I go to gaming school

It's remarkable how much career-oriented progress I'm making after just a couple of days of real-deal school. I needed an answer to the extremely frequent question "what's your career goal?" and the answer of "video games" just became habit. 

Everything else is just falling into line. I'm exploring game-related work for next summer and letting it shape the work I'm doing here, from research to topics for Japanese assignments.

I was so busy doing all that that I missed the real-world culmination of what I wanna do: the Tokyo Game Show, or Japan's E3. I went back and caught up on the news this morning, and I have a few observations:

-Final Fantasy 13 will be fantastic, following the theory that every FF game on a new platform is a classic: 4, 7, 10. Wow. If you just keep counting by 3s, you get the original Final Fantasy (unarguably a classic, look what it spawned) and, of course, 13. Maybe we should update the theory.

-Hideo Kojima is Japan's best export. Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker will be fantastic. See for yourself:

-Microsoft Natal came to Japan! People are playing Katamari Damacy with it, by kinda doing this retarded swimming motion, and now I understand the skeptics. Buuuuuuut...

-Natal could have some really broad implications. MS had another fantastic showing in Tokyo this year, and they had a panel where a trio of famous Japanese designers just started tossing around ideas for what you could do with the technology. Kojima was on the panel, and while he of course stated that he has some fantastic ideas for games that recognize your appearance and interact with you that way, his thoughts on the device itself were more telling: Medical imaging, or security cameras, could benefit from the tech.

That's huge. Suppose the technology works well enough to identify you from a relative distance away, say 15 feet. Tie that into the cloud, or Facebook, and you've instantly established a working surveillance society.

In short, TGS has had some really fantastic timing in terms of my life here. Professors, who I'm meeting for the first time, ask what I want to do, and now I can point a finger to this show and say "this." By which I mean "games industry + business development + exciting new technologies + big companies like MS + Japan." They may not get it themselves, but the important thing is that I'm able to answer the question.

We've moved!

Dear Blogger,

You have been utterly fantastic for the last 8 years - that's beyond an eternity in Internet Time - but our time together is coming to an end.

While your service was groundbreaking back in 2001 - "a free service that lets you make your own news site!?" the times have changed, blogging has become its own monster, and the art and science of writing your own ramblings have greatly moved forward. You, unfortunately, have not.

Which is why I've moved to posterous, a wonderful new blog provider that automates everything. I'm writing this post just by sending an email to post@posterous.com - brilliant, right? It even does cool things with video, audio, and photos, like automatically embedding video links, turning recorded audio into a podcast feed, and making galleries out of photos. I'm attaching a few recent fun pics from California out of principle. I've been exposed to the genius of the whole thing by Aroon, who has suddenly gotten back into the blogging biz because of it.

For readers, the move gives you more options to see my silliness. Facebook, as always, will get my newest posts, and the 'old' Blogger site will continue to be fed the posts from the 'new' site for as long as it's feasible. Twitter, as well, will get some love. Long story short: you don't have to update your bookmarks if you don't want to, but just entering snagger.org in your browser will ensure that you see what I intend for you to see.

I also want to thank Emily, whose flawless design work has stayed standing on my Blogger-based site for at least half an eternity (again, measured in Internet Time) - and will for half an eternity more.

As for me, I've felt the need to spruce things up on my own blog for a while now, but as Emily's talents have made her too busy in recent times I was left in a bind. With this move, I get a simple and clean new look, the technical things get easier, and more people get these posts in more ways.

It's a win-win-win, unless you're Blogger. In any case, here's to 8 more years of sharing and theorizing.

Love,
Blake

Diet time!

I'm doing a little experiment where I'll spend a week without a certain thing in my diet.

It's not directly for weight loss purposes - just a week without something certainly isn't a healthy or effective way to lose weight - but rather it's to learn more about my own particular needs and what I can (or can't) live without. Once I'm done, we'll see what was doable, what was torturous, and what left me with enough energy to get by. From there, maybe some beneficial lifestyle changes will take place - or at least I'll be used to eating more veggies.

So, here will be my weeks, if I can remember:

-No red meat
-No sugar
-No complex carbs (pasta, bread, potatoes)
-No meat at all
-Reduce all portions by 1/3

If you can suggest more weeks for me to try out, let me know. And no, "Reduce all portions by 100%" is not a valid option.

Where am I?

Q: How many hipsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: It's a pretty obscure number. You've probably never heard of it.

(That joke comes courtesy of Chloe, who must've gone unmentioned on this little blog for a number of years until just now.)

Coming up on two months in San Diego. It's been eventful, yet not busy. Four days a week of relatively easy classes have left me bored and have left my classmates with enough time to go clubbing three nights a week. I'm a little burned out and ready for real-deal school to start. Something like two and a half weeks until then.

Everyone who's already been in the program says "enjoy this time while you have it," but it's hard to enjoy idle time when that's all you've had for the last year - two, if you count how slow life moved for me in Japan.

As promised, the Prep program helped me establish some social networks, but it feels like those kind of temporary college orientation cliques you make that fly out the window the day classes start. And with only two-thirds of our class in place now, there's certainly room for a shake-up once next week's actual orientations begin.

In fact, there's a lot that feels like starting college here. I'm experiencing that lack of comfort and familiarity that comes with a new place, and this time I can't chalk it up to culture shock.

I miss the sensation of knowing where everything was, and not just in a navigational sense. My relaxation with my hometown gaming buddies was at the Starbucks by UTA, my fun nights on the town were at the Japanese bar in downtown Dallas. My diet was controlled - whatever take-out Mom was in the mood for that night - and the drinks were free so long as they were taken with Mom in the courtyard. It was totally the easy life.

I don't have much of that stuff in SD yet. It'll come with time - but I'm ready as all hell to get that ball rolling. Can we stop the orientation nonsense yet?

It's that time again...

I'm the kind of person who remembers things by seasons, so after something happens I'll let it go for a year and then reflect on it when that time of year comes around again.

Late July and early August is JET turnover season, and it's been fun to look at Facebook through that season. To put it simply, late July sees lots of "Goodbye!" posts (both from departing teachers-to-be and their friends in response) and for a couple weeks thereafter you see "Hello!" posts from people who just got back and want to share their new phone numbers.

Add then there's the photo albums. Whether it's the first days or the last days, it looks much the same: parties in Tokyo. Then people put together their "best of Japan" albums and it still looks the same: serene snowscapes, cherry blossoms, local temples, beaches, post-party food runs resulting in one guy passing out on the table. Their photos look like my photos, which look like any other JET alum's photos, but they're still our own for what those places and scenes meant.

My amigos' photos, even if they're not my own, take me back through all the time between "Goodbye" and "Hello." I understand the feelings, the highs and lows, the tastes. It's almost like being ex-military - there's a huge body of common experience, unique to your 'people,' to draw upon when establishing new relationships, both personal and professional

This season last year was my own turn for the "Hello!" posts, and now that it's been a full year and I'm re-established in American culture, this is the first time I can step back and look at the whole experience, from start to finish, holistically.

It was a pretty great chapter in life.