(Note: for template stuff, scroll to the bottom of this post)
tragicomic (adj.): manifesting both tragic and comic aspects; "the tragicomic disparity...between's man's aspirations and his accomplishments"- B.R.Redman
philtre(n.): a drink credited with magical power; can make the one who takes it love the one who gave it
As usual, the title has no relevance at all to the text; I'm not going to talk about an ironic* love potion in this post. Rather the title is randomly chosen for a variety of reasons: so that I don't have to think of one, so it sounds cool/stupid and thus memorable, so they return the first hit on Google (and so I can finally use the I'm Feeling Lucky button), so I have an excuse to look up random never-used-in-real-life words, so I can pathetically attempt to be witty, etc. The reason I draw this to attention is because of the "so I have an excuse to look up random never-used-in-real-life words". In each of my future blog posts I'll put the definitions of each of the two randomly generated words at the beginning to take up more space with irrelevant material and hence have longer, more impressive-looking posts.
Addressing other things.
The Mii-Wii 'debate':
The Mii is most definitely not a brilliant creation. It's not even per say, a creation. That doesn't make it completely useless, however.
A Mii is simply a customizable avatar. Customizable avatars are simply a digital representation of the user, and they're not new. Customizable avatars have been around since the early days of MUDs and Usenet, as blocks of Ascii code. They're in practically every IM client today and if you post in a forum, you'll have seen tons of them. More recently, you'll see them featured prominently in many RPGs (i.e. Mass Effect and Oblivion allow for tons of character customization, up to the exact position of eyebrows, for example), and in practically every MMORPG and MMOG in general. A lot of games even let you put your actual face (or actually, any object...) on your 3D character, so the Mii creation, where there are only a few dozen choices per category, is actually considerably lackluster compared to other games' customization systems.
There are many purposes of an avatar - it lets you be recognized quickly, it serves as a means for personal expression, etc. How much time you want to put into customizing your avatar has always been a matter of personal choice. It's not necessary, but a lot of people do it anyway. A lot of people don't - and this is why there are often enough default or randomly chosen avatars for use when you need them.
As of now, the Mii basically serves the same purpose your Gamertag and profile on XBOX Live does. If anything is brilliant about the Wii, it's how they (mostly**) got away with the risk they took in choosing to use the Wii Remote as the main controller.
Where is Artefactual Coattail Part 3?:
Um, yeah, I'm still workign on it. There was a flaw in my original solution so it now seems a lot harder, but I'm partially done. I'll post whatever results I was able to get tomorrow.
Templates:
Many templates here:
http://mashable.com/2007/09/13/blogger-templates/
Take your pick. Just one request - choose one with a light-color foreground (not black) because a black foreground will cause all the LaTeX to be unreadable. Light colors like light blue or green are fine though. Put your choice in a comment, and I'll choose whichever is most popular (and among ties, whichever I like the most :) ).
Happy Holidays!
-squid out
*this seemed like the best way to convey 'tragicomic' in one common word - although it's really more of an amalgamation of ironic, pathetic, and ludicrous.
**if you're wondering why it's 'mostly', go take a look at all the hardcore vs. casual debates surrounding the Wii - although this is also representative of the direction the games are taking.
tragicomic (adj.): manifesting both tragic and comic aspects; "the tragicomic disparity...between's man's aspirations and his accomplishments"- B.R.Redman
philtre(n.): a drink credited with magical power; can make the one who takes it love the one who gave it
As usual, the title has no relevance at all to the text; I'm not going to talk about an ironic* love potion in this post. Rather the title is randomly chosen for a variety of reasons: so that I don't have to think of one, so it sounds cool/stupid and thus memorable, so they return the first hit on Google (and so I can finally use the I'm Feeling Lucky button), so I have an excuse to look up random never-used-in-real-life words, so I can pathetically attempt to be witty, etc. The reason I draw this to attention is because of the "so I have an excuse to look up random never-used-in-real-life words". In each of my future blog posts I'll put the definitions of each of the two randomly generated words at the beginning to take up more space with irrelevant material and hence have longer, more impressive-looking posts.
Addressing other things.
The Mii-Wii 'debate':
The Mii is most definitely not a brilliant creation. It's not even per say, a creation. That doesn't make it completely useless, however.
A Mii is simply a customizable avatar. Customizable avatars are simply a digital representation of the user, and they're not new. Customizable avatars have been around since the early days of MUDs and Usenet, as blocks of Ascii code. They're in practically every IM client today and if you post in a forum, you'll have seen tons of them. More recently, you'll see them featured prominently in many RPGs (i.e. Mass Effect and Oblivion allow for tons of character customization, up to the exact position of eyebrows, for example), and in practically every MMORPG and MMOG in general. A lot of games even let you put your actual face (or actually, any object...) on your 3D character, so the Mii creation, where there are only a few dozen choices per category, is actually considerably lackluster compared to other games' customization systems.
There are many purposes of an avatar - it lets you be recognized quickly, it serves as a means for personal expression, etc. How much time you want to put into customizing your avatar has always been a matter of personal choice. It's not necessary, but a lot of people do it anyway. A lot of people don't - and this is why there are often enough default or randomly chosen avatars for use when you need them.
As of now, the Mii basically serves the same purpose your Gamertag and profile on XBOX Live does. If anything is brilliant about the Wii, it's how they (mostly**) got away with the risk they took in choosing to use the Wii Remote as the main controller.
Where is Artefactual Coattail Part 3?:
Um, yeah, I'm still workign on it. There was a flaw in my original solution so it now seems a lot harder, but I'm partially done. I'll post whatever results I was able to get tomorrow.
Templates:
Many templates here:
http://mashable.com/2007/09/13/blogger-templates/
Take your pick. Just one request - choose one with a light-color foreground (not black) because a black foreground will cause all the LaTeX to be unreadable. Light colors like light blue or green are fine though. Put your choice in a comment, and I'll choose whichever is most popular (and among ties, whichever I like the most :) ).
Happy Holidays!
-squid out
*this seemed like the best way to convey 'tragicomic' in one common word - although it's really more of an amalgamation of ironic, pathetic, and ludicrous.
**if you're wondering why it's 'mostly', go take a look at all the hardcore vs. casual debates surrounding the Wii - although this is also representative of the direction the games are taking.
4 comments:
I say Hada-negra, it looks coolest (though neoneon is good too)
I like natural. It looks prety nice
Hada-negra is okay but neoneon is way too kiddy
Also, you might want to consider Pizza (its highly customizable)
You'll notice that the foreground of Hada-Negra is orange, which is pretty dark for black text (indeed, they use white text in the template).
Neoneon does look pretty dumb in my opinion.
Pizza is okay, but I'm not used to the text being so right-alined (it's usually left-aligned practically everywhere).
Natural looks good. My favorites would be something like K2, Agua, or Minyx 2.0, but maybe I'm just too minimalist. I'll let you guys decide.
Hmm... I think pizza is dumb... Natural and Green Marinee both look good though.
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