Category: Uncategorized

In lieu of working on my senior project, I gave numberless a new look, taking inspiration from Daring Fireball and (picnic, LIGHTNING). James tells me that John Gruber gets angry at people who steal his design, so let me emphasize that this site is inspired by his site, and is not necessarily copying its format. I admit I worry about such trivial things as angering Mr. Gruber, but I suppose it’s difficult to offend people when you have no readership. So I’m safe for now.

I’m still not 100% in love with the look. It’s less conventional, but still blog-like; the large logo is at times eye-catching, and at times an eyesore; the background color looks better on some screens than others; and the content looks pinched to me, compressed into the space between the sidebar and the main section, leaving the rest of the site seeming bare.

On the plus side, I managed to make a table-less page design that looks identical in IE, Firefox, and Safari. And on my first try, too! Regardless, I still might end up tweaking a few things, namely the color scheme and size of the header.

In order to secure one on launch day, I waited out in the cold for twelve hours of my life. Outside of the Hudson Valley Mall in Kingston. Thirty degrees Fahrenheit. No sleep.

Totally worth it.
 

» Wii + Popcorn taken by Max.

» 1x Nintendo Wii Console w/ Wii Sports
» 1x Wii Remote
» 1x Wii Nunchuk
» 1x The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo Wii
» 1x Rayman Raving Rabbids for the Nintendo Wii
» 1x Wii Points Card (value: 2,000 points)

Purchase. Return home. Play. Sleep. Play some more.

» Bundle pack taken by Bonnie. No thanks necessary.

Later: The Shopping List

My coverage for the Montreal International Game Summit is now officially wrapped up. It’s as good a time as any to look back at the event, and talk about what transpired.

Joystiq-wise: I pseudo-liveblogged the keynotes of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Ken Perlin, and Reggie Fils-Aimé. Considering my normally short attention span, I was surprised by my ability to transcribe the structure of each presentation, while pulling accurate quotes and taking the occasional picture. When it’s liveblogging for reals, I would imagine it gets much, much harder.

I interviewed Chaim Gingold and Chris Hecker my first day, asking questions about Spore, Maxis, and related stuff. The day after, I talked with Elan Lee about 42 Entertainment’s current projects. I feel like both interviews went fairly well, though after listening to each on cassette I realized I could probably stand to improve the substance of my questions. Not “hard-hitting” enough, I suppose. Or something like that.

In between my feature-length coverage, I snuck in posts about the Great Canadian Video Game Competition, my sub-par swag bag, Reggie’s cameo appearance on the show floor, and more. After a long day of studio tours, I was able to take a one-hour tour of the Arcadia Festival, and you better believe I took photos.

Me-wise: Before embarking for the actual event, I had a bit of anxiety about my role at the Montreal summit. I wanted to be there in two capacities: as a journalist for Joystiq, but also as a game designer, and I had some reservations about my own ability to wear those two hats simultaneously. Ultimately, I focused on my Joystiq assignment, and it was only through that coverage that I was able to meet a large number of people. I don’t regret my choice of focus.

The summit took most of our time for the first two days in Montreal, and the third was spent doing studio tours and visiting the Arcadia Festival. We stayed until Sunday morning, and left Saturday open for exploring the city. Unfortunately, Montreal chose that day for its torrential downpours. We did what little exploring we could while fully saturated, caught The Departed at Paramount Cinema on rue Ste. Catherine (c’etait très bon), and called it an early night.

In the overall, I’d have to say the experience far exceeded my expectations. My expectations weren’t low, but I certainly didn’t expect the actual summit to run as smoothly as it did. I do wish we could’ve seen more of the city, but I enjoyed what we saw, even in the rain.

» Images from Heroine Sheik on Flickr, and taken by me.

So I’m thinking about redesigning numberless, in part out of procrastination, and in part because I believe it looks too much like a blog.

What would I like it to look like? Something like (picnic, lightning) would be nice (you know, I only just got the Lolita reference?). The question is, how do I make my site look like his site without stealing his layout? He’s not a WordPress user. Doesn’t that somehow make it okay?

Note to self: No matter how fickle you get, do not change domain names again. Ever.

Almost every time I use Cyberduck these days, I’m confronted with this:

I consider this to be a horrible, horrible thing.

It asks me a “Yes” or “No” question, but only gives me the options of “Don’t Change” and “Change All.” Invariably, I always manage to select the wrong one, resetting all of my passwords and forcing me to reenter them countless times.

I understand this dialog box so little it hurts. I WANT Cyberduck to access the same keychain items as the previous version. I want to click “Yes,” but I can’t! Do I click “Don’t Change,” assuming that Cyberduck will then not change my passwords, retaining the old ones? Or do I click “Change All,” assuming Cyberduck will then change its keychain settings to access the old passwords? WHAT THE HELL DO I DO?

I plan on writing about my impressions of the conference (and the city) once I get through all of my Joystiq coverage. Funny, I thought that would’ve happened by now.

You can find everything I wrote/am writing for the conference here. It’s not a lot, but it feels like a lot.

Yum, yum, blogging by Bonnie on Flickr (even though I took the picture).

Bonnie and I are headed to Montreal, in part to attend the Montreal International Game Summit, and in part just to be in Montreal. I’m very, very excited.

I’ll be covering the event for Joystiq, and my coverage should start appearing on their site on Wednesday. There may be interviews with cool people, there may not be. It’s still a little up in the air at the moment, but whatever happens, happens.

I’m also just excited to be at the conference for myself, independent of Joystiq. I finally get to put my pretty new business cards to use, and hopefully meet some nice people with similar interests. We depart tomorrow morning, after we vote.

Kotaku’s Mark Wilson got a chance to go hands-on with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii. He played nine hours of the game, the first four of which he discusses on the site. But here’s the kicker: according to Mark, “Nintendo claims testers took 70 hours to play through the game the first time.”

Jeezy frickin’ creezy. I suppose this is a good thing for the more “hardcore” gaming audience, but not for me. I was growing mad impatient by the thirtieth hour of Okami. There’s a chance it could be different with Zelda, but the game had better be consistent in terms of its quality, and not stretched out like taffy like some other wolf-based game I know…

» Image from ACLetras on Flickr. Thanks!