The lows are low, but the highs are home

I said I’d write about customization at some point this week, right? Well, I meant to do it earlier, but instead I spent the last couple of days customizing Emacs. I was having too much fun to appreciate the irony of the situation. On the bright side, I’m just about ready to use Emacs for damn near everything ever, which should be fun. This has an unexpected benefit to you, my dear reader, because you’ve been saved from a lengthy post.

        Originally, I was going to write about the process of setting up my system - I figured that someone, somewhere, would appreciate it. I used to get really jealous of people’s desktop setups a few years ago, and I would have loved to see them include instructions on how they did it. I took a bunch of screenshots to build the post around, and I even knew what I was going to write about them. You can still see those screenshots here, if you want (not pictured: drop-down terminal, best used with Cygwin’s bash). If you like what you see, I’ve got contact info at the bottom of my actual tumblr page - I’d be happy to help!

        While some of the changes I’ve made are purely cosmetic, it’s all been about setting up a system I’m happy with. More importantly, setting up a work environment I’m happy with. I use my laptop for taking notes in class, where battery life trumps all other concerns. I use my laptop for writing papers, for writing code, for browsing the web, for keeping in touch with friends - the list goes on. Long story short, I’ve been working for a couple of years now to get a user experience I’m happy with on my laptop. With this latest round of customizations, I think I’ve finally gotten there. I’m embracing the keyboard a lot more to get things done quickly, and with AutoHotKey, I’ve got a lot of power to make things juuuust right. I turned my right alt key into ctrl, for example, which keeps me from stretching my pinky all the time. I found out about using ctrl+backspace to delete the entire preceding word rather than mashing the backspace key a bunch - then I remapped a key combination to do it without taking my fingers from the home row. Now I’m typing away as fast as I can think, and it’s awesome, and I’m genuinely happy to be using my computer.

        When I’m not wrestling with inconsistencies created by multi-platform software interfacing with Cygwin behind my back, anyway.

        So this post isn’t as horrifically boring as I thought it might be. On the other hand, it’s nowhere near as interesting. Hmm. Well, you’ve got the pictures, right? Look at them! I’ll have more interesting things to say in the next post, about software, because that’s where the magic happens. In the mean time, I’d better start actually using Emacs to do work…

A long time ago on a tumblr far, far away a challenge was issued to create a post about goals for 2012. Bonus points if a summary of 2011 was written. I took it the other way and made the 2011 part primary, with the future goals as a bonus assignment. I didn’t get around to the 2012 post during the Christmas holiday, and then school happened, so that kept me away. School has stopped happening for a week, so now I’m catching up on a ton of stuff. I made a to-do list of things I wanted to accomplish between February 17th and February 27th, mostly school related, but there’s a few fun things as well. I’m happy to say that writing this post is the 14th item accomplished out of a total of 27! Although I’ve really just been taking care of the small annoying things, it’s nice to get them out of the way and be on the ball a bit more. At this point I’ve got a couple big projects to take care of, four items related to fixing up scripts for LBL, and a week-long studying project. Ideally, if I take care of this stuff now, it’ll put me in a really good situation for the rest of the semseter. So there’s my short-term goals for the next week.

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Goals for the year?

        For the rest of 2012, I have a bit more difficulty deciding what my goals are. The main problem is that I haven’t managed to dedicate a significant amount of time to anything but school for a few years now. It’s definitely my number one priority, and that’s a good thing, I guess. But I’ve always seen school as an obligation, something I do no matter what. I could just say that my goal is to keep my average where it’s been, or to do really well in a certain course. But it feels like saying “my goal for 2012 is to continue breathing, not starving, and not dying of dehydration.” It’s the absolute baseline of what I’d need to do throughout the year before even looking at other things. That’s why other goals I make tend to fall by the wayside. I’ve said a few times that I would like to find ways to do get everything done and still have some spare time, and as you can tell, that hasn’t happened yet. I suspect the answer to that problem isn’t going to be finding some amazing way to revolutionize my workflow. The biggest hindrance is probably the fact that I get so miserable I don’t even realize it, which does more to keep me from working than anything else. The cycle of “procrastinate in a subconscious attempt to find some kind of joy,” followed by “oh no I have no time I must work constantly” is really not optimal. If the first week of this semester and the last few days are any indication, I can do a lot more when I’m happy - and I can actually enjoy my work, too.

        So I figure the best thing I could probably do in 2012 is find some way to stay consistently happy. Problem is, I don’t know where to start. I don’t think the answer is to set aside time for my hobbies (playing games, reading, tweaking my computer, sometimes anime) because all of that stuff is solitary. Although working on some open-source programming projects and seeing actual results from my work might be a rewarding exception. In reality, I’m actually not sure I can distinguish between being lonely for real and just feeling guilty letting my relationships wither. Sometimes I think it’s the latter. Either way, I keep wondering if I might not be miserable if I had more close friends (which would involve talking to people sometimes, or maybe even hanging out with them - but that would be crazy). Or that it might be nice to not be single (even crazier). The fact that I find both of those things incredibly difficult makes them both fine contenders for ways I could improve in the long-term… I just don’t know if I’m willing to commit to either one. If I did say for sure that I would accomplish one or die trying, I would probably work at it. I might also just tell myself that I’ll work on it for a few hours and then chicken out. I need a real push to get it done, I guess.

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Trivial goals

        As for a trivial goal that I will definitely accomplish because it’d be impossible not to, I’m going to finish the last half of FF VI this year. I might even finish FF XIII-2 before Reading Week is over. With both of those things done, I can safely say I’ve finished the entire main Final Fantasy series. Depending on when I finish FF VI, I can see myself getting through Dark Souls as well. That, I would actually be proud of. It’s incredibly rewarding to make any progress at all in that game. If I’ve got extra time left in 2012 after that, I’d actually looking forward to playing Nier. I hear fantastic things about its narrative, despite a lot of serious flaws in the rest of the game. I’ll write more about that if it does turn out to be amazing, anyway, and if nothing else I’ll write about how its soundtrack blew my mind.

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Tune in next time

        Anyway, I’m going to have a few more posts coming up this week. First, about the current state of my computer customization. I had somebody summarize the reality of that situation pretty well: “If I have to explain why it’s awesome, you probably won’t think it’s awesome.” I’m excited, and you have to respect that. Second post is slightly more accessible - I’m planning to recommend some of my favourite software. Only slightly more accessible, but it’s something I can give to people when they say “what do you recommend for doing x?” Which has happened to me all of once. NEVERTHELESS, I INTEND TO WRITE THAT POST. You might get a super special post after that, depending how the rest of the week goes. So there’s something you can look forward to!

I went through my archive and picked out the posts that I think are most essential to my life in 2011, and the complete list is below. They’re all tagged recap, alongside the posts from 2010. I wouldn’t say they’re the most well-written, or the most interesting, of my posts from 2011. I wouldn’t even say they’re worth your time to go back and read. It’s just a bunch of bullshit I wrote about myself, really. But if someone wanted the quick version of my life in 2011, this would be it. You can probably extrapolate from what I wrote about not being perfectly efficient in my work to the fact that I haven’t been writing as much. I don’t have much to say about these posts that I haven’t already said in my 2011 In Review post (last item on the list), so go read that. Otherwise, I stand by what I wrote as a representation of me at that point in time.

• My name in shining lights (in which I become part of the Language and Brain Lab)
• I’m STILL not good at managing my time/forcing myself to work
• In which a banquet forced me to confront my introversion
• In the meantime, take these pills
• Morality of used games (is buying a game used as bad as downloading it? probably)
• You have [3] games remaining (where I reveal my quest to finish every Final Fantasy game - current status: 50% finished with FF VI)
• Username Origin Stories
• Old Friend, New Roommate (I’m still happy about the decision, for the same reasons I mention here)
• Improve the world, and be happy! (in which I become satisfied with my life)
• Catherine & Me
• Catherine Pt 2: Love Should Be Selfless
• The Catherine & Cheating Saga, Pt 3
• How I Got My Android Phone (it was a big deal to me, jeez)
• Not Antisocial, Just Shy
• Hey Matt, Whatcha Up To (but mainly the anxiety stuff)
• Too Busy Planning for Later, To Think About Right Now
• 2011 in review

Oh, one thing that might be notable: there’s a lot of stuff I wanted to write about this year, but felt like I didn’t have the time. Looking through my archive, a pretty common theme is “I did have a better post, but take this for now” or “I’ve got great stuff coming, just you wait!!!” and none of it ever materialized. That sucks, but it is what it is. Again, I’m not totally sure it’ll get better. But I’ve got at least a dozen drafts waiting in the wings, and hopefully I’ll put the finishing touches on some of those. I may write a post about my plans for 2012, but whether or not I post it will depend on how boring it is. If it’s not up in a few days, then 2012 is probably just going to be more of the same.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

This year, my brother and I are with my dad for Christmas. My mom went home to spend Christmas with her family, but before she left we did half-a-Christmas. So my gifts from her, my grandparents, and one or two “from Santa”:

• A pre-order for the limited edition of FF XIII-2 (once bitten, twice excited about the changes they’re making)
• An IOU for a copy of Valkyria Chronicles 2 for PSP
• How to Do Things with Videogames, by Ian Bogost (kindle)
• Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal (kindle)
• Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn (kindle)
• The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry), by Siva Vaidhyanathan (kindle)
• The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie (kindle, First Law #1)
• Newsgames: Journalism at Play, by Ian Bogost (kindle)

Oh, and I picked out the Game of Thrones board game as a gift for my brother and we’ve had a lot of fun with it. Enough that I’d consider it partially a gift for me, which is the good thing about doing your own gift shopping. If you’ve got a group of people willing to sit down and play a really political game for 3+ hours, I’d definitely recommend it. Imagine Risk if there were no dice rolls, and manipulating people is a far better strategy than outright destroying them. You tell them you’ll guard their back as long as it suits you, and when it doesn’t…. well.

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For our second Christmas, which was on the proper date, I mainly got more books, but physical ones this time:

• Valkyria Chronicles 2, for real
• A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Raph Koster
• The Golden City, by John Twelve Hawks (Fourth Realm trilogy #3)
• Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, by Michael Zielenziger
• Before They Are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie (First Law #2)
• Last Argument of Kings, by Joe Abercrombie (First Law #3)

My personal gift to my brother was Penny Arcade: Gamers vs Evil, another double-gift. We played it before going to bed, and I had fun with it. I can’t say how it compares to other deckbuilding games, but turns are very quick once you get used to it and the cards interact with each other in some pretty interesting ways. For example, I won the last game we played using the Carl hero, from the Automata strips. His ability makes the most expensive types of cards - Boss Loot - cheaper by one. There’s another card, Broodax In Disguise (not for the faint of heart - it’s an alien wearing a person’s body), that has a value of 1 when you play it, OR a value of 3 if you intend to put those points towards buying Boss Loot.

Whenever I failed to have enough to buy a Boss Loot, I bought more Broodax. Eventually, I got hands that - out of six cards - three of them are Broodax in Disguise.

Needless to say, I acquired a good chunk of phat lootz, which won me the game.

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Honourable mention goes to a couple of gifts I could only get shipped to the US, so my aunt brought them to my mother while she was visiting. So when she gets home, I’ll get two gifts that you may find very strange: a shell replacement for my DS Lite (a few hours of tinkering, which may ruin the machine!) and a bundle of empty cases for PSP games. Anyway, I’m weird like that. Both of those things were pretty cheap, and I’ll be happy to have them. I can replace the sticker-covered cases from PSP games I bought used, and if all goes well, be the owner of a non-broken red and black DS. Woo.

(also, does anyone still say woot? I have the strangest desire to start saying it, just because)

[title inspired by the least important line in Streetlight Manifesto’s ‘A Better Place, A Better Time’. The rest of the song is incredibly beautiful to me, too, but for entirely different reasons. Do me a favour and read the lyrics, alright? Whether or not you can connect the dots, I think you’ll get something out of it.]

        I read something in my psych textbook last year that’s really stuck with me. It was a single-line comment, something a good student knows they won’t be tested on, along the lines of “people with anxiety disorders often feel more in control of their lives when they worry about things.” I can guarantee that if I ask the people I know who’ve taken that exact same course, and read the exact same textbook, most of them wouldn’t even remember that part. What I can also tell you is that it’s more like a subtle reassurance than some sort of powerful feeling of controlling your own destiny. And that it takes a hell of a long time to think about the worst things that might happen, and debate how I should react or whether it’s worth the risk. It doesn’t feel good to take three hours working out a 30 second conversation; but think about what might have happened otherwise! I have to keep doing it, making mental conversation trees, guessing at people’s reactions, because to do otherwise is to give up the illusion of control, and risk facing problems I might not be prepared for.

        As you can probably guess, spontaneity isn’t one of my strengths. Makes me a terrible role player, too.

        The unfortunate problem is that I habitually use most of my downtime to think about these sorts of things. Worse still is the fact that trying to fall asleep is essentially infinite time to worry about things. Lifehacker posted an article this summer about dedicating time to worry - and not doing it during the rest of the day. It’s easier said than done, especially when you have a lot to do (and worry about), and when you’ve spent years replacing sleep with worrying. But it’s definitely something I need to work on, because it’s a big part of why I have trouble with people. Even though I know it’s true, I kind of have to remind myself that nobody is going to remember that time I said something dumb (even if I remember it forever), or expect me to be perfectly eloquent all the time (even if I regret not saying X for days afterwards, and why didn’t I think of that at the time!?). It’s a lot harder to carry on a conversation when I’m trying to keep all those things in mind. And it’s not like I often manage to map things out and predict how someone is going to react. It’s just a reassuring habit I fell into years ago.

        From the outside, you probably can’t tell how hard it is to break out of this pattern. It’s incredibly powerful, and incredibly pervasive. The associations get so strong that relapse is completely inevitable. Years of an almost ritualistic reliance on a seemingly harmless activity don’t go away overnight. Maybe you don’t want to see the harm it causes, or you can’t quite connect the dots. Either way, it sometimes seems a lot easier just to work around it rather than try to change.

        I’ll do it, though. I’m tired of being paralyzed as I hover over the send button, wondering whether I could improve the message (text, IM, e-mail) that I’ve been writing for 5-50 minutes. I’m tired of being tired, because I tried to go to bed early, but instead stayed up for two hours worrying, then woke up in the middle of the night and worried for another hour before falling back asleep. Tired of psyching myself out to the point where I can’t even talk to people, or talk in the presence of people when it comes to class discussion. It might take me six months, or it might take me two and a half years. But I’m tired of not being able to explain this to people, leaving them guessing as to what the problem actually is. I can take care of that problem now, while I work on the rest.

I got some free headphones with my new phone, and they weren’t bad as far as free headphones go. Better sound quality than the piece of crap $15 Skullcandy earbuds I bought a year ago, and they had a button that would play/pause anything playing on my phone. Neat! So I stopped using the crappy, uncomfortable, terrible sound quality Skullcandy headphones, which I only bought out of desperation because I couldn’t find my usual $10 Sony ones.

Last week, the left earbud stopped working unless you tweaked the cord in a specific way. Fine, I can live with this, I’ve got to power through an assignment anyway. Nope! A few hours later, the other earbud gives out too. Well, shit. Now I have to listen to dumb people while I’m trying to concentrate. But, ok, I’ll just stay on campus really late and there won’t be anyone around to bug me. Fine, it all works out, I get my old headphones back and stuff. Sucks, but it’ll do.

But everyone who uses earbuds seems to go on about how they “used those white iPod headphones for years and they worked fine!” So when my dad had to replace his iPhone after dropping it (screen shattered, bits of broken glass in his hand, etc.), I snagged the headphones that came with it. They worked just fine listening to music in iTunes, and were slightly less uncomfortable than the Skullcandy pair, and all was well.

Then I tried to use the headphones with my phone. My Android phone. And it sounds like ass. Like someone is sitting on my ears, specifically. Also, like the audio was playing in slow motion. Then being filtered through tinfoil.

Still sounds fine playing music through iTunes. This is what they call a conspiracy, folks. And I have no idea what it means to be “like an Apple product,” because a certain mysterious internet vigilante (who is in hiding) never finished their simile. Maybe it means to be spiteful and refuse to work well with others? The world may never know.

[I bet you thought you missed me until you read this]

[title courtesy of this XKCD shirt I’ve always liked, but known it would be stupid to actually wear. Also, I wrote this post… nearly two weeks ago, and since I’ve started talking about it with a few close friends it’s gotten a lot better. I’m only just posting it now because I know the rest of the people who will read it are exactly the people I haven’t spoken to enough, and I’m not sure how you’re all going to react. No pity, alright?]

       Now that classes have started again and I’m starting to see people I never spoke to last year, I’ve realized something strange. Without noticing it, I’ve developed pretty severe social anxiety. To the point where going to meet up with a bunch of linguistics students was physically difficult for me. Thinking about it hours in advance made me sick to my stomach - that was my first big hint. When I got there, I couldn’t even think of things to say, or was always ten minutes behind the current conversation. It was pretty brutal.


        Then I got to thinking about how little things have changed between Brittany and I now that she’s moved in at my mom’s - we see each other physically about as often as we used to speak by text/IM (both of which we’ve mostly stopped doing) when she lived in PEI. And I realized that I’ve been a bit off around her, too, never really knowing what to say and dreading the thought of starting a conversation. And it’s sad to think that one of my closest friends is now my roommate (half the time), and we never hang out, and I say it’s because I don’t want to intrude when I’m really just afraid. And worse is the fact that I’m sitting in the basement, trying to force myself to study, but I wind up being unable to concentrate because I’m just miserable and lonely. And I could just walk upstairs and say “hey, what’s up?” But I don’t. It’s been almost three months, and I haven’t done that once. It’s baffling, honestly, but only when you really think about it. As you can see, it’s taken me this long to notice, so there’s some positive self-deception for you. I’m slightly curious about whether I’m the last person to realize this, and whether I’ve always been like this, but I haven’t had the guts to ask.


        It gets worse, though, because then I think about it some more and realize it’s been a couple of years since I started a casual conversation like that at all. Including over IM. Only two or three years if we’re talking zero conversations whatsoever, but then, an epiphany - I’ve been like this since I first got on MSN in 8th grade. With few exceptions, I’ve always waited for other people to start the conversation or only ever started to talk to them when I had something specific to talk about - a funny webcomic, comment about a new game, whatever. Vael and I talk a lot over IM, but nine times out of ten, he starts the conversation, and the rest of the time I have something to show him or ask him about.

        [Errata: Vael says he counted and it’s roughly 50/50. But I was mainly thinking about a sort of “hey, what’s up” kind of thing that just leads naturally into a conversation. Plus, a lot of the time you don’t actually have anything to talk to someone about yet, so you don’t have much else to say.]

        So suddenly it’s come to light that I’ve never been comfortable starting a casual conversation. You can see how that might be a problem when it comes to getting to know people. It seems like I’ve made most of my friends by accident, considering the number of new friends I made during high school (just Vael) and the number I’ve made since moving to Ottawa (one, a few more depending on how much you lower your criteria for “friends”). Not to mention the piss-poor job I’ve done of keeping the friends I’d already made. And the others I’ve driven away trying to “help” them with all of their problems, because I couldn’t think of anything else to talk about… Or worse, the people I got to know simply because they needed someone to talk to about stuff like that.


        I’m working on it, though. Friday before last, I invited someone over for supper just for the sake of having some company. And I’ve felt a lot better since then, because it was a lot like hanging out with people once upon a time. And I’m not deliberately avoiding sitting near people I kind of know in class, though I’d still feel weird going and sitting down next to them. And thinking about just how deep the problems run has made me realize just how little I need to do in order to improve on my previous behaviour. So how’s that for low expectations! Spoke to a human being today, I’m so proud of myself. But, seriously, this is where psych 101 comes in and I realize I’ve had this avoidance learning thing going on for years. And I don’t intend to keep it up. Which is why I’m writing this, instead of posting sad song lyrics, or about how I’ll be FOREVER ALONE T.T, or how much I identify with Socially Awkward Penguin.


        I’m not looking for pity, and I’m not going to say “this is just how I am” or look for ways to cope with the symptoms (without actually dealing with the real problem). But hey, I have a cell phone and unlimited texting. If you don’t know it/aren’t in Canada, when my IM status doesn’t say I’m busy, feel free to say hello. I’m not ignoring you, and I don’t hate you either. I just don’t know where to start most of the time. But don’t do it too much! I can’t keep relying on other people to start conversations. I’ll be around, anyway. Plus, if you’ve read this far, I can only assume you’re either very interested in my life, or can’t think of anything more exciting to be doing. To both of those kinds of people, you may as well just say hello - I’ve got tons of contact info on facebook if you’ve got me there, or you can scroll down my ugly tumblr page and find a few options.

Five years ago (minus a month and 9 days) I was sitting in front of our “big screen” 36" CRT TV with my launch day PS3 and a copy of Insomniac’s first Resistance game. I ran around, shot aliens in the face, and I probably had fun doing it. I think I tried to run around and find all the hidden documents for a little while, and even ventured online for a couple hours of multiplayer. Too long ago to remember much more though.

        Roughly three years ago, Resistance 2 came out, and I liked it well enough too. Convinced a few friends to buy it so we could play co-op online… but I never played it with them. Oops. I didn’t really mind the changes from the first game (regenerating health, no weapon wheel), but I was really getting into the story. What’s up with the Cloven? What are the Chimera? I was under the impression that there were more backstory documents in the multiplayer, so I really wanted to get those, but my interest waned pretty quickly.

        A month ago now, Resistance 3 came out, and I knew I didn’t really care. But hey, I’m already two games in, I have to know what comes next, right? So I bought it a couple weeks ago. Played my way up to chapter 17 (of 20) over the course of ~8 hours or so. And I didn’t enjoy it in the slightest. As far as the gameplay goes, the best ideas it has are to bring back health packs and the weapon wheel. There’s nothing to see here, folks. You’ve got scripted sequences where it seems like you might die, but you obviously won’t. You’ve got arena areas with just the right amount of ammo and health to get you through safely. You’ve got some “quirky” weapons like the one that freezes dudes, and the one that mutates dudes, but the end result is that the other dudes die and you don’t.

        I kept going, looking for the fun, hoping it might be right around the corner. But there was no fun to be found anywhere in my $60 game. Trade-in value for the game is down to $25, but of course that’s in-store credit. I usually think of trading in a game along the same lines as throwing it out, and I was that frustrated with the game that I almost considered it. But not for half of what I paid for it, and conditional on the fact that I want to spend that money on another game. So I’ll just keep it, and set it aside in the Hall of Shame section of my shelf.

        The thing is, I’m not sure if Resistance 3 is just an ok game, or whether I’m bored with shooters in general. Or maybe it’s not even shooters - maybe I’m just done with “Hollywood games.” I want Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, where you can actually fail the platforming sequences. I want Demon’s Souls, where rocks fall down and kill you, instead of falling around you to create the illusion of action. I want to be legitimately afraid because my character is weak and the enemies are strong, because a dark room with some scary noises isn’t going to cut it. I want a narrative that gives me just enough information to get engaged, but always has bigger mysteries to solve. I want characters that are worth caring about. And I don’t need every game to have all of these things - one or two of them, done well enough, can carry a whole game.

        But I’m done throwing away sixty bucks on games with nothing to offer. I’ve got better things to do with my time and money. I can’t see any shooters coming out any time soon that I have any interest in buying, and I’m going to think a bit harder before I jump on something like the new Assassin’s Creed or FF XIII-2. In the mean time, stuff like Serious Sam: The Random Encounter is far more interesting to me than all of the big releases coming out this year.

Ars Technica wrote a great piece you should really read about game developers leaving the AAA industry to make it on their own. Inside, they mentioned a game called Card Hunter, which is being funded by the co-founder of Irrational Games - the guys who made System Shock 2 and Bioshock. I looked it up, and found out it’s being worked on by other people you might have heard of. Farbs makes some pretty cool games, and I actually bought into the Captain Forever series when the first game was in beta. On a slightly more famous note, does the name Richard Garfield ring any bells?

        There’s no definite release date yet, but it seems pretty fascinating. They’ve got a couple of developer diaries talking about deck building in the game: one here, and another here. I pretty much like everything about this game, but the deck building is particularly interesting. Rather than adding specific cards, you equip items, which give you a specific “suite” of cards. Should make for some good strategy.

        I guess I probably shouldn’t post about a game that isn’t out yet. But I’m eagerly awaiting its release, and I think some of you might be interested too. After all, you probably played Magic years ago. Remember the good times? Yeah, me too. Card Hunter will probably have more good times! Play it with me when it comes out!

Last summer, when we moved to Ottawa, my mom decided that we should all have our own cell phones. My dad already had his own, so she got a 3-year contract family plan for herself, my brother, and I. Her phone, the main line, cost $35/month + $20/month for countrywide My5 call/text. The other two lines were each $30/month. Total: $115/month. We got the most basic crap phones you could get, because hey, we never needed fancy cell phones before. I started itching for an upgrade after a few months, but the reality was that all I needed to do was making one call per month and send text messages, so anything would do.

        BUT THEN DISASTER STRUCK. About a month ago, after being crushed and scratched by 30 kg (66 lb) bags of concrete mix, my phone’s signal quality went down drastically. To the point where I would have no signal anywhere in my house, for days at a time. My mom and brother had identical phones, and when placed beside each other, I would have no signal and they would have a perfect one. This was the excuse I was waiting for! The phone either needed to be repaired/replaced, or I’d get an upgrade. However, I can’t afford a data plan, so I needed to see if I could upgrade the phone without paying for wireless data. When Lifehacker posted about Geekaphone, a site that would suggest the perfect phone for your needs, I made a list and set off for the phone store.

        I asked after a handful of phones, and the only way I avoid a data plan would be to buy the phone off-contract for $400+, with the phones at the top of my list being $600. If I got a data plan, I’d get the “with a 2-year contract” price. However, I needed to pay a $35 administration fee for changing phones (offset by a $50 mail-in rebate), and a $120 “early upgrade fee” for not waiting out the contract. But again, this requires me to sign up for a $30/month data plan. I certainly can’t afford a $600 phone, and I definitely can’t afford to spend $700 on a data plan over the next two years. Well, I probably could in the long term, but with no income during the school year, it might be tough. And so, I resigned myself to finding out my options for an out-of-warranty replacement.

        Returning home, we dialed up our wireless provider and made our way to a customer service agent. It would cost $20 to replace my phone with an identical model, but for $40 I could get a Samsung A886 (meh), and for $80 I could get a Sony Ericson Xperia X1 (meh-ish). No matter what I got, I’d keep the same contract and not need to shell out for a data plan. To give me time to research the phones, my mom (who is nice and polite pretty much all the time) asked if we could change our plan to match the current offerings. Eventually, we came out of the deal paying $65/month for the main line and $15/month for the two additional lines, with 500 extra monthly daytime minutes and countrywide My5 for all three phones. Total: $95/month, for a better plan. Not bad, and we didn’t even have to yell and scream and talk to customer retention!

        I had grudgingly decided to go with the X1, if only for its sliding keyboard. However, since we’d earned a lot of goodwill from the customer service lady, I asked what kind of phone I could get for more than $80. The next step up was the Motorola Quench (known as the Cliq XT in the US) for $130. Officially, it’s stuck at Android 1.5 because there was no way to get 2.1 to perform adequately on the mediocre hardware. But recent updates to CyanogenMod have added support for the phone, so the decision was made: get the Quench, root it the day I get it, and optimize everything for performance. Since I spend most of my time either at home or on campus, I’ll have access to secure-ish WiFi most of the time. Why bother spending $30/month just so I can check Facebook while I’m on the bus?

        The only potential downside here is that the phone might just suck so much that nothing runs well on it, but with all the customization options, I’m hoping I can manage. As long as I keep in mind that it doesn’t have gigabytes of RAM, I should be able to run things pretty smoothly… one at a time, anyway.

        Until I get a hold of it around Friday, you’re safe from me talking about all the stuff I’m doing with it. But when I get it, expect to be inundated with an absolute nerdfest of Android-love.

Stumbled upon the website psychologyofgames.com, which I will hyperlink even though you could drag it into your address bar, and in addition to being worth exploring on your own I thought I’d link to a few interesting pieces. And actually, I’ve posted about them before - their Three Reasons We Buy Those Crazy Steam Bundles article is very good at keeping me from wasting my money!

• Burnout and Crunch is a fantastic piece, and it applies to any kind of work you might be doing - it’s more the psychology of game developers than the psychology of actual games
• Psychological Flow and Fake Plastic Rock is about flow, which I swear I’ve posted about before but can find no record of… if I haven’t, this is a good, easy to understand explanation and it’s written well, too
• Psychological Weight of History is about the weird way we value things, as is this post about the endowment effect
• Jam and Game Reviews is about why we’re bad at rating things based on their different parts, but I’m not totally sure how I feel about his conclusions. If you want a review on whether a game is “good”, as a piece of software with graphics and sounds and stuffs, that’s one thing - and most people could probably write that. If you want a review on whether a game is “fun,” as a thing with stuffs you can do, that’s pretty easy - and anyone could write it. But if you want a critique, on whether a game is “good” as a piece of art that delivers some kind of message, that more or less bypasses the problem with typical game reviews (usually a mix of the first and second options). Sure, you can tell people it looks nice and has fantastic voice acting, but if the same game had wonky graphics it would probably still be worth playing. Harder to appreciate, maybe, but worth playing.

        A follow up to something I posted long, long ago is Procedural Generation and User-Generated Content II: Storylines, AI, and Emergent Gameplay. I didn’t title it, so don’t blame me. While I like the idea of generating random contexts, and I’m sure it is being done already in the games we play. The emergent storylines part, in particular, is very interesting to me from an AI perspective - but also in terms of what the player can be allowed to do in something like a browser-based game where players have to be explicitly allowed to do things. Also, basing the game on text (i.e. most of the browser-based games I’ve played, because games made in Flash are “flash games”) makes it super easy to add mechanics. You want to let the player seduce, or murder, or steal from, or lie to any NPC in the game? Easy, just give them dialogue options. No need to animate it all, or have art, or a button dedicated to doing this action, or show what happens when they succeed or fail.

        All of that being said, I’m dubious about the idea of totally procedural games. It would have to be very, very sophisticated to match the kind of output talented human writers and game designers can come up with. As soon as a player realizes that they’re being sent to [kill] [X] [for Y coins] for the seventeenth time, by some randomly selected character archetype (last time it was a peasant, this time a wizard!) it will all fall apart. Not only that, it would be hard to craft deep and truly meaningful experiences - mature experiences! - without a human hand to guide the complexity.

        Catherine is deep and meaningful by virtue of its subject matter, but then there are games like The Witcher (first and second) that become deep and meaningful through the complexity of the situations they present. Any given quest has various interpretations, based on who you talk to and what you know. So then any procedural generation has to make your gameplay situation, but also add a lot of context in terms of ulterior motives and hidden information unavailable to the player. And then you get into the realm of things that need so much processing power, they have to be generated during development rather than at game time, and that’s cheaper than paying humans but far less dynamic.

        Game AI vs Traditional AI offers interesting insight into AI in games, and why it sometimes seems to lack in the Intelligence department. I don’t have much to add to what’s already there, but if I tell you that it’s an article about how to make players feel like they are The Batman will you be more interested?

        Yeah, I thought you would be.

        Trenches seems like a relatively interesting webcomic project between Penny Arcade and the guy behind PvP, at least as far as a webcomic with five comics can be “interesting.” However, what is very interesting is their Tales From The Trenches that accompany each comic - anonymous stories from people who have worked as game testers. These are fantastic tales of horror, and I highly recommend reading a few. The one you’ll see linked to if you read this the day I post it, titled “Ship It,” is particularly soul-crushing.