jasonbutler42

I can barely remember a time when video games weren’t a part of my life. My family could barely afford a television, much any gaming consoles, but I had lots of relatives who endured hours of me planted in front of their Nintendos. I’m approaching 30 in a few years and I recently realized that I’m still excited about some upcoming games ( Spore, Wrath of the Lich King to name a few) and I asked myself if I’ll still be excited about video games when I’m 50. I mean, I don’t know anyone over 40 who is a “gamer” but I think that ’s because video games didn’t exist during the formative years for anyone over 30. Among my close circle of gamers, we all agreed that we’d still be excited, probably for the rest of our lives. I look at my grandpa who is a total gearhead; he’s still rebuilding cars in his late 60s. Video games have always been viewed as childish or immature, and now that games are become “mature” ( GTA IV, Age of Conan) people ( Jack Thompson) are horrified that we would take a child’s medium and pervert it for adult use.

But video games are not a children’s medium any more than animation is. I’ve tried to convince my wife that some of the most emotionally loaded films I have ever seen ( Grave of the Fireflies, The Iron Giant, Jin-Roh) are animated, but she still views them as “cartoons.” One of these days I’m going to force myself to sit through Grave of the Fireflies with her and weep like a little girl just to hope it has the same impact on her. I mean, I’ll weep either way, I just hope the movie has the same effect on her.

I’m just glad to see that there are other people who are taking games seriously, even if they aren’t gamers, and that games are getting the critical attention they deserve. I would expect there to eventually be a form of Academy Awards for Games, probably when Gabe Newell retires. I think one of the keys to greater acceptance of gaming as a mainstream form of entertainment lies with the emerging social aspect of games. There was a time when I didn’t play World of Warcraft (oh those sweetly blissful days filled with ignorance of Azeroth’s wealth!) when my coworkers spoke in excited tones of conquest. They pushed the game harder than a crack dealer with kids to feed. “Have some candy little kid…” So I started playing, mostly casually, mostly on my own on a PVE server. And the game was fun, but it wasn’t the life altering methadone I’d been led to believe is was. Then I moved to a PVP server and began playing with some very close friends on a regular basis and the butterfly emerged from its chrysalis. My eyes were opened to the social dynamic of hanging out with friends. We were in a virtual environment, but getting together in meat space isn’t nearly as easy as meeting online.

Melody recently asked for memories of our favorite party. Aside from my wedding reception, my favorite parties have been the Rock Band parties that have been a regular occurrence in the last year. Rock Band is a great game in and of itself, but the game explodes with all manner of awesome when used in its intended manner - with a four piece rock band! The game is fun to watch as well as play. It’s the social aspect of team work and ribbing that takes place. I think, despite our reputation for solidarity, gamers need human contact too.

But the appeal of Rock Band extends to non-gamers as well! I’m hearing stories, and I’d love to see actual stats, that people are having Rock Band parties instead of bar hopping or trivia nights. I feel like I’ve arrived at a place where all my fantasies about what is cool are coming true. You can stop laughing, computers (and games) are cool now.

I feel like I’m drifting at work. I keep finding out minor (and some not so minor) details and I just can’t build the emotional attachment necessary to live and die for my company. Not that I would ever place my employer over my family - work / life balance is imperative - but I need to know that the company I work for is the best at what they do. Or at the very least, the best at something!

I’ve taken to using the term “tattoo company.” You know, the kind of place that you love so much and believe in so deeply that you would get their logo tattooed onto your body. There are very few companies like this, at least big companies. Microsoft, Apple, Google, maybe even IBM are a few examples. They have corporate cultures that extend beyond their stock price and financial ledgers.

The place I work at now is not a tattoo company and I fear that they never will be one and that saddens me because what we do is really cool. We provide a capitalistic solution for what is essentially a socialistic need. I could totally get behind that! Rock on! Helping people! Making money! The problem is that, like most companies, we take the approach of “just good enough” and I can’t live like that. I have to do my best. If I can’t do my best because of other people I stop caring because I don’t want to live my life as one of those angry people who hates everyone. It’s tough to restrain passion - even if that passion is for things like user interface design, or web standards, or browser load times.

Sigh.

I’m totally feeling connected to humanity once again. Twitter, despite being unreliable and not having IM, is helping me connect with people I would never have met. And despite my atrocious behavior at the Whitaker Music Festival where I failed to introduce my lovely wife to anyone without being prompted, it was nice meeting Melody ( girlsguidetothegalaxy.com) and Don ( www.lifemovestoofast.com) and Mati ( matik72.blogspot.com) and some others (I’m not even going to pretend I remember. I barely remember my children’s names).

Despite the possibility that IM use is on the decline, I use it all the time. I just started experimenting with a webcam to connect with my family in California. Now if only I could frickin’ blog more.

But the thing I like is that I’m connecting with local people, not just totally random internet people. It was great talking with Gina about a new home for my cat Sammy, and about pets in general - including the pain of losing my pet rat Ashley (it was more traumatic than you might think!).

Also, the links to various people in this entry are to their respective twitter accounts. Should I do that? Would you rather me link to your websites? Maybe I’ll add that in later.

Update: Added in homepage URLs.

The deeper I go into the rabbit hole of social media, the more tools and potential I see. I see more and more “perfect score” sites - sites that are next to impossible to improve upon. Twitter, for all of it’s reliability faults (something that they are actively addressing by possibly moving off Ruby on Rails) does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Flickr, YouTube, the indomitable Google - small, discrete functionality that can be strung together to create some massively impressive applications.

I just signed up for Google Health to see if it’s as awesome as I hope. So much time is wasted on recollecting data that already exists. I want a centralized data source to which I can grant access - permanently or temporarily. There are, of course, trust issues. Google’s still a corporation and they aren’t held to HIPAA standards like medical facilities. But if the trust issue could be overcome, I would gladly let a third party handle things for me as I begin to build my metacortex.

I see so much potential in the disruptive technologies that are springing up. It’s as if technology is progressing at an ever increasing speed. Is this what it felt like during the industrial revolution, when newer machines allowed for even newer machines that allowed for ever more newer machines? I feel like the next 20 years is going to change everything we’ve ever known! Cybernetics, nanotech, biochemistry, custom genetics - just four of the fields that are feeding off each other and growing faster and faster! The future is here!

Now here’s the question: does every generation feel this way? Optimistic that future is limited only by clock cycles and since clock cycles are still following Moore’s Law it’s only a matter of time? I can see so much of StarTrek happening, everything from teleportation to food replicators to and end to any and all poverty. I see an end to human civilization as it’s ever been known, whether that’s good or bad is debateable, but I’m convinced that it’s going to happen. But am I being naive? Do the young in every generation feel like the end of the world is out there, waiting to be grasped, and racing towards it?

Obviously, the  future isn’t for everyone. I’ve tried explaining Twitter and RSS to people and keep getting blank stares. “You can get all the information you want, when you want it.” <blank stare> So maybe it’s being an information junkie that makes me see a bright horizon. I hope it’s not just me.

I’m honored to be quoted at St. Louis Bloggers Guild!

There are many people who believe that neutrality doesn’t exist now, but who, like Jaelithe, support legislation to create an online environment where the free exchange of ideas does not ebb and flow according the pocket depth. Jason Butler, also a St. Louis blogger and a professional Web Producer, said,

“It’s been like that since the internets began, but as more people use bandwidth, telecom is concerned and wants to throttle it.”

Melody asked me if I could be quoted in an upcoming post at St. Louis Bloggers Guild. Had I but known which of my quotes would have been used, I would have left my out the ironic “s” on internet but I’ll stand by my statement as is!

Also, there’s much more to the entire net neutrality issue than can really be encapsulated in a brief direct message on twitter. The public is woefully unprepared for the future debates surrounding bandwidth throttling, packet sniffing, and all the other issues of a free (as in speech) and open internet(s).

Update: Edited because I suck at putting in blockquotes.

Updated again: Updated the link Melody.

Everyone has been talking about the “Quake of ‘08″ so I won’t rehash my personal details of waking up in the early morning hours. But what’s been on my mind has been summed up by Bill McClellen in a fictional account from the future. I’ve been worried that the New Madrid fault would be jostled loose by the quake from the Wabash valley fault and we’re not far away from another tremendous quake like the one in 1812 that changed the course of the Mississippi river. I’ve been trying not to fear working on the 9th floor of a building in an area chock full of dense bedrock (apparently the looser ground in California makes the quakes there appear less potent). Unlike my previous obsession with pandemic flu and disaster preparedness, there really isn’t anything I can do to prepare for my building to collapse.

So if this post turns out to be some prescient forecast, I want my family to know I love them all. I always have and I always will.

Walking past the ubiquitous feed from CNN on our department television, I caught a glimpse of Hillary Clinton speaking somewhere and was struck by a strange familiarity. If she wins the election, I can only think of one actor to portray her on Saturday Night Live. You be the judge:

Amidst a deep conversation regarding civil right, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and defining government the following dialog took place:

“So Emily, did you know we are having an election this year to pick the next President?”

“Yes! And I hope the girl wins!” 

Not having expected my six year old to know anything about civics, much less the sex of the candidates, I was taken aback and pleasantly surprised - my tax dollars at work!

“Why do you want the girl to win?” 

Then came the dreaded response, “Because my teacher told me - this would be the first time a girl was president! That would be awesome!” Dreaded because it’s the first time Emily has come home having been taught a viewpoint counter to that which her mother and I would prefer her to hold.

“Emily,” I said, “we don’t pick someone to be president because they are a boy or a girl. That would be like picking someone because they are tall or because they can cook. We pick someone because they will do the best job.” 

“But I want the girl to win!”

“Will the girl do the best job?”

“I don’t know… will she?” – throwing the argument back into my court. 

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter if the President is a boy or a girl. We pick the person who will do the best job.”

In the end she was disappointed, but she eventually understood that we need to pick a President based on merit, not skin color or sex – both of which will obviously be played up in this year’s election. What makes me mad is that I have to be the one to correct her teacher’s feminist viewpoint. I thought teachers were supposed to teach things like critical thinking and objectivity. Maybe I just truly underestimated the “girlpower” that Clinton brings. Makes me shudder to think that many people in this country will be placing their fate in the hands of someone based on gender. I wish teachers do more educating and leave the indoctrinating to the parents.

I was reading through some recent posts of Susan Isk. I’ve been following her and several other local bloggers on Twitter for awhile now, but haven’t read many of their personal blogs. I found this entry that led to this article about how the millennial generation needs more work experience. I was reminded of the Navy’s study regarding this generation and also of how I could never really identify wholly with either Gen-X or with the Millennials. Having been born in 1980 I find myself without a generational tribe to identify. I carry some of the angst and self reliance of the older Gen X, but I also understand the need to be connected 24/7. I don’t get MySpace at all though.

What I do get is papercraft. I’ll be making Ceiling Cat in papercraft form very soon, if for no other reason that to freak my kids out. Found via Papercraft World. What’s even weirder is that my boss walked over while I was looking at it and laughing. He was like, “Yeah, I saw that a couple of days ago.” Pretty sure that my boss isn’t a papercraft guy, I deduced that this must have hit BoingBoing recently. I was totally right. I’ll have to squeeze this in between Volume 1 (finished) and Volume 2 (printed but not started) of Yamaha’s “ Ultra-Realistic MT-01” (”…so real that nobody has ever seen anything like it!”)

Here’s an excellent summary of what Twitter is and why it works. I’ve been using Twitter since April 11, 2007. It’s been life changing. I’ve made new connections and began feeling like part of a community. Most of the people I follow are in and around St. Louis with a few exceptions (like Wil Wheaton). This video from Common Craft succinctly explains tweeting far better than I have ever been able to.

It’s been said that we are now in the end of prehistory. I know I don’t remember stuff the way I used to. Who am I kidding? I never remembered stuff before. But now you can search through all your old communications and find dates and names and places. It’s the future - and we’re living in it now!If you haven’t signed up for Twitter, give it a shot. You can follow me at twitter.com/jasonbutler42.