There’s another post up at SFist, which I mention only because that’s the only way they show up in the sidebar down below to your right.

Speaking of belated responses to basically inconsequential news: A couple of weeks ago there was a big stink all over the videogame section of the internets about this “lawyer” named Jack Thompson and his run-in with the guys from the webcomic “Penny Arcade.” In brief: he wrote something claiming that he’d donate $10,000 to charity if any videogame company would make a game based on his premise, which was a ridiculous story about a father whose child was killed as a result of game-inspired violence and went on a killing spree murdering game developers, publishers, and retailers. The Penny Arcade guys, to their credit, handled it reasonably well: they pointed out to the guy that they ran a charity which raises money and supplies games for sick kids, and they made a $10,000 donation to that charity in Thompson’s name. He responded with legal threats and various letters to the FBI, several webcomics and hundreds of blog articles resulted. (And when somebody did actually make the game, he responded by saying that his claim had all been “satire,” and then with a couple more threats of legal action.)

In short, everybody got what they wanted. The sleazy ambulance-chasing lawyer got the attention he wanted and kept his name in the press. The Penny Arcade guys drew more attention to their charity, which could be seen as self-serving, but was basically a potent way of getting their message across, that most of the people who play videogames are not hyper-violent, semi-autistic selfish children.

I don’t even like mentioning Thompson, because it just adds one more internet reference to him, however insignificant, to make it seem like the guy’s having more impact than he really is. He’s laughably incompetent, and his agenda is completely transparent, even if you’re not aware (as I wasn’t) of his history of grandstanding and dementia. One of the Penny Arcade guys had an unexpectedly mature take on it: he said that they were aware they should just ignore the guy instead of giving him more attention, but that it was essentially a good thing he was at the forefront of the debate. Because if they ever had anyone competent taking all the credit as leader of the anti-videogame crusade, game fans and companies would be screwed.

(Senator Joe Lieberman and SF Assemblyman Leland Yee also make occasional headlines in videogame censorship news, but usually only when it’s around election time. And when they do, it becomes apparent they have no real expertise in the issue other than knowing enough to mention Grand Theft Auto and Postal).

The problem is that there’s nobody particularly competent on the pro-videogame side of the issue, either. All we’ve got is the insistence that there’s no evidence linking game-playing to violent behavior, and the First Amendment. Which means that as soon as someone releases a study showing that there is a correlation between GTA and Columbine, then all you’ve got left is the ACLU and “I know my rights” and an argument that has parents responding, “Well yeah, but…”
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Man, I thought I’d learned everything about procrastination from college and then working at EA, but that was strictly amateur class. Now that I’m working from home, I’ve gone professional in my time-wasting.

Before, it was The Sims 2, where I’d do stupid stuff like see an interesting house in the city and then go into the game to try and build that and then put a family in it and then try to get them hooked up with one of my other Sims or have a baby and then before I knew it three or four hours had passed.

That was nothing compared to Civilization IV. That game is pure evil. I always made fun of the people who claimed they had an “internet addiction” or were addicted to games like Everquest and World of Warcraft, and I still do, because they deserve it. The idea of being addicted to a videogame is absurd. But this game is just weird. When I picked it up on Thursday, I was resigned to waste a whole day on it, and that’s exactly what happened. I got it home around 4pm, and the next thing I knew it was 2am and dark outside and I just felt gross. Really stupid, but I saw it coming so whatever.

But it’s worse than that. Yesterday I was reading a review of the game that mentioned this opening sequence (narrated by Leonard Nimoy) that I didn’t remember seeing. So I started up a game just to check that out. And the next thing I knew, it was 4 hours later. Not even my usual “I know I shouldn’t be doing this now, but I’ll make up for it later” thinking; I genuinely didn’t realize that much time had passed. So, I’ve decided to put that game aside until after I finished my work. Seeing as how I’m not a damn twelve-year-old.

So that’s left all the other stuff to creep in and take over my attention. Like how I became convinced that I wanted to add my AudioScrobbler recently-played tracks to my website like all the cool kids do. Even though I don’t listen to iTunes all that much, and nobody who reads this thing is all that interested in my music — that’s not the point. The point is that it could all track this data that nobody’s interested in, automatically. That’s Web 2.0! The future of the internets! And what’s more, I got it working perfectly, writing the code to get the data and parse it out and put it in a nice little list on the sidebar, rationalizing that I was learning about web programming as I went. But for whatever reason, it doesn’t work from my webserver, and AudioScrobbler’s service is only up intermittently. So scratch that.

But hey, check this out! Some guy made a bunch of Flickr Toys to make calendars, mosaics, Magic cards, magazine covers, and such from your Flickr photos. And what impresses me is that Flickr has complete documentation for their API, so you can write your own toys and galleries and stuff using your photo collections. That means I’ve got to write a new gallery for all my travel photos, right?

Maybe later. After I get past the outline stage and writer’s block I’ve been having with work.

For now, there’s another SFist column up. I’m only supposed to do one a week, but again: it lets me get distracted from what I’m supposed to be doing.

And finally: Happy birthday, Mac! Welcome to your 30s. It’s not as horrifying as I make it out to be.

Another SFist post is up, which mentions zombies in passing.

That’s because today is a special day: at last, my little obsession over the past few months is over, and I’m caught up with “Alias.” TNT finally ran the zombie episode. I’d been expecting a whole zombie storyline, but they didn’t show up until the season finale. And they weren’t really zombies. But still, it was pretty damn impressive as a TV show season finale. On par with the best season, season 2. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence, but what they both have in common is Lena Olin as Sydney’s mom. Kinda sucks when you make a show with one great, stand-out character that your staff really knows how to write for and makes for the best storylines, and you can only have her make guest appearances.

I do think it’s kind of funny that throughout the entire series so far, the only times they’ve showed Jack Bristow kissing a woman, it was with someone he was angry at or repulsed by. C’mon, dude — you’re an actor! And it’s Lena Olin and Isabella Rosselini for gosh sakes! Can’t you just take one on the chin for ABC, and put some passion in it?

So all that’s left is the two missing episodes from the beginning of season 4, but I already know what happens in those from flashbacks and such. Then I have to pick a new hobby. I do have these “Lost” episodes on DVD sitting around…

I wrote earlier about the teddy bear who’d collapsed on his way towards my apartment. Unfortunately not all the toys in San Francisco are so lucky. In rougher neighborhoods, like Haight-Ashbury, you come across scenes like this one. Mac and I had a Stand By Me moment a while back when we came across this bear’s body lying on the road in front of a car. It looked innocent enough until we came closer to the scene and realized that his head had been crushed!

No witnesses saw the incident, but investigators are saying it’s a case of post-picnic violence. The victim was most likely gaily dancing about while his assailant was watching him, catching him unawares. At six o’clock, his mommy and daddy arrived on the scene to take him home to bed, but instead found this.

Also, another SFist post is up.

I wrote another article for SFist, this one about Apple’s announcement and the new video iPod. The comments section is pretty funny. As angry and bitter about computers that I am, I’ve got to laugh at being called an Apple-hater, as I’m sitting here using Safari on my Mac mini hooked up to the second iPod I’ve bought and an iSight camera and an Apple wireless keyboard and two variations of Apple mice sitting next to my second PowerBook and knowing that I sold a PowerBook to one friend and convinced another friend to buy an iBook. Part of me wonders what you’ve got to do to be a real Apple devotee, but then the rest of me doesn’t want to know because I’m not sure I could afford it.

Oh yeah, and the guy who said that the obsession with expensive gadgets is a manifestation of a greater socialogical (sic) ill of consumerist excess and social withdrawal? Well, no shit, Brainiac.

Anyway, the new iPod. No, it’s not that big a deal, just a thinner version of the iPod with a wider screen. It’s actually really nice, from what I’ve seen, and the best design of an iPod yet. It’s just not the big “video iPod” that all the blogs were leading up to. Great product by all accounts, just nothing astounding. Not even I can justify getting one, unless something… happens… to my existing iPod.

I was never convinced that any mobile device could play video worth seeing, until I saw the Sony PSP. I said it before, but including Spider-man 2 with the thing was a great move on Sony’s part. I don’t think it sold people on the idea of buying movies on UMD — it didn’t sell me on the idea, anyway. But it did show that it’s actually practical to watch an entire movie on a handheld. The problems, as I’ve said enough times now that I’m already sick of hearing myself saying it, are that UMDs suck and memory sticks don’t hold enough. It’s going to take a real video iPod, with a hard drive and everything, before you see people getting excited about mobile video.

Just for yuks, and to see what the video quality was, I did download a couple of videos from the iTunes Music Store. They’re nothing to get all excited about — they didn’t draw much attention to it in the press releases, but did mention it at the actual presentation, but the video is only 320×240. (And I’ll admit that the two videos were “Limp” by Fiona Apple, and “Least Complicated” by the Indigo Girls.)

Browsing through the video store was kind of neat, because at this point it’s still mostly old, old stuff that makes you say, “Oh yeah, I remember that video!” I’m having to flashbacks to sitting in the living room watching “Night Tracks” on TBS waiting for them to play “One Thing Leads to Another” by the Fixx again. As soon as they have “The Warrior” by Scandal Featuring Patty Smythe, I’m totally buying the hell out of that.

As for the TV shows, I’m skeptical I’ll ever use it. If I were using something like an iMac as my whole home media center, I could see how it would be cool — but then if you’re using an iMac instead of a bigger TV, then are you in the market to pay two bucks a pop for episodes of TV shows that were broadcast the night before? All the shows are DRM’ed with Fairplay, so it’s not as if I could copy the video file to a PSP, either. Or burn it on a DVD. They’ve still got to work that part out, I think.

Another SFist post is up today, about the robotics convention I went to last weekend. I have to say it was kind of a disappointment (the convention, and the column), probably because I’ve been jaded by all the money that gets poured into E3 shows. I’d expected to see more ASIMO and AIBO and less Lego Mindstorms and circuit boards.

In other news, the Wallace and Gromit movie is just awesome, probably my favorite movie of the year. I was thinking there’d be no way they could keep up the level of the shorts in a feature film, but they did. I also saw Serenity a second time, and it was still good, but I don’t have much desire to see it again. Now the wait’s on until DOOM.

And apart from that excitement, I’ve been playing a lot of DOOM 3 (because I’d been feeling guilty I hadn’t given it enough chance, when it turns out I had), waiting to get into a Battleground in World of Warcraft (I’m not yet convinced they actually exist), and playing the Sims 2 expansion pack, “Nightlife.”

They did a good job with it; in fact, I think that this is the expansion pack they should’ve released first. I still believe that the “University” expansion is too separate from the main game; when most of us were still just looking for more content for the main game. One of the things that always impressed me about the Sims franchise and kept me from getting totally burned out on it was that they were really committed to making the expansion packs have real content instead of just being shovelware. But with “University,” they went too far in that direction; just an updated “Livin’ Large” pack would’ve been welcomed.

“Nightlife” is the right balance — it’s the same theme as the old “Hot Date” pack but adds a lot more, and it’s all well-integrated into the main game. All the new interactions and locations are welcome, and there’s just a lot more to do. I’m one of the sad little people who plays it like a soap opera, setting up families to watch them intermingle and fall in and out of love and make each other’s lives miserable, so I appreciate all the new features making it easier to get your computer people to get other computer people into bed with them. It’s still frustrating in places, and the pack introduces a whole bunch of new bugs, but on the whole it’s engaging. Probably not enough to draw in somebody who’s not already interested in the Sims, but good for those of us who are.

Currently I’ve got the Gordon family moved in with the Wayne and Prince families; I’m hoping that Bruce Wayne will make the moves on Diana Prince and kick his current wife Selina out to the curb. I think the only thing geekier than having comic book families in the Sims would be Lord of the Rings families, but I never claimed to be highbrow. As an example: because the Sims 2 doesn’t have a “young ward” option, I had to make Dick Grayson Bruce Wayne’s son. None of the game’s built-in aspirations are really suited to the Batman, so I just figured he was obsessed with family and should have the family aspiration. So now all his wants are “Tickle Dick” and “Play with Dick.” Which is high comedy.

I wrote another thing for SFist that’s up now; they’re getting lighter and lighter, I’ve noticed. This week I’m going to some big robot convention in San Jose, hopefully I’ll be able to get something more substantial from that instead of just letting Eve do the research while I add TV references.

And it turns out I need help with the TV references as well. I found out this week that for years I’d been mis-remembering the most important thing to any Generation X aspiring trendy hipster: Brady Bunch trivia. See, I always thought that when Jan made up the name of her imaginary boyfriend, she chose “Ron Glass“. And I always thought that was awesome. What better way to get attention away from Marcia and stick it to your uptight mom and homo dad, than show up at the big dance with a black man 20 years your senior?

And then when she showed up with the big black afro wig, that just knocked it over the top. Jan had gone past living out some predictable mid-70’s white girl Mandingo fantasy, and had blossomed into a true nubian princess.

But I was looking around the web, and it turns out the name she picked was George Glass. Who’s way more boring. Still, it turns out he was an associate producer for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? which I guess is kind of funny.

I’ve got yet another post up at SFist, so check it out if you’re so inclined.

A lot more interesting is the story about the ski jump on Fillmore Street yesterday. I drove by it on the way to lunch yesterday, and although traffic was backed up on Broadway, it was pretty well-handled. I didn’t see much of it, but after looking at the photos of the event on flickr, I wish I’d stopped to check it out. I have to admit I thought it was a stupid idea when I first heard about it. After seeing it, well I still think it’s a stupid idea, but I also think it’s a stupid idea that’s totally wicked awesome. Locals never seem to appreciate when I say that San Francisco is like a theme park with panhandlers, but this is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.

And it sounds like there’s a ton of other cool stuff going on this weekend, like Serenity which I already knew about, but also Mirrormask if you’re into Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, and a Free Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park. Makes me wish I didn’t have actual work I had to get done this weekend.