Posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 11:00 pm (7 Responses)
Some of you who know me (or follow my Twitter feed) know that I’m a big fan of video, computer and board games. My biggest love is the Nintendo DS, but I find myself playing any platform which falls into my hands, which includes my mobile phone, my computer and iPod.
I also like talking about games, and since I don’t get asked as often as I probably should, I figured to compile a short list of my top 5 all-time favorite computer and video games.
5. Peggle
Peggle from Popcap is probably one of the most fun and creative casual games I’ve ever played. What makes this pachinko/pinball oddity so much fun is the combination of light-hearted, random silly humor and a heavy dose of color and sound. This is not an easy combination to pull off with any game for audiences over the age of 8, so Popcap seem to have done a great job and bringing these together to form a great casual game.
4. Animal Crossing: Wild World
If you’d ask me which of the games on today’s market I find most creative, I’d probably answer with Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: Wild World. Set in a small town, Animal Crossing is full of inhabitants, sights and sounds. There’s plenty to do and a lot to see – with the game running through hours of the day, days of the week and seasons of the year in real time. I’ve been playing this game for over a year and have yet to become bored, especially with really enjoyable wi-fi play.
3. Total Distortion
If you haven’t heard of Pop Rocket’s Total Distortion, I don’t blame you – this game was little known and largely absent from the game shelves of the mid 1990s. I was 13 at the time, and this game was HUGE for me. Graphics which completely blew my mind (Myst? pfft.) and since I was just discovering my fascination with everything electric guitar, Total Distortion was a great pastime for misbehaving punk-rock pre-teenagers.
In the game, you’re a music video producer sent to shoot footage and direct videos in an alternate dimension (I swear, it made more sense back then). You need to battle your way through the depths of the “Distortion Dimension” to get the best and most rare footage in order to make enough money to send you back home. This was a great game for after school, until I figured out that I could cheat by running two saved games and passing video footage between them, thus minimizing the chances of me losing. It was fun while it lasted.
2. Mario Kart DS
Mario Kart is the iconic Nintendo racer, and there are almost as many iterations of Mario Kart for various Nintendo platforms then there are of Need for Speed, but Mario Kart DS was the first iteration that let people race each other over the internet. This is one of my favorites because of how much fun it always is, is easy to pick up and play and is one of those games which you can really make an evening out of. I love this game for how social it is, and how much fun it is to play together.
1. Day of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion II)
The one, the only – Day of the Tentacle. This is my favorite, all-time game, and it is as much fun to play today as it was when it came out in 1993. They don’t make games like this anymore; the creativity that went into the puzzles, the plot, the graphics and the story all made up an absolutely superb title from LucasArts and a game which blew away almost everything else at that time in terms of gameplay and engagement – not to mention imprinting itself in the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere.
Posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 11:35 pm (7 Responses)
I mentioned in my previous post that I stopped smoking a little while ago. This took a lot of courage; the change of lifestyle and fear of abruptly modifying long-standing habits is mighty intimidating. This is not an issue to be taken lightly – I’ve been smoking for my entire young adult life and did not remember what it was like not to smoke on a regular basis. The “habit of not smoking” was something attributed to my pre-teenage years. Yes, I’ve been smoking for that long. 10 cigarettes a day. A quick calculation brings up that I’ve smoked about 43,800 cigarettes. I’m writing this post to perhaps inspire others to stop smoking as well – hopefully the conclusions I have come to regarding smoking and the part it has taken in my life up until this point will strike a chord with those who feel similar .
The recurring question which I’ve been asked in the past few weeks has been “Why did you stop?“, from both smokers and non-smokers alike. My response to this, largely, was that it wasn’t stopping which required a reason or justification. I’d assume that one normally seeks reasons to forcefully justify something which otherwise would be considered a bad idea. I could not find one (one!) viable or justifiable reason to continue smoking, so I stopped. It’s not about why I stopped – it’s about why I’m not continuing.
I continued smoking for as long as I did, despite the health concerns, out of two reasons: enjoyment (disillusion) and habit (fear). I’ll break these down and explain both.
Enjoyment (disillusion)
Even after all these years of smoking, it was conceptually simple for me to realize that this enjoyment was, like a lot of other things are, chemicals in the brain. Once I understand that this “enjoyment” is linked to my body’s dependancy on nicotine, everything changes. “Do I do it because I like it or do I do it because my addiction to a drug is making me believe I like it?”. Those of you who know me are aware of how mortally afraid I am of chemicals which alter my behavior. I don’t just steer clear of class-A drugs; I drink very little alcohol and stay completely away from marijuana. The moment I realized that Nicotine was tricking me and altering my behavior to make me believe that something so horrifically damaging was “enjoyable”, I made the decision to stop smoking. There is no genuine enjoyment in smoking, only the feeling of relief which is achieved when a craving for a drug is satisfied. Nicotine is an addictive drug which controls you – NOT the other way around.
Habit (fear)
The habit of smoking is, for me, much stronger than the actual addiction to the drug. I picked up my first cigarette when I was 15 and started smoking more or less regularly when I was 16. Being 27, this means that I have been smoking so far for my entire adult life. There are no adult experiences I have gone though which hadn’t involved cigarettes in some way, shape or form. Relieving stress from work, going to coffee shops, having deep conversations – all of these involved cigarettes as a part of routine. Never lighting another cigarette means finding new ways of experiencing my day-to-day – and this is scary stuff, especially for people like me who enjoy the comfort of routine living (I look at it as “practice makes perfect”).
The way for me to deal with this issue was to identify these “habit” cigarettes and tackle them directly weeks before actually quitting smoking altogether. Weeks before I had completely stopped, I made a mental list of the cigarettes that weren’t “craving based” but “habit based”, and cut them slowly out of my routine. That cigarette on the way to work, that 2nd cigarette with a cup of coffee, that cigarette before bed – out. Cutting these out of my routine early helped me concentrate on dealing with the physical cravings after smoking that last cigarette, instead of trying to completely rebuild my life at the same time.
I think that the act of smoking as a nonsensical act really crystalized in my mind the moment I really realized that there was no real reason to smoke. There were truly no benefits to smoking – not one. The decision to not light another cigarette put me back in control and opened up my future to more than it would have otherwise been, both from a personal standpoint and in regards to my health.
I haven’t lit a cigarette in two weeks. Here’s what’s changed:
My sense of smell has improved
My face looks better, brighter
I can breathe deeper
There’s more money in my wallet
I smell nicer
My migraines are fewer, weaker
I don’t have to air out the house before having guests
I don’t have to air out the house after having guests
I have proven to myself that *I* call the shots
Gosh, I’m just more fun to be around! Who wants a hug?
But oh, does it hurt.
I can’t get away from this issue without mentioning withdrawal. This is an issue which is easy to forget in writing because I’m too ecstatic about quitting to bother remembering to mention how hard it is to actually do.
At the end of the second week, I’m not feeling as bad as I initially did – but the first few days were extremely difficult. I was feverish, irritable, was having trouble concentrating at work, suffered from headaches, nausea, abdominal pain and insomnia. Most of these problems have at this point subsided, however I am still waking up several times a night. This too shall pass.
I think that what helped me to not relapse during this phase of withdrawal was the understanding that I was exercising my right to be in control. Looking at other smokers and saying “gosh, I bet this person would have liked to be able to quit like I have.” instead of “hmm, I’d like a cigarette too”. As a matter of fact, I actually did the exact opposite of what all those quit-smoking articles suggest – I changed nothing about my surroundings, I continued to hang out with the exact same folks in social situations in which I used to smoke, I continued to take “smoke breaks” with co-workers (!!!) but did not smoke during them. Smoking is not something that they “get to do” and “I don’t” because I quit. Smoking is not a prize or a reward. There is no logic in saying “I deserve a cigarette” after completing a difficult or stressful task. This is like saying “I did something I am very proud of, therefor I will now go ahead and poison myself”
It all became considerably easier once I understood that I didn’t really want to smoke. Everything else pretty much followed.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post.
If you’re thinking of kicking the smoking habit, this book which you can read online may be a source of inspiration for you. It was for me. Good Luck!
Posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 7:20 pm (3 Responses)
First of all, apologies for not blogging very much lately. Since I last posted, I’ve been on vacation back home in Israel, I stopped smoking and received a copy of Peggle DS which has subsequently melted my brain.
Posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 12:10 am (7 Responses)
One of the things I could never really wrap my head around was the complete and total failure of moblogging as a platform and as idea. Moblogs had a (very) short renaissance period in 2003 when camera phones made their mainstream debut (yes, it was only 6 years ago) and carriers were heavily pushing MMS. There were a few problems back then – MMS to email was extremely expensive and users were heavily restricted by the types of content they could upload – moblogs never really caught on in the way blogging did – even though they probably should have.
The rules of the game are slightly different today. Data is cheap(er), most mobile phones can send emails without the use of MMS and 3rd-party software to upload photos and videos are a dime a dozen. The “moblog crowd”, however, has moved on, and mobile bloggers have long been posting to Twitter from their mobiles as a means of getting their content published on the go. Twitter is excellent for getting mobile content pushed immediately to the masses – especially with Twitpic and Qik added to the mix. But the question remains – how can the model of the standard moblog evolve into a truly useful (and flexible) mobile blogging platform, especially when we share different types of mobile content on different platforms and networks?
I revisited Tumblr today, and realized that, if set up correctly, it could be a wonderful tool for creating a mobile timeline blog, aggregating my published mobile content from throughout the day. Tumblr is a blogging platform for Tumblogs, which wikipedia describes as:
“a variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary.“
One of the great things about Tumblr specifically, is that is allows one to set up the service to pull posts from other services via RSS. This is great – because it means that you don’t have to change much of your current behavior in order to set up a moblog with Tumblr. I post articles to Delicious bookmarks on my mobile via Viigo and upload photos to Flickr from my mobile via the Flickr Uploader for Blackberry. All that’s left, really, is to pull all of these together and mash them up.
Hippocamp Software provide a great (and free) Blackberry client for Tumblr, which allows you to post text, links and images to your Tumblog directly from your Blackberry. You don’t have to do this though – if you’re using the Flickr Uploader for Blackberry (or Shozu for most mobile phones, or Nokia Share Online), you can assign a special tag to your uploaded Flickr/Picasa photos (I chose “mobileupload”) and instruct Tumblr to automatically “pull” these tagged photos into your Tumblog, where they will be ordered by date taken. If you use Viigo (Blackberry / Windows mobile), you can easily post articles from your favorite websites to your Delicious bookmarks. If you give these links a special tag (like “mobilelink”), Tumblr can fetch these, too. If video is your thing, Tumblr can fetch your Qik videos, too.
The result is a timeline of links, text snippets and photos you’ve posted throughout the day on your mobile phone. It may not be as immediate as Twitter – but that’s not the point. The point is to document a timeline of you outside, out and about on your mobile. It’s incredibly easy, requires minimal setup, and if you’re posting links, videos and photos via your mobile anyway – this method brings everything together into a streamlined format for your friends and family to enjoy.
Posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 1:58 am (No Responses)
I know Hanukkah is over, but browsing through my flickr feed I came across this snapshot I took, and couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t posted it.
This “Festive Candle” was up for sale at Nook’s in Animal Crossing DS over Hanukkah. Yeah, I know it’s a Menorah, not a Hanukkia.
Maybe I should have saved this for next year… but then I’d miss this wonderful chance to share my massive GEEK CRED with you. At least it’s better than that Hanukkah video I did in December.
I mentioned in 
One of the things I could never really wrap my head around was the complete and total failure of 
