Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Games, one frame at a time

I remember uni, waaaaaaay waaaaay way back when in the "good old days" when i really started to get into "twitch" gaming. For those of you who are unaware, twitch gaming does not mean, play until your eyes are black with sleeplessness you're dehydrated, smelly and your limbs have atrophied to a point where the skeletons you've been fragging (digitally annihilating)are saying "Woah dude, maybe you should stop and eat something" and you start twitching... that's called something else. Twitch gaming refers to the quick reflexes and fast, but small movements you need to make to play them, that to the unobservant admirer might appear as twitching. These games are generally all about killing things. When i was serious about playing these games I was a little obsessive about frames.

Frames, not the things around pictures, more like a picture that moves, think of all the pictures that go into making a movie. Playing a game is similar to that, enough of them and everything is smooth as, making the binary evisoration of your enemies that much easier. The opposite is like watching bad stop frame animation you have almost no control over. Playing those kind of games in stop frame animation is the mental equivalent to ...

considering possibilites for that particular similie made me feel sympathetic pain for the imaginary constructs in my mind that were experiencing those possibilities.

Suffice it to say it is bad.

Strangely I now find myself moderately addicted to click and wait type games.

They go

Click

Wait...

Click again

Wait some more

and again

opps, that didnt work, refresh the page,

click again

etc

If that isnt a sign i'm changing, what is :p

It is incredible that i'm not finding these games as frustrating as i used to...

possibly the various work environments i have been in now have redefined frustrating to something that would not have been recognisable to an earlier version of myself

Update

There doesnt really seem that much to update people on at the moment, maybe the various agents of inspiration and enthusiasm have been on leave recently, or the charges have been reprioritised.

It is entirely possible that those agents that are supposed to be responsible for me have be re-organised into a group to more effective inspire a group of us, with degrees of success and time being measured on "preformance metrics" and requireing to meet certain output quotas, improving overall their departments output and numbers, but truely sucking for me.

What can i do? start a rival agency? Write in spite of them? bash my head against a wall (Ever thankful to michael, i never before meeting him realised that beating ones head against hard objects could be a cure all) I don't know.

Perhaps to truely spite these agents of inspiration and drive, I will... do nothing.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Words and Movies

Words, something I have been skipping on recently. With my girl moving over here with me there was a whole new range of things to settle into again, some for me, more for her. I guess now we are mostly settled with some things going pretty well and a lot of things that could be going smoother and hitch free.

None the less we are trooping on and settling in.

The important matter that I bring to you today is Stardust, a movie that I have been impatiently anticipating and, just recently, finally saw. The book was a very sentimental fantasy story, reminiscent of a fairy tale that hasn’t been bastardized and standardized by Hollywood or Disney.

I loved the book.

The movie, well, I’ve been disappointed by the last neil gaimen movie I saw, it didn’t quite meet some of my expectations. This one I merely eyed off sideways, so as not to get too excited about a possible disappointment. The cast was star studded, much like the story line and title, things that can bode well, or unwell…

I got off my arse and saw this movie, in spite of negative reviews from my significant other (she saw it without me and fell asleep). I was impressed by this movie. Not only did the movie impress me as a movie, but as an adaptation of a book. The plot and feel of both the book and movie were consistent.

The most powerful thing about this movie I can think of was that I went into the movie feeling pretty crappy, and damn it if it didn’t cheer me right up.

A sweet and sentimental movie that’s not overly flowing with syrupy sugar, unusual in a fairy tale, this one should be seen and enjoyed.