Christian TV hosts comes out of the closet

Posted on April 16, 2008 by steve

Via the Huffington Post:

Azariah Southworth announces he is gay

I haven’t watched any Christian-based TV programming in years. To be quite honest, even at the highest point of my most fervent belief, I never watched that much religious based programming. So I really have no idea who this person is.

Apparently, he is a very popular Christian TV host.

Apparently, he is also gay.

I can’t fathom the amount of personal agony to be a popular figure for a religion that despises your existence. Can’t even get close to imagining the amount of courage to stand up for who you are, knowing how much ridicule, especially given our current political and religious climate, that you are about to receive.

Kudos Azariah, even though I’ve never watched any of your show.

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Jenny Block, open marriage and me

Posted on April 9, 2008 by steve

Oh, the magic & wonder that is the blogosphere-rama. The last post on my evolving view on love & relationship, seemed to have caught a few unusual eyes. One of which is Jenny Block, an author who lives in an open-marriage lifestyle and is writing a new book.

I found her article on the beginning of her open marriage fascinating:

Portrait of an Open Marriage

You can also find her blog here at My Open Book, she has posted the first chapter of her upcoming book on the website. I’ll find sometime to read it in the next few days, maybe.

Continue reading →

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Love

Posted on April 5, 2008 by steve

Contrary to population belief, I’ve always felt that the internet didn’t spark a revolution as much as an evolution of existing ideas. Most certaily, “web 1.0″ was about bringing traditional commerce to a new avenue; but in its nature, the idea behind most of these businesses didn’t differ much from their traditional counterpart. In fact, most web 1.0 companies had close ties to mail catalogue & phone order business, just with a different interface & avenue that took less resource to manage, and gave you more information than what could be expressed in more traditional mediums. Even the advent of search engine giants at the time (oh Yahoo, how far have you fallen?) was a direct cousin of our traditional 20,000 page yellow pages that the phone company so happily left on our front porch (and I bet, the cause of many back-injury related work-comp claims for postal workers).

Continue reading →

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Brilliant religious advice of the day

Posted on March 21, 2008 by steve

Courtesy of my dear friend Colin at: A)bort, R)etry, F)ail.

Stick to your cat, it’s not religiously judgemental, so long as you worship it.

Indeed, Colin, indeed.

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Call of Duty 4 is like…

Posted on February 1, 2008 by steve

The single player campaign of CoD4 reminded me of first grade, when I had to raise my hand with a desperate thrust and wave to get the teacher’s attention, just so that I can go to the bathroom. Even then, it was up to the teacher’s discretion to decide whether or not I really had to go, as if my own biology had somehow betrayed and lied to me. The single player experience in CoD4 is essentially the same kind of hand-holding buddy system that we’ve grown out of (at least some of us) by the time we hit second grade.

Although I understand that the CoD series has always been about scripted battles, being a “shooter-on-rails”. The end result is that I am pointlessly bored as our team moves from point A to B, with AI constantly yelling at me, “Soap! Where are you?!” Let’s not go into how any respectable mercenary/militia man would allow himself to have a call sign that reminds one of a bad shower experience in prison. Give me Halo 3 anytime, even with Master Chief’s strangely erotic relationship with a piece of software (granted, a piece of translucent, glowing, and oddly sexy one at that).

So why did I even get CoD4? Part of it is peer pressure, all my friends were doing it. Part of it is that mixture of RPG and various online multiplayer modes are supposed to be fun. After several grueling hours of “grinding” myself to higher levels, which made me wish that I was still playing WoW, here’s what I’ve realized:

Call of Duty 4 is like having really bad sex.

  • You spend a lot of time looking around in attempt to figure out where you are.
  • You keep yours eyes peeled for any subtle, sudden, or strange movements that may or may not mean it’s okay to proceed.
  • You spend hours, or what might have felt like hours in your space/time continuum, in various amount of coaxing and foreplay, just so you can get a shot at actual sex.
  • Once in a blue moon, you might actually “engage” in the act of sex, if you’re really lucky or good depending on your degree of self-loathing or ignorance in regards to your insignificance in the universe.
  • With all the odds of the world against you, you finally do engage in the act, only to have it end about 5 seconds later. Leaving you with a deep sense of dissatisfaction and regret.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget all the meanwhile, there’s some 12 year old kid yelling at you through the headset, “Do you like nipples?!! I like nipples!!!”

BTW, if you really want to know the secret to getting really, really good at CoD4, consult my dear friend Nano:

(10:02:32 AM) nano: maybe you should dress up like a clown
(10:02:37 AM) nano: noone looks for clowns during warfare
(10:02:46 AM) Steve: indeed O.o
(10:02:55 AM) nano: like that family guy
(10:03:01 AM) nano: when peter is dressed up like one in nam
(10:03:03 AM) nano: and hes like
(10:03:10 AM) nano: ‘see, you guys are stupid. theyre going to be looking for soldiers’

Now, go get 25 headshots already.

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My talent

Posted on January 17, 2008 by steve

Last night, my best friend informed me that she thinks one of my best talent (at least I hope it’s not my only talent) is being a critic. I think her exact words were something like:

“you are a very good critic, b/c you are able to articulate your likes and dislikes very very clearly… especially the dislikes”
“If you don’t like something, you will find the best words to say it… and say it in different ways 200 times”

I guess nothing illustrates this better, than a recent email that I had to send off to my housemates. I hate to admit this is almost the best writing I’ve done in … a long time:

Hey gang,

I noticed that the lint filter is sometimes being left full of lint after a load. Please take the small bit of time to clean after your lint. I don’t really mind cleaning out the lint before using the dryer; but it’s just a nice common courtesy to clean after your own lint, rather than having your lint being cleaned after.

Another issue of mine, is the amount of time that’s been taken up to do laundry. IMO:

  1. It really shouldn’t take multiple days to do laundry, unless you’re doing laundry for a family of four or five (I do remember the good ol’ days when my aunt always seemed to be doing laundry.. but that was a family of five).
  2. Even if you separated all your colors & whites & delicates & whatever, it really shouldn’t take more than half a day.
  3. I see laundry being left out there for days at a time, this creates a few problems:
    • I’m not sure when someone’s laundry is “done”. Sure, I can open up the washing machine and take a peek, but that’s almost an invasion of privacy. I don’t want anyone to look at my underwear & such, and I certainly don’t want to look at anyone else’s underwear & such. Which brings me to the next point…
    • I could remove your clothes from the premise, but I really don’t want to touch your underwear & such, just as I would like it if no one touched my underwear and such.
    • The only situation at which I would feel comfortable with seeing your laundry out in public display, or having to touch any part of your laundry while it is in public display is:
      • I happen to be your mother, and I’m doing your laundry for you.
      • We are in a physically intimate relationship where I feel comfortable with that.
    • Given that neither of the situation above applies to any of us (unless I’ve been ignoring obvious signals? If so, I apologize, I’m a bit of a dimwit when it comes to intimacy), I think it’s safe to say that I really shouldn’t be seeing someone’s laundry just “hanging out”.

Anyway, depending on the time of the day, the mood which you’re in, this email may come across as 1) Bitchy & whiny or 2) Hilariously entertaining. Whatever the interpretation, I hope we can all respect each other’s laundry rights and perform the aforementioned duty quickly & respectfully.

I can be such a bitch.

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Per request, more Jojo!

Posted on January 15, 2008 by steve

Here are some more pictures of my cute & adorable (and crazy) cat!  For no reason at all!

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The art of subtle game design: Halo 3

Posted on January 14, 2008 by steve

Through a sequence of unforeseeable events, I ended up becoming a XBox 360 owner over Christmas. I have never been one to adapt a new console platform upon its initial release, since I was burnt by NEC’s vaunted PC Engine platform as a kid. Given that, I had plenty of catching up to do.

I was a happy XBox owner, happy enough at the time that I sold my PS2 for a very cheap price including a bundle of games to a friend. That turned out to be one of the worst decisions I had ever made, because PS2 continued pumping out quality games for another two years, while XBox failed to pick up much more momentum and lacked quality title until the introduction of the XBox 360.

With that aside, Halo was the reason why anyone bought the XBox at all, even though it was not a particularly innovative game at the time. First-person shooter was already a very well developed genre, although it never fared quite as well on outside of its computer-platform origin. Halo marked the first time, that anyone was able to prove the FPS games can be done just as well on console as they have been on PC.

That brings us to the point, that Halo wasn’t a genre-redefining game of any sort; it is however, very much a genre-refining game.  Very much like Blizzard software, another company that’s been known for their refinement of existing genre, Bungie Software’s accomplishment with Halo is not to revolutionize, but refine and balance everything until it is near perfect.

Small and subtle game mechanics goes a long way towards changing the overall experience of the game. At a time when most FPS was about hoarding the biggest gun and the highest amount possible (in all descendants of Doom-like games, you carried as many weapons as there are in the game at all times, and you only used weakers weapons when the best weapon ran out of ammo), Halo limited the player to carry only two weapons of their choice, with limited ammunition. You had to constantly juggle the best situation to use a certain type of weapon versus another, and that results in drastically different approaches to encounters depending on what weapons you were carrying at the time. One little change to the traditional game mechanic at the time, yielded a completely refreshing and different game experience.

Somewhere along the line, Halo 2 lost of that magic. The developers in various interview admitted that Halo 2 wasn’t quite as balanced and polished as they liked it to be. I felt some of that too, since I could never bring myself to play more than half-way through Halo 2 in numerous opportunities. There was something intangible that bugged me about Halo 2, something that made it stale & boring. A weird balance that I never quite pinned down, but can only react by quitting the campaign.

I was not exactly excited when Halo 3 came out, due to my experience with Halo 2. However, since I got my own XBox 360, there’s no reason to not own the most renowned franchise on the platform. I could’ve picked up a number of other games on the aisle, but most of which I would just rent from Gamefly and then dump once I’m done with them. Halo 3, for whatever its historical value is, should be owned regardless.

The logic behind buying Halo 3 had really little to do with the game’s playability, but in retrospect, after finishing the single player campaign entirely by my lonesome (I didn’t even do that with the original Halo, a friend and I co-oped through the entire game), this was one of the best gaming experience that I’ve had in a long time.

At no point in the game, did I feel that I wasn’t challenged enough, and I was never so frustrated by the difficulty to just “give up” either. Most importantly, is that every battle encounter had a multitude of solutions, the encounters never play out exactly the same way, you are never pigeonholed into doing anything just one way. This is where the subtlety behind the game shines. The balancing of AI, the clear mission objectives & direction, and still having the flexibility to deal with every single battle in a multitude of ways dictated by you, not the game.

By comparison, I’ve also been playing CoD4 through the single player campaign. It is the most mundane & boring single player experience I’ve had in a long time. The feel of the battles might be authentic, but at no point did I ever have the flexibility to play the game the way I want to, versus just following directions that’s being constantly hollered at me. Of course, that is the trademark of the CoD series, it’s a “shooter on rails”. You follow directions, you camp spots, you fire away at enemy from cover for 5 minutes, you move to the next spot. Plant a beacon, pull a switch, more 5-minute cover fights. There are people who appreciate that type of focused, linear gameplay.

However, it is much harder to program a game where the AI reacts to what you do, and you’re given freedom to roam and reach resolution by your own devise rather than scripted events. On that alone, Halo 3 is a much more well made game than CoD4. Toss in the balancing of all the weapons, abilities, even sub-weapons and equipments newly introduced to the game, it is really the best FPS that I’ve ever played.

Of course, this brings up the question if it’s better for a game developer to rehash old gameplay and just refine and polish it, rather than innovating and revolutionizing the industry (and possibly, most likely, falling flat on their face for doing so). That’s an entirely different topic for another day.

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My creative process, and the inevitable self-destruction

Posted on December 12, 2007 by steve

Warning: This post is undoubtfully, 100% emo.

Traditionally, I only post emo stuff following you know, some sort of a heart-breaking event in my life. This time really isn’t any different. Yes, there is a heart-breaking event in my life (of a very typical & easily guessable nature). However, that event in itself isn’t to be talked about here in a public forum. As far as this post is concerned, that event only serves as a catalyst for me to think about posting something here that is related to the mood itself, but not the subject matter. It also serves to explain why this “blog” uses a publicly available template, instead of a customized, made-just-for-me template that all proper designer should have.

The heart of the matter is, I loathe everything I make.

I had a conversation with my best friend last night, it was brought up that I have this huge void, a yearning and desire to be loved. She thought that I wanted to be loved by everybody as much as I loved myself, seeing that I always seem to self-righteous and stern about my ideals. There’s no question that she was definitely right about my need to be loved, but the reason is actually opposite of what she thought. I don’t love myself, not even a little bit.

Part of being a designer is that you need to have very firm belief in what you’re doing. Design is subjective, although you may support your design choices with as much rationalization, facts and data as possible, you can’t avoid debating over subjective opinions. For example, if I chose a shade of light green as our branding color, I can support that choice with the rationalization that it is a friendly, approachable color. Thus allowing our brand to stand out against other brands which are more tech-oriented, with a clearly defined male-dominant target audience. At the same time the color will not turn away the tech audience by being too effeminate. I’ve made this choice based on my experience, my personal opinion, and gut instinct.

So when someone asks, “Why can’t we go with blue?” Or even better, when someone says, “I really don’t like green, we should go with a color that’s more, you know… (insert your choice of pretty/normal/like what that other company does/pink here).” As a designer, you need to have the conviction and confidence to stand up for your point of view. This need for conviction is why I seem to be self-loving. “Steve thinks he’s always right,” is a statement of what I seem to be in front of others, not necessary of how I process thoughts internally.

I like to blame my job for this weird personality disorder of mine. It is also very possible though, that I chose this career because of that personality disorder. So in a way, I would’ve been the same whether or not I’m a designer, but by some strange twist of fate I happen to have a personality disorder that allows me to perform better at my job.

So, I have no love for myself. In its place is really a constant stream of self-doubt, insecurity and self-loathing. I can’t really explain how or why it started, it goes back for as long as I could remember, even as a child I was introspective in the worst way possible. I’m constantly examining my own faults, and rarely happy with any of my accomplishments (if one could call them accomplishments-worthy at all). Worst of all, is that even under this constant self-examination, endless number of personal flaws still slip through the crack. Thus the endless cycles of self-examination, loathing, and fixing what isn’t fixable.

How is this an essential part of my creative process? One of the most important lesson that all designer must learn, is that everything has flaws, faults, and must be critiqued. If you can’t identify what is “wrong”, you can never figure out what is “right”. Then you may or may not look at what you’ve just corrected into the “right” and try to determine whether or not the new “right” is now also “wrong” as well. The only thing that stops the cycle, is the deadline imposed by some other department outside of the design process. This pursuit of perfection will never end, and perfection doesn’t exist.

When I’m done with a major design project, I usually sit back a bit, admire all that has been accomplished, and feel good about my existence in the universe for a few brief moments. It’s only a matter of time before I find flaws in what I just accomplished, then there comes the fear and desperate hope that no one else has noticed the same flaws I just found. “How did I let that one get away?” “That color isn’t right.” “I should’ve done something different here.” And it’s only a matter of time before the momentary relaxation turn into another round of complete self-loathing.

Yes, I loath everything I’ve ever created.

There was a time when my portfolio was small enough, and my ambition for my own design-oriented website was just a few pages. I designed the website over the weekend, have everything coded, up and running by the end of that weekend. If I had any time at all to go through the self-examination process, it just stops. I hate what I’ve just created, I must destroy it and rebuild it again. This is also why PixelPushingMonkey has no real website and no real design of mine at the moment. I have not found enough time to complete this massive project in as short of a time as possible, before the self-loathing kicks in, before I want to destroy it all just to rebuild it half-way again.

I guess, this is the quality that makes me at least somewhat decent at my job.

It is also a very slow deterioration that eats through my very own being, a bit at a time, making that heart devoid of self-love even more empty. The void continues to grow, and my yearning for love goes along with it.

It would be a misnomer to say that the cycle never ends, because at some point, I imagine, I would have to stop. I would collapse, I would give it all up. At some point… maybe.

I could let it continue to eat me up inside, or I could force a change of perspective on my own life. How do you change someone into something that they’re not, that they’ve never been? I don’t think it’s possible to change one’s personality and their belief in life by rationalization and willpower. Aren’t we all exactly just as dysfunctional as we’re meant to be?

For the moment, the void is manageable.

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Purple Violets is a good movie

Posted on December 8, 2007 by steve

I spent the past week thinking of a clever title for this post, to my failure and disdain, that which you see (yeah, up there, look up) is the best I can come up with.

As a bit of background, Purple Violets gained a bit of attention as the first movie directly released to iTunes as an exclusive before it is available either as a direct-to-video release via DVD/VHS/rental or in the theaters. This move generated a bit of media coverage which probably would’ve never occured via any other channels, and the film would likely have died an obscure death, or relegated to the bargin bin in Best Buy.

However, Purple Violets’ release is not just a play on generating media hype. The nature of the film itself is almost exactly the opposite of that. I am reminded of a few years ago, when horror movie genre was gathering steam yet again, and there were a lot of hype generated around some horror film fest (something akin to the 4 horror films you’ll never see, major studio will never release, or one of those all-weekend horror film b-flick marathons… or something); and the films all turned out to be forgettable, mediocre waste-of-my-time-and-intellect (what little is left of that last part).

Purple Violet is *not* one of those films that would’ve been dependent on media hype to just be seen. It is a very frank, straight forward and non-assuming film about relationships and human interaction. It doesn’t provoke any new revelations or truth about human nature, it doesn’t have any real controversies to induce emotional conflicts from its audience. Most of all, it does not attempt to make you cry and weep to prove that it is in fact, a very romantic & emotionally engaging film.

To put it blandly, this film is simply about people who had made mistakes in their lives, especially in regards to their choice in relationships; and how they were given another chance to rediscover what they might have been, and what they have lost. The dialogs aren’t dressed up with unnecessary complexity, they’re delivered naturally without pretense. Part of that I attribute to the script (written by Edward Burns, who is also the director), and a part of which I attribute to the wonderful casting (Selma Blair’s best work). The story itself is refreshingly linear, you always know where the movie is going, and it never once pretends that it’s going to veer away from that path.

This movie reminds me of Next Stop, Wonderland, which is another romantic film that delivers its content without dressing. Due to the likable characters and the tenderness of its plot, you can’t help but fall in love with the characters in the film. Purple Violets reminds me of how good a film can be, without trying to be anything that it’s not.

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