Day: July 21, 2006

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Between the lines

In case you’re sitting around bored this weekend, here’s an interview with a book designer who isn’t Chip Kidd.

Here’s a blog post by Dylan Horrocks (a.k.a. one of the finest cartoonists alive and an all-around swell guy who let me crash at his home in New Zealand a few years ago) on science and art.

And here’s the introduction to a new book on Leo Strauss. I found it pretty interesting, especially when it went into the east coast vs. west coast Straussians’ rivalry. It really heated up when they popped Biggie, that’s for sure.

I hope your weekend is exciting enough that you don’t read all this stuff.

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!rebmiT

During the summer, my office is only open from 8am to 1pm on Fridays. It’s nice of the owner of the company to give us that early start to the weekend. Since Amy doesn’t get out early from her job, I usually take the extra Friday hours to get a bunch of errands done.

Today’s errand-circuit took me to Home Despot (Remington 3.5 HP electric chainsaw), the local Lukoil (a quart of motor oil), and Chik-Fil-A (the grilled chicken combo with the waffle fries is All That).

Then, fortified with Chik Courage, I set to work slicing up the tree last seen lying across my driveway:

Well, first I warned my neighbors across the street, “If you hear the chainsaw stop, followed by a wet thud, give 911 a call, then come over and try to find any limbs or fingers of mine that are still in the driveway. If you could pack them in ice, I’d really appreciate it.”

We all laughed nervously.

It turned out fine, given that it was the first time I’ve ever used a chainsaw (yeah, I wore work gloves and protective glasses), but there was one kickback that almost severed my right leg. And that taught me not to crouch down to the same level that I was cutting.

The glorious results?

Some of the pieces I cut it down to were a litte too large, so my back is sore as heck from hefting them up into the wheelbarrow, but the big work is all done. (I swept up after taking that pic; I’m such a blog-tard.)

Let the weekend begin!

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Free Market Dance Dance

BizWeek offers an essay on how failed videogame platforms are good for the business:

Of course, whereas a market leader’s role is to provide stability, there is a difference between stability and stasis. Ideally, the “big guy”, whoever it is, must represent the basic ideals of the medium as it currently stands; the moment it no longer provides that representational force, the entire industry begins to shift on its foundation. People grow restless, lose interest because videogames no longer “speak” to them. Intuitively, new users won’t be attracted by an industry that doesn’t seem in touch with where it’s going or where it is now. Sales slump; everyone blames everyone else, and the industry just becomes all the more conservative because if it doesn’t know where the draft is coming from it’s best just to wear a coat to work, leading the spiral ever downward until someone steps out of the crowd and realigns the industry with its principles, creating a new status quo — as Nintendo did twenty years ago, as Sega kind of tried to do five years later, as Nintendo’s trying to do again today.

The thing is, by nature the most vital area of the game industry lies not so much the mechanics of the upper echelon of the industry – rather, it rests below the radar of your typical analyst, in the dark, greatly loved yet poorly exposed corners of the market. Though by popular definition you might well call them failures, without your Sega Saturns, your Atari Jaguars, your Amigas and GameCubes and NeoGeo Pocket Colors, the industry would be an autocracy, governed by a single dictate — indeed, one of limited perspective and shallow, if broad, concern for growth.

For the record, official VM buddy Sang & I played the heck out of the NBA 2K2 game on the Sega DreamCast.