas

I have another big wordy blog post that I keep starting to write, but I probably won't get to it till after next week when I'm on Christmas Vacation, even thought the inspiration for the post will be old hat. I'll actually say that its about Blizzard, World of Warcraft, and their torture quest kinda. Its not really a criticism about that quest in particular, more about how WoW has saved the MMO industry, what they have done right and what they can do better.

In the meantime, I thought I would put up my Christmas picture.Besides this picture, I haven't done anything else for Christmas. I just doesn't feel like Christmas and I've no Christmas plans. I'll dig through the Christmas boxes tonight and see if I can find my Mannheim Steamroller Christmas CD's, but that is about it.

Giving up on Net Identity

For those of you who haven't been following my adventures with Net Identity and whomever they sold their web hosting to let me summarize.

Net Identity was a service that allows you to sign up to use a sub-domain thereby getting a personalized email address and URL. I have (had?) www.joseph.hewitt.org with a matching email address. I generally used it as a resume site while looking for work after Westwood Studios was closed. Lately it just points to this blog and I have just been using the space to store pictures and files that I link to on this blog, but I thought it was still worth paying for in case I wanted to do something with it in the future.

Tucows bought Net Identity a few years ago. They upgraded some stuff, re-vamped their web based email program, had a few growing pains. All-in-all nothing really too bad.

Tucows decided it didn't want to be in the web hosting business anymore and sold that part of the company to somebody else. They claimed we would get an email from that company with all sorts of update news and information. No email was ever received. At one point my site and all its content vanished. I made lots of complaints and never got an answer.

Ross Radar, from Tucows must have been ego searching and stumbled across my blog. He had always been in the forefront of getting information out before and somehow got me the attention of somebody at this new company. They restored my website from a back up. Only they left what appears to be the compressed file they transfered over from the back up on my site. This caused me to go over my storage limit. They attempted to bill me for this... twice. No correspondence from me to them about this have been answered to this day.

I have attempted to remove the file myself but don't seem to have FTP access to my site. I just tried to update my resume HTML and Word Document now that I was promoted to Creative Director at Interzone, but I still can't FTP into the site to upload the new versions.

I am paid up to March of next year but I've had it. I don't care so much about the website, but at least having the email address was nice. I have updated just my account across the web to the yahoo email address.

The way the original announcement was made I was thinking maybe Tucows still has the email part and its only the web hosting that the other company now controls. I don't know, I am just tired of all the hassle. Over Christmas break I am going to reconstruct all the content that is stored there either as blog posts here or store them elsewhere.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act Sucks

Here is another example of how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is failing us. YouTube user jmkaos put up a video collection of every single James Bond movie opening (as of Nov. 2006 which is when the upcoming linked article was posted). Cimematical has a little story which embeds all the videos, except that every single one of them has been taken down. I can’t really see how these videos harm the movie studios, license, or the James Bond intellectual property in anyway. I believe they actually help all the above and would make you want to see the movies again. I don’t know how long each clip was nor do I remember how long of a clip is considered fair use, but I am going to assume they fit within that margin.

The more I think about it, I’d be willing to bet that it wasn’t even the movie companies that complained about them which forces YouTube to take them down. I’ll be willing to believe it was one of those people who has nothing better to do than make a fuss and probably watches TV with a pad and pencil,* ready to note any broadcast that offends them personally so they can fire off some hate mail. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. Jay Leno makes a joke about Arizona and before the laughter dies somebody out there is writing a letter, “As a resident of Arizona, I am offended by your suggestion that…”

The point being that, just like YouTube does not have the time, resources or funds to manually review each claim of breach of copyright; they probably don’t spend too much time checking to see if the complaint is actually coming from the copyright holders. Give me a relevant sounding email address to a YouTube post with some broadcast media in it, and I can get it pulled. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, YouTube is liable for violations if they have been presented with a violation notice from the copyright holder. So if somebody they think is the copyright holder tells them to take something down, they do. Better safe than looking down the barrel of lawsuits and federal copyright violations.

It was kinda funny how John McCain got bit in the ass by Digital Millennium Copyright Act during his campaign seeing as he voted for it. Not cool the way he wanted a two tier system for "Important" people like him versus the unwashed masses like us... a two tier unfunded mandate system that YouTube would foot the bill for.


*Yes, pad and pencil. These nut jobs are good and they know that hand written letters have more weight than typed letters or email. Note that if you are ever writing your congressman. If you hand write it, they take it more seriously. If you take the time to hand write out a letter, put a stamp on it, and drop it in the mailbox; you are probably the kind of person who gets up early to head to the voting booth on election. Fire off an email, worse yet an email that you copied from a website and just added your name to the bottom; you are probably a reactionary dimwit who likes to complain and feel like you are part of something, but are actually too lazy to make the effort to vote.

Interzone has been Nerfed

Game software development follows along the same path as the rise of a civilization. At first you have primordial ooze, followed by some signs of intelligent life which then start to form distinct groupings such as Art, Design and Programming. Soon after this they then begin to war against each other with escalating weapons of mass destruction.

Interzone is no exception, luckily in game development our destruction power has been Nerfed. Dan's "Hulk Abomination Blaster" not pictured.

Small IZF magazine article

My friend Anthony also recently returned from the U.S. He picked up issue 12 of the British "Total PC Gaming" magazine in the L.A. airport to read on the plane. Why LAX is selling British magazines instead of U.S. magazines I can't say. While flipping through the pages, he stumbled on this small article: I will point out that it implies that Interzone Futebol is not "free to play" which is actually the plan at the moment.

Romário

I knew that was something I was forgetting. Right about the time I left for San Diego we announced that we signed Brazilian soccer legend, Romário, to sponsor the game. This in addition to it being scored by Paul Oakenfield.

Romário retired earlier this year after leading an amazing career which lasted into his early 40’s. He is credited with being instrumental in the Brazilian national team’s win of the 1994 FIFA World Cup and was considered one of the world’s best strikers. He was the FIFA World Player of the Year and won the World Cup Golden Ball in 1994 and was also named one of the Top 125 Greatest Living Footballers by FIFA as part of their 100th anniversary celebration.

Romário now has his own official blog hosted by Interzone, though being part of the Brazilian site, it is in Portuguese.

A few of us were supposed to meet Romário when we went to Rio. He had said a few days before the meeting that he was sick but assured us that he would be feeling fine by the end of the week when we were flying up from São Paulo. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. He did fly down to the São Paulo and meet everybody the next weekend, but I had already returned to Perth.

The only thing is, every time I say his name, this little voice in the back of my head says, "It's me! Romário!" You know, like Nintendo's Mario.

Traveling Man

I started working on this map last weekend, but I couldn't remember to use Paths in Photoshop to draw curves. I knew it had something to do with drawning the path, manipulating the handles and then using the stroke function, but I kept doing things wrong.

What can I say, I'm bad at stroking! Sorry, I realized that if I didn't do a "stroke" joke you probably would.

Anyway, something was going wrong, it would fill in the curve, or have the stroke option grayed out, etc. I asked Tim here at work and he said, oh that's easy but when he went to show me he realized he had forgotten as well. I finally went to Lisa, who in addition to having the power to make one last can of Diet Coke appear in the fridge when it looks like we've run out, also has mighty Photoshop powers and knew how to do it.

So finally here is a map of my recent travels.



Red: Perth to San Paulo
Perth - Sydney - Los Angles - Chicago for several days
Chicago - San Diego for a week
San Diego - Huston - Austin GCD for a few days
Austin - Las Vegas for a week and a half with family and friends
Las Vegas - Huston - São Paulo for about a month and a half

There was also a weekend in Rio right before we left.


Purple: São Paulo back to Perth
São Paulo - Huston - Chicago - Los Angles - Sydney - Perth

From the point I arrived in the São Paulo airport till I landed in Perth was 63.5 hours. Most of this was caused because my main ticket was a round trip flight from Perth to Chicago. There were a bunch of other separate tickets for the travel in between, for example I bought my own ticket from Austin to Las Vegas. This meant I had to fly back to Chicago first, then head back to Perth. Granted I also got to the São Paulo 8 hours before my flight, because Dan and Jack's flight was earlier than mine. There was also 10 hours between flights Chicago.

I was initially I had fun complaining that Dan and Jack were leaving 4 hours before me, but were getting back to Perth over a day before I did. But then while sitting in the Macaroni Grill in the Chicago Airport enjoying a nice bow-tie pasta, I learned their flight out of Santiago had been canceled and they were stuck. They still arrived in Perth a half a day before me.

At first I couldn't fathom how they appeared to be all nice and rested after the long trip while I was dead. Even noting that Jack went straight to São Paulo and Dan was with me to Chicago but then went to São Paulo from there; they were still too lively. Then I found out they got a night in a hotel in Santiago AND in Sydney because of the canceled flight.


Yellow: Perth to San Diego
Perth - Melbourne - Los Angeles - San Diego

Green: San Diego to Perth
San Diego - Los Angeles - Melbourne - Perth

This trip back to San Diego was a result of my work the previous trip. We arrived Tuesday morning and left on Thursday, spending about as much time in San Diego as we spent in transit. It appears to have gone well though, so that is all good.

Though I have to say Melbourne's airport sucks! When you get off an international flight you have to collect your bags and clear customs in that country. Normally, once you through customs there is a place where a guy will take your bags. Not in Melbourne. In Melbourne you have to go up as if you were checking in at the ticket counter and wait in a long line with the people who have used the new automatic check computers in to get their boarding pass.

So lets compare:

Normal - 1 or 2 people to collect your bags as you come out of customs, go right to your gate.

Melbourne - 6 overworked and stressed people at the counters, 1 person at the head of the line directing you to get into the line and 1 person walking up and down the line pulling out people who have been waiting so long that they have to be rushed to the front of the line so as not to miss their flight.

Profile Picture Library

I decided to create a post for various things instead of having them go out to separate web pages, because I can no longer count on the company hosting it. I'm starting with these previous profile pictures because I was about to update it but whomever is hosting my website now still hasn't gotten their act together. This way I can link the post on the sidebar, update it as I add new pictures, and people can even make comments about my receding hairline. I'll be doing this for my resume and history pages sometime in the near future as well.

So, here are the various profile picture I've used since starting this blog in 2004. Be kind in your comments, because words hurt.

This picture was taken at the Brisbane Botanical Gardens in early 2004, shortly after I arrived in Australia.

When I used it as my first profile picture on the blog it had converted it to black & white because my skin tone was so washed out. I did try to restore the color in Photoshop but I wasn't happy with anything I was able to do.



Here is what I looked like after I made the fateful decision to see what life would be like as a blond in 2006. Basically I looked like Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, in the Harry Potter movies.

This absolutely killed my hair. It became really dry and all of the natural curl went away. I started wearing it in a ponytail and didn't notice that it was breaking off in the back making it look horrible.



Here I am in early 2007 having dyed the hair back to my normal brown though you can still see the lighter ends. The curl was starting to come back, but it was still a mess especially in the back.








This picture was taken in late 2007 right before Auran shut down. It is cropped from a picture taken for a feature in issue #173 of Hyper Magazine.

The games you can see on the monitors are Eye of the Beholder and the Original Command & Conquer.






Here I am outside the Interzone offices in Perth Australia in late 2008. Note that it is a rare "smiling" picture not often seen.

The color looks really washed out in the this picture but it might just be this monitor. I might have to readjust the balance and re-post it.

Grim Fandango Design Document Online!

My friend Richard just sent around an email pointing out that Tim Schafer, founder of Double Fine Productions and former designer at Lucas Arts, in a "fit of Cake-induced Grim nostalgia," after a celebration of the 10 year anniversary of Grim Fandango, has posted the PDF of the original Grim Fandango Puzzle Design Document. To quote Richard's email directly, "OMFGHOLYSHIT!!!"

Richard and Baz just finished playing through the Legend of Kryrandia PC game and were complaining about some of the puzzles. I pointed out that they should play some other adventure games of that time period if they wanted to see difficult puzzles. To quote Tim's post, "People said the puzzles in Grim were super hard, and I’ve always maintained that this was due to a deep character flaw or mental illness on the part of the player. But now, reading this again, I’ve realized that holy smokes--Some of them puzzles were nuts. Obscure. Mean, even."

Australian versus Violent Video Games

Under current Australian legislation, people of all ages are being treated unfairly by an outdated video game classification system. Unlike movies which can be rated R18+, video games can only be rated as high as MA15+. Most of the problem can be laid at the feet of South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson who is even blocking debate on the subject.

To help with the campaign for a R18+ rating, my friend Tim has created an advocacy site to keep to up with the latest news on the issue and help educate people on the issue. The site is: www.r18games.com.au, pass it on.

Now that is a completely separate issue from the Australian Government’s proposed legislation to censor the internet. The exact details are still being kept under wraps, which I believe would be illegal in the U.S. But it is basically yet another example of a government spending millions of tax payer dollars, 44 million budgeted so far, to turn Australia into a nanny state.

Internet providers and the government’s own test have already been proven to not do a very good job of stopping people from accessing illegal material and will slow Australia’s already abysmal internet speeds by an additional average of 30 percent!

The latest spat being their attempt to censor critiques of the system.

A good site to keep follow to keep up with what’s going on with that front and information about what you can do to stop it is: www.nocleanfeed.com/

Another site that mocks the whole thing with a parody type send up is: www.netalarmed.com/. However I think the whole issue of how big, tough Australia holds up against violent video games was summed up best by GU Comics.

Macaroni Grill and Ouija Board Pasta

I had been complaining about my trip itinerary back to Perth. I left São Paulo 4 hours after Dan and Jack and would have arrived in Perth a full day after they do. My trip travel time is 53.5 hours and that doesn't count that we arrived at the São Paulo airport at 3:00 PM, which was an additional 8 hours before my departure at 11:00 PM.

But now as I camp out in the Chicago airport Macaroni Grill, during my 10 hour layover here, enjoying a nice bowtie pasta, I learn that Dan and Jack's flight out of Chili to Sydney was canceled and they are currently stuck with no idea when another flight will be available. I guess I can't complain about my long trip anymore... but I can giggle quietly to myself.

The guy next to me was reading a Johnathan Kellerman novel and we talked briefly. He was an older guy and was wearing an X-Box Live sweatshirt, small conversation ensued. I know I've read some Kellerman novels, but am horrible with names. I asked if he was the guy who wrote the Navajo Tribal Police mysteries, but that was Tony Hillerman... who I just learned passed away today! His books were another series I listened to when I first discovered audio books in the library way back when.

When I first sat down here at Macaroni Grill, I was also thinking about how a bunch of us phoned up and ordered take-away from a Macaroni Grill in Vegas one afternoon while playing a table top role-playing game. My friend Kelly convinced me that you didn't have to tip the bartender when you picked up the order; because, really what did he do besides take the food from the kitchen and hand it to you all boxed up. The bartender, however though he deserved a little more and made quite a show of the fact that I wasn't tipping him, at the top of his voice, as I was walking away.

The point of that is that I got a Facebook invite from Kelly while sitting there. Now granted, finally getting onto Facebook isn't the same as passing away, but that's two out of three Macaroni Grill coincidences.

The third was that I was also thinking about this girl I went on a date with years ago where we ate at Macaroni Grill. There was a memorable incident involving a reproduction of one of the paintings that I drew on the paper tablecloth with the crayons they give you. Nothing became of the date and we went our separate ways, but now I'm just waiting for something related to her to pop up.