1807: Learnin’

During quiet periods, I’ve been educating myself in some things that will doubtless prove beneficial to future career plans: specifically, I’ve been learning about the various languages of the Web thanks to a marvellous site that I remember seeing the genesis of a while back, but which I haven’t really delved into until just recently: Codecademy.

Codecademy is a site that truly leverages the idea of interactive learning and makes programming accessible to anyone, regardless of their previous skills. It covers a range of topics, starting at HTML and CSS and working through other useful technologies such as JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Python and Ruby, and also provides examples of how to use these technologies to leverage the APIs of popular platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Evernote to build your own apps.

There are a number of different approaches you can take through the currently available course material: you can take a specific “skill” (such as HTML and CSS, or JavaScript) and work your way through a series of multi-stage exercises, given clear instructions and the opportunity to immediately see the effects of your work as you go; you can take on a practical project (such as recreating the homepage of a popular site using established Web technologies such as HTML and CSS plus extensions like Bootstrap); or you can do one of the super-quick “this is what you’ll be capable of if you stick with it” projects whereby you “create” something impressive like an animated interactive picture by referencing pre-existing libraries that have conveniently been built for you.

So far I’ve found I’ve responded best to the structured, skill-based work. These courses take the longest out of all of Codecademy’s material, but they provide in-depth experience of getting your hands dirty, and tend to provide enough plausible context for the things you’re doing to make them relatable to real contexts. The JavaScript course perhaps didn’t go into quite as much depth as it could — I would have liked to see greater exploration of how JavaScript code is integrated into a website, rather than (or perhaps as well as) treating it as an entirely separate and independent language, but at least the course game me a reasonably firm understanding of some of the core concepts, and allowed me to get my head around object-oriented programming a lot more than I have done in the past.

I quite enjoy programming, though I haven’t been properly “into” it since the 8- and 16-bit eras, when I used to use variations on BASIC (Atari BASIC on the Atari 8-bit computers, and STOS on the Atari ST) to put together simple games. I fell out of the habit of programming around the time you no longer had to put line numbers in manually, though a few abortive attempts to learn over the years have made me pretty familiar with common conventions such as {curly braces} and ending lines with semicolons();

As with any new skill, the real thing you need to do to ensure the knowledge sticks it to apply what you’ve learned in some sort of practical situation. I’m hoping that the later exercises in Codecademy will provide some of this much-needed context for my learning and allow me to confidently say “yes, I do know [language]”. That sort of thing makes you eminently attractive when being considered for new positions, and while I’m not intending to move on anywhere just yet, it is, of course, always worth keeping one’s eyes open for suitable opportunities to flex one’s intellectual muscles and make use of the things you’ve learned over the years.

Still got a way to go before I’d consider putting any of these languages (except HTML and CSS, which I’m pretty confident in the use of) on my CV, though; better get back to the studying then, I guess!

1379: Press Pause

The assertion that “video is the future” of online media is probably more hyperbole than anything else — much like the argument that “free-to-play is the future” of gaming — but it still concerns and frustrates me somewhat.

This isn’t to put down any of the hard work that genuinely talented video producers, editors and performers do, of course. It just makes me worried — particularly given my occupation — and also frustrates me as someone who still likes to, you know, read things.

You see, I don’t like video as a generic means of consuming information. It’s intrusive, it’s noisy, it’s disruptive and it demands your full attention for a fixed period of time. This is fine if what you are specifically doing is sitting down to watch a video, but when you want to get a piece of information quickly, video quite simply can’t compare to a simple piece of text and possibly a Find function.

Video is not particularly portable, either. While mobile phone data networks — and the devices with which to access them — have improved considerably over the last few years, there’s still a significant chance that if you’re out and about on the go, you may not be able to watch a video link, and even if you do, there’s the risk of running afoul of your mobile provider’s data limits and/or fair use policies. A simple text link, meanwhile, is something that is quick to download and, perhaps more importantly, easy and discreet to browse in public or while doing other things.

It also makes me a little sad to see people well-known for their entertaining writing skills stepping back from penmanship in favour of video content. Let’s take Jim Sterling, for example. This isn’t specifically to “pick on” Sterling; he’s just a good example of what I’m talking about.

Sterling’s work around the Web has historically been somewhat provocative, but to an entertaining degree rather than any attempt to deliberately cause offence. He’s mellowed somewhat from his quasi-“shock jock” nature of a few years back and become someone who can bellow well-informed vitriol without alienating people — or at least, without alienating people who don’t deserve to be alienated. His reviews and opinion pieces over on sites like Destructoid were always a good read — he wrote in a distinctive voice, but from a well-informed perspective, and even if you didn’t agree with his points, he usually made a convincing argument.

Now, Sterling is primarily doing video content, in which he does much the same thing. No bad thing, you might think, and indeed I’ve specifically sat down and watched a good few Jimquisition episodes when I wanted to have a giggle at the game industry’s expense. But I’m significantly less likely to watch a Jimquisition video than I am to read an article simply because of the time involved — and now he’s taken to variations on Let’s Play videos I now have even less interest in his content whatsoever. It’s a bit sad, though I also recognise that I am but one person and he is simply doing what there is apparently demand for.

I’ve made my thoughts on Let’s Plays reasonably clear in previous posts, but I’ll reiterate and perhaps reinforce them, since I’ve had a while to think about them as the format has grown in popularity: I’m not a fan. At all. Particularly Let’s Plays of story-based games, which, to me, completely defeat the object of a story-based game. People already get pissy at the slightest hint of a spoiler about games, movies and other media, and yet there are people out there doing nothing but spoiling games… in more ways than one. This is baffling to me; I understand the basic concept of a Let’s Play as an opportunity to see how a game plays and get some commentary about it, but to watch a story-based game with someone babbling over the top of it rather than playing it is just, frankly, the absolute last thing I want to do with my time. Again, though, I recognise that the format has popularity and there’s apparently demand for it.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t want traditional media to go away. I don’t want to see the death of long-form articles about games — or even short, snappy news pieces, though I wouldn’t mind seeing the back of two-sentence placeholder pieces. I want to see talented writers continue to have the opportunity to express themselves in a medium that they’re comfortable with; I don’t want to be forced to watch a video just to find out what a voice I trust thinks about a particular game or issue in the industry, particularly when I’m out and perhaps want to share it with friends.

By all means, then, video content producers and consumers, keep doing what you’re doing; just don’t forget that the way you do things is not the only way to do things.

#oneaday Day 834: RUMOUR: Rumours ‘Rumoured’, Says Rumour-Monger

If you’ve ever started a conversation with “I heard that…” and then gone on to explain exactly how you heard somewhere/from some guy in the pub/from “The Internet” that something awesome/awful is going to happen, then I urge you to think before you speak in future. Because if you continue with that sentence, you’re simply feeding the rumour mill, and the rumour mill doesn’t produce good things and help us make the Bread of Truth. It produces garbage and poo, and then squishes it all out into the world’s most unpleasant pâté.

Tortured (and gross) metaphors aside, it’s a fact that I wish more people — particularly in the press — would cotton on to.

Today, for example, saw news that Liberty X “might be” reforming for a new album and a tour. Firstly, I don’t think anyone wants that, and secondly, the only evidence that such a reunion “might be” happening is the fact that they were photographed together outside the ITV studios and — get this — they were smiling. Stop the fucking presses.

There are a ton of journalism sectors that are particularly prone to this. Showbiz columns report who might be sleeping with whom. Sports columns report who might be moving to some other club for a disproportionately enormous amount of money. Music and arts columns report who might be working on what. And then, of course, there are the tech-related industries.

Anything related to Apple is accompanied by an inordinately huge amount of rumourmongering, for example. In the run-up to the company’s announcement of the third-generation iPad, all sorts of nonsense was flying around. This ranged from suggestions that it might not have a Home button to the frankly astonishing assertion that the reason iOS apps had started having textures like leather and the like in the background was because the new iPad would have a haptic display — i.e. one where you could feel textures as well as see them.

The video games industry is far from immune, either. Rarely a week goes by without one outlet reporting on some rumour from a mysterious, anonymous source and the “story” then being picked up by every other news site on the Web as if it were fact. This particular rumour mill goes into overdrive as a hardware generation starts to wind down and people start wondering what the next generation of consoles might look like. Inevitably, the vast majority of stories turn out to be absolute bollocks, and on the rare occasions when an outlet or reporter writes something that turns out to be true, there’s at least a day’s worth of smug, self-satisfied cries of “Called it.”

No you didn’t. You were throwing darts blindfolded, and you happened to hit a lucky bulls-eye. Your other fifteen darts are embedded in the barman’s testicles, the barmaid’s left boob, the right ear of that hard-looking dude who drinks absinthe by the pint and the TV that was showing the Bolton v Wigan match. (Everyone is angry. I’d run, if I were you.)

So why do we persist on reporting on these festering sores on the very arse of journalism? Because they attract attention, particularly if they’re controversial. If one site prints a story that Liberty X is reforming, or that the next Xbox will feature a system to prevent used games from working on it, or that the iPhone 5 really, totally, absolutely positively is coming out this time, then that will attract commenters like flies around shit. And that means page hits, advertising revenue and the little graphs that make the men in suits happy moving in an upward direction. Who cares if it’s absolute nonsense dreamed up by someone who cleans the toilets at Microsoft? Print it!

I make a point of not reading any stories that start with the prefix “RUMOUR:” now. And should I ever find myself back on the news desk for a popular gaming website, I will most certainly do everything in my power to avoid reporting on such nonsense — unless some actual investigation turns up something interesting, of course. But blindly parroting another site’s “anonymous source”? No. Just no.

So, then, I reiterate: think before you speak/write/publish. Because rumours are rarely helpful. Remember that time it spread around the whole school year that you’d shat your pants when in fact you’d just sat in some mud?

Yeah. That.

#oneaday Day 771: The Trouble With Kotaku Might Not Be Quite What You Think

Yesterday, Internet Rage focused the full power of it’s +5 Cannon of Ranting at Kotaku, and not for the first time. On this particular occasion, the problem was this article, by all accounts a rather obnoxious piece by comedian Kris Kail describing the fact that he supposedly managed to get laid several times in a room filled with Sonic the Hedgehog memorabilia.

The article drew heat for several reasons. Firstly, it was simply quite bad taste. Secondly, it was rather obnoxiously self-congratulatory, and a thinly-veiled attempt for Kail to sell more copies of his book Slacker’s Paradise. Thirdly, and this is the thing that Kotaku has most commonly taken flak for in the last few years, it was really only tangentially related to video games.

Editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo took to Twitter shortly after it became very clear that reaction to the article’s publication was almost universally negative. His response, though, was somewhat curious, as it seemed like he was apologising for something different to what everyone was upset about.

“The only person who has to apologize for stories on Kotaku is me,” he tweeted. “It was my call to run the Sonic story. I had expected it to come off as funnier. That was an error of judgment. But, more significantly, I owe our readers an apology for okaying a story that implies all gamers are straight men. I should’ve caught that. It’s no small thing. No article on Kotaku should make you feel that you don’t count as a gamer. If one does, that is my fault and inconsistent with Kotaku values. I must also add that humor and writing about sex isn’t off-limits at Kotaku. We just have to do it right and not forget our own standards.”

While it’s good that Totilo responded so quickly to criticism, certainly on my Twitter feed the fact that the article was supposedly assuming an all-straight male readership wasn’t really the issue — rather, it was the poor taste and seemingly rather pointless nature of the article on a site which is supposedly about video games.

But that got me to thinking. What is Kotaku really trying to do?

Then a theory hit me. It became obvious what Kotaku seemingly wants to do, despite its half-hearted attempts to be “inclusive” to everyone. It wants to be a “men’s magazine” a la FHM, Maxim et al, but one that focuses on games. Were the site to be branded as such and have the confidence in its content to say “yes, we are specifically aiming at a straight male demographic” then articles like the above actually wouldn’t be all that out of place. Those who didn’t fit into that core demographic might not enjoy that sort of content, sure — but if the site was obvious enough about its intentions, it wouldn’t provoke nearly as much ire.

There’s precedent for this sort of thing, too. A good few years back now, there was a short-lived magazine from PC Zone and Maxim UK publisher Dennis known as Escape. It focused on video games, Internet culture and the Web’s formative years alongside the usual scantily-clad ladies found in more “general interest” men’s mags like its stablemate Maxim. It’s a real shame it’s not around any more. There’s actually arguably a place for a publication like that on newsstands today.

Because you know what? It was pretty good. It brought together Things That Men Like under one convenient header. Games. The Web. Girls. Sports. “Alternative” culture. It took a few risks with its content, too; most memorable for me was the occasion when they quasi-scientifically attempted to test the theory that video games were better than sex by wiring up my brother to a heart monitor and then making him have sex, wank, talk to a stranger, play a video game and bungee jump. Surely a high point in his career. (Bungee jumping “won”, by the way.)

I can’t help but feel that the “blog/news aggregator” format for gaming sites has had its day, and that the way forward is for outlets to specialise both in their content and their core demographic. Video game culture is all-encompassing nowadays, covering men, women, kids, adults, straight, gay, trans, nerd, enthusiast, casual, PC, console, any combination of identifying characteristics you might name. As awesome as that is for the cultural penetration and acceptance of gaming as a mainstream medium, it does mean that you start to get to a stage where you can’t please everyone. So why not focus on a specific demographic? If you’re up-front and honest about being, say, a “men’s” site and focusing on content as such, those people who have no interest in straight male-focused content can move on to any of the bajillion other sites out there (it’s not as if we have a shortage, after all) while those who enjoy that sort of thing can stick around without feeling “guilt”.

Some sites are already wise to this. We have GayGamer.net specifically choosing to cater its audience towards (I quote) “boys who like boys who like joysticks and girls who like girls who like rumble pads”. We have Gamers With Jobs specifically catering towards the older gamer who doesn’t necessarily have the time to play everything but enjoys some mature discussion. We have Girl Gamer, specifically aimed at female players. And doubtless there are numerous others catering specifically to other markets, too.

So why doesn’t Kotaku bite the bullet and make a bold shift in editorial direction, specifically stating that it is going to court the straight gamer market above all else?

The answer is sadly probably the most simple one. Hits. By attempting to be “universally appealing” (and, as we’ve seen, often failing) Kotaku aims to get the largest possible audience of people who are just interested in “video games” as a general, amorphous concept. More hits means more advertising revenue means the site can continue to grow and be a household name in gamer culture. At the same time, controversies such as that which occurred yesterday over this article attract people to the site, in much the same way as the Daily Mail posts deliberately contentious headlines in order to direct outraged traffic their way. Any publicity is good publicity, as they say.

It’s a cynical view, perhaps, but it’s also not an unreasonable assumption to make given Kotaku’s recent history. Consider, however, something that Arthur Gies of Vox Games said on Twitter last night:

You know what brings people to content? Good writing. You know what else brings people to content? Outrage. Which would you rather support?

There is a place and a demographic for content such as the Sonic the Hedgehog piece we saw yesterday. But that place is not on a site which purports to be universally appealing to all gamers.

The solution to this is one of rebranding and targeting that specific audience without guilt or apology — but sadly, I can’t help but feel it’s a bit too late for Kotaku now.

#oneaday Day 591: Proper Intarnetz Plz

You don’t realise how much you’re going to miss the “proper” Internet until you don’t have it. I’m writing this using a T-Mobile 3G dongle which, to be fair, works perfectly fine for the most part (except for the data limits, which make it impractical for use for anything more than fairly light web browsing) but it’s 1) not as fast as “proper” Internet and 2) rather more expensive at £2 per day.

Proper Internet for us is still about two weeks away. I’ve never quite understood exactly why it takes so long for Internet access (and a phone line, for that matter) to reach your house. After all, in most cases the infrastructure is already in place. Okay, sure, sometimes they have to “send an engineer out” but the last few times I’ve set up my own Internet access said engineer has done very little besides bring some equipment. While the personal touch is nice, I’d be happier with receiving it by post if someone can just flip a switch a bit quicker.

I know, I know, it’s probably considerably more complicated than that, and with all the households in the UK, the finite stock of engineers which can be sent out at any one time only goes so far. But have a heart; how will I watch endless cat videos, play stupid Flash games and indeed download the gigabytes of updates my reinstalled (again) Mac insists are absolutely necessary?

That said, where we are now is certainly a far cry from just five to ten years ago. I recall struggling on with dial-up Internet for a few weeks when moving in to a new place, and inevitably forgetting to disconnect it at one point only to confront the next person to pick the phone up with digital squealing. And even further back than that, I recall dial-up Internet being the only Internet. Getting some time on the Internet (after 6pm, naturally) was a real treat, and downloading a file of 1MB or more was something you had to plan ahead for.

In some ways, I miss those days. It made browsing the Web seem like a “special” experience — particularly with the pain in the arse it was to get some browsers working with certain ISPs. Nowadays, we just take our Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia for granted.

I guess it’s one way of the human race showing how adaptable it is. Give the people a new tool to use and it won’t be very long in the grand scheme of things before its widespread adoption worldwide. Perhaps our bodies have stopped evolving, and all future evolution will be done in the digital space?

Perhaps. It sounds like an exciting sci-fi future. But it’s all very well until there’s a power cut.

#oneaday, Day 337: Internet Games #2: TinyURLette

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when browsing the web, visiting the same few sites over and over and over again in a vain attempt to find something new to waste your ultimately meaningless existence with. Facebook is usually the timesink of choice for many people, closely followed by Twitter, TVTropes, Wikipedia and a few others.

As such, it’s easy to forget that there’s a wider web out there, filled with sites that you may not have ever come across during your daily browsing routine. Some sites you would never have wanted to discover, ever. And some are real gems that you’ll be happy you came across.

So what better way to explore the web than to make it into a little game? There used to be a website devoted to this very philosophy. Called ShuffleTime, it allowed players to jump around the web seemingly at random, answering trivia questions about the pages they were seeing. Correctly answering the questions allowed the players to collect cards and coins and purchase rewards and entries into prize draws. Sadly, it didn’t last very long, but I thought it was a great idea.

So here’s a variation on it. I can’t promise any kind of reward (short of discovering something horrendous/wonderful) but it’s a good time waster. Probably not safe for work, but if you’re reading this at work then you’re probably not concerned about that, either. Here is a picture of Rise from Persona 4 in a bikini to make you feel uncomfortable about reading this at work.

Well, it serves you right. Get on with what you’re supposed to be doing and I won’t have to embarrass you again.

Alternatively, you could embarrass yourself further by playing TinyURLette, a game of discovery. The rules are very similar to The TwitPic Game which I informed you all of a few days ago (and no-one participated, boo) except this time we’re dealing with websites.

So here’s what to do. Visit your link-shortening service of choice and simply add whatever you like after the URL. I will attempt this with both TinyURL and bit.ly links to demonstrate.

So first up, we have http://bit.ly/blargh, which takes us to a page of YouTube comments for this video. It is a Scottish guy who has obviously been studying phonetics recently. He also says hello to a lot of people. And goes off on a rant against one of the members of his channel. He also does that irritating “quick-editing” thing that people are doing all the time on YouTube. “Hello! I am [edit] a person [edit] who is [edit] talking [edit] to you about [edit] rubbish.” Enough of him.

http://tinyurl.com/ihateyou, conversely, is appropriately named and takes you to a picture you really don’t want to see. Especially if you’re at work. You have been warned. It’s not porn or gore.

http://bit.ly/arse takes us to BioEthics Bytes, a blog about multimedia resources for teaching bioethics. An unfortunate URL for a page that looks quite interesting.

http://tinyurl.com/what takes us to an article from the San Francisco Chronicle about the death of Margaret Singer, an expert on brainwashing and cult activity. The obituary is an interesting read, actually, with some quotes from Singer herself.

By extension, http://tinyurl.com/whatisthisidonteven takes you to a page clearly intended to RickRoll you. Unfortunately for them, the video they have been using for RickRolling purposes is a broken link, meaning that this page is, in fact, a failed RickRoll. A RickStumbleAndFallOnYourAss, if you will.

http://bit.ly/yourface features a news headline from Twitter very literally about your face.

http://tinyurl.com/stopit gives us a blog post in Russian about Lifespring, the now-defunct “human potential training” company. Or, as Google Translate puts it, “Layfspringe”, which is a much better name.

Finally, http://bit.ly/borednow takes us to a page from McCarthy Psychology Services from Australia about care provision for the elderly.

I’m a little disappointed. Out of 8 different pages, only one of them is the slightest bit inappropriate. You are not doing your job properly, Internet.

Found any entertaining TinyURL or bit.ly shortlinks through playing this stupid game? Let me know in the comments.

Weirdness of the Web: PMOG

I came across this the other day when browsing through friends’ Twitter profiles. As if Twitter didn’t waste enough time with publicly announcing that you were taking a dump (a tweet that, mercificully, neither I nor anyone else that I “follow” has felt the need to share… as yet) I happened to come across something called PMOG on the page of one Jennatar.

PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game and I guess it’s one of those Web 2.0 thingies that you always hear people rabbiting on about. I was intrigued by the title, to be honest, so I decided to check it out.

PMOG takes the form of a Firefox extension that you install and it does all kinds of interesting things while you’re just going about your normal daily life on the Web. Firstly, you gain Datapoints for browsing websites. Secondly, players sometimes leave items on webpages including Crates, which can contain Datapoints, Mines, which cause players to lose Datapoints (and which cause Firefox to wobble around like it’s having a spaz attack), Portals, which link to another website with only a little hint about what it might be (though there are NSFW tags on ones which… well… aren’t) and some other bits and pieces.

The great thing is, these things only pop up if you’re running the PMOG toolbar, so you can make it leave you alone whenever you like. But then you’ll miss out on the mysterious portal which has appeared on your Facebook page, linking you to a video of, I don’t know, some dancing kittens or something.

It’s an interesting idea and it’s already made me check out a number of sites I’d heard of but never got around to investigating in any great detail.

Crap. As if I need another excuse to waste time on the Web.