Amidst the fallout

I finished Fallout 3 a few days ago and thought it was a pretty solid ending. I will have to go back and play through things a bit differently, or realistically I will move onto another game and never look back, because I don't often return to games that I've actually gone to the trouble to beat. I am curious about the evil path (I always take the good path) so perhaps Fallout 3 will finally be the game to bring me round to a second playthrough.

Scratch that, there is another game I've played multiple times, possibly my favorite: Max Payne. Both the first and its sequel were immense pleasures to play and I reluctantly await round three. I've written previously about the location of MP3 and the attitude of the game, but I wait to see what they end up doing with it.

In other news the awesome Flixel Bros, Adam Atomic and Danny B, have released another awesome little time-waster. Canabalt is a simple procedural, six-tone game in which you're playing a one button, sidescrolling Mirror's Edge. All you do is jump obstacles and leap from building to building, crashing through windows as you gain speed, allowing you to leap the greater distances as the buildings grow farther apart. Fun for a short time or a bit more than that, I highly recommend the minute it takes to click on the link and get hooked.

Speaking of Mirror's Edge, I finally was tipped off by my girlfriend to a coupon that saved me half the cost of the ME map pack, so I grabbed the new time-trial maps the pack has to offer. They are slick levels, ditching the cities for giant floating boxes that feel like they should be designed by VW and Apple's lovechild. The levels are fun and challenging, just what I like, though I need to give them some more time to truly appreciate the $5 I added to EA's pockets. DICE did well, and I think that you should give Mirror's Edge a chance if you've never done so. [Factoid: I applied to intern at DICE, but this was when I had absolutely nothing on my resume that would make an international developer such as DICE recognize me as anything but ordinary. I still might feel that way, but my resume grows steadily, nonetheless.]

next week on []Musings: I discuss singleplayer vs. multiplayer tutorials.

Pictures like this make my day: http://www.fred.net/slowup/xmasword.jpg

an urge to play videogames

microblog: It doesn't always happen, but right now I've the strongest urge to play some videogames. I am guessing that I've excess energy that can only be taken by the totally absorbing experience of playing something like Fallout 3 or perhaps the new Batman demo?

Unfortunately I'm not playing for a bit yet, since I've got visitor obligations and who can deny going out to breakfast on a Sunday morning?

Happy! Beautiful mother, beautiful father, happy!

It is a happy accident that I met my girlfriend three years ago. It's a happy accident that I have continued to email and keep in contact with one of my old high school teachers who, it turned out, had a husband with lots of amazing connections and got me my current job. It's a happy accident that I don't really remember what incited me to open up blogger to write this evening.

But I'm continually in amazement over the simplicity of this world. The fact that we create these beautiful tapestries that we call lives, we create them out of the simplest events. Going to dinner with someone, reading a book, playing a video game, traveling into the wilderness to bond with friends and get attacked by mosquitoes. Eating, drinking, walking, talking, playing. Am I playing games to escape all of these beautiful things? No, I guess I am playing for my desire to extend my life beyond its normal bounds.

Recently I have been reading the Harry Potter books and I finally did it for two reasons. A) I finally noticed Ginny in the latest movie and thought, hey, she's pretty cute. I wonder what she's like in the novels. And B) I understood that there really was a depth to the world that Rowling had created. My Tolkien elitism settled down and I've been able to enjoy a fascinating world that expands my imagination. The imagination is so powerful and it holds the special place in my heart that recognizes my dreams and thoughts of unreal things can matter just as much to the internal tapestry of my life as any tangible reality.

So, despite Harry Potter not being real, that addition to my mind of a fantastical school of wizardry extends my universe a little more. He is, at times, almost as important as the hike I took a couple weeks back. Or as prominent as the unfortunate homeless I pass on my way to work. Or as captivating as the movement out of the corner of my eye late at night in my apartment that gets my adrenaline pumping? Isn't that amazing? I have read Rowling's words, and now her real imagination is part of my own intangible existence.

annoying invention of the day

If you cannot afford to put a regular soap dispenser in your home or office, why not get one that is exceedingly wasteful and ineffective? That's right. When you grab the following dispenser: http://www.newtondistributing.com/panel/fotoprod/BRA%206501.gif
You will find that it is difficult for the soap to come out, and when it does, it will just drip slowly. Grab it now so that you can detest using it and wish people never came up with it.

Blogging!

Here I am sitting at work, not working, because it's after work and I'm only here because my pal is getting to the nearby airport 4 hours from now. That's a long time. However, there's no sense in me driving home, because that takes approximately an hour and a half. So I would be spending all my gas to get home and then leave again shortly thereafter. So why not blog a little?

Hello! I'm Randy O. I work at Digital Chocolate as of two days ago. I spend my time now making sweet art for stuff I can't tell you about. I like signing NDAs. It's about the closest I will ever get to being a secret agent. In fact, it's as close as I can get because it makes me a secret agent because I keep secrets as an agent of this company. I'm ignoring the somewhat inappropriate usage of "agent" and so can you. This is cooler than my normal life because I don't have to keep anything secret. Though I do love mystery.

And there are still a few people here at 7pm. That was definitely not how it was at my last job. Then again, surprisingly, people show up here even later than people at the previous place. How do they do it? Okay, I know the answer to that: they have sleep schedules just as screwy as mine. I'm changing my schedule because I've got no other choice. 2 hour train ride to work at 7am, ya got no choice but to not sleep at 3am every morning.

This change of pace in life, it really gets to ya. I'm tired right now, but, well, I could take a nap. Perhaps I shall. Oh, to be napping at my workplace (after work hours!) after three days here. I am amazing.

[Oh, yah, so this all means I have a job. Go me!]

WoW

I was scrollin' the internet through the power of the Nethernet, and a portal took me to TOSBack, a site that follows certain EULAs and such, including Blizzard's EULA for World of Warcraft. I decided to scroll down and I discovered this addition from a couple months ago:

"BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or the EULA."

Can I just highlight "BLIZZARD MAY...TERMINATE... MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS... FOR NO REASON"?!?!

Wow, that's scary. What kind of rights do you get with an MMO now? The right to what you paid for? Now back to Fallout 3 where multiplayer doesn't get in my way.