Top 10 Favorite Things About 2006

You gotta love a New Year.

Even better than a New Year, you gotta love stealing tired old ideas for blog post topics.

This list is pretty simple: these are my favorite things from 2006. They come from a variety of categories with no real connection, rhyme, or reason. They may be things, they may events, or they may have just made me laugh.

10 - Dwarf Fortress

The fine blog Dubious Quality was where I first heard of this little game back in September. At first I didn't pay it much mind, but in December I finally reinstalled XP for the sole purpose of giving this game a whirl.

Holy. Crap.

Never you mind that the graphics are borderline pukeworthy. Once you get over the craptacular ASCII, you realize that the focus in this game has been all about *gasp* gameplay. Trying to summarize this game is nigh impossible due to its incredible complexity, but at the basest level the game is about trying to keep a bunch of dwarves alive through harsh winters, attacks from various beasts, and even personal emotional crises.

The whole thing is still in an alpha stage, which is absurd for how polished the game actually is. I encourage you to download the game (it's free) and take it for a spin. You'll definitely want to look over some of the wiki for some tips on starting out... the game and interface can be overwhelming at first, but I promise you it's worth it. If my endorsement doesn't persuade you (and why would it really?), I encourage you to read some of these stories from player experiences in the game in the Dubious Quality archives (or just search for "Your Dwarf Fortress Stories").

How does this little game make the top 10? Because it is everything that mainstream gaming isn't right now (with the possible exception of Nintendo). It is gameplay focused, ambitious, and is willing to believe that graphics should be secondary to complex, detailed gameplay.

9 - 10,000 Days

Being a Tool fan, this was an easy one. By far my favorite album of the year (with the Decemberist's Crane Wife coming in second), Tool went to strange new places on this one, to the chagrin of more than a few folks.

But I like it when a band isn't afraid to try something new. Besides, at its core, 10,000 Days is still Tool: the melodies and lyrics are still complex, the songs still challenging, and the song lengths epic. Yay!

8 - Guitar Hero

Had I actually received my copy of Guitar Hero for the Playstation 2 sooner (technically I got this just after New Year's) this may have ranked higher. In fact, an argument could be made this shouldn't be on the list.

But the game is just too damn fun to leave off. No matter how silly you might think it is to buy a controller for the sole purpose of playing one game (in this case two if you have the sequel), once you try this game you will find it hard to stop.

There is something unbelievably satisfying for a schlub like me who cannot play a real guitar at all to rip through "Sweet Child of Mine", even on a video game. The whole experience is incredibly immersing: from the sound of the crowd responding to how well (or how poorly) you are playing, to the "Star Power" game mechanic, which gives you bonus points when you hold the guitar vertically like a rock icon, the thing really makes you feel like you're the real deal.

Plus it's just hilarious to watch other people play it.

7 - The Departed

The best movie I saw this year was Martin Scorsese's Departed. It was nice to see him get back to formula that has always worked for him: foul language + violence + gangs + ass kickings = good cinema entertainment.

When I heard Scorsese was doing a remake of Infernal Affairs, I thought it would be okay (since that movie was just okay). I was wrong. The Departed is like a rabid, snarling pit bull let off the chain running amok in Williams & Sonoma.

6 - Dems Take Congress

I tend to sit on the liberal side of the fence on social issues while leaning towards the conservative side on economics, but in the end I like it best when government is split.

It just seems to me that things run a whole lot more smoothly in situations like these because it is harder to pass crummy laws that only a few people actually want. The checks and balances work best when no one party has all the power.

I have no illusions that anybody will get much done in the next couple of years before the next Presidential election, but I actually prefer deadlock to insane laws like the Patriot Act.

5 - Quitting World of Warcraft

Let me preface this by saying, AGAIN: I did not write "The View From the Top".

My own story of quitting WoW was much more tame than Andy's now (in)famous guest post.

I started playing Warcraft when Julie (my fiance, then girlfriend) was studying for the bar. Having recently moved to Delaware, this left me with some free time, and a buddy persuaded me to try out WoW to do some gaming with him.

The whole thing got a little out of control. I played the game constantly and found myself thinking about it all the time. I persuaded other people (Andy included) to try the game out. I didn't even mind anymore that I was barely able to see Julie... the game was just so damn fun.

Long story short, Julie passed the bar. And I was still playing the game. In the end a number of factors combined to result in my quitting. Primary among them was getting to spend time with Julie again, which made me want to play the game less. When you are level 60 and play the game less, you fall behind your friends and guildmates, who are able to get better gear/stronger characters. It wasn't long before I was basically left in the dust and the decision became pretty easy.

Since quitting Warcraft though, with that newly acquired time I have lost 40 pounds (which was not due to WoW, although I'm sure it didn't help) and participated in NaNoWriMo, successfully writing 50,000+ words of a novel.

I still play games and still love them. The novel isn't done, and I still slack off when I go home. But quitting WoW freed up the ability to do a host of other things (some useful to personal growth, some just other ways of slacking off) that I wasn't able to do while playing and keeping pace with my guildmates.

I don't hate WoW. But I like doing all the other stuff instead.

4 - Nintendo DS

Which transitions us nicely to another time waster: the Nintendo DS. This thing made me completely rethink what was possible on a handheld platform. The games like Brain Age and New Super Mario Bros. are clever and can be played in small doses. Games like Final Fantasy III and Castlevania can waste hours of your time.

Altogether the unique methods of input (writing with the pen and actually talking to the thing in particular) make this thing second to none. The PSP has better graphics capabilities, but it was the DS that made me realize once and for all that graphics are really at the point where they should be a non factor when we are talking about games. What the DS provides is a great platform to try some new ideas (Elite Beat Agents, anyone?) and get designers out of the FPS/RPG/RTS rut.

3 - Prince of Nothing

If you haven't heard of this trilogy by R. Scott Bakker, do yourself a favor and at least check out the first book, The Darkness That Comes Before.

If you don't like it, stop right there. If you do, pick up the next two because the books get progressively better, unlike certain other series.

I didn't pick up the first book until the end of last year, but this series makes the 2006 list because the final book of the trilogy, The Thousandfold Thought, was released in February.

In my personal opinion, this series is even better than George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. A lot of folks will disagree with that due to some of the hurdles in Prince of Nothing (I initially had a lot of trouble keeping the complex names straight), but those who stick with it I think will find it very rewarding and above all, quite original.

2 - iMac

At the beginning of the year I bought the Intel iMac, my first Apple computer.

At the risk of sounding like a frenzied fanboy, it has completely changed the way I think about my home computer.

I'm not a Windows or a Microsoft hater. In fact, Microsoft platforms are part of the reason I have a job in the first place.

But the whole Mac experience is different in so many subtle ways that it is sometimes hard to explain to the average PC user why it is better.

The whole thing is just so seamless, simple, intuitive... and damned if it doesn't all just work the way you'd expect. Is there anything the average user needs that a Mac can do that a PC can't? I can't really think of anything.

But it's like the difference between driving my Hyundai Accent and a BMW. My car will get you from point A to point B (well, probably). But the BMW will make you enjoy it.

1 - Getting Engaged

Yeah, I know, cheesy.

But if this didn't rank number one, I think I'd have to reevaluate a lot more than this silly list.

Seriously though, how could I not be excited about marrying a great girl like Jules?

If 2007 is even half as good as 2006, I'll be in damn good shape. Here's hoping that 2007 brings all of you happiness and prosperity.

The New Mob Rule

One of the impressive things about the current age of technology we're in is how quickly information can get around.

One of the even more impressive things is how quickly misinformation can get around.

Let's look at examples of both.

First, let's take a look at an article on Digg today. For those of you who don't know, digg is an extremely popular "social bookmarking" site. People can submit stories and also vote for (or "digg") other stories that they find interesting. An algorithm on the site determines which are the most popular (I assume via some function of how quickly an article receives diggs and the number of those diggs, but I don't know the details) and puts them on the "front page". When an article makes the front page, the site in question gets absolutely hammered with visitors, because a lot of casual users like myself only browse the front page to visit interesting things.

Today featured an article about a small town Snohomish. The citizens of Snohomish love their high school football team. Even more, they love the tradition of firing off their cannon before football games and after touchdowns.

Well, unfortunately a student got badly hurt by the cannon some time ago. A member of the high school ROTC, the student was part of the team that fired off the cannon, and it exploded, almost taking off his leg. At one point it looked like they were going to have to amputate his leg entirely.

Based on the article, it looks like the kid didn't get a lot of sympathy from the town. In fact, he actually got threats.

It would appear that, afraid they might lose the tradition of firing off the cannon due to safety concerns, the town went a little nuts. Some folks threatened to "blow off his other leg", and a collection to help pay the steep medical bills (including putting a titanium rod in his injured leg) yielded a sum of $200, nearly all of that coming from other schools.

Enter digg. Once the article got on the front page, the enterprising commentors discovered the school's football website. An innocent poll there asks visitors how many games they plan to attend.

So far over 100,000 (and rising fast) have replied "none".

Will any of this do any good? Who knows. Is the article biased? Probably. I would've liked to have seen more reaction from kids in his class.

But is it funny to see that many people (along with, I'm sure, more than a couple of scripts doing the voting) visit a little homegrown school website and express their displeasure through a pointless poll? Yes.

Second, let's talk about internet hoaxes. If you have an email account (that should include one or two of you), you know that people love to circulate chain letters containing erroneous information. These may include a gent from Nigeria claiming he wants to send you money. These may include people encouraging you to buy a junk stock.

They also may include completely falsified rewritings of history for the purpose of a political agenda. An example of this would be the Oliver North "testimony" which claims that Ollie identified Osama Bin Laden as "the most evil person alive".

Osama Bin Laden is evil. I'm not disputing that. But what is easily disputable is the testimony. The blasted thing was circulated so much that the US Senate even thought to include a refutation of the entire thing on their website.

But that's the internet for you. Perhaps for better or worse, the internet allows us to see "news" now already filtered through the lenses we prefer. There are plenty of bloggers and "news" websites out there that will tailor to your political views, whatever they may be. That's nice because it is often pleasant to read things that we already agree with.

But it's a heck of a lot more challenging... and more important... to read points of view we don't agree with. And as more and more people turn to these alternative news sources (and for the love of all that is holy, chain emails should never be considered "news"), the responsibility falls on us to do our fact checking.

Frankly, that's not something at which people have proven particularly proficient.

Update: It appears the poll has been taken down. Too bad, I would've liked to see just how high the count got.

Update 2: It should be noted that Fark.com was on this story first. Credit where credit is due.

Lessons Learned Losing

Back in June, I posted the story of my dodgeball team and our Cinderella run to the finals after a regular season filled with losing.

I still proudly display my medal at work.

My fiance and I decided to join dodgeball again for the Winter season (that's right, there are actually multiple seasons of this thing), but due to scheduling conflicts we had to join a different team this time around.

Our former team (Average Jay's Gym) went on to completely dominate the competition all season long.

Our new team (The Hurlers) won just one game.

I wasn't particularly concerned. After all, in the previous season with Average Jay's, we only won two games before going on our improbable streak to the finals. Every team makes the playoffs, so really the only point of the regular season is to determine seeding. The important thing was to get everybody some time on the court, and we'd get better every week. Right?

Well, not exactly. Last night our team got absolutely pounded in round one of the playoffs (by a team named "The Chins of Chuck Norris", no less). We got shut out 4 games to zilch.

As for me, my dodgeball technique actually regressed this season. I think I lasted a total of 30 seconds in the games I played last night.

What's the point of all this? Simple. Failing teaches you things. When you do something you're good at, you don't tend to learn much from the experience. It's only when you do things that fall outside your comfort zone that you really learn. In fact, you learn a lot more about a person when they lose... especially if that person is you.

In fact, I think there's something rather strange about a person who is only interested in winning. That type of person is unlikely to participate in activities where they perceive they have a weakness, and that means that they stop developing at a certain point in their lives. They put an artificial cap on themselves and their realm of experience.

I am not a talented athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I know it might be hard to believe, but writing code for a living doesn't translate well to activities that require a great deal of physicality.

But for the past few years (largely due to my fiance's influence), I've tried out things like flag football, dodgeball, and hopefully basketball in the near future. I'm actually playing racquetball tonight with a fellow from the team.

It should make for good comedy. But you can't be afraid to get a beatdown once in awhile. You can't be afraid to lose. Because once you are afraid of failing, you stop learning.

In the link above about the old dodgeball team, there is a quote:

If it wasn't for failure, we wouldn't have succeeded.
- Lucas Hellmer

I don't think that's always true. There are a lot of talented people out there that are just good at certain things. But if they don't try things they might not be good at, they'll never realize their full potential.

So I encourage you to get out there and try something you've never tried. Better yet, do something you know you're not good at. You'll learn from the experience... even if all you learn is that a dodgeball to the face doesn't leave a mark (unless you consider shame a mark), that's something.

50,000 Words Later

Although I already outlined a lot of my thoughts about this process in a previous post, I figured I'd add a couple more things now that I've reached the finish line of NaNoWriMo.

I've experienced a few distinct phases since uploading my work and receiving my winner's certificate.

Phase One was elation. I mean seriously, I have never written so much fiction in so little time at any other point in my life. That includes school. For some of the veterans of this event, 50k is nothing. They go into the hundred thousands on their word counts. But for a schlub like me, there were definitely times I didn't think I'd make it. If you look at my progress during the course of the month, you can see that I came tearing out of the gate with 10k in five days, but things really took a nosedive in the middle of the month. Initially, when I had lots of outline, I looked forward to coming home and fleshing out those ideas. But it didn't take long for the outline to run out (I'd guess around the 8th of November: note the four day gap), and that was when things really got interesting. I knew where I wanted the story to go, but without the safety net of the outline, it became harder to know just what I should write on a given day.

Phase Two was relief. Now I can finally relax, I thought to myself. Now when I come home I can sit down and fire up a game or the TV without any guilt whatsoever! And speaking of games, my moratorium on video games can finally come to an end!

Phase Three was realization. Even at 50k, my novel isn't done. In fact, realistically I'll probably need another 20-25k words to finish a full first draft of the thing. The ending isn't written yet, and damn it, I want to know what happens.

Finally, Phase Four: resolve. The moratorium must stand. December must be treated just like November. If I don't get this thing done now, I'll never get it done. I've proven to myself I can write 50,000 words in a month.

Now I need to prove to myself I can finish.

So Final Fantasy XII will have to wait.

And you know what? I'm okay with that.

I Did It

I'll write something more informative here tomorrow, but right now I'm just going to go to sleep and enjoy it.

The Halfway Point

Last night I reached 25k words in my attempt to reach the finish line of NaNoWriMo. The entire experience has been eye opening on a number of levels, and I've learned (or relearned) a couple of things.

The first and most obvious lesson is something I knew already, but had forgotten over the past couple of years: writing is hard. Back in college, I used to wait until a couple of hours before any given deadline and crank out the requisite number of pages at that time. This resulted in pretty good grades (when I actually handed the paper in), and deadlines tended to spice up what was otherwise a pretty dull activity. I can distinctly remember one time writing the first word of a 20 page final paper 4 hours before the deadline, and getting it done with a half hour to spare.

For some reason, that kind of "academic" (the quotes are extremely intentional) writing came pretty easily to me. Most times I didn't take it seriously because, quite frankly, I didn't find it that difficult to throw up a smokescreen analysis wrapped up in pretty language for the purposes of getting a decent grade.

However, I once took a poetry writing class and the experience was entirely different. It was a lot more difficult to BS my way through things. This might sound strange, because poetry is such a subjective thing... surely I could've just spit out some free verse and handed it in and passed. But for some reason I took it a lot more seriously. When writing in "academic" tones, I was just arguing for argument's sake. When writing poetry, it was a lot more personal. What I wrote said something about me.

So it is with fiction, I suppose. When I started this I didn't think 1667 words per night would be that difficult. It is. I've had to let go of making things perfect, and just write. I always knew that writing was difficult: whether or not I like John Grisham or Tom Clancy, I've always respected that they have the discipline necessary to sit down and engage in the act of writing.

The second lesson I've learned applies to a broader scope than just writing. When someone hears I'm writing a novel during the month of November, the thing I most often hear is: "I wish I had time to do that."

Now, some of those people are definitely busy. I have no clue how people with kids and a full time job are capable of doing NaNoWriMo (although there are plenty that are if you read the forums). But there are just as many people that easily have the time. They've just chosen not to prioritize it.

I think this applies to things like working out, reading books, or just about anything. People love to say "I'd go to the gym, but I don't have time."

Bunk. You've got time, you just haven't prioritized going to the gym above other things. I'm guilty of this myself. I haven't been to the gym consistently since high school. But it's not because I "don't have time." It's because I'm lazy. It's about that simple.

I can understand prioritizing things like family and stuff ahead of writing a novel, going to the gym, or learning to ride a unicycle. But any time you sit down to watch TV or play a video game, you've got time to do something else.

This is not an indictment of playing video games or watching TV. Those things are relaxing, and relaxation is important to a healthy and balanced lifestyle. But I will say this: since November 1st, I have had to force myself to watch less TV and play fewer video games because I've prioritized this over those other things.

Third and final, I'll share something from one of the NaNoWriMo FAQS:

If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Novel writing is mostly a "one day" event. As in "One day, I'd like to write a novel." Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists.

This goes back to point two about "making time", but we all know that not all novelists are great "artists" whose work will stand the test of time. They're just people who had the discipline to sit down and get done what almost everybody says they'll do "one day".

Perhaps the reason some people who style themselves artists don't have that much respect for "popular" authors is because they seem to believe that they could do what they do "if they had time".

To them, I say this: make time.

Football, Baseball, and Novels

Keeping the thread of personal responsibility alive for at least one more post but switching the lens from gaming to sports, I'm going to talk for a moment about Shawne Merriman.

Those of you who know me know that I love baseball. For the past couple years that has meant trying to sort out the steroid issue and how it factors in to the "purity" or "history" of the game. The conclusion I eventually came to is that there really isn't such a thing as "pure" professional sports anyway, because when that much money is involved, some folks are going to do what they can to get an extra edge. If injecting yourself with steroids means you might be able to squeeze one or two more home runs out of a year or one or two more innings out of your arm, that difference can mean millions of dollars on your paycheck.

Call it what you will, but it is a tempting proposition.

Baseball has been the face of the steroids in sports discussion for the past few years now. Somehow, football has completely flown under the radar.

Those of you who know me know that I'm not a big NFL fan. So I'm clearly biased in this. But Shawn Merriman's positive steroid test and his subsequent excuses smack of good old fashioned BS to me.

Maybe it's not. It's possible he's telling the truth and he really is the "victim" of an overly harsh drug testing policy.

But if he is a "victim" for taking something on the banned list of substances: isn't it pretty clear that he or his trainer just flat out screwed up?

Bored at Life has a nice writeup on just this.

Now, getting back to the important stuff for a moment (namely me). As I mentioned previously (but before the World of Warcraft firestorm), this year I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month. Like many others I'm sure, I've talked about "someday" writing a novel many times, but never actually done it. The goal of this event is to crank out 50,000 words in the month of November.

Just before November 1, I almost threw a giant Molotov cocktail into that plan. Final Fantasy XII was released.

I admit, I almost bagged the entire thing to go out and buy this game. I knew if I did it, I would never, ever, reach the goal of 50,000 words because I'd be playing the damn game every day for at least a month.

So I held off, and promised myself I'd get it on December 1.

Pathetic? Yeah, probably. After all the talk of "addictive behavior" and the "wasted time" flying around here, it would've been pretty funny if I had bagged an attempt at writing a novel for a video game.

Then again, an argument was made in some of the comments that there is no intrinsic difference between spending time writing a novel and playing a video game. Maybe they're right.

I just know that for me personally, buying the video game would've been the easy way out.

5000 words and counting.