More Game Geeking

I'm in the final stages of Silent Hill, which in my case probably means weeks of play yet. But I'm starting to burn out a little on linear RPGs, so I decided to use some of my allowance this payday to buy a platform game. My choice: Jak and Daxter. True to my form, I started without reading any directions. And true to her form, Kelly came creeping downstairs to interrupt my gameplay.

I think there's a rule that she needs to play my characters until they are dead or in dire straits. This time, she was running around until she encountered a spiked pit, then handing me the controller. In this case, I'd just turn around and do something else, and in minutes she was demanding the controller again. Go figger.

One note about Silent Hill: I got stuck once and consulted GameFAQs. In the walkthrough I consulted, they explained that the game had four endings, good+, good, bad+ and bad. In order to get a good+ ending, you have to do certain things right. Unfortunately, they don't all make any sort of sense. I'm shut out of the good+ ending because I failed to collect a puddle of spilled red liquid early in the game! I could go back (having kept a steady stream of saves), but I'm unwilling to play through all the intervening action to get back to where I am. Boy is that irritating. You'd think these people would try to make the game playable and fun. It isn't 'challenging' if the goals are arbitrary. So instead of getting an A+, the game designers will be getting a B- at best...

Fly Me

Criminy, how could I have missed this all these years? TM advocates claim that it's actually possible to levitate once sufficiently advanced in one's meditation. Reading one page on the topic, I noticed that it was not until the bottom of the page that Yogic Flying was explained:

The physical manifestations of the "Yogic Flying" vary with the practitioner. The Yoga Sutras of Mahrishi Patanjali describes three stages of immediately visible results. Stage One is generally associated with what would best be described as "hopping like a frog." Stage Two is flying through the air for a short time. Stage Three is complete mastery of the sky. The above photo and all "Yogic Flying" demonstrations to date depict Stage One results.

[emphasis mine]

Control the Presses, Control the Market

This extremely well-reasoned article covers the ground I already have travelled. The recording industry (not their indentured artists) has the unstated but actual motive of continuing to control the means of distribution. It's not about piracy, but control.

Pirate's Web Site Attacked

That's right, the criminal organization known as 'the RIAA' had it's website subjected to a Denial of Service Attack in response to legislation their puppet Howard Berman introduced which would allow them to attack your computer. Look for more of this just retribution in the future. Serves them right, the crooks!

Frivolous Purchase Horizons

Now I begin the debate. Do I purchase the DVD of Master of the Flying Guillotine when it comes out in September, or be content with having seen it at the Clinton Street Theater with my friends? I'd probably watch it once or twice myself, but the value comes in letting others see it. It's cornball fun, but most people don't have the stomach for old chopsocky flix. Dilemmas, dilemmas...

Dinosaur Pops

We drove down to Fry's today to buy Kelly a bit of computer software. On the way down, I swear I don't remember why, we began talking about cryogenics. I got my definitions a little garbled, in that I didn't remember that cryonics was the word specifically describing freezing people with the goal of later resuscitation. But the essentials were correct, and I got across the current state of the art and why we don't know if it is possible to resuscitate a frozen person (for legal/ethical reasons, all persons frozen to date have been legally dead already, so even if we thawed them out without 'freezer burn', they would still be dead).

Kelly got the idea and contributed: "It's too bad we didn't freeze the dinosaurs, so now there could be little baby dinosaurs for pets."

"Yes," I added, "it's too bad we didn't have cryonics labs back then. But if we did have dinosaurs for pets, what would we do when they grew up?"

"We'd send them away."

"Send them where? I can see you having a little baby T. Rex gnawing at your thumb, but when it got bigger..."

"I don't know. But wouldn't baby dinosaurs be cute?"

"I guess we could give them to the zoo," I offered, giving Kelly an out. "Uh huh. That's a good idea!"

Capsule Review

Steven Johnson relates, around page 141 of Emergence, his own exposure to bio-feedback training, where he learns that his adrenaline levels hover at the middle range unless he makes a joke, when they spike: "But I'd learned something nonetheless: that without consciously realizing it, I'd already established a simple feedback circuit for myself years ago, when my body had learned that it could give itself a targeted adrenaline rush by making a passing joke in conversion."

Curiously enough, this follows the only joke I've encountered so far, on page 140: "Without that negative feedback pulling our circadian rhythms back into sync, we'd find ourselves sleeping through the day for two weeks out of every month. In other words, without that feedback mechanism, it would be as though the entire human race were permanently trapped in sophomore year of college."

Relax, the rest of the book is much better than that. I've now reached page 162, and I know I'll finish the book. He talks about a lot of stuff I already knew, but I was engrossed by his theory that Clinton's troubles with Monica Lewinsky might never have happened were it not for an attempt to garner affiliates by CNN several years before. I won't go into it, read the book to find out. It's a great anecdote, whether it accurately reflects the causes, and gives a neat illustration of feedback cycles.

Now I've got to go tell some jokes while hooked up to a biofeedback rig...