So, what's new with Adman?

Big news is that we got a new car (well, new to us). Diana's sister moved to Sweded for the forseeable future, and sold us her Prius. So we're officially tree-hugging, clean-air-loving, gas conservationists, or something. I've only driven the car around the neighborhood, but it seems pretty nice. I believe Diana's in the midst of selling her car to Sara, so there's been a good bit of time spent on the DMV website, figuring out how to transfer ownerships.

Me and Diana and Eryn banzai'd out to Vegas, where Iwan and Sara we're celebrating his 30th birthday. Diana's dad called earlier in the week and said he had credit with Southwest that was going to expire, and did we want it? Yay for free plane tickets! We stayed at the Stratosphere, which isn't the fanciest place, but isn't terrible either. Gambling-wise, the trip was pretty successful for almost everyone. I got a full house playing "Let It Ride", which won me $130 and basically covered my gambling expenses for the rest of the trip. Eryn, as far as I can tell, cleaned up at blackjack multiple times. The five of us played in a $30 poker tournament, and Iwan ended up taking second place! We were all very proud of him. As it happens, ZJ's bachelor party was in Vegas that weekend as well, so we met up with Gabe and all three Reynolds boys for a Benihana dinner and night out. Good times.

The only dissapointing part of the trip is that there doesn't seem to be a casino that is both 1) elegant and sophisticated and 2) offers cheap gambling. We spent both nights at "Slots-A-Fun", which, while cheap, is pretty slummy. When we were in the cab line, and admitted our destination publically, people actually LAUGHED OUT LOUD at us. I'm hardly an aristocrat, but Slots falls on the wrong side of some internal line. But, I guess I'd rather go there than spend $15 per hand on Blackjack. As I said, I just wish there was room for both.

In the cab ride back to the airport, I talked with the cabbie a little. He said he'd been in Vegas for something like 25 years. I commented that it must have changed a lot, and he said "Yeah, massive changes", and indicated somehow that the old days were better. I asked why. "It was classy back then," he said with a lingering New York accent. "When you went out, guys wore jackets and sportcoats, women wore evening dresses. You could go to a lounge and catch a show. There were no rugrats running around...." He sounded truly sad. I think I would have liked to have seen Old Vegas, if only for a night.

In other news, we recently watched the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know?". I'm a little lost on how to describe it. It's a movie that is a series of interviews with various scholars and "mystics" who talk about quantam physics, the power of positive thinking, and various new-agey kind of stuff. Intercut with this is a dramatization of a woman who goes from anxiety-pill popping grumpy-pants to clean, happy, and free-thinking. While I agreed with some of the themes of the movie, for the most part it was completely laughable. Still, it was thought-provoking and interesting to watch. The most interesting part to me was the hypnotic themes that were employed. There were lots of shots from a first person point of view of descending through a tunnel at fast speed, and lots of suggestive language about opening our minds and accepting these ideas. I could only picture my work-boy, who is both highly suggestable and also (probably not coincidentally) recommended the movie to me.

That's the big news. Diana is still working hard with school. I let myself get sucked back into World of Warcraft, but I'm unsure how long that will last. My game-programming has stagnated somewhat, but I hope to get back on track with that soon. This weekend we're going to a memorial service for the mother of a friend of Diana's who died recently after an incredibly long fight with various cancers, so that will be kind of a downer. I've never been to a funeral service, if you can believe it.

That's all I got.

Can you name this movie?

Norm forwarded this to me, and I thought I'd share it with you all. Click on the picture to download an Excel file with pictures from various movies. The actors have been digitally removed. Type in your guess below each movie, and see how many you can get right!

On my first pass I got 39... My work boys and I collectively got all but 12 and 57.

Good luck! Thanks Norm for passing this on!

Are you ready for some football?!

I sure am. I watched more football in the past 48 hours than I have in any previous 48 hour timespan in my entire life. Good times. I normally root for my home team, and while other games interest me for their own sake (good plays and whatnot), I'm not really personally involved in them. Fantasy football has changed that. Now I'm flipping back and forth between games watching for my guys to make big plays. Diana also entered a survivor pick'em with other teachers at her work, and was one of the unlucky few (actually, 1/3) to get booted on week one. Pre-game, we checked out the latest Vegas lines. Top favorites were New England, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay I believe. NE was a 7.5 favorite, and Minnesota was a 6 point favorite, so we chose Minnesota. Bad move. Oh well.

However, tonight's Monday Night Football game sealed the deal for the Fightin' Birdmen over the lackluster Morms. Next week, bring on the surly Commish himself, Discostup... *YAWN* :)

Diana's been busy with school, but we found some time to visit her parents this weekend for a late birthday celebration. That was nice. Dawn powered through the first "Game of Thrones" book in a few days. She really seemed to enjoy it, and I'm glad I could make the recommendation.



I've been doing more programming side-project stuff, taking a little break from my game to do some "special effect" type programming using particle systems. Pretty fun stuff, with neat effects.

Work is pretty slow. I'm kind of between projects right now while People More Important Than Me (I know, mom, "...Than I", but that sounds so formal!) make decisions on what projects are most important, and who should work on what.

S'about all for now. Smell ya later.

Yesterday, I discovered I'd cut my thumb on something. I didn’t noticed until I was eating lunch, playing chess with my workboy, and saw blood on my lunchbag. Then my thumb. Then all over my pants. I expected the pants to be ruined, but a damp paper towel got it all off. My pants must be stain resistant or something. It ruled. Never figured out how I cut my thumb, though.

In other news... A while back, I had a discussion about violence in videogames with Diana's sister (who just completed her graduate study in psychology). I don't think we communicated very well, but I was (and am) staunchly opposed to the school of thought that violence in videogames causes or is even a significant factor in violent behavior (a la the Columbine shootings). My only basis for this notion is my own gaming education, and witnessing the game/violence habits of nearly all of my friends.

Alicia did a big project or something on the subject of violence in television and gaming, and said she had a number of studies to support her claims that there indeed WAS a correlation between witnessing "violence" (in quotes, because we're talking about fantasy violence in TV shows and computer games) and aggressive behavior. I was very interested in seeing the research myself, and was able to borrow and peruse through it the other night.

Even after skimming through the research (it was very helpful that Alicia had marked notable passages with underlines, highlights and stars during her own research for her presentation), I still remain unconvinced that there is any significant or immediate harm in fantasy violence.

First of all, my wife's skepticism (for lack of a better word) of scientific research has rubbed off on me. To explain: I think when a layperson hears of a scientific study, they immediately jump to the conclusion, and accept that as gospel truth. Diana, I've noticed, immediately questions the methods of the research, and accepts the results based on how acceptable the actual test was.

With the psychological experiments I read, this was laughable. For example, there was a study where they wanted groups of people to play basically equivalent video games, where one was violent and other was not. They wanted violence to be the only significant differing factor, while things like "frustration level", "excitement level", "realism", etc were similar. The games they chose were "Myst" and "Wolf3D". I'm sorry, I can't continue reading a study that rates Myst as "exciting" as Wolf3D. Apple, meet Orange!

In some others, they'd have players play games, and then do some other test to test their level of aggression. The problem I had with some of these is that it seems so hard to isolate exactly what they want to test. In other words, the test might not be as much about violence as it is about the frustration level of the games, or physical side effects some people get from playing games, or any other number of factors that difficult to isolate.

So while I remain skeptical, the real reason really is because of my own experience and my own thoughts on gaming. (I'm even open to the idea that I'm so desensitized to violence that my viewpoint is totally skewed. However, I remain one of the least violent people you'll ever meet).

I really believe that gaming to so highly symbolic that people don't even realize it while they're playing. A game, in a general sense, is a set of Rules, Objectives, and Obstacles that the player must traverse through to reach some sort of Winning Condition. Every game shares these (well, maybe not EXACTLY these, but concepts like these) things in common. Yet what appears on the surface is vastly different from game to game.

I've always compared Counterstrike against chess. Both teams start from predefined starting points. Each team has a variety (but limited) attack ability. Once the game begins, however, there are almost infinite possibilities as to who goes where. A big difference is that combat in CS is highly based on the physical skill of the player (like armwrestling every time you moved your knight to attack a bishop!).

CS is also graphically violent. But you know what? I don't honestly believe that anyone with any non-trivial gaming experience even notices. And not because they SHOULD notice but are media-bred zombies. I believe that gamers implicitly understand the Game under the surface, and are playing THAT. Everything else is only a paint-job. Which isn't to say that paint-jobs aren't important, but the games that sell well, and are critically acclaimed uniformly have something more going for them than a nice paint job.

I played a lot of World of Warcraft. There's a huge amount of fantasy violence in the game (killing monsters to save the princess, that sort of thing). But to any gamer, it's simply an Obstacle of a different color. Same with Grand Theft Auto. In one game, I might get a quest from a wizard to enter a cave, kill the monsters, retrieve his spellbook, and return it to him. In return, he'll give me 50 gold pieces and a key that let's me get into the haunted castle. In the the other game, I might have to go to a rival gang's territory, fight my way inside to kill their leader, and return to my own gang, where I'm rewarded with an uzi and a phone number of someone else who might have a job for me.

I submit that for all intents and purposes, those elements of the game are identical. I use previously gained Skills to overcome an Obstacle, and get a Reward which allows me further access to the game. And I further submit that those game elements are more similar than different to capturing an enemy knight with my rook, giving me control to a critical open file and positioning myself better for the end game.

But the critics of gaming don't seem to understand the underlying structure. They see (or more likely, hear about) a game where you can actually SHOOT someone else (*gasp!*), probably forgetting that they used to play Cops and Robbers when they were kids. Or that in Minesweeper, if you take a wrong move, you get blown up. To a gamer, it's the same thing.

If you can't tell, it really amps me up.

What's really disappointing is that more people don't understand the benefits of good games (even contraversial ones like Grand Theft Auto). Inherent in the game is juggling priorities, financial responsibility and decision making, stuff like that. I know it sounds silly, but the decision of buying a new weapon (making you a more efficient killer, therefore getting more money faster, and therefore allowing you to buy more stuff) vs buying a new car (allowing you to get from place to place faster, as well as run away faster, or whatever) is a Big Decision when you look at it from the point of view in the underlying game. It's as critical as an important chess move.

That's all I got. My final note is a reference to an article I read in the Economist where the author notes that violent crime rates have been falling for years. With the huge influx of violent games, shouldn't they be skyrocketing? (I suppose they could be even lower, but I don't buy it). That seems important. He also notes the cyclic nature of this kind of thing. Rock and Roll, hippies, DnD, gaming. The new generation knows it's not bad. The old generation has a hard time accepting this (but dies sooner than the new generation).

PS: In spite of the above, I do agree with ratings and age-limits for games. I'm not suggesting that 8 year olds should play GTA.