Game video addiction - part 4

You are probably surprised by the fact that there is a part four to this video game addiction thread. To be honest, so am I. However, the threads of fate have pulled me back to a topic for which I had originally intended part three to be my last post.

When I completed my one week moratorium on video gaming, I was understandably happy. After all, last week, I was able to prove that I could still control my craving for video games. This week, the only thing I was able to prove was that I can't control anything.

After my absence from video games, the sudden reintroduction of Mass Effect was a real system shock. Like a starving man invited into a buffet, I gorged myself at the feast which lay before me. Indeed, if there was some kind of food force measure, my high score would top all!

And now, after what feels more like ninety-nine nights, my sleep deprived brain needs rest before I get admitted to a sanitarium. After all, its getting to the stage where I suspect my subconscious is deliberately putting g6me references into everything I do...

Video game addiction - part 3

And thus ends my 1 week moratorium on video games ... and I can't wait to get home and load up Mass Effect! :)

As a recap, the reason I decided not to play video games for a week was because of an article I read about a blog author failing at such a test. When I read that article, I thought it was incredible that an adult didn't have the willpower to stop playing video games for a short period of 1 week. To me, it seemed incredibly easy to do. After all, its only for a period of 1 week. However, I realised that its easy for me to sit there and criticise - the question was whether I could do any better if I went through the same test.

And I'm happy to say that I passed - I played no video games at all last week. In all fairness, I have to admit that I wanted to play video games several times. In fact, I even almost failed the test on Monday when I tried to load an online flash game without thinking (btw - I replayed that brain game today and won back my first place with a Space Ace brain score - cue smug grin!). However, whenever I felt the urge to play a video game, I just told myself to suck it up - after all, it was only for a period of a week.

And this was how the week passed, alternating between watching DVDs, wanting to play video games, reading books, wanting to play video games, finishing my Halo 3 comic and then wanting to play video games (did I mention that already?).

On one hand, I'm glad that I had the willpower to resist the urge to play video games for a week. However, the downside is that, judging by the urges I had to play, I guess the sad truth is that I am indeed addicted to video games. Still, I guess I shouldn't feel too bad - after all, there are worse addictions out there!

Halo 3 comic - finished

Well, I finally finished my Halo 3 comic.

To be honest, I've been close to complete for a month now. The problem is that after I bought Mass Effect, all of my spare time was directed into saving the galaxy. And lets face it, completing a comic book doesn't even compare to saving the galaxy!

I have to say that the whole process was quite difficult primarily because I didn't have the right tools. Trying to create a comic using Powerpoint is hard. In addition, there were several things I would have done differently in terms of page layout etc if I had the right tools. Anyway, I'm currently downloading the trial version of Comic Book Creator again - once downloaded, I'll give it a go and see if it makes creating a comic easier.

Anyway, regardless of the difficulty, I did eventually come up with a finished product. Although I can identify quite a few areas of improvement, overall I'm very happy. If you want a copy, let me know and I'll email it to you.

Below is a page taken from the comic to whet your appetite!

"Translation" of indian music video

Just watch the video. Absolutely hilarious - not much more that I can add really...


Absolutely Hilarious Indian Music Video - Watch more free videos

Video game addiction - part 2

Wow - this is going to be harder than I thought.

As you know, today marks the first day of my 1 week abstinence from video games. And I almost failed on the first day!

I mentioned before that I'm a competitive jerkwad. This reared itself again last week when a friend of mine challenged me to a game on facebook called "Who has the biggest brain". Basically, this game is a series of questions designed to test your arithmetic, visual acuity, memory etc. At the end of the game, you get a score for how "clever" you are. In form, its actually very similar to some of the brain training games that you can buy for the Nintendo DS.

So, as I was saying, I received a challenge last week. Naturally, I took up the challenge and promptly beat her brain size (apparently, I have a scientist brain). Being the jerkwad that I am, I also left a message for her trumpeting my triumph. What can I say - I'm clever, not mature.
:p

Anyway, I get back into work this morning and find that, after numerous attempts, she has finally managed to beat my brain size. Shock! Horror!! Well, I wasn't going to let some upstart female get the better of me! I immediately clicked to load the game.

Luckily for me, I received an error screen while loading (the applications in facebook are prone to the occasional error) and I wasn't able to get in. At this point, I remembered my pledge to not play any videogames for a week. I had tried to load the game without thinking. Never mind lasting a day, I almost lost on the first morning!

Only a twist of fate had saved me...

Video game addiction

Here is a question for those who know me - am I addicted to video games?

I'm asking this question as a result of reading this article. In this article, the Aberrant Gamer decides not to play any video games for a period of a week. Basically, she failed. In the case of the Aberrant Gamer, I can partially understand why as her job is video game related. You may not know this but if you are involved in the video game industry, its definitely due to love for the medium as opposed to love of money!

As I read this article, I couldn't help but think "Get a life!". After all, video games (for me) are just a hobby. Granted, I'm probably considered a hardcore gamer considering the amount of time I spend playing games, thinking about games, reading about games, writing about games etc etc etc. However, at the end of the day, it is still just a hobby - a way for me to relax.

So, all in all, when I first read this article, my reaction was that I could easily go a week without playing any video games. However, can I put my money where my mouth (or rather keyboard) is? After all, talk is cheap! To this end, I have decided that I will go for a period of 1 week where I will not play any video games.

As with any test, I need to lay down some ground rules:

• The test will only run for 1 week. Although I'm sure my wife will be disappointed to hear this, I have no intention of giving up gaming for life.
• The test will start on 21 January. I am in Shanghai for a business trip at the moment so making the test for this week would be too easy.
• The test only applies to video games (specifically, no PC games, no X360 games, no NDS games and no mobile games). I can partake in all other forms of entertainment - including reading and writing about video games.
• Fantasy Football on Facebook is not considered a video game.
• There will be no penalty for failing this test - other than eternal shame for showing that I have no resolve whatsoever...

Any other rules which I haven't thought of?

Journalistic integrity

For some reason, I seem to be thinking a lot about journalistic integrity recently. More specifically, I think about the issue that some journalists don't seem to have any integrity at all. If I were being mean, I would add "just like politicians" - but then that would just be mean.
:)

Anyway, you can find the article that prompted today's rant here. Before, reading any further, please click that link and read the article.

If you are familiar with the video game Mass Effect, then you may be thinking whether this is a genuine article or not. I will admit that my first reaction on reading the first couple of paragraphs was that this was sarcasm in full flow. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it isn't sarcasm and is a genuine post about how this guy views video games in general and Mass Effect in particular (full disclosure dept - I am a huge BioWare fan and highly enjoyed playing Mass Effect. In fact, if you run a search on both of my blogs, you will find several references to this game).

I actually read uninformed crap from morons babbling about video games all the time. Admittedly, most of the time, its from politicians and other professionals (say for example, lawyers) who are trying to push a political agenda and don't know anything about the video game medium. In that situation, I can kind of understand why - they are looking for votes on the back of an easy scapegoat. Similarly, I can understand why so much video game legislation is initially successful before being struck down as unconstitutional in court - after all, if a politician doesn't vote for legislation on video games, then their opponents will just use that as ammo to say that this guy doesn't care about morals or children or whatever (Think of the children!!).

Another element that video gamers have to deal with is the blatant hypocrisy of politicians when they attack video games. As an example, some politicians claim that children exposed to violent media (which obviously includes games, movies etc) have a higher risk of becoming sociopaths and hence want to regulate the sale of video games. However, you rarely see these same politicians attack the movie industry in the same way. To be fair, I can understand this as the movie industry in the US is very powerful and attacking these guys head on could result in the end of your political career.

Anyway, let me get back on topic before I get sidetracked too far.

As I was saying, in the case of politicians, I can understand why they are attacking video games. However, in the case of Kevin McCullough (the author of that post), things are slightly different. Kevin seems to be semi famous - he has radio broadcasts, appears on TV as a pundit, is a published author etc (you can find his bio here - I'm assuming he wrote that as its on his own personal blog).

I don't know if he is considered a journalist. I don't know if he considers himself a journalist. However, based on my definition of a journalist being someone who reports on the news, I do consider him a journalist.

And before you ask - when I write about news and similar events on my blog, I consider myself an amateur journalist and try to be ethical about it accordingly. Where I feel I haven't done enough research and feel that I don't have sufficient facts, I try to let you know that. I hope that when you read about news items on my blog, in addition to getting my viewpoint, you also get a reasonably balanced look at what is happening. An example of this is my recent post on Sony. I told you that I'm not a fan of Sony so that you have full disclosure of my viewpoint which may bias my comments as anti-Sony. I also deliberately included phrases like "According to the author" and "seems to be based". These words were deliberated inserted to make you pause and think about whether you were getting the full story (obviously you weren't as Sony did not, and probably never will, release any statement on this). Admittedly, I don't always succeed (see my very one sided posts about the RIAA).

So, whats my point? My point is that, as a journalist, you have a certain level of responsibility when presenting news.

First off, you should not lie. This is the big one. If I find out a journalist was outright lying, I never give that journalist any future credibility ... ever.

The second big responsibility is that you should research your topic so that, at the very least, you know what you are talking about. If you don't do this, this also impacts on your future credibility (if I know you aren't going to research your topic, why should I believe what you say?). If you don't research the topic, but rely on someone elses work, then you should make this clear and let us know what you base your "facts" on. Again, to take an example from my blog, I recently posted about the RIAA suing someone for copying music from a CD onto his computer. When I first heard about this, I didn't take it at face value. Before I blogged about it, I checked online to see if it was true. I found a transcript of the actual law filing as well as an article in the Washington Post. Based on this, it seemed like the lawsuit was genuine. I posted a link to the Washington Post article so that you readers could see why I thought it was genuine (I didn't post a link to the transcript as I felt that was too boring to ask you to read!).

Of course, this doesn't mean that you can't be wrong. After all, nobody is infallible. You could be flat out wrong when presenting something - but if you honestly believed what you said and did a reasonable amount of research before presenting, then I wouldn't hold any grudges.

Now here's the thing. Based on what Kevin wrote about Mass Effect in his column, I can only think of two possible reasons. Either he is outright lying and knowingly presenting the game as something it is not or he didn't bother taking the time to do any kind of research into this game before writing his column. Both of these possibilities highlight a distinct lack of ethics.

At this point, I should also mention that Kevin isn't the only person with such views. However, I chose to post about his column because it was the latest example that I came across while also being the most extreme example of highlighting what I consider to be a lack of journalistic integrity.

New Year's Resolutions

I'm not a big believer in making resolutions at New Year. In my opinion, making a resolution at New Year just doesn't work.

To understand why, you have to understand why you are making the resolution in the first place. Most people get to New Year and then think "Oh, its New Year! I need to make a resolution. It also has to be something good. Now, lets see, what can I do?". In my experience, the most common resolutions I hear are:

1. I will go on a diet this year;
2. I will do more exercise this year;
3. I will eat more healthy food this year.

The problem with this is that you are making a resolution for the sake of making a resolution. It could be due to peer pressure (everyone else is doing it!) or feeling guilty over stuffing your face during the Xmas period. However, the fact remains that you are making a resolution for the sake of having a resolution.

Another problem with most New Year's resolutions is that people give very wishy washy resolutions (like the ones above). Think about this - your resolution is to go on a diet for a whole year? What happens next year - are you allowed to stuff your face like a pig again or is the diet resolution one that is made every year?

The problem is that when most people make New Year's resolutions, they don't give any real thought to how they are going to achieve that resolution. As any counsellor will tell you, if you set yourself a goal, it has to be specific. For example, instead of saying I will go on a diet this year, you should set yourself a goal of losing 20lbs (depending on your weight obviously!!). You should then set yourself an action plan so that you can actually go about losing those 20lbs.

Under conditions like this, is it any surprise that most New Year's resolutions end up failing?

This isn't to say that New Year's resolutions can't ever work. They can work - if you make the effort in properly setting your targets and milestones and then plan out how to practically achieve those milestones. In other words, treat your New Year's resolution with the respect that you would give to any other lifestyle change.


Anyway, the reason that I'm talking about New Year's resolutions is because a friend of mine has just told me that he has made a resolution to eat more healthy food this year. Ding ding ding - that's number 3 on my list above!! This endeavor is doomed to failure!!


Only joking!
In all seriousness, I wish him all the best in meeting this resolution. In particular, I hope some of my comments above make him realise that if he is serious, he will need more than good intentions. In short, I hope that this will help him in achieving his goal.
I also want him to know that if he doesn't make it, I will publicly name and shame him on this blog.
:p

Enforcing my diet

I told you before that I'm on a diet. Well, sometimes, you have to force yourself to follow that diet - despite public pressure. And sometimes, you can rig the system to avoid public pressure altogether!

While I was in Guangzhou over the last couple of days, a group of us went out for dinner. As is the norm when you have a large group of people in a chinese restaurant, we ordered way too much food. We're at the tail end of the meal and there is still a large plate of prawns remaining. The problem is that everyone is already full. At the same time, no-one likes to waste food.

What to do?

We decided to let fate decide who should eat the prawns. To understand this next bit, you have to realise the setup on a large table in a chinese restaurant. Basically, you all sit at a large round table. This facilitates conversation by the whole group. Food is placed on a large plate in the middle of the table. This plate can spin so that even if food is on the other side of the table, all you need to do is spin the plate so that you can reach the food. It's a good system.

By now, you can probably guess what we did. We spun the plate and decided that wherever the plate stopped, that person would have to eat one prawn. The colleague on my right starts the process and spins the plate.

The plate spins round once and then starts to slow down. I'm looking at the plate and thinking, "crap, that looks like it will stop at me!". Luckily for me, everybody's attention is on the spinning plate of prawns. While their attention is diverted, I lay my hand on top of my chopsticks (in a very natural manner - I'm a natural actor!) and surreptitiously push one of my chopsticks forward slightly.

I didn't push it very far or very hard. Just enough so that the chopstick is sticking against the spinning plate and creating extra fiction. The speed of the plate slows down even more and stops ... facing the girl to my left! We all laugh and she grabs a prawn.

However, we still have a large plate of prawns left. So we repeat the game. Once more, based on the speed of the plate, I suspect it will stop facing me. So once again, I surreptitiously push forward my chopstick so it is sticking against the spinning plate. And once again, it stops facing the girl to my left! The poor girl hadn't even finished eating the first prawn yet!

Three prawns later, we all decide that the game is too cruel. And noone realised that throughout the game, I was rigging the result.

>:)

What can I say - I'm on a diet!

Does Sony want my money?

Well, I'm back in Guangzhou for another business trip. Consequently, I have no access to photo's of Gerry which means that my enforced period of blogging about Gerry has come to an end. Don't worry though, I will of course blog about him again in the near future (he is after all, my favourite blog topic)!

Anyway, now that I've finished blogging about Gerry, I reckon its time for me to go back to moaning and complaints!

As many of you are no doubt aware, I am not a fan of Sony. I really don't like how this company does business and I feel justified in this considering the amount of crap which Sony has been involved in over the years. As that stuff has happened in the past, I'm not going to waste words going over it again. Besides, there's plenty of new stuff from Sony that I can bitch about instead...

In one sense, I feel like I'm taking the moral high ground in not purchasing Sony products. However, I only recently realised that not only do Sony not care that I don't purchase their products, they don't even want me to purchase their products! Imagine my shock!!

Basically, what happened is this. OXM, a magazine focused on the Xbox, conducts a review of one HDTV every issue. They reason that people with a shiny new Xbox 360 may want a shiny new HDTV to get the full graphics experience. For the March 2008 issue, they wanted to review the Sony Bravia HDTV. To this end, they contacted Sony PR for the purpose of getting a TV to review. The Sony PR rep said no.

According to the author, the reason for this rejection is that OXM is a microsoft focused magazine and that Sony are a Playstation creating company. In the words of the rep, "I have to support our friends over at our sister company."

The first thing I want to say is that I fully support the rights of Sony to decline to provide a TV for review purpose. An HDTV is expensive and I'm sure Sony PR won't give out a TV to just any Tom, Dick or Harry who asks for one. If they had said, "we don't think your publication has enough of a readerbase to justify sending a TV to" or "Sony will pass on this opportunity" (without embellishing), I wouldn't have cared. That decision is perfectly within their rights and I would have nothing to blog about.

However, their decision not to send a TV for review seems to be based on the fact that OXM is focused on a Microsoft product. I don't own a PS3 either and have no intention of ever buying one. Does this also then mean that they wouldn't want to sell me a Bravia TV as they need to "support" their friends in the Playstation division?

Gerry likes dim sum

Recently, we've been taking Gerry to dim sum with us. Actually, I should be a bit more specific as we've always taken Gerry to dim sum with us. In the past, we would generally go to the Gold Coast - the hotel there has a Chinese restaurant which does really nice, albeit expensive, dim sum - rather than going to a more mainstream dim sum restaurant like Maxims.

To be honest, I've always liked Maxims. The dim sum there is of very good quality although it is slightly more expensive than other mainstream dim sum restaurants. The problem is that Maxims gets very packed especially as weekends. If you go at lunchtime, you generally end up waiting over 2 hours before you get a table!

However, if you go in the morning, you can get a table very quickly. And this is exactly what we've been doing recently on Saturdays. After getting up, we would get Gerry and go to Maxims for a dim sum brunch.


Here you can see Gerry thanking me for treating him to some nice dim sum. :)


Although I am thrilled to get a kiss, you can see he is less happy. Maybe I should have shaved...


I mentioned before that Gerry has a sweet tooth and also likes bread. Given this combination, I should have guessed that he would really love custard egg buns.


In fact, he liked them so much, he ended up eating all three (leaving none for poor mummy)!


Here you can see the aftereffects of eating three custard egg buns. Luckily we were well prepared with wet wipes (admittedly, they were normally reserved for his soft backside!).

Xmas buffet at Kowloon Hotel

For our family Xmas dinner this year, we went to the buffet at Kowloon Hotel. To be honest, the main reason we chose the Kowloon Hotel was because the buffet there over Xmas wasn't split into two sessions. A lot of buffet's (at hotels anyway) over the Xmas period split the buffet session into two sessions - one from 6-8pm and the other from 8-10pm. This lets the restaurant get lots more business.

However, as we wanted to take Gerry, we didn't want to feel rushed during dinner. In particular, if we needed to change his nappy or chase him down, it wouldn't leave us much time for dinner!

Luckily for us, the buffet at the Kowloon Hotel turned out to be okay. Most of the main courses were nothing special. However, some of the desserts were quite nice - in particular, they had all you could eat Haagen Dazs ice cream (of the missus's fav brands). Considering how much a scoop of Haagen Dazs costs these days, just the ice cream in itself is quite a draw.

Anyway, here are some pictures of Gerry at the buffet playing with his cousin.


This is a picture of them "fighting" on the couch.


I'm not quite sure if they're applauding someone or playing paddywhack. Either way, Gerry looks happy.


I guess Gerry was tired of clapping but his cousin wanted to continue. Hence, he decided to "lean" on Gerry a little...


Saved by granda. Looks like they're all playing paddywhack!


I like this picture. For some reason, it makes me think that Gerry is about to unleash some kung fu fury on granda!
:D

A quick intermission on the RIAA

I know I promised a stack of photos and updates on Gerry in celebration of his birthday - but I just had to insert a quick intermission to comment on this article. The incident in question happened in early December although I only just found out about it. Also, despite how outrageous it sounds, I'm assuming the article is genuine as it isn't April 1.

Basically, the RIAA is suing someone in the US for copying music from a CD onto his computer. The RIAA considers this to be stealing. The key quote from the Washington Post in this case is the following - "the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer".

You may recall in the past I said that I extremely dislike the US music industry - in particular the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). Its crap like this that helps explain why.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I have an ipod nano and that I copy music from my legally purchased CDs onto my PC. In other words, I am a criminal in the eyes of the RIAA.

Well, the RIAA can kiss my @55.

Gerry's sweet tooth

I mentioned in my last post that Gerry had a sweet tooth. Just in case you needed more evidence, here are some pictures that we took of Gerry recently. We had gone to Hollywood Plaza to see the Star Wars 30th anniversary exhibition. After wandering around, we popped into Starbucks for a quick coffee and cake.


This is Gerry taking a piece of blueberry cheesecake (I have to admit, the blueberry cheesecake from Starbucks isn't bad). Gerry, like me, has always been a fan of cheese and I guess he liked the familiar taste of cheese in the cheesecake.


I'm guessing he is probably wondering why mummy is eating his cheesecake...


Yum - you can tell he liked it as he is licking the fork clean!


Yum - still licking...


And after cheesecake, what better than a tall iced mocha. After licking the fork clean, Gerry took his fork and stuck it into the coffee. Then he licked his fork clean again before repeating the process. It appears we have another coffee lover.

PS Yes, he was hyperactive for a while after the coffee. At least, I think he was. It's hard to tell with any certainty as he always runs around like a madman in the shopping mall anyway...