Just a Lark

Today I got a first-hand experience of just how serious internet business is by my review of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Because I gave it a poor score, I am clearly a terrible person and a bad player of games. I also hate Nintendo, role-playing games, kittens, happiness, and love. Of course I knew this was going to happen, and in no way am I taking it personally or anything, but I do find the accusations amusing and sad.

I wonder how long I’ll get hate mail over this one. [Read more →]

…I spent the last three hours making this:

Ness, from the SNES RPG Earthbound with his pixel counterpart.

Today, after being tipped off by my co-worker Chris about Yerba Buena Arts and Culture Free4All day I took a trip down to SF MOMA. I’ve been meaning to visit ever since I moved here (it is, after all, two blocks from my office) but the fact that I generally hate modern art (Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol are hacks) has kept me out. Not to mention that my last experience there was with an art history class I was taking that was literally taught by the most boring woman in the universe–imagine being toured around there and lectured by the female version of the teacher from The Wonder Years and tell me you’d like to go back. Luckily, as much as I dislike most modern art I love interactive art installations, media installations, and other imaginative things. Not to mention that the collection at SF MOMA has some really awesome traditional art pieces. So the combination of the works of Olafur Eliasson and Joseph Cornell, along with the right price ($Free.99) made me journey through rain and a massive line to finally visit. [Read more →]

I’m back from a weekend of hanging out with my family and friends back home in the so-called “biggest little city in the world.” I lived there for over ten years and I still don’t know what that means. Anyway, it was quite the adventure and good times were had, as well as some really weird times.

Originally I went to go see a concert, which is something that I never thought that I would ever do–Reno’s not exactly well known for good shows and for good reason–but Freezepop, a funky synth pop band that’s probably most known (which is to say not very) for their contributions to Harmonix’s various music games over the years was playing there. Chances are if you’ve played Amplitude or Guitar Hero or Guitar Hero 2 you know them for Super Sprode or Get Ready 2 Rokk or Less Talk More Rokk. Anyway, I heard about them playing there from my brother and made plans to go with my friend JD. [Read more →]

Finally got my copy of The Orange Box and have been able to experience the amazing Portal (at work, since my work PC could beat up my home PC), and it’s pretty fantastic. The mind bending puzzle design is great on its own, but it’s really your artificial intelligence nemesis GLaDOS and her clever dialogue, courtesy of the dude behind Old Man Murray, that makes it so awesome. [Read more →]

I haven’t updated lately ’cause I’ve been super busy. Lotta crazy stuff going on around these parts. We had the GameSpot Player’s Ball, during which I helped to set up the area for our Rainbow Six Vegas tournament, which was a blast until we had crazy problems. Problems like not having enough power bricks for the Xbox 360s, or being shorted two copies of the game and having to make an emergency Best Buy run. Things worked out of course, but getting there was a journey. Then I did what I did best and rocked out, helping to run Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band booths, which was great considering I was explaining how to play games I barely understood to people. [Read more →]