Why First Person Shooters Are Good For Us

For every nutjob who gets in the news because he went on a shooting spree and it turns out he loved violent video games, there are thousands upon thousands of us who use games like Call of Duty: Black Op II or Killzone Shadow Fall as a non-violent way to work out our frustrations.  That's just one of the interesting points made in this New Yorker article delving into the appeal that first person shooters (like the two games mentioned above) hold for many of us. 

I definitely experience the immersive quality the author talks about, as video games are one of the best examples, for me, of "getting in the zone," as we used to call it at work.  And I can see how the control aspect applies, as well: in a first person shooter, especially a highly-competitive multiplayer match, everything happens so incredibly fast that you're constantly making split second decisions and choices that have the feeling of being life-and-death.  It's an illusion, of course, because 'death' in that environment usually only lasts a few seconds, but somehow it always feels slightly more real than that.

It's a great article that should be of particular interest to those who don't play first person shooters and can't understand why the rest of us do.

Deadly To Pets

Thanks to our friend Sue, I now have a handy visual reminder of what foods to keep away from dogs and cats:

Big Change In U.S. College Football

I'm not a big fan of NCAA football, in general, but during the TV wasteland period that comes at the end of every calendar year, Vicki and I typically enjoy a few bowl games.  What's always bugged me about the format of college football 'playoffs' in the States has been the fact that there's never really been a playoff.  It used to be just a bunch of bowl games and then voting took place afterward to decide who the best team was... no, I'm not kidding!  The introduction of the Bowl Championship Series several years ago improved things incrementally, as at least with that change you'd get the # 1 ranked team playing the # 2 ranked team for the title of champion.  However, the flaw in that structure was the subjective ranking involved.  More than once I've seen an unbeaten school get ranked 3rd or 4th, meaning that they went the entire year without losing and yet didn't get a chance to play for the title.  Whenever that's happened, there's been a lot of controversy, as there should be.

Starting next year, however, the chances of an undefeated team missing out like that are at least going to be reduced significantly.  Starting in 2014, there will be two semi-final games, involving the top four ranked teams, with the two winners meeting in the championship game (presumably a week later).  What this means is that a team would have to be ranked 5th or lower in order to excluded from the chance to contend for the championship, which seems much, much fairer to me.  Even if you're ranked 3rd or 4th and think you should've been put at the top, you'll still have the opportunity to win a pair of playoff games to prove that you deserve the title.  In a league where positions are determined by votes, that's probably the best you could possibly hope for.

I can't wait for this to be implemented, a little over a year from now.  It should make the end of the U.S. college football season a whole lot more interesting, exciting and satisfying than it's ever been before.

Another Biking Season Draws To A Close

I biked downtown to get comics today, and it was a beautiful late-fall day for a ride.  I think the temperature was around 4 or 5 degrees, though the windchill made it feel closer to 0, according to the Weather Network site.  Most importantly, the roads and bike paths were clear and the sun was shining.

Unfortunately, snow is in the forecast and I think today may have been my last ride of the year.  It's certainly one of the final trips I'll be able to make in 2013, as late November is usually as long into the season as I can go before the snow and ice arrives.  My days of long biking streaks or simply saying "Screw it" and biking in the snow are over, I think.  There's something about entering my 50s that's just made that sort of thing seem impractical now.  But even so, I'm proud to have stretched the biking season to (at least) November 20th this year, as that's nothing to sneeze at.

The Other Christmas Connection Yesterday

Not only was yesterday Christmas for gamers, thanks to the long-awaited release of the PS4, but Vicki and I (and Tammy, in absentia) also got to play a small part in some Christmas goodness.  A comic store owner in Windsor, Shawn Cousineau of Rogues Gallery Comics, has made an annual habit of getting comics into the hands of underprivileged kids every Christmas.  It's something he started several years ago, inspired by the fact that he and his single mother had benefited from similar acts of generosity when he was a child.  I heard about his campaign to get 6000 comics donated to the cause and remembered that Tammy had given me several boxes of her old comics, asking me to find a new home for them.  She'd brought them here before leaving for Australia in 2011, but I hadn't gotten around to doing anything with them yet.

The combination of the PS4 arriving and our planned trip to Windsor yesterday got ugly around 10:30 when the street crews began setting up to finish the paving of our crescent that had begun over a month ago.  They'd put one layer down back in September or early October, and then they disappeared for about six to eight weeks, only to pick Nov 15th, of all dates, to complete the job!  As it started to look like they'd be closing the street and my PS4 hadn't yet made an appearance, we gave up on waiting for it.  I figured the mail truck would never be able to get on the street once the paving started anyway, so why bother waiting?  We loaded the car up with the four boxes of comics but had to take the long way around the crescent as the usual exit was blocked by trucks filled with asphalt.  We got halfway around the crescent when I saw a Canada Post truck parked in a driveway, so I stopped the car and jumped out.  I approached the truck, saw that the driver was our regular mailman, and was about to ask him if he happened to have a package for me when he hopped out and handed it to me!  I couldn't believe how lucky I was, or how close I'd come to missing it!

After thanking the postman profusely, we packed the box into the trunk with the other cargo, and headed to Windsor.  Once we got there, we spent about an hour in Rogues Gallery Comics, getting to know Shaun, and discovering just what a nice, friendly guy he is!  He couldn't have been more grateful for the donation, and was just a joy to talk to.  He's one of the nicest comic store guys I've ever met, and I've encountered a lot of them.

Anyway, Tammy can be proud of herself, as her former collection (minus a handful of comics that we knew she'd like to hold onto) will brighten Christmas morning for several hundred needy children in the Windsor/Essex County area.  What a great role for a few boxes of comics to play!

Christmas For Gamers

Today marks the launch of the PlayStation4 (PS4), making it the equivalent of Christmas Day for most serious gamers.  One of the first recurring topics introduced on this blog, way back in the fall of 2006, was my pursuit of a PS3, as I struggled to find one amid the hysteria following its launch.  Here we are, seven years later, and I've learned my lesson: I pre-ordered my new toy this time around, and it's on its way to the house right now.  I've tracked it from Mississauga (where it left the Best Buy warehouse late last night) and can see that it's now out for delivery here in London, which means I'll hopefully have it within the next few hours.  I already have my first game to play on it - Killzone: Shadow Fall, which was released ahead of the console, as strange as that seems - and can't wait to check that out, see what the console's UI looks like, discover all of its cool new features as well as whatever else I may find.

Of course, this doesn't mean I'll be completely abandoning Boneman and Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer on the PS3.  I'll continue to slum it when I have to, until that glorious day when he, too, joins me in this magical land of the future...

Poor Man's Meal Planner

For reasons I wrote about almost a year ago, I stopped supporting the various Java/Database applications that I'd written over the past fifteen years or so.  I've found the absence of cataloging each new comic I buy to be liberating, after nearly 40 years of recording every addition to the collection.  Vicki hasn't said much, one way or the other, about losing her book inventory system, so I don't know how much of an impact that's had, if any.  But the one area that finally 'hurt' a little was the loss of the Meal Planner application.

Initially, I wasn't worried about the Meal Planner because Vicki had stopped using it anyway before I even made my decision to abandon the applications.  She said she was just taking a break, but that hiatus has gone on quite a while by that time.  However, several months ago Vicki began asking the old age question again: "What sounds good for supper tonight?"  It was that same daily routine that had prompted me to create the Meal Planner in the first place, so that got me thinking about a simpler solution.

The result was a spreadsheet, the printout of which looks like this:

The idea is that you put this sheet up on the fridge.  On it, you get 3 weeks worth of daily spots into which you can write a dinner, along with 3 pre-filled columns of possible choices.  The first column contains the most frequent/beloved meals, followed by a second column of slightly-less desirable options, and a final column that has the rarest/blech-est of the possibilities.  As you select a dinner choice from Columns A, B, or C, you write it into the slot for that day, and cross it off whichever list you got it from.  Throughout the course of the 3 weeks, the days fill up with meals and then, when you're done, you print off a new copy for the next 3 weeks.  Crossed off items can be picked again in the same period, of course... but by virtue of being crossed off, they're less likely to be selected, which is what you want if you're looking for variety (as we are).

It's not anywhere nearly as sophisticated or automated as the old Java version, but it seems to be working.  We're on our 5th or 6th iteration of it now, and I'm happy to report that Vicki rarely asks me what I want for dinner anymore.  And that's exactly what success tastes like, for me!

Scary Article About The Realities Of Cycling

I mean, the title says it all: Is it OK to kill cyclists?  You should definitely give it a read, whether you're a cyclist or not, but especially if you're a driver who resents cyclists.

Thanks to the Man from Mars for the link.

Neil Gaiman, Class Act

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan.  The first issue of his new Sandman prequel series, Sandman Overture, which came out last week, absolutely blew me away.  I'm waiting to do a second reading of it before posting anything about it here, but it's... just... amazing.  This is one of those rare cases where someone revisits a masterpiece of theirs from the past and manages to produce new work of the same, if not maybe even better, quality.

Anyway, today I was reading an interview with the artist of that series, J. H. Williams III, and got to the end only to see this quote from Williams about working with Neil:

I wanted to see if [Neil] was open to me approaching it the way I've approached many of my other projects, where I take what's there, and if I see, "Oh, these two pages work in a more interesting way if they're turned into a double-page spread, with some sort of design that encompasses the whole thing." How would he feel about me altering the pace in that way? And he gave me the most perfect, humbling compliment. He said, "It's you. We asked for you. Do what you do, I trust you."

That's Neil Gaiman, in a nutshell.  Total class act.

Money Well Spent

This is the final weekend before Call of Duty: Ghosts arrives, and so that means I'm just about done playing Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the previous CoD title that came out just under a year ago.  I'm pretty confident that I spent more hours playing BOII than any prior CoD release, to the point where I prestiged in it 6 times!  I inched my kill-to-death ratio up to previously-unseen heights, finishing tonight at 1.75.  I doubt I would have believed, last November when the game arrived in my mail slot, that I'd get anywhere nearly that high a KTD or that I'd prestige more than once, let alone do a half dozen of them.

The main driver for all those hundreds of hours online, without a question, was the presence of Boneman right there beside me (virtually speaking) over the last twelve months.  Having someone to partner up with makes a huge difference in terms of not getting bored with the same old maps, and he and I had some amazing adventures playing Team Deathmatch together on Nuketown 2025, Express, Slums, Standoff, Hijacked, Carrier, Aftermath, Meltdown, Turbine, Overflow and, yes, even Yemen. 

Now, though, my attention is ready to turn to Ghosts, where I'll no doubt suffer for at least a week or two with a subpar KTD while I learn the weapons, perks and maps.  I can't imagine I'll end up spending as much time in this game as the last one, but you never know.  You're only a kid once, after all!

Rainy Hallowe'en Nets Us Just 9 Little Beggars

We didn't even hit double digits this year (a first!), thanks to a windy and rainy late afternoon and evening.  Nine is only a few kids less than normal, though it's about 50% below the average if you want to talk percentages.

Updating the tallies from the years I've been blogging:

2013: 9
2012: 14
2011: 15
2010: 18
2009: 19
2008: 19
2007: 18
2006: 12

The New Bathrooms, Part 2

I couldn't convince Vicki to provide the blog post on the upstairs bathroom, so you'll just have to settle for photos and minimal commentary from me.

Here's what it looked like before:

And here's the spiffy new look, once again hard to capture in photos, unfortunately:

Quite the upgrade, I'd say!!  And now we'll be proud to send house guests upstairs to use the facilities, which certainly hasn't been the case for years.

Lou Reed, Neil Gaiman And The Art Of Interviewing

Following the news of Lou Reed's death over the weekend, there's been lots of conversation about the man, as usually happens when a celebrity dies.  My own 'relationship' with the singer is extremely limited, to put it mildly.  I enjoyed a few of his popular songs, including "Sweet Jane" by Reed and The Velvet Underground, which Tammy introduced me to several years ago (and which has been covered quite a few times over the past forty years).

By far the most interesting thing I've read out of this current flurry of Reed-mania is Neil Gaiman's interview with Lou from 1992.  I'm a firm believer that there's an art to conducting a good interview, and it's a skill that seems largely lacking among those who do the most interviews.  I used to love Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show style back in the 70s and 80s because he not only asked interesting questions of his guests, but he also went to the places that you wanted him to go, even if you didn't know it until it happened.  By the time Snyder was done with his subject, you understood the person (rather than the persona) in ways you never would had anyone else been asking the questions.

Neil's talk with Lou Reed is fascinating in a different way, though.  The article that precedes the interview provides the perfect scene-setting to allow you to understand how big a deal it was for the writer to land that gig, as well as to observe the slow, steady transformation that unfolds in the singer's attitude toward his interviewer.  You can track Reed's growing appreciation for the intelligence and insight behind the questions, and the openness that Gaiman elicits out of him in response is extraordinary for such a short conversation.

It's a weird confluence of coincidences that Neil Gaiman's return to Sandman debuts in two days (Sandman Overture) and I'd just suggested The Velvet Underground as the letters column name for the comic series, Velvet, that came out last Wednesday.  Everything ties together.

Copyright Vs The Public Domain

The Washington Post has a great article detailing the history of copyright term-extension legislation, including the fact that the topic is about to rear its ugly head again over the next several years as properties like Mickey Mouse are once more 'at risk' of falling into the public domain.

As a creator of copyrighted material myself (six books and counting!), I'm totally of the opinion that copyrights have to terminate after a reasonable span, such as the creator's lifetime plus fifty years, for example.  That provides plenty of opportunity for money-making off of them, not only for the person who produced the work, but also for the next generation of family members.  Any more than that is ridiculous, if you ask me.  And, as the article points out, the term keeps getting extended to put more money into corporations' pockets, not to help out creative types.  Considering that it's Disney and Time Warner, among others, that we're talking about here, the irony is pretty thick: both companies have comic publishing arms (Marvel and DC, respectively) who've famously screwed over the people actually creating the stories and artwork for their characters.

I'd love to see this trend toward longer and longer extensions reversed sometime soon, but I doubt it'll happen.  Corporate interests, after all, are more zealously safeguarded now than ever.

The New Bathrooms, Part 1

For the past two weeks, Vicki, Emma and I (and even Tammy, during her Thanksgiving weekend visit) were under siege from a father-son pair of contractors who were completely renovating our two main bathrooms, literally from floor to ceiling.  This is the project Vicki worked her last contract for, as we set aside most of the after-tax money she made specifically for this purpose.  All of our bathrooms have been looking tired and dated for years now, and so Vicki took on the challenge of addressing that situation for the two main ones.

I may get her to do a guest blog post (haven't had one of those in ages!) to really do the subject justice, but I thought I'd at least put up some before-and-after pictures to get a certain relentlessly-persistent sister-in-law off my back.

I'm starting with the en suite that's situated off the master bedroom, as it's the one I always use (and this blog is all about me, remember).  It's hard to convey the look and feel of the room in photos, but here's what we got rid of:

Quite boring looking, with ugly vertical striped wallpaper that was peeling off and tile grout that was impossible to get clean (believe me, I tried!).  The tub had long since lost any luster and the toilet had some sort of design flaw in how the water needed to circulate in order to go down, the end result of which was that it clogged very easily and required me to plunge it about twice a week.  No, I'm not kidding!

After Mark and Jordan of Cornerstone Construction worked their magic, though, the room was transformed into this:

Beautiful colours all around, and everything's state of the art now: toilet seat and vanity drawers are all self-closing, the ceiling fan has its own humidistat for automatic on/off functionality, and best of all, there's a rain head at the top of the shower, which I've already fallen in love with and use in place of the actual shower head.  And the toilet flushes reliably and with a lovely whooshing sound!

We do have a slight problem with space, as you might be able to see from the pictures: the longer-than-usual toilet and the fairly wide vanity don't have a lot of room between them near the tub, making the access to the tub a bit tight.  So we may end up swapping one or the other out for smaller pieces if we find that it continues to feel cramped in there.  The plan right now is to get Cornerstone back in over the next several months to do the basement bathroom, and that would be the perfect time to tweak the en suite's layout, if necessary.  As it is, though, I can't believe what a great job Vicki did in all of her choices, as it really does feel like an executive bathroom in some swanky hotel.  And yet it's right off our bedroom!  How awesome is that?

Still to come: the upstairs bathroom, which is equally impressive.

Supporting The Artist

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the way art intersects with commerce.  I guess that's not surprising, as I'm mostly writing and selling my books these days, as compared to earlier periods where I was working full-time or doing Math tutoring.  Now I'm more likely to think of myself as an artist who is - or isn't - making a living off my art.

Anyway, one of the recent trends I've seen in my spending habits is that I'm more inclined to support activities or products that give more of their proceeds back to the artist.  As musicians and writers, in particular, have discovered new and exciting ways to get their output directly into the hands of their fans, I've begun to feel better and better about laying down my hard-earned cash for such work.  Another example would be the Fringe festivals that Vicki and I have started going to, where 100% of the money taken in at the box office goes to the performer(s).  I find that I love the feeling that comes with that kind of a purchase.

Today, a new comic series, Velvet, is coming out from Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, the creative team responsible for the greatest run on Captain America.  I was sold on Velvet from the day it was announced, purely on the strength of the creative team, and everything I've seen about it since just increased my confidence about its quality.  However, one aspect of its publication appeals to me for reasons more in line with the rest of this post: Velvet is a creator-owned title, published by Image Comics.  I didn't use to think about such things much, but now it's a huge deal that Brubaker and Epting will own the characters and stories of this great female-spy title.  After all, there's never been a better time for comic properties to break into movies or TV than right now, which means those two gents could reap huge financial rewards for their work if they were picked up by Hollywood. One need look no further than Robert Kirkman and The Walking Dead (also an Image title) to see what I'm talking about.  Even if that doesn't happen, though, there's the usual revenue from merchandising in addition to all of the monthly sales profit, the entirety of which will go back to them.

And as I look at my comic buying habits right now, I notice that four of the most exciting titles I'm buying are creator-owned: Fatale, Lazarus, Saga and now Velvet (all published by Image).  All of them are doing well, both commercially and critically, and each one is a joy to read.  They represent about one-quarter of my monthly purchases, with the rest being a mix of DC and Marvel titles.  At this point, I'd actually be quite happy to see that balance swing more to the creator-owned side, as I'm well and truly sick of the corporate greed that's begun to dominate both of those long-established companies (thanks to owners, Warners and Disney, respectively).

In the meantime, though, I'm just excited to have four such entertaining comics to read each month, with the profit going where it belongs.

Getting Onto The Internet Through Your Light Bulb

This crazy invention is another example of just how brilliant we are, as a species, when we're not busy destroying the planet like a bunch of morons, that is.  The idea of using the flicker frequency of light bulbs to transmit data is so out there that, at first, you can't help but think someone's pulling your leg.  It's actually been proven to work, though.  Wow!

As the article points out, there is the one big limitation: the device you want to connect to the Internet would have to be within sight of a data-transmitting bulb, as compared to current routers that transit through walls.  Still, I'd think that would be a small price to pay in order to get speeds ten times faster than what we see now.  And really, if all the lights in your house were acting as routers, then it probably wouldn't be much of an issue unless you like surfing in the dark, or want to head outside.  (It does bring to mind a whole new family of "How many ___________s does it take to change a light bulb?" joke possibilities, though.)

Amusingly, the light in our living room where I'm typing up this post flickered twice in the past several minutes, possibly signaling its approval of this invention.  Or maybe warning against it!

A New Low In Canadian Politics?

Or just more of the same, when it comes to Harper's Conservative government?

You be the judge

Thanks to PJ for the tip on this one. 

Gotta Love Fox News

They're almost as comical a news provider as The Colbert Report, especially when they do stuff like this: interviewing people about how Obamacare has adversely affected them, without even bothering to check to see if any of the stories are real/accurate. Or maybe they knew full well that those tales of woe were complete bullshit and went with them anyway. Either way, that seems about right for Faux News.

Roller Derby Will Save Your Soul Next June

Two years ago, Vicki and I went on the road to take in Hamilton Fringe Festival, and when we came home I wrote about all the plays we'd seen there, even going so far as to provide our personal rankings for each.  Very near the top of both our lists was a wonderful one-woman performance called Roller Derby Saved My Soul, featuring Nancy Kenny.  Ms. Kenny was funny, poignant and totally engaging in RDSMS, and I've hoped ever since that she'd someday be able to bring her wonderful act here to London.

Well, as she blogged about yesterday, it's happening!  She's doing a multi-city tour next summer, and she's kicking it off with a stop here during London Fringe (June 4 - 15).  I'll be sure to promote this great show again closer to the start of the festival itself, but I wanted to get the word out nice and early.  Any fans of humour and pop culture will definitely not want to miss RDSMS in 2014.