Shutter Geeks unite!
Obsessed with apertures and full frame sensors, cross processing and high key conversions, strobes and bokeh? Don’t know wth I’m talking about but love taking pictures anyway?
Come join my group of Shutter Geeks! It’s fun, it’s free and best of all, it’s geeky!
Just taking the new flash (and Picnik) out for a spin
Got my new Canon 430ex flash today (only took three years!), latched on a Gary Fong Lightsphere and took it for a spin. Also played around the Flickr’s new web editing tool, partners Picnik.
Awesome stuff!
Technorati Tags: photography, Flickr, Picnik
Why Super Columbine Massacre should not have been made: A gamer parent’s POV
Recently, there’s been a medium (I won’t say ‘big’ since quite a few people who read my blog won’t know what I’m talking about) hoo-ha about the removal of a game at this year’s Slamdance festival, a part of which is dedicated to the making of independent games, called the Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition.
AÂ few responses to the issue have been floated around and about the blogosphere, including of course the makers main supporters hosting (thanks, AndrewK!)Â the game, Manifesto, who made their thoughts known very eloquently on their site.
The ‘ripple effect’ of their removal is now being felt as other game makers have begun pulling out their titles as well, Boing2 reports, perhaps in protest or simply as an indignant ‘kinship reaction, common in the indie game-making community united by the menace of big business.
Firstly, for the reasons put forth by Manifesto itself and its supporters, I do not think the removal is justified.
As Jonathan Blow of Braid has so articulately put it, games should no longer be treated as mere entertainment and
“… be taken seriously as an art form that can expand the boundaries of human experience.
as they
…can help us to understand situations in a fully-engaged fashion, as participants and co-creators, which the passive media cannot do. As an art form they contain a tremendous power to shift perspective and to heighten wisdom.”
I come from a country that bans for far less. Sanitary napkin advertisements. Walking into government departments in mini-skirts. Children’s books (see numbers 15 and 16). So I know something about oppression, where a discussion of one’s civil liberties (or lack thereof) may be tantamount to treason, so don’t even talk to me about the lack of freedom of expression.
But I will say this, as a parent and a gamer: Super Columbine Massacre should never have been made at all.
Firstly, what kind of deeper understanding can the gamer hope to gain from playing an RPG based on such a tragedy? What boundaries of human experience can be broadened, and what kind of shift in perspective or heightened wisdom can we hope to acquire from playing a game about, say, the holocaust, as Hitler, or as the terrorists who piloted the planes into the World Trade Center? If there are, they escape me and I would love to learn just how I could find entertainment in or become a more learned individual with a larger horizon of understanding from putting myself in the imagined shoes of the perpetrators of such tragedies in a straight up shooter, much less a roleplaying game.
Games like Postal or Grand Theft Auto, while imitating the darker slates of life, have invited criticism, both fair and unjustified. However, these are not interactive portrayals of actual events that deliver entertainment at the expense of those who are STILL suffering from the tragedy.No matter how you spin it, Manifesto, even a cartoon about the massacre will undermine it. Perhaps to some, it may simply leave a bad taste. To others, it is bitter realisation that there are people out there who are willing to turn your pain into their pleasure, and in some cases, profit.
As a parent, it is a challenge guiding our children through the labyrinth of mass media. What games or TV shoes, movies or videos, should our children watch? How long is too long? How violent is too violent? This is a task that is especially difficult for my husband and I, for the fact that we have spent the last 25-30 years of our lives playing computer games. While accepting that it is our responsibility to filter all content our children may come into contact with on a daily basis, it is a slippery slope. One wrong judgment call and the jig is up. Do what we say, not do what we do, or we’ll just have to throw away the XBOX and the TVs to be fair.
We want our children to enjoy what we enjoy, to develop a love for an art form that brought my husband and I together for one, and one that has given me the best eight years of my career as a journalist. Even with the violence and the sex and the gore, we will tolerate it all if we can tell our kids that “this is just pretend.”
And that, Super Columbine Massacre is not.
Perhaps this is the curse of the industry. In the chase for more shock value, more excitement, more controversy to fuel our increasingly jaded, and yet insatiable appetite for entertainment that pushes the limits, we have forgotten that these games are created in an age where the distance between real violence and our children are simply a few keystrokes and clicks away. This assault happens in our homes, right under our noses, so quickly that we just cannot keep up without completely turning off our TV sets and cable modems.
Need it come to this? I, for one, simply cannot imagine a world without video games. Not for me, nor for my children.
I would’ve expected the bigger game companies to take such a distasteful risk. We all understand that real ingenuity in games is hard to come by but tell me: What do independents have if they do not have integrity?
What do you have if not even dignity?
Let the big boys resort to such tactics. You have the freedom to come up with so much more.
For so much less.
True madness
A stroller with iPod docking built-in.
No, Malaysian parents, please don’t.
NO!
*slaps hands away*
I’m in the Social!
So I went to pick my man up as usual from work. Little did I know I’d pick up a late Christmas present as well.
This here, my friends, is a Zune. That’s Microsoft-speak for Zazzy Device to Keep Them Tunes. And vids. And pics. Also means I Don’t Need an iPod No More.
I knew I was worth more than a crummy block of art paper and charcoal!
That man is SO having sex tonight.
Â
Picasa does RAW, I need new glasses and a tree is lit
At the risk of becoming a bore – although I know I already am to some of my old friends who remember the OLD Jenn, the exciting Jenn, the spontaneous Jenn who would do a Michael Jackson impersonation at the drop of a hat – I want to share some fantastic news: I just discovered that Picasa, Google’s photo organising/editing software, can see Canon’s RAW files! It should be able to see your Nikon RAWs as well. I didn’t know that! Once you manipulate it using some of Picasa’s simple tools, it automatically converts them to JPGs.
So girls, scrap Breezebrowser and grab, if you don’t already have, Picasa (for one, it’s free – you have to pay for BB after the 14-day trial). I use that app all the time and it’s a blast.
Also, we witnessed our first tree lighting in Duvall. It was a lively affair featuring carolers, booths of hot cider and cookies (four dozen of which I baked!), haystack treasure hunting and, of course, the grand finale of a huge tree getting lit, and Mr C himself riding in on a fire truck and distributing candy. What a treat.
And now for the REAL news:
I need new glasses. See Exhibit A.
You’ll just have to live with this geeky Jenn, that’s all there is to it.
Raising creativity
My husband, the dear man, shared with me a TEDtalk video yesterday, which just blew my socks off. It was of Sir Ken Robinson, a leading expert on innovation and human resources. Here, he speaks of the flaws of today’s archaic education systems worldwide that focus on providing human capital for the present (or the past?) instead of the future, and how creativity is being educated out of our children. He is an articulate, hilarious speaker. Entertaining and enlightening.
As some of you may know, TED is the yearly Technology, Entertainment and Design conference for 1,000 of the cleverest people in the world. Tickets are always sold out. Thankfully, we can now watch some of these luminaries speak online.
So sit back, watch, and learn.
Copyright © 2006 The I’mperfect Mom. This blog is for non-commercial use only. If you’re reading the entirety of this entry on another website (excluding your RSS aggregator), please email me to report copyright infringement so legal action may be taken. Thank you.
I heart casual games
Screenshot of Delicious Deluxe, from Big Fish Games.
This isn’t something to which a self-proclaimed gamer likes to admit, but I play a LOT of downloadable arcade games.
You know, those you can either play online or download for 15 bucks? Love ‘em.
Screenshot of Snowy Lunch Rush, from Big Fish Games, my new favourite of the restaurant/diner casual games.
From busing plates and taking orders to hunting down criminals to assembling teddy bears to delivering pizza to baking cakes to ringing up shopping, casual games, which have been the domain of online female gamers, are just becoming better and more fun with time. Best of all, they’re cheap to develop, easy to market (all downloadable online), and appealing to women. The golden formula to a game publisher.
While I still play the ‘triple A’ games that often challenge my hardware (and my husband’s wallet every few months or so), it is these cartoonish, 2D casual games I am getting fond of. Low maintenance, entertaining, gentle or no learning curve, and best of all, easy to put down, these surprisingly well-made and oftentimes beautiful casual games fill nap times and school hours and pre-bedtime boredom nicely, without asking for too much in return.
A non-commital, casual relationship. Ironically, that’s what we girls like. In our computer games, anyway.
Perhaps I’m just getting old, but I see myself playing these games for a long, long time. Much longer than Counter Strike or World of Warcraft or any other triple A game.
And that, my friends, is sustainable business.
Copyright © 2006 The I’mperfect Mom. This blog is for non-commercial use only. If you’re reading the entirety of this entry on another website (excluding your RSS aggregator), please email me to report copyright infringement so legal action may be taken. Thank you.
Bet you didn’t even notice
My old computer died in its sleep.
I gave it a break having worked it relentlessly for almost a month with nary a shut down. Without even saying goodbye, it simply refused to wake up the next day. A silent, final UP YOURS, YOU SLAVE DRIVING, BLOGGING, GAMING, EMAILING, SPREADSHEETING MANIAC!
For that, I’ve been compensated, rather generously, by an ever-eager-to-upgrade husband, with a new rig. Instead of just changing my dead mobo, he’s managed to somehow convince himself (I didn’t need any convincing) to switch my old Intel-ATI-Gigabyte setup to a 3500+ Athlon 64-bit chip, NVIDIA mobo, GeForce 7600GT piece of heaven.
What a betrayal.
That’s right. Give up on us, and we give up on you, beeyaawtch!
I think you want WADE, BILL?
Calling my husband’s office is quite an experience.
Now I usually call his mobile. In this day and age, there’s really no reason to call a land line except if you can’t get the person on his/her cell and have decided that you still want to bug the hell out of him/her by resorting to calling his/her home/office phone.
Today was my first time talking to a robot (if you don’t count my husband, who occasionally qualifies for that category).
“Please state the name of the person you wish to contact, at anytime…”
Wow, you can actually SPEAK to this robot.
“Loke Uei Tan.”
“Do you wish to speak to, WADE, BILL?”
What, no! Must be my strange accent.
“LOKE UEI TAN!”
“Please answer YES or NO. Do you wish to speak to WADE, BILL?”
“NO.”
“Okay, please repeat the name of the person you wish to contact, at anytime.”
“LOKE UEI TAN!!”
“Please pick from the list of names. WADE, BILL. WAYNE, PHIL. WEI, TAN?”
Okay, was that Uei Tan? Gosh this is becoming annoying.
“I’m sorry. You did not pick a name. Let’s do this differently. Do you have the email alias of the person you wish to call? Please say YES or NO.”
“YES!”
“Great! Please spell his alias.”
I do so.
“Is the person you wish to call LOKE WEI TAN? Please say-”
“YES!”
“Great! Please wait a moment while I connect you!”
The phone rings once.
“Bee, I call you back.”
The phone goes dead.
WHY YOU SORRY SONOFA….
I swear they make it annoying so you resort back to calling the cell.
Flawed expensive software or cheap complicated software: Which is worse?
Which is worse?
Yesterday night, while tucking my little girl in bed, my husband and I got into a debate about the governance and the unethical undercurrents of how some technology companies seem to be doing business.
It was a simplistic argument, and a general one at best, but it was interesting.
Now which is worse – Selling seemingly stable software that is next to impossible to use without paying high prices for consultancy or services, or providing software with similar functions that you can train anyone to use despite its complicated functions, but the software itself is faulty that you need to patch all the time, or opt for an upgrade the next time one comes around.
You can see where I’m going with this.
I’ve always felt that SOME IT companies seem to be either deliberately making complex software to capitalise on their deployment/services/consultancy business, or not providing enough R&D to simplify the use of such software towards the same effect. Their priorities seem to be
1. make/buy/sell good software
2. don’t bother if it’s easy to use, we have consultants and our partners have engineers for that
Versus the ‘policies’ of companies that work to create software that you can easily train users for:
1. make okay software, don’t bother if it’s perfect when we sell it because we can always patch it later
2. make sure it’s so easy to use, your grandma can learn to use it
What do you think?
Kill the ads (but tip-offs are ok!)
Wired.com reported today that entrepreneurs are saying that targeted SMS ads are going to be the next big thing. While it does sound like there’s gonna be a LOT of complainants about companies flooding your phone with useless SMSes (like when Maxis sends you SMSes on its promos), what about tip-offs of when the next (supposedly members only) Esprit or TAngs sale is going to be, or when RAM prices have dropped to an all-time low? I know I’d sure like to know that!
What’s your say?
Upgrade your brains
Cnetasia reported today that brains can have wireless upgrades, so says scientist Kevin Warwick. Taking a page from TV Smith’s recent parody on Mykad, (used with his permission, hehe), here’s what could happen when a cybernetic Ah Beng orders pizza!
Operator: *10110001000100101001* (translation: THank you for thinking of Pizza Hut! Pls think your username and password)
Customer: *0010000100001001001* (translation: Ah Beng niasing…seilor what’s my pass already…)
Operator: *1000010001001000100* (translation: Error, please rethink your username and password)
Customer: *100000100001001010* (translation: Ah Beng…niasing123!)
Operator: *001000100000001001010* (translation: Thank you for your verification – pause – Welcome back Mr Ah beng, your address is-…)
Customer: *000100001010000100001* (translation: hmm..what to eat ah…stuff crust…maybe some kah…)
Operator: *00100010100100101001* (translation: I’m sorry. Please verify your address before ordering – pause – Ah Beng, customer No. 53545354, address No. 53, Jalan 54, 53540 PJ. Pls confirm by thinking of the letters YES)
Customer: *001001* (translation: Y E S)
Operator: *0010001001010010011* (translation: Thank you for your verification, Mr Ah Beng. Please place your order after the image of the Pizza Hut logo)
Customer: *00010010100001010010* (translation: Ah…ok, I want ikan bilis stuff crust pizza regular…)
Operator: *0001010100101* (translation: Error. Size of image of order transmitted is not the same as size of actual item on menu. Please report thought order process)
Customer: *001001010101010* (translation: Niasinglah,..ok – looks at pictorial menu before thinking – I want one ikan bilis stuff crust pizza regular, one long bread…)
Operator: *001001010010100001* (translation: Error. THere is no such item as “long bread” in our menu. Please repeat thought order process).
Customer: *00100101010100101* (translation: BASKET BALL!)
Operator: *00101000001000101* (translation: Error. There is no such item as ‘basket ball’ in our menu. Please repeat thought order process).
Customer: *0001010010001000101*!! (translation: Ok…stop thinking…stop thinking)
Operator: *001001* (translation: Order aborted. You have terminated the service. Thank you for thinking of Pizza Hut. Good bye and think pizza, think Pizza Hut!)
Â
Yesterday’s duds, tomorrow’s tech
It’s been a helluva week, and it’s only Wednesday.
Yesterday, I discovered that I had only two pieces of wearable clothing for work purposes. An hour to a meeting with 3com for my first assignment as Content Editor for Citrineone, a PR/content agency, a new contract I recently picked up to pad up my cash-strapped savings account, this horrific revelation resulted in 20 minutes of frantic rummaging, yielding a moldy pair of black pants that had not seen “the light of day”, as the Chinese like to say, for quite some time. This is what happens when you quit the rat race and opt to be a stay-at-home mom-cum-writer. You forget certain necessities, like clothes you wear out in public. After the tech briefing, I made a mental note to shop, something I hated to do because I am 20 kilos overweight, making trying on stuff a depressing exercise.
A memo to all SoHo freelancers who live in shorts: Be wary of turning into a fashion hermit. Be sure to allocate some time and money to buy some proper threads for that emergency.
A memo to cubicle dwellers and corporate-ladder climbers: Please excuse that fat lady you see in yesterday’s duds.
On the other hand, I just equipped my home office with a spanking new speed demon: a P4 3.06GHz dream machine with a Gigabyte dualbios motherboard with onboard every-damn0thing, 1 gig of DDr 266Mhz RAM and the ATI Radeon 9700 (could not afford the 9800 because it’s about RM1,000 more), as well as the latest Samsung combo drive and a 19-inch Philips flat screen monitor. It’s so beautiful we got the iCute Blue Light Special casing so we could show its innards off. This beauty has four fans, not including one inbuilt fan on the mobo. And all this for the love of gaming. I can’t be sure but I honestly improved in my Age of Mythology rankings with the 2Ghz+ increase in speed. I’m not kidding!
The damage? RM4, 110, not including the chip (got that free). Not bad. Not bad at all…
Speedy Gonzales
I finally picked up my new Intel P4 3.06GHz Hyper-Threading speed demon from HWM today, payment for judging their recent DIY contest at Low Yat. Yay! This weekend we finally have enough motivation to go shopping. We went two weekends ago to MVM’s IT Centre, just to scout out the prices. From that we reckoned we’ll need about RM4k WITHOUT the chip to get a good mobo, a good graphics card and ntm a good monitor.
Maybe RM4k won’t be enough even…
Anyway, we thought of getting the ATI RADEON 9800 but a quick trip to Low Yat yesterday revealed that it will do a damage of RM1,800!! That’s almost half my budget gone! Sigh…another RM900 for the mobo. THat’s RM3k gone. Who’s going to sell me a soundcard, a 21-inch flat-screen monitor, 512MB DDR 888 RAM and speakers for RM1000?
Oh well. I guess we’ll just have to set our sights lower. Anyone here got stuff u wanna sell off?
Never negotiate with terrorists!
The whole Half-Life/CS licensing ruckus caused by Adspace which resulted in the closing down of dozens of cyber cafes last year, based on the supposed violation of copyright laws, is now finally being turned on its head. A talk with a prominent cybercafe player who stood his ground on not submitting to these ‘terrorists’ of the Malaysian CC circuit revealed that cafes can actually use legal copies of Day of Defeat (distributed by New Era Interactive and not SM, as DoD is published by Activision and not Vivendi Universal) instead of Half-Life, to run CS. This allows cafe owners to only pay a one-time original copy fee and not the ridiculous monthly licence charges set by SM – a regulation which does not exist in any other country but Malaysia, and one that has caused the demise of many cafes. When asked how they managed to discover this loophole, my friend said “It just landed on our lap!” Rumour has it that SM is now trying to buy NEI over so that they can again cannibalise on the business and ironically put their very customers out of business. I really hope Microsoft (since Sega is out of the running) or some other conglomerate buys Vivendi (and hence BLizzard/Sierra) out so the cafes here have a chance to breathe. Sure, the software per copy would cost more but the monthly “protection fees” would stop. This extortion has to stop.
THe irony is that these guys are being hailed as the intellectual property protectors. Let’s see what happens when the axe falls. For all we know, it could Uncle Ho himself!
Lawsuits galore
There has been a a marked increase in lawsuits flying between stalwarts of the global IT sector these past few months. The first in this legal lineup is of course the now much-covered SCO vs IBM which has had Linux users in an uproar, in somewhat juvenile form, banding up and inviting more legal action from the purported ‘owners’ of the Unix platform. And then came Oracle’s hostile takeover bid for Peoplesoft, with the latter now suing the former for deliberately interfering with its plans to buy over JDE. To this, Oracle upped its ante by over US1 billion and filed a countersuit yesterday against Peoplesoft and JDE “in response to their collective efforts to eliminate PeopleSoft shareholders’ ability to accept Oracle’s tender offer”. Hours ago, Reuters has reported the state of Connecticut has filed an antitrust suit against Oracle to block its bid.
And just yesterday, Microsoft filed suits against 15 firms for spam.
Well, well, well – one thing’s for sure. The lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank. They always do. Don’t I wish I finished my law degree…