Technical Difficulties

New MC Frontalot Site

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 15:31:00 -0400

Maybe you knew, maybe you didn't, but for the last few months, I've been helping to program MC Frontalot's new website. In any case, the site went live today, so if you wanna go check out some of my work, feel free. Or go visit it because the site in now home to a bunch of sweet content and MC Frontalot is totally rockin'. Either way. I worked on the mp3/lyrics pages, the voting system, the OSB page, and various other things here and there.

The site's more or less stable, but definitely not in its final version. There'll be updates and changes to the design and implementation alot in the forseeable future, so feel free to keep checking it out as a work in progress. Hopefully we'll manage to catch up to all this Web 2.0 and AJAX craziness at some point.

And since I'm sure someone's gonna ask later, my generic online handle is OrionsGlory.

Oh, Right. I Have a Blog. And Mel Gibson Hates Jews.

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 23:22:16 -0400

Yeah, haven't posted much recently, mainly because my life is sort of nuts right now. I've spent, in the past two weeks, somewhere in the vicinity of 10 hours both at home and awake. Don�t worry, I'll get back to bitching about right wing politicians and linking to niche-appeal articles about game design soon enough.

For now, I just want to share this really great editorial I found about the whole Mel Gibson Hates Jews thing. I've always been in the "Celebrities�' Lives Are Not Headline News" camp, and I think this article makes some really great points about the implications of the reaction to this incident about our culture.

One More Reason Why I Love VV

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:38:29 -0400

From my inbox:

From: Jessica Lott
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 3:25 PM
To: vv-east
Subject: Re: [East] corn snake looking for a home

Have you considered a plane?

-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse Booth
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 3:13 PM
To: vv-east
Subject: [East] corn snake looking for a home

I have a red and orange striped corn snake I'm looking to find a home for. She's a little over a year old and not too big.

To see a snake that looks similar to her, see the pic here:

http://www.cornsnake.net/gallery/stam10aa.jpg

If you are interested or have further questions, let me know.

Jesse

Holy Crap!

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 13:56:32 -0400

This might very well be the most incredible thing I've ever heard. This guy started with a red paperclip and traded it for an item, which he traded for another item, etc, all the way up until he got a goddamned house. Other trades include speaking role in a movie and a recording contract. Go look at the trades he went through over about a year. Freakin' crazy.

Link would be proud.

Edit: Various Links of Similar Whereabouts

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:33:30 -0400

So, yeah, video games. I've had these stashed for a while, but have been too busy to post them.

There's this interview the EA's chief creative officer, Bing Gordon (if that's his real name, I'm thoroughly amused). Regardless, while most of the interview is pretty interesting, I wanna point out this one line:

"I think our industry's greatest challenge is to transition from technology-based to creativity-based experiences. In other words, we should all become like Miyamoto!"

Oh, okay--- Wait, what? I'm sorry, did EA just say that we should be focusing on creative a better gameplay experience rather than pushing technology to give better graphics? EA? Are you kidding? The company that has routinely stifled innovation for the sake of license pandering and having the highest polygon count? Nintendo announces a motion sensitive controller and suddenly the games industry is about creative game experiences? Can I stop writing this entire paragraph in questions?

Various Links of Similar Whereabouts

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:32:40 -0400

So, yeah, video games. I've had these stashed for a while, but have been too busy to post them.

There's this interview the EA's chief creative officer, Bing Gordon (if that's his real name, I'm thoroughly amused). Regardless, while most of the interview is pretty interesting, I wanna point out this one line:

"I think our industry’s greatest challenge is to transition from technology-based to creativity-based experiences. In other words, we should all become like Miyamoto!"

Oh, okay--- Wait, what? I'm sorry, did EA just say that we should be focusing on creative a better gameplay experience rather than pushing technology to give better graphics? EA? Are you kidding? The company that has routinely stifled innovation for the sake of license pandering and having the highest polygon count? Nintendo announces a motion sensitive controller and suddenly the games industry is about creative game experiences? Can I stop writing this entire paragraph in questions?

Delicious

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 00:08:17 -0400

We got a new snack machine in our kitchen.

If You're Tired of DRM...

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:58:20 -0400

Here's a chance to do something about it! Defective by Design, those guys who protest Apple and other DRM vendors with Hazmat suits, are going to be putting up RIAA execs' phone numbers and are asking for people to call them and tell them what they think of DRM. Here's the BoingBoing story on it, here's the link to sign up to get the phone numbers. I'll be participating. As I've mentioned before, I'm highly uncomfortable with the idea of only leasing my media instead of owning it. I think that if I actually manage to get through to one of these execs, it'll be a very interesting conversation.

Edit: Like, iTunes Sucks

I.Stolarsky@gmail.com (Igor) — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 20:54:46 -0400

Apparently, Weird Al gets much less from selling an album on iTunes than from selling one in the store. Yet another reason for me to hate iTunes past the fact that you don't actually own what you pay for and what you paid for isn't even the full quality audio.

Also, I completely support the campaign to stop saying "like". Yes, I'm guilty of it. But I'd rather not be.