This is actually a pretty good book!
I recently read a book called slide:ology that talks about improving slide-based presentations, and the book has given me a lot of food for thought. But one of the minor points that’s really stuck with me comes from a section where the author explains that it’s easy to create your own illustrations for slides, but that people rarely do it because they believe they can’t. The author mentions is that if you ask a group of children, “Who in this room can draw?”, you’ll see almost every hand in the room go up. But if you ask a group of college graduates, “Who in this room can draw?”, you’ll see very few hands go up.
When I’ve gone into classrooms and worked with aspiring young authors, I’ve noticed this as well. Kids believe they can do almost anything, and regardless of the results, they’re willing to try. Adults, on the other hand, only believe they can do the things they know how to do, and they’re often reluctant to try new things without someone there to guide them. What causes this disconnect? Is it simply that children don’t have the wisdom to know that they can’t do something well… or that adults are too concerned with quality to try something that they know they’ll do poorly?
I’m probably the wrong person to answer this question, because I love learning new things, and I’m rarely afraid of failure. But in that spirit, I’m going to make an attempt to do so. Bear with me.
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If you saw my last list of five great television shows you’ve probably never heard of, but should check out, you’ve probably realized that I tend to watch shows that aren’t exactly popular or well-known. But they’re still worth watching, and today’s list will give you five more that are definitely worth checking out if you’re tired of the normal dreck on network television and cable. Read more »
Tags: AZ, best, hammer, kill, manhattan, police, puppets, shows, sledge, squad, television, titus, tv, who
[Television Thursday] | SeanJJordan | 
January 29, 2009 12:59 am | 
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What game is the greatest of all time?
It seems like every year, at least one of the dedicated video gaming magazines, blogs, and websites comes out with a list of “the top 100 video games of all time.” These lists are generally pretty short-sighted and include games that, ten years from now, most people won’t even remember. Generally, as you get to the top of the list, you find a few sacred cows — Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid — that are good games, and maybe even great games, but certainly with some element about them that prevents them from being considered the greatest of all time.
Maybe part of the problem is that the criteria used to evaluate the concept of “the greatest games” are subjective rather than objective; in the writer’s head instead of on paper; made up as the list is compiled, not established ahead of time. So of course a lot of games that are nostalgic will wind up on the list, not because they are truly the greatest, but because they stuck out in the writer’s mind.
We also should avoid the GameRankings style of quantitative rankings based on qualitative reviews. I’m not going to get into the details, but there are many flaws with such a system, and when you look at the top games (available here), you find that there are lots of really excellent titles that have been snubbed because they didn’t receive the level of acclaim that they deserved since they weren’t AAA releases. Plus, the GameRankings system has some very arbitrary logic to it, and it’s really not a very good system for judging the worth of a game any more than Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic are good for weighing the worth of a film.
I’m going to offer a different take on this. I’m going to start with a set of guidelines, and then narrow my focus down to one title that stands above all others. When you see my conclusion, it probably won’t surprise you — nor should it. But understand that the purpose of this article is not to state what the greatest video game of all time is, but why it deserves such a title.
Are you ready? Here we go.
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Tags: best, chrono trigger, final fantasy, grand theft auto, greatest, half-life, halo, nintendo, super mario bros., tetris, video game, world of warcraft, zelda
[Video Game Wednesday] | SeanJJordan | January 28, 2009 12:59 am | Comments (0)
Laptops would be so much easier for novices to use if they weren't developed to do so much!
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have a Blackberry Storm, and I love it — this little device can do so many things that I’m finding myself using my laptop less and less for routine tasks like checking email or goofing off on Facebook, and finding myself anchoring my laptop to a desk more frequently.
Aside from those two devices, I have a PSP that I’ve loaded custom firmware onto, giving me a dedicated entertainment platform that can play so many games that I really have no need for the vast array of video game equipment I have. That means that between three pieces of hardware, I can have more functions than I know what to do with — and every week, I’m finding a new and novel use for one of them.
In the tech industry, one of the big buzzwords over the last ten years has been “convergence” — the idea that as technology evolves, there’s going to be less of a need for multiple devices and that more and more emphasis will be placed on using a single device for all of our technological needs. Right now, it appears that that device is going to be the cellular phone, though it’s possible that once long-distance wi-fi towers are a standard, VOIP will replace cellular technology entirely. In another decade, wireless networking will probably be everywhere, at a price that puts today’s rates to shame. And we’ll all be using a small portable device to take advantage of it instead of the bulky notebook computers we lug around today.
But there’s a downside to technology — the tendency to add new features to products that are already doing a pretty good job. It’s not enough to put out a nice product and leave it alone anymore — every new model has to include some improvement over the past model, even if it doesn’t make sense. We’re rapidly approaching a time when the cry of the consumer is not going to be for more, but for less. And it could happen sooner than you’d think…
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Tags: blackberry, computer, convergence, future, laptop, network, playstation, portable, psp, storm, technology, wi-fi
[Technology Tuesday] | SeanJJordan | January 27, 2009 12:30 am | Comments (0)
Actually, I used Arial to create this, but it's practically the same font. Windows PCs come with Arial; Macs come with Helvetica.
I’ve been sharpening my graphic design skills lately, and as I’ve read books on improving the look of my Powerpoint slides, the visual display of quantitative information, and basic typography, I grew interested in a documentary film my brother mentioned to me last year called Helvetica.
“Helvetica?” you might be asking. “Isn’t that a font?”
Not only is Helvetica a font, but it is the font that you’ll see in most graphic design since the 1960s. See, back before personal computers, typesetting and font design was a very complex process — you had to create very detailed illustrations of every character and then ship them to type foundries, where steel pieces would be created for printing presses. Because of this, there was a great need for a simple, “everyman” sort of font that not only was readable and stylish, but neutral.
“Yeah, but why should I care?” you might ask. “All I have to do now is fire up a computer, and I can use any font I want.”
True, but it never hurts to learn about why Helvetica (and copies like Arial) became a visual standard. And it’s even more interesting to see how Helvetica has been used in the creation of logos we see every day:
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I've spent more hours working retail than I care to admit.
My wife and I went shopping at the mall yesterday, and it was a pretty horrifying experience. Our local mall has somehow managed to banish every bookstore, toy store and nature store from its premises, leaving us with a pet store (that will probably be out of business soon), a “Club Libby Lu” (which is going out of business), a GameStop and a slew of clothing stores, gift shops and cell phone kiosks. Blech.
Now, for those who don’t know, I have a fairly successful background in the retail industry — when I was working for EB Games (which is now GameStop), I was the top-ranked manager in the entire Midwest for 2 years in a row, and when I left the company to go back to school, I was ranked #2 behind the regional manager’s home store. From what I’ve been told, I was the only manager in the history of the company to ever do that. (To be fair, my employees were a big part of the effort, and they deserve credit too!) But it wasn’t just because I was really, really into video games — even when I worked in an Eddie Bauer, which was way out of my element, I was the top sales associate in the store fairly consistently.
So, yeah, I know a thing or two about retail. And what I want to say right now to anyone else who is in the retail business is to stop asking me if there’s anything I’m looking for when I walk into your store. This helpful-sounding question actually kills more sales than you’d think.
“Huh?” you might ask. But trust me, I have a good reason for saying this.
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Rich Uncle Pennybags makes it seem easy, doesn't he?
I keep up on skeptical literature, but I really don’t see a lot of skeptics out there talking about financial schemes that are designed to rip people off. So, over the next several Saturdays, I’m going to tackle some of these topics.
I’m sure most of you are aware of the “Nigerian Email Scam,” also known as the “4-1-9 Scam,” but for those who aren’t, here’s a quick recap. You get an email from someone claiming to be a lawyer who is trying to handle a large estate, but who needs help with the fees. For some reason or another, the lawyer has contacted you, and would like your help. All you have to do is forward the lawyer a small fee and your account number, and he or she will finish the transaction and give you some percent of the money (generally, a 6- or 7-figure dollar amount) for your trouble. Sounds like a win-win, right?
Of course, no one should actually fall for this scam. There are too many things that are fishy. First of all, whoever heard of a lawyer who wants to give money away? And to a complete stranger, at that? Why would a large amount of money be frozen in such a way that a small amount of money could release it? Why couldn’t the lawyer just send a check, or initiate a wire transfer to a neutral account? There are just too many ways this scam sounds fishy to most people.
But, the law of large numbers holds that if you can get your sample size large enough, you’re bound to find a few outliers in the form of suckers who will fall for your scheme. And, lo and behold, here’s the story of a guy who did fall for one of these email scams. When you read it, you’ll find out what a sad and messy ordeal these scams can be. The guy just kept giving these con men money until he had to face the fact that he’d been duped. Now, he’s a pariah, and not only does he feel very stupid, but he also has zero credibility with his friends and family.
He should have known better, right? Of course. But the problem is that most people love the idea of getting something for nothing… of having some magical ship come in and give them everything they’ve ever wanted. And that’s why we all have to be careful and arm ourselves against get rich quick schemes.
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It's not always easy to decide what's beautiful...
So I’m a little critical on this blog — I’ll admit it. Every week, I recommend films, video games and television shows that I think are good and I tear apart others that I think are pretty lousy. Clearly, my tastes are particularly, and my preferences are for things that I consider good. Most people develop their own sets of preferences for things that they find good which may or may not conflict with my own. That’s part of being human.
But have you ever stopped and wondered how we arrive at conclusions about what is good and what is bad, what is perfect and what is flawed?
The field of criticism is based on a philosophical principle called “aesthetics,” and it’s the basis that we use to determine what we like and what we don’t like. Most people have an intuitive grasp of aesthetics, but never bother to develop their understanding to a point that they can broaden their own horizons very easily. And there’s another problem, too – the problem of whether or not there is some universal sense of “good” aesthetics (i.e. whether truth and beauty are directly related) or whether or not aesthetic values are determined by culture and experience.
Let’s take a closer look at the issue and see if we can arrive at any conclusions.
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LOST is one of the best shows on television, period.
LOST is back for its fifth season, and like many people, I made a point of getting together with some other LOST fans and watching it. I’ve been keeping up with the show since the middle of the first season, which means I’m all too aware of its brilliant moments… and its slumps.
As it happened, the premiere hit on a lot of the strengths and the limitations of the show. So, while it’s fresh on my mind, here are a few observations I have about LOST overall: Read more »
In his FINAL form, Kefka is way more awesome than Sephiroth. But prior to that, he's just a weird clown.
So, I got a little passionate last week and decided to slay the sacred cow that is Final Fantasy VII. To summarize, I concluded that it’s a good game, and maybe even a great game, but hardly the greatest game of all time. (I’ll tell you what that is next week.)
But in talking about FF VII, I realized that one of the reasons it’s so popular is because people don’t realize that there are many other RPGs that are just as good, if not better, than FF VII. Oddly enough, none of them are recent titles, and all of them predate FF VII or were in development when it was in its heydey. And, just to make things fun, I’m going to set my handicap to “only Square Enix titles.” That means I can’t bring up Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Lunar or Lunar 2: Silver Star Story, Grandia, Suikoden II, or The Legend of Dragoon, all of which were great RPGs. I’ll also restrict myself to leaving out other Final Fantasy titles, since VII is generally considered the best of the series. (That assessment is incorrect, by the way; VI and XII are far superior in terms of actual gameplay, and VI’s only downside is the peculiar nature of its villain, a clown named Kefka, who just can’t manage to be as badass as Sephiroth despite the fact that he destroys civilization halfway through the game and rebuilds it with himself as its god.)
If there are any games on the following list that you have not played, do yourself a favor and track them down, if you can. Each of them is an amazing experience. Read more »
Tags: chrono cross, chrono trigger, enix, final fantasy, final fantasy vii, psx, RPG, secret of mana, seiken densetsu 3, snes, square, super mario rpg, the world ends with you, vagrant story, valkyrie profile, video games, xenogears
[Video Game Wednesday] | SeanJJordan | January 21, 2009 12:27 am | Comments (3)
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