Feb 20
So I got an auto-reply based on keyword the other day. Zzz.
But, um…. look what it’s replying to:
I can’t help but imagine some very graphic and bloody puppy websites. I think I might have an overactive imagination.
Feb 17
I’ve been playing (but haven’t finished) Mirror’s Edge on PC lately. I’ll spare the details of the gameplay, but I can’t get over how rad the colours in this game are. A side effect of this is that when I pass red exit doors in real life I have to suppress my instinct to kick them in.
(Click on images to see full size. I resized them, and thought better of it, but you poor saps will just have to deal with the smaller images).
Jan 14
Following up on my earlier post about the November Girl Geek Dinner, the Montreal Girl Geek Dinners have been featured on the ARTV show Mange ta Ville. Allow me to let out some juvenile excitement here — I’m on tv, zomgwtfbbq!
Dec 21
My hands get incredibly cold while at work. I’m sure it has to do with poor circulation or something, but in the meantime I really wanted to find something that would keep them warm, and Fuzzy Mitten suggested I knit up some fingerless mittens so I could keep my hands warm while still being able to type. At last I had been convinced to get (back) into knitting after some coaxing from knitter friends. I would make these mittens, for great justice!
They’re my first project that wasn’t a scarf; I made a bunch of scarves in my first year at university. I got a little practice with simple increases and decreases, as well as seaming and weaving in ends. I’ve got to say that weaving in ends is probably the most tedious part, and I shouldn’t have left it all till the end. I’m fairly happy with how they turned out, though I’m sure other knitters will probably find some mistakes in there.
I’m hoping to make one of Fuzzy Mitten’s stuffed animals next. They’re incredibly cute, and I’ll learn a few more stitches with them. Ultimately I’m hoping to make at least one pair of socks this winter. I’ve already got some gorgeous lavender sock yarn waiting…
Dec 12
Sometimes I am uneasy about how much a person’s character can be sketched out from their online presence. I noticed this in a big way when I was still using facebook. Many people will air all their dirty laundry, like messy breakups, surprise pregnancies, and petty feuds, all over each others walls without considering the fact that, though their account may be “friends only”, bosses, colleagues, and acquaintances can see the #$%& piling up, in real-time. I’m not going to say the people I was friends with on facebook were all drama queens/kings, but I definitely saw some status messages, wall posts, etc. that I would seriously have regretted writing, were they mine. Even something seemingly minor, such as a relationship status change, will show up in a friend feed, and incite all sorts of (probably well-meaning, for the most part) questions from friends. Any sort of outlet on the web through which people can vent makes it possible for a person to say things in a rather public way that they may regret later. It makes me think of the people that will have a very personal and loud cellphone conversation about how so-and-so is a jerk who cheated on them and is somehow oblivious to everyone around them who can hear the entire thing. But, you can take consolation in the fact that even if you have a messy and embarassing public phone, or otherwise, conversation, there (usually) isn’t someone there recording it for later use. It’s quite a bit harder to _permanently_ erase things you’ve said on the internet, especially if it’s in a place that is owned by someone else (i.e. facebook & livejournal), rather than you.
The reason I personally care so much about this is because my online identity plays a fairly large part in my life, being a techie. When I got my current job, my supervisor told me that he had googled my name during the hiring process. I’m under the impression that this is not an uncommon occurrence. Not only do I need to be careful what I write on the internet, but it’s also in my best interest to make sure meaningful results do show up for my name. It nearly feels like I need to be an SEO expert in order to do this.
Another issue that I didn’t foresee when I first started using the internet was using a universal handle, or online name. I don’t always want to use my given name, especially since it’s not the easiest to spell. But, since my real life nickname (nini) is nearly always taken, I’ve come up with a variety of different handles for different sites. Though it can be useful to use a different handle for personal and professional web personas, having a different handle for nearly every application makes it hard to tie profiles together and build a good online identity that can be presented to both your peers and professional circle. This is definitely something that I want to work on.
Nov 29
This didn’t quite fit into the Gamma post, so I gave in and you’ll have to suffer through 2 posts today.
Urban Outfitters has some really cute robot christmas ornaments.
I might have to get these. While I was there I picked up a gold tinsel 3′ xmas tree as well. I’m determined to be festive this year, damnit. What better way than to do it retro-style?
Also, Left 4 Dead on 360 is really fun. I was a little skeptical and wasn’t going to pick it up (especially considering it’s about $60), but it turned out to be a fun little distraction that you can jump into for an arbitrary amount of time. I love that I can hop into my friends’ game at any point and start up as one of the team members that used to be played by a bot. Also, if I go afk, the bot will pick up for me and I can take back control of the player when I get back. It goes along well with the new xbox experience too, since it’s really awesome to create a party in the dashboard that you can bring into a game, and be in the party as a spectator chatting to my friends who are playing. The co-operative element makes it really fun, too, since it’s nigh impossible to beat the game playing alone, or split up and wandering around. Players really rely on each other, and playing so well as to not get incapacitated (which requires your teammate to revive you) or to kill a tank on your own grants you an achievement, which I imagine is pretty crazy to pull off. The only thing I’m not happy about is that some of my friends are playing on PC, and I don’t really envy buying another copy just so I can play on the computer. Must remedy this.
Nov 29
I haven’t written about Gamma 3D yet, o noes! It was a great event, and just as fun as last year. Gamma 256’s music (Anamanaguchi and Bubblyfish) were a lot more thematic, but 3D’s music was equally enjoyable. Evidence of its awesomeness is the fact that I was actually dancing to it. I was postulating that they’d play some sort of retro music to go along with the theme of cheesy 60s and 80s 3D movies, but then, what kind of music would that even be? I think their choice of mashup-y electronica was kickass.
Moving along to the games themselves, I very much enjoyed Paper Moon. The gameplay was really fun and easy to pick up by experimentation. The style was really cute, and was a bit like a macabre children’s book. Super Hypercube was pretty neat as well, although my depth perception seemed to fail me a little (I blame the BEvERages). Puzzle games are classic, and always fun. Fireflies was really cool because of the controls which were on the unusual side, and also because I think it really worked well in stereoscopic 3D — plain old 3D just wouldn’t have been as cool. I wasn’t as impressed by The Depths To Which I Sink, mostly because I felt it wasn’t using stereoscopic 3D very well — maybe it was my eyes but the objects just seemed to get larger and smaller, but not popping out of the screen. It still works decently well as a game, though. Though I didn’t play BlottoBrace, I watched a few people play and I found it a little confusing and disorienting (and possibly buggy). I reserve final judgment however, as I would have to give it a proper try to review it. AltiToad is the one game I didn’t look at, but perhaps I’ll download it at some point and try. All the games are available on the Kokoromi site, including the ones that didn’t make it into the event itself.
In addition to hanging out with various friends that are into these sorts of things, I got introduced to Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid (which I wrote about previously). He’d spoken at MIGS earlier that day about meaningful games, and I wish I could have caught his talk. In any case it was great to meet him, although we didn’t talk for long.
Can’t wait for the next Gamma. Thanks Kokoromi!
Nov 28
This past Tuesday I was given the opportunity to present to the Montreal Girl Geeks about building a gaming computer. I’d been interested in building a new one a little while after I sold my old gaming rig, sauron. He had a socket 939 AMD64, and a GeForce 6800 video card, which is rather on the low end these days, at least for gaming. I figured I would just keep gaming on my XBOX 360, Wii, and DS and not bother to buy a new PC. Besides that, I was (and still am) quite happy working entirely on OS X — using Windows again would be painful.
As it turned out, Spore came out, and I couldn’t get it to run on my Macbook, unless I used Boot Camp. Though I could do that, did I really want to? In any case, after that a couple of my friends started playing Team Fortress 2 on PC, and since I’m convinced I’m the only person in existence that bought The Orange Box (or as my silly Quebecois version is called, La Boîte Orange) for 360, I decided something must be done. Since TF2 really won’t run on an Intel GMA 950 under Windows (hey, I never claimed to have bought a Macbook for gaming purposes), the thought occurred to build a new rig.
I had mentioned my idea to Tanya at some point and I was invited to speak at a GGD about my rig building experiences. I wasn’t sure at first if it would be a topic that would really interest people, but the dinner seemed to be a success. Keep in mind that this is the first presentation I’d done since high school — I’m a coder, I’m allowed to be lacking in certain social skills.
As for the presentation, I did a short OpenDocument Presentation on the prep process, then a slideshow of the building process (available on flickr), and finally opened up my case to showcase the guts of my machine. Laitue et Go turned out to be a reasonably good venue for this: there were extra tables that I could set my hardware up on, it was fairly well lit and quiet, and there was wifi (which I didn’t end up using). Also, their salads are nommy.
To the Girl Geeks: I hope you enjoyed, I certainly had fun 
For the curious, here are teh specs:
Nov 8
I’ve finally gotten around to downloading Braid from XBLA and I wish I’d done it earlier. It is truly as brilliant as everyone says. I’ve only played about a level and a half so far and already had my mind blown into smithereens. Some of the gameplay is blatantly taken from Super Mario Bros., but this is not a bad thing, quite the opposite. It expands how one thinks about platformers — you can do so many things that would be ridiculously impossible in a regular platformer. It is non-linear to the extreme. The fact that there are achievements both for traversing the world, and solving the puzzle for the world hints at this.
This is far from an original review, since everyone on the face of the earth is raving about this game, but I wanted to say that I agree wholeheartedly with the plethora of admirers. I can’t wait to get further in the game and have my perception of the world altered some more.
For now, it is back to the cloud bridge!
Nov 5
Eight years of hell are over (Pravda).
