Clubberjack's Unfocused Ramblings

Gum Blondes

Man. This is why I love (and hate) our culture, the Internet, the art world...

Gum Blondes

I have no idea what kind of relevance to anything this has.

posted by Clubberjack @ 2:23 PM 0 comments

The Incredibles: Ubermensch?

Just ran across this interesting tidbit linking the message of Pixar's latest, The Incredibles, with the writings of Nietzsche. "Everyone is special so no one is." I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with the sentiment of the movie, but it certainly is an important issue in today's world.

posted by Clubberjack @ 5:13 PM 0 comments

Anda's Game

More on the optimism front: A great short story called "Anda's Game" posted at Salon. It's well worth the short ad you'll have to view (unless you are a Salon subscriber). This story gets at the hope and optimism that I feel when I think about game technology and the possibilities for a greater good.

posted by Clubberjack @ 1:31 PM 0 comments

Kinsey

Haven't seen the film, but this tidbit from Wired.com's review seemed particularly timely:

Kinsey's story reminds us of the liberating power of knowledge, and that sexual equality, like gender or racial equality, is a right that 20th-century heroes fought and suffered for.

Things like this give me hope, as I look into the coming four years.

posted by Clubberjack @ 6:05 PM 0 comments

Halo 2 and Live

Just a quick word to say that I am now a member of Xbox Live, driven to get online finally by the release of Halo 2. If anyone wants a game of Halo, Crimson Skies, or Burnout, my gamertag is (appropriately enough) "Clubberjack."

I have to say that the Live experience is really a pleasure so far. I got hooked up and payed up without a problem. The voice communication is a lot better than I had anticipated. With other people who have decent connections, the sound quality is about as good as my cell phone, sometimes better.

I've only played Halo 2, but the Live experience for that game is incredible. I've only experienced lag in 16 player matches, and people are by-and-large decent. I haven't run into too many dumb-asses. It's very easy to slowly gather a group of teammates and continue playing together. Last night, a friend and I jumped into some team skirmishes and after a few matches, we had picked up a couple more people, finally having a big enough group to make up the better part of an 8-man team. When the lag in the 8-on-8 matches got to be too bad, we switched to straight up deathmatch between the 5 of us. The ease of staying together and switching games is really quite amazing.

Also, anyone playing Halo 2 online really owes it to themselves to check out bungie.net's stat tracking system. Registering for a bungie.net account (and linking your gamertag to it), opens up some really amazing features, namely the Game Viewer, which still blows my mind.

posted by Clubberjack @ 4:09 PM 0 comments

Art Kick

Lately, I've been on an art kick. Two of my favorite artists, discovered through Clive Thompson's Collision Detection, are El Rey and Bathsheba Grossman. El Rey has a great, playful pop-art style that contains pop-culture references along with some great portraiture (of animals and people). Bathsheba Grossman creates beautiful "math art," sculptures that demonstrate mathematical ideas, though they are ideas that are a little beyond my level of understanding. These are the kind of things you could imagine M.C. Escher creating if he had access to rapid prototyping, 3D printer equipment. I would love to see some of her stuff blown up to a huge, monumental scale.

posted by Clubberjack @ 4:01 PM 0 comments