Articles

Welcome to the blog page. Here's all the articles. Like the tag line for the web site says, I write about a lot of different subjects. Well, at least, when I write at all. It still haven't gotten over being disheartened by losing years and years of content to WordPress hackers. I guess I still need to work that out. In any event, here's what I've managed to slap together so far.

The Illusion of Control

OK, this post is gonna have a lot of typos, because I’m writing it from a hospital bed at 02:00 hours, at the start of my fifth full day in the hospital. So deal with it. I'll clean it up later. Life would be so much easier to...live, if only there seemed to be any sort of sense or rhyme to it.

The Fall of BioWare: The Movie

I converted my essay from last week into a YouTube video for people who hate reading.

Creating a New Alphabet

When I was a kid, my friends and I used to pass notes in class. Sometimes, to prevent the teachers from reading the notes, we used a a simple letter substitution cipher. A=Z, B=Y...you know, that sort of thing. We apparently thought that our teachers would never be able to decipher this fiendishly clever puzzle.

The Fall of BioWare

BioWare is, perhaps more than any other game developer, famed for fantastic writing and storytelling. Games like 2003's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) and 2007's Mass Effect (ME1) cemented that status. Those were nearly legendary games that, while perhaps falling short in the combat/gameplay departments, told such great stories, and gave us such richly-developed characters, that we simply didn't care. That reputation was cemented by other games, such as Baldur's Gate and Jade Empire.

Microtransactions Suck in Star Wars: Battlefront II Beta

Electronic Arts released a public beta for Star Wars: Battlefront II this weekend, and I played it. There are some things about it that are nice. The gameplay, for example, seems solid, and the graphics—as much as you can tell with a very limited number of maps, anyway—seem nice. Sadly, other things seem not so nice, and one thing seems truly awful.

Political Realism

This is not a political web site. Nor do I want it to be. But the things that are happening in the country right now certainly have me thinking about politics. As a result of that thinking, I have some observations that I want to get off my chest.

We Need To Talk About Apple

Steve Jobs changed the world three times, by my count. The first time was at the end of the 1970s. Prior to Steve, no one in the computer industry thought that computers were suitable for the home, or that regular people would ever want them. Sure, there were homebrew computer hobbyists, but they were neckbeards, not normal people.

Your Craigslist Ad Sucks

Have you ever tried to sell a car or motorcycle on Craigslist and wondered why no one called you? There’s probably a simple explanation for that: Your Craigslist ad sucks. Think about it. You’re trying to get a total stranger to come to your house and give you thousands of dollars.

Wish List

"What if I could build my dream garage," I sometimes ask myself. "Any car or motorcycle could be mine. What would I choose?" Now, you might think the answer might be some supercar, like an exotic Lamborghini, but you'd be wrong. Not only because cars like that are so expensive and, at the same time, so impractical that driving them regularly would be a pain, but also, I'm not nine.

Space Capsule

Car guys are culturally required to hate minivans. If you love cars, you're supposed to want the BMW M5, or a Chevy Camaro, or Dodge Challenger Hellcat. Of course, the M5 costs as much as a house. The Camaro--even the $60,000 ZL1 version--has a remarkably shitty GM interior.