✰ Gaming

IndieGames;
»Indie Games Summit Round-Ups: Day 1

Kotaku;
»Salute Your New King of Kong
»How to Try Out for the Final Fantasy XIV Beta
»Dwindling Tokyo Game Show Hopes to be World's Biggest Game Gathering

✰ Film

io9;
»Tron Legacy Trailer Stills Reveal Secrets, Plot Points and Upgrades

✰ Literature

io9;
»Is "Science Fiction Humanism" a Contradiction in Terms?

✰ Curios

Boing Boing;
»When RealNetworks Settled on DVD Copying, We All Lost
»Looking back at the dotcom boom, ten years later

The New York Times;
»Using Computing Might, Google Improves Translation Tool

Gizmodo;
»MIT Media Lab Extension: The New Home of Face-Melting Research

io9;
»Lady Gaga in Wonderland, an Xbox 360 Robot, Star-Jumping with Eljiah Wood, and the Coolest Pool Table of All Time

Jalopnik;
»Dude, Where's My Flying Car? The Popular Science Fantasy

Gearlog;
»Where's Spock? Physicist Says Warp Speed Will Kill You

✰ Fandom

Gizmodo;
»Tiny Voltron cosplay is adorable

✰ Gaming

GameSetWatch;
»Miranda Make-Up Tutorial for Mass Effect 2 Fans Wait, wait. Why would you want to, though?

Grand Text Auto;
»Global Game Jam recap

Kotaku;
»What Does a "Misanthropic" Film Director Think of Heavy Rain?
»Violent Video Games Now Getting You 3-5 Years in a Venezuelan Prison
»Why Modern Video Game Armies Lack Female Troops
»The Disturbing Ways Our Video Games Addict Us

✰ Film

io9;
»The Existential Beauty of Godzilla Haiku

via Kotaku;
»The Tron Legacy trailer in HD

✰ Television

io9;
»Amanda Seyfried to Get Her Red Hood Symbolically Dirtied Up by a Werewolf

✰ Music

Boing Boing;
»OK Go Rube Goldberg video: meet the makers!

Gizmodo;
»Q&A OK Go's Lead Singer Tells Us Secrets of the Band's Geeky Videos

✰ Srs Bzns

Kotaku;
»3-year-old dies by mistaking her father's loaded pistol he just had hanging around for her Wii controller peripheral

Gaming

Boing Boing:
-Ubisoft DRM servers go down, punishing customers but not pirates

Film

io9:
-When Your Face is Tied to Another Person's Mug, the Apocalypse Can be Tricky

Curios

Gizmodo:
-Robot Pokemon: Kojiro Would Destroy Asimo with Musculoskeletal Jujitsu

Gaming

GameSetWatch:
-Interview: Radaingames' Schneider Gets Happy Happy, JoyJoy

Kotaku:
-The Case of the Indie Devs and the Medical Marijuana Mixup
-Xbox 360 controller cupcake

Animation

Cartoon Brew:
-Descendants by Heiko van der Scherm

Gaming

GameSetWatch:
-Twin Galaxies Founder Walter Day Retires

IndieGames:
-Links: Sick of Hearing About Meat Boy & Monaco

GamePolitics:
-Sexual Orientation Can Now be Included in Gamertag

Wired Game|Life:
-Review: Beautiful, Boring Final Fantasy XIII Loses RPG Magic

Kotaku:
-An Insider's Guide to Portal 2

Film

io9:
-Don't Remake These 21 Movies, Film These Books Instead!
-Tim Burton's Alice is a Bad Marriage Between Disney and Goth

Gaming

GameSetWatch:
-The Psychology of Games: The Glitcher's Dilemma

Gamasutra:
-Blog: Bringing Down the Hairy Elephant: The Ancient Art of Storyboards
-Blog: On Game Structure
-Analysis: Echoes from the Underworld - Echo Bazaar and Storytelling

Destructoid:
-Why Heavy Rain proves Ebert right

The Psychology of Video Games:
-Why Do We Love Genres So Much?

Groping the Elephant:
-Mass Effect 2: Living with your mistakes.

Film

io9:
-How to Make an Oscar Winning Scifi Film (the io9 Way)

Curios

io9:
-Your Military Science Fiction Isn't Really Military Science Fiction
-Once Dolphins are Recognized as People, Will We Send Them Into Space, or Kill Them?
-A New Way to Search for Alien Life
-Antarctica's Blood Falls are an Extremophile's Paradise

Srs Bzns

GamePolitics:
-Korean Parents Neglect Real Child for Virtual One

...Oh, I missed the roundup. Well, I was busy celebrating something (as most of the world knows by now), so much apologies all around. I'll be back in the saddle tomorrow.

Writing

Augh, procrastinating forever.

Work

Tutoring's been getting off to a pretty slow start this semester, but I'm hoping I'll see some more students after the English professors hand back their first revision notes. The quest for steadier work continues.

Watching

All right. Netflix is getting canceled again till my income's better. I'm asking for last-minute movie recommendations as I try to empty my queue and start the long detox process.

On the new media front, I've ended up exhausting Rooster Teeth's non-RvB series and have discovered that their RT Shorts are nerdy, film student love. When the biggest laugh they get from me is from an incredibly punchy rack focus, it's easy to see what kind of hopeless case UCLA turned me into.

Reading

In search of feminine female characters I remember enjoying, I found my way back to Neverwhere. I reached the description of Door's 'fire opal' eyes, stopped, and closed the book again. Sorry, Neil. We both know you've grown since then.

So I'm back to having no clue, honestly. This despite volunteering at Hathor, I know. It's not so much that I don't think they exist or that I can't point to any I know by reputation, I just can't remember having read and discovered any for myself. They just don't tend to crop up in the sort of fiction I read, which is probably just a sore consequence of reading too little, I know. Time to start picking up the slack on those resolutions (although I'm pleased to report that I'm up to 60 units on Folding@home).

Playing

Finished FFXII, just in time to hand the copy back to the person who loaned it to me on his birthday. Here, buddy! Remember when you lent this to me, oh, three years ago? Or was it four? Jesus Christ, I'm slow with this game.

( some notes upon, to avoid being a downer. )

I do find myself in possession of a copy of Heavy Rain, but I'm putting off playing it till I can manage to reset the palette a little. Which... might be an understatement. Next on the list is Assassin's Creed (yes, I know, shame on me) and then Dirge of Cerberus, because somewhere in there I'm hoping the extremes will cancel out and I'll go into Heavy Rain as clean and impressionable as the virgin snow.

Large Hadron Collider

io9:
-At Last the Protons are Getting Ready to Smash

Gaming

Gamasutra:
-Princeton Review Names USC Top Game Design School

GamePolitics:
-Dead or Alive: Paradise Director Fires Back at Critics

Wired Game|Life:
-Steve Wiebe to Chase Donkey Kong High Score at GDC
-PlayStation 3 Units Coming Back to Life

Kotaku:
-The Underclass of the Japanese Gaming Industry
-The Next Big Thing in Video Games Might Be Fear of Embarrassment

Curios

Gizmodo:
-Project Gustav: Microsoft Research Updates MS Paint in a Huge Way

Gaming

BitMob:
-Top Five Black Video Game Characters that Deserve Their Own Game!

Kotaku:
-Indoctrinating the Veterans of a Virtual War
-PS3s Suffering from Global Network Lockdown

Film

io9:
-5 (Imaginary) Movies About Your Favorite Childhood Games

Comics

io9:
-The 75 Books You Should Own for DC Comics' 75th Anniversary

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-UK Digital Economy Bill will wipe out indie WiFi hotspots in libraries, unis, cafes

Augmented Reality

Gizmodo:
-The Frightening Future of Augmented Shopping

Gaming

GameSetWatch:
-Alt Space: A Step Too Far

Film

io9:
-Will Kick-Ass Kill Superhero Movies?

Wired Game|Life:
-Light Cycles, Disc-Fu Juice Tron Legacy Trailer

Gaming

Gamasutra:
-In-Depth: We Make Characters That Look Like Us?

Kotaku:
-Transformers: War for Cybertron Preview: A World Without Michael Bay's Robots
-Where Have All the Zombies Gone?

Film

io9:
-The Real Problem with Midichlorians

Curios

Boing Boing:
-The brain and intelligence

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-Pentagon fesses up to 800 pages' worth of potentially illegal spying, including peace groups and Planned Parenthood

Gaming

Gamasutra:
-Blog: Games, Disability and Anti-Discrimination Laws
-Blog: Needs More Cowbell: Why Publishing Producers Sometimes Dictate Design
-Opinion: On BioShock 2 and Why Return Beats Renovation

Wired Game|Life:
-Active Time Babble: Discussing Final Fantasy XIII for 2 Hours
-Q&A: Nintendo's Cammie Dunaway Says Wii May Have Peaked

The Atlantic:
-Wrex in Effect, or, Deep Space and the Negro/Injun/Krogan Problem

GOOD:
-Videogames' Slow Move Toward Accessibility

The Brainy Gamer:
-Sequel 101

Insult Swordfighting:
-Why we need sequels

PopMatters Moving Pixels:
-Is Suda51 the Alfred Hitchcock of Video Games?

The Game Critique:
-The Nature of Reading: Interpretation and Auteurism using Final Fantasy VIII and Mulholland Drive

Border House:
-Bayonetta -- some initial impressions

Indie Games:
-Interviews: Kenta Cho, Tyler Glaiel, Hello Games and More

Kotaku:
-Why We Play Games, and Why We Grumble About Them
-Heavy Rain Explores Player Depression with Freezes and Glitches ... :(

Animation

Cartoon Brew:
-Animated Review of Avatar

Curios

Boing Boing:
-RIP, Hummer

io9:
-Nothing is Ever Junk When It Can Be Reembodied

Fandom

Kotaku:
-Fan Creates Final Fantasy VII Sequel Demo

Gaming

Gamasutra:
-Critical Reception: Sony/Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain
-Analysis: When Console to PC Conversions Go Awry

The Independent:
-Control freak: Will David Cage's Heavy Rain videogame push our buttons?

Kotaku:
-What Your $60 Really Buys

Film

Kotaku:
-NSFW: Kirsten Dunst is Your Magical Nerd Princess

Boing Boing:
-Murakami "Akihabara Majokko Princess" with Kirsten Dunst

Cartoon Brew:
-James Cameron: "I'm not interested in being an animator"

io9:
-Build Your Own Hometree with Exclusive Avatar Concept Art

Music

GameSetWatch:
-Sound Current: 'Kenji Kawai - Game and Anime Intersections'

Curios

io9:
-Why Pea Aphids are the Most Awesome Organism
-Are We Using the Right Methods to Find ET?
-The Trippy Techno-Mythology of Japanese Science Fairs
-Behind the Wiki: Meet TV Tropes Cofounder Fast Eddie

Fandom

Kotaku:
-A custom-made Naked Snake
-When a Spartan Loves a Stormtrooper

Augmented Reality

Gizmodo:
-A More Awesome (But Maybe Creepier!) Way to Facebook Friend That Girl You're Talking To

Gaming

GameSetWatch:
-Opinion: Sweating the Small Stuff - What's Still Wrong with Games

GamePolitics:
-Study Examines the "Displacement Effect" of Videogames

Wired Game|Life:
-What Videogames Can Teach Teachers
-Hands-On: Overhauled StarCraft II Welcomes Strategy Noobs

Kotaku:
-Video Games in Space Nixed Over Fears of Space Station Hacking
-Get Your Superior Heavy Rain Box Art Here

Animation

Cartoon Brew:
-Animation Legends and Facebook

Film

io9:
-Which Type of SF Movies Has the Best Rotten Tomatoes Scores?

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-ACLU and EFF on school where spy-laptops were mandatory

Dead Horse Corral

Gizmodo:
-China to Everybody: Hacks! Hacks? What Hacks?

Gaming

Gamasutra:
-The Art of International Technical Collaboration at Square Enix
-The Dust of Everyday Life: The Art of Building Characters
-Visceral Games on One Title Per Year Goal: 'Less is More'

GamePolitics:
-How Games Assisted One Person Through Life

Wired Game|Life:
-Review: Heavy Rain's Riveting Murder Story is Big Leap for Games
-Heavy Rain Taps Real Anxieties for Massive Story

Kotaku:
-The Search for the Video Game Auteurs
-Project Natal's Lag, as Judged by Stopwatch
-How Australia's Proposed Internet Censorship Will (and Won't) Affect Video Games

Film

io9:
-Scientist to Hollywood: Stop Making Shit Up
-Space Ships, Aliens and Comics to Watch at SXSW's Film Fest
-Science Proves 3D Movies Hurt Your Brain

Television

io9:
-18 Upcoming TV Shows That Could Save Small-Screen Scifi

Music

Boing Boing:
-U Wisconsin symphony concert based on fantasy novels, video games, manga, anime

Curios

Boing Boing:
-Chatroulette: won't someone think of the children?
-Objective reporting and American politics

Gizmodo:
-Dramatic Chipmunk, PhD: Colleges Accepting Youtube Videos as Part of Application

Kotaku:
-'Xbox Effect' Cited in Chick Flicks' Rise

Srs Bzns

Boing Boing:
-Laptop surveillance kid was disciplined when spying authorities mistook candies for pills
-FBI tracking suspects' cell phones without warrants

Gaming

GameSetWatch:
-'The Magic Resolution': Waggle the Left Stick

Curios

Gizmodo:
-MIT Flyfire Robot Swarm Concept Could Create 3D LED Displays in the Sky

Film

Gizmodo:
-The Formula for a Perfect Movie

Curios

Gizmodo:
-Fake Mars Mission Befallen by Real Drama

Dead Horse Corral

Boing Boing:
-Writers describe the positive impact of D&D on their lives

Gaming

Gamasutra:
-Analysis: Haunting Ground and the Art of Empathy

Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
-Colourblind Gaming: Is It In His Eyes?

beeps & boops:
-How We Talk About Games: Graphics

Border House:
-Uranian Love vs. Status Quo A comment on the absence of male/male romance options in Mass Effect 2. Finally!

The Brainy Gamer:
-Scrambled Talking about ME2 and genre mixing

Semionaut's Notebook:
-Insert Pun Involving "Meat" & "Beat" Here About the danger of game manifestos

Kotaku:
-Flower wins Best Casual Game, loses to Scribblenauts for Most Innovative, at the 13th AIAS Awards
-Kitase: FFVII Remake Only Possible if It Can Be Done in a Year

Film

io9:
-Avatar's Directors Cut Features 15 Minutes of New Material, Plus "Video Game"-Like Deleted Scenes
-Ridley Scott's Alien Could Have Looked Like This

Television

io9:
-Will Steven Spielberg Save Science Fiction Television?

Curios

Gizmodo:
-The Opposite of Photoshop This is jawdropping. I really could not tell what was going on here.

Srs Bzns

io9:
-Chinese Students Behind Google Hacks?

What the Hell

Boing Boing:
-Look at this butch cupcake. Just look at it.

io9:
-Science Fiction Teaches You How to Create a Male Sex Slave