Calacanis and Winer: now here’s a reason to hate the internet

Even though this is making all the rounds on the internet, I feel the need to comment. I don’t know why; I guess I must just be bored.

So, evidently Jason Calacanis talked at Gnomedex about Mahalo. And Dave Winer didn’t really care for that too much. But instead of intelligently discussing his issues with Jason’s talk on his blog, Dave apparently yelled out from the back row of the conference room about how Jason was “spamming” the audience.

I wasn’t there. I can’t say for sure, obviously. This is just what the internet is telling me. And we all know the internet is never wrong.

Jason and Dave have been telling their own sides of the story on their blogs; just follow the links provided in the previous paragraphs. Jason says he was just talking about a concept, and Mahalo is central to that concept. Dave says he doesn’t want to hear a commercial message at a conference dedicate to non-commercial content.

Dave’s main argument is that Jason isn’t bringing anything to the table for developers to build on. He likes the open APIs that Google and Twitter bring. Dave doesn’t like any product that only gives him information. He’s always looking for something he can use as a platform, and he can’t build off of Mahalo. I sympathize — it’s part of the same reason I haven’t been able to get excited about Jason’s newest venture. But blurting out that Jason is “spamming” the audience at a conference is not a good way to build support for your cause.

Jason is responding to Dave, but not in the way that I thought he would. Jason doesn’t necessarily seem concerned about the central point of Dave’s argument; instead Jason is drawing more attention to Dave’s outburst and subsequent online rants regarding the disagreement. In a sense, he’s trying to make Dave the focus of the argument, instead of the problems Dave has with Jason’s Gnomedex content.

I have really nothing more to add than to say that Jason and Dave are both acting a bit immature in this situation. I have a lot of respect for both of these guys because they are both so passionate about the internet and are both visionaries regarding web development. They really need to settle this intelligently. Dave needs to be a bit less antagonistic and Jason needs to listen to the concerns more. Both of these guys have legitimate points in this argument. They are simply both being too loud and obnoxious for the other guy to hear them clearly.

August: the month of Metroid

I was reading an interesting editorial over on IGN from Matt Casamassina discussing the complete absence of hype and/or marketing for the upcoming Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I thought it was a great read, especially considering we are less than 3 weeks away from MP3’s launch, and Nintendo hasn’t even bothered to update the official Metroid.com website with any mention of MP3’s existence. I was prepared to write up a blog post agreeing with Casamassina’s contempt for Nintendo’s apparent lack of MP3 love.

But then, today happened. What does today bring? Oh, nothing much. Just a brand new Wii Channel you can download that has videos, screenshots, and information about MP3. Oh, and word comes down from on high that both the original NES Metroid as well as the SNES Super Metroid will be released this month. Not only that, but the official Metroid.com website has just been updated with a new splash screen displaying MP3 and a little news bit about the new downloadable Wii Channel.

The irony is deliciously brilliant. I guess Casamassina isn’t as much of an insider with Nintendo as he would have us believe.

Someone else will have to save the city

So, NCSoft reactivated everyone’s City of Heroes accounts for the weekend to give more people the opportunity to try out the new issue 10 content. They did this to us last year, if you recall.

Alas, the draw is too terribly strong. And having an upgraded computer since last year, I thought the experience might even be better. So, I reinstalled and reupdated. The patches to get to issue 10 only took roughly 2 hours to download, install, and apply. Not bad, considering I installed from the DVD which is about 5 issues behind.

Unfortunately, the experience is not all I remember it to be. It took forever just to log in. And then once I grabbed a character and attempted to jump into Paragon City, I crashed. Hard. Display drivers were apparently out of date. I got the drivers updated and was able to get into the city, but it was a slideshow of epic proportions. And twice the game locked up on me while I attempted to perform some trivial action, such as opening a door. It was horrendous.

I don’t fault the game at all, I’m sure it works wonderfully. It just has a nasty history of not working well with our IBM Thinkpad laptops. I don’t necessarily fault IBM, either. They make business laptops, not gaming rigs. No, I fault myself. I should really just stick to the Wii. Not too much longer until the hits start rolling. Then, I can rest easy with a Wiimote in hand. I’m just not cut out for keyboard/mouse gaming.

Finished Harry Potter, 1:30am

Completely NON-spoilerific post. Promise.

I knew when I hit chapter 25 at around 9pm last night, that I would have no choice but to keep going from that point until the very last word of the book. The word I uttered upon closing the novel: “damn.”

There’s a lot contained within that one simple word. The joy of finally having all the questions answered. The amazement of Rowling’s phenomenal storytelling talent. The sadness of completing a series, and stowing away on a dusty shelf the characters that have become so close to me over the past several years.

I don’t want to get too sentimental, because the completion of the series really puts such a satisfied finality to the entire story that it feels right. You aren’t left wanting incredibly more than Rowling gave. It just feels complete.

But there definitely is a sadness there. It’s unmistakable. As you begin to piece together all the time you spent reading these marvelous stories, intricately weaving your memories of the characters up with Rowling’s graceful prose. You come to understand that it’s all over, and that there won’t be anything more. No 8th year in Hogwarts. This is it. And, yeah, there’s a sadness there.

There’s another kind of sadness, too. A frail, pathetic sadness for those of us that feebly refer to ourselves as aspiring writers. We close this final tome and humbly mumble to ourselves: “I could never do what she did.” I could never create that world. I could never breathe such life into my characters. It’s an empty feeling. A bit painful. But I know that as time wipes away the clear memory of the wonderful power of her words, I’ll eventually feel more comfortable in my own writing skills again. It will take time. It always does.

But hey, on the plus side, it’s not necessarily over, is it? There’s always the movies.

More later. I need to digest it all.

Spook Country added to stack

After reading Cory’s positively glowing recommendation of Spook Country, I’ve added it to my reading stack, ahead of Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. Probably not my best idea, but I yearn to get caught up enough in my reading to actually be reading currently relevant fiction for once. I also added the entire Sprawl trilogy to my Considering list, because I had never even heard of William Gibson until just a couple of years ago and I’m terribly ashamed of this fact. I must make amends.

This town needs an enema!

That’s my favorite line from any Batman movie, ever.

Ok, so I’ve gone back to Evil Avatar. I just can’t help it. Every time I think I can break the habit, I get drawn back in via some interesting discussion, or some news I just feel the need to post there.

By the way, I’m going to be offline for a majority of next week. Taking some youngsters off to magical, whirlwind tour of southern Missouri. We might end up at a Christian youth conference along the way, as well. So if you’re expecting some communication from me sometime in the next few days, well, don’t.

So, everyone have a great week! And I’ll catch back up with you sometime around the beginning of August.

Pre-order Pushers stopped updating!

Not because they’re lazy, mind you — they need more stories!

If you have a horror-story to share about your experiences within the dark recesses of those vile, decrepit storehouses of pain and suffering, otherwise referred to as GameStop or EB Games, send them in to preorderpushers at gmail dot com. I love to hear people explain in fine detail exactly why I only purchase games at Target, Best Buy, or Amazon these days.

Goodbye, Evil Avatar

I’ve been a member and regular poster at Evil Avatar for some time now. I’ve always loved the site and a lot of the regular contributors. I think it’s just time to move on. I’ve been posting with less and less frequency lately. Now, I’ve simply hung it all up altogether.

Nothing in particular made me decide to stop contributing to the community. I’m just sort of getting sick of the constant, negative, cyclical discussions that frequent the boards anymore. It’s always the same thing, every day, every week. Nothing ever changes, even as new details emerge that prove naysayers wrong. The negativity never ends. More than anything, I’m a bit turned off by the fact that it really has turned into nothing more than an Xbox fansite. The admins will never admit it, and it’s possible that it isn’t intentional. Maybe they’re too close to the site to actually see it occurring. But it’s obvious some days. If I owned a 360, I might not notice myself. As it is, it just constantly made me wonder why I continued to visit the site.

And any discussion involving Nintendo quickly devolves into pathetic complaints and unfounded arguments. There are people there that so fervently support and defend Nintendo that they lack a degree of rationality. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are far too many people there that think Nintendo will point the gaming industry towards nothing but watered-down, brainless, casual games. Both sides are ridiculously over-represented in the community, and some days I felt as though I was the only person somewhere in between the two extremes.

So, I rid myself of the community. I don’t plan on attempting to find another forum as an outlet for my thoughts. This blog will suffice. I plan to use the time I wasted on message boards for other endeavors, such as actually getting some work done. In the meantime, if you might like what EvAv has to offer, by all means, I’m not suggesting people give it a miss. It really is a fantastic community, if you can find yourself a niche amongst the regular contributors. It’s finding that place amongst the flood of irrationality that’s the hard part.