Back to San Diego...

I'm back early!

If you can believe it, I was laid off from a summer internship. My colleague (and fellow Austinite) Will Leverett wrote up the situation, and I think most of us would agree with his assessment. The product was seriously flawed, and the transatlantic offices were almost inevitably suspicious of one another, but by and large, we all liked the people we directly worked with.  

The last days at the office, after the layoff bomb had been dropped, were somewhat cathartic. People had stressed for weeks or months over the future of their jobs. But now, at least, they knew the deal, and could move forward. Spirits were surprisingly raised. Former employees back in Colorado are still meeting up for margaritas at lunch and spending afternoons on LinkedIn collecting contacts and recommendations.

I, for one, was able to come back to California, a place I missed more than I thought. During my eight weeks in Boulder, I learned that I took a hell of a lot of things for granted here, including the weather, the location, the local culture, a whole lot of food, and the people. The California atmosphere in general, if you will. Boulder's a beautiful place - and I should take a second to thank my generous Colorado hosts - but I felt in my heart that I wouldn't be happy there long-term. The drive across western Colorado, however, finally sold me on the state, and I'm looking forward to the day when I can spend Christmas snowboarding in Vail. 

I've been back for five days now, and it just feels right. I've gotten to go running at the park, I've laid by the pool, I've slept in my own bed, cooked in my own kitchen, seen a few awesome people, gone out in LA's Little Tokyo, and of course, eaten at Tajima. Things here are just as I've made them over the last year, and that's intensely satisfying. 

You may notice I don't sound too distressed about losing my job. I'm not. For an internship, I did what I came to do: get in the door and establish some solid contacts. Financially, it's not too much worse to be unemployed. I was paid decently in Colorado, but I was paying rent at two places and eating out every day, so I may as well be dipping into savings from a beach here. Emotionally, there's no pain at all. It's just not the kind of thing I would take personally. That's a necessary attitude for the games industry, given how entrepreneurial it is. 

I had a quick talk with my boss on the way out of town. He asked if, after this experience, I'd stay in the games industry. My answer: "Hell yes."

Language and the Internet

This Wired column by Clive Anderson is fascinating. What if Google's improved translation features (try them out in Chrome if you're doubtful) unifies the users of the Internet, and everyone can post in their own mother tongue simultaneously, letting automated translation sort it all out?

Certainly, any activity requiring serious precision — legal proceedings, business discussions, diplomatic negotiations — will still need expert human translators. And in the short run, English will probably dominate those fields. But most people don’t need that level of quality to chat with foreign friends or surf the international Web.

At once, I'm thrilled and mildly concerned about the prospect. I think the 10-year-old in me that first got on the Internet would feel the same. When I was that little, the first website I was visited was nintendo.com (I was a big, big fanboy). The second was nintendo.co.jp. I have no doubt that being able to see a little sliver of the Japanese world back then was a big inspiration to go on to learn Japanese later in life. What if I had Google Chrome 15 years ago? Would I have been too lazy to bother wanting to learn Japanese?

Every so often, I start to miss Japanese life and language and need to reconnect with it. I'll crack open a beer and log in to my iTunes Japan account. Last night, I spent an hour checking out what was popular lately, but also just listening to random podcasts about the Japanese music scene. As I put it to Suihan: 

i'm at once very happy that i can understand what's being said (thanks to having studied) and relieved that the 'net has developed to the point where i can just jump into the japanese world on demand. they go hand-in-hand

I guess the real question is, will the Internet make future generations more internationalized, what with all this translated communication, or will it make them more insular and dependent on their own language and Google translation?

Blake Recommends: Summer Edition

Summer and pop culture go hand-in-hand. Summer movies, summer reading, and in the last couple of years the world of gaming has even embraced summer releases. Here's what I'm hitting recently:

Books
My God, Johnson. I'm reading books. Boulder leaves me with lots of free time on the weekends, so it's lots of Barnes & Noble visits for coffee and reading. So far, Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential is what I hoped it would be: fun light reading full of Bourdain's famously raucous personality and a direct, straight-man's humor reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk. Aspiring foodies and restauranteurs, this should be required reading for you.

Next up will be Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. I'm a big Zakaria fan, and this book is pretty famous in circles that try to look at the next few years in international politics. Zakaria's analysis is, in general, so spot-on that I'm excited to see what he has to say about the next 20 years.

Movies
My God, I'm doing books and movies. What's happened to me?

Inception was fucking sweet. End of story.

Games
I'm spending the summer without my consoles, so I'm having to expand my gaming reach. That's left me spending time on my Nintendo DS, iPhone, and PC (now that I have a pimp one at work). Here's what's treated me well lately:

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is the latest in the Phoenix Wright series. The gameplay has evolved a little bit (where exploration now involves moving a character around in a 2D environment instead of Myst-style point-and-click), but the real joy is the improvement in writing. Crimes are less confusing to solve (but not necessarily easier), and the dialogue writing continues to improve upon its predecessors. This game's a joy, and certainly fills the DS adventure game void I'm feeling until the next Professor Layton title hits later this fall.

Mario vs Donkey Kong: March of the Minis is a great Nintendo-esque twist on Lemmings. Like a 90s Nintendo title, I find myself replaying levels I've already beat, just trying to get up to a silver or gold medal. If you need some bite-sized, old-school gameplay, check this one out.

Plants vs Zombies is PopCap's take on tower defense. It's everything you'd expect from a PopCap game: excellently addictive core gameplay, very easy to pick up, and some hilariously awesome characters explaining things along the way. This one, unlike earlier PopCap games, also adds a very well-done sense of progression where new plants (towers) are unlocked in thematically relevant batches. I'm spending significant time on my iPhone just to play more PvZ.

Other iPhone games I'm digging include: Flight Control, Harbor Master, and Auditorium. Auditorium's free, and the other two are cheap (usually about $1-2) and well worth it.

On the PC side...

Team Fortress 2 finally got all of its class upgrades sorted out, and it's a whole new game relative to what I played two years ago. Tons of content, a loot system, and the flexibility in weapons for each class adds tons of depth. It's good clean fun, but I have missed out on two years' worth of leveling, unlocking, and learning maps. It's hard to catch up.

StarCraft II is finally out, and I am miserably bad at this game. I'm going to just sit in the corner, play the campaign, and see if I can't get sucked into some Blizzard lore for once. I'll play multiplayer with people (be warned - I'm hideously bad) and get excited for the eventual genius that comes out of the user mod community. Don't forget that the last Blizzard RTS gave the world what are now two fully-fleshed-out genres: DoTA and tower defense.

I swear, I'm going to get around to replaying Deus Ex. I swear. By the way, if you haven't played that bit of genius, drop me a line. I will buy it for you if you'll play it. It's that good.

Why Kinect will win

In two words: Dance Central.


This E3 was the year of cool devices: Kinect from MS, Move from Sony, and the 3DS from Nintendo, better known as The Guys Who Already Did Motion Control or This Year's E3 Winner.

Hardcore gamers who have been calling the shots from this year's E3 have looked at Kinect with a more-than-healthy dose of skepticism. Yes, developers will be tempted to crank out shovelware that involves jumping and full-body waggling. But relative to the Wii, there are two big advantages: computational horsepower and full-body motion.

The result of this is a huge coup for Microsoft in the form of Harmonix's next-gen mega-hit-to-be, Dance Central. This game will be huge with the college crowd, where dance crews are now so in. Talent shows have been replaced with dance contests on campuses nationwide. A game that exploits the fantasy of proficiency in something cool and creative (see: Guitar Hero / Rock Band) will always be a winner. A game that does this for a new field (hip-hop dance) will be a hit. A game that does all of this for whatever the college kids are doing right now and watching on MTV later tonight is going to sell 2 million copies overnight and 2 million more as it trickles on to significant others and little siblings. And unlike the rhythm games we've come to expect, it'll cost less than $100 for a group of 4 to play.

My preorder will be placed in short order. You're all invited to come dance on launch day.

Shut up Internet, the iPhone 4 is good

In my experience, the iPhone 4 is pretty great. Relative to my 3G, which was on the verge of collapse after two years of software updates, undone jailbreaks and loads of intensive apps, it's way more stable. Not being on AT&T's California network is a refreshing reminder of what cell phone service can actually be like. Everything is way faster, which makes me appreciate how fast the network can actually be when things like Facebook updates load instantly. (Who knew that was a hardware limitation?) TomTom loads and operates quickly and navigates more accurately.

Games are great with the new processor and screen. Between Nike+ and another new Nike app, I'm back to working out with my music. The new glass is more precise and less smudgy. And I haven't taken advantage of the improved camera much yet, but I'm excited for the first time I'll snap a quick picture and think "I'm glad that got updated!"

It's smaller than my old model. And fighting with my car to get it playing music has made me discover that Bluetooth audio works flawlessly, even when I put navigation on top of the audio. It's amazingly cool getting voice navigation and music over my car stereo with the phone in my pocket.

The antenna thing is, in many ways, its Achilles heel. But in the Age of Internet Criticism, people tend to forget that except for that spot, Achilles was an all-around badass.