So, a friend of mine from work showed me some stuff he’d been messing around with in GarageBand – Apple’s music tool that ships with iLife. I’ve had it installed on my Mac since I got it, but never really messed around with it. After I got a chance to see it in action, though, it reminded me a lot of Sonic Foundry’s Acid, which I really enjoyed playing around with.

GarageBand isn’t as powerful as Acid, no doubt – at least, to me, it’s strangely not as immediately accessible. But it does a lot of what Acid does, and it’s free. I’ve got Acid Pro 3.0 lying around, but I can’t seem to ever find the CD Key and the CDs at the same time, so it’s been unused, unfortunately.

But finding GarageBand, and also finding out that it’s actually not only useful, but fun to use, has made me poke around iLife a bit more. Turns out, I ended up using iMovie to edit a clip of Serenity for use in a pitch presentation I’m giving at work. Took a little poking to figure out everything I needed, but it’s relatively straightforward, and looks like all I’d really need to actually do movie editing if I wanted to.

It’s strange – in the same way that the iPhone may not do more than most Windows Mobile phones, but it makes the functionality *accessible*, I feel like the Mac does *more* than the PC did, simply because it’s there, and it’s easy to use.

iLife gives me the ability to edit video easily, create music easily, manipulate my photos easily (except that introductory phase, which sucked, and its inefficiency, which still sucks), make a competent DVD, and basically take care of whatever media mishmashing I want to. It also integrates really well with Keynote and Pages, which I’ve used for work-related stuff.

Keynote, for the record is fucking *AWESOME*. It’s so far beyond Powerpoint in terms of ease of use and visual style that it’s hard to actually describe its value. The difference in impact between the presentations I used to make in Powerpoint for work, and the current thing I’m doing in Keynote is indescribable. If I had to estimate its value, functionally, I’d say the difference could literally be the difference between getting this pitch into the pipe and not, simply because it looks better, and as a result, it conveys information more easily.

I’ve been really happy with my Mac. The functionality’s just awesome, it feels great, it’s sufficiently powerful for anything I want to do, and I’m constantly surprised by *what* I can do with it.

My sole problem is that I have yet to find a browser that doesn’t behave really oddly in some fashion. I haven’t spent a lot of time with Safari, but I threw my hat in the ring with Camino, and it’s fine, except for the fact that it periodically completely loses its mind, and becomes unable to read the *format* of a webpage, and then just periodically stops loading anything. A quick restart of the browser fixes the problem, but it’s sort of a pain in the ass, given that it’s probably the application I use the most.

That said, I’m floored by the quality of the laptop, and the sheer volume of bizarre stuff that I can do with it easily.

So, reading through a friend’s post, I realized that I have a couple hobbies that I used to really be into that I just don’t particularly care about anymore. I suppose it’s not that odd – you just don’t have the time, money, or mental space to devote to everything you might be interested in, and my hobbies were often niche enough that it took effort to keep up.

Comics: I wish I could still be “into” comics as much as I used to be, but I’m just not. Whether it’s that I don’t have the time or ability to sort the wheat from the chaff, or that *most* comics (just as they did back in the day) suck, I haven’t been able to find anything that’s really caught my attention and held it. Recently, an ex-coworker of mine had lent me The Walking Dead, which I enjoyed, the Kurt Busiek Conan books, and Y: The Last Man. Of the three, I liked Y the best, but they were all pretty good. Oh – he also loaned me the Joss Whedon-written Astonishing X-Men, which was absolutely awesome. Based on these reads, I went back to a comic store, but was utterly unable to find something that I was willing to spend money on without a guarantee they’d be of a similar caliber.

Music: I have essentially the same problem, here. I used to really be into music – finding cutting edge stuff, really getting into it. I went to a lot of live shows in high school, and had a lot of fun. Saw Radiohead on their first tour of the states, and really early Pearl Jam, before they hit it *big*. These days, I hear about all sorts of bands I ought to like, and probably would if I was willing to invest the time, but I’m just not. I like music – it’s not like that’s changed, but I don’t *care* about it. It occupies almost no mental space. It’s not something I think about, pretty much ever, unless I’m actively looking for something new to listen to, and even then, I can barely be bothered to really try any of the hip new things.

It’s sort of strange, because these things have a way of sort of defining who you are, when you’re obsessed with them. One of my friends, H, I think of as “music girl,” in some respects, because I know if it’s hip, and new, she knows of ’em, and has an opinion. My ex-coworker was really into comics, and you’d see it in the clothes he wore, and things like his computer backgrounds. Not that that’s a bad thing – he wasn’t asocial, he just loved comics. So, it’s weird, because in high school, it was pretty much music and comic books, and now it’s not.

*shrugs*

So, my right knee hurts. When my leg’s straight, it feels like someone’s stabbing me with a steak knife right below my right kneecap.

I don’t think that’s normal, and I’ve had some pretty fucked up experiences with that knee.

It comes and goes, but it’s basically been persistent in varying degrees for the last few days, so I went to see the doc today. The nurse practitioner looked at it, went, “Hnrgh,” and directed me back at the guy who originally operated on my knee, who’s apparently a pretty renowned local knee specialist. So, that appointment’s at the end of next week, and ’till then, I’ll be hopped up on painkillers more or less nonstop. Fun!

Knee.

Not really.

So, I’ve had plenty of wacky customer support experiences – some bad (Best Buy), some good (Oakley). My Macbook had a problem the other day – the lip from the top plate of the laptop, near where my right wrist rests, snapped, and a chunk of it had broken off.

I took my ‘book to the Genius bar, wondering whether it was covered by warranty. They said it would be, but they’d have to order the part. So, I waited a couple days, got a call from ’em today, and took it in. They said they could do the repair while I waited, so I bit on that. Brought the thing home half an hour later, and here I am, typing away.

What strikes me as odd is that they didn’t just replace the plastic piece – they replaced the entire “section” of the laptop. New trackpad, new trackpad button, new plastic piece, entirely new keyboard. Which feels great – feels like a brand-new laptop, honestly.

So, score 1 for Apple in the “good” category. The Genius Bar system’s sort of a pain in the ass, but only compared to “good” customer service elsewhere. Compared to any other laptop manufacturer, it’s stellar.

So… another friend of mine from college passed away. I’m not gonna write anything specifically about him, because we’ve been asked not to. But it makes me examine my reaction to the news. I’d gotten news a couple weeks ago that it looked like something bad had happened, but it was only today that we got confirmation. I think part of the reason I feel so… distant from it is simply that the news from a few weeks ago was pretty likely the end of it. Chances of a different outcome were slim, at best.

I felt terrible then, but because it wasn’t *conclusive*, I think it was easier to say, “Later, I’ll feel bad. There’s still hope.” Now, knowing that there isn’t, I feel like, “Well, that seemed likely from the news weeks ago.” It’s terrible. It hasn’t sunk in what’s happened, though academically, I can certainly understand it.

When my other friend died, I felt quite similar. My response was almost, “Oh. That’s terrible news,” move on with life. A month or so later, it hit me like a wall – I have no idea why.

I guess part of me wonders whether it’s a hard-wired reaction – that maybe in times of bad news, some people just have to not respond to the news. Maybe I’m just trying to justify my lack of emotional response. I don’t know.

I will say this about my friend – I never felt like I really knew him. There are some people who are so effervescent, so enthusiastic, and so positive that I feel like they’re seeing a different world than I am. I think knowing someone who sees the world so differently than you is a great thing – and when I say I don’t think I ever knew him, it’s simply that he was so different than me that I could never imagine seeing the world in the same way he did.

Another friend of mine at one point in college said that it’s the differences that make friendships interesting – that it’s the surprise, and the challenge that makes these friendships worthwhile.

He was someone who could genuinely see the best in people, and I feel like he loved the process of living more than almost anyone else I know. He was one of those guys who cared when you were down, did his best to bring you up, and… I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to really love everyone that unabashedly. But knowing him showed me there are people like that out there, and that such a worldview is possible. I’ll miss that.

I’ll miss him.

(Edit – this was published recently, but originally written in 2007)

This may be the best episode of Top Gear I’ve ever seen. Absolutely insane.

There’s an interesting thread here about how it appears that Lucasarts, for their new trailer for Force Unleashed, have essentially stolen a random artist’s mesh for the giant star destroyer that’s the centerpiece of the trailer.

Poor form. Even if it’s technically “legal,” it’s really … repulsive behaviour, to me. I haven’t been psyched about a Star Wars game in ages, and this wasn’t changing my mind, but it’s just really distasteful, and I hope they come clean.

So, right now, I weigh 215.2 lbs. That’s down from the beginning of the year at 233, but it’s up from my low weight of the year at 212. The new job, and finding a sustainable schedule for working out/eating right has been tricky, but the consequences haven’t been as dire as I’d suspected.

Still, I’m definitely in worse shape than I was, and I’d like to correct that. So, starting today, I’m focusing again on eating better and getting regular exercise with the goal of being down to 200 by the end of the year.

I’ve found that when I weigh myself every day and log it, I can actually watch what I eat because I don’t want the number to go up. When I don’t, I don’t care all that much. It’s a small switch, but a critical one for me. Without a strong external motivation (beating Klay is *excellent* motivation), it’s also hard to stay focused. It’s just a matter of willpower, and the desire to change. On the plus side, it’s clear that once I hit my target weight, I can actually eat a reasonable amount without gaining that weight back.

Ah, well. Time to focus.

Scott Adams on careers.

His premise is that most successful people are good (top 25% of the populace) at three things that put them into high demand. At the end of the article, he asks, “What are your three?”

Lessee:

1. Breadth of knowledge – I know this isn’t necessarily what he’s looking for, but I think it’s suitable. I’m not great at anything, but on top of being decent at a couple things, I’m marginally okay (I’d say 65%+) at a *lot* of stuff. I think this gives me a lot of perspective, and enough of an ability to pull useful information from a wide variety of sources that it’s a skill in itself.
2. Understanding systems – Again, sort of a weird thing to be good at, but I have a really solid ability to look at a system of interactions and understand how it’ll work. It lets me play games in my head that don’t exist, or build an interactive system of dialog before writing a line. I always wanted to be able to draw well, but I was never able to develop the skill to take an image in my head and transfer it to paper – I couldn’t ever “see” the image in sufficient detail to translate it. With game design, I can see the whole thing, clear as day. Sometimes I’m wrong, and obviously I miss stuff – but I’ve found in my experience if I’ve got a single skill I can say I’m genuinely good at, this is it.
3. Writing – Yeah, okay – the novels and the blog aren’t the best example to hold up here, but it’s not really what I’m talking about. In terms of writing, I think my skill is that I can take an idea, and write it down in a way that (hopefully) communicates that concept to the reader. I’m no Kerowack (spelling intentional (not Jack Kerouac)) – not by a longshot. But in terms of say, taking something from ‘Understanding systems’ and trying to communicate that to someone, I think I can do that better than 90% of the people I know who have similar responsibilities.

So, I think those are my three things. If you’d asked me 10 years ago what I thought my three things were, they’d have been totally, totally different. *shrugs*

Roger Ebert has written a bit about whether or not games can be art – his conclusion is that they can’t be. Of course, I disagree.

His most recent entry into the debate is a response to Clive Barker’s comments here.

Barker: “I think that Roger Ebert’s problem is that he thinks you can’t have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written ‘Romeo and Juliet’ as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn’t taken the damn poison. If only he’d have gotten there quicker.”

Ebert: He is right again about me. I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. Would “Romeo and Juliet” have been better with a different ending? Rewritten versions of the play were actually produced with happy endings. “King Lear” was also subjected to rewrites; it’s such a downer. At this point, taste comes into play. Which version of “Romeo and Juliet,” Shakespeare’s or Barker’s, is superior, deeper, more moving, more “artistic”?

While games are rarely created by a single person anymore, many of the best games are the vision of one person, brought into reality by a group of people who share similar goals. I think you can say that they are collaborative in a way that is similar to movies. The lead designer of a game, let’s say, is the director. The actors, cameramen, effects artists, director of photography, etc. are the various people who work to make the director’s vision come to life. In games, you have modelers, texture artists, level designers, system designers, and programmers who all help you bring your vision to life.

The collaborative process is no different. So, it’s not that it’s a *single* person’s vision. But there is an “artist” at work.

In a movie, the “artist” presents the viewer with a linear narrative, which the viewer then interprets. Because it’s a linear narrative, you can usually be pretty sure of the viewer’s response, but there’s often differences in how people interpret things based on what they bring to the viewing – each viewer has perspective, experiences, and expectations that the other viewers do not. While I wouldn’t say it’s an ‘interactive’ experience, there is definitely some back-and-forth between the viewer and the artist to arrive at the final perception of what the experience actually *was* in the end.

In a game, the exact same thing occurs. The difference is while the movie delivers a single path through the experience, a game presents a “possibility space,” to use Will Wright’s term, where the player has options to shape the experience. In some games, the possibility space is very large (the Sims), while in others, it is very nearly linear (Final Fantasy). In the Sims, there is almost no prescripted narrative. I can do anything, and put my characters in nearly any situation. In Final Fantasy, while I can affect the mechanics of the game, the narrative is relentlessly linear, and there is almost nothing I can do to change the course of events other than die or not die.

Here’s the thing – if I make a movie about ‘the human experience,’ and my ‘human experience’ differs from yours, you may not get it. You may not be able to relate to the experience, no matter how universal I’ve intended it to be if our perspectives are substantially different.

In a game, let’s take the Sims again, you can create something that’s a statement about the ‘human experience,’ or make a statement about consumerism in modern society, and in the game, people can bring those different perspectives to bear, interact with the game in a very different way, and still reach the same sort of conclusions about the experience, because they’ve “solved” the mechanics of the game in a different way.

To hit another quote from the article:

Ebert: …the real question is, do we as their consumers become more or less complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, empathetic, intelligent, philosophical (and so on) by experiencing them? Something may be excellent as itself, and yet be ultimately worthless.

Yes.

This has been another installment of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.

To be more precise, though, yes, of course:

• Sim City taught me a lot about not only city planning and management, but strategic organization under time pressure, and how various logical systems can interact with each other. I’d say without question, it’s made me more intelligent.
• Various adventure games – many of the Sierra games (Space Quest, etc.) and games like the Monkey Island series – ‘taught’ me to be witty, or empathetic in the same way that movies do.
• Ico, as I’m sure many people have pointed out to Mr. Ebert, has probably made them more philosophical, and if not Ico, certainly Shadow of the Colossus has made people question whether they’re doing the right thing or not

Those are but a few examples. The point being, to someone who’s grown up with games, that’s a question that doesn’t even need to be asked. The mere fact of his asking shows that he lacks an understanding of the medium’s potential. That’s no slight against Ebert. For someone of his generation, I’d bet he has far *more* understanding of games than most. That he believes games have more in common with sports isn’t all that far off. Many games, the Maddens, Counterstrikes and Starcrafts of the world certainly are more sport than not.

But the point is that the medium has tremendous flexibility, and the “sport”like games are merely one instance of a tremendously vast and varied medium. I would never say a game like Grim Fandango is anything like a sport. It’s a linear, self-contained narrative that happens to have some interactive elements. Half Life 2 is not a sport, but if it doesn’t evoke the same bleak dystopia that Children of Men does, I don’t know what else even comes close.

I’m glad Roger Ebert’s talking about games. Hopefully, our medium will find its own voice – it’s own Roger Ebert to have the same kind of lasting impact that he’s had on movies.

Still – doesn’t mean he’s *right*.