pareidolia

I need a word for this

I love wikipedia. I enjoy reading an article, and then reading other articles that relate to it. Tonight I watched The Foot Fist Way, a very funny movie about a Taekwondo instructor. I didn’t know anything about Taekwondo, so I looked it up on wikipedia. Somehow, I ended the night reading about sexual slavery as practiced by the Japanese during the first part of the 20th century.

But I’m not here to talk about the boring ways in which I spend my free time. There is a tendency, in wikipedia articles, to be less and less accurate when the topic of the article is less and less general. For example, during my reading adventure tonight, I was reading about breaking in regards to martial arts demonstrations. At a point, the article starts to make questionable statements:

People often talk about a “domino effect” that only exists in the mind, which was proven scientifically.

In most other wikipedia articles, it would probably look like this:

People [who?] often talk about a “domino effect” that only exists in the mind, which was proven scientifically. [citation needed]

This amuses me. I know I’m pretty much done reading wikipedia for the night when I start to encounter these.

I have a theory for why this phenomenon exists. I read a lot of articles tonight about Japanese warcrimes during the 20th century. Those had plenty of sources and were very clearly written. I think many people are interested in these topics. They are historically significant.

But breaking boards and bricks for martial arts demonstrations is, to say the very least, less significant. I imagine that far fewer people read the board breaking article than read the warcrimes article. And the people that are reading the board breaking articles have no problem with claims of dubious quality. I’ve seen this whenever I come across an article that seems to have little possibility for general interest. Articles about anime, musical genres that I’ve never heard of, and fanboy-inspiring topics in general.

It’s really easy to imagine the guy from The Foot Fist Way reading and possibly contributing to the article on board breaking. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone else reading it, really.

I want to come up with a word for this drop in quality. It is the point at which wikipedia stops being useful and simply elicits a chorus of “yep, that’s pretty much how it is.” And it will never get any better for these kinds of articles because nobody who knows anything about writing or truth will ever read them.

Grim Fandango

So, after all these years, I finally completed Grim Fandango.

I love the characters and the setting. I even think some of the puzzles are pretty good. Certainly it’s a very good game. I love adventure games, and I would even say that it’s a relatively good adventure game. But Grim Fandango is not the best adventure game ever. Lots of people seem to think so. It even tops a lot of best-of lists.

Apparently, Lucasarts was in a transitional period when this game was made. It ended up being their second-to-last adventure game, which is a shame, because they made some really fun adventure games over the years. Most of this is due to the writing and game design of Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. Ron Gilbert left the company before Grim Fandango was made, and this game served as Tim Schafer’s last hurrah. It seems that Lucasarts used Grim Fandango’s performance as a way to test the market waters. If it didn’t make a boatload of money, then they would stop focusing on adventure games. And, well, it didn’t make a boatload of money, so they stopped focusing on adventure games. I assume that some of the differences between Grim Fandango and other Lucasarts adventures, then, were because they knew that the genre was close to death, and they were trying like hell to attract new players. So they debuted some new experimental features.

The trademark Lucasarts writing remained excellent. The puzzles remained excellent. But the graphics were converted to 3d. I know this was 1998, just into the Playstation era, but holy hell, these graphics are terrible. They did the best with what they had, I guess, but the characters are blocky, and the pre-rendered backgrounds are, well, I guess they’re fine for pre-rendered backgrounds, but even the art from Myst looked better, and that was 5 years before. I admit that the idea of using traditional Mexican art is quite inspired. I can only imagine what the initial concept art looked like.

Even though I generally dislike 3d graphics, that’s not the game’s biggest downfall. That dubious honor is reserved for the horrendous fucking controls. There were so many times playing the game that I would attempt to walk somewhere, but couldn’t, because the Resident-Evil-style-rotating-point-of-view movement is so incredibly broken it makes Resident Evil seem like Super Mario Galaxy. Once, I accidentally went up and down the elevator by the Blue Casket in Rubacava four times just trying to walk past the god damned thing.

So, with the graphics kind of sucking and the control really sucking, I couldn’t help but think that this game should have been made in the style of Lucasart’s other graphic adventure games, like Full Throttle or Day of the Tentacle. The art in those games is far superior because it’s based on actual drawings instead of polygons. It has character and warmth.

Just try to imagine a Grim Fandango that looked like this:

instead of this.

I think maybe I will always prefer pens to polygons. I believe that the transition to 3d did more harm than good. I guess it’s just hard for me to shake the idea of Grim Fandango looking as good, as, say, Sam & Max Hit the Road.

And the control was so much easier in those games. You just clicked on things instead of moving your character around with the arrow keys.

In most types of games, I prefer a direct approach to game control. For example, in role playing games, I prefer games like The Legend of Zelda where you push a button to swing your sword, to command-driven RPGs, where you push a button to confirm that you want to swing your sword. It’s more visceral and it feels like you’re actually doing something instead of just triggering cutscenes.

Maybe if they had spent more time working on the controls, I wouldn’t be complaining so much. I played Escape from Monkey Island, which was a later game built on the same engine, and I didn’t have nearly as many problems.

In this article, Tim Schafer talks about their intent with the controls. They wanted to minimize menu screens so it looked less like a computer game, making it more immersive. And they changed the control scheme from mouse based to keyboard based for the same reasons, I guess. If you see a big crosshair cursor in the middle of your screen, that makes it harder to suspend your disbelief. Their intentions were good, but they fell short. Moving around is frustrating, manipulating your inventory is annoying, and, for me, this made it nearly impossible immerse myself in the story.

I do want to reiterate, though, after all this criticism, that I really liked the game. If it had been made maybe 3 or 4 years previously, or maybe 10 years after, I think it would have been one of the best games ever made. But, I guess it’s better that it was released than being shelved, like Full Throttle 2.

Comments Off

Any time I’m reading a long article on a web page, I’ll occasionally glance over at the right side of my browser window. I’m looking for the scroll bar, trying to figure out how much longer this thing is. Sometimes it’s because it’s boring, sometimes it’s because I have to go to the bathroom but I’m really interested in it and want to finish reading it before I go.

This behavior isn’t limited to the internet. I do it when reading books, too. Whenever I eat at a restaurant by myself, I bring a book. Often, I’ll stay much longer than the time it takes to finish the meal, just because I want to finish the chapter. Sometimes chapters are long. If it’s more than 10 pages or so, I’ll usually just call it a loss and leave.

In any case, I often try to assess the length of whatever it is I’m reading. I think it’s useful, and you probably do it, too.

And now I finally come to my point - anybody who makes a web page with comments, please make the comments a separate page. Or make them hidden until you click on “reveal.” Or just turn them off. I don’t care how you do it - but they need to not add length to the page.

Like I said, when the article is long, I’ll look at the scrollbar. If it looks like I’m halfway through it, I’m usually wrong, because there are comments at the bottom and sometimes they’re as long or longer than the original article. This is bad.

In my mind, the page does not exist for the sake of leaving comments - it exists so you can read the words of the original author. Now, let it be said that I think comments are are a good idea. I understand their relevance, but they are certainly not as important as the original article. Newspapers don’t print ever single letter they get. The have a special page for letters and they only print a few.

Unless the purpose of the site is discussion, comments should be de-emphasized. And, also, they tend to be poorly written. So I make it a point not to read them. Sometimes I do, when it’s technical information or it’s a site where the comments have a decent reputation, like Slashdot or Metafilter. But usually they’re bad and not worth reading.

If what I’ve said before hasn’t convinced you, think of all the lost productivity. If comments on internet were magically turned off, we’d have entire communities looking up, blinking their eyes and stretching, and going outside to paint the shed.

Certainly you’re as sick of all those unpainted sheds as I am.

Hey Headline People

For the love of god please stop referencing old song titles as news article titles. If I have to see “The X are alright” at the top of an article one more time I think I might vomit.

No No No

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have a new album coming out. According to this, apparently it’s all about synthesizers and dancing. I haven’t even tried to listen to their leaked tracks - I have absolutely no interest.

I used to like this band. Turns out I was duped.

I said it before and I’ll say it again - any music that encourages dancing is music that I never want to listen to.

Review of Pitchfork’s Review of The Sophtware Slump

Here are a few points that I feel I need to declare before I start.

1. I love Grandaddy, and The Software Slump in particular.

2. I generally hate Pitchfork.

I was looking up this album on Wikipedia, hoping that there was something new and interesting about this album that I could learn. There wasn’t. But I did click on the link to the Pitchfork review. What a mistake that was.

It’s been almost 10 years since this album was released. When evaluating a work of art, knowing when it was made helps you determine the context. But, and this is apparently very important, the album was released sometime in early 1999. So much of the review is spent talking about how this might be an early contender for “album of the year.”

I don’t understand why critics fixate on these arbitrary year-to-year distinctions. Especially in a review. And especially in a review that is available on the internet 10 years after it was first written.

People talk an awful lot lately about how online journalism (blogging) is killing print journalism. Every time I read something on Pitchfork, it makes me sad because even smelly old Rolling Stone is better than this garbage. And it’s never the albums they choose to review or their ratings or anything like that - it’s entirely their tone that bothers me. See this old post.

Still, I guess 8.5/10 ain’t half bad. I give this review, however, a 1.475 out of 10.

Sadness

My mother died recently.

It wasn’t sudden. My family knew for a long time that this was going to happen. She’s been sick for too long and I’m glad her suffering is over.

Of course, I wish it hadn’t happened in the first place, but it wasn’t really anything she did to cause it. It’s not like she drank herself to death or died skydiving. It was like cancer, but it wasn’t cancer. I still don’t know what caused it, I think it’s quite possible that no one does. It’s just one of those things that happens.

I think that my mother’s emotional state was greatly affected by this disease. The first occurrence of the brain tumor was before my parents got divorced. 1987, I think. I know when she had brain surgery my dad was still around.

But they got divorced in 1989. Again, the details are fuzzy, but I think she had no more brain surgeries until sometime in the early 90’s. I know she was really sad about the divorce. But anyone that knew my family could easily see that it was for the best. My dad is kind of a dick.

She got a job and worked to support me. I can’t even imagine doing something like this, considering she was a stay-at-home-mom and her marriage of 20+ years was now over.

Sometime around this time she got rear-ended by a drunk driver, her car flipped over, and they had to pry her out with the jaws of life. Unfortunately, I can’t remember if this was before or after the divorce. She had more brain surgeries. I moved out, and she had more brain surgeries. She stopped working and started getting social security money. And then more brain surgeries – Into the double digits. They cut her skull open 10 times, at least.

I think she probably felt like the unluckiest person in the world. We never really talked about this. I know she resented what happened with my dad. I know she didn’t understand why she had all these brain tumors. I know she was really upset about the car accident.

I think she felt that suffering was what she did.

I went back to michigan when my mom died. I looked at a lot of her things - old photos, newspaper clippings, etc. I saw a poem she had saved. I don’t remember the poem exactly, but it was basically about an adolescent girl who feels like she isn’t pretty and doesn’t have much to offer the world. It was very sad. My mother had saved it in a box of keepsakes, and wrote next to the poem “me.” I don’t know when she did this. It looked old, but not too old. I imagine that she did it in high school, before she was married to my dad.

I didn’t really know too much about my mother’s childhood - just that she was artistic and that her older sister often had to drag her out of bed in the mornings when they went to school.

Now, looking back on all these things, I am forced to conclude that I am much more like my mother than I ever realized. For the most part, I tried very hard to not be like my mother - but I guess that’s how it always goes. I’m sad about most things. I feel like bad things happen to me more frequently than anybody else I know. I feel unlucky in love.

I don’t think anyone could say that my mother lived an amazing life. We were really poor, she was sick, she didn’t have any romantic relationships that I know of since the early 90’s. Her father died in 1995. I have a very real desire to do better than that.

I know that my mother did the best she could - and, for the most part, I believe that her circumstances, that is, the things in her life that were out of her control, were truly unfortunate. So far, none of the really bad things that happened to her have happened to me.

But I can’t help but think that her attitude might have something to do with her sadness. And, since I’ve just recently noticed that am pretty much just as sad as my mother was, I am worried that I will end up the same way. I don’t want that. I don’t want to die at 60, unable to clean myself and basically alone. I want to have an interesting career. I want to find love. I want to be happy.

So I have decided to try to change some things about myself. I want to stop thinking that bad things always happen to me. I want to make good things happen. I want to be less pessimistic. She suffered. But maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe I don’t have to.

I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s worth a shot. This rejection of the qualities I inherited from her isn’t meant to dishonor her. I think if she knew that I was happy, it would have made her happy, at least for a little while.

I don’t think she would have wanted me to be sad. I would not wish sadness on anybody, and I don’t think she would, either. So I don’t think she would disapprove. I hope she would be happy that I’m trying to make things better.

I miss her.

Chicagoist Redesign Critique

I tried to post some of these comments on the forums, but their installation of Moveable Type seems to be running like frozen butter since the upgrade. So I’ll write it here instead.

Chicagoist implemented a new design recently. Chicagoist is part of a network of sites centered around cities, Londonist, SFist, etc. Commentary about what’s going on in the city. The redesign affects every site in the network, so these comments should apply to any of the other -ist sites as well.

Let me start off by saying that I like it overall. But I still have some problems.

1. It’s too narrow. The old design, and I’m basing this on my memories, seemed wider. It’s a fixed width design - I measured the width of the content of the site and it’s approximately 850 pixels wide. I have no idea if there is any objective reason to make a website 850 pixels.

Generally speaking, I design websites to be 960 pixels wide. This width is based on the viewable area of a browser when the window is maximized on a 1024 x 768 monitor. There is research to support that this is the resolution most people have their computer set to. Here’s a good one. I’m sure there is more out there.

So, unless there’s something I don’t know, there’s no real reason the site should be this narrow. Perhaps there’s some purpose that the original designer had, but without knowing it, I assume he/she is just stupid.

The new site has a border around the entire thing. This contributes to the boxed-in effect. The old design, however wide it was, had no definite edges. It’s possible that the border is part of what’s making it seem so narrow.

2. Moveable Type. It’s a dying program. No one should use it anymore. And furthermore, this implementation is really really slow. Perhaps they need a new server. But if it’s Moveable Type’s fault, it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m pretty sure that Kottke also uses MT, and his site isn’t unbearably slow.

3. Miscellaneous things. It’s possible these are bugs, so they may be fixed soon. But they still need to be mentioned.

a. Near the bottom of the page, the “Next” and “Previous” navigation elements - when I hover my mouse over these buttons, as well as the “1 2 3..” buttons, it becomes an opaque brown box. This doesn’t seem like it was intended, and if it is, there’s no reason that I shouldn’t see what I might want to click on.

b. Search Results - The space between each of the matching articles seemed really narrow. Too narrow to be intentional.

c. Miscellaneous other problems - On this page, the page title is really really big. So big that it pushes all the tags out of the box and they’re cut off. It’s possible this is just a Safari thing. I’m not going to bother checking it in other browsers, because that’s the job of the web designer. Also, at the bottom of every page, the “stats” link seems too close to the footer text. Also, who puts public links to stats anymore? That’s so 1997.

That’s about it. I was reading through the comments on their redesign announcement page, and so many people complaining about the changes as a whole. Whenever a redesign occurs, in any medium, people tend to complain quite loudly. Logos, newspapers, magazines, websites. People are comically afraid of change. I’ve seen it before, time and time again, so I feel it’s pretty safe to disregard what these people are saying.

My criticisms are all things that I think are errors in design. I don’t really care about things like the headlines being in a non-bold font. That seems like it was intentional. The things that I mentioned could be fixed easily. My criticisms are constructive. This redesign isn’t really changing much. The logo is the same. The color is the same. They still use Arial for their main body font. These people need to shut up.

Doppelganger (song)

I’ve been working on writing a song, it’s called Doppelganger. So far, all I’ve recorded is the basic chord progression and a “solo” which is a modified version of the melody from the chorus. 

doppelganger-solo.mp3

More later, hopefully.

A Dialogue

One: I have been drastically underused.

Two: You have, indeed. Tell me again, whose purpose is it that you wish to serve?

One: My own.

Two: I see. So you haven’t been utilized to your fullest?

One: Not at all.

Two: Well, then. I assume this makes you unhappy.

One: Quite.

Two: What do you intend to do about it?

One: Nothing. I’ve tried some things and nothing seems to work.

Two: Like what?

One: I tried selling myself on the street. No one was buying.

Two: I’m sorry.

One: That’s quite alright. Next I tried purchasing my services.

Two: For yourself?

One: Yes. You can see straight away what sort of bind that left me in.

Two: Indeed. I once tried to buy a hot dog from myself and it ended in tears.

One: After that I went on a soul-searching quest. 

(pause)

Two: And?

One: I found nothing out.

Two: Rats.

One: Tell me about it. I started asking my friends for advice-

Two: You have friends? I was unaware.

One: A few, yes. They mostly ignored me, I think they were too busy watching football or something.

Two: Yes, I’m familiar with the game.

One: Well, not me, I thought I was merely being obtuse.

Two: No, not at all. It’s a game of skill between two teams, involving a ball and these metal -

One: Spare me. I was just using it as an example of something that is meaningless.

Two: Not meaningless at all. In some circles you can get quite a lot of money for performing well at this game or predicting who will.

One: I care not! I’m concerned with matters of truth and beauty, not money!

Two: Well, if you can’t find beauty in football then I guess you’re “shit out of luck.”

One: How droll.

Two: Yes.

One: Anyway, my friends were no help.

Two: What did they say?

One: One of my friends told me to get a job.

(laughter)

One: So you can imagine how I took that.

Two: Quite.

One: Another friend told me to volunteer.

Two: Oh? I’ve heard that can be quite rewarding.

One: Yes, well, I couldn’t help but make fun of the poor unforunate souls sent to me for help.

Two: Who sent them?

One: This guy. He think’s he’s so great.

Two: Which guy? If he runs a charity he probably is great.

One: He’s not great. He likes watching his wife get tied up and violated by other men.

Two: Oh dear. That’s not pleasant at all.

One: So you see, I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t help but feel that my purpose in life has been somehow lost.

Two: Well, maybe your purpose in life is merely to search?

One: How boring.

Two: Yes, quite.

(pause)

One: So do you want to go to the Titty Bar?

Two: I thought you’d never ask.