Miss Anthropy

Obama's Speech on Science Education

A bit of overlap, but several blogs lent their viewpoints to today's speech that many might find of interest, in light of LHC's first successful collisions!

Boing Boing:
-The Science Geeks of Tomorrow Need Your Help

Gamasutra:
-ESA, Sony, Microsoft Respond to Obama's Call for STEM Education

Kotaku:
-Obama and LittleBigPlanet Team Up, For Kids
-Watch Obama Talk Math, Science, Education & Video Games

Large Hadron Collider ♥

io9:
-Undeterred by Time-Traveling Saboteurs, the LHC Begins Colliding

Gizmodo:
-LHC First Particle Beams Collision Doesn't Obliterate World, Universe

Boing Boing:
-Good News from the Large Hadron Collider

Gaming

GameSetWatch:
-Fighting Fantasy Flowcharts

Gamasutra:
-Rolston: Physical and Virtual Artifacts Crucial to Narrative Designer's Job

Boing Boing:
-Everything but the Game: The Art Behind the Stitches of LittleBigPlanet

Wired GameLife:
-Today's Game Book: Race for a New Game Machine

io9:
-BioShock cosplay is amazing

Gizmodo:
-Microsoft Sued by Datel for Killing Off Third Party Xbox 360 Memory Units

Kotaku:
-Rockstar Presents: Music Lessons for Schoolkids
-Child's Play: We Came, We Partied, We Raised...

New Media

Henry Jenkins:
-Editing Interfiction 2: An Interview with Delia Sherman

io9:
-Producers of America: Congratulations, Joss! Now Leave Television Alone

Film

io9:
-Charting the Evolution of Superhero Movies
-Avatar Linguist Wants Na'vi language to be the Next Klingon ...okay, you know what? I finally realized what Avatar reminds me of: Atlantis: The Lost Empire. And love that movie though I do, that is not a comparison I should be drawing here.

Literature

io9:
-If SF Publishing Implodes Once Again, Will You Follow Your Favorite Authors to Porn?
-Get Exposure (In Your Trunk) and Profit (for the Publishers) the Vanity Press Way!

Boing Boing:
-Tom Gauld print: "Characters for an Epic Tale"
-Understanding the psychology of authoritarianism

Curios

Boing Boing:
-Murdoch-Microsoft deal in the works

io9:
-We Are Being Crashed By Another Galaxy

Gizmodo:
-Wikipedia's Brain Drain
-The Definition of Evil: Microsoft's Search Wars Hurt Us All
-74 Mesmerizing Slow Shutter Shots Oh this stuff is gorgeous.
-Wind-Sensitive LED Dandelion Dress is Made for Pretty Night Fairies And this!
-Rat Brain Simulator Calls IBM's Cat Brain Simulation Bogus

Nightmare Fuel

Gizmodo:
-Brain Scan Finds Man Was Not in a Coma-- 23 Years Later

Large Hadron Collider

io9:
-All Systems Go for Large Hadron Collider - Stay Tuned for Collisions!

Gizmodo:
-CERN Director: "The LHC is a far better understood machine than it was a year ago."

Gaming

Gamasutra:
-BioShock, Far Cry 2's O'Connor: Beware 'Serviceable, Not Great' Approaches to Integrating Game Writers

GameSetWatch:
-Design Diversions: Anatomy of a Gun
-Mama Cooks It Up for Arcades
-Sound Current: '2 Player Productions -- Reformatting PAX for DVD'

GamePolitics:
-Aussie R18+ Rally Planned
-Fighting Fair: International Humanitarian Law as Applied to Games

IndieGames:
-Browser Game Pick: Captain Forever

Kotaku:
-Art Style Digidrive Micro-Review: The Superiority of Video Games
-Square Enix Already Rolling Out Paid Gyromancer DLC
-Sackboy Gets Furried by Sonic the Hedgehog *SCREAMS*
-Mass: We Pray, which I wisely did not report on in these roundups, was the hoax it so obviously was. Who was behind it? The genius retards behind Dante's Inferno.
-Microsoft Denies "One Million Banned" Report

Animation

io9:
-There's No Intelligent Life on Planet 51
-First stills for Satoshi Kon's newest feature, The Dream Machine. It's very Tezuka, actually.

Kotaku:
-New Halo Legends short hits Waypoint this Saturday.

Film

io9:
-Rare Dune Concept Art from One of Space Opera's Greatest Visionaries
-New Moon, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Celibacy
-Page-to-Screen Fail: The Worst Live-Action Versions of Book Characters

Literature

io9:
-One of Your Crucial Characters Isn't Working. What Do You Do?
-How Do You Bridge the Gap Between Two Cool Moments in Your Novel?
-Maybe the Best Reason to Write Science Fiction
-Independent Publishers Who Are Reinventing the Future

Curios

Boing Boing:
-Origami hats for the faces on the money
-Google puts a stop to tooth-whitening, belly-flattening scumbags In other news, Firefox AdBlock prevails.
-Matt Logue's Empty Los Angeles photography book
-3D scanning with a plain webcam

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.
-Competition and Google Book Search

io9:
-Scientology Trial Reveals Alleged Work Camps and Baby-Killing ...well, it only took, what, nearly two years for what Anonymous has known since the beginning to come to light in court, but finally?

Oh God the Sky is Falling

io9:
-Apocalyptic Images We Should have Seen in 2012

Oh Japan

Gizmodo:
-Guy Marries Video Game, We Don't Judge

Boing Boing:
-Taste Test: natto, gooey fermented soy beans

Gaming

Gamasutra:
-In-Depth: Pixeljunk's Baiyon and Katamari's Takahashi
-Sony: 'All PS3 Units Will be Firmware-Upgradeable to 3D'

GameSetWatch:
-The Week in Game Criticism: All You Need is Love
-Korean Students' Cut and Paste Game

Kotaku:
-Dev Alleges Some Deceive ESRB to Get Lower Ratings
-Here's What Phoenix Wright Looks Like on the Wii
-Fat Princess Delayed in Japan For apparent censorship issues? Oh Japan.
-More Images from Final Fantasy XIII
-The BioShock 2 Special Edition is Gorgeous, Groovy
-A wealth of new StarCraft II stuff
-So, the Haystacks of Assassin's Creed II - Are They Any Bigger?

Film

Kotaku:
-Turbo: The Struggle to Make a Better Video Game Movie

Literature

io9:
-Ray Bradbury's Advice to Struggling Writers: Struggle Harder!

Curios

Gizmodo:
-Livescribe Pulse Smartpen Now Has Its Own App Store "That's right folks—now there's an app store for pen and paper."
-The Paint-Less Coca-Cola Would Save Earth One Can at a Time
-Rumor: Firefox Coming to the Playstation 3
-Apple Exec Wants You to Puke All Over His Mind-Bending Backyard Deck
-The NSA Helped Microsoft Improve Windows 7 Security

Boing Boing:
-Demonstrating TSA futility by stabbing dead pigs with pens
-Videos: Great Depression Cooking with Clara
-Video: How Kimchi is Made ARGH I WANT SOME RIGHT NOW.

io9:
-Concept Art: Cosmonauts Silently Explore the Alien Planet Earth gorgeous
-The 30 Most Disturbing Twilight Products *rolls*

FAIL

GamePolitics:
-Anti-Violence Flash Game Lets Users Beat Women

Media Studies

Henry Jenkins:
-On the Pleasures of Not Belonging, or Notes on Interstitial Art (Part One)

Gaming

GameSetWatch:
-Alt Space: New Horizons

GamePolitics:
-Lanning on Why Violent Games are Still a Talking Point

IndieGames:
-Freeware Game Pick: rComplex

Kotaku:
-Square Enix Promise to be More Timely with Future Western Releases
-Final Fantasy XIII Impressions: Looking for XII
-For the Discerning Art Collector/Halo Fan
-Halo: Reach to Premiere at Spike VG Awards
-Spike Video Game Awards Nominees Announced Flower is up for Best Indie!
-Team Fortress 2 Gets Updated A LOT
-Modern Warfare 2: What Were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld Trying to Tell You?

Television

io9:
-The Prisoner: All You Need is... Wha?

Literature

io9:
-One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above the Poverty Line

Curios

Gizmodo:
-This Woman Will Make Our Walls Breathe
-Microsoft's Bag-Based Computer Interface, for Poking
-"Unfriend" Declared Word of the Year ...What? The word is defriend. God.
-Scientists Make Breakthrough with First Programmable Quantum Processor
-It Takes 147,456 PowerPC Processors to Out-Think a Single Stupid Cat Brain
-Qualcomm eBook Display Ups the Ante with Full Color and Video

Boing Boing:
-Klingon as a First Language
-Papercraft mecha: Metabots
-Energy Literacy Part One: Energy is invisible
-Library workers fired for colluding to keep graphic novel from being checked out by 11-year-old girl

io9:
-Scientists Say Jupiter's Moon Europa Might Be Teeming with Fish
-The City-Sized Nuclear Bunker Chairman Mao Built
-First Look at Harry Potter's Wizarding World Theme Park ...oh hell.

Oh Japan

Boing Boing:
-How-to make yourself look like Sailor Moon

bitstream: I just got to the part where you have people disintegrating and liquefying
Trope: It's kid's fiction!

I want to write a story about the marijuana lobby 50 years after the drug's been decriminalized nationwide.

Gaming

Kotaku:
-One Reason Why Hideo Kojima Put MGS: Peace Walker on the PSP
-Final Fantasy XIII is Install-free

GameSetWatch:
-Editorial: Are Publishers a Necessary Evil?

GamePolitics:
-Middle-Earth as Symbolic Middle-East

IndieGames:
-Interview roundup

Media Studies

Henry Jenkins:
-Cordwainer Smith Imagined Convergence Culture (and Viral Media) in 1964

Literature

Boing Boing:
-Booklife: a guide to a sane, productive writerly life

Curios

Boing Boing:
-Kingfishers: incredible underwater hunting photos
-Building a brain inside a supercomputer
-Communist-era store windows

Gizmodo:
-Watch Sony's 360 Degree 3D Display in Action

io9:
-Chart Shows How Few Missions to Mars Succeeded
-What's the Worst that Could Happen on a Fake Mission to Mars?
-It's a Robot Art Jam - Bring Your Spray-Cans and Flame-Throwers!
-Will Women Rule Over Men in the Future?

abandonedplaces:
-Abandoned waste disposal plant

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-US military data-mines America's kids for war recruiting Which isn't a slanted headline at all, but the article is about using No Child Left Behind data for recruiting purposes.

Oh Japan

Gizmodo:
-Japan Welcomes Windows 7 with Seven Layer Whopper Burger

Gaming

Kotaku:
-Sony's Magic Wand Shouldn't Look Like a Sex Toy
-New FFXIII screens
-For Little Money and In Many Words, These Gamers Help You ...an article on game FAQs? Slow news day, I guess. Actually, I find topics like this one interesting.
-Molyneux: Fable III Will Use Project Natal Yeah, but check out the source of the rumor.
-Fable III May Also Get In-Game Microtransaction Shops

PopMatters Moving Pixels:
-Inclusive Criminality: Multiculturalism and Saint's Row

Boing Boing:
-Like Ghibli Barfing Rainbows: the Art and Motion of Capybara's Critter Crunch

GameSetWatch:
-The Dark Tower Game Teased

Animation

io9:
-The Secrets of Astro Boy's Floating Robot City

Boing Boing:
-Animating the XKCD "I Love the Internet" strip HA HA. IT'S IN YOUR HEAD AGAIN!

Comics

Dresden Codak:
-42 Essential 3rd Act Twists

Gamasutra:
-Nickelodeon Acquires Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Franchise

Literature

io9:
-Pop Apocalypse book review

Curios

Boing Boing:
-Vampire killing kits from the 19th Century
-Spiral staircase built around 75' tree
-86-year-old WWII vet on gay marriage: "what do you think I fought for in Omaha Beach?"
-Neuroscience of Mona Lisa's smile

io9:
-A Lamp that Celebrates Alien Cow Abductions Everywhere
-The Vehicle of Our Mars Dreams is a Needle Waiting to Thread Space
-Barack Obama Lowered Republicans' Testosterone
-Stanford Study Explains Internet Trolls

Gizmodo:
-Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-Access Copyright tells Canadian gov't: no home TV recording, no ripping music, no moving old ebooks to new readers
-Voting machine source-code leak shows election-rigging subroutines?

Hey, I'm back. Laptop is still a senior citizen but at least I replaced its busted hip.

Writing:

The short story I got pretty far into developing turned out too creatively bankrupt to pursue, which seems to be the case of everything I've tried writing since 2003 ever. Just going to focus on revising a better, faster, stronger Downworld this NaNoWriMo.

Work:

Tutoring, tutoring, tutoring. It's not quite as much work as I want, but it's more than I had before.

I've also been hired on for some new merchandise materials for a feature film, namely the DVD and soundtrack case designs. And I'm back to staff editing at Hathor.

Still looking for something more permanent, and if it involves a move, so be it. I just wish I had more leads.

Watching:

Well, let's see. I saw 9 its opening weekend but kept mum about it because I was writing a review on it for a prospective job, but that fell through and the review is now dated and patently useless, so nevermind. But I did like it.

Also recently saw Doubt (oh my god that was the hugest gutpunch of a last scene ever) and LA Confidential last night and, no, I know it's improper to have waited until a student needed me to help her on a paper to finally watch this movie, but there we go.

The big one I've gotten into is Red vs. Blue, a full six years late I'm sure, but better late than never. The rambling, clumsy experiments of the first five seasons left aside as the sophomoric experiments that they are, Reconstruction has to be one of the most seminally perfect answers to oneself that I've ever seen, transformative work or otherwise. Not to mention that it brings the transhumanist ethical debate into the sphere of the player-and-avatar dynamic in a singularly expressive way. Not a bad follow-up for a hundred episodes of frat humor and plot holes, right?

Reading:

Recently finished Neuromancer, which, yes, is wonderful companion reading to RvB, especially of late. I then switched to John Steakley's Armor on a gut feeling, and no, I felt no surprise to find myself mired in a narrative about space marines and their magic monster armor, but transitioning from Gibson's fine jeweler's tool to Steakley's sledgehammer calling itself writing has not been a smooth one. I'm sticking it out, though, on the promise of eventual relevancy. Kind of. Look, I'm on a Halo kick, okay?

Playing:

Halohalohalohalohalohalohalo.

I finished a second Mass Effect play-through and am still staring at Final Fantasy XII as though it should be able to just beat itself even with my console off. Really, it's not that much of a stretch, at this point.

I was going to work on The World Ends With You next, but unfortunately had to get rid of my DS not long ago. When I'm in a better place financially, I'll just get a DSi and begin rebuilding my collection from there.

You know, I can't be the only one disappointed that the winner of the casual console war, and therefore the RPG war, of this round has been a portable. Many games are nothing if not cinematic and when you take the most story-heavy genre among them and relocate them from a big screen to a small one you transform it from a community event to a solitary one. My little siblings learned to read because of Squaresoft, and I think we're losing that, if it isn't already lost.

Come to that, even TV is narrowing from communal to personal with the rise of bite-size media, and the community aspect has grown disproportionately to consist almost totally of the watercooler conversation component. The introverted fan in me sees no problem with this. The older sister and someday-teacher in me wishes the primary stage was still principally a shared experience.

What about all of you? Do you consume media by yourself, or with others? If you watch with others, does that mitigate the degree to which you engage in secondary fan activity like fandom? Or not?




And you know, most "news" articles I get plastered in my face when I sign onto my mail in the morning simply insult me, or more often, let me know their political slant well in advance. Part of why I wish Firefox had a "stupid headline" blocker or replaced banal, nebulously 'kneejerk social conservative' feeds with, I dunno, BBC or something.

This link, however, was neither from the mail service's usual sources nor of the kind of end times frivolity that apparently gets the most trackbacks. It was kinda worth it in that low-brow "hurrrr"/woke-up-five-minutes-ago way.

Five Ways for Michael Bay to Kill Megan Fox in Transformers 3

Mmmmm.

Roundups resume tonight, by the way.

PAX

Kotaku:
-Could Gaming Soon Overshadow Music in Seattle?
-Mike Didn't Like Making Video Games, But Jerry Did

Gamasutra:
-Analysis: The 7 Ways that Penny Arcade Expo Does It Differently

Gaming

Kotaku:
-Strike Witches game coming to Xbox 360
-Measuring The Time It Takes Between A Button Press and On-Screen Action
-Mass Effect 2 is More than Meets Our Eyes you mean... DAVID KAYE IS IN IT???
-Final Fantasy XIII Dated for December 17 (Rumor)
-Yes, [Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic] Has /dance
-Delving Into The Darkest of Days

IndieGames:
-Solar Plexus
-Alchemia

GameSetWatch:
-Are Games Too Much Like Work?
-AnatoWii: System Internals Reimagined

Curios

Boing Boing:
-Normalcy is the future
-Arcade in Congo

Oh God the Sky is Falling

Boing Boing:
-Child-safety software sells your kids' IM conversations to market-research companies

Oh Japan

Kotaku:
-Peach-flavored 'Placenta Jelly'
-Photos from the second Phoenix Wright musical

Gaming

Kotaku:
-It Was Called Pac-Man Land

Gamasutra:
-GDAA Head Criticizes 'Ridiculous' Aussie Ratings System
-Analysis: How Important is Post-Release PR for Games?

GameSetWatch:
-Postmortem: Ensemble's Age of Empires
-Interview: Translating Shin Megami Tensei: Persona for PSP

Boing Boing Offworld:
-This is the Only Level and Upgrade Complete shore up indie meta-gaming

Animation

io9:
-Ponyo review

Film

Kotaku:
-Halo Movie Still "On Hold"

io9:
-Sci-Fi Mahbharata Prepares to Blow Your Mind

Television

Robot Chicken:
-Humping Robot skit

Literature

Boing Boing:
-Visualizing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Book

Grand Text Auto:
-Expressive Processing

Curios

APOD:
-Moonbow and Rainbows Over Patagonia

Gizmodo:
-10,000 Year Clock
-World's First Wireless, Internet-Connected Pacemaker Installed
-The Album is Dead and Your Stupid CMX Format Won't Bring It Back, Record Labels
-The Real Cost of Upgrading to Windows 7

io9:
-Mammal-Eating Plants Found in the Philippines
-Watch Whales from Your Living Room Inside the Bering Strait Tunnel
-The Terrifying Beauty of a Combat Vehicle That Thinks, Plans, and May One Day Harbor Dark Desires
-Paul Krugman Explains Why Progress is Slowing Down

Boing Boing:
-Charles Stross and Paul Krugman talk science fiction and economics at the WorldCon
-Adobe: Once you license software in France, you can only use it in French
-Twitpocalypse: "Open Source Twitter" proposed as antidote to Twitter's DDOS vulnerability
-Showdown at the 4chan corral: Doug Rushkoff

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-Mexican drug cartels sold stolen oil to US

Boing Boing Gadgets:
-Internet addiction camp inmates wave signs pleading for help

Events

Gizmodo:
-There are Perseids outside! Right now! Go go!

Oh Japan

Kotaku:
-Man Sets House on Fire Over Gundam

Gaming

Kotaku:
-Bioshock 2 pollutes beaches
-How Earth-to-Mars latency will affect gaming... Jesus Christ, our priorities much?
-Mario Was Put in Punch-Out Without Permission

GameSetWatch:
-'The Magic Resolution': A World Apart

Film

io9:
-The G.I. Joe Remake You Really Wanted
-First trailer for Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Heath Ledger's last film

Literature

Post Position (Nick Montfort):
-Worlds, Spin, and the Revolution of Curveship

io9:
-Can You Still Write Science Fiction Set in the Future?
-A Peek Inside the Life of a Science Fiction Editor

Television

io9:
-FlashForward's Producers Wanted Science Fiction That Wasn't Futuristic

Curios

io9:
-NASA Should Look Outside Itself for the Future, Says Panel
-The 20th Century the Way It Should Have Happened (with robots)

Gizmodo:
-Best Buy in 3D Needs to Go Back to the 2D Drawing Board

x planes:
-Sunday Fantasy: Cutangus

Oh God the Sky is Falling

io9:
-Just How Will America End?

Gaming

Kotaku:
-Production I.G.'s Shinji Aramaki heard about Halo from his wife
-Final Fantasy XIV screenshots
-Valkyria Chronicles 2 Grains Up for the Camera
-Valve Studying Sign Language for Deaf Half-Life Character
-Squeenix announces it will announce FFXIII release date soon maybe possibly
-Only 40% of American homes have game consoles In ur reports unskewin' ur statistics

Gamasutra:
-Xbox Live Indie Games - What Do Creators Think of the Price Changes?
-Rhianna Pratchett: Cut-Scenes Still 'Important Tool,' If Used Correctly

GameSetWatch:
-The Amateur: A Montage without Music

Wired GameLife:
-How Final Fantasy XIV Could Humanize the MMO

Sean Malstrom:
-Going the Wrong Way

Rampant Games:
-Tales of the Rampant Coyote: Paying the Indies

GamePolitics:
-Group Hopes to Turn Philadelphia into a Gaming Mecca

IndieGames:
-Boxgame
-Elements

Film

io9:
-How Brave Will Ridley Scott's New World Be?

Television

io9:
-Bryan Singer to direct 2012-themed SyFy miniseries

Curios

Boing Boing:
-Teens tweet
-Stupid pitfalls of social media
-Man brings gun into jail hidden in his body rolls

io9:
-Three Scenarios for the Future of Romantic Love
-Neil Gaiman and the Power of Storytelling

Gizmodo:
-Jesus Wants To Be Your Friend
-Sony's Cybershot Exmor Ad is Laughably Unfair

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-Free parking costs a fortune
-Terry Pratchett on the right to die

Oh God the Sky is Falling

Gizmodo:
-DDOS Attack Against Facebook, Twitter, et al. Was Because of One Guy's Livejournal (uh... really? really?)

GamePolitics:
-New Swedish Anti-Piracy Law Causes Web Traffic Drop

Oh Japan

Boing Boing Gadgets:
-Sanyo's rechargeable neck warmers

Writing:

There's a short story nagging at me pretty hard, and now having gotten more or less back into the habit of fiction writing after an absence, I may have to attempt it. It's actually not genre fiction this time, if all goes according to plan.

Work:

Applications, applications, applications. At the moment I've taken on some art requests to fill out my portfolio with new samples.

Watching:

Not too long ago down in the Sprawl I got to see Brazil for the first time on the big screen. Strange, I've seen almost every cut of this film that's out there (an analysis of this film was what got me into UCLA), but this opening was new to me. Definitely a delight to fill out the evening.

Reading:

I find myself catching up on a terrible backlog of my regular comics as of late, namely Saiyuki Reload, and All Hail Megatron. Yes, high brow, I know. For my birthday my sister gifted me with The Collector of Hearts and Slouching Toward Bethlehem, my favorite collections from Joyce Carol Oates and Joan Didion respectively, so they have helped me feel wholesome and misanthropic as I should be.

Playing:

I wouldn't say I'm playing it exactly but every night I turn on Final Fantasy XII for a few hours to let the characters level themselves. Good job, guys. Once I reach the infinity loop part I should really just leave it on for a night and go finish MPO or something.

Gaming

Kotaku:
-I love this shirt
-Myst Coming to PSP via Playstation Network
-Indies Being Shut Out of Xbox Live Arcade?
-Video for Penn & Teller's Bullshit! video game

Wired GameLife:
-Ridiculous Life Lessons from New Girl Games
-Indie game: Time Gentlemen, Please!

Grand Text Auto:
-Agency Reconsidered

GameSetWatch:
-Rapelay Developer Releasing Dragon Quest Parody H-Game
-More details on "Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!" because I know you wanted them

Curios

(replacing "Neat Stuff" to now include things that might not be neat per se but definitely of interest.)

Boing Boing:
-Kappa Machine (for you, andmydog)
-x planes (There is also an LJ feed, to which I now subscribe.)
-Personal Transformations in the Internet Age

abandonedplaces
-abandoned factory near South Bridge in Kyiv, Ukraine

GameSetWatch:
-Daft Punk Chiptune Cover Album "Da Chip" now available for free on album's website
-Augmented Reality Movie Poster for upcoming film Gamer

odysseyworkshop:
-Interview: Ginjer Buchanan

Gizmodo:
-Robot 3D mapping and localization... from 1979
-The Kaleidoscopic Dance of the Inkjet Printer

Oh God the Sky is Falling

Kotaku:
-FTC Calls Out Video Game Reviewers in Proposed Endorsement Rule Changes

I just noticed Deena over at Drollerie Press actually put together blurbs for the individual stories in "Needles & Bones". Here is the one for "Gravity":

Salut is the blood-letter of the Sixth Step. She and her kin are lighter, more righteous, than the creatures of the Seventh Step, but fall short of the glory that is the Fifth Step. They cannot imagine how beautiful the creatures of the First Step must be until a stranger falls from the First. She and her kin are distraught for him. Oh what a terrible thing it is to fall! It would have been better for him, they think, if he had not survived, but he is bright, and light, and very beautiful, and she cannot help but sew him back together with the threads that bind her own heart.

Though Salut cannot imagine the despair that must drive the stranger, Namaste who is stranger no more, when he chooses to fall from the Sixth Step she is horrified. Yet, though she hardly knows why, she must follow him, if necessary all the way to the Steps’ end and into the mouth of the Great Sea.

So, there you have it. It does have a plotline, you know. Even if a rather fanciful one.

For reference: you can buy "Gravity" in its "Needles & Bones" anthology here. I've also added the link on my website (finally).

In other writing news: Downworld is likely to be finished for this year's NaNoWriMo. I know, I know. But the more I stare at it the more I realize it needs recalibration as well as to be flat-out finished, so the extra time will be good for it.

And I've had a short story or two turning around in my head... We'll see what comes of them.

Daily Link Roundup

In which I pilfer other sites' roundups as well. (Starting after today, link roundups will always be in their own post.)

Gaming:

Kotaku:
-...idek
-"Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman!"
-A guide to commenting the fanboy way

Boing Boing:
-Recreation of Super Mario during India's Got Talent

Gamasutra:
-The Designer's Notebook: Sorting Out the Genre Muddle
-The Business of the Japan Niche

Neat Stuff:

io9:
-Nick Frost and Simon Pegg intro video to Paul.

Wired:
-Robot Einstein Learns to Smile

Gizmodo:
-Renowned hacker added to Homeland Security council (yes, it's a month old, but I missed this and haha, awesome)
-Cyborg crickets

Oh God the Sky is Falling:

Gizmodo:
-Power outlets for your laptop at airport terminals provide an exploit for keylogging.

So you're all going to buy my short story, right?

Right?

Well, okay. I have a few free copies to give away, but not many. So if I give you one, could you do me, the other authors, and especially Drollerie Press a big favor by posting about it (hey, even to say you hated it) and directing your friends over to the site? This will help see this anthology in other formats in the future, so it's my time to make doe eyes at you all and self-promote shamelessly.

Blurb:

Needles & Bones is a collection of poems and short fiction by a double handful of brilliantly creative artists-with-words. It begins gently, with fairy tales, but its tendrils of surreality spread from the stories of our childhood, into our adult world, and on to places beyond our own. We visit heaven, and hell, and places we might never imagine, peopled by creatures who are only sometimes like us.

And I might as well blurb about my story in particular, "Gravity":

"Gravity" is a post-Singularity fairy tale, a fable about faith, history, and relative perception. On a Stair which spans from the ocean to the heavens, two dolls left behind by the gods seek an escape from everything, even the fundamental physics which rule their existence.

It's also coming to mobipocket.com, Fictionwise and Amazon as soon as it's processed. So you can go places with it. And all those 21st century things.

Downworld's finally broken 100,000 words.

So okay.

Today is a wonderful day.

Anyway.

Writing:

Downworld is at 98-something thousand words. We've officially entered into "I hate you but you're too far along to stop writing you" territory. That's good news for someone, anyway.

Work:

Animation commission is mostly done, and I have another commission to design a promotional page for a feature.

Watching:

Haven't seen anything lately.

Reading:

Haven't been reading anything lately.

Playing:

Bought and played through all of Flower, and it was everything I could have hoped for. Not quite the religious experience that flOw was, which I think had something to do with the inherent role of mankind in this one, versus its complete absence in the last game. In flOw, you're basically communicating with a Comforting Universal Force of Something Or Other, while Flower is... hippy tripe, let's just be honest, but I eat that sort of thing up with a spoon, so no complaints there. As a thematic successor to NiGHTS, I can think of no better. The last level was the best...

Anyway, that was three or four hours of pleasantness, but we're back to the grind now. See ya, kids.

Writing:

Haven't been getting a lot of work in on Downworld because of competing projects and the holidays. I did, however, get around to cleaning up the Character Bible yesterday. It's turned into a mangy, overgrown thing with too many and not enough details, not to mention some purely wrong stuff. That's what happens when you write something down and then your brain goes and thinks of something ten times better for the actual story.

In some sense, it's like my brain is trying to write fanfiction based on my own canon: I establish something, and then that fickle contrary part of my head goes "Yes, but wouldn't it be really cool if--" and the next thing I know there are these half-sister gunslingers and particle-acceleration centrifuges and a whole nation of meritocratic feudal hyper-capitalists.

And yeah, I've started shipping pairings That Can Never Be. But I'm sure all writers do that.

Work:

I'm happily deployed as a staff editor for Hathor Legacy now, where I get to read awesome articles and make them even more awesome. I'm also drafting my own quartet of articles for them at the moment, details of which I might be able to speak on soon. Or, well, it depends on how they feel. It's a rewarding post one way or another.

Watching:

hane gifted me with Kill Bill 1 and 2 as well as Sukiyaki Western Django, because she's too good to me. I haven't gotten around to the former, but with respect to the latter, I must say that that was probably the best action performance by an Asian actress over the age of 27 since Lady Vengeance. Definitely worth the watch at the very least. Not to mention, Tarantino fans will piss themselves with the awesome of the man's cameo. Hell, even I found it a Godard moment for the ages.

I wouldn't say it's the most interesting fourth wall-breaking discursive romp through a two-times-removed genre --something about Miike always leaves me with a "this is nice, but I've had better" taste in my mouth-- and it probably lacks the true punch to reach cult celebrity status, but who the hell knows about these things. I imagine everyone thought the spaghetti westerns would be a passing fad as well, so.

I will say this: if Hideo Kojima made a movie, it would probably look a lot like this.

Reading:

I tried to read Mainspring, but a third of the way into it I was far too frustrated with the carried-by-the-current mentality of the "protagonist" to continue. Yes, he's on a mission from God so to one extent or another it's plausible that he should sit back and allow happy coincidences to converge all around him, but I can't say that's what I look for in a novel. I'm pretty sure a lot of the Biblical prophets actually had to get a bit of sweat on their brow and employ active thinking skills, even when they were doing all the holy pre-ordained stuff.

So what am I reading currently? This. And this, but you should rightly fear that one.

Playing:

After completing a speed run of MGS4 I've been forced to concede I've probably milked this game of all that it's good for, at least for the foreseeable. I'll probably need to go back to it a fourth time just for project-related stuff (surprisingly, not just for fanfiction in this case), but right now feels like a good break time. I downloaded the LittleBigPlanet tie-in materials on their release day, but haven't started working with them yet either. I suppose I'll need to go in and create some Deadly Poisonous Zanzibar Hamster creatures before I can design a level worth playing, anyway.

The Wiimote I bought for the family for their wild Wii Bowling parties doesn't seem to want to synchronize, so until I manage to finagle an exchange on that baby, I went and downloaded Columns for my mom. Yes, Columns. Also known as the one Sega game she will drop anything to play, and then won't let go of the controller for hours on end. I know I've sort of disparaged the Wii as a bucket of low-grade nostalgia-dyed slurry in the past, but it is effective on that point. Also, it makes my family slightly less inclined to harass me about gaming when they're Wiiflailing all over the living room.

Because I had something like A Brazillion Dollars in Wii Points left over from when UCLA paid me for this stuff, I went and finally picked up Lost Winds for myself as well. Spending state funding on the one Wii game that thoroughly sells the academic thesis of a Brave New Era of Digital Distro? That's... actually quite appropriate. You're welcome, UCLA.