The word of the week is 'shǎjīng - it's both dumb AND clever! 傻精傻精
April 11 - Dozens of Empty Cities In China
If you've ever wondered how numbers can hurt the world, look no further:
This falls under 'Looks Great On Paper, Stinks In Reality.' Of this sort of thing are economic crashes made of! 65 million new empty houses... it boggles the mind.
April 12 - Sleep Measurement, from Sweden!
For the past four months or so, I've been measuring my sleep cycles via an iPhone app named, appropriately enough, 'Sleep Cycle' - go figure. It uses the motion sensor in the phone to track when you're awake( motion )or deeply asleep( no motion )and display it as a chart, thusly:
Looking at the charts, I've tried to correlate the good nights vs. the bad for things like stress, early / late bedtimes, video games / TV before bed and the like. So far, the only thing that has shown a marked improvement in my sleep cycle is exercising that day for at least a half hour( no surprise there ). I slept the best I had in some time the same days that I walked up the mountain home; something symbolic in that.
April 13 - Autism
Over the years, one story idea that's rattled around my head from time to time has been about being IN my head - trapped, if you will. I've wondered( with some horror )what it would be like if a person was trapped inside their own mind due to an accident or illness and how that would play out. Thanks to Brian, I now know that there's a story in there, along with a person and a good dose of empathy. Watch this video and make sure you have a handkercheif handy - it doesn't tug the hearstrings, it yanks.
April 14 - Bilbo Begins!
More years ago than I like to think, the Lord Of The Rings film trilogy hit the big screen and brought Tolkien's works to dazzling life in ways that few thought were possible given the medium. They were( and still are! )glorious films that I watch when I can, but only when I have the time to enjoy each one from start to finish uninterrupted - call it escapism, if you must. How amazing then, to learn that Peter Jackson has begun filming on The Hobbit TODAY - and there's VIDEO! Here you go:
Follow The Hobbit - Start Of Production - in HD to watch it in HD on The Hobbit's Facebook page!
April 15 - Why Story Matters in games
As a writer, I tend to pay closer attention than most to the bones of a story. Heck, I pay close attention to story in MOST types of media, movies included. But when it comes to video games, story seems to be taking a back seat to graphics and gameplay - which is understandable, as a story-centric game would be little more than a text adventure from the 80's. Which can be fun, but won't work out the video card in your PC much. Working on your brain is what the story does, in any medium, and for video games, it sometimes has to be said in plain words - check out this great C|Net article on Why Story Matters In Games.
April 16 - Real Faces For TCats And Turtles
Two of my favourite 80's shows are TMNT and Thundercats, though I have yet to pick up either on DVD; TMNT tended to have good and bad series, depending on what decade you were in. There are a LOT of other fans out there who share my tastes, but thankfully some of them are a LOT better visual artists:
April 17 - Sunday: Not what it used to be
Sundays seem to be a bit of a wash for me, which is a total 180 from years ago when I always had them off( and thus usually gamed all day ). Now I work every Sunday, which doesn't seem to matter much as the salad days of playing COD in the morning with my friends in ON are over with - nobody plays as a group anymore, at least not regularly like we used to. Things have switched on Sundays, in that I now game in the evening in NWN, slaying dragons( or wizards, or what-have-ye )instead of shooting baddies in a crazy twitch-fest. I have to say NWN is more relaxing, in that I've yet to have a 'bad game' in NWN, compared to days / weeks in COD where my score tended to lower the median - globally. Let's hear it for magic winning over machine guns, and roleplaying triumphing over... romping? Meh.
Ack - just tired tonight. Enjoy the blog!
