My entire notion of a video game as a child was to "beat" them. That means the goal was simply to make it through the game alive. These people entirely changed what winning means. Now they race through the games as fast as they can. There's now no way to "win" you just play and do the best you can.
The community that evolves out of this is really great. Three guys swapped tips for speed runs through Ninja Gaiden, I game where I never even sniffed the ending as a child. They beat the whole thing in 13 minutes, which was about 10 seconds off world record pace. And the main goal was for one of them to get the best time possible. They are genuinely cheering for each other to do something amazing.
Glitches and bugs are unintentional things that the game designers never intended. These speed runners have taken the game as it is, not as it should be, and incorporate those glitches as an essential part of their speed runs. Understanding all of the tiny details and treating these glitches as opportunities are key to achieving the best time.
There are some games on this list that I had when I was a kid. So it's nice to revisit some old favorites while watching someone play it much better than I ever could.
And just in case you need an (unrelated) pick-me-up:
After college, as my friends left Michigan for better opportunities, I was determined to help fix this broken, chaotic city by building my own home in the middle of it. I was 23 years old.
This is the best answer I've ever heard to the question, "Why do sports matter?"
"Sports are a part of the human condition and so they must matter. Every society invents games and competitions. Or at least tests of strength, speed, or skill. And so since that competitive drive is a part of being a human, then it must be an important part of being alive."
This National Championship Game was not a life or death struggle. Let's all keep sportball games in perspective. But, holy smokes, that was great.
When I went to school there in the early 2000's, we had a quarterback named Chris Rix. He was a nice human being but was put in a situation where he struggled mightily. He found a way to consistently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. His legacy has tainted every sporting event since. Each game turns into a "Guillotine Game", when I know we'll lose, but I don't know when or how.
To win this National Championship Game, in this fashion, is still almost impossible to comprehend. And I just watched it happen.
My phone BLEW UP at the end of the game, because people knew that was my team. For better or worse, Florida State is a part of me and I am a part of it.
Now, in the afterglow, I've been watching ESPN rehash the game over and over. And I still have trouble believing it happened.
Here are some ideas to interior decorate that don't seem dumb. The Museum of Flight is half off as long as the Seahawks stay in the playoffs. And the have an Amelia Earhart exhibit right now. Hooray for football and feminists!! Pair tools for mindful living with New Year's resolutions you can keep. This Year Collection is like a "best of" for your favorite podcasts! I recommend Too Beautiful To Live and Uhh Yeah Dude. But they also have This American Life and the Adam Carolla Show. Get into it!
There's a blog called Pop Candy, written by Whitney Matheson that writes about (expectedly) pop culture. She's a big believer in comic books, or graphic novels if you want to be a snob about it. The first comic I remember ordering from Amazon was "Y: The Last Man", about what would happen to the last man on Earth. It turns out Amazonian tribes would hunt him down to kill him, the government would send out secret agents to control him, and he would participate in a globespanning adventure with his new pet monkey, Ampersand to find his (ex)girlfriend. Needless to say, it's a great read. They've been trying to make a movie out of it for years with no success.
From there, I got into Fables. Another concept that Hollywood has tried to harness with Tv shows like "Once Upon A Time" or "Grimm". It's about fables like Snow White or the Big Bad Wolf who have been kicked out of their homeworlds by "The Adversary". Now, they all live in a magically protected building in Manahattan. The first volume concerns a murder mystery that you can actually solve long before the characters if you really pay attention.
And then I was completely in on comic books. I started Sandman, a classic by Neil Gaiman about the lord of dreams. I read Watchmen and other great one-offs like Dark Knight Returns and Maus.
For all of the movies they've made out of comics, I've never read one before they made movie until now. Captain America: Winter Soldier will be coming to you local multiplex this spring. After reading the book, I'm not sure how they're going to do it. Now I'm going to be that guy sitting in the theater saying, "Black Widow wasn't in the book. This is all wrong!"
This is a disorganized, rambling, and unedited list of thoughts heading into 2014:
I'd like to start writing here more often. When I committed to one post per day, I always read the news, I stayed updated on what kinds of events were coming up in the city. I read the newspaper and social media FAR more often than I do now. It wasn't the posting of news and events, but the searching that really helped me stay plugged in to happenings and events that I would enjoy. If I do start blogging more often, I feel locked in to the once per day due to the name of the blog. But I suppose I could just change the name again. It's not like my millions of readers would be missing out.
Here's the other thing. Pictures. Oh my goodness do I stink at pictures. Not only do I stink at knowing what is picture-worthy, but I also stink at finding tasteful ways to take pictures. Selfies are completly out. That's just not my kind of thing. They feel so limiting. You're committed to one perspective and the same type of framing in EVERY photo. I would want photos that showed a little more thought an effort, but the alternative is not having photos at all. An example from today, we played Takenoko and Lost Cities at the Beverdige Place in West Seattle. We had a great time. There are no photos. Wouldn't it have been nice to have a picture to remember that carefree afternoon?
There are also no pictures of me on the internet. I honestly don't think I've been in a photo in the last four months. (Just checked Bookface. I'm a liar. There's a photo from the Storm game in September.)
(Are selfies EVER flattering?)
(And why are my eyes closed in every F@#%ing picture!)
And this blog helps me take more pictures in general, which means a better chance of a picture of me. Wow, that sounds conceited, but it's true. My friends are not big photographers, so if I don't do it, I don't think it's going to happen. Here's one thing that's strange, I'm not sure there are any pictures of me wearing a suit. I go to functions where I wear a suit, but I don't have any pictures. Maybe I should just go on a photoshoot around the city, where I change into fourteen different outfits in one day?
Nothing good ever happens on Bookface. I don't care about DAILY updates on your dogs, cats, children or "vaca". (Do you really say that word "Vay-cay"? Seriously?). To be clear, the people, things, and events in your life are great, but I'll hear about them when we talk face to face. If we never talk face to face, that should be all you need to know. And why the heck don't we talk face to face?
That's more of a problem for me because no one from college lives out here. So there are four/five years of my life where I didn't meet people my age who share my sensibilities. That's the story of my life. When I started Boy Scouts, my entire den quit within a year. I was put in a group with people older or younger than myself. Most other people I know who are my age now have kids or a dog. Which means they can't do anything ever.
In the last few years, I've picked a yearly skill to learn. One year it was snowboarding, One year it was golf. It strikes me that I don't really practice the skills I had before. I'm decent at the trumpet. And I'm pretty good at tennis. But I don't do these activities often because I'm busy trying to learn new skills that I'm not good at. I told my students the other day that I've definitely lost brain cells since starting my teaching job. Which must be true. I say the same thing 5 times a day, and then repeat all of it the next year. (To any teachers reading this, yes I vary the instruction method to best meet the cognitive and emotional development of the individual learners. I passed National Boards, so I can spout educational B.S. with the best of them.) Anyway, I haven't picked a skill this year. I'm leaning towards guitar, though I've been picking away at that for a few years. I can play this song:
Which may or may not qualify me as a guitar player. It probably doesn't. I used to think being able to play "Classical Gas" would make me feel like a guitar player. But that's a hard song:
He's only playing one guitar there. Maybe I need to lower my expectations.
It's time to get over my aversion to birthdays and special occasions. I think I struggle with drawing attention to myself. Which is probably why I write on this unread blog rather than on the internet. This blog is like the worst LiveJournal ever, isn't it? Part of me feels like I should start planning get-togethers, but it feels like I would have to get really good at using Bookface or email. Which might just be a necessary evil. I'd like to go to Add-A-Ball now that they've finally added a women's restroom. And that probably tells you everything you need to know about that arcade.
When I was in college, I wanted to get into cooking. Food Network was always on TV and Rachel Ray or Alton Brown cookbooks were go to presents from my family. College was the ABSOLUTE worst time to try and cook. First, I didn't have a car to go to the store and get ingredients, which turned every shopping trip into a goddamn odyssey. Have you ever tried to shop with someone who had a completely different grocery list? It take FOREVER! Plus, you're stuck going at odd times of the day, when both your schedules are free, which means Club Publix is wall to wall shoppers.
On a related note, I can't smell the food as I'm cooking it, (I'M SMELLBLIND!) so sometimes I'm unaware that everything I'm cooking smells like fish. And furthermore, my cooking audience has always included extremely "picky eaters". As a recovering "picky eater" myself, I'm of two minds about new foods.
-Of course we should try new food. There was a time in out lives when we'd never tried the foods we now love the most.
-I don't need to try a ghost pepper to know that it would reduce me to a quivering ball of tears and pain.
Picky eaters are not a great audience to practice your new cooking. My roommates in college were picky, my roommates after college were picky, and now I live in the middle of all these businesses that will cook food for me on demand. They only want a little money in return? WELL WORTH IT!!
The fact that I'm thinking about it probably means that I should try and cook. Like with everything new I learn, I just have to be ok, with starting from scratch and progressing slowly. I could start with one meal a week. And provide you with a overly detailed explanation of how I followed someone else's recipe. >thinking< That would provide me with a way to track my progress and learn from my mistakes. Maybe I should do exactly that.
My kitchen is criminally underused. I don't even own official plates. At some point, I just bought paper plates and thought, "good enough". I'm AWARE this is probably not a very mature thing to do. But who are you to tell me what to do? I'm an ADULT, gosh darn it!
I also keep toying with the idea of revamping my wardrobe. My only hangup there is that I don't feel like I could wear a suit to work. I would feel incredibly overdressed and it doesn't seem very practical. I used to wear dress shirts and ties and I didn't feel like I could move around the room to work with the kids. I still have quite a collection of ties from my student teaching experience.
Running as grown on me over the last few years. My main barrier to athletics has been finding other people who want to go outside and play. As a child, my brother and I had a bin in the garage and we had all manner of sports equipment at our disposal (one of the benefits of having a father who teaches P.E.). In college, we played IM. And I played soccer for a few years until the rest of the team started to quit (due to babies and injuries).
Running doesn't require anyone else, which is the best and worst part about it. I've read a few different ideas about how to add the team aspect back into what is basically the most solitary sport on the planet. Maybe I need to get into the adventure/obstacle racing. For a split second, I worried about becoming "bro-ey" but I think that train left the station long ago. Board games and comic books won't suddenly stop being awesome.
Computer coding is another skill I'd like to learn. CodeAcademy is great, and I probably just need to gut it out before I can make something really cool. They did already teach me how to make a very basic "Choose Your Own Adventure" text-based game. So I'm basically Bill Gates already.
And I'd like to read more. And watch more movies. And play more games. And play more sports. And learn new things. And go to more happy hours. And keep most things the same but also radically change everything else.
Do I like all of the things that I'll ever like in my life? I mean, am I going to discover some new passion at this point in my life? I really hope so.
I like my job, my apartment is cozy and in a good neighborhood, and I have a car that will take me anywhere at anytime. I can't remember the last time I was bored.
There's definitely something gratuitous and undisciplined in a lot of the long stories that run today, and in the general fetish for them, but this is just part of the price paid for the ready access we all enjoy to an astonishing depth and variety of quality work. Anyway, the list below isn't any kind of best of, but it is a list of stories I loved and that you should read if you haven't, or even read again if you already have. You could easily make a list twice as long and just as good without doubling up on anything or anyone, and so could I, and that's the best sign of how good things are right now. Saying otherwise is just a sure way of showing how little you're paying attention.
Mathematics directs the flow of the universe, lurks behind its shapes and curves, holds the reins of everything from tiny atoms to the biggest stars. Math is a way to describe reality and figure out how the world works, a universal language that has become the gold standard of truth. In our world, increasingly driven by science and technology, mathematics is becoming, ever more, the source of power, wealth, and progress. Mathematical knowledge is unlike any other knowledge. While our perception of the physical world can always be distorted, our perception of mathematical truths can’t be. They are objective, persistent, necessary truths. A mathematical formula or theorem means the same thing to anyone anywhere – no matter what gender, religion, or skin color; it will mean the same thing to anyone a thousand years from now. And what’s also amazing is that we own all of them. No one can patent a mathematical formula, it’s ours to share. There is nothing in this world that is so deep and exquisite and yet so readily available to all. That such a reservoir of knowledge really exists is nearly unbelievable. It’s too precious to be given away to the “initiated few.” It belongs to all of us.
For as many movies as are clearly “Christmas Movies,” there are quite a few others that take place during the holiday season and yet are not dubbed with the colorful moniker. Do they need to be set at Christmas? In a lot of cases, no; they really are just using the holiday as a setting or are adhering to the release date. For some reason, movies released at Christmastime are often set then as well, as though people who go to the movies in December can’t fathom a story taking place in May. At any rate, here are ten movies that take place at Christmas that maybe don’t need to. Here, they’re in chronological order.
There’s nothing more annoying than a meeting that goes on and on and on. As a manager, it’s your job to make sure people don’t go off on tangents or give endless speeches. But how can you keep people focused without being a taskmaster or squashing creativity?
What the Experts Say
The good news is that meeting management isn’t rocket science; you probably already know what you should be doing. The bad news is that keeping your meeting on track takes discipline, and few people make the effort to get it right. “The fact is people haven’t thought about how to run a good meeting, or they’ve never been trained, or they’re simply too busy,” says Bob Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, senior fellow at Brookings Institute, and author of Extreme Productivity. “Organizations are moving faster and faster these days and few managers have time to think through their meetings in advance,” says Roger Schwarz, an organizational psychologist and author of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams. But rushing now is only going to cost you more time later. So whether you’re getting ready for a weekly team meeting or convening a larger group to discuss your division’s strategy, it’s important to put in the effort. Here’s how to make your next meeting your most productive one yet.
Gambling is the most existential of vices, because it depends upon an interface with the universe as a thing that simply happens. In this way, chance is just a synonym for the universe itself, for its happening. Unapologetic games of chance, like Candy Crush, offer ways to prove to ourselves that luck really is on our side, that the odds are actually in our favor, that our desires are momentarily aligned with the universe. Of course, we have to go back to the table again and again because life just keeps happening. And, truth be told, most days we don’t feel so lucky.
What Candy Crush does better than just about any other game is model an essential fact of life: its radical contingency. Young people feel this in cities, in nights out, where all the colliding elements give an overwhelming sense of possibility. At any moment, something could happen and set your life on a new course. But the stakes of this contingency become even clearer as you age. The world becomes a thing not only imagined but experienced. Your brain, evolved to anticipate contingencies, if-thens ad nauseam, actually sees the unexpected and often tangled consequences of a given moment and their accumulation over a lifetime. You watch as people around you struggle to control chance, maybe impose a little of their own design on the universe, if they’re lucky. You see the less lucky thrash and flail or die in senseless accidents. You feel their contingency wink out.
In the Parks and Recreation episode “The Cones of Dunshire,” which aired November 21, 2013, Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) finds himself unemployed for one week and he spends the time “cooking up something pretty big” — namely, the obsessively detailed board game that gives the episode its title. “Presenting ... the Cones of Dunshire, a brand-new gaming experience [for] eight to twelve players,” he excitedly tells his interest-feigning wife, Leslie (Amy Poehler), before rattling off ever-nerdier details about his invention, including its goal (“to accumulate cones: Four cones wins, but in order to get a cone you have to build a civilization ... which is where the Spirit Cards come in”), its hyper-specific character types (“two wizards, a maverick, the Arbiter, two warriors, a corporal, and a ledgerman,” the latter of which merely keeps score while wearing a hat that says Ledgerman), and its many quirks (“the thing about the Challenge Play is that it’s basically the game” — here, Ben opens his hand dramatically to reveal disc-shaped game pieces — “in reverse”). To build a prop worthy of Ben’s neurotic intensity, the Parks and Recreation producers turned to Mayfair Games, publishers of the meticulously crafted strategy game The Settlers of Catan. In our quest to add more micro oral histories to our theme week, Vulture spoke with Adam Scott, Parks and Recreation honchos, and the Mayfair Games brain trust to find out how the game was dreamed up, whether the cones are, in fact, a metaphor, and if we’ll ever see Ben’s creation in stores.
On August 21, 2005, the HBO drama Six Feet Under concluded with a seven-minute montage of flash-forwards revealing how each of the remaining main characters die. The episode, “Everyone’s Waiting,” was immediately hailed as the most satisfying TV ending ever, something the show’s creator, Alan Ball, still hears all the time. “People say they love it, that it was incredibly moving, that they watched it over and over,” he tells Vulture. “All those things.” As part of our micro oral history week, Ball and the scene’s other key players look back at the finale and discuss the Sia song, the process of aging the actors, and grappling with the meaning of life and death.
We’re living in a golden age for golden ages:television,technology,journalism,television technology,television journalism,journalism technology, and on and on—we’ve all seen the TED talks. Paeans to our best-of-all-possible-worlds tend to not mention that the first golden age was presided over by a god whodevoured his own children. But every utopia has its discontents, and every utopia deserves them. If you’re one of the discontents—if you get the nagging feeling that maybe buying a tablet computer isn’t a revolutionary act, that Twitter might not end political oppression, that humanity remains as stubbornly imperfectible as ever—British science-fiction seriesBlack Mirrormay be the show you’ve been waiting for.
Andre Iguodala, one of the most versatile players in the NBA, could be the key to a championship for Golden State, but it took him years to find the right teammates — and some respect.
Are you ready to enter the 36 Chambers of teaching? Educator Jose Vilson breaks down why the Wu-Tang clan holds keys to greatness in the classroom. "If we can reach our students on their level," says Vilson "we have the opportunity to make our pedagogy relevant to some of our harder-to-reach students of all backgrounds." Vilson notes that "group member ODB would say, 'Wu-Tang is for the children.' But really, says Vilson, "Wu-Tang is also for the adults."
What defined music in 2013?All Songs Consideredkicks off NPR Music's year-end coverage by humbly submitting the following themes for your consideration: The long-awaited return of legends. New favorites who arrived fully formed. The triumph of elaborate promotion. The sneak-attack album drop. On this special edition of the show, Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are joined by NPR Music's Stephen Thompson and Ann Powers for a roughly chronological tour through the musical high points of the year.
Every man should have at least one good suit. However, different events often call for different attire, and keeping multiple suits around is a luxury few of us can (or want to) afford. Still, you'd be surprised how much versatility you can get out of one sharp-looking suit if you buy smart and get the right accessories. Suit up guys: here's what you need to know.
Julia Child andThe French Chef... was one ofGood Eats’three main pillars,the trio of influences Brown points to as the inspiration and foundation for his show: Alongside Child—whose “anyone can cook” method is the basis of the instructional cooking show at we know it—were Mr. Wizard (the educational aspect), and Monty Python (bringing the entertainment value).
"Sleepwalk With Me" is streaming on Netflix. If you're not familiar with Mike Birbiglia, go watch that right now. Then come back and read this interview. ("My Girlfriend's Boyfriend" is on there too, and it's supposed to be good but I haven't seen it yet.)
The list of Paul Thomas Anderson movies you love is probably pretty long. When you’ve directed movies likeThe Master, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia,andBoogie Nights, you’ve earned yourself a fair amount of (deserved) attention. There is, of course, always a beginning, andCigarettes & Coffeeis just that. Shot on a borrowed camera in 1993, the 24-minute short debuted at Sundance and lead to Anderson’s feature directorial debut withHard Eight. The short focuses on five characters in a coffee shop outside of Vegas and was written with actor Philip Baker Hall in mind. You can watch Magnoliaor anotherfilm about family dysfunction later; for now keep it short and sweet (definitely, just short) withCigarettes & Coffee.[viaBlackBook]
Neville Longbottom has quite a following in the Harry Potter fandom, and for good reason—he is humble and noble, brave and kind, he’s a wonderful friend and a fierce supporter. Neville is what most Gryffindors would be like in the real world, a person capable of heroic feats under dire circumstances, but not inclined to them every waking moment. Neville understands that it’s not about being loud and brash every day, it’s about picking your battles and knowing what’s dear and worth fighting for.
What if at school you had to take an “art class” in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso? Would that make you appreciate art? Would you want to learn more about it? I doubt it. You would probably say something like this: “Learning art at school was a waste of my time. If I ever need to have my fence painted, I’ll just hire people to do this for me.” Of course, this sounds ridiculous, but this is how math is taught, and so in the eyes of most of us it becomes the equivalent of watching paint dry. While the paintings of the great masters are readily available, the math of the great masters is locked away?
The problem is: while the world at large is always talking about planets, atoms, and DNA, chances are no one has ever talked to you about the fascinating ideas of modern math, such as symmetry groups, novel numerical systems in which 2 and 2 isn’t always 4, and beautiful geometric shapes like Riemann surfaces. It’s like they keep showing you a little cat and telling you that this is what a tiger looks like. But actually the tiger is an entirely different animal. I’ll show it to you in all of its splendor, and you’ll be able to appreciate its “fearful symmetry,” as William Blake eloquently said.
Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” is, without hyperbole, one of the best rock songs ever recorded. And this music video is, again without hyperbole, one of the most impressive I’ve seen.
The video has 16 channels—with plans for more, Mashable reports. You can toggle between them as the song progresses, and on each one, you’ll find people mouthing the words to the Dylan classic. There’s Steve Levy onSportsCenter singing along. There’s Marc Maron berating some poor podcast guest with Dylan’s lyrics. Drew Carey lip syncs on the set of The Price Is Right. And so on.
16. READ THIS The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, a short story by Alan Sillitoe, tells the tale of a rebellious youth in a reformatory who runs in solitude and makes a stand against a system he doesn't believe in. You'll have new appreciation for the power of solo runs.
He’d blown the first debate. Now he was on the verge of blowing the second and risking his reelection. In an excerpt from their new book, Double Down, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann describe the moment when a president was talked away from the edge.
I ran in the Bison 50 Relay race from Topeka to Lawrence, Kansas last weekend. It was 50 miles and surprisingly not the worst thing I've ever done. Next week I'll run a half-marathon in Florida and then, well, I don't know what I'll do. Probably get re-fat on alcohol and seasonal treats for the next two months because, honestly, Thanksgiving? And then Christmas? Christmas cookies? I'm not going to eat all the Christmas cookies? Sure, let's go with that. Aim for the stars.
Last Friday in Norway, 1.3 million people watched strangers knit on television. For four hours they tuned in as people talked about knitting, and then they stuck around for eight and a half extra hours of actual knitting.
