Nearly three years ago, Richard Bartle gave a keynote speech at the Austin Game Developers Conference. Some time after that, I was at a party where some people hadn’t been attendance of it, and I summarized it thusly: “He drew a line from World of Warcraft all the way back to MUD1, then basically said, ‘Bitches better recognize.’” Got at least one good laugh from that.

I’ve not been a student of Dr. Bartle’s, and can only imagine what his lectures are like from what I read from him and have heard him say. The Guardian published a column of his in reaction and support of the Byron Report on Britain’s video game regulation system. Short version of the report: Yes it needs overhauling, but education rather than fear must prevail.

Bartle’s shortform: Byron knows what she’s talking about because she grew up with computers and probably played games on them, and all the politicians making hay over them can wither and die. Bitches.

Most of the people on my IM list know that I have two working desktop computers now, after two months with just one in pieces and a laptop that was pulling total duty. What follows sounds so ridiculously cliche that I don’t even recognize myself for writing about it, but I’m surprised about something and hope someone reading this can offer some advice.

Continue reading Drive bay bezel springs…

Replacing a power supply in a “small form factor” computer is not fun at all. Especially when it’s four years old and I didn’t put it together in the first place, and I have no idea if the new PSU is any good, having probably been sitting on a shelf somewhere for probably the same amount of time.

Better news is, someone upgraded me to Wordpress 2.5 while I was napping. I bet I know who.

My mom ordered me a cake from the grocery store bakery near where I work. I know this because she told me so in an e-mail. It’s a carrot cake.

So tomorrow I’m supposed to go to the store and pick it up, so she didn’t have to pay the delivery fee, apparently more than the cake itself.

Also, they wouldn’t take her credit card, so I’ll have to pay for it myself, and she’ll reimburse me.

Thanks, Mom. I don’t blame you, I blame H-E-B for being dumb. Tomorrow, cake!

Tonight I went to one of those free lectures offered by Austin Community College’s game development institute, which I’ll write up tomorrow. Yeah, it’s been a while since I did such a thing, when I used to do them all the time. It’s even feeling like a change of pace to actually update this site more than once a day, so bear with.

The real news besides the talk, however, came from program coordinator Bob McGoldrick. Seems that he is no longer the “director” of the institute, as he had become on perhaps an interim basis. Turns out, the new director is Spencer Zuzulo, notably the founder and director of GameCamp, an organization I’ve praised before (though apparently not on this site. Hmm.)

What’s more, Bob said, this fall will have a substantial expansion of the programs offered, as well as associate’s degrees in game programming, art and design. There’s also been quite a bit of effort to coordinate with 4-year colleges, but as Bob said, there are very few bachelor’s degree programs in existence when it comes to game development.

Anyway, there might be more news about this another time.

Maybe it’s just because Simon Pegg is best at playing losers with charm enough to woo women that ought to be beyond their reach, or because Britain hasn’t had a good movie about racing since Chariots of Fire. Or maybe it’s that while the main cast of Pegg, Thandie Newton, Hank Azaria and Dylan Moran all do a great job, the real treat is Harish Patel, as Pegg’s landlord/personal guru, an actor who few people outside of India will have ever seen act. Or maybe it’s that Pegg and Moran have the most entertaining two-man fight since They Live, which you can see toward the end of this BBC interview.

Whatever. Run, Fatboy, Run is a brilliant piece of formulaic underdog romantic comedy. Besides maybe three scenes that are unnecessary and awkward (unfortunately, the end coda counts), everything else seems to flow extremely well together. David Schwimmer did at least as well as Ben Affleck did with Gone Baby Gone, both first-runs for unlikely actors as well as both having titles that begin and end with the same word. Go figure.

J. says, check it out. Expect to laugh. Yes, I know critics are more than half against me on this one, but I disrespectfully disagree by calling them names.

This site is shutting down for good. I haven’t been updating it regularly in a dog’s age, and I think I’ve run out of anything to say. Plus, I’ve recently accepted a job at a major game company and can’t talk about it anyway. My life’s likely to change significantly at long, long last.

OK, I’ll tell you a bit about it, after the jump.

Continue reading Yeah, it’s been fun….