I think the reason many of my older blogs never really went anywhere is they lacked focus, however surprisingly when I had the original pixeldiary up the hit count was quite high, I guess back then every man and his dog didn't have a blog and smaller blogs didn't get lost in the sea of commercialism and celebrity blogs.
At any rate this is my statement of intent for this new iteration of my blog and guidelines for my own posting, I've kept it down to 5 rules but I may change them later as the blog evolves or changes focus.
Original content only (ideally): The only way to offer something of value is to create something new, rather than just regurgitate and reblog existing content.
If it's not original, the comment needs to be: If I do end up reblogging something I will make sure my comments and insights are at least original or necessary, rather than just saying "here's something I found on the internet you've seen 1, 000, 000 times before.
A picture is worth 1000 words: This has always been a focus of pixeldiary, in the days of text only blogging I always tried to have some kind of picture/design/illustration. I will try to add pictures but more specifically add my own rather than raid google images.
Try to keep content interesting: I'm definitely guilty of just ranting on blogger. This time around I want to keep things interesting, relevant and worthwhile reading.
Not sure about this right now, it's still in rough draft.
This is an interesting case study of two people who went from being a bit dorky (sorry guys) to incredibly stylish (maybe a little bit of weight loss but I don't think you'd call either of them fat in the before photos). I guess it goes to show that a good haircut and better clothes makes an incredible difference. Some people really do get better with age.
For the uninitiated Allison Mosshart is the singer from "The Kills" and "The Dead Weather" and
Jonathan Ive is the senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple and is largely responsible for the design of their iconic products. There is no connection between them (that I know of), I just thought they were both interesting case studies.
I have noticed this meme floating around the internets lately, I've seen them done for musicians and artists but none for designers. Last night I sought to rectify that.
I couldn't really think of an adequate one for "what my friends think I do", I have just found that most of my friends/acquaintances seem to think I design games/game characters for some reason.
Yesterday I was really down about being knocked back for another job and being unemployed. But then I realised if I had a job I wouldn't be outside in the fresh air skating along the beautiful Brisbane river. I felt free and happy to be alive.
The photo really doesn't do it justice, for a little city Brisbane scrubs up real nice.
I've been wanting to write this article for a while, it's an interesting phenomenon when you "discover" an artist on youtube, play that song repeatedly then excitedly download the album expecting the album version to be even better.
I'm not quite sure why these tracks are better than their album counterparts, personally I think some artists lose a certain quality that is captured in live performances, or perhaps the songs are refined over time after their initial studio recording.
1. Kimbra - Two way street
This track is really quite beautiful - lyrically and musically. It has nice harmonies with the backing vocals (yes the backup singers/musicians are all men). It's quite strange that the album version feels flat and overproduced, and doesn't really capture the unique quality of Kimbra's voice and the instrumentals of the song.
Live Version
Studio Version
2. Ratatat - Seventeen Years
I never really liked this song much until I heard the live version, I found it a bit too synthy, no offence to Ratatat as they are an amazing band but I definitely prefer the music they've done that uses more guitar riffs. For that very reason I really love this live version and think it really has a quality that is lost on the album version. The raw power chords really make it something special and give it a quality that is really lost on the album version which has more of a synthesised guitar/keyboard sound. The video quality is bad but it definitely has the best audio.
Live Version
Studio Version
So there you have it, 2 live versions of songs that are better than their album counterparts. I'm sure there are more I could have added to this list but those were the best examples that came to mind.
A while ago I took my Mum out to lunch at this Japanese burger place called "Mos Burger". It's in Sunnybank the unofficial Chinatown suburb of Brisbane.
Apparently you have to keep the burgers in the wrapper otherwise everything falls out, as this illustration demonstrates.
The staff were really friendly, one of the young guys working there even helped out an intellectually disabled woman who was wandering around confused outside the restaurant.
I wouldn't say the burgers were anything special, they were fairly average fast food fare, they were very cheap though. Also the Ice tea was excellent.
Just got some threadless shirts in the mail. One thing I have to say is the quality has gone down a bit and is a bit hit and miss now (but hey they were only 10 bucks each).
I would still 100% recommend threadless but I think consumers should be aware they are a bit hit and miss and the quality has slipped a bit nowadays, perhaps its just due to them producing higher volumes of shirts.
How did you feel when you woke up - disoriented and wondering where my girlfriend and room was but then realised I had stayed the night at my parents place
What did you have for breakfast - Bacon, eggs and fried tomato, thanks mum
What did you have for lunch - Lamb Kebab
What did you have for dinner - Lamb chops, mmm la-a-a-a-a-amb.
Did you workout/exercise, how was it. if not why - I dug some holes to help mum plant some trees
What interesting people did you meet today? Didn't really meet anyone new today What did you talk about? - N/A
What did you do today that was ill advised - Broke the garden hose by accident and got annoyed at being knocked back for a job
What was the best music you heard all day - The Skrillex theme song to the new Syndicate game, sadly
What was the best moment of the day - Breakfast and having a coffee overlooking the rainforest at my parents place
Word of the day - Cat Bird
What did you learn today - Don't get angry when things don't work out and it seems helpless, but allow yourself to be pissed off about it for a little bit then let it go, move on and learn what you can from the experience.
I never really considered myself a gamer. In fact I didn't realise the title existed until a few years ago. Perhaps I was in denial of all the years of pissing away my youth playing games on my Sega Master System, Super Nintendo, 486, Pentium and PS2.
I think with the exception of a few childhood obsessions up until recently I'm what most gamers would refer to as a "casual" gamer, merely dipping my toe into the realm of games. I think before I bought my Xbox 360 my PS2 and Wii just sat gathering dust and gaming quite frankly just didn't seem worth the time.
I was overseas for about a year backpacking and probably played games a grand total of twice while away, so when I found my forgotten Xbox 360 at home still in storage I went on a bit of a gaming binge, finding myself unemployed for a few months didn't help as I had a lot of time on my hands.
In 2 months of unemployment I played through Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect 1 and 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Gears of War 2. There were probably times where I'd spend an entire day playing games, something I can't really remember doing since my childhood. When I finally got a job I remembered spending sleepless nights playing Left4Dead and Fallout 3.
6 months later my gaming library has exploded from about 4 titles to 20+. It may not sound like much, but I played pretty much all of those games all the way through sometimes multiple times. I feel as though the world of gaming has opened up a little and I'm more aware of it than I was before. I'm still not really a core gamer and still use my Xbox 360, although mostly for financial reasons and I'm considering going PC at some stage. I think I fall somewhere between casual and core gamer, intermediate if you will.
However as the world of gaming opened up and the light was shone on amazing new games I never knew existed, the cracks in the current state of gaming started to show.
So here are the 3 things I really hate about modern gaming:
1. Console wars are still raging
Console wars are generally stupid and reading the comments of fan boys is much like watching monkeys flinging their own feces at each other. When I bought into the console market my decision was primarily a financial one, as nowadays with the exception of Nintendo consoles have the same games with the same graphics.
If you look at the video below without looking at which screenshot belongs to which you'll notice something...
The PS3 and XBOX 360 are almost exactly the freaking same.
With the exception of sharper textures on the 360 you would really not know the difference unless you were looking for it. Which blows my mind when people still try to deride you for choosing the 360.
2. Special editions and DLC
Ok so maybe I'm getting old and nostalgic for an era where the game was released, you bought that game and that was that. They might release a game of the year edition with some new maps and content a few months or a year later.
These days they release "special" editions with all the stuff you'd expect in a special edition, but simultaneously with a "regular" edition at the initial release date. Think about that for a minute, the game has already been developed, all the content is there yet it is intentionally witheld to try to get you to buy the ultimate 1337 N3rd Edition which has the 5 "extra" guns, the pink jumpsuit and the "extra" mission where you save zombie Jesus from the aliens. I'm sure the development of this content is in the overall budget and development of the game.
To put it another way this is basically like releasing a movie a the cinemas and an extra "special edition" simultaneously for an extra $20 with extra scenes and multiple endings. Seem retarded? that's because it is...
Developing something and deliberately witholding it to squeeze a few more bucks out of consumers is not the same as a "bonus" or "extra".
3. PC games still haven't gotten their shit together
I'm a fan of consoles, not because I like playing games on my TV with a controller, but rather because I just like playing games opposed to dicking around downloading patches, constantly upgrading my graphics card and using hacks and workarounds to get games to work (and screaming at my computer when they didn't).
The sheer lack of user friendliness in the history of PC gaming is probably what put me off it in the first place. My amazement is that in this day and age things have actually gotten worse. Games will be released poorly tested, only to have patches and updates released days later. The philosophy of development nowadays seems to be build it and let the user beta test it for you so you can fix it along the way.
Annoyingly this trend has creeped into console gaming too, but on the whole it is a much more pleasant experience, just let us play the freaking game.
So there you have it, my long winded musings on the current state of gaming. Some of these points borrow liberally from www.cracked.com articles, shit I even stole the format, but I felt my frustrations needed to be vented.
