Games, media, entertainment, photography, and other things I do for fun.
Apr 05
Normally, my online gaming jollies get fulfilled during our Friday Night Follies gaming sessions, where we all gather in my basement and play multiplayer games in the same room. Since we can all yell at each other to our hearts’ content, we don’t need headsets or microphones. Lately, I’ve been actually gaming a little more …
Apr 01
When you buy a bicycle, it typically comes with wheels. Unless you’re buying a super-expensive racing bike, or a custom build where you spec out all the gear, the wheels you get with the bike are OEM wheels. They’re typically pretty average wheels, even for relatively pricey bikes. Even if you’re something of a duffer …
Mar 31
I don’t play video or computer games to be challenged. There, I’ve said it. And I don’t feel ashamed to admit it. Note that I don’t typically play in easy mode, usually gravitating towards whatever the game suggests is normal. Firaxis calls this “Veteran” for XCOM 2, Fallout 4 dubs this “Normal”, and Rise of the …
Mar 30
The first Silicon Valley Comicon (so named, anyway) wrapped up last weekend. While successful, the overly large crowds marred what should have been a great event. We talk about how what we liked, how it can be better, and why it might have to move out of Silicon Valley to be better. Meaning Friday evening …
Mar 29
I seem to be on a history kick this week. As I dug into my past experiences with the early days of 3D graphics cards, I stumbled across a trove of old Word documents from the days when I wrote for Computer Gaming World. What really amazed me is how little things have changed. Things …
Mar 24
Video games now permeate society at all age levels and socioeconomic strata. The vast numbers of people playing games creates communities of gamers who live only in their particular gaming niche. Electronic gaming was always a tribal activity, but today’s gaming communities seem more narrowly focused than ever. Online FPS gamers and MOBA players rarely mix …
Mar 11
I stumbled across Rogue in its MS-DOS incarnation when I bought an original Compaq portable back in the 1980s. Spawned originally on the Unix, the MS-DOS version I played added color sprites, but still rendered levels, monsters, and characters in ASCII. I spent endless hours creating new characters, pushing further into the dungeon, losing them, …
Mar 25
The Bicycles In My Life: Lynskey Viale
I owned and rode a Lynskey Viale titanium-frame bicycle for six months. That six months taught me a valuable lesson about something I call “the hubris of experience”. As you move up the learning curve in any endeavor, you can reach a level of competence where you believe you know more than you really know. …
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