joshleejosh.com.
At last, the quest to wrest control of my name from all those dead senators, financial analysts, and random college students begins! Today, a game of ego-Concentration, tomorrow the top of Google.
Today’s walk.
Walking up the wrong face of Grand View Park. Logs were placed here to step the trail, but inattention and erosion have pushed them around, forming terraces out of which flowers grow, and the path now running alongside this impromptu garden is just sand and loose rock. The path glitters in the sun (it’s 1:00 PM). Some of the shine is silica in the sand and stone; most of it is glass from broken beer bottles. Parks are imagined as a respite from the city that surrounds them, but the city always finds its way in.
Grand View Park is basically grass and trees grown over a sand dune, which is piled up over a big rock, which sticks out of the top of a hill. The view for which the park is named shows off the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the ocean. For some reason, I have to climb up to a spot like this to remind myself that San Francisco is enveloped by water on three sides. The city covers itself so thoroughly that it becomes easy to imagine the whole world as buildings with a sprinkling of parks, and that the only water to be had comes out of a tap. Sometimes you get lost wandering around the park and forget that you’re surrounded by the city; sometimes you get lost wandering around the city and forget that you’re surrounded by more.
links for 2009-07-02
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'For the inner East Bay to grow the way it should, it will have to overcome the region's well-developed not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) sensibilities… There is a growing realization that no-growth activists have to step back and look at the bigger picture…. If you live in an urban area, you can't call yourself an "environmentalist" and continue to act like a NIMBY by blocking new housing.'
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'a techno-crutch for the chronically indecisive'
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'If you're going to come here, even if it's only for a year, you should make the most of it. And to do that… you need to embrace what's unique about it.'
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wut?
Recent Entries
Slow games: Flower Garden.
There’s very little negative feedback if you don’t play perfectly; flowers wilt if you under- or over-water them, but they never die, and it only takes a single successful watering to get them back to a bright and happy state.
Plants vs. Zombies and GemCraft Chapter 0.
Tower defense games aren’t the sort of game that’s going to change the world and usher in a new age of interactive art and beauty; they are uncut, repetitive, lower-brain fun of the worst variety, in the pernicious tradition of Minesweeper, Solitare, Bejeweled, and their ilk. Good times!
Twitter-based social games.
In the last couple of days, I’ve seen two different Twitter-based games percolate through the stream that act a lot like the more Facebookish variety of social gam.
Soon. Now?
I swear, as God is my witness, that I will start posting to this weblog again if it kills me. And yes, I still call it a weblog. Get off my lawn!
GDC 2009: Bogost, Daglow.
Two different perspectives on perspectives in games.
GDC 2009: Experimental Gameplay Sessions, Lazzaro.
The miracle of those games is how natural the mechanics seem once you recover from the initial shock.
GDC 2009: Game Studies Download.
We live in an age in which it’s easy to share information without having to wait for conference proceedings or recordings. So instead of a bunch of sloppy notes, here’s the actual scoop from the session.
GDC 2009: Microtalks.
Each speaker had 5:20 to give their talk, illustrated by an auto-advancing slide show of no more than 20 slides.