Not sure how well I like this one, but maybe you’ll find it interesting.

-Max Payne 3 is being made by Rockstar Games, but rather than being set in the usual New York-esque film noir city, it’s set in Brazil. But a Brazilian fan says that’s not a problem.
-Hunch will help you make decisions with the wisdom of the crowd, and a little technology.
-The most-looked up words in the New York Times.
-And the 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English language. I do my best to pronounce them, but end up murdering them mostly.

 

 The Modern World, episode 6: Play Now | Play in Popup

Links! For the podcast I just recorded!

-For some, voicemail is losing its allure. If any phone companies want to use my ideas for voicemail replacements, they are all patent pending, and you can contact me to see how much it will cost you.
-Journalism school students, please stop writing about Twitter.
-The cops may be after traveling food vendors in San Francisco. This is the burrito I had while in LA, and this is the Joystiq podcast where I tell the story of how I found it.
-OneClickDog is the company that made Little Wheel, the really fun one-click game that you should sit down and play through sometime. Wake up, robots!
-The fiber optic cable that brought out the men in black suits and SUVs. I’m not naive, I know big brother is out there. But I think it’s fascinating to hear that there are still real secrets, in a world where secrets are already so widely known.

 

 The Modern World episode 5: Play Now | Play in Popup

Yes, I had the terrific fortune of being at E3 again last week, and once again, I had a great time. I’ve got all kinds of stories from my time in LA (and I found some good neighborhoods to consider for my move out there this Fall), but for this post, I’m pretty much just going to focus on games — I played quite a few, and lots of people have asked me for impressions. If you want to hear a good non-gaming story from me about my time in LA, listen in to the end of this podcast, in which I tell the ever more famous burrito story.

Basically, when you go to this thing (which, by the way, if you don’t already know, is one of the biggest conventions about videogames in the world), you work. You work a lot. In fact, you basically work and sleep, and there’s not really that much sleep to it. Half the time is spent running around trying to make meetings where people tell you stuff to write about, and the other half of the time is trying to squeeze out a few minutes to write about it. So despite what people may think, there’s not much time to actually play games. Still, no matter what you’re there for, you’re supposed to take at least a little time to try out some games that you’re interested in — it’s really the opportunity of a lifetime to try and get to play some of the best games over the next year, and so on Thursday, the last day of the show, I carved out an hour or so to try and get some real game playing done. What I did was just make a pie-in-the-sky list of all the game I’d heard about at the show that I wanted to play, and then I just ran around the floor focusing on these games. This is not a definitive list of games at the show, it’s just the games I really wanted to see. So below are all the games on the list, and my impressions of the ones I played. Some were not available on the show floor (not all of the games are open to just anyone, some of them you have to be special to get to see, and I, as you probably know, am not all that special), but most were, and surprisingly, I actually did complete most of my list.

Here we go:

Modern Warfare 2: Was playable at the show, but not on the floor, so I didn’t get to play it. Chris Grant, who runs Joystiq, did, and he told me it was great. Which isn’t too much of a surprise — most of the games that I didn’t get to play because they were behind closed doors were games I was planning to buy sight unseen anyway. This one included.

Rock Band: The Beatles: It’s Rock Band, with Beatles songs. So yes, it was awesome. The coolest new thing I saw was the fact that you can have more than one vocal going at the same time, enabling harmonies. Oh, and if you haven’t seen the cinematic yet, you should — it was made by the guys behind the Gorillaz. This was another game that I was planning to pick up anyway — I won’t buy another whole set, but any game by Harmonix has my money already. I lurve them.

Brutal Legend: It was tough to pick out a “Game of the Show,” but when most people asked me, I eventually gave it to this one. Tim Schafer is a brilliant man, and this game is not only a piece of art on its own, but it is a heartfelt ode to metal music. It is certainly a game in its own right — there are action moves, you can slash baddies with an axe and a guitar (so two axes, really), and the boss battle I played followed the time-tested mantra of if you can do one thing to hurt a boss, you should do it three times for good measure. But it’s also a movie that is Pixar-quality — the writing is brilliant, the animation is a pleasure (the facial expressions of Jack Black’s character and his female counterpart early in the game are brilliant), and the whole game just oozes with so much love and care both for its source material and its own gameplay that you can’t help but love it. I couldn’t stop smiling as I played the game — it does everything completely and totally right. I’m close to calling it game of the year, actually — it’s the kind of game where you play for five minutes and just know it’s a classic.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii: I went into this demo thinking that they’d made an actual New Super Mario Bros. for Wii, which I would love — the DS version is probably my favorite DS game of all time, and I love the idea of a Mario Brothers 2D on the Wii. But really, this game is all about co-op Mario — if you only played solo, the levels seem like they would feel empty and too simple to keep your attention. If you have four players handy all the time, this game is probably a blast. But I worry that at the end of the game, the challenge won’t be in the platformer gameplay, but in the act of keeping four people together. Going solo doesn’t seem nearly as fun.

Assassin’s Creed 2: Was not playable for me. Seems a little too early to judge this one, though at least one Joystiquer wanted to call it Game of the Show.

Batman: Arkham Asylum: This is the biggest shocker of the show for me — there, in my mind, has never been a really good Batman game, and I’m as big a Batman fan as they come. So I walked up to this thinking it would be crap. And instead, it impressed the heck out of me. They’ve got all of the Batman TAS voices, and the writers from that show, and in my mind again that’s the best representation of Batman I’ve ever seen. Plus, they actually got the feel of Batman exactly right — in most games, combat is all about if you can hit someone. But when you’re Batman (as you can see in this trailer), combat is more about enforcing what you want to happen. Do I want that guy knocked out? Yes? Then he’s knocked out. Do I want that guy standing or on the ground? On the ground? Done. The counters are so easy and so ingrained in the combat that you really do feel like the badass that Batman is. We’ll see how they handle that later in the game. But Batman went from a “no way” to a must buy for me, just based on the few minutes I played.

Bayonetta: Didn’t play it. It was on the floor, but there was a line, and it didn’t intrigue me enough to stay.

Bioshock 2: Not on the floor. I heard multiplayer was, but again, I’m buying this one anyway.

Crackdown 2: Not yet playable. Probably doesn’t actually exist yet — it was just announced.

Darksiders: This was another one that came out of nowhere. I hadn’t heard about it at all before the show, but THQ has been working on a God of War-esque beat ‘em up with characters and art by Joe Madureira, and it charmed the heck out of me. The hacking and slashing is super easy, apparently there are lots of RPG elements and different dungeons to explore, there’s the God of War button pressing cutscenes that the kids love so much nowadays, and let me just tell you this: there’s a grab button in the game. I saw a police car that looked like scenery. I said, “what the heck,” walked over, and grabbed the police car. I then proceeded to beat the crap out of demons with it, with the doors and trunk and wheels flying everywhere. It was great. And I didn’t even dive into the RPG stuff — apparently there are quests, and you can level up and there are different weapons, and just wow. It seems really, really great.

Dissidia: It was on the floor, and I did want to play it… until I realized it was a PSP game. Pass.

Final Fantasy XIII: This one was playable behind closed doors, and I tried to wield my mojo on the girls guarding said doors, but then they told me that the game had already left the building — the folks demoing it for Square Enix had ditched the show early on Thursday. Oh well — I’ll buy it anyway.

God of War 3: Wanted to play it, but it’s for the PS3 (which I don’t own, and can’t bring myself to buy, given that I’ve already got three consoles), and the lines were really, really long. I watched it for a bit, and it sure did look like God of War. Not a bad thing, but it’s God of War.

Golden Sun DS: I was so excited to hear this was coming out — I liked the old games and would like a nice RPG to play on my DS. So I hunted it down on the game floor, and sure enough, there was one DS running it. The guy standing by it said “sure, it’s playable… kind of.” So I loaded it up, and it was playable, for about five seconds: right in the middle of the trailers, you could control a character running across a bridge. And then it went back to trailers for the rest of the demo. So yes, I played it… kind of.

Halo 3 ODST: It was on the floor, but there was a huge line, and I didn’t feel like enough of a jerk to try and skip it with my media badge. I’ll buy it anyway (wait, how much money do I have to spend on games this holiday, exactly?).

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: This is my one big regret — I couldn’t find it on the floor, and I was out of time to play games and had to get back to writing about them. I’ll probably pick this one up, though, if I can convince some friends to play it with me. Deadpool for the win.

Ratchet and Clank Future: I loved this series on PS2, and fortunately, I didn’t see anything in the part I played that made me want to buy a PS3 just to play it. It seemed pretty much exactly the same as the old games. New graphics and new weapons, but nothing I had to play.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: I heard this was great, but it wasn’t playable on the floor, and I didn’t have time to go behind closed doors and see the demo. But I did watch the cinematic, over and over and over.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: Not playable. Can’t wait for this one.

Wet: I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this one, but I figured I should put a few games on the list that I didn’t care too much about in the hopes of finding a diamond in the rough. I didn’t find it here — while this is a fun action game with some really wacky film effects (as soon as you start jumping or sliding, you go into slow motion and can shoot at two targets at the same time, and I also got to see a “rage” mode that looked really artistically well done, as well as a jumping-between-cars action chase that was great), it’s only slightly above average. Better than Stranglehold, probably not good enough for me to get excited about, unless it’s cheap and I’m in the mood for Eliza Dushku voicing an assassin lady.

Uncharted 2: I didn’t really want to play this one, because I know that of all the games on the PS3, this one is the most likely to make me shell out for another console. Still, I wanted to give it a chance, so I tried some co-op. Fortunately, about two minutes into the demo, while I did really enjoy the gameplay, their demo systems shut down due to network issues. I walked away, still PS3-free. Whew. But yes, the trailer makes this look like too much fun. When I buy the PS4 and play all the backwards compatible games I missed, this will be first on the list.

Scribblenauts: This game just plain flabbergasted me. It’s just not possible. It’s a tiny little DS game (there were only two demo units on the whole floor, and they were hidden way back in Warner Brothers’ booth) with an amazing premise: you’re given simple real-world puzzles, and to complete them, the game will give you anything you type in. Anything. Anything. I’m pretty sure the way they made this game was to just sit down with a dictionary, pass out sections of it, and have people create objects for every word in there. It was unbelievable, and this little DS game, by the end of the show, was competing with all of the huge graphics-driven blockbusters for attention.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 3: I actually did pull the media badge out for this one (there was a line at the demo unit and I wanted to skip it by getting my own demo inside), but I shouldn’t have bothered. It’s MvC3, plays just the same as it always did. Totally worth a purchase on Xbox Live.

The Agency: I didn’t get to play this one, but I did charm the girls outside the SOE booth into letting me see a demo of it, and I liked it. I probably won’t buy it, but there are some good ideas for MMOs in there — you only have access to two abilities at a time, so gameplay is pretty simple, and emphasis is placed on teamwork instead: using your partner to distract or incapacitate a guard while you sneak in and do spy stuff. The art style is really cool, too — very 60s spy fiction. I don’t know how much of an audience it’ll have (it seemed too action for your usual MMO fans, but too MMO for action fans), but they’ve got a lot of good ideas going.

So. Worst game I saw was probably Vogster’s CrimeCraft, and I wrote about it here. Best games were Brutal Legend, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Darksiders, and Scribblenauts. The hottest booth babes award goes to Nyko (they had some pretty ladies in white dresses with wacky red wigs), the coolest booth goes to Harmonix (they recreated Abbey Road in what looked like to scale), the most charming demo people I met were from SOE at The Agency, and the smallest booth goes to the folks at Netdevil for their upcoming space shooter MMO Jumpgate Evolution — I felt so bad for them, I think Gamer Grub had a bigger booth than they did, and their game was great.

Best party I went to this year was at Titmouse Studios (they make Metalocalypse, and they’re working on a game about a zombie pirate, plus I know not one but two people who work there, and there was an open bar, and it’s where the aforementioned burrito story takes place). Best non-burrito food I ate in LA was from Orris — my old friend Valerie Fletcher and her fiance ate some Japanese/French tapas with me. Best hotel clerk was the guy at Ritz-Milner, who helped me get back one night to the Hyatt Regency, where we were all staying. Best celebrity sighting was Joystiq’s own Justin McElroy — I saw a few others, but I didn’t freak out as much as when I saw McElroy in person.

And best parking ticket I got was when I had to duck into a GNC near Pink’s Hot Dogs to get some quarters for the meter. But that’s a story for another time.

MacBook unboxing from Mike Schramm on Vimeo.

I bought the new MacBook finally, and since I was asked for an unboxing, here you go. Non-techies, feel free to ignore — there’s something fascinating about this experience of opening up newly purchased hardware to those of us who care about it. It could be that usually you have to shell out a lot of money directly before (so you’d like to get as much enjoyment as you can out of it), or it could even be that you are almost guaranteed to find something new and cool. And nothing excites us technologists more than the new and the cool.

Also, as a bonus, here’s “the list”: all the programs I got up and running on this thing last night.
Quicksilver
Skype
Ecamm Call Recorder
Audio Hijack Pro
Firefox
Adium
Pixelmator
Desktoptopia
Evernote
Ventrilo
Xmarks
Growl
Tweetie
iStat Pro
Comic Life Magiq
Writeroom
Snapz Pro X
App Zapper

It’s not an exhaustive list (and sorry, I need to get to real work today, otherwise I’d have linked them all for you), but it’s more or less all of the apps I regularly use for general work. With all this stuff, I’m all set to do all my blogging and computing on the road.

After a week’s hiatus, it’s back with four stories and unfortunately no interviews. But next week’s show will have at least one interview, maybe two if I can corner someone at E3.

Show notes
-The Science Behind Generosity: We are more inclined to give when giving depends on us, and yet we’re very bad at figuring out where to best put our money and time to help others.
-New Technique’s Gonna Find out Who’s Spammy or Nice: Bad title, interesting story about how to determine who’s behind the keyboard when an email is sent or a web page is browsed.
-Infinite Summer: a challenge to read David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece in 93 days this summer.
-Wolfram Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine” by Wolfram Research (no relation, but they did make Mathematica) that takes a big step towards semantic computing. Note: I talk a lot about the semantic web, which (for some) actually has more to do with editing web pages to make machines understand the meaning (inserting certain code into your webpage, so that machines can “see” the meaning that’s there). But the idea of computers grasping meaning is tied up in there — Wolfram Alpha may not be the actual semantic web, but it’s a good example of how computers can be taught to deliver information that applies to the meaning of what you search rather than just the absolutes.

As always, you can listen to the show below, and feel free to email me if you have any input at all. Thanks for listening!

 

 The Modern World episode 4: Play Now | Play in Popup

Hey folks. I finally confirmed this week that I’m going to get to go to E3 again this year, and I am super excited about that. Last year, I had an awesome time, and this works out perfectly, because since I’ve been planning the move to LA in October, I will get to use some time out there around the convention to look for an apartment. But there’s one issue: my little 12″ Aluminum Powerbook G4 performed as admirably as it could last year at both E3 and BlizzCon, but for the serious amount of photo/video editing that I need to do at a big conference, I don’t think it’s going to cut it again.

So I’m probably going to get a new MacBook (or MBP, I’m not sure yet). And to try and take a little bit of the bite out of the price of that, I’m going to try selling my Powerbook G4. It’s a real shame, actually — I love my Powerbook. It is an amazing computer in an amazing size, and it’s been perfect for sitting beneath my desktop monitor, running IM and Twitter and Vent for me while I run games or work on the desktop. It’s awesome for taking out to a coffee house and punching out blog posts or typing up code or trying to get some fiction done. Whenever I take it out, I get countless compliments on just how perfectly small it is: 12″ is just at the right point between an ultraportable (too small for me) and a hulking, ugly Windows laptop.

So if you want it, I’m selling it. Here’s the specs:

1.5 GHz PowerPC G4 (which means no, it won’t run Intel-only apps, but it runs Firefox, Twitter, Adium, Vent, iTunes, Garageband — I’ve recorded and edited audio podcasts on it without problem — Word, Skype, Xcode, and iLife ‘08 just fine)
768 MB DDR SDRAM (this is probably upgradable, but I never needed it)
80 GB HD
Superdrive (CD and DVD read/write)
Firewire 400 and USB of course
GeForce FX Go5200 (the toughest game I’ve probably run on it is WoW — busy battlegrounds were a little slow, but it’s more than enough to level with)
Built-in mic (no camera, this is before that)
Airport Extreme wireless card

The battery has been replaced once — it lost the ability to keep a charge, but Apple had a free recall running, so I got it completely replaced. The charger is as mint as they come, and I have both the cord for it and the regular plug. I have the original manuals and the OS 10.4 disks, as well as an old copy of iWork ‘05 if you want it, and I’ll reset the HD and OS (to 10.4 — I believe it’ll run 10.5 if you want, but I never actually bought it, so you’ll have to purchase/install that yourself) for you before I send it so you can start with the clean, cool feeling of a brand new Mac.

Physically, it’s in great shape — no scratches that I can see, and all of the keys and buttons work and are clean and readable. The Apple logo behind the screen shines brightly into the night — if this laptop were a comic book, I’d call it Near Fine to Fine. There aren’t even any use marks on the trackpad or palm rest. It’s not brand new, but I’ve taken really good care of it — never dropped it, ever.

So yes, if you want an awesome little Powerbook to do your minor computing tasks both at home and abroad, this is definitely the ‘book for you. Truthfully (and I swear I’m not just saying this), I’m sad to see it go. I said it was the best computer I’ve ever owned in this interview and I wasn’t lying — I bought it used a few years ago and in that time it’s never given me an issue, never crashed or complained (the battery is the only time I ever had to replace anything, and even then I just left it plugged in and it just kept chugging on, no downtime at all), never not done something I’ve asked. I’ve taken it to about six conventions and on multiple vacations, and every single time I pulled it out to do something, I got it done. I love this little guy, and I hate to see him go.

But at the same time, given that this E3 is going to be bigger than last year (and I’m going to do more video editing, something I’ve never done on this Powerbook), I think I need to move up. So he’s for sale. I see these things going online for about $700, but $550 seems like a pretty reasonable price to me, and I’ll pay to ship it to you unless you live someplace outside the USA or it’s crazy expensive for some strange reason (if you’re in Chicago, you can just come pick it up). If you’re interested, drop me a line at mike@mikeschramm.com, and if you don’t need it, but you know someone who might, feel free to pass this on to them. Thanks!

Update, in case you’re wondering: Sold it. Going to replace with a 15″ MacBook Pro.

Show Notes
-Why are text messages limited to 160 characters (and Twitter limited to 140). Listen to the podcast to find out, but it has something to do with Friedhelm Hillebrand’s typewriter.

-The many and varied forms of YouTube Poop. You’ve seen Over 9000, but have you seen Zelda Poop or the Unfitting Music fad?

-Greenlight is a city-owned ISP (that provides great service, apparently) in Wilson, NC. But Time Warner doesn’t like them very much. Fortunately, the bills have been sent to committee, and are pretty much dead for now.

-Finally, create your own tunes in B flat with the in B flat 2.0 project. (more…)

 

 The Modern World episode 3: Play Now | Play in Popup

So as you may have noticed if you’ve been following my Twitter, I’ve become a baseball fan again this year. In actuality, it was a very deliberate decision — late in the football season last year, I started listening to a local radio show that talked sports occasionally, and that really sparked my interest in the Bears. I would follow them from week to week, learning the players’ names and following their interviews and press. By the end of the year, I knew what was happening on every down, and when I went out to watch the games with friends, it was much more enjoyable.

So this year, I decided to watch a baseball team again — I used to follow baseball way back when, but haven’t really paid attention since around high school. And since the Bears had worked out so well for me (because I live in Chicago, all of their games were on TV here, and all of the local media were covering the team), I decided to go local again. Very local, in fact — since I live about five blocks from Wrigley Field, I decided to follow the Cubs.

But of course, if you know me, you know there’s an issue. Because I’m from St. Louis. Since a very young age, I’ve been a Cardinals fan. And though, as I said, it’s been a while since I’ve actually followed baseball, back in the day, I really followed baseball. Ozzie Smith was my hero. Jack Buck still is one of my heroes. I remember a newscast one night after the game in St. Louis that called Vince Coleman and Pedro Guererro “lightning and thunder.” Because the first could steal bases faster than you could see, and the second could crank home runs for the Redbirds. My family always claimed that since the Herzog name was somewhere in my Grandmother’s family tree, we were somehow related to Whitey Herzog. My brother and I would sit in our living room on hot summer evenings, listening to Jack Buck, the roar of the crowd when the bat cracked, and the crickets humming outside at the same time. I’m a die hard St. Louisan, and I was a die-hard Cardinals fan.

So when I started tweeting about the Cubs, you can imagine what happened. Everyone I know in St. Louis felt I’d betrayed them, couldn’t see how I could follow the blue team when I’d always been a fan of the red. And for a while I thought it wasn’t a big deal — I could still be a Cards fan and just watch the Cubs because they were local and here. They were the only team I had every game in high definition on the TV without having to pay a bunch of money to MLB. All the papers followed them and every one of my neighbors knew what was happening in the games. I could enjoy Cubs baseball without actually cheering for them. And yet I couldn’t — the very first inning that the Cards and Cubs played this year, the Cardinals grabbed a Cub-hit ball headed for the outfield, got it to first base for an out, and I swore out loud, before being shocked at myself. I’d become a Cubs fan.

Still, a month and a half into the season, I’ve come to the realization that I’m not really a Cubs fan. Yes, I’m watching the team — home games are at Wrigley, and I’ve really gotten to enjoy hanging out with the announcers Len and Bob, and I like singing the stretch at the seventh inning. And though there are still things about the Cubs I hate — their fans are real jerks, those win flags are annoying, and that end-of-game song bugs that heck out of me (even though it gets stuck in my head when they win) — I am enjoying following the team, and celebrating with them when they win, and feeling the disappointment when they don’t. So why am I not a Cubs fan? Because I don’t really care about the Cubs. I care about the players.

Kosuke Fukudome is such a great guy — when he steps up to the plate, he doesn’t brag or show off. His movements are methodical and effective, both batting and in the outfield. Theriot and Fontenot are the two Oh twins in my mind, providing solid defense with the occasional great hit. D. Lee has won me over — he had a rocky start, but his grand slam the other day made me a fan. “Fonzi” Soriano was another guy I had to come around on (he’s had a reputation that he hasn’t quite lived up to yet), but after he got off the DL I started liking him, too. Carlos Zambrano is a ton of fun to watch pitch, and when he steps in at pinch hitter of all things, I imagine he’s having his own ton of fun. And even Lou, the manager, is a rough and tumble veteran that you can’t help but like. He’s the engine behind Cubs’ fans constant denial — when they lose and all of the fans ask for something to change, he says, “Don’t worry, they’ll get there.” And everyone whines but they believe him anyway. I don’t like the Cubs, I like these guys on the field and in the dugout. I have gotten to know them, I’ve seen them at their good and bad, and when they win, I feel happy for them, not some old franchise stuck in a crumbling stadium.

You may argue with me if you happen to be a baseball fan — maybe you believe that loyalty is loyalty, and when you come from somewhere, you stick by that team until you die. But look at even these players — they have less loyalty to that team than anyone else in the stadium. Players switch teams whenever there’s a bigger paycheck to be had, and teams have even less loyalty to their players. Ozzie Smith, my hero, and a veritable St. Louis icon? Tony La Russa made him fight for his job, and when he did well, still got rid of him, and as a result, he’s distanced himself from the team ever since. Vince “Lightning” Coleman left St. Louis for the Mets not long after I stopped following baseball, and later got in trouble for saying, “I don’t know nothing about no Jackie Robinson.” And Pedro “Thunder” Guererro was arrested, probably ten years after I saw that newscast, for trying to buy 33 pounds of cocaine from an undercover federal agent. (Apparently they later let him off the hook, saying his IQ was too low for him to have even understood there was a drug deal taking place.) They didn’t have any loyalty to the Cardinals, and the Cardinals didn’t have much loyalty for them, either.

So no, I’m not a Cubs fan — I like the guys on the field, and since I’ve seen almost all of the games so far, I’ve come to know them enough to cheer for them and feel some disappointment when they lose. But when I head off to Los Angeles later this year, maybe I’ll be a Dodger fan. Or maybe I’ll watch hockey, and try following the Kings for a little while (I used to follow the Blues, but that was way back when Brett Hull was skating for them). I haven’t abandoned St. Louis — I love that city, I’m part of that city, and I’ll never not be a St. Louis fan. I like the Cardinals, and I love Busch Stadium and all of the memories I’ve had there (well, the old Busch, anyway — the new stadium looks nothing like that place I used to go). But the Cardinals aren’t the Cardinals I knew as a kid. And I’d rather cheer for a team of guys who work right down the street from me than a group of guys I’ve only read about in the paper, no matter what logos they wear.

Here’s episode 2 of The Modern World, featuring two interviews with two people who are doing some pretty impressive things on the Internet. I geek out a little bit in this episode — in the future, I’ll try not to do that so much. Also, the RSS feed should be working — it’s submitted into iTunes right now, and should show up there soon if you want to subscribe. I’ll link it here when it’s up.

Show Notes

-GoDaddy says you should probably seek alternatives for .tv domains. Why? Because Tuvalu is sinking into the ocean.
-Brad Wardell is the CEO and founder of Stardock. Their latest game is Demigod, an action/RPG/RTS hybrid that I really am enjoying.
-Kate Beaton’s website is called Hark, a Vagrant, and it is full of really funny and well-drawn webcomics, sprinkled with more references to historical figures than I’ll ever really comprehend.

Hit “play now” to listen to this week’s show (or download the MP3):

 

 The Modern World episode 2: Play Now | Play in Popup

By the way, I completely forgot that I was going to turn this into a music blog and post music I’ve been listening to. So here’s a tune I’ve liked a lot lately — Metric’s last album was kind of boring, I thought, but in this new one, they focus more on Emily Haines, and the whole album is much better for it (her solo album is also great, too, if you’ve never heard it). Anyway, I guess this is their first single, and I pretty much agree — it caught my attention on the first listen-through and I’ve been enjoying it since.

Also Beatles > Rolling Stones. Sorry.

Just wanted to update you with a few things going on with me. First of all, I think I’ve told pretty much everyone I know already, but just in case you haven’t heard, last Sunday I ran the Ravenswood Run here in Chicago. Which means I ran a 5k, which is 3.1 miles. Let me repeat that: I *ran* a 5k, as in I started running (well, jogging, but still, I made the running motions in a steady pace) in one place, and I didn’t stop running until 3.1 miles later.

I don’t want to get too misty here (though I won’t lie: I did get a little misty right after I finished the race), but this is a pretty big deal. I’ve never been a physical guy — if skinny is New York and “overweight” is somewhere in the beautiful vistas of Denver, I’ve been hanging out on the California coast most of my life, for various reasons. And for more various reasons which I won’t go into too deeply here, though maybe someday I’ll tell you all of them, I’ve decided to change that: since January, I’ve been working out and eating better and just generally taking care of myself much more. This has hardly reached its climax (I’ve got a lot more of the gameplan to carry out), but it has reached a definite first peak with this 5k thing. Back in January, and indeed, back since high school, I’d have been hard pressed to run a quarter mile without falling over in a sweaty heap. Nowadays, after lifting some very heavy weights and putting some major treadmill miles under my feet, I’m routinely finishing off three miles, and am now aiming to try and do it in just a half hour, and then go for a 10k after that. And who knows — I may eventually try running a half marathon. It seems impossible to me now, running for that long without stopping, but back in January, running three miles seemed impossible, and now I do that whenever I want. Anyway, just wanted to let you know, blog readers. Stay tuned for more.

Also, Brigwyn is a World of Warcraft blogger who runs a site called The Hunting Lodge, and he kindly asked me to answer twenty questions, some of them about Warcraft, and some about me personally (and even one about this site — boy it was crazy going back through the archives of some of the things I’ve written here). I answered them for him, and you can read my answers and his questions over on his blog right now. I don’t know if I reveal any major secrets, but anyone who’s interested in me might find it a good read. Also, Brigwyn is running this amazing auction for the great Child’s Play charity, and in there, you’ll find the chance to bid on a guest spot on the WoW Insider Show, which is a podcast that I help run. In other words, if you’ve got some money burning in your pocket that you’d really like to donate to a worthy charity, you could do a lot worse than spending it on a chance to chat with me and a few friends on a Saturday afternoon about World of Warcraft. In fact, even if you’re not a WoW fan, you should probably bid on it — it would be really funny to have someone on the show who’d never played the game, just loved doing great things for kids.

And finally, assuming that you’re interested in interviews of me, Stompalina, who is another figure around the WoW community, will be hosting me live on her Rawrcast podcast this Saturday afternoon. I don’t want to ruin anything she’s got planned, but believe me when I tell you that it will be wild and crazy and strange things will happen.

And finally, speaking of podcasts, stay tuned for episode two of The Modern World, coming to this very site next Sunday afternoon. I’ve lined up two really good interviews with two people I’ve really been impressed by lately, and I think you’ll enjoy them both.

Here is the first episode of my brand new podcast. Some of you may have heard my little stint on The Mike Schramm Shoe, which I considered a rousing success, but it was kind of like the first batch of cookies you make from scratch — they are good (they’re cookies, after all), but you realize that there are a few things you could have done with the recipe that you didn’t, and one of the trays was in for just the exact right amount of time and you could have done them all like that, and you realize that if you just added some walnuts, they’d be really excellent. So this is my second batch of cookies. I’m calling it “The Modern World.”

It’s currently seeking a home, actually — if you have (or even better, run) a site that often hosts podcasts about interesting technology and want me to do a podcast like this for you every week, let me know. Pay wouldn’t really be required — though it would be nice, I’d really just like to have a nice chunk of bandwidth to share these on, and a built-in RSS feed that I could easily post into iTunes. Email me and let me know if you have any ideas. Meanwhile, big thanks to my friend Josh Gray, who has always been there for me every time I’ve come up with wild Internet-based ideas and then realized I don’t know anything about how to make them a reality.

Show notes

-While @aplusk and CNN were fighting over who would get to a million Twitter followers first, the folks over at 4chan were aiming to make @basementdad famous instead.

-Yahoo is finally shutting down Geocities. Which makes most web developers cheer, but I think the beginning of the “anyone can do it” Internet deserves a more fond farewell.

-The video above is assembled by a guy named Michael Gregory, with help from his brothers (and sister-in-law). Big thank you also specifically to Andrew Rose Gregory, who helped me get the interview together.

-Finally, here is the must-watch Elevated demo, which is a procedurally-generated demo, all contained within just 4k. Thanks to Inigo “IQ” Quilez from RGBA for speaking with me.

Listen to the show: Click here to download the mp3. iTunes and RSS feeds are coming soon.

I’m going to say that you can expect a new show here every Sunday, though as I learned this week, coordinating interviews on a deadline is a tough thing to do (especially when people have no idea who you are). But I will do what I can to get these out weekly. And as I said in the show, they’ll be a little shorter (this one clocks in around 50 minutes or so), and hopefully will have less of me talking and more of interesting people speaking passionately about what they do. Should be fun, thanks for listening, and tell your friends!

 

 The Modern World episode 1: Play Now | Play in Popup

Last week, I was invited onto a panel at Shimer College, where my friend works in the Admissions office. It was supposed to be about careers, and I thought that I’d be mostly talking about being a freelancer and how to make it as a writer. But it turned out that I was on a panel with a bunch of alumni, and the whole thing was much more general — instead of talking about clips and pitching, we talked about resumes and job interviews.

But I had asked my Twitter and Facebook friends if they wanted to see video of me there, and there was a lot of interest. So, since the actual event didn’t apply much to freelance writing (and there was no real good chance to get video — you guys would have been bored by it if I’d gotten it), but I’d already done a lot of thinking about how I got to where I am, I figured I’d write these up. If you’re interested in working professionally as a writer, maybe these will help.

1. Write! I got to see Warren Ellis speak at the Chicago Comiccon last year, and he put this advice (which I’ve heard many, many times before from lots of people) in the most relevant form: “I’ve always believed that writers write. If you’re a guy who calls himself a writer but who sits around in his underwear watching TV all day and wondering what themes to include in a novel, you’re not a writer. You’re a guy who sits around watching TV all day.” If you want to be a writer, you have to write, a lot. And of course it’s easier than ever to get published, even if you aren’t paid: start a blogspot blog, and start writing, every single day. That may sound easy, but it’s really not: you’d be very surprised how many blogspot blogs consist of one post: “Hello and welcome! I’ve just started this blog, and there will be more posts here soon!” The truth is, for the first year or so of any blog you start, no one will read it, you’ll get no comments, and it’ll feel pretty pointless. But the most important thing is to be consistent and constant. Write every day, no matter what it’s about, and you’ll learn to be a better writer.

2. Work for free, but not for too long. The worst advice I ever got, coming out of college, was this: “never work for free.” The person who gave it to me had good intentions — they believed that my work was valuable, and that I shouldn’t ever give it away. And they were right: my work and my time are valuable, and I shouldn’t spend either one frivolously. But saying “never work for free” locks too many doors — especially with the economy the way it is, and especially because, when you’re first starting out, editors will doubt your conviction unless you show them that you can put in a day’s work or deliver x number of words on deadline, working for free is often more than worth it, whether it’s working an internship at a local paper or publishing a weekly column on an unpaid blog. In terms of getting your name and reputation out there, in terms of the experience of meeting a deadline for a bigger team, and in terms of getting clips with your name on them, working for free is often a necessity. You don’t have to do it for too long — once you’ve proven yourself and have a few solid clips in hand, then you can start asking for money. But don’t take the advice I got and say you’ll never work for free, because not all payment is monetary.

3. Rejection means nothing. This is actually solid advice for any job, and I did say this on the panel: rejection should mean absolutely nothing to you. I was just listening to Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcom in the Middle who’s now doing a great job acting on AMC’s Breaking Bad) on Adam Corolla’s podcast, and he said that before Malcolm in the Middle, he got denied two different acting jobs that he was really counting on. He was really bummed out, because he’d really hoped for something big from those two, and they hadn’t chosen him. But not a day later, he got invited in to audition again, and that third one was Malcolm in the Middle, which was on TV for seven years and made him a millionaire. We work ourselves up with big auditions or big job interviews, thinking that “if I don’t get this job or land this gig, that’ll be it.” But it never is — there’s always another opportunity around the corner, or something else that will come along and be even more perfect.

4. Deliver. This is good advice for almost any job as well, though one of the things I like about writing is that it’s not that hard to be really good. Most editors are looking for one thing: a properly formatted, correctly spelled piece with the right amount of words in the right order before the deadline. That’s it. They’re usually not looking for Shakespeare or Joyce, though there’s no harm in aiming to be one of those guys. All they’re looking for is someone who can do what they say they can do, someone who they can turn to and say “2000 words on this by Friday,” and then have it be so. It’s even OK if they say that and then you say “I can do 1500 by Friday, but for 2000, I’ll need Saturday,” as long as come Saturday, you’ve got the 2000 all set. Originally, I wanted to be in radio, and I still kind of do, but the problem is in radio your job depends on so many different people — the program director who’s breathing down your neck, the ad sales people who have to get you the money to stay on the air, and even the engineer in overalls who has to keep the transmitter running. When you’re a writer, your job depends on you. Sure, an editor might make changes to what you write, and there are still usually ad sales people lurking around somewhere making sure there’s money in the payroll account. But when you have to turn in 2000 words, those 2000 words come from your head, and the only one responsible for making sure they appear on paper by the time they’re supposed to is you. Making that happen is all that’s really required to be a solid writer, and once an editor sees you can do that, then you’ll become such a valuable asset that they’ll throw work at you.

5. Endure. And this, I personally believe, is the most important thing about making it in any profession, especially something creative like writing. The way that you get successful at something is usually just that you do it for a long time. There are actors in Hollywood who’ve been doing commercials and training videos for twenty years, and then get one movie part that turns them into a big success. Likewise, writing is a “keep at it” job — there are almost no overnight successes, and even most first-time novel writers who make it big have been working in newspapers and magazines or just writing on their own for years ahead of time. They way you become really successful is just to be the guy still doing whatever it is you want to do when everyone else decides it’s not worth it any more. Sure, it takes talent, and you can’t stick to doing something for a really long time unless you have a strong conviction or a passion about doing it. But the truth is that the more you write, the better you get, the more people see your work, the more editors hear you name, and the more success you have. Too many people sit down to write, try it out for a while, and then decide there’s something else they’d rather do with that time. If you’re one of the crazy ones who keeps writing even after that feeling passes, then you’re on the right path.

There’s a statement I’d never though I’d make. But it’s true — when I went back home a few weeks ago to see my parents off on their RV journey (I’ve twittered and podcasted about this, so you’ve probably heard: my retired parents sold our house in St. Louis and bought an RV to travel the country), I started up a blogspot blog for them, and much to my amazement, my mom has been pretty faithfully posting news about their travels to it. I feel a little bad — I stacked the deck early on so they’d have some comments, but I have no idea what traffic has been like since then. Blogs, as you know if you’ve ever actually started one, begin much more like a locomotive than a Lamborghini: it takes a while for them to get up to speed, if they ever really do. But I’ve talked to my mom and she says she enjoys it. I know she’s had a writing bug for a long time (I used to find snippets of fiction around the house near our typewriter when I was a kid), so maybe the act of chronicling their trip will bring that out in her.

Plus, we get to read about all the fun stuff they’re doing — they’ve already wandered a good fourth of the United States and met all kinds of people on the way. They have always had the itch to travel, though. When I was a kid, I probably traveled more than all of my classmates put together, but while they were vacationing in resorts and flying off to New York, I was riding the blue highways in my parents’ van with my family. We took trips (these are all separate trips, taken on a spring break or during a summer week) to Maine, California, Colorado, Washington State, Washington, DC, Florida, Florida, Texas, Mexico, South Dakota, Nevada, and anywhere else on the map my Dad thought it might be interesting to see. When I got a little older (say 16 or 17), our trips started petering out — all of us kids started having social lives and schedules, and it was not quite as easy to get us all in a van and go (not that it ever was). But now, ten or so years later, my parents find themselves back on the road, this time to stay.

Every time I tell someone about it, they have a kind of shocked non-response (”Really?!”) and then fall into a sort of “your parents are crazy” mode (”Well I’m sure they’re enjoying it!”). They don’t really have to tell me — my parents are crazy (especially my Dad), and that’s why we love them so much. But then they ask what we, my brother and sister and I, think. Are we OK with not really having a home to go home to? Are we fine with our parents showing up on our doorstep with a giant RV whenever they feel like it, or our parents inviting us out to someplace we’ve never been for a Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner?

I know I speak for myself, and Daniel, and Melissa, when I say: of course we’re fine with it. Our parents have done nothing but support us for the largest part of our lives. When we were down, out, lost and/or broke, they were there to help. They’re our parents. And this is their dream — for years, they’ve talked about doing just this, and now, after all of the planning and scheming, they’ve done it. How can we not support them completely?

And I’m happy that I get to read about it on the blog. If you haven’t a second, head over there, and, since they’re new to blogging, give them a nice welcome.

Before I begin, let me just tell you that it was quite a pain getting these pictures for you — I had to rent The Dark Knight on my Netflix (even though I’ve already seen it a few times), I had to get it loaded up on my laptop (apparently the DVD drive in my Mac is dying and/or already dead), I had to find a screen capture program that could capture these pics (surprisingly hard — no one wants you capturing images from movies, apparently), and I had to upload these things and put them all in the right format and places.

But it will be all worth it when I tell you why: I was in the greatest Batman movie ever made. Maybe.

I don’t mean that it might be the greatest Batman movie ever made — though Batman Returns will always be my favorite Batman movie, and though the 1966 version will always have a place in my heart, The Dark Knight is definitely the greatest Batman movie ever made so far. But “maybe,” because I worked, for one day, as an extra on The Dark Knight when they were filming here in Chicago. And when I went to see it for the first time, I hoped that I was in there. I hoped they hadn’t left me on the cutting floor.

I went to work as an extra for a charity here in Chicago — we volunteers would work as extras, and then instead of paying us the extra money ($100 a day, I believe), they’d give it to the charity. Good for them, and fun for me. So on a day two Augusts ago — I think that’s when it was; I know it was summer — I dressed up in my finest winter clothes and went downtown.

They were filming the police funeral scene (no major spoilers but I hope you have seen the movie already). We weren’t on camera for the actual funeral attack part (the Joker and his guys break things up), but we were hanging out waiting for our shot way, way past camera. Here’s the beginning of the scene I was in.

Note that when I write “me” on that picture with my little pretend telestrator, I don’t mean that I’m one of the cops — I believe those guys were real off-duty Chicago police. No, I mean I was way, way in back — back near the end of the block, standing in the middle of summer in our winter coats for about three hours waiting for our shot. We were nowhere near the cameras, but we could see all the to-doing, all of the cops, all of the podium activity (I could barely make out Nestor Carbonell, who most will know as Richard Alpert but whom I remember fondly as Batmanuel). Someone said they saw Gary Oldman, and I was excited, because he’s one of my favorite actors, but I never did see him.

Eventually they called us off to our shot. We were “background,” which meant that Christian Bale, as Batman, though not in costume, would ride through an alley across the street from us on his motorcycle. We’d be normal pedestrians, crossing back and forth way out of focus in the background. I wasn’t sure why they wouldn’t just use actual pedestrians, but then I realized that real pedestrians would probably stop and stare at a flashy red motorcycle driving through an alley. I thought for a moment about being a method actor and doing exactly that, but decided it would rock the boat — they told me to walk back and forth and so I did.

Here’s Christian Bale riding the motorcycle in the movie (or at least someone who looks like him — I never actually saw him, though I did see the bike pull in).

You can see us moving around in the back there — we’re all actors, including the cop. You can’t actually see me in that shot, but I thought, upon first viewing of the movie, that I could see myself in the film.

I had my black coat on and my gray driving cap, and was carrying a black briefcase. A few seconds later, just as Bale heads into the building, I thought, for just a moment, that I was the one stepping out into view behind him.

I thought that was me back behind him. You can tell that the person has a lighter part on top of their head, and I thought that was my cap. You can also see that they’re carrying something black, and I thought that was my briefcase.

I was very excited about this the first time I saw it, and I left the theater telling everyone that even though it was blurry, in the background, and only for half a second, that I actually appeared in The Dark Knight.

And I’d still like to believe that’s true. But it’s not.

While getting these pictures for you, I paused the movie right there, and slowed it down to see who exactly that was stepping across at that exact moment.

And it wasn’t me.

It’s a lady, actually. She’s wearing a red coat, and I remember her at the shoot. I don’t remember if she was a volunteer with us or not, but I hope that she cared enough to do exactly this and squealed with delight when she paused the film, stepped forward frame by frame, and finally found herself, starring as an uncredited blur in the background, on screen with Batman.

I think I’ll probably tell people that I was in the movie anyway. They shot a lot around Chicago. I was probably in there somewhere.

Yeah, as announced on Monday’s show, I’m moving the Talkshoe recording of this evening’s show back to midnight on the East Coast, because that seems like a better time for listeners than right in the middle of prime time. So if you’re up and around this evening around 11 central, tune in over at the Talkshoe page and we’ll have a good time. Originally, my plan on Wednesdays was to open up the floodgates and just talk about whatever the callers wanted to talk about, but given that we’re short on callers so far, I do have some good topics to discuss this evening.

Also, work continues over at the Wiki — if you’re bored at work today and want to write up a crazy entry about the modern life of the wildebeast or the top ten reasons you use Twitter (as per Monday’s show), feel free. Anything that gets posted over there could get mentioned on the podcast as well, of course.

Should be fun. Like I said, the show is notoriously short on live listeners (though I definitely appreciate everyone who’s tuned in so far), but people are definitely listening on the downloads, according to the Talkshoe stats. Maybe next week I’ll try to do a non-live show and see how that works. Anything is possible!

Against my better judgement, I’m jumping on the merry-go-round again — I’ll be doing another episode of the Shoe tonight at 7 my time. The first episode, from last night, is also up on that page if you want to listen, though I warn you that it’s rough. Really rough. You probably just want to wait until this evening and hear the show live (and maybe you can come on and chat as well).

The wiki is also taking shape, so feel free to check out the changes over there also. There’s a page I made for episode 1 with all the links I talked about on it, so even if you don’t listen to the actual audio (and like I said, it’s rough), at least you can take a look at some of the interesting stuff I found from around the ‘net.

Tonight should go better — I’m streamlining the tech a bit, so I don’t expect any issues. And I’m also actually putting in less prep time, so hopefully it will be more off the cuff and more fun. If you want to join in, please do — I’ll see you over on Talkshoe around 7 central, 8 eastern.

Oh boy. So I have discovered over the past year or so that I really, really like podcasting. I originally went to school to do radio broadcasting, and while the radio industry itself is dying, podcasting is its new form. A lot of podcasts have captured my attention, and done a lot of interesting things — and then died out. I used to listen to Penn Jillette’s show via podcast, and loved it.. and then he stopped doing it. I really enjoyed Steve Dahl’s podcast from here in Chicago… and then they took him off the air.

Combine all of that with a recent nagging feeling of creativity, along with a little extra time lately, and you’ve got the reasons why I’ve decided to do this. I’m making a new podcast: it’s called the Mike Schramm ‘Shoe (for reasons that will become apparent shortly), and it’s going to be quite an experiment.

The podcast itself is over on a site called Talkshoe, which we’ve been using for the TUAW Talkcast, and is cool because it’s basically a conference call with recording and chat capabilities built-in. If you have a mic hooked up to your computer, you can chat right along with us without any additional software, and even if you’re not on a computer or near the Internet at all, you can call (724) 444-7444, punch in our call id (which is 40600), and listen to the show and talk with us live. That’s why the show is called “Shoe” — not only because it sounds like show, and not only because it’ll be my “shoe” to throw at whatever I want, but because it’s going to take full advantage of the Talkshoe service.

It’s called the “Mike Schramm” ‘Shoe, because it’ll be run by me, and we’ll talk about whatever I want to talk about (except on Wacky Wednesdays, when you guys will set the topics, but we’ll talk about that on Wednesday). So it’s a talk show, more or less, but it’s an interactive talk show — I will have anyone and everyone on with me who wants to come on. And to make sure things stay civil and/or entertaining, we’re going to make it a little game — I’ll be giving out points (or taking away points) for people who add to the show. More on that in the actual show itself — we’re going to write the rules of the game as the show goes along, and it’ll be a lot of fun.

As for what we’re actually going to talk about, it’ll be whatever interests me for the week. It won’t be ordinary — lots of talk shows and podcasts cover the same issues every week from their own angle, and my goal with this is really to try and drop off the beaten path into some interesting stuff, whether it be cultural touchstones like what the smoke monster really is, interesting history (like where the Iron Sheik used to keep his gig), or tech weirdness like the Unix 1234567890 Day. It’ll probably be nerdy, since I’m nerdy, but it’ll also be technology, entertainment, and/or news-based. It won’t be full of politics, but where politics cross over into our daily lives, the show will be there.

Oh, and finally, given that we’re going to be passing out points and talking about all kinds of issues in an entertaining fashion, we’ll need somewhere to keep track of everything. There’s already a “Shoe” wiki — you can head over there right now and post anything you want on it. I’ll be staying mostly hands off of the wiki — I really want to see what comes out of there as a community. I’m responsible for the show itself, and listeners are responsible for the wiki. For better or worse — probably worse.

If you want to contact the show, there’s also an email address: you can send feedback, comments, questions, or whatever you want to mikeschrammshoe@gmail.com.

The first show is this evening, Sunday, February the 22nd, 2009 — we’ll start at 8pm Eastern over on Talkshoe. You can listen live, or just wait (eventually, we’ll have the show set up with an RSS feed in iTunes as is usual with podcasts these days). At this point, I’m planning to do the show three times a week — on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, about 30 minutes to an hour each show. That will likely change, depending on my own schedule and what people think of what we do.

And finally, this is currently an experiment. As I’ll explain in the show, I’m only committed to doing 12 episodes of this so far. If, at the end of twelve episodes, I think it’s worth continuing (for me, for listeners, or whatever), then we’ll continue it. I have no idea what will happen or what will come of this — like I said, it comes out of seeing great shows falling off the map, my own personal creative drive, and a general need to try and raise some hell about who knows what.

Should be fun. If you are around this evening, join up in the channel and we’ll see what happens.

So now it’s your turn — please, please, please reach deep in your wallet and pull out whatever you can to donate to 826 CHI for my moustache. Like I say in the video, I know times are tough, but with a little ingenuity and/or dishonesty, we can all come up with a few bucks. The kids at 826 really deserve it.

And thanks — I’m not going to lie: there were some rough times with this moustache. It was itchy, at points it looked bad (random people I talked to would slowly smile for no reason as we progressed through the conversation), and there were a few times where I threatened to get rid of it right away. But it all paid off, and now I can tell my grandkids (and their potential grandmothers that I happen to meet at the bar) that I once won a contest for growing a moustache.

The Simpsons, Star Wars style
Live action Simpsons (this was an official intro, actually, done for one of the show’s season premieres, I believe)
The Simpsons intro in 3D (looks like a student work)
The Simpsons intro in Line Rider (only partially done, unfortunately)
The Simpsons intro, South Park style (obviously fanmade, but again, it combines all of the important parts)
The Simpsons intro in Lego
The Simpsons intro real-life (made by a bunch of students for a high school channel)
The Ridgeways (made for a family slideshow)

It’s interesting that the minute or so of animation can be so iconic, and that the jokes, even the ones that don’t change (every time, you wonder if the baby really is driving the car), can hold up so well and be so universal that they’re so skillfully and adeptly parodied even by amateurs (talented amateurs, sure, but amateurs nevertheless). Not to mention that the intro itself is really well done — in sixty seconds, we get a clear picture of all of the show’s major characters: Homer is a blue-collar worker who fails at his job, Bart is a troublemaker with street smarts, Lisa is too smart for her own good, Marge is a prototypical errand-running mother, and Maggie (the .5 of the average 2.5 children) can survive anything this family can throw at her.

The more official versions of the intro they make, the more characters are added to it (the HD version, above, has throwbacks to even small jokes in the show, including Mr. Sparkle and Tomacco in the checkout line, and Bart’s first girlfriend). But the central shots and beats remain the same, and as a result, we’ve got a touchstone of the culture.

So I’m playing Rock Band 2 the other day, as I often do, and I finally earned enough stars in the World Tour to open up something called The Endless Setlist 2 (so called because the first game also had an Endless Setlist). It’s where you play every single song in the game, back to back, all in one sitting. I have to say, I’m pretty darn good at Rock Band guitar (not so good at Rock Band drums, and don’t ever ask me to do vocals), and I think I could pull it off. So I twittered asking if I should do it and stream it live for charity, and the overwhelming answer was: yes.

So I will — on one condition. I’m asking you, dear readers, to raise $200 in the next few days. If I can get $200 donated into my account by Saturday evening, then this Sunday, February 15th, I will do the Endless Setlist 2. And I will stream it live over Ustream (and record it), so you at home can watch and chat with me the whole time.

$200 is nothing for that kind of entertainment. If everyone who reads this (and I know there are plenty of you — that shaving video got a sizeable amount of hits) gives $5, then only 40 people have to pay in. If everyone gives $10, then we only need 20 people. If everyone who looks at this gives the suggested donation of $20, then only 10 (ten!) people need to shell out in order for you to watch me rock Rock Band 2 live on Sunday.

ONLY YOU CAN BRING THE ROCK! Is what I am saying in that picture.

My moustache is super metal, so this will work out great. I will be attempting to play every song on Expert — I have never played for six hours straight (which is about how long it will take me to go through the 84 songs on the disc all in one sitting), but I am sure I can do it, especially if I am funded with your donations.

“But Mike,” you say, “what if we don’t get the $200 together in time?” Well unfortunately I likely won’t be streaming my attempt, but it’s not a total loss — you’re all still entered into the contest, which by then will be up to the $400 mark and have some very lovely prizes. And, oh yeah, you’ll be helping the kids at 826 CHI, which is probably better than me playing videogames or you winning an inflatable Frostmourne anyway.

But $200 is nothing when you put the power of the crowd to work — I have no doubt we’ll reach the goal fast and that you’ll be watching me rip it on that plastic guitar come Sunday. Please give now — I’ll update the blog here on Saturday with the plan if we make it. It should be rockin’! Throw up the horns!

Update: We did not, in point of fact, make it. Unfortunate. Have a good Sunday — I may do this anyway at some point, but not tomorrow.

This be the link you need to press to donate, and please give as much (or as little) as you can. We’re up past the $200 total (thanks to everyone who’s donated so far!), so there’s both a conversation with me and an original drawing by me in the prize pot that everyone who donates will be entered into. Of course, more money donated means more prizes — there’s some Blizzard stuff on the line and a dinner with me if the total gets big enough.

Please give — there’s only a little while left in the fundraising event, so don’t wait.

And I should mention that my moustache now has a life (and a Twitter account) of its own. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow mikesmoustache to get all of the up-to-date information about what my facial hair is up to at any given time. Seriously, I’m not in control of that account at all. I have no idea what’ll be posted there — it’s all up to my ’stache.

Thanks for reading, and thanks most of all for giving — the kids at 826 CHI (who I was just hanging out with earlier this morning — they say hi and that you look nice today) really appreciate it.

This year I’m running with the whole Obama vibe and making my moustache a much more interactive and Web 2.0 experience, so here’s another video I made showing the actual making of my ’stache. I know, I know it’s exciting stuff. And yes, it makes me look silly, but as I say in the video — I’m willing to give up my dignity if you’re willing to give up $20, or $10, or whatever you can give.

This is the 826 CHI homepage (and make sure you scroll down to “Mike S” — that’s me, and I can only win this thing if you give to my name), or you can click here to head right over to the Paypal page and give directly. Thank you for giving, and if you haven’t given yet, please do.

We’ve met the $100 goal, so everyone who gives has a chance to win a 30-minute conversation with me about whatever they want. If we can hit $200, I’ll be drawing that picture and sending the original art to another winner. At $300, the Blizzard swag comes into play, so if you know me from WoW Insider, you’ll want to get your guild all giving so we can reach that goal and you can have a chance at winning that. And so on as the donations stack up.

Thanks again! Stay tuned — hopefully I’ll have a better way of showing off the moustache. I’ve always been plagued in this contest by having light colored hair, so maybe it’s time to take the next step and put some dye into the mix?

I twittered about this song, and it got me thinking that I should have a music blog, where I can post music that I really like. Then I realized that I already have a blog, and that there was nothing wrong with me posting music on it. So here you go — this is actually a mashup of the Ting Tings song with some crazy kids show, but I like it anyway.

To donate: Click here, scroll down to “Mike S.” (that’s me) and click the Paypal button. Or just follow this link straight to Paypal.

So here’s the deal with the prizes: as the total given hits the number below, I’ll throw each one of these prizes into the pot. And at the end of the contest, everyone who gives has a chance to win them, one person per prize, randomly.

$100: I will call this winner or the person of the winner’s choice and have a nice 30-minute conversation about whatever they want to talk about.

$200: I will draw an original picture of whatever the winner wants (probably in crayon, though medium may be negotiable if you have an idea), and send it to them, signed.

$300: I will give the winner an official BlizzCon 2008 Blizzard Authenticator, plus some other WoW-related goodies. If you play World of Warcraft, you know how valuable these are, and if you don’t, they can easily be sold on eBay, making you back your donation (and maybe a little bit extra).

$400: I will use my considerable talents (!) to write 1000 words about whatever the winner wants. It can be an essay for school, a love letter for their loved one, a poem in their honor, or a summary of that day’s New York Times (so they can save time reading it themselves). Or whatever else they come up with.

$500: I will buy dinner for the winner in Chicago at the restaurant of their choice. If they want me there, I’ll go, otherwise I can purchase it for them and they can go with whomever they’d like.

And if the amount of donations goes up from there, I’ll add more prizes to the list. To reiterate: everyone who donates is eligible for all of these prizes, given that the total amount of donations reaches the amount stated above — if the total reaches $500, there will be five different prizes, and everyone who gives will have an equal chance at each one (though if you win one prize, it wouldn’t be fair to give you another one, now would it?).

But whether you give for greedy reasons (who wouldn’t want a picture drawn by me, right?) or for generous ones, please do give. Head on over to Paypal and give whatever you can (suggested donation is $20 — which, you might then realize, will keep your chances at 1/5 to win any of the prizes — but you can give whatever you want). And thanks!

Yes, it’s back. Even though I was not able to grow a terrific (or even respectable) moustache last year, I was able to raise a nice chunk of money for my good friends at 826 CHI (a writing center that I volunteer at here in Chicago), and so I’m back at it again this year, in their yearly fundraising and facial-hair growing enterprise. But just like our nation at large, I’ve made some changes, and I have a little more hope than last time around.

• I have decided to go all out with my facial hair. While I have never been able to grow a moustache (and last year’s attempt was no big surprise in that vein), I have always been able to grow some good sideburns, and so this year I’m going to just go all the way. I’m going for the full mutton chop. I have no reason to believe that this will be any more successful than the moustache itself, but I found last year that the more people who asked me what was up with my face, the more people I got to donate money, so I feel that this tactic will have more of an impression on those around me.
• I feel like I know more people this year. I have no numbers to back this up, but 2008 was a productive year for me, and surely someone noticed.
• Oh, and I’m resorting to bribery this year. If you give money to my account (by going to 826 CHI’s official page and clicking on the PayPal button under Mike S. — that’s me), you’ll be entered into a drawing to win an amazing prize. I’m not quite sure what this prize will be yet (I have quite a few things in mind, including some things that are very valuable), but I will let you know before the contest ends what it will be.
• Additionally, for every $100 I raise, I will add something to the pot of things you might win for donating to me in the Moustache-o-thon, and add one to the list of winners (so that as you can convince others to give, the odds don’t change — if $100 is donated in total, I will choose one winner from among all of the donators, if $200 is donated, two winners, if $1,000, ten winners, and so on). The prizes could be anything. Perhaps it will be something personal to me or created by me, or perhaps it will be something of great financial value. You never know. As we hit $100 totals, I will reveal the prizes, so start donating now.

Cheap ploy, you may say? So be it. But as you can see from last year’s picture, my moustache isn’t going to win me any contests, so I might as well raise some money. To donate, you can just click on the PayPal button under my picture, or send me a check if you’d like (you can email me for my address).

The first check-in is two weeks away, and I assure you that I am growing my facial hair as fast as I can. Every time there’s an update, I’ll post a picture here, and I’ll reveal as many prizes as have been unlocked. The more money you give, the more prizes there will be, and the more creative I’ll have to be with them, so feel free to start giving now. In two weeks, when I am updated with the current totals, I’ll let you know what they are and where we’re at. Wish me luck.

Top ten games of 2008

Castle Crashers
Despite the issues, this game is a perfect example of the type of original games that should be on services like XBLA: great production quality, easy to pick up and play, old-school feel outfitted with new-school aesthetic, and tons of replayability. It’s too bad the bugs dragged this one down, but even with the problems, it’s still a great game.

Banjo Kazooie
It’s not a platformer, only it is. There’s still tons of collectibles to be found, but instead of unlocking abilities, you unlock vehicle parts and get access to a Lego set that every kid has dreamed about for years. The platformer isn’t dead (and I do still hope to see an amazing next-gen platformer soon, though Mario Galaxy delivered on Nintendo’s side already), but it did take a nice drive around the countryside with this one.

Grand Theft Auto 4
Instead of growing the game outward, they grew it inward. It would be hard to top San Andreas for sheer scale and size, so they didn’t: instead, they went real, and put together the best reconstruction of a living, breathing modern city in any interactive experience.

Left 4 Dead
Perfect co-op. And boy did they nail the zombie asthetic, even while they pushed the mythology just enough to make it their own.

Rainbow 6: Vegas 2
The turn from slow strategy to cover-system action has worked very well for Rainbow Six, and spreading the multiplayer system out across the whole game (you can earn XP on your character no matter what mode you’re playing in) was a great decision that paid off very well. It’s too bad multiplayer matches seem to go too fast, but there’s endless fun to be had in t-hunting.

Wrath of the Lich King
Blizzard is just rocking it. No one else is even close to their level in terms of what they’re doing with MMOs and PC games right now. WoW was already a legendary game, but the ideas, technologies, and storylines they’re running in Northrend are just astounding.

Braid
A complete deconstruction of the Mario genre (and the myth in general). People remember it for the time warping, but it was much more than that — a moving, powerful story told not through cutscenes or text on the screen but through the actual gameplay itself. Brilliant from beginning to end.

You Have to Burn the Rope
Not all games have to or even should be hundreds of hours of epic gameplay. Sometimes all you should have to do is burn the rope, and then figure out what you’re going to do for the rest of your day.

Rolando
Rolando represents what’s possible on the iPhone – it looks great, plays great, sounds great, and uses the iPhone’s potential in a way almost none of the other games in the App Store has before. This is the first really serious original triple-A title on the iPhone. Here’s to many more.

Tatomic
But that doesn’t mean that all games need to be original and amazing on the iPhone. Sometimes you just need a quality falling-block game with a twist to pick up and play while waiting for the bus, and Tatomic serves that purpose very well.

Top ten movies of 2008
Disclaimer: I’m behind on movies, and I know it. So a lot of the films I really wanted to see this year (Doubt, My Name is Bruce, Frost/Nixon, Gran Torino, Synecdoche, New York) I haven’t actually seen yet. But I’m soldiering on anyway with ten that I really liked.

Tropic Thunder
If Ben Stiller stays in the silly comedy realm, this will likely end up being his best movie — he’s got Jack Black doing things we’d never seen him do before, he’s got a pitch-perfect skewering of a subject he knows very well, he’s got Robert Downey, Jr. in the best acting job in a comedy in years, and he’s got Tom Cruise — well I don’t know exactly what that was Tom Cruise was doing, but it was very enjoyable.

The Dark Knight
Duh. This is the Batman mythos at its core — trying to fight crazy criminals while walking the line of becoming a crazy criminal yourself — and it was supported by the scariest Joker I’ve ever seen. Including all of the Jokers in the comics. Plus, I’m in this one — when I get my hands on a Dark Knight DVD, I’ll do a post here and show you.

Iron Man
Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark was perfect casting, and it made for a great comic book movie. Gwyneth Paltrow also deserved a little more credit for this one — she was terrific in bringing the superhero nuttiness right back down to a more human level.

Wall-E
I didn’t actually like this one as much as everyone else — I still think The Incredibles is Pixar’s best film, and the themes of humanity growing fat and lazy in this one didn’t really resonate with me so much, because while most people equated the brilliant Buy-N-Large concept to Walmart, I saw some interesting parallels to Disney. But anyway, the film was still great, as beautiful as all Pixar films are, and EVE was one of the best characters of the year. Even if most of the movie was just Wall-E and EVE yelling each other’s names.

Rambo
You laugh, but Stallone has proven himself as a terrific director with last year’s Rocky and this movie, which is actually a lot smaller than it seems while you watch it. But that doesn’t matter — it moves fast, it’s fun to watch, and it gives you exactly what you want: John Rambo, a guy dealing with the knowledge that when you’re pushed, killing’s as easy as breathing. Bonus points for having Julie Benz, too — she was great on Angel, is awesome on Dexter, and is good in this one as well.

24: Redemption
Another laugher from you, probably — a TV movie likely doesn’t belong on this list. But I loved it — I’ve missed 24 for so long, it was great to see Jack back in action, even if the movie wasn’t that good. As a two hour preview for the show returning, it works great, and there was never a minute of this that I was bored or unhappy with what was happening. It was Jack, and he’s finally coming back.

Speed Racer
This probably isn’t worth watching again, but being that I was under some influences at the time, it was probably the most visceral visual experience I had this year. Brain off, eyes engadged, it was wild.

The Air I Breathe
Brendan Fraser, for all of his silly family comedies, is an extremely underrated actor. And this is probably the best job he’s done in a dramatic film yet. He needs more parts like this.

The Incredible Hulk
There seemed to be no coming back from Ang Lee’s version, but Edward Norton did his best, and Marvel pulled it off. Sure, it got silly at the end (though the effects were great anyway), but I think I rewound and watched that chopper crash three times over. That’s the way a big-screen Hulk should be.

Wanted
Don’t expect to care about the story — even James McAvoy can’t make what’s happening to him make sense. But Timur Bekmambetov took his NightWatch and DayWatch creativity with effects and brought them successfully into an American action movie. Angelina Jolie is nice eye candy, but the real charmer is the inventiveness that the action scenes bring with them. Everybody does guys jumping with akimbo pistols these days, but not everybody has them jumping across from one rooftop to the next (in Chicago, which amused me the whole movie, seeing places I go by every day), and then demolishing a whole crew of assassins. Great fun.

Top ten albums of 2008

Fleet Foxes “Fleet Foxes”
White Winter Hymnal is pretty much the best song of the year. That’s all I really have to say about this one – it’s on the top of everyone else’s lists, too. It’s great.

Bon Iver “For Emma, Forever Ago”
Ditto – not much you can say about this one that hasn’t been said. It’s simply crafted (supposedly by a guy by himself in the northern woods), and unbelievably beautiful.

Hold Steady “Stay Positive”
Quality American rock songs with a story behind them. The title track is a refreshing look at the future.

Girl Talk “Feed the Animals”
My one issue with Girl Talk is that he’s too schizo – instead of actually exploring the connections between the songs he samples, he moves way too fast from song to song to song. That’s part of the feat, I guess (playing “name this tune”), and the album sounds great. But I think if your thing is mashups, you have a responsibility to put something of yourself in there, and he really doesn’t.

Jonathan Coulton: Everything he’s done
He didn’t really release any of those amazing tunes this year (he’s been putting together great geek pop for years), but this was Coulton’s year: performing at PAX, showing up on The Daily Show, and riding the “Still Alive” wave to get his music in Rock Band and out to the bigger audience it deserves.

MGMT “Oracular Spectacular”
Album: 8. “Time to Pretend”: 11. Million.

Mountain Goats & Kaki King “Black Pear Tree”
Saw them live and they were both amazing. This EP is one of the most overlooked of the year. And if it wasn’t for a last-minute showing by the Mario Kart Love Song, their Thank You Mario tune would be the best Mario-related song of the year.

She & Him “Volume 1”
I thought this album came out last year, but no, I’ve only been crushing on Zooey Deschanel for most of 2008. She was so awesome on this album I’ve had all of her movies on Netflix (yes, even Flakes, ugh), and I watched most of Bones (ugh) hoping for a cameo. “Volume 1” means there’s more volumes to come, right? Please?

Weezer “Weezer” (a.k.a. The Red Album)
I’ve stuck with Weezer through thick and thin, even while my friends were making fun of me for still liking them (I’m still a fan of “Make Believe,” no matter what anyone says). And sure, this album had its weak spots (I couldn’t name any of the songs not written by Rivers), but “Pork ‘n’ Beans”? “Troublemaker”? And “Greatest Man that Ever Lived” is a classic. Still proud to be a Weezer fan.

Jem “Down to Earth”
Don’t you dare make a Holograms joke — Jemma Watson is rocking a great mix of trip-pop, and almost no one is noticing. Her first album, “Finally Woken,” had my favorite songs of 2003 on it, and this album follows up with just slightly fewer really great songs. But the title track and “It’s Amazing” make up for the lack for any low points.

I’m waiting for the snow to come to Chicago (we’re supposed to get like a foot overnight), and while I had hoped to write a blog post for you tonight, it’s just not happening. But in lieu of that, here’s an interview with me from a podcast called How I WoW (WoW being World of Warcraft, a videogame that I write about for WoW Insider).

I warn you (you being a person who’s interested in me and not necessarily in my work or videogames) that the talk gets nerdy at times, and there is a particularly obscure part about the WoW community, but in between all of that stuff, you can hear me talking fondly about the National Bowling Hall of Fame (which is a real place that I really do enjoy going), my first memories of videogames, and other philosophies I have about running communities and blogging in general.

I don’t know if you’re interested, but then again this is mikeschramm.com, so I assume that you came here to find out about me. So there you go.

And as I write this, the snow has descended on the Second City. I could see it coming — a fog over the rooftops from the south, first just hazy and then dotting out the rooftops with the white, cottony blanket. Even now I can see huge flakes of ice fall past my window down into the alley below, where a silent cover falls across the city like a blanket across a bed.

It’s pretty cool. Maybe I’ll go take some video and post it here later.

Just listened to the Thanksgiving episode of Sound Opinions, where they tore apart their biggest “music turkeys” of the year. They called out Weezer, which I guess I’m not cool for liking anymore (but I like them anyway), but otherwise the show was good. Here’s the top five games that disappointed me most this year. So far, I guess — it’s not over yet, is it?

5. Fallout 3

Ok yes, I’m putting it on the list. I thought the game was good and it is — there has never been a more real or complete apocalypse simulator. But other than that, it’s boring — there are long stretches of nothing to do, the NPCs are wooden and have the same problems that the 10 voices in Oblivion did, combat isn’t interesting (most of my fights devolve into me running back into cover shooting the enemies when they run up close, and then rinse and repeat), and I can’t even bring myself to finish it. I will — I’ll flip it down to easy and just do the main quest until I can see the end of the story. But what a disappointment — I didn’t like Oblivion because I thought it was too boring, and I thought Fallout 3’s setting and weapons would be different… but I was pretty much wrong. Disagree with me as you like. Mass Effect was a much, much better combat RPG.

4. Metroid Prime 3

This may have come out last year, but I picked it up this year, and boy was I disappointed. It was built up so much to me — the graphics were supposed to be the best Metroid yet, and the controls were supposed to be great (”best first-person shooter controls ever”, I was told). But I didn’t like it at all — the graphics were muddy and old and the controls felt like a novelty. I may not have given this one a fair look — I still plan to play it in the future — but very big disappointment.

3. Sonic Unleashed

Why did I ever believe things might be different. The next Sonic will come out next year, and again, they’ll say “we did it this time, guys! We returned to the formula! Things are better now! Welcome back to the sparkling blue Dreamcast days!” And we’ll probably all be suckered in to their promises again, only to find that they’ve still ignored what makes Sonic fun: going really fast.

2. Golden Axe: Beast Rider

I should have known better on this one, too. But it looked fun at E3. Tell me this doesn’t look like a game you’d want to play. And yet — it’s horrible. And I didn’t even plan to have Sega twice on this list.

1. Castle Crashers

This game was actually great — I played it, beat it, and enjoyed it. But man, they could not have screwed the pooch more on bugs and online breakdowns. Games were unplayable online — when they didn’t crash. And when they did crash, you lost all of the fun little collectibles which were the reason you were playing the game in the first place. And though all of that could have been fixed in a week with a solid patch, we’re still waiting on Behemoth or Microsoft, or whoever’s responsibility it is to fix this thing. I said that Castle Crashers might eventually be the best game on Xbox Live arcade, and I still think it might have been — if they didn’t colossally screw up the technical side. What a bummer.

I guess now I’ll have to do a top 5 games of the year list. I’ll get back to you soon.

I just read through Gedeon Maheux’s post on why Deep Space Nine is his favorite Star Trek series, and I couldn’t agree more — in fact, I’ve been thinking about the exact same thing. I’ve been catching some DS9 reruns on Spike lately (it’s right after the Ultimate Fighter, which I would never, ever watch on my own but which a friend has convinced me to follow), and for all the reasons Gedeon lists and more, it’s by far my favorite part of the Star Trek universe.

Truth be told, I’m a Star Wars man. I never was one for fleet captains and military designations and diplomacies, I’m much more a fan of the rough rider, rebel forces (and let’s be honest, racist) wild west in space kind of universe that Star Wars depicts. Of course, in the newer movies, it got deeper into the mythology and midichlorians and the Jedi Council, but let’s be honest, the real star of Star Wars is Han Solo. Sure, the Jedi and their Force are a big draw, but you can’t have an elegant weapon like the lightsaber without a universe full of clumsy blaster-wielding roughnecks on the run from Jabba the Hutt.

So yes, when it comes to sci-fi universes, Star Wars has my heart. But there’s no denying that Star Trek has some solid mythology, and for all of Star Wars’ sound and fury, it’s never been able to delve into the big questions like Star Trek has (and when Lucas has dared to try, he’s usually failed). I’d never wear a Starfleet uniform, even ironically (though I’ve owned toy Startroopers, a Darth Vader pez, and many, if not dozens of, lightsabers of various sizes and coolness), and I think the Vulcan ears are just cheesy (yes, even in the new movie’s trailer), but there’s no denying that the universe has some heft to it.

And never is it felt more than in the DS9 series. Gedeon’s post has lots of good points — Avery Brooks is extremely underrated as the main lead of a Star Trek series, as are all of the memorable (if not necessarily likeable) characters of the series, and the central theme of Star Trek as “man and his universe” has never been more apparent in every single scene as in DS9.

I once read (and I’m sorry that I don’t remember where) that there are two kinds of science fiction. One kind is like the original Star Trek series — the technologies dreamed of in the fiction are cutting-edge and used only by a select few. They’re experimental, and it’s the experimental fantasy that keeps us interested: movies like Alien, Back to the Future, and every other sci-fi movie where there’s a whole world of people who have no idea that these fantastic things are real. That kind of fiction is interesting, I guess: it’s a dream of the future, based on a premise of “so if we can do that now, will we be able to do this soon?”

But the second type is infinitely more fascinating to me. It’s where all of the technology dreamed about in the first kind is no longer experimental, it’s commonplace. Blade Runner, Fifth Element, and yes, Star Wars. Instead of a desperate spaceship captain activating an alien warp drive that might bend time, the alien warp drives are in every household coffeemaker, and instead our hero is a coffeemaker repairman. Instead of, say, an elite crew navigating the vast regions of space to boldly go, etc. etc., humanity lives and breathes out in space, and alien races that were once, ahem, alien to us, are instead working and living and fighting shoulder to shoulder with us.

Which also makes DS9 a series more relevant than ever these days, when our world is more “global” (whatever that means) than it has ever been, and we must learn either the hard way (or any way, really) that everyone we once as a culture thought alien, from homosexuals to terrorists, are really not that different from us at all. Star Trek’s other shows are about exploring outward, searching the stars, and going to new places. But DS9 is, in a much more interesting way, about searching inward, and figuring out just who we are and why we do the things we do.

Plus, Deep Space Nine and America are similar in another way now: we’ve both got a black guy in charge.

That there’s my new avatar on Xbox Live, which doesn’t really look like me, unless you count it as a much more cute and attractive version of me (and that’s not just me being humble — looking around my friends list, they’ve basically designed the avatar system with so few options that it’s kind of tough to make an un-cute and un-attractive avatar, so everyone ends up looking much better than they actually do in real life). In the NXE, which is the brand new firmware on the Xbox 360 — the little system that runs on the console when you’re not actually playing the games — that little avatar of mine runs around playing Uno, checking out the games my friends are in, and picking games for me to play next. It’s interesting — an obvious ripoff of Nintendo’s Mii system, although Microsoft has even upped it a notch by extending the metaphor not just in games, but in the system itself. Nintendo’s Miis never left their little Mii parade to join the rest of the UI, but Microsoft’s avatars are everywhere on the Xbox 360.

I would like more options, not necessarily in the way the avatar looks, but in terms of clothing. I hear they’re on the way — Microsoft says they’re aiming to double the amount of clothing available by next year, but I want special stuff — a Gears of War 2 t-shirt for beating that game, or a Master Chief helmet for finishing Halo 3 on Legendary. I want accessories — a Zune for my avatar to listen to (even though, sure, I’d want an iPod, but this is Microsoft we’re talking about), or an Xbox headset to wear when I’m in a game or chatting. I’d even love to see Microsoft get really crazy — a Kazooie pet to sit on my shoulder when I beat Banjo Kazooie 3, or a Zombie version of me from Left 4 Dead. Of course, this is only the beginning, but I hope they take this places it was never meant to go.

As for the rest of the UI, it’s a UI — it moves faster than the old one, which is definitely welcome, and I also like that rather than having to go back to the dashboard from the games, you can simply pull up the UI and read messages or dive into another game right away. I haven’t tried the Netflix features yet, but I plan to: I quit my subscription to Blockbuster just yesterday, because even the hint of streaming HD movies from my Xbox as part of a subscription has me drooling.

So yeah, I’m digging the update — there wasn’t really anything to miss about the old one, and it’s basically like getting a new console for free. Can’t argue with that. Can I get a different pose for my avatar’s picture, though? Who stands like that?

(Not to mention that when I did write something here, Twitter pushed it off the front page so fast that no one got to read it.)

So I’m dropping Twitter back down to its own little section (or you can follow me over there), and instead of depending on my Twitter updates to run my blog, I’ll go back to doing it myself.

My latest obsession is getting an HD video camera and making some short films. Time will tell whether this all passes before I shell out a few hundred bucks on a gadget I’ll probably never use again, but trust me when I say that just like you, I’m waiting with bated breath to see what might happen. In the meantime, I tried to be happy with the camera I have, and the video above is the result. Enjoy?