A Surreal Sunday

So, yes, I was quoted in my local paper when a woman crashed her car into the retaining wall outside my house. Here’s a picture of the wreck:

Here’s the story in a nutshell. Our dogs started going nuts, and we assumed it was the neighbors making noise outside. My wife looked outside and saw three police cars, a fire truck and an ambulance. “You might want to come look at this,” she said. “A car crashed into our retaining wall.”

The woman apparently had low blood sugar (we were told it was a seizure), lost control of her car, and crashed. I’m hoping she’s doing all right — I’m sure she was shaken up by this. But anyhow, I was the only person in the area they could find to quote, so I’m quoted as saying… well, saying exactly what I saw, which was nothing.

[Technology Tuesday] Sony Needs to Learn How to Be Better At Marketing

2008 was a banner year for Sony — they won the format war with Toshiba and cemented Blu-Ray as the next generation of storage media, they released two killer app games for their Sony Playstation 3 game console (Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Little Big Planet) and they saw two great pieces of software push PSP sales in Japan (Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and Final Fantasy Dissidia). The PS2 continues to sell strongly around the world. They continued to perform well in other consumer electronics markets as well with their TVs, digital cameras, and music players. Sony has always been good at making cool products, and from a design standpoint, they’re still going strong.

So why is Sony suddenly posting a $1.1 billion loss? I’d argue it’s because they’re so good at design that they neglect their marketing. And I’m not just talking about their advertising, either, but their entire philosophy of how products are developed for public use.

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[Movie Monday] 5 Great Films For an Offbeat Evening

I consider myself someone with rather eclectic tastes when it comes to film. I’m not into pretentious art films, I hate almost everything French, and I despise films that value style over substance. But at the same time, I don’t like movies where the formula is obvious, I don’t like things that are dumb or that are pointless, and I really, really hate bad writing.

“So, you watch about 2 movies a year?” you might be asking. Pretty much. But fortunately, I’ve got a Netflix account, so I have a chance to check out movies that I wouldn’t normally think to watch.

As it happens, I’m trekking over to a friend’s later today to watch Hamlet 2, a film I’m pretty sure I’ll like, and it’s prompting me to think of some other offbeat movies that I’ve enjoyed. Here are five, in no particular order, that I think are worth watching.
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[Sound-Off Sunday] Five Board Games You’ve Probably Never Heard of (But Definitely Should Try!)

Last week, I shared five card games you’ve probably never heard of, but should try. This week, I’m going to focus on board games.

Now, I’ve been a fan of board games ever since I was a kid, but I’ve always found that the standard family games (Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Stratego, Risk, The Game of Life, Payday, Sorry! and so on) are a little dull. I’ve also never been a fan of gimmick games that require a massive amount of setup time for a weak payoff (Mousetrap comes to mind…).

When I was in junior high school, some friends introduced me to some board games that dared to go beyond what I’d experienced before. The first I played was HeroQuest, a game co-developed by Games Workshop and Milton Bradley. It was a board game that played like a paper-and-pencil RPG — very cool. Another game was Battle Masters, a giant battlefield game that featured humans, elves and dwarves fighting goblins, orcs and ogres. Because of these games, I learned about Games Workshop titles like Space Hulk, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k and Blood Bowl… none of which I could actually afford to play. I was, however, able to afford a copy of Battletech: 3rd Edition, which included little plastic mechs and a paper gameboard.

I left board games behind as I got into video games, but when I was a little older, a friend introduced me to Star Wars: Epic Duels, a board game I didn’t expect to like, but which was surprisingly fun. I got so into it, in fact, that I wrote one of the definitive tactics pages for the game (apparently), which people still use as a resource for developing strategies. If you can get your hands on Epic Duels, I recommend it; it’s a fun and easy game that is easily accessible to casual gamers, but which has some real depth and strategy to it as well.

This game helped to rekindle my interest in board games, and over the last few years, I’ve been able to play a few that I never even knew existed. The five games below are all games that are a lot of fun, and which I’d recommend to anyone looking for an interesting evening of playing games with friends. Read more »

[Skeptical Saturday] So What’s the Story With All Those “Turn Your Debt Into Wealth” Type Programs?

I don’t listen to the radio often, but when I do, I generally hear a commercial where someone is offering a “proven system” that will help people turn their debt into wealth, no matter how much debt they have. I’ve always wondered what sort of program could take a negative balance and turn it into a positive balance through some sort of financial magic, and I’ve always been annoyed to find that, when I look into these systems, their websites don’t provide ANY information — just a bunch of promises and testimonials.

So, in the spirit of skepticism, it’s time to take a look at these debt-elimination systems, and find out what they’re really all about.

I’ll start with John Cummuta, and his “Transforming Debt Into Wealth” system, because I hear his ads on the radio all the time. Now, I don’t have anything against Mr. Cummuta, and from what I have been able to find out about his system, I don’t have any grounds to say that it doesn’t work. (I’m actually fairly certain that it will work if you follow it.) But what I will tell you is that I can give you much of the same advice here, in this article, for free, if you hang on until the end. That’s not because I’ve bought Mr. Cummata’s book or bought into his system; it’s because his system is something that debt experts have been preaching for decades. Read more »

[Philosophy Friday] What’s the Big Deal About Wisdom, Anyway?

Throughout the varied religious ideologies of the world, there are three common themes:

1. Humanity is imperfect and needs to improve itself in some way.
2. Treating others with love and respect is the morally proper thing to do.
3. Wisdom reigns supreme over all other knowledge.

But what is wisdom? Is wisdom relative to culture, or is it something universal? And how can one truly become wise?

Let’s address each of those questions point by point.

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[Television Thursday] – Five Great TV Shows You’ve Likely Never Heard of (But Should Track Down on DVD!)

If you’re reading my blog as of late and thinking to yourself, “Man, all Sean does is watch TV, play games, and complain about movies,” If you think that, I don’t blame you — I don’t know how I’ve come to acquire so much knowledge about so many trivial topics, but here we are. As a writer and a creative artist, I’ve always been interested in consuming entertainment media, and as a critic and a thinker, I’ve always been interested in thinking through their aesthetics and implications. That’s what I get for being such a “middle-brained” person.

As it happens, I don’t watch a lot of television anymore, because most of it is garbage. But over the last few years, with seasons of shows popping up on DVD, I’ve found myself watching a lot of television shows. Part of the appeal of watching shows is that they’re just about the right length (20-40 minutes) for me to watch while I’m eating or resting, and they don’t require me to sink the time I’d put into, say, a feature film. TV shows are also typically less demanding in terms of my attention; as long as I know the characters and the premise, I don’t have to have much more information, unless I’m watching a serialized show like Lost or Heroes.

One of the things I’ve found out in recent years is that many of the best shows produced for TV are fairly obscure titles that were either cancelled prematurely or aired on networks most people don’t watch regularly. So, I thought I’d put together a list of five really solid shows, all of which are available on DVD, but most of which you’ve probably never heard of. All I ask is that you do the right thing and buy them on DVD if they’re available, and reserve searching bittorent sites for those which are out of print or not yet available on DVD in your country.

With that said, here’s the list!

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[Video Game Wednesday] Final Fantasy VII – The Most Overrated Game of All Time?

A friend recently talked me into picking up Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for my Sony PSP. For those who don’t know, Crisis Core is the prequel to the game for the original Playstation, Final Fantasy VII, which bears the distinction of being one of the first Japanese role-playing game that many gamers ever played. As such, FF VII has achieved a sort of legendary status among gamers as being one of the best games ever made. There are even a significant number of people who know everything about the game – its story, its characters, its places, its goofy moments — without actually having played it.

As it turns out, Crisis Core is pretty good, and I’d say it’s one of the better games I’ve seen on the PSP. But playing through it has reminded me about my mixed feelings towards FF VII, which is a good game, and maybe even a great game, but surely one of the most overrated games of all time.

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[Technology Tuesday] – An Honest Look at the Blackberry Storm

I don’t get excited about gadgets too often these days – they come out far too frequently, and they’re often too expensive to be worth my while. But as I began to experience some frustration with my Palm Treo 650 smartphone, I also found myself growing enamored with the Blackberry Storm – a Blackberry device with a touchscreen. And somehow, that excitement translated into my standing in line to get one on the day it came out.

I got my Treo 650 four years ago when I decided I needed an e-mail-capable phone. At the time, I wasn’t too impressed with the Blackberry devices – they had just recently started coming with color screens, and they seemed light years behind some of the other phones on the market in terms of features. The Palm Treo, on the other hand, was easy to customize and to modify, and it could function as an all-in-one media player to boot. I could even turn it into a cellular modem for my laptop with little fuss. That seemed like a good enough reason to me to make it my smartphone of choice.

But the Treo and I developed something of a love/hate relationship as the years went by, mostly due to an inconvenient glitch in the design of the headphone jack, which broke very easily and forced me to always use a headset in order to use the phone. I also hated the Treo’s web browser and its default email clients. I was getting annoyed with the stylus pen, too, since it was constantly slipping out of the phone and nearly getting lost for good.

So, I was ready for a change. There were lots of new smartphones on the market, but there was an obstacle in the way…. Read more »

[Movie Monday] Armageddon: My Litmus Test for Film Advice

Have you ever seen a movie that was bad? I mean really, really bad, not bad in the good way where you can make fun of the film and enjoy yourself, but bad in the bad way, where you feel like you’ve just wasted two hours of your life. Bad in the way that you walk away saying, “if anyone ever recommends this film to me, I’ll know not to take advice from that person on movies again.”

For me, that movie is Armageddon. It came out the summer after I graduated from high school, and I somehow missed seeing it in the theater. But when I saw it on home video later that year on my first Thanksgiving break away from college, holy crap was I annoyed by it.

You might like Armageddon. You might think it’s a good movie. You might even own a copy for a purpose other than irony.

Well, to you I say: that’s fine. But I won’t be taking any movie advice from you until you realize the error of your ways.

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