- logging coolness from 127.0.0.1, daily.
Well, not so much with the automobiles, but my commute-based reading for this week was interrupted by both the Thanksgiving holiday, and Nintendo's devious launch of its DS handheld. So, with my time split between books and games, the mini-reviews come roughly in that order:
'The Second Coming of Steve Jobs' by Alan Deutschman - although this dates from around 2000, and plenty has happened since then, it's still a fascinating, if acerbic and borderline muck-raking look at the 'fall' of Jobs, or at least neXT's struggles, and his rehabilitation at Pixar and Apple. But if you wanted to know about Bill Gates' drunken prank-calls to Jobs' personal phone number, or the odd, complex story of Pixar, which Jobs sank $50 million into before it was even remotely successful, then you've come to the right place.
'Strip Jack' by Ian Rankin - Rankin's hard-boiled Scottish detective Inspector Rebus is one of the best, most gritty crime protagonists of the past few years, and I've commented before on the rather excellent BBC America-shown TV version of Rebus, starring John Hannah. This novel, starting with the shame of a Scottish MP found in a brothel and going far, far beyond that into lust and murder, shows Rankin's great sense of both plot and character, and is a great introduction to his work.
'Feel The Magic: XY/XX' by Sonic Team/Sega [DS] - if you like mini-games, as I do, then you'll like this game, no doubt. And some of the stylus/touchscreen-centered stages rock. But, compared to the might of Wario Ware, it falls down a little, and I think that's because of the 'Track & Field'-like necessity to blow, scrape, or point frantically for a bunch of the stages. It's fun and stimulating the first time around, but for repeat plays, it just feels a bit tiresome, on your muscles as well as your addiction gland. However, the stylish Flash-like presentation and the generally gonzo stage themes still make it a great launch title.
'Super Mario 64 DS' by Nintendo [DS] - firstly, play this using the included pen stylus, not the digital controller or the 'thumb stylus' that's attached to the DS' wrist strap. Since I was used to the thumb stylus from the Metroid Prime demo, I presumed it'd work well for this, too - not so. But when you've got the hang of the analog controls, you'll find a well-made, if not very DS-enhanced upgrade of the N64 classic, with a few extra touchscreen mini-games, and enough playability to go round. Just don't expect anything spectacular.
Now I'm taking Caltrain to and from work, I get a chance to read books. Lots of books. In fact, since I have almost a couple of hours per day, and I'm a (unintentionally) speedreading nerd, I'm getting through three or four books a week. So, having stocked up at the spankin' new King Library in San Jose, I'm going to try to do quick single-paragraph reviews on the books I read every week. Starting... now.
'The Dain Curse' by Dashiell Hammett - most famous as the writer of 'The Maltese Falcon', Hammett was an ex-detective who wrote some of the most glorious hard-boiled crime fiction around. 'The Dain Curse', written in 1929, is set in the Bay Area, and has three gloriously twisted acts. Is the Dain family really cursed? Why is death following the heroine of the piece around? Is she the cause? The book is genuinely shocking and tremendously complex, with odd jaunts into ritual murder and rural kidnapping, and it's a wonderful piece of fiction.
'Starving To Death on $200 Million' by James Ledbetter - A genuinely interesting non-fiction book on the boom and bust of weekly tech magazine The Industry Standard. The author headed up the short-lived Industry Standard Europe, so doesn't have a perfect perspective on the demise of the main U.S. offices themselves, but he _is_ perfectly positioned to talk about the good (great reporting, lofty intentions) and the bad (over-diversification, tech bust) in the fall-out from the NASDAQ's collapse. A lot of good material about hard financial journalism, too.
'Master And Commander' by Patrick O'Brian - I didn't get round to seeing the movie yet, but now I'm definitely interested. Although _very_ technical in places when it comes to nineteenth century ship rigging and the mechanics of battle, the first in the series of almost twenty historical novels hooked me into the world of Captain Jack Aubrey and the ship's physician, Dr. Stephen Maturin. It's precisely written, it's borderline epic, and although a little dense, it's very enjoyable.
'Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind' by Chuck Barris - probably the biggest surprise of the week's reading. I'd seen the Charlie Kaufman-scripted movie (though reportedly, George Clooney changed it around significantly while making it), and so I expected that the book was perhaps some kind of averagely written novelty, punched up by Kaufman to more intriguing levels. But oh my, no. Chuck Barris is a great writer, and this is a sometimes lewd and profane, always entertaining book, with a, well, Kaufman-esque insanity to the main premise - what if the creator of 'The Gong Show' was a CIA hitman on the side, and this was his autobiography? Even weirder, it doubles as a genuine autobiography in some places... at least, I believe it does, so Barris has probably won.
Leading technical publisher O'Reilly has announced the release of its book Gaming Hacks (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/gaminghks/), containing '100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools' relating to video games.
Lead authored by Simon Carless, former Slashdot editor and current Managing Editor of industry site Gamasutra.com, the book also contains contributions on subjects as diverse as speed runs (from Radix and Morfans of the PlanetQuake Speed Demos Archive), audio and video gaming setups (from Penny Arcade's AV expert, Stormy), Unreal modding (from Make Something Unreal award winners Demiurge Studios), interactive fiction (from noted IF authors Adam Cadre and Andrew Plotkin), machinima (from Strange Company's Hugh Hancock), Japanese translation (from Wired News' Chris Kohler), MMO tips and hacks by Michael Zenke (current Slashdot Games editor) and much more, as well as an introductory foreword from Valve Software's Half-Life series writer, Marc Laidlaw.
The book's official homepage includes sample PDF versions for 5 of the hacks.
[Also worth noting - Amazon.com currently has copies of the book for 32% off - that's $16.97, not bad at all. I've been informally told that the book has made its advance back already, so seems like initial sales to bookstores were strong. Also, feel free to contact me if you'd like a review copy.]
So, once upon a time, there was an import/obscure gaming news and features fansite called insert credit. Actually, I believe it was formed all the way back in 1999 by Brandon Sheffield and Vincent Diamante, but I only really came across it more recently, when I was editing Slashdot Games.
Anyhow, ic has a reputation for talking about games in a way which is either somewhat innovative or overly self-absorbed, depending on who you speak to. The site's most famous article series is probably its games journalism feature, closely followed by any feature from Tim Rogers, who is, well, either the Antichrist or the Anti-Antichrist. In any case, ic writers get tapped for pieces by magazines like Wired, Official Nintendo Magazine UK, and a bunch of others, and there's no doubt that even the more 'boutique' games magazines like the Edge-s and the Games TM-s of this world keep an eye on it. Sometimes I pretend it's like the games version of the NME, or at least the earlier-era NME, but - likely not. At the very least, the site has a sense of humor about its own shortcomings.
So, oddly enough, I started working with Brandon Sheffield on a currently dormant spare-time project just before we both got hired on at the CMP Game Group, but now that he's working there (and sometimes contributing features to the site I run, Gamasutra), he doesn't have time to update insert credit like he did - especially the news section. A lot of people had been making noises about doing a 'PHP version' of the site, but, well, it wasn't happening. Hopefully it will soon, but in the meantime, I decided to hack the news section, with Brandon's permission, to run in Movable Type, using an old 2.6 version of the app that I had hanging around (we don't need comments or any super-complex stuff!)
Anyhow, it took a couple of nights of semi-messy hacking about, but considering I'm _not_ a coder of any kind, it shows how easy MT's flexible template system makes it to get a multi-author news posting system with auto-permalinks and archives going, and looking exactly like the old page. Importantly, considering Brandon can't do the crazy news updating like he used to, the strictly-for-fun site has now expanded out to about 10+ news authors, including Click-Stick, Jiji, Zepy, Vincent, Brandon, some other 'shadowy figures', and even myself - I'll post very occasionally, as I did earlier regarding Andamiro's 'Pump It Up' DDR clone coming to PlayStation 2. But above all, after the last ffwd post, which might be considered to some to be 'bad mojo' (even if I was just speaking my mind), I hope that the the effort I put into the insert credit semi-resurrection has helped re-orient my karma just a little. And I'm also hoping ic will continue to be a breeding ground for a slightly alternative view on video games.
Oh, and we moved house successfully. Yay.