Gamers' Central

Gamers' Central Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Jaymark Malloy (Joshua Mallory)" journal:

March 20th, 2012
08:39 am [Link]	Birthdays, Huh? I'm not a big fan of attention or fuss, so this birthday was a good one. Stephanie and I joined the local happy hour group from work, along with some folks from the guild who happened to be in town, and I got a tequila sunrise (meh), a shot of birthday cake (mmm), and a shot of patron tequila (surprisingly shootable). And, we ran a Wrath of the Lich King-era raid on WoW with a small group. It's new to us! In college, I was an easy guy to get presents for. There was always some game that I didn't have. Now, I'm a really hard guy to get presents for--there really aren't that many games I care about but don't own! This weekend we're going to St. Louis for the Distant Worlds concert. Now THAT'S a birthday present! I'm reading an interesting book called Reality is Broken. It posits that games, and video games in particular, enrich our lives and fix fundamental flaws in reality. The argument is that adding more game features to real life situations (learning, exercising, recovering from injuries) improves our performance and happiness in measurable ways. The author did a lot of research into how our brains work, especially when confronted with hard work that we choose for ourselves--like a good puzzle, or a life's calling. I'm about halfway through it now. Current Mood: amused Current Music: lots of chatting in the cubicle hallway Tags: books, gaming diary, linkage (Leave a comment)
March 7th, 2012
09:45 am [Link]	Whew, I'm Beat! We had a pair of brand new DDR pads boxed up in our closet, and we finally unboxed them and played DDR last night. I haven't played DDR since the last time I popped a ligiment my big toe while playing it. Remember, now that I brought DDR to my wedding. It's not like I'm any good at it, but I really enjoy it. Playing last night reminded me how awesome it is... It brought back lots of memories of college. Now, for some shameless advertising. Do you have an inactive World of Warcraft account? There is a new Scroll of Resurrection system, where if you accept an invitation from a current player, you will get: 1. a free upgrade to Cataclysm, the current expansion, 2. A free server and faction transfer to the friend's server, 3. A free character upgrade to level 80, which is where you begin with Cataclysm's content, and 4. Seven free days to play. If you wanted to accept an invitation from Stephanie or I, you could join our guild, which runs weekly 10 man raids and has a small but grasping PvP group, lots of friendly people, and a ton of unlocked guild perks. What do we get out of it? A free mount, and hopefully some more friendly people in our guild. Current Music: something by Origa stuck in my head Tags: ddr, gaming diary, linkage, nostalgia (Leave a comment)
February 22nd, 2012
03:58 pm [Link]	Yeah, I'm a Little Tired of All the Articles Too OK, this is basically a ten month old article, but I can't believe I missed it the first time around! Why Every Final Fantasy Game is the Best AND Worst in the Series. It does a great job of explaining why people have an easier time agreeing on pizza toppings than choosing the best entry in the Final Fantasy series. Current Mood: amused Current Music: Dissidia: Final Fantasy - Final Fantasy IV Map Theme Tags: linkage, videogames (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
February 2nd, 2012
03:45 pm [Link]	Into the Cave There are only a handful of video games in our short history that can be called masterful. One of them is Super Metroid. Super Metroid is the third title in the Metroid series; the first was a proof of concept, and the second expanded on it--the third time is the charm here. The balance, atmosphere, flow... all perfect. The later Castlevania games follow closely in Metroid's footsteps, and thus that style of side-scrolling Action Adventure within a persistent world is called Metroidvania. If you've never played Super Metroid before (Hi Steph!) you owe it to yourself to give it a try. If you have played it before, you should check out this article to refresh yourself on why it's so awesome. The article explains all the great game design decisions, but it is essentially a walkthrough--and thus a complete spoiler. Current Mood: happy Current Music: Super Metroid Theme of Samus Aran - Galactic Warrior (in my head) Tags: linkage (Leave a comment)
January 19th, 2012
12:57 pm [Link]	Because You Make More Money From the Advertising Gigs I just saw Sonic the Hedgehog in a Progressive commercial, alongside Flo. As if the last decade's Sonic games weren't embarrassing enough for the franchise, now he has to sell car insurance? Current Mood: amused Current Music: Sonic and Knuckles - Hidden Palace Zone (in my head) Tags: tv, videogames (Leave a comment)
January 18th, 2012
02:58 pm [Link]	Brogue My game du jour is Brogue. Brogue is a Roguelike, or "a game like Rogue". Rogue was one of the early offshoots of the Adventure genre; a graphical adventure game back when drawing with text was an advanced technique. In Rogue, your character was an @, all the objects on the ground were symbols, monsters were lower and upper case letters, and the things that happened were all described in a text sidebar. The hallmarks of a Roguelike are randomly designed (or partially randomly designed) dungeons, items and equipment with hidden properties that have to be tested or used blindly (like potions that are described by color, at least until you drink it and find out what it does), and tough monsters that often have to be defeated by clever item use. Roguelikes often use the limited graphics they are known for as a starting point to make extensively complex and complicated environments. Roguelikes are also known for being dense and esoteric. So what is Brogue? Brogue is an attempt at an accessible Roguelike that still uses ASCII* text graphics. Monsters are still single text characters, but you can hover over them with your mouse to get all the information on it, including its powers and how difficult it might be to fight. In fact, you can control the entire game (including inventory commands) with your mouse. Items start unidentified, but you can access a chart of all the items in the game, and which ones you've already discovered. Each level fits on one screen, so you can see the big picture. Best yet, the text is in full color, including shadows and lighting effects like luminescent phosporous and fire. Anyway, try Brogue. It's probably unicode text, actually, but you know what I mean. Current Mood:* restless Current Music: nothing in particular Tags: gaming diary (Leave a comment)
January 11th, 2012
12:07 pm [Link]	Less QQ, More Pew Pew! Today I ran across this interesting editorial out of the Star Tribune, and since I have been very good and quiet lately, I feel like I'm entitled to a little bit of snark. So, I will be reproducing the article in its entirety below, so I can comment. Feel free to read the article on your own beforehand, if you wish. In short, the author feels that college degrees are pointless and that colleges are money-grubbing greedy bastards. Not that either argument is completely without merit, but his argument in particular is completely without merit. Let's begin! That college degree paid off -- for the schools, not for me ( Flagrant copy-pasting follows, plus fair-use invoking commentary! ) ***** If you noticed those red flags, you might have figured out that they all smacked of someone who is unconfident, bored, and easily fooled. Guess what sort of person well-paying employers want to hire? Someone who is confident, interested, and smart. All I'm saying is, I'm not convinced by this guy's article that his financial situation is caused by his money-grubbing universities. OK, so for any pre-college folks that stumble upon my blog, here's some advice from someone who got a non-worthless college degree. In general, college degrees apply to career fields. With degree A, you can get jobs x, y, and z. With degree B, you can get jobs y, z, and t. If your professor or college counselor has to explain to you what you can do with degree C, it's not a degree for you. I'm not saying it's a worthless degree per se, but it can't be a good fit for you if YOU can't imagine what sort of job you might be getting with it. There are four factors to consider with a college degree: Money-making potential, cost, difficulty, and satisfaction. Understanding the interplay between these four factors is the best way to make a WISE college decision, including whether or not to even go to college at all. Cost is unavoidable for a few fields, like medicine or law. That's something you have to accept if you want to get into nursing. Past that, a cheap state school is just about as good as a prestigious ivy school. The best thing you get from an ivy school is contacts; hobnobing with the rich people that can afford tuition and the supergeniouses that can get scholarships. Even state schools cost money, but the price range is a lot wider than you might think. If the cost of in-state colleges sound prohibitive, you might be better served getting a job now and saving money for a few years before trying college. Money-making potential is the reason most people want college degrees. The difference in money-making potential between degrees is primarily what sort of job the degree SPECIFICALLY qualifies you for. The job that requires "any bachelor's degree" is also the one with the largest pool of applicants, and therefore the most difficult to get--and is probably worth little more than a "high school education required" job, due to supply and demand. For instance, a computer science degree can get you a computer science job. A history degree can get you a teaching job. Mark out jobs that you have a gut reaction against, because their salaries don't count. There isn't much research required to find out the average salary ranges for different job fields. Difficulty is different for every person. Some folks have an easier time dealing with numbers, others with words, still others with people. Still, while counting for the variety in personality, some degrees are just easier than others. Difficulty is a big factor in deciding which career path to venture down. Satisfaction is another great reason to choose one field over another. Some people ENJOY working with people, others ENJOY pouring over computer code twelve hours a day. Sounds terrible to you? We're all different. If you have a good idea what kind of work would satisfy you, your college decision will be easy, because you won't care about the money. Money only really matters if you are cold and starving. Go to a place you can afford (assuming you need the training and experience), and you're set to have a very happy life. If you don't know what you want to do with your life, you really have two options. You can go for as much money as possible, or you can go for the easiest degree you can get. An easy degree will give you more leisure time to ponder life, or likelier more time to get in trouble in the college atmosphere. Going for the most money will likely make you miserable, but hopefully you can put some cash into savings while you figure out how to do what you really want. But do you even need a college education? Maybe not! Embarking on a college degree is risky business when you don't know what you want to get out of it. Having a bad job for a few years while you think about it is a lot cheaper than getting a degree and not being able or willing to use it, especially if it turns out you need a different degree for what you DO want. Anyway--if you go for the easiest degree you can get, you'd better not complain when you don't get paid well. And if you're dumb enough to believe for a minute that every college degree is a get out of poverty free card, you deserve those student loans. And a good college degree doesn't guarantee a good job, either! You still have to be the sort of person a business would want to hire. That's scary, but it's just something you have to push through. Good luck, college/job investigators! Current Mood: calm Current Music: nothing in particular Tags: classes, job hunting, linkage, philosophy (Leave a comment)
January 1st, 2012
10:45 pm [Link]	It's 2012! ( Customary Meme ) Current Mood: bouncy Tags: memes, milestones, nostalgia (Leave a comment)
December 18th, 2011
11:35 pm [Link]	We found a nifty-looking DVD shelf at Best Buy and bought it yesterday... It turns out it was only nifty-LOOKING; it's pretty shoddy quality and we had a heck of a time putting it together. We managed to break the darn thing, and had to glue some pieces back together. But put it together we did, and it is functional enough. We're finally able to display all our anime, DVDs, and video games at once again. Of course we are planning to take pictures... Shaun stopped by tonight while we were still trying to put the shelf together. He always manages to show up when we need help setting up furniture! Our house is a terrible mess, though. Terrible. Steph took her Calculus final last Thursday, so she's done with that class. Yay! Current Mood: cheerful Current Music: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - Login Screen (in game) Tags: anime, movies, nostalgia, videogames (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
December 7th, 2011
10:32 am [Link]	What? I Never Left! I'm tired, I'm cold, and I'm on call, but hey! I have Livejournal access at work again. For some reason. I don't understand their roulette of banning and unbanning. But anywho. I've been completely terrible about updating LJ, or even keeping up with the folks who have left comments saying hi, and I'm sorry. Except for the spam bots. Stupid spam bots. The thing is, I'm not good at telling stories about my life. Good storytelling requires details, and I forget details. A lifetime ago when I posted daily, I would comb over what I did and who I did it with, and what was interesting or funny, and I could maybe remember it because it happened just an hour ago. My life isn't interesting enough anymore to remember to post about what just happened an hour ago. I've always envied people with great, detailed memories. My friend Mike, for instance, can tell stories about individual games of Smash Bros. Melee from High School. (My lord, I was still in high school when Smash Bros. Melee came out) I can make up details, which is why I write decent stories, but even then my stories tend to work in concepts and broad shapes rather than the fine lines and shadows and textures. For instance, I see color fine, but I have to struggle to remember color. Likewise, I remember the gists and emotions of conversations rather than the actual words. It's interesting, because I read somewhere that left-handed people are twice as likely as the general population to have major brain disorders, and that mixed-handed people are several times more likely than that. Interestingly, I was ambidexterous in Kindergarden until I finally settled into left-handedness. Anywho, I think Thanksgiving Friday is officially a tradition at the Mallory household. We ended up feeding about fifteen people. Holding Thanksgiving feasts is good. We clean the apartment from top to bottom, get rid of clutter, reorganize. For now we've managed to keep the apartment that way. It's been one week, I guess. That's a start! We also got lots of delicious leftovers, which we have finally just about finished. Meanwhile, our World of Warcraft guild completed its first official Cataclysm raid: the first two bosses of Baradin Hold. Nevermind that they will be releasing a third boss tomorrow; this is proof that we have enough interested, capable people in our guild to DO RAIDS. That's crazy, for a social guild. Stephie and I continue to read; I'm on the third book of the Song of Ice and Fire series; Steph is on the fifth book of Harry Dresden. The Song of Ice and Fire is really harsh. It's a textbook example of a Crapsack World where horrible things happen, and then things get worse. The first snow of the season was yesterday. I love snow, almost as much as I love wind. Snow some more! Snow some more! Current Mood: anxious Current Music: nothing in particular Tags: gaming diary, linkage, personality, reading, videogames, weather (1 comment \| Leave a comment)

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