| tumblr |
[Apr. 15th, 2013|03:16 pm]
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so, i did my first tumblr post of any substance. you can read it here:
http://ferricide.tumblr.com/post/48016248558/alison-bechdel
it is on cartoonist/graphic novelist alison bechdel and my relationship to her and her work.
--
i am not 100% sure if i am going to keep going with tumblr. i see two big & obvious pros and cons.
CON: by default, it doesn't allow comments, and i'll have to enable them via a 3rd party solution like disqus.
PRO: people use tumblr a lot right now. nobody uses lj anymore.
the CON is emblematic about the bigger problem with tumblr, is that it's not really a content-creation engine and more of a sharing engine. of course, a lot of people ARE using it to power "real" blogs these days, i think due to the critical mass it's attracting, so this is less of a salient criticism of the platform than it was a year or even six months ago.
anyway, i dunno. there's no point in pretending that things are anything other than what they are: lj is not going to bounce back.
i will continue to post links to tumblr posts here, but i am doing it manually. of course, that assumes further tumblr posts. tbd, as i said. |
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| 2013 o_O |
[Apr. 6th, 2013|12:58 am]
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soul hackers
SMT4
pikmin 3
wonderful 101
animal crossing
tales of xilla
project X zone
rune factory 3DS
bravely default?
too busy. |
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| virtue's last reward |
[Jan. 11th, 2013|04:19 pm]
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one of my favorite, perhaps my very favorite games of last year, was virtue's last reward (the sequel to 999, available for 3DS and vita.) i think it's a significant game, in terms of what it does for design and narrative, and i fought to get it onto the gamasutra top 10 for 2012. (i didn't have to fight hard!)
anyway, today i published a feature that comes out of an extensive Q&A with its director, kotaro uchikoshi, and a lot of thinking on my part.
http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/184632/the_storytelling_secrets_of_.php
read it if you're interested in the game, game narrative and design, or japanese media culture. no spoilers, it may be worth saying. |
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| change of pace |
[Nov. 24th, 2012|04:31 pm]
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i'm on the latest episode of 1UP's games dammit podcast talking about (title aside) the evangelion anime, because the new movie just released in japan. it's a super insane nerd typhoon. i talk a LOT. spoiler heavy, it may go without saying. the first segment isn't, though, if you're just curious about eva. |
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| new place! |
[Nov. 24th, 2012|12:48 am]
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soooooo after 2.5 years or so at my place in emeryville i decided to get a new place. particularly after talking it over with francesco. it's too small and cramped for the both of us, when he comes to visit. hell, it's a little small for me.
what really sold me on leaving is this: it has all the downsides of an urban dwelling (noise, screaming crazy people at 2AM, crime) but all of the downsides of the suburbs (the "local businesses" outside my door are: safeway, subway, target, panera, best buy, etc. well, i'll miss panera. but.)
i decided why not go on full-suburban. i already drive everywhere fun, or take public transit. and bart is all over. i settled on san leandro: it's very central to every spoke of the bay area, and i have friends all over. it's still close to oakland (and the good and bad that entails!) and convenient.
i ended up lucking into finding a really nice duplex that a new owner just picked up and renovated. i'll be the first inhabitant since it was fixed up. built in 1951, but in fantastic condition. we'll have SO much space now, it'll be fantastic.
i won't go into the agonizing day i spent going back and forth between two properties (same rent, different pros, different cons). it was horrid. but i'm optimistic that i made the right choice, because this is a place i feel like i could stay for a long time. really hope it works out that way. moving sucks.
( picsCollapse ) |
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| how you stopped the universe from dyin' but you're never gonna stop me cryin' |
[Oct. 30th, 2012|12:20 am]
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also i'm not getting ads. wondering if they don't put them on basic accounts anymore or they just have no inventory. but usually when a site has no inventory it puts PSAs in the slots.
so yeah. dunno! thinking i'll redo my paltry 6 user pics because i miss some of my other ones. or not. i dunno. |
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| stuffs |
[Oct. 30th, 2012|12:10 am]
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1. coupla podcasts:
active time babble talking about pokemon
insert credit talking about a whole lot of things.
2. my last blog post painted an idyllic picture of what it was like to be in pennsylvania, but of course that couldn't last, and i'm not talking about the hurricane bearing down on my parents' house right now (though doubtlessly with much less force than in NYC, or at least, i hope so.) things got weird as the week rolled on and it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. as it often does. not my mom this time, but my dad. FUN
i could go into it but i won't. just: yeah. reality reasserts itself. i had a fantastic feeling when i got back to CA. being away really made me appreciate it. |
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| and something else |
[Oct. 22nd, 2012|02:43 am]
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it struck me after writing my last post that i came to livejournal to post about.. livejournal. not my, you know, life.
so howsabouts i talk about that a bit.
well, since tuesday, i've been visiting my parents in pennsylvania. it's mostly been nice. they still fight over nothing because somehow despite being married for, oh, i dunno, 40 years or whatever, they haven't figured out how to deal with each other.
wooo that sounds cynical but
it's not that bad. i shouldn't mention that first. and i shouldn't mention it last, either.
really it's been an interesting trip because i usually come during holidays. the last time i came during a random week was, i dunno, 2005 or something. usually it's thanksgiving or christmas, which means festivities. what i've gotten to see is a bit more of what constitutes normal life for them, and man, my mother has a lot of social commitments. i knew she did, but she's been out of the house every other day, pretty much, including tomorrow, to go do something. she's in red hats, league of women voters, historical society, local women's clubs...
actually she's been strangely inaccessible while i've been here, also because when she's been home she's mostly been pooped. it's kinda hilarious. tonight she was talking about how she has to cut back on commitments.
conversely, my dad is inevitably watching football and baseball and we've spent a lot of time together chatting about nothing, really. which is okay.
i brought home my wireless router (my parents don't have/need one, as they have tank of a 2005 dell XP box that sits in the spare bedroom and gets used for a couple hours a week, maximum) and that has made the trip more fun and flexible (and social!) as i can sit around with my macbook anywhere in the house.
haven't played as much pokemon black 2 as i expected to, mostly because it would be hard to do it with the sound on while talking to my parents, and i'm stubborn about game music, but i'm still digging it a LOT. been doing some fun writing actually, for the first time in an age.
been talking to fran, playing games with him, the usual there too. so some things don't change when you fly across the country. though we did start playing ragnarok online, of all games, today. he is an old fan of it, and ragnaraok odyssey has been reawakening his latent obsession for it, so i figured -- sure, this could be a fun thing to do together on the weekends. so i started it. it runs surprisingly just fine in crossover for mac (this seems somehow magic to me -- to run a PC game in a window on my mac. well, i say that, but i read how they do it and it makes just enough sense to me that it doesn't actually seem like magic. plus, it's windows. there's nothing magical about windows.)
dunno, pretty nice trip, despite any weirdness. i mean, the weirdness is gonna be there forever. i think what the important lesson of this trip is recognizing that while the weirdness is at some level in me too i don't need to worry about it too much, because that is far from practical. instead of dwelling on how i'm like the bits of my parents that i don't like, it's about dwelling on how i'm different, the steps i'm taking to be a better person, do things right.
you don't get anywhere worrying about shit. you get somewhere by DOING shit.
i've found my 30s is as growth-oriented as my 20s were, and in a more real way: a lot of the growth i did in my 20s was crucial and real, but some of it was me being too clever and thinking i was maturing rapidly and hitting onto answers that were illusory. some of them were cheats, some of them were avoiding problems till they seemed to go away, and some were just wrong. so i'm rebalancing. life is a challenge.
and fuck, i have to say, there's a big part of me that wants to move here. it's insane-o gorgeous right now. fuck it, let me pull some photos off ye iPhone.
( 4picsCollapse )
i seriously wish i could be somewhere like this. i mean, i know, i know -- the grass is always greener. the bay area has amazing upsides, too. this place has horrifying downsides that i know about and worse i don't, of course. but this kind of landscape is a balm for me. all the trees, all the sky, all of the quiet, all of the beauty. being here just makes me want to get a house in the woods and just quietly... be. i feel more me in surroundings like this.
plus there's tastykakes.
i think it is not just how beautiful and to my personal taste it is, though, on a little reflection. it's also that i had a spate of so little "home" lately. that long trip to europe. bari feels much more comfortable and familiar to me now, but it's still not home. and emeryville isn't home either -- that is for sure. i don't know if i believe in the metaphysical qualities of home, but it is nice to be somewhere where i feel like i fit, or it fits me. after all, we've had this house for 31 years... and though it's changed a lot in that time, as, obviously, have i... it's still my home. i grew up in new jersey, but i spent the summers here, and ultimately have been here more than anywhere else in my world. |
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| paid |
[Oct. 22nd, 2012|02:07 am]
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so my paid account expired today and i decided not to renew. what you get for renewing, that i actually use: more than 6 icons.
that doesn't seem like it's worth $20 a year.
the real reason i paid for LJ, though, was to support the development of livejournal, to support the community and the service. but i don't think that any decisions SUP is making probably have anything to do with me anymore. i still feel like i'm part of a (shrinking) community here, but i feel like it's frivolous to spend even $20/annually on this.
i'll still be posting, though, and i have six months to pay before they purge the bulk of my user icons. wondering if the ads will get to me.
i'm considering dropping flickr, too. i never upload anymore; with that, i'm paying for access to my old photos (which is cute and fun but not particularly useful) and the METADATA that they revoke (sets) if i stop paying.
doesn't seem worth it, does it? but i guess i'd need to figure out if i would want to move my photos, leave them there, whatever.
in the end i have bigger priorities than spending money on online services i barely use anymore, y'know?
though i really should have kept uploading my photos to flickr. i have taken a TON of mobile photos over the last several years and so few of them are on there, and there are some really great ones in that mix. they're part of the ephemera of twitter if they're anywhere, which means they more or less don't exist.
but who has time to organize, catalogue, upload, and tag all that crap? i got shit to do!
edit: this popped up on the "post completed" page after i posted:
that's kinda hilarious. i've had a paid account since, i dunno, 2003 or 2004. it expired today. i think i remember the benefits. |
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