I’m by no means a serious gamer — with kids and a busy job and such, free-time comes at a premium. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t get seriously blown away occasionally by the craziness that is the gaming industry, as well as the increasingly amazing art direction. And beyond the actual games, even the whole ad/trailer space has somehow gotten really interesting and short-film-like in the last little while. And yes, the opportunity cost of watching some good trailers is way lower than that of staying up all night playing an actual game. The Xbox360 crowd, especially, has some really great ads. Couple highlights for the folks who live without game culture…

Kind of a classic at this point, here’s a game ad, for a shooter no less, that’s really more of a mood piece. Its all about the music, obviously, but someone over at the ad agency (McCann-Erickson San Francisco) had a pretty inspired idea here — focus on the game, yeah, but in a totally new way. Gears of War is the game.

Another interesting ad, though this time more of an interesting urban set piece with absolutely no connection to video games whatsoever. A good ad nonetheless.

And lastly, a trailer for Bioshock (which doesn’t appear to be at all suitable for playing with my toddler). Holy cow.

So, um, go out and buy yourself some video games and waste a bunch of time. Just tell yourself its “art”.

Ok, I realize Flight of the Conchords isn’t exactly a secret, but if you haven’t seen them, they’re funny. And I wanted to share that. Folk parody duo, I guess you’d call them. They have a show on HBO, too. Here’s a song. “Business Time”.

Ok so obviousy the VA Tech thing is not the most uplifting story in the world.  I heard the head of the ENGR dept, Dr. Ishwar Puri, on NPR yesterday though, and thought I’d share.  Interesting interview.  Check out Morning Edition for a listen.

So the suburbs have their advantages, and I guess I live close enough to DC proper (about 2 miles) that it still feels sort of metro-like. I miss NYC, but at least my kids can go to a good school and play on some grass without having to ride the subway for 20 minutes first. Anyway, this morning we went to the Clemyjontri park, which is basically the biggest, most structurally-accomplished park I have ever seen (check out the pic). It’s total craziness, I’m always afraid someone is going to kidnap my children. The suburbs are rubbing off on me I guess, starting to develop irrational fear of, well, everything.

On the way, I took a slight wrong turn, and somehow ended up in a “restricted government facility”. We got the whole treatment — pull over by the orange barrels after driving around all the cement barriers, talk to the police, etc. They eventually let us turn around and go to the park, but it was kind of weird. My wife thinks I look like a terrorist so she was stressed out. I guess the two toddlers in the back seat convinced them that we were harmless. My theory is that there are alien corpses stored there. Or that it’s the “undisclosed location”. Anyway, a little adventure for a Saturday morning.

Then we got home and I went to get a new propane tank for our grill.

Ah, modern American life.

Ok so I was in Starbucks this morning. I know, that in and of itself is sort of embarrassing, but there’s one right near my house and the “independent” place nearby is too full of hipster attitude. The hipster attitude is annoying in Williamsburg; in the suburbs it is downright upsetting. Anyway, I had the pleasure of seeing a whole cardboard display dedicated to (Sir) Paul McCartney’s new album, Memory Almost Full. Though the fact that the title is mildly computer-related is about 5% amusing, I can’t even begin to describe my depression on hearing snippets of it through the Starbucks PA, seeing the “limited edition” Paul McCartney Starbucks gift card, thinking again of his annoying ex-wife (you know, the one with the leg issue), and generally just remarking to myself on how much of a Beatles fan I am and how much I hate Paul McCartney’s pathetic solo career. It’s doubly depressing these days because I am well aware there are plenty of kids who have never had the joy of getting a real Beatles intro.

Anyway, not much to say here other than that I really really really hate his reincarnated version, and I wish he would just go retire somewhere and give it up. For all the kids that don’t know, the Let It Be remaster is a pretty rockin intro.

Let’s pause for a brief celebration of great industrial design.  I have a 2002 Jetta.  It’s an ok car in general, a V6 with a manual transmission so it’s pretty fun to drive, but it’s nowhere near my wife’s 2000 Accord in terms of overall robustness, build quality, etc.  The one thing that is totally awesome, however, is the way the windows work.  You know, those glass things that are on the doors that you look out of.  Two killer features:

• On both front side windows, you can press the switch once in either direction until it “clicks” to cause the window to go up or down all the way automatically.  That’s right folks, not only to open them all the way (which my Honda does), but to close them as well.  I’ve never tried the experiment of putting my arm in there to see how much pressure it takes to reverse them, but I imagine it wouldn’t chop it off.  This is exceedingly useful for tollbooths (those old school kind with no EZ-Pass), drive-throughs, needing to give someone the finger, etc. 
• After you shut the car off and remove the key, you still have the ability to control the windows until you open the door.  This is awesome for things like cracking them when parking in the heat, closing a window you accidentally left open, etc.

In any case, just wanted to take a moment to recognize the substantial accomplishment of the windows subsystem team at VW.  Good show.  Who the hell needs auto-parallel-parking Lexi anyway.

Ok it’s late, so I admit it. I like lolcats. Well, maybe except for that all-too-ubiquitous Twitter-down one. Maybe I don’t like them as much as the good old days of all your base, but still, lolcats are good as far as memes go. Incidentally, I am also I huge fan of making custom t-shirts for my kids to wear (and annoy their mother), favorite sources are cafepress and neighborhoodies. So, naturally, I decided to make my very own lolcat and put it on a t-shirt for my 15 -month-old. That’s what any other self-respecting parent would do, right? Just put the order in, here’s what’s going on the front:

I’m pretty bad at graphics, so no great shakes, but I am confident that it will contribute to the already high regard in which I am held amongst the other parents at the playground.

P.S. cheers to that phenom of the week, those cheeseburger folks.

Ok, so I’ve had a blog about 15 times over the last several years. The cycle goes something like this:

1. I decide it’s time to start blogging (again), so I set one up somewhere
2. I write vigorously for a few weeks, each post wittier and more compelling than the last
3. I realize that I have other stuff to do, so I start doing that other stuff, and blogging less
4. I get depressed about not being a real blogger and kill the install
5. I think of something I want to write about a few weeks later, but alas, have no vehicle

So, the great conclusion this time around is that I can set up a blog and, lo and behold, post something when I feel like it. Is anyone going to read it every day? No, but I’ll get some stuff out there for posterity and do my part to participate in the user-generated content revolution (isn’t that thing over yet?).

Hope it’s not a complete waste for you, humble reader.