#entertainment
12 posts tagged entertainment. All tags
My Ambilight, My Obsession, My Curse
A long, rambling dump of a year's worth of obsessing over my DIY ambilight: every way people build them, why none of them do what I actually want, and the 4k HDCP wall I keep hitting. No TL;DR, sorry.
Donnie Darko - An Interpretation
My chapter-by-chapter reading of Donnie Darko through The Philosophy of Time Travel, arguing it is straight science fiction about tangent universes, not the emo psychological thriller everyone treats it as. Spoilers throughout.
Features! But its got a compass!
Why does the iPhone need a compass, and why did Ralphie need one in his BB gun? A cynical look at feature creep and how useless add-ons are usually the exact thing that makes us buy something.
Leadership in Gaming
Leading a World of Warcraft raiding guild sounds silly, but recruiting, setting rules, distributing loot, and keeping 25 people happy is real management practice. Here is what running one taught me about leadership.
Blogging: What I have learned
My 50th post, so a look back at what writing a barely-trafficked blog has taught me: keep a schedule, do not get discouraged, stay short, and ask whether anyone but your mom would actually read this.
No Girls Allowed!
Why a lot of top World of Warcraft guilds explicitly ban women, and why I don't think it's really sexism so much as raid leaders dodging drama. With a case study from my own guild that drove me and my girlfriend to quit.
I shall name my first born son "Violence"
On the parade of absurd celebrity baby names and the ones New Zealand actually banned, like Sex Fruit and Talula Does the Hula. I think the names are ridiculous, but I am not convinced the courts should get a say.
Science is Racist
A Dallas commissioner took offense at the phrase black hole and called it racist. I walk through his examples one by one, where the etymology actually came from, and where I think he was just stretching.
iPhone Madness
Buying an iPhone 3G on launch day, the three-hour line, and the activation mess that killed two phones when I tried to port numbers. My defense for picking one up, since it was cheaper than the GPS unit I wanted anyway.
Groupthink: Digg, oh how I hate thee.
How Digg went from my favorite site to one I can barely stand. A breakdown of the groupthink that rules the front page, complete with my cynical scoring system for what guarantees a story gets promoted.
Go play a real guitar...
Everyone asks why I do not just play a real instrument instead of Guitar Hero. My answer: gaming is a waste of time, but so is everything else you do after work, and the plastic guitar is no sillier than a plastic steering wheel.
Anyone wanna watch some Metal Gear?
Metal Gear Solid 4 has so many cut scenes that my friend and I started asking each other if we wanted to go watch some Metal Gear. Somehow it still made me believe in the PS3.