Monthly Archives: August 2003

God in the console

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As both a Christian and a gamer, the article on MSNBC entitled God in the console called out to me to be read. I found it through the Internet for Christians newsletter I receive weekly.

The article discusses some interesting facets of gaming, including the fact that there are a number of Christian games that are produced and released. The article even discusses Ominous Horizons, I game I happen to own. I will admit that I didn’t actively seek out and purchase the game, but was given it as part of a radio contest on a local Christian station that I listen to regularly. It’s an interesting game.

One particular quote I found especially interesting from the article is an observation near the end that the author, Tom Loftus, makes:

One day perhaps, as games grow larger in size and more realistic in play, a modern day St. Augustine will write some treatise on the notions of truth and morality in game play. Until then, gamers will have to negotiate those mazes of “twisty little passages,” on their own.

Merging two of my loves in life, my faith and gaming, creates for some really interesting scenarios. For example, I have a copy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on my computer. I enjoy the play because it is very open and free-form. While there are missions that I can take and complete, I don’t have to. I can get a car and drive around jamming to interesting 80′s music, which is one of my favorite music genres. However, then I think about my means of acquiring the cars: theft. I also think about some of the more violent actions that can be taken. I might shoot someone, then think about what I’m doing. I’ve actually felt guilt in the past due to these actions.

Oddly enough, other violent games, such as first-person shooters, don’t invoke this same sort of feeling, this same guilt. Is this God’s way of telling me that he doesn’t mind an FPS, but he doesn’t like GTA? Am I feeling a prompting that’s trying to steer me clear of some other messages? After all, I’m told that GTA has some other negative facets, such as dealing drugs or owning a strip club, but I haven’t (and doubt I ever will have) played far enough to see these elements. I ran through a few scenarios one time, but the content got to a point where I had no interest in it, and was actually fairly repulsed.

Am I being morally elitist? I have friends who enjoy these games – does my repulsion of it make me think I’m better than them? Absolutely not. It’s just my personal moral compass. For some reason, alerts go off when I play GTA that make me not wish to play further. Other “violent’ games such as Counter-Strike or other FPSes don’t trigger this same response. I tend to not play them as much, but that’s more because I’m bored with them rather than offended.

Normally I don’t ask anything of my reader. You leave a comment and I’m ecstatic. However, this time I’m going to do something a bit atypical of myself, as that seems to be a trend lately. I’d like you to leave your comments regarding something you’ve read here. It could be comments about the MSNBC article. It could be thoughts on religion and gaming. It could be thoughts on my personal approach to gaming. It could be anything really, I’d just like to see some conversation sparked up around this, as I find it incredibly fascinating. I have some personal thoughts I’d like to post, but I think I’m going to save those for later today or tomorrow, just so that this post gets top coverage on the blog right now. Thanks for taking time to read my thoughts.

Nostalgic Gaming

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Ah, classic video gaming – games I grew up with, playing in arcades or on home systems, games I will cherish as some of the best gaming ever.

One thing that I find both fascinating and highly enjoyable is how game companies are playing on the nostalgia of gamers by re-releasing old games, usually bundled together, for newer systems. One example of this semi-new trend would be the Namco Museum series. There were a few Museums released for the PlayStation console, and I’m considering buying one of them for my brother-in-law, since he’s a big Pac-Man and Dig Dug fan (Museum 3 has Ms. Pac-Man, but it’s similar enough that he’d be happy), but the link above points to the one that’s out for my main console, the Nintendo Gamecube (well, really, all three next-gen consoles, but I can get it on my ‘cube, so that’s good). “Games included are Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Dig Dug and Pole Position.” That’s not a bad lineup. I used to have Microsoft’s Arcade software for my PC, which effectively had all of those, but I can’t find those floppies anywhere. If you happen to be someone that I lent them to ages ago and still have them, zip up the content and send it to me, because I’d love to play some of it again.

However, while most compilations have maxed out at five or six games (with really a max of three that are actually interesting), Midway is about to release a compilation with over 20 classics on it, including games like Spy Hunter, Joust, Gauntlet, Defender, Rampage, Marble Madness (truly, the main reason I’d pick it up), Bubbles, 720°, Toobin’, Smash TV, Paperboy, Roadblasters, Sinistar, Klax, and many others that I don’t have a full list of, simply because the full list doesn’t appear anywhere on the compilation’s website. Also, the greatest thing is that it’s listed on Amazon (PS2 listing only so far) for only $20. That’s like a buck a game, plus exclusive DVD-like special content including interviews with developers, concept art, etc.

I’m wanting to pick up the Namco Museum for fun as well, but I’d also consider picking up the Namco 5-in-1 TV Games toy, made by JAKKS Pacific. Possibly one of the most interesting and fun trends with the whole nostalgic gaming thing, JAKKS Pacific is selling three different devices. Each one is some sort of a controller device (a funky double-cross-pad thing for Activision, a joystick with a button for Namco, and the classic Atari joystick complete with stiff button for Atari games). The controller itself is also the game unit. You just hook it up directly to your television through a simple pair of RCA jacks (mono sound only – it’s not like these games were stereo back in the day anyways) and then you can play. The Namco unit has Pac-Man and Dig Dug, which is really all that matters. It only has five games, but that’s okay. I’d still consider buying it for my brother-in-law too, since that’s what he wants. The Atari one has ten games, including such classics as Adventure, Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Missle Command, and of course Pong. That list is alphabetical simply because I’m copying down what the site has for that game listing, instead of just randomly listing them like I did above for the Midway series.

If this post sounds like one giant ad, that was unintentional. I just felt like running with a theme here, and this was most definitely the predominant theme of this morning’s web surfing. While I’m loving the new consoles and awesome games (like my new copy of F-Zero GX that’s just come out, and I stink but it’s fun), nostalgic gaming is really a big deal to me. I was hooked back when games only took a few minutes to play, and we didn’t have to sit and invest hours and hours into gaming. That’s not to say that I haven’t done so, as I’m sure that the collective Final Fantasy series easily accounts for a few weeks, if not months, of my life – it’s just that now, fast gaming is helpful to me. If I can pick up a game and put it back down after five minutes, I’m good. It’s not that I don’t enjoy gaming these days, it’s just that I simply don’t have the time for it like I used to. Life is different now. If all goes well, I’ll have a great job this afternoon, and a full-time job combined with an intense class, with a nice heaping of family life on top, just doesn’t leave room for gaming much. That’s not to say I’m sad about these changes either, as I really like life and the direction that I’m headed with it right now, it’s just that I don’t have time to play those intense, days-of-my-life RPGs like I used to. That’s not going to stop me from asking for money for my birthday (February 1st, feel free to donate me some birthday cash) when that time comes and using it to buy the Final Fantasy for my ‘cube, as that’s probably the only RPG series I would make any attempt at sinking some time into (well, Golden Sun 2, but I dunno – I’d like to have my Golden Sun chars higher level, but I can’t get myself to sit and hunt for hours just to level, since I’ve already beaten it and am just fighting right above the boss room anyways).

I suppose this post is long enough for now. I’ve found much more relief and joy in composing this post than I have in some time. Maybe this is a sign that I’m taking Rebecca Blood’s advice to heart, and writing for myself rather than my readers. Maybe it means that I’m enjoying blogging more now, and will start doing so in earnest. Maybe it means nothing and I’m being too deep about it all. I’ll leave that up to the philosophers.

A solution to sloth!

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One of the problems with being slothful with a blog in the Movable Type system is that, if you don’t post for a week or two and then someone leaves a comment, it can wipe your front page clean of content, and leave a weird link bar. I love the Movable Type system, and have wanted this one feature – the ability to specify a number of posts to display, instead of a number of days worth of content. When I was beta testing the Typepad service, this was an option, so at least I’m not totally out of luck – maybe the feature will show up in a later system.

For people who blog like fiends, specifying a number of days is probably alright. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy blog habit, as it can make for interesting reading. I’m sure some people who use Movable Type have their blog set to show just two days worth and yet have more content than I’ll ever have in a lifetime.

So, as I’m surfing around today, somehow I find myself in the Movable Type support forums, and I run across an area discussing how to set the number of posts to display instead of the number of days. I have now done so, and I cannot tell you how overjoyed I am at the result. One person in the thread commented that it would be nice to see this as an explicit option instead of something that one would have to dig around for a little bit, but it’s so nice to know that it’s there. Hopefully, I will never, ever display an empty blog again.

One nice little side benefit is that it looks like I blog more too, since I have it set to play 10 entries worth. If I start blogging a lot, I might up it to 20. Ten is nice – it feels like LiveJournal that way.

Shuffling things up

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For now, I’ve gone back to the default “clean” style sheet for my blog, as it turns out that the “Georgia Blue” theme from MT was causing weird issues in Internet Explorer – mainly, that any content that was longer than my sidebar (which is fairly short in itself) was being cropped off. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t. I don’t get it.

Anyways, I think I like the clean look more than Georgia blue, and someday I’ll actually design my own look. I just haven’t gotten to it yet. The clean template makes content stretch funny in IE, so you get a horizontal toolbar, but at least you can basically read it all. Someday, I will put time into my website. For now, it’s going to be rather basic.

First day of class, last class of degree

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I really need to get off of my butt and update this thing more frequently. I actually have people who stop by and read it now, like Carlos.

There has been much activity over the past few days, which deserves proper blog coverage, so this post may get quite long. Hopefully they won’t always be this long. One of the most notable things is that today I’m attending the first day of my last class in my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, which is very exciting. I only have one class left, and I’ll be done with my degree. Unfortunately, it’s one of the toughest classes there is, but at least I can truly focus on it. I might have taken it last semester, but that’d have killed me, plus I just couldn’t fit it in, so I chose to keep it for the last course. It works out decently. I know that at least my friend Mark should be in there, so that’s a nice little motivator. Competition keeps me going, let me tell you.

Let’s jump back a few days. On Saturday, Lisa and I went down to the Fall Crawl 2003 downtown. For those who don’t live in the area and don’t want to bother with the link, it’s like a giant concert with 22 different stages and more than 100 local groups, performing any and every type of music that one could imagine. While there are some outdoor stages, most of them are usually within the establishments between 2nd and 7th streets on Central, the majority of which are bars. As Carlos commented on my prior entry, going to an event such as this is very atypical of me and my wife. We’re fairly conservative people by nature, and have never exactly been partiers, although apparently my wife remembered going to a club in the area of Fall Crawl while she was there with her friend (who joined us, and was text messaging Carlos at the time, who was out in DC going to, well, I don’t know what, but he was with the friend’s sister – what a small world we live in).

Our main purpose for going down to the Fall Crawl, aside from doing something different from the norm, was to see our friend’s group perform. The group is Dirty Baby Dolls, aka DBD, and they classify their music in their artists profile on mp3.com as Nu-metal. Once again, this isn’t exactly something we normally listen to. It was very interesting though, and the time was enjoyable. As for the group members, I know three of the current four of them in some capacity or another, and their manager is a good friend of mine. He’s actually the guy who encouraged me to ask my wife out on our first date, so in some sense I owe him quite a lot.

Overall, the time was really enjoyable. We had a lot of fun, seeing the different areas and listening to various sorts of music. I got to listen to this one really interesting group playing on a string bass and trap set while the women were using a restroom.

On Sunday, after church we went to a friend of my in-laws, to help her learn how to use her new computer. She doesn’t exactly have a lot of computing experience (her last computer is about eight years old), and they bought the best machine that money could buy apparently. Very, very nice computer that I wish I owned. However, that’s an aside. We spent about three hours there, going through a rather comprehensive list that she had put together. It was actually really fun, because I enjoy teaching people how to use their computer, and she knew what she wanted to know. She had composed quite a thorough and comprehensive list, and so that made things a lot easier. She paid quite a bit more than I had anticipated too, so tonight I’m going to pick up a copy of F-Zero GX. That ought to be a lot of fun.

Now, I’m trying to get my wireless adapter to work in the Student Union Building at the university. There are access points everywhere, and my card sees the network, and it connects but is given a weird IP address and doesn’t function at all. I’ve got everything set up properly, so it’s time to call for support and see what’s going on. Maybe once I’ve registered my MAC address it takes a few hours. I’m not sure, but it gave no warnings as such. I’ve also got my normal NIC with me, thank goodness, or I wouldn’t be able to get online at all.

Nothing wrong with me

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That is, aside from some sloth. I really should update this more often. This week wasn’t terribly eventful once I got the router. Work is work, life goes on. We’re going hiking again tomorrow, which is fun. We’re also going to the Fall Crawl downtown – a venture that is somewhat atypical of us, but it should be fun. More information as events warrant.

New Router

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I’m writing this entry from my laptop in my living room, and connecting via my new USB 802.11b network adapter from Linksys and my new Belkin Wireless Router/4-port switch. It’s great to be able to connect from anywhere in my house now. While I’m not a giant fan of working on my laptop all the time, I used to be, and I now may become so again. I have a really nice desktop, but I can’t bring the desktop out into the living room in the morning and surf the ‘net while I watch the Today show, like I now can using my wireless router and USB adapter. I’m very stoked about it all.

One awesome day

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Today was a great day. It’s hard to believe that it’s all been just one day though, because it’s been so filled with activity. In some ways, I feel like I need a day off to recover from my day off. Thank the Lord that Sundays are usually a bit more relaxed of a day.

My wife and I got up around 6:00am today, and we went for a hike in Embudito Canyon. Since we’re still relatively new to hiking (or at least I am, my wife has more experience than I do but she hasn’t been in awhile), we only went about 1.5 miles in, but it still resulted in about three miles total that were covered. It felt great to get out early in the morning, and to feel the cool air on us as we climbed up and through this lovely area in the foothills. It was really enjoyable.

After hiking, we went to Weck’s for breakfast at around 9:00am or so. I had the farmer’s choice omelette, which consisted of four eggs with peppers, onions, I think some tomato, guacamole, sour cream, and sprouts inside, smothered in red chile with a large heaping pile of hash browns, also coated in the chile. My wife was only able to complete about half of her Huevos Rancheros, but I managed to eat my entire breakfast. For those familiar with Weck’s, that’s a ton of food, I don’t know how I did it.

We got home around 10:00am, took showers again (after all, we’d just gone hiking for a few miles, I know I was a little sweaty when we stopped), and then decided that we would go see a movie. We still hadn’t seen Pirates of the Caribbean, so we decided on that. The movie didn’t start until 12:30pm, so we had a little time to kill.

Around 11:30am or so, we got to Oshman’s Sporting Goods at Winrock mall. The movie theater we chose to go to was also at this mall, so we chose to visit Oshman’s for a little while. We walked around, looked at the various items for sale, fantasized about buying a few things, and then it was time already to go to the movie.

Pirates of the Caribbean was scheduled to start at 12:30pm, but they started the previews about five minutes early, and on top of that it was just three or four movie previews – no advertising of any other sort, not even for Fandango. I was quite in shock at this lack of advertising, but also a little happy about it. I’ve seen some advertisement for Sprite Remix the last few times we’ve been to the movies, and I was sick of it, although I really enjoy the paper bag Fandango ad (“Not always on Friday nights though, because we go clubbin’”).

Pirates of the Caribbean was really an entertaining and enjoyable movie. While the change in heart of the commodore near the end seemed a bit much, it was still a really good movie, and left itself open enough for a sequel. It’s nice to see Johnny Depp playing a good role again, because for awhile he seemed hopeless.

After the movie was over, we headed back home. It was around 2:30 by this time. For some reason, my contacts started bugging me really bad during the movie, and while I managed to see the movie, my eyes were hurting through most of it, and after the movie, I got such a headache from the eye irritation that I still have the headache even now as I type this.

Once I had my contacts out and my glasses on, we went to Dairy Queen for a quick treat (Blizzards are awesome), then we went to Target, as the wife needed a couple of things. After Target, we then went to Cottonwood mall, where I redeemed a flyer I had received in the mail from Eddie Bauer for a gift. I had no idea what I had won until I got there, and I am now the proud owner of an Eddie Bauer keyfob, as they put it.

Our next destination was my mother-in-law’s house. We got there right at about 5:00pm. The whole family wasn’t quite gathered yet, so as my wife helped her mom prepare dinner, I continued my conquest to unlock Pyoro 2 in Wario Ware, which consists of beating every single microgame to a satisfactory level, and there’s over 200 of them. I’m about a third of the way through them.

Once everyone got there and we ate dinner, it was time to work on the invitations to my sister-in-law’s baby shower (she’s due in October, near Halloween). By this point, I think it was around 7:30, but I’m not totally sure. We headed over to the neighbor’s at this point, where the women gathered around the table and did invitations, while the men gathered around another table and played a rousing session of Settlers of Catan (which I eventually won, with 11 points). By the time the game was over, it was about 9:50pm, and my wife was ready to go home, as was I.

We went back to my mother-in-law’s house to pick up one last thing, and then it was decided that the lip needed waxing (as did my sister-in-law’s), so I sat with my parents-in-law and watched the first 20-25 minutes of a fascinating program on the History channel I believe, regarding the Echelon system.

Once the lip was done, we loaded some of my sister-in-law’s stuff into our car and took her back to her house a mile away (as her husband stayed behind to play another game of Settlers of Catan with the neighbor; he could very well still be there right now), then unpacked her at her house and left. It was now 10:30 or so.

They live on effectively the opposite side of town, and while Albuquerque’s population isn’t terribly large, the expanse of land is somewhat sizable, so the drive home usually takes at least a half hour. I took a more scenic route in order to pass the Temple and avoid some of the larger highways because I didn’t feel like dealing with traffic, and so we got home at about 11:15am.

My wife just got out of the shower, and so it’s my turn to get in and clean. It’s been a very long, action-packed, highly enjoyable day. If you made it this far down into the post, you deserve some sort of reward, but I don’t know what yet. Maybe I’ll figure that out at some point. Goodnight.

Dental Work Stinks

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Today I had to go and get a series of cavities filled. The dentist that I went to back at the end of last year is apparently quite an awful dentist. He found and filled a few cavities on the right side of my mouth, but missed the entire left side. Therefore, today the cavities were much more developed than your ordinary cavity, and so the procedure was much more detailed.

It took about forty minutes, and considering that five or six cavities were taken care of in that time, that’s not bad at all. Both my dentist and his hygienist were excellent. They were very comforting, and once I got past the initial jitters, things were just fine. I had the work done at 9:00 this morning, it’s just past noon and I still can’t feel half of my face, although it’s getting better a little bit. I’m told that I should be feeling things more by 1:00 this afternoon. I can feel most of my tongue again, which is a big improvement.

One thing that I really enjoyed about this dental visit is that he has a unique technology, something I’ve never seen elsewhere. He has this small white wand with very bright lights on the end of it, as well as a small digital camera, and he is able to snap pictures of my teeth very easily, so now I have a couple of pictures of my teeth from during the procedure in my pocket. Both shots are after most of the drilling on that particular tooth is done, with some work left to do, before the filling. While some people might find that gross, I think it’s fascinating to see what was done. I was even able to hold up a little mirror during half of the procedure to see what was going on, but I still found it a little more relaxing to close my eyes, rest my hands on my stomach, and breathe deeply, as opposed to watching him drill on my teeth.

I’m just glad it’s all done. I have one more week of summer left before the fall semester starts, but this should be one of the easier semesters ever, especially considering my past few. Ignoring the summer sessions, I’ve taken 18 or more credit hours for the past two semesters, and in the summer of 2002 I took three 300+ level math courses. Now, all I have left is one course. It’s a rather difficult course, but at least it’s just one course. I can focus on that course and not worry about anything else. Hopefully I’ll get the job that I interviewed for yesterday, because then I’ll be working full time while finishing up my bachelor’s of science in computer science, and then I can move on with the rest of my life.