the-inbetween.com

The Hazards of Looking Left

After spending my entire 28 years of existence in places where the traffic moves forward on the right side of the road it would take me a while to get used to it flowing from the wrong end. Not as a driver but, simply, as a pedestrian crossing the road. I’ve managed to avoid any collisions but, on a number of occasions, I have been startled by a car coming at me from a direction I did not expect: my right. Fear is a great learning aid.

I imagine that this is a known problem in a tourist heavy city like London. What else would be the motivation for painting, on intersection asphalt, signage telling pedestrian crossers which way to look? All around on the streets are painted notices advising people to “LOOK LEFT” and “LOOK RIGHT.” No doubt many a foreigner walked onto the street looking the correct way only to be struck down by a double-decker bus coming coming from the other direction. I have not been so unfortunate as I have adjusted my jaywalking habits accordingly.

The streets I understand now but the pedestrian pavement continues to dumbfound. If the cars drive on the left which way, as a courtesy, are pedestrians meant to walk on the sidewalk? Casual observation shows that, as anywhere else, people tend to stick to the right hand side. But not everyone. I wonder about those contrarians: are they walking their own path, regardless of common decency and courtesy, or are they the few stragglers doing it right amongst a sea of wrong-headed tourists? I was uncertain until I started going into the London Underground where, along the deep escalator descents, signs were posted alerting those that choose to stand to stand on the right.

My questions had been answered. Pedestrians stick to the right except when passing. This must be, no matter what automobiles do, a universal rule. I was satisfied.

The very next day in some connecting station somewhere on the Northern Line, in the busy tunnels going from one platform to another, there were signs posted asking pedestrians to stick to the left. To add to that, some stations had their descending escalators on the left and others had them on the right. Once again I was confused so, now, I do what makes most sense: I walk in the middle. Let everyone else sort it out.

Last Weekend In Toronto

Well, that was it. Last weekend (not this current weekend) was the last weekend I spent living in Toronto.

That weekend was also Gay Pride in Toronto and, as was the case last year, I was right in the middle of things. My apartment was in the centre of it all with my front door clogged with revelers, my street closed to traffic and my living room windows giving me a decent view of one of the main concert stages. It was loud, it went late and it gave me headaches. I don’t mind the event as there’s plenty of people watching to be done and roasted corn (made right outside my apartment) to be eaten but, this year, it felt very disconnected. I was disassembling furniture and packing boxes and archiving old CDs and cleaning out old nooks to the sounds of a DJ and thousands and thousands of loud and celebratory people.

I needed an escape so I headed down to the Dundas streetcar stop, rode it through downtown and Chinatown and Little Portugal, walked down Ossington to Queen West and hopped through a few art galleries. Queen West was unusually quiet for a Saturday afternoon. Down there I checked out the Evolution: 30 Years of Computer Games exhibit at Interaccess. Despite the huge party happening outside my door, I chose to spend the afternoon by crossing half the city to go play video games on computers from the 1980s in an art gallery. This is a good summary of my tendencies and interests.

The space was small but it covered a wide range of hardware and software, most of it on systems that I have no familiarity with (I started with the NES so I didn’t have any of those 80s computer systems.) You can see some blurry shots of the items on display in my flickr stream. I played, or merely touched, every machine except for the Microsoft Flight Simulator and the one playing Gears of War: it was a Games For Windows sponsored event. What struck me the most is that, despite the improvements in visual fidelity and processing power, game design hasn’t changed much from what was on display there. The real change was in the hardware and user interface design.

Playing a Space Invaders clone is familiar and easy until you do it on this controller. Everyone knows Tetris and how fun it can be, but they don’t know the pain that comes from playing it on a clunky, unresponsive 80s keyboard with some totally arbitrary key mappings. Rampage is a classic game that hasn’t aged well — it sucks — but it sucks that much more when using this bloody thing. Hell, in a fit of Simpsons-esque lunacy, I couldn’t even get this game to work. Pressing “any” key would bring up another screen asking me to press something else. Hitting that would bring me back to the “press any key” prompt screen. Repeat until capitulation.

That’s the most obvious improvement in gaming over the last three decades. Games, especially on consoles, just work. Even the bad games. You don’t have to deal with clunky controllers and C64 load prompts and awkward, slow storage devices (one game there was running off of a compact cassette.) You just put it in, grab the ergonomic controller and go. It’s why I’m not entirely sold on the Playstation 3, it seems to be a step backwards in some regards.

Anyway, after that diversion I headed home along old familiar streets. I stopped by at Chippy’s along the way for some Herring and ate it at Trinity Bellwoods. After that I walked along Queen West and down Bathurst to King St and through the downtown core past the Eaton Centre through Yonge-Dundas Square by the old Sam’s sign accross Ryerson University back to the crowds around my apartment on Church St. These are all well-traveled routes but on that day they felt different. Condos were sprouting where there were none. Old favourite restaurants were boarded up with “for lease” signs in their windows. Stores and signs had changed all over. This is normal life-of-the-city change but it all feels sudden and drastic when noticed for what could be the very last time.

I’ll be back in Toronto. I’ll visit. Maybe I’ll work here again. The hope, however, is that I won’t. This is entirely dependent on what I do over the next four months, but it’s the goal. I don’t hate the city, quite the contrary, but I’m done with it. It doesn’t feel the same anymore and it doesn’t feel like it’s for me. Toronto is like one of the controllers for those old videogame systems: nostalgic, full of memories and fun to play with occasionally but I wouldn’t want to be stuck with it. It’s time for something more ergonomic, something that suits my matured tastes. I fly out on Monday.

Quatchi’s Shootout Shutout

One of the things that has kept me super busy over the last month has just launched: Quatchi’s Shootout Shutout. A small flash game for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics’ “Meet the Mascots” page. I’ve liked the Meomi designed characters ever since they were revealed last winter, so it was a joy and privilege to be able to work with them.

The game was produced by zinc Roe Design, who recently launched their own weblog. All Flash coding by me. PS. try to break 3000 points.

Games to Discard

The arrival of June marks my last month of living in Toronto before my extended escape to Europe. The month will be full of decisions regarding what I do with all my stuff. I have to choose what to sell, what to store, what to lend and what to discard. One of the goals of this process is to detach myself of as many material possessions as I can; I’ve certainly accumulated my share of crap over the years. Amongst all that junk is a well-sized game library.

Of course, there’s no way I’m getting rid of all of the stuff there. Not even half. I might be going away but I shall remain a gamer nerd. Hell, I’m certain that the PSP and/or DS will come along with me. However, there are numerous games that I don’t touch anymore and don’t really care for and many more still unopened sitting there. If I haven’t touched them in years, I’m never going to touch them. These are the titles I can get rid of.

Anybody want them?

(No, they aren’t all crap. There are some gems in there, like Gitaroo Man, a few Nippon Ichi games and even current-gen Wii and XBox 360 titles. Yes, I am serious with the offer. I’ll give them away, for free, to a loving home. Some conditions might apply!)

Visa Application

Like an unstoppable freight train, the date of my Canadian escape draws nearer and nearer. I had my Canadian passport done a month ago. Today I submitted my application for a Polish –European Union– passport at the Consulate. Yesterday I purchased my airfare and a week’s worth of accommodation in London. I fly out July 7th. I return November 3rd.

The last item is the scary one. It makes the whole thing tangible. It’s no longer just an idea that I might shake; it is real, paid for, in my hands and with a firm deadline. It’s a realization that I’m still trying to come to terms with but that might be due to the sticker shock. It’s not the price of the airfare — that was pretty much expected — that’s doing it to me, it’s the ridiculous taxes that come with it: a rate of, just about, 70%. Ouch.

The return fare is important for two reasons. It gets me back into Toronto so that I can pick up my Polish Passport (five month processing time?!) and it frees me of any complicated visa entry problems. I contemplated getting a Work-Holiday visa but the process cost money, was annoying and required a little too much personal information. All for something that would be moot when I do get my EU passport. Anyway, I did go through a large portion of the application process and was mostly amused by this page:

Oh, British humour strikes again.

1. What war criminal would answer YES to such questions?
2. Have you, ever, committed abuse, on commas and other, punctuation?
3. All YES or NO radio button questions must be answered in English.
4. The rather vague are you considered a person of good character? question.

It wasn’t long after this page that I gave up on the application. I don’t need it anyway. The UK Visa page tells me as much in plain English:

I’m visiting for a short time, have proof of departure (return ticket) and will have proof that I can sustain myself and not use public funds while I’m there (as soon as I get all the pay cheques I’m currently owed). As long as they don’t find out that I publicly mocked their grammar and application questions, I should be fine.

Pentax K20D

I have a penchant for overly expensive hobbies. When I’m not playing an over-priced game on an expensive console connected to an even more expensive HD television — like right now, with the XBox dead in the water — I like to go out and take pictures. Photography, even if you go digital and remove the film and processing costs, is not a cheap hobby if you want to pursue it seriously. It’s a relatively new interest for me but it is, yes, something I want to pursue seriously. Hence, I bought a new camera. It was an impulse purchase.

Those that are in the know would ask “but didn’t you buy a new camera less than a year ago?” Well, I did. It was the Pentax model previous to this one. It was a fine camera and was a very good introduction to the world of SLR and I took many photos with it, but I gave it to my sister for Christmas. She had more use for it than I did, being a third year photography student and all. After several months, however, I started to miss that camera. Lucky for me, a new model was just around the corner. No, I did not need all the new stuff — the K10D was perfectly good — but something about the new and top-of-the-line appealed to the technodork in me. When I found out that it was released, earlier than I anticipated it, I had to have it. I like being bleeding edge on the pro-sumer front.

There isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two cameras, especially to an amateur that’s still learning. The body is practically identical. The UI is practically identical. The features are mostly the same, except for some additions like better ISO, “Live View” and other more advanced features. I think the sensor is new too, but I’m not sure. Most notably the biggest change is numerical: the K20D has 14.6 Megapixels compared to the K10D’s 10.2.

That is a fucking lot of pixels. The uncompressed RAW files it generates are over 24MB each with a resolution of 4457×3104 at 240dpi. That is a fucking lot of pixels. To better visualize what that means, here is a picture at a 1:1 pixel ratio:

Now here is the picture it is taken from, scaled to fit:

It’s really quite striking. I can’t imagine taking too many photos at that full resolution, but it’s nice that it’s there. Of course, any photos I take as I learn and familiarize myself with the camera will be posted to my flickr feed so if you’re curious about what the camera can do check that out and also look at the fledgling K20D flickr group.

Oh. I should also mention one other reason why I purchased this camera: I quit my job, I am moving out of my apartment and moving to Europe. It’s a minor thing.

Probably Promotion

If Duke Nukem Forever is released in 2008, everyone who comments on this post* will get a free, RETAIL game from me.

I’m not sure what the buzzword for this type of advertising is but it seems to be coming up more and more. It all basically follows the same formula: if event X (outside of the company’s control) then free (or discounted) Y. In the above example, if Guns N’ Roses releases Chinese Democracy this year, Dr. Pepper will give away free drinks. During last year’s World Series, Taco Bell offered a free taco to everyone if a base was stolen. This wasn’t the first time they used such a promotion. In a more localized setting, Pizza Pizza offers every ticket holder at a Raptors game a free pizza slice if they score 100 points. This has caused some odd reactions during some blowout games.

In some ways, these kinds of promotions can be regarded as gambling: there’s a prize and it’s dependent on chance. I wonder if there are any legal implications? The payoff for the marketer, of course, is that if the chance event doesn’t happen the company gets free advertising. On the flip side, if it does happen I’m sure numerous statisticians were employed to crunch the numbers to ensure that the possible risk is still worth the benefit. So even if they have to pay, the cost is minimized by the advertising and side-purchases it brought them (a single taco isn’t going to fill you up. Want a drink and fries with that?) I’m also sure that numerous lawyers were used to ensure there were appropriate outs and loopholes to ease the potential damage. There’s always a catch.

That said, I figure I’m not above self promotion. I can get in on the act. If Duke Nukem Forever is released in 2008, everyone who comments on this post* will get a free, RETAIL game from me. Make sure you leave your email address (will not be shown.)

• * Before the comments are closed, which is usually about 30 days or at my own discretion.

A Source of Random Medieval Information

Amongst the many ridiculous events in the Church’s history, the Cadaver Synod has to rank in the top five. Basically, they dug up a dead pope, cut off his fingers, put him on trial, found him guilty, reburied him, dug him up again and then threw him into the river. Here’s another article about it.

Anyway, that’s all inconsequential. What’s interesting is that the wikipedia page’s discussion is categorized as “Low-importance Middle Ages articles“. Following through to that will reveal a vast depository of obscure and random medieval history. If you ever feel the need to write historical fiction set in the dark ages, this is the place to be.

PS. Don’t forget about my Tumblr, I’ve been posting there frequently.

Run Button

Eight years ago when I was looking for a domain and dedicated web host for my fledgling weblog, I came across WestHost.com. It offered a lot for a very fair, and student friendly, price. I registered the-inbetween.com through them for the full $70/2 year price tag that domains had back then. The package had unlimited bandwidth (remember those days?), a capacity of 15 MB and full PHP3 support. It was good for the time. In those years that account has been automatically upgraded and I now have 2000 MB worth of space and PHP5 and all sorts of other nice things that I don’t ever use.

Halfway through that run dreamhost started promoting themselves with their weblog friendly hosting packages. Webloggers, and others, started to switch. They raved. The packages were tempting and I was considering the switch myself, but I figured that domain transfer would be annoying and that, well, nothing was wrong with my current hosting provider so I chose to stick it out.

Nowadays I hear nothing but complaints about Dreamhost. Their status page reads like a comedy of errors (Due to a typing error on our primary router while trying to block a denial of service attack, DreamHost is currently offline.) People are canceling their accounts and looking for new options. Meanwhile, my account with Westhost just works. I am glad I never switched.

So when I was looking for some extra hosting for some possible projects, I went with WestHost again. I’m not one to normally plug companies like this but eight years of happy service has to account for something. If you ever need reliable and simple web hosting, give WestHost.com a look and put ‘the-inbetween.com’ as a referral.

Anyway, as I was signing up for that new hosting account I needed a domain. With the help of some friends on IRC, we came up with a list of potential (and available) domains. Since I can’t register them all I offer them as free domain name consultation service to you. They’re all available as of last week.

• bossattacks.com and bossattack.com
• blockpuzzle.net (unfortunately it’s a .net so it ruled it out for me)
• badicality.com
• f0il.net and m00d.net (more .net domains, but these are 133t)
• resetthis.com (not a fan of the double ‘t’)
• loadbutton.com
• levelledup.com (very good for subdomain fun, ie. mike.levelledup.com)
• isnonplussed.com and isacynic.com and enjoysthings.com (for more subdomain fun.)

In the end, I settled for Runbutton.com. It’s brief and snappy (three syllables); it’s not inherently game-y; it is totally game-y; it’s an obscure reference to weird game-y things (the most useless button ever: the dedicated run button. I’m looking at you Mortal Kombat.); it was available.

What kind of projects are going to go there? I’m not sure right now but the first might be in response to this TIGSource competion and it might look like this:

Tumblr

With my growing ambition to extend myself to every corner of the internet, I have created a tumble log. I’ve been aware of Tumblr since it launched but never really considered it useful at the time. I already had a weblog. I already used del.icio.us. What did Tumblr do that I already didn’t have done?

Then I had a revelation. Tumblr fills that little tiny niche that exists between a so-called “proper” weblog and a linklog like del.icio.us. It’s great for ephemeral snippets and pieces of the internet. Of course, if I had an invite I’d probably be using ffffound for that too. But yes, n0wak.tumblr.com.

Also, it made for a fine birthday gift, to me from me.

Time to bring out 28 cock candles

Two Tips for New Bloggers

A couple of weeks ago Wired wrote about the 10th anniversary of “weblog“. I’d be remiss to not mention that yesterday, December 31st 2007, was the eighth anniversary of, in its many incarnations, this weblog. My Blogger profile, where it all started, says December 1999. That’s a long time. 80% of the life of “weblog”.

I still have those first few posts archived somewhere, on some long buried CD, but everything else after February 2000 is out there if you know where to look (though I suggest otherwise as it is all a little embarrassing). I, of course, do have easy access to all that data and looking through it, as I did recently, is a nostalgic experience. All those posts act as a mental time capsule preserving the I of the year 2000. That first year is full of freshman whines, before the eventual drop-out; all sorts of links to sites and content that is now long gone; small signs and portents of a budding interest in the development/design side of the web; very little to do with my current primary obsession, gaming, since that was before the future job, money and Playstation 2 rekindled it in me (sadly, it meant that I missed most of the Dreamcast era until after the fact); and an over abundance of commas and a severe lack of capital letters. Most shocking of all, however, are the hints of a personality that hasn’t changed much at all in eight years’ time^[1].

Wired also has the additional list of Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers From Original Blogger Jorn Barger. They’re all well and good though they do tend to assume the classic definition of “weblog.” In the ten years since it was coined that word has evolved from that initial “list of links” meaning to something encompassing links and journals and editorials and essays and fiction and everything else following the “newest entry first” format. They’re good tips for maintaining that del.icio.us feed but most of them don’t apply for more writer-ish endeavours. For those, new tips are needed.

In my eight years of maintaining a weblog I’ve come to realize enough to be able to provide my own weblog tips for new Bloggers:

1. Do it for yourself. Do it to improve your writing or to learn HTML or to document things you like or anything as long as you do it for yourself.
2. Don’t care about anything but #1. If you do it for yourself, links and feedback and hits and ad revenue, though nice and welcome, aren’t going to change why you do it.

That’s it. That’s the secret to longevity. Here’s to another eight years^[2].

And yes, I’ve made the first design change in years to commemorate the anniversary (I actually started it in October but have been too slack!) so some things might be wonky and/or subject to change.

1. The personality might be the same but tastes are vastly different.
2. I’ll be in my mid-thirties. THAT is scary.