Archive for the 'Asides' Category

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Contrasting Review Philosophies

Posted by Zubon on April 30, 2011 in Asides. 4 Comments

Gamespot 2007: fire reviewer for trashing a game that was advertising heavily on the site. (Side note: 6/10 theoretically looks like “somewhat above average,” but that is really a 6 on a scale from 7 to 9. To get a 2, the game would need to physically damage your console with harmonic resonance, and even then a small ad buy could get you at least a 5.)

The Onion 2011: Dylan Dog gets a D+ rating while basically paying for the site for the month. As I type this, the main Onion AV Club page is running 4 ads for Dylan Dog at once. I don’t know what that does for their advertising revenue, but that sounds like buying a chunk of credibility. (Sadly, I rarely find the AV Club reviews helpful. A post on using reviews productively is coming up.)

: Zubon

Sinker

Posted by Zubon on April 1, 2011 in Asides. 9 Comments

Lightning strikes twice! Less than twelve hours after mentioning last year’s pranks, the New York Times has actually published… You know what? I’m not going to spoil the punchline. I will just refer you to Ted Frank.

I mean, sure, he was involved in lawsuits about Grand Theft Auto (you read that right, 5 years over “Hot Coffee”) and NVIDIA, so he sounds like a guy who would be a good source. Ignore the date, cut-and-paste, it’s news!

: Zubon

Follow the links if you are having trouble getting past the paywall. Spoilers allowed in the comments.

Hook, Line

Posted by Zubon on March 31, 2011 in Asides. 5 Comments

Tomorrow is one of the internet’s favorite holidays. I recall my first year in Asheron’s Call, when a fansite mentioned a bug granting a Darktide (FFA PvP server) character a GM flag that effectively gave him godmode. Last year, some friend sites were part of a small conspiracy that was re-blogged at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal after they made up a controversy that was “too good to check” before publishing. Curse that 24/7 news cycle. One hopes that a combination of caution and the new paywall will prevent embarrassment this year.

Read safely this Friday. Consider the comments on this post open for linking your favorite jokes and pranks of the year. Unfortunately, Poe’s Law applies generally: no matter how absurd your joke, we can find apparently sincere examples that are worse. Exaggeration is hard these days.

: Zubon

Step 4 Is Essential

Posted by Zubon on March 27, 2011 in Asides and General. 4 Comments

The game was updated!

  1. Ask question.
  2. Get answer.
  3. Reject answer.
  4. Take victory lap

: Zubon
repurposed from a friend’s Twitter

About

Posted by Zubon on March 13, 2011 in Asides. 9 Comments

This is Ethic’s site. Because I have the most posts, my name is above his on the list to the right, so I am the one who gets many of the e-mails from people who want to pay us $2/month to post flash ads for their casinos. But if you look at our traffic, we are mostly Ravious’s Guild Wars 2 news site.

: Zubon

Wrong Context

Posted by Zubon on February 3, 2011 in Asides and World of Warcraft. 6 Comments

All yesterday, I kept seeing headlines about like “Blizzard Cancels Hundreds of Flights Across the Midwest” and how many people Blizzard was forcing to stay at home. WoW has really gone mainstream. Was there a patch or something? I also heard about crashes and such, so maybe it did not go well.

: Zubon

Forward the Future

Posted by Zubon on January 20, 2011 in Asides. 4 Comments

The amazing thing about the modern day is not that computers can play Jeopardy against human opponents, in real time using natural language recognition (although not voice recognition?). The amazing thing is that the second comment on it is “Eh, not so impressive.” Because here in the future, we just assume computers do that kind of thing.

: Zubon

Blogger Habit or Too Much Time in Academia?

Posted by Zubon on January 15, 2011 in Asides. 11 Comments

I provide citations in conversations. If I could speak in hypertext, I would. Most people find this odd.

I once read of a language (possibly fictional) where the grammatical structure demanded that you state the source of your claim. For example, every declarative sentence would start with something like “I once read of…” or “I was thinking…” If this is a fictional language, we need to make it.

: Zubon

Scheduling and Potential Apologies

Posted by Zubon on January 1, 2011 in Asides. Closed

In a very unusual turn of events, I will be offline for most of the next two weeks. In fact, I am already there, having scheduled posts for my absence. I will apologize now if any of them turn out to be really inappropriate due to events that had not happened when I scheduled them. Nice boat.

I have the last of the Cognitive Surplus quotes scheduled. Also apologies to Clay Shirky and his publishers if I have gone beyond fair use. There are lots of good ideas to discuss here. I presume I am helping business more than hurting it, but that’s your call if you want me to take posts down. (The potential irony is noted, yes.)

: Zubon

Annual Safe Driving PSA

Posted by Zubon on December 31, 2010 in Asides. 3 Comments

I am heading to my usual weekend-long New Year’s LAN party, and while I may no longer work for the state traffic safety office, I want to remind you to drive safely wherever you may be celebrating.

The worst time for alcohol-involved traffic crashes is midnight to 4am on January 1. Having a sober driver is a given, but I recommend celebrating somewhere you can sleep. As you know from your PUGs, you are not the problem, that other guy is, and that other driver lost count after the fourth tequila. Do not be between him and the tree. In case he missed the tree, watch for him in the morning. Your body processes about 1 drink per hour, so many people will be waking up still drunk.

If you are transporting alcohol to or from a party, put it in your trunk. There will be extra police out. You do not want questions about open container laws, and anything with a broken seal is “open.”

And if you are staying home, remember: don’t drink and tank.

: Zubon