So, I took my brother to look for a birthday present (today is his birthday) and ended up taking him to the bookstore. Got five volumes of various .hack manga and Little Brother and For The Win by Cory Doctorow. $10 for each of those 400-page books. As much as I want to read a 400-page book in .txt format… Nah, I got my money’s worth. Plus, For The Win was hardcover, which is like super amazing value considering the average new release in hardcover is like $30 minimum.

Total: $90.

Anyhow, french presentation went well, and I realized there’s no point in me typing anything up about it because it’s basically all in the Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids article. So, read that.

“The cat’s blue. The one in Shinjuku. If you find it,” she said with a smile, “all your dreams will come true.” … If you sold that smile in a hamburger shop, it’d sell better than the fries. That was what it looked like to me, anyway.

That’s from Slum Online, and I’m liking it a lot. It’s pretty short, a little over 200 pages counting the 30-page “Bonus Round,” and I’ve read about 90 pages in the past couple of hours. The main character’s a pretty good player of an online fighting game, and he’s trying to work his way into the top four players of the game. Then he starts talking to a girl who shares a few classes with him and getting to know her. It switches between extremely detailed accounts of his fights online and investigating a character called Ganker Jack who managed to beat two of the top four players without anyone knowing what he looks like, and his time with her in class and around Shinjuku. I don’t know where either of those stories are going (well, except the part where clearly there’s some kind of confrontation with Ganker Jack) but I like the writing and the length a lot. The main character refers to anything he hears in “RL” as sound effects, and online he describes what seems like a pretty accurate version of competitive fighting games. Cancelling out of moves for specific animations, dodging just a few pixels out of the way, break throws and air combos and all that whatnot. If nothing else, it keeps your attention in much the same way a military novel is still interesting if you’ve never been to war.

I’ll finish it off tomorrow I suppose, and hopefully finish the second Dragon Age book as well before school ends. I don’t think I have anything else short enough to finish before school ends. I’ve done my part, anyway!

Prom!

Two weeks later, I’ve realized I may as well post about prom and then repost the extra pictures whenever I get a hold of them. Woo. Speaking of yesterday’s post, you know how I said I go looking for books to buy? Went to a bigger bookstore today, spent $60. Got: Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund (twin children of Lucifer have to survive three temptations and three heroic trials, Max read it but his aunt’s dog ate it, so I bought my own copy), Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (published by the same guys who translated Battle Royale and about a boring college kid playing an MMO and stuff? I’ll see when I read it), The Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (my brother says it’s good, from the 50 pages he read in the car), The Prodigal Mage by Karen Miller (first of a second trilogy in a series I liked to begin with, should be good - fantasy with a heavy cultural/political leaning, so there’s plenty of attention to detail), and finally The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (I’ve actually avoided knowing what this book is about, because I wanted to find out for myself - I’ve heard nothing but good things about this book, and I’ve finally decided to buy it). Moving on!

        Our house, unfortunately, was never really a looker. Gardening and other pretty things were never our strong points. So, when it came time to take pictures for prom… We borrowed the neighbour’s yard. They’re retired, and the husband spends practically all of his time cultivating his gardens. So it was pretty good for taking pictures. Before Brittany, my date, and her friend Lindsey got to our house, my mom got some pictures of me around their yard and a few around our house.

        When they arrived, we got some pictures in front of the house before moving on to the neighbour’s yard. First we got some pictures in front of a flower bed and near the flower bed. Then we got a picture with our moms, her mother being the one I don’t have my arm around. Then they got my boutaneer thing on me, and we crouched down in front of the flower bed because my mom thought it would look nice. Then we moved over to a little white gate thing they had and got some pictures there.

        It was starting to get kinda late, and she was going to get some pictures with the guy who got her hired because he was moving soon, so they started to got meet him before he got off work. Then my mom surprised Britt and Lindsey by asking them to turn around for a picture, and then we got a few more pictures in front of the house of the two of us.

        So I don’t have any pictures of us at prom, because nobody offered to take any or wanted any with us together (my friends aren’t into that, her friends only wanted pictures of her) so I’ve got nothing for that until I get the couple of pictures that did get taken from other people’s cameras. Still, to summarize: we made our own way there, I tried to make my way in through people because she was already inside, I finally get in, we hang around and talk before eating. Food comes in, turkey dinner, couple of things to be said by people, thanks given to the people who organized everything. During dinner we watch a 20 minute preview of our upcoming Grad Video, desert comes in, some more announcements. We wait outside for an hour while they clean everything up and get the dance ready, the niece of the woman we’re staying with (I only found this out later) gets a picture with me because her friend bet her that he was the only one wearing a bow tie.

        Dance starts, Britt and I hang around ‘cause neither of us can dance and we didn’t think we should slow dance together, Ms. Barrett was making her rounds because she was one of the people who spent many hours putting prom together for us, and I got a picture with her. Then we left at 10 (supper started at 7, ended at 8, dance started at 9) because Britt and Lindsey had plans, then I went home and went to bed.

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        Exciting, wasn’t it? Anyhow, I just thought I’d invite any of you reading this to get a hold of me somehow if you don’t already have a way to IM me. My contact info is at the very bottom of my actual tumblr page, but likely any of you that have a tumblr won’t see that, so my xfire is starvalddemelain and my e-mail address for msn is mapleleafdude[at]hotmail and I’m sure you can figure out the last bit. Unless you’re a spambot! I’m generally always available through both of those, so whichever you prefer is fine by me.

After finishing Wake in three days and ordering its sequel, I’m back to Synthetic Worlds again. At least until Watch gets here. Let me summarize, once again: this is an amazing book, and I’d love to see Synthetic Worlds 2.0. If you have ever in your life used the internet for social interaction, played a video game, been interested in economics, sociology, psychology, technology, or even if you’ve done NONE of those things, you will enjoy this book. Seriously, this is some intense delving into the subject of MMOs.

        Here’s the amazing thing about Synthetic Worlds: it was written when WoW only had five hundred thousand subscribers. The global total of MMO players was ten million, less than the estimate thrown around by those WoW ads! This is six years ago, people. Two-thousand-and-four. I haven’t gotten to the part where he talks about the future yet, but I can guarantee some of the stuff he predicts has come to pass.

        Here’s another thing: it was written before the Wii was called the Revolution, when gaming was something mainstream but not necessarily a household activity. Digital distribution was only beginning to pick up Steam (oh, come on, there was no way I could resist that) and the average person likely didn’t play video games on any kind of regular basis. Maybe some… oh, wow, this is even before Guitar Hero. Maybe they might have played some Mario Kart, some Mario Party? I mean, we’re talking your grandmother and her dog here.

        There’s a lot of data in there just to say that no, people playing MMOs aren’t sweaty teenage nerds living in their mom’s basement, many of them ARE the fathers/moms of regular kids. The average age was, off the top of my head, something like 29? Many were married, most had good jobs. The results were divided between those who considered themselves “residents” of their chosen game, and that they “visited” Earth much the same way a casual player would “visit” Azeroth or Norrath. Many considered themselves to be addicted, but there was surprisingly little difference between the two groups in terms of time spent playing. The author questions whether “playing those silly video games” more than other people counts as an addiction by default, and suggests that addictions are the things that have a negative effect on our life when we aren’t doing them, such as drinking or drugs.

        He also gets into why exactly someone would get deeply involved with these games at all. Why would you want to live on Earth, where you’ve got a crappy office job and will never amount to anything? Why not live in Azeroth, where you’re the leader of a guild and everyone loves you? There’s a bit of psychology thrown in there, too, about how we get immersed and how it’s actually harder to suspend our belief when we play an MMO than it is to suspend our DISbelief. When there are 50 people around you, equally involved in slaying some giant dragon, it’s hard to step back and go “no wait, this dragon is a worthless pile of code and actually means nothing because it doesn’t really exist.”

        The idea of emotional immersion rather than physical immersion isn’t exactly new, but this gets into WHY your brain wants to believe you can cast Magic Missile rather than “waaah this game had no immersion” or “blah blah the characters were so realistic and I was so immersed and I cried blah blah blah” crap. There’s a history of virtual reality, the goggles and giant suit and no fun kind, compared to the fun, interesting, made to be enjoyable rather than a tech demo kind of synthetic realities engineered specifically for the benefit of the player.

        Wake had interesting ideas and it was really cool and awesome to read, but that was a novel. Synthetic Worlds is 300-something pages of statistics and sciencey examination of things that are likely near and dear to you, and in a word, it is wonderful.

Two books I’ve started recently that I highly recommend: Synthetic Worlds by Edward Castranova, and Wake by Robert J. Sawyer. To summarize the rest of this post: buy these books.

        edit: oh dude the second book hardcover for $10 from Amazon.com, please don’t kick me out for being from Canada right before checkout *shakes fist at book industry*

        Castranova is the writer for Terra Nova (link only because he mentions Blizzard making two million dollars the day their shiny pony came out) and an economist. The fact that he’s an economist matters because Synthetic Worlds deals with the practical stuff involved with online games. Economics, immersion, psychological things that make us associate ourselves with our avatars, consequences of a world where the majority of the population spends most of its time in another world, legal things we’ve never had to deal with before… I’m only a couple of chapters in, and it’s very interesting and well worth reading. It’s got a really nice black cover, though, and I hate getting fingerprints all over it >.>

        Second book is a science fiction novel by, shock and dismay, a Canadian author! If you can’t think of a book you’ve read by a Canadian author, you would be no different from the vast majority of Canadians. Robert J. Sawyer is, according to wikipedia, relatively popular outside of Canada. He’s got an American tv show based on one of his books (Flashforward) and he also wrote a trilogy about the dinosaurs being abducted by aliens and taken to another planet, where they create a human-esque society. Unfortunately, the covers are so goddamn horrid that you could never read them in public.

        The book of his that I’m reading (and loving) right now is the first of a trilogy called Wake, and it’s about a blind teenager. She’s recently moved to Canada because her dad got a job working for some company or another that may be imaginary, but is funded by Research In Motion, who definitely do exist. She gets an e-mail from a Japanese researcher who says he could give her sight, and it doesn’t work, but somehow lets her see the internet. Or something. I’m only just getting to that part.

        Meanwhile, the internet is forming its own consciousness and making some connection with another being. China cuts off its internet from the rest of the world to cover up a mass execution, creepily enough to stave off a potential H5N1 pandemic (this was written pre-Swine Flu, I think o.0) and the internet itself recoils in pain. It isn’t aware so much of its existence before, but of the sense that things are no longer right, and slowly develops a sense of self and of others through its contact with the other being. The being may be a hacker from China who breaks through their security, and his connection seems to break when the internet stops concentrating and loses track of him, but the being may also be a monkey. Or it may be Caitlin herself, as she tries to figure out what she’s seeing that definitely isn’t her room. Who knows! Even if I did, I wouldn’t spoil it!

        Speaking of RIM, everything has a name in this book: her dad has a BlackBerry, she has an iPod, she uses JAWS, she has a LiveJournal, she edits a Wikipedia entry about her dad to remove a section about how her “disability” was a “burden” to him… I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m half-expecting her to give a speech about her Tampax™ tampons. It’s realistic - really, how could you refer to Wikipedia or LiveJournal without mentioning any names? “A free online encyclopedia” or “online journal” would just be clunky. Still.

        It’s the most “modern” book I’ve read, and it’s kinda strange. I was just reading a newspaper article about how to “become a better writer:” don’t let your character drink “a beer,” make it a Pabst! He doesn’t just look at the tv in the bar, he looks at the Samsung HD yadda yadda. This is the joke made real.

        Some of that stuff is what I really love about it, though. Attention to detail is nice. For example, those LJ entries are taken directly from the book. Another thing is that the main character is, regardless of everything else, a blind teenage girl. It’s not just a little thing that pops up here and there and everyone triumphs over adversity la-dee-da. It’s like, her dad is a super practical, devoid of sentiment, kind of guy, and he turns off the lights when he leaves her room because she doesn’t need them. Or she tries to guess at people’s body language based on their voice alone, or their height based on where their voice is coming from. It makes her pretty human.

        Anyway, here’s the website for the series, and the newest book just came out recently. I noticed the first book not long after it first came out, and it seemed really interesting, but not interesting enough to buy as a hardcover. Then the second came out, and the first came out as a paperback, so I snatched it. I’ll probably buy the hardcover of the second.

        (I’m so proud of my hyperlinks, I will try to use them less but the last couple of days I’ve been collecting stuff to post about at work then unloading it all here afterwards, so I have to fit them in somehow)