Missing Skills in a Digital World

So I was helping someone with a printer issue a while back. This person had typed out something work related, but it kept printing out sideways. Everyone was befuddled as to why it was doing that, which of course means that I get called in to work my magic. Evidently, my magic was on the fritz because it took much longer to fix than I would have ever anticipated.  After what seemed like hours of troubleshooting, I realized that the right margin had been broken for one line which was causing it to automatically switch the style of printing.  After that, it was easy to fix.

Blank Page Syndrome and Priming the Pump

Ever find yourself sitting in front of the computer with a blank word processing document open and no ideas about where to start?  Neither research papers, book reports, nor the next great novel can write themselves, so how do you go about breaking the ice that's formed over that blank document?

Diablo III cutting out the middleman

When I read about D3 offering an auction house which allowed players to buy and sell in-game items with real money, the first thing I thought was that they were trying to cutout all the businesses from D2 that traded in runes, items, and pre-leveled characters.  The second thing that I thought of was a scenario where my character would be running around wearing rags wielding a tree branch, then selling everything that he finds to put gas in my car.

Will other games follow suit?  Will this type of opportunity open up virtual-to-real businesses to the average gamer?  The notion of trading on virtual merchandise to make or supplement a real world living isn't anything new.  Gold farmers have been doing it for years, though it generally requires more than just a single person to actually see profits from it.

I guess the answer to some of these questions will depend on how popular D3 ends up being.  If the first two games are any indicator, it'll probably be extremely popular.  The PC Gamer article mentions there'll be a few free auction listings per week, so I'm sure most players will try their hand at selling things.  What happens then? Will players be facing a constant set of decisions whenever they find an item?  Keep? Sell?

A Few Thoughts on Writing

Writing is like any other activity; you have to keep doing it to get better at it.  I read an interview with the late Robert Jordan where he talked about being a writer.  I can't find the interview anywhere online now, but it went something like: "If you want to be a plumber, plumb. If you want to be a singer, sing. If you want to be a writer, write."  I think he also mentioned reading a great deal too, so that you learn how other people have done it.

Sure, some people have more natural talent than others.  An affinity or Rain Man type of knack that's impossible to explain  I'm sure some people have different levels of potential just like athletes.  Dirty Harry said that a man's (or woman's) gotta know his (or her) limitations, but assuming that your limits are rather low is idiotic.  Assuming that you are limitless is probably the other end of the spectrum.

It really comes down to just putting words down and seeing where they lead.

Scream 4

Rumors of a fourth installment of the Scream series are apparently true. How will the latest flick live up to the original Scream? Probably about as well as the last couple. What's that mean? Well, the first Scream movie was a hoot. It managed to poke fun at all the traditional horror movies with the rules of things that you didn't do in a horror film. The best part of the movie was that it wasn't some supernatural killer -- it actually turned out to be a couple of idiot guys.

Super Mario Brothers

When I was little, we briefly had a ColecoVision, which was the first gaming console to grace our house. Not sure why it didn't hang around for long, but I ended up getting an Atari 2600 for Christmas. The Atari provided about as much fun as one could experience with one joystick and a button. When the NES came out, everything changed.

I'm probably no different than most people who owned a Nintendo. I played the heck out of Super Mario Brothers, smashing turtles, sliding down tubes, and eventually saving the princess. Repeatedly. Why was that girl always getting in trouble?

Now there's a new multi-player version for the Wii. The game sports some new features, but it's built on top of the classic 2D gameplay that we all know and love. I was looking forward to snagging this game, but reviews like the one linked above and others that I have read have started to concern me. Apparently the game does not pull off the multi-player aspect of the game very well.

What would be neat would be to have a game world that changes based on how many players are in the game. This would allow it to add in cooperative challenges which forced players to work together to achieve in-game goals.

I guess I'll think about this game some more before deciding whether or not to get it and introduce the kids to an updated version of old school Mario.