The iPhone is officially out. Can we move on and talk about something else now?

No? Well, wake me when it can cook me dinner.

I am faced with a bit of a dilemma. I just finished playing the demo for the new game Overlord. In it you play the titular character who must control an army of minions to do your bidding in your goal to become an all-powerful force of evil. It's Sauron meets Pikmin with a liberal dash of black humor. In other words, it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

I played both the Xbox 360 demo (available through the marketplace) and the PC demo (available online at Fileplanet and other places). I honestly can't decide which one I should get. As far as I know, the game is identical on both platforms in terms of content, so it comes down to price and experience. Here are the talking points:

• The PC version retails for $40, and the console version $60. I'm not sure how Microsoft justifies the price difference.
• It looks very nice on the 360 in High Definition, but it also looks awesome on my PC at 1600x1200 resolution (though I have some doubts that the frame rate will hold up when I have 50 minions running around on the screen). Still, I can probably get a better, crisper picture on my PC, but my 360 is connected to my beautiful Sony KDS-60A2000 SXRD widescreen HDTV (so I'm bragging a little--it was my Christmas gift to myself).
• I must say, leaning back and relaxing on the couch is more fun that sitting at my desk.
• My PC has better audio (4.1 versus simply stereo), though that's not a big deal to me at the moment.
  
• The 360 has those tasty little achievements, the collecting of which is an addiction in and of itself.
• Overlord definitely feels like a game you'd play on a console, with a controller. I thought the controller felt a little more natural, seeing as how a mouse doesn't really add anything to the control scheme on the PC (there's no cursor or crosshair like and FPS, so it basically just controls the camera). "Sweeping" your minions over the terrain (an action difficult to describe but akin to "driving" your minions with the thumbstick or cursor position) also felt more comfortable with the controller than mouse.
• Of course, the $20 I save on the PC version could be used to purchase the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows which would allow me to use my 360 controller with my PC (if I had the corded controller I could just plug it into the USB port and save myself an Andrew Jackson).

How awful that such a decision would lay before me. Do I spend $60 and sit on my couch playing it with a controller in HD on a 60" TV with stereo sound on a 360, or do I spend $40 and sit at my desk playing it with a keyboard and mouse it at high resolution on a 20" LCD with 4.1 sound on my PC? Or do I drop an extra $20 and get the kit that lets me play it on my PC with the 360 controller?

Decisions, decisions!

Update: I bought the 360 version and am enjoying it immensely.

Hi. I feel like crap. Apparently my body has been invaded by some no good external organism and my immune system is actively engaging it in microscopic combat, leaving me to deal with the consequences.

Could be a resurgence of the HKV, but I don't think so this time. Dr. Katonian has been suspiciously silent lately.

In lieu of original content on my part, why not check out a video on the 10 Stages of the Illness Communication Exaggeration Curve. I suspect I'm stage 5 or 6.

In a case of blogging ping-pong, I wanted to take a second and riff off of something that Paulius posted concerning self-doubt and podcasting, which was a riff on something I posted concerning self-doubt and podcasting.

He mentions some of the issues I bring up in my post and a quote from Tom Hanks that relates well (and serves as the title of this post). I recommend reading Paulius' thoughts on the matter, but he basically points out that some thing we'll have to learn if we want to expand to new media like podcasting and videocasting is that we have to shed our self-consciousness and not force our behavior when behind the mic or in front of the camera. He addresses the doubts about our own image by pointing out that the world already see and hears us in a particular way, and it is only the discontinuity between that and our own internal view of how we think the world perceives us that leads us to doubt. "The only person hung up on what you look like you," he writes.

I thought his point about home-movies and the bathroom mirror analogy were an insightful way of looking at the situation--something I had not considered before. The idea that it's only you who thinks you look strange in a home-movie, and no-one else, resonated with me. Sometimes you can't see something in a new light until someone has offered you a different perspective.

The discussion reminded me of one of the few times I've had to perform in front of an audience. I was in the Senior Musical in High School in which I had to act, sing, and dance on stage, none of which I'd really ever done in front of a crowd. Couple that with the general awkwardness of being a teenager and, understandably, I was somewhat terrified of the prospect. But my desire to perform and be a part of something that looked like so much fun outweighed my doubts and I went to auditions. It was mortifying, especially when I had to sing a song I'd really never heard before as part of my audition, but I drew some strength from Scarlet, who is the thespian in the family. If my younger sister could do it, so could I.

I secured a part and practiced for weeks. We eventually performed a weekend's worth of shows and they went off, for the most part, without any major hitches. I know I was wracked with stagefright, but my voice didn't quaver too much, and I didn't freeze when I walked out into the stagelights and looked upon the crowd. It's been a long time and I can't be sure what I felt during the whole experience, but interestingly I don't remember being overly self-conscious. I remember being nervous that I would forget my lines, and the general butterflies about performing in public, but I don't remember being afraid to perform because of what people might think. I don't think I ever considered that someone might think my performance sucked. Maybe I've grown more self-conscious in my years. Maybe I'm more hesitant to take a chance because I'm an adult now, and somehow more is at stake. Maybe all the practices instilled in me a greater confidence. Or maybe I was secure in the knowledge that I was following someone else's direction, acting out someone else's scenes, singing someone else's songs, whereas now I'm considering embarking upon something that is my work alone. If it fails, I can't deflect the blame on anyone else.

But I was once more afraid of forgetting what to say than how the audience would react to me saying it. If I felt that way once, maybe there's hope for me yet.

Kato: I've brought you two together because I need guidance. I have been mulling the idea of a video project for some time now. It's something I'd really like to do.
Kato's Doubt: Didn't we do this to ourselves when we mulled over the whole podcasting idea?
Kato's Hope: True, but we decided then that what we would be doing wouldn't be worth the effort. A video project would be different content from the blog, and give us more freedom.
Doubt: Okay, fine. What if it sucks?
Hope: What if it doesn't? We won't know until we try.
Doubt: And what if we're not nearly as clever and funny as we like to think we are?
Kato: (And I assure you, we're not)
Hope: Then we'll quit while we're ahead. Besides, we've seen what's on YouTube, it's not like we could do any worse.
Doubt: We'll never have time to do all this.
Hope: We'll just have to make time.
Doubt: It's not like any of our other thousand projects have ever seen the light of day, what makes this different?
Hope: Maybe we just haven't pushed ourselves hard enough. Plus we can bring in friends to help.
Doubt: I don't know, we get really excited about these ideas and they always fall to the wayside. Whose to say this is any different?
Hope: You hemmed and hawed about starting a blog, but we've been doing that for a couple of years now.
Doubt: Who's going to watch it anyway?
Hope: The Internet is vast. If it's good, it'll find an audience. Besides, the WITFITS readers can be our guinea pigs.
Doubt: I don't know if I like that idea. We've worked hard to keep a layer of anonymity between us and the Internet. Is it really such a good idea to lay it all out on the line and let people know who we really are--what we really look and sound like?
Hope: We're taking a chance on it. You can only remain anonymous for so long.
Doubt: How are the WITFITS fans gonna take it? It'll be like seeing what a radio star looks like for the first time.
Hope: They'll adapt.
Kato: (I'll apologize ahead of time)
Doubt: And future employers? Our current one? What if they see it?
Hope: Again, we're taking a chance. It's not like we're planning on filming amateur porn...
Kato: (There goes that plan)
Hope: ...so what do we have to worry about? Who knows, maybe this will gain us other employment? Maybe it will open new and different opportunities for us?
Doubt: I don't know if I'm comfortable with our looks. I mean, we're average at best. And we've put on weight since college... I don't wanna be like the Numa Numa guy and have everyone call us "the chubby Dutch kid".
Kato: We're not Dutch.
Doubt: You know what I mean.
Hope: Well, that's why we bought an exercise bike. Plus, who cares, right? We'll just shoot from creative angles and avoid wearing spandex.
Doubt: We don't even have any good ideas.
Hope: We'll make it up as we go, just like we have been with WITFITS.
Kato: (Is that a good thing?)
Hope: Besides, Scarlet told us to "do things when you aren't ready".
Doubt: I don't think we can do that.
Hope: We have to. We're already addicted to Brain Crack. We'll never see any of our dreams realized if we don't try.
Doubt: But aren't we just doing this because we're envious of those out there doing it already?
Hope: Of course we are... because we know we're talented and want to be a part of this "new media revolution". But that's not the only reason. We have a lot of ideas up here, and we want to get them out. To share. To entertain. To create.
Doubt: And what if we fail? What if we embarrass ourselves?
Hope: I don't really know. I guess we just learn what we can from it and move on.
Doubt: I don't know if we can do this.
Hope: We'll never know unless we try.

My dear WITFITsers... have you words of advice for my conflicted psyche? Would you follow me if I delved into the brave world of video media?

Casey McKinnon runs a weekly online video show called Galacticast which parodies "all the worlds of geek-dom" (thanks to Veronica Belmont for making me hip to this). It's well done and has a lot of potential. The "Sci-Fi Challenged" episode is a personal favorite. Hmm, I might have to take them up on their invitation to write a script for an episode. I wonder if they'd act out an "Inside My Head" bit?

I was checking out Miss McKinnon's crazy active FlickR account the other day and I came across a picture of her posing all sexy. The first impression I had upon seeing it was that it reminded me of a 40's or 50's pinup shot. I wondered if it was possible to Photoshop it to make it look like something an airman would paint on the nose of his plane. Although I didn't come up with a way, I came across a tutorial on how to make pictures look like "pop art" using Photoshop. I set to work on doing it with the lovely miss McKinnon's picture.

Here's the result (left) next to the orignal (right). Shrinking the image as I've done here destroys the effect, so please click on this link or the image to see the full-size image on my FlickR account.



It came out decent for a first try. Her outfit didn't resolve well since it was all black (though that made coloring it a non-issue) and it was difficult to get an even amount of detail everywhere without either completely washing out a section with dots, or ending up with large blank areas. But I tried. Once you get the specifics of the Photoshop technique down (which isn't too tough), the rest is up to artistic talent, which is something I don't have a great deal of. To give it a little more depth I added some depth lines using a darker shade of the "flesh" color, though I'm not real happy with it (the mouth line from the nose bothers me, but I put it in because it added dimension). Anyway, for what it's worth, there you have it.

So... very... sleepy.

WITFITSers, I have completely messed up my sleep schedule. I have been up since one o'clock this morning and all I can think of right now is curling up on the couch and taking a nap. But I can't--I musn't! If I do that, then I'll just wake up in the middle of the night groggy and unable to go back to sleep and this cycle will just keep repeating.

So, I have a mission for you: You must keep me awake. I only need to tough it out for a few more hours then I can crawl into bed at a decent time and sleep until morning. Your job is to see that I don't succumb to the sweet, sweet call of Morpheus, God of Sleep.

Post in the comments to keep me awake. You WITFITSers can take shifts. If you see that no one has posted in awhile, drop in and comment away, and all the better if you have something entertaining to share. Only through your help can I get my sleep back on track.

We'll make it. Together.

This begins... NOW!

The air conditioning in my apartment stopped functioning yesterday and the temperature hung in the 90's for a majority of the day. Inside it was stifling, despite open windows and blowing fans. Winding down before bed, and hoping to cool off a little, I stepped out onto my balcony and enjoyed the night air and cool breeze.

The sky was dark and hazy. I sat down in a chair and let my eyes slowly adjust. The night sky where I live is often muted by light pollution, so I didn't expect to see much. Atmospheric conditions be damned, a plucky star shone through the haze and grew brighter as my pupils dilated to pull in the light.

Sitting there, watching the star twinkle gently, I thought about what I was seeing. That small point of light hitting my retina (probably the red giant Arcturus) was coming from a celestial body larger than I could possibly imagine (15 times larger than our own Sun). I was witnessing light that had traveling trillions of miles across the vacuum of space--light that was created from fusion reactions that probably occurred ten years before I was even born.

Humbling, to say the least.

In popular Science Fiction, it is commonplace for adventurers to hop from planet to planet, solar system to solar system, exploring strange new worlds and interacting with all manner of alien species. Due to the sheer vastness of space and the magnitude of interstellar distances, science fiction spacefarers have to rely on any number of fantastic devices (warp drive, hyperspace, etc.) to get around this formidable obstacle to spaceflight. We are, alas, not so lucky.

The nearest star system to Earth is Alpha Centauri, at a little over 4 light years away. A light year--a unit of measurement of length, specifically the distance light travels in a vacuum in one year--is around 6 trillion miles (or 9.5 trillion kilometers), making Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth other than our Sun, around 25 trillion miles away. For a sense of how far away that is, if the Space Shuttle, which reaches speeds in excess of 17,000 MPH, could maintain that velocity for the entirety of a trip to Proxima Centauri, it would take over 100,000 years to get there.

Sending an unmanned spacecraft to another solar system would be a monumental achievement for humankind, trumped only by actually setting foot on an extra-solar planet. Ever since I was a kid staring up at the night sky I have wondered what was up there, what mysteries await us outside our solar system and among the inconceivable number of stars. Science Fiction like Star Trek has further whetted and fueled that appetite, opening my imagination to tantalizing possibilities. Unfortunately, the distances are great, and the technological challenges to overcome are daunting. Unless we make unprecedented breakthroughs in space science and inter-stellar flight, it will be some time before we boldly go where no one has gone before. I remain optimistic, but I must certainly resign myself to the fact that it is highly unlikely we will step outside of our solar system in my lifetime.

And realizing that fact makes me sad.

I found this site awhile back and forgot to mention it. If you send in a photo (or a link to a photo) and $10 he'll draw you a robotized version. Very cool.

Check it out and maybe support a talented artist.

Ze Frank is a humorist, "online performance artist", and video blogger who hosted a popular 1-year web video experiment called the show with zefrank. I had heard his name around the Intertubes before, but only "discovered" the show when it was three-fourths of the way through its run. I became a fan almost instantly and quickly grew to admire his comedic timing, style of presentation, and ability to make a penis joke one second and then deliver a thoughtful analysis of the human experience the next. If you never saw the show I recommend checking out his popular episodes.

Amazingly, Ze produced a new episode every weekday for a year (a feat I'm envious of, being unable myself to muster more than a couple blog posts in a week). In an interview with CecilVortex.com, he discussed his thoughts on the nature of creativity. When asked about the "secret of living a creative and productive life", he had this to say:

You know, I really think that people have to come into this in their own way. For me, this notion of "creativity" is sort of a blank word. It doesn't really mean much. And the more you look into it and look at how different people explore it, you realize that it's a word that has many, many different definitions.

The thing that I focus in on is being interested and realizing that anything that you approach has almost a fractal pattern. Anything. If it's yarn for knitting, you realize that if you have any interest , there's more information there than would last you a year, to get into and understand and play around with, not to mention all the tactile qualities of yarn and what it feels like when you stretch it across something or ball it up. So that's how I look at this -- having the energy to stay interested and the energy to spark interest in things.

That last bit, "the energy to stay interested and the energy to spark interest in things", is I think the most interesting. It is something I struggle with. I write this blog and engage in other creative endeavors both for myself and for the audience I'm trying to build. But where does the energy for that come from? How does one continually tap it? Is it a bottomless well, or are its resources finite? I often feel like it is the latter. Ze doesn't have the answer to this, nor does anyone I think, and Ze begins his reply by recognizing that creativity is tied to the individual, and that we all have to discover the process for ourselves. For him, the answer has been to be productive every day ("I make something every day" he says when asked about any daily habits he might have). I can definitely see the wisdom in this, as like anything, creativity can be honed and sharpened through practice, and sometimes creativity begets creativity. On the other hand, I think most people would agree that you can reach a point where you feel "tapped" and unable to draw forth anything more.

There is an excellent episode of theshow in which Ze discusses what he calls "brain crack". In response to a question posted in his comments, "Are you running out of ideas?", he replies with what I consider to be an incredibly insightful observation:

I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later.

Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed. And they imagine it on a beautiful platter with glitter and rose petals. And everyone's clapping for them. But the bummer is most ideas kinda suck when you do 'em. And no matter how much you plan you still have to do something for the first time. And you're almost guaranteed the first time you do something it'll blow. But somebody who does something bad three times still has three times the experience of that other person who's still dreaming of all the applause. When I get an idea, even a bad one, I try to get it out into the world as fast as possible, 'cause I certainly don't want to be addicted to brain crack.

It's advice that I take to heart, but to continue the metaphor, I haven't yet found the will to kick the "brain crack" habit. Understanding you have a problem is certainly the first step, but I don't know how to get on the road to wellness. I don't know how to bridge the gap between the ideas and their implementation. Or I'm too afraid of failure to do so.

I'm that "other person" who's still dreaming of all the applause.