Mashing buttons since 1984
A couple quick updates: the Carnival of Gamers makes its third stop at Corvus’ Man Bytes Blog. Make sure you head over there for all the info. There may even be a prize for the best entry (crosses fingers it’s me and the prize is a sketch!)
Secondly, I’ve updated the CoG’s HQ with a list of future Carnival stops and a “mini-FAQ” that will hopefully clear up any questions the uninitiated may have. If you have something to add to the FAQ, drop me a line.
Enough with the knee-jerk reactions already. I wasn’t going to comment on this, which I read a few days ago, but after discussing this with a friend of mine, I’m frustrated how quickly this was blamed on video games. If you haven’t read the story, basically, a couple left their four-month old at home (alone) while they went down the street to play some World of Warcraft at a local PC Bang. When they returned (five hours later) their daughter had suffocated. While the news that a small child had died is a horrible thing, blaming this on video games is so far out in left field that it borders on the ridiculous. First of all, you could replace “went to play video games” with “watched TV” or “took a nap” and all of a sudden this just becomes a sad story, possibly a case of SIDS. Instead, the media (and the police) jerk their knees in the direction of video games. What a joke.
Discussing this with other gamers, it becomes evident that they think this is a simply a case of bad parenting, of parental neglect, not video games. But it’s not even that. How do the police know this small child didn’t suffocate five minutes after the couple left the house? They don’t. Even if the couple was at home, how could they have avoided this tragedy? Short of checking on the child every two minutes, this probably could not have been avoided. Instead, we get a quote like this from the police:
Police said, “It’s unfortunate, because the tragedy could have been averted if the couple had just left their daughter with Yu’s mother-in-law, who lived upstairs from them… We booked the pair on criminal charges, judging that when you consider the situation, they were responsible for their daughter’s death.”
No, I don’t think the tragedy could be avoided. But since we need someone to blame, we’ll blame the parents and their evil video games. If I was the manager of the place this couple was playing at, I’d be getting nervous. “If only he hadn’t provided a place to play their game this would have never happened.” And if “Blizzard hadn’t created such a darn addictive game, this little girl might still be alive!” (Excuse me while my head explodes).
So in summary – this is a tragic story. As a father, everytime I hear of an infant passing away, my stomach turns. But I find it too much of a stretch to blame this on parental neglect or video games. This is a just a sad case of misfortune. Unfortunately, in the blame-obsessed society we live in, video games are the easiest target, so they get the lion’s share of blame. Which is just sad.
(On a side note: I always thought prevailing wisdom was to lay a child on its back to sleep until it was old enough to roll over on its stomach. Most four-month olds can’t roll over. So maybe this was just a case of the parents putting their child to sleep on her stomach and that was simply not the best decision.)
Today mark’s buttonmashing.com’s one year anniversary. Man, how time flies! I had various ideas of what I wanted buttonmashing.com to be but I settled on the idea of a video-game blog. It all started with a simple post about my intentions with this site (which have morphed over time) and snowballed from there. Although I can certainly recognize good writing, I’ve never considered myself a good writer. Looking over my older posts, however, I have seen a definite improvement. Improving my writing skills has been one of my goals and I hope that continues. I’ve also been fascinated with the blogging phenomenon and I’m glad to be a part of it, small as buttonmashing.com may be. I’m not really sure where video game blogging fits in to the “blogosphere” but I think it has had at least some effect. I have also noticed that there’s been an increase of video game bloggers, which can only be a good thing.
First, I want to give a big thanks to everyone who’s visited, commented, vented, whatever, here at buttonmashing. It’s been fun reading what others have to say and what others think about this medium we all love. It really is a great community, fanboys and all.
Even though I caught flak for using numbers for a measure of success, I’m gonna do it again. In addition to the numbers below, one measure that can’t be put into statistics is the fun I’ve had. Buttonmashing.com has been a lot of work but it’s been a lot of fun, a great release, if you will. Buttonmashing.com originally started out on Blogger, which was a good starting point but I eventually wanted something more. The move to WordPress has been the easiest switch and I am impressed on a daily basis by the support WP gets. From plug-ins to security to comment spam protection (Bless SpamKarma2) WP is the best blogging software out there. With that, on to the numbers:
Posts – 212
Comments – 206
Page Views – 25,825
Unique Visitors – 16,590
Controversies Started – 1 (that I’m aware of)
So it’s been a wild, fun, first year. Starting the Carnival of Gamers has been a treat and I’ve “met” a lot of great bloggers and gamers out there. I hope buttonmashing has provided at least some form of entertainment and information to you, the reader. Thanks again to everyone who’s stopped in and here’s to another year of button mashing!
The first time I read this, I groaned, recognizing this as instant “Nintendo is for kiddies!” Fodder. Then I thought about it for a while and realized what they’re saying is actually good news:
Asked to identify the three “coolest” brands, 42 percent of respondents 8 to 12 years old chose Nintendo, while 36 percent think Disney is among the coolest.
I thought back to my first experiences with the NES – I was about 11 years old. Nintendo was cool. I was firmly in Nintendo’s camp in the Nintendo vs. Sega battle. The fact that 42% of these kids are associating Nintendo with “cool” means they are growing up with Nintendo! They fact that they recognize Nintendo as a brand is positive. I’ve said before that Nintendo should embrace this reaction and run with it. Kids love Nintendo. Even 21% of the 13-17 year olds cite Nintendo as cool (tied with Sony, the perpetually cool company). Hopefully this will foster interest in the Revolution and a new generation of video-gamers will hold Nintendo in the same regard as those of us who grew up with it.
I noticed that Xbox was missing from these lists. They did ask the kids about “Brands” so that may explain why. Nevertheless, it doesn’t appear that Microsoft is cool with kiddies. Very interesting…
I have been connected to the “internet” for so long that I often forget life before Google (or HotBot or AltaVista or whatever). I feel I’ve become careless because I know that everything can be solved by Googling it. It’s a crutch, and I know it.
Well today wasn’t a case of carelessness, it was a case of an upgrade gone awry. Last week I added a stick of memory to my aging PC to give it at least another year of shelf life. I consider myself rather PC/Tech savvy — I built my current PC from scratch, so I know a little bit of how this works. I figured this was a no-brained upgrade. Sometimes, however, errors and problems crop up whose causes are unknown. By some weird cosmic combination of components and mismatched parts, Windows seems to go crazy and begins corrupting itself in some self-preserving, self-destruct mode. At first, it seems harmless. A simple BSOD pops up. Then an occasional reboot that happens out of the blue (no pun intended). Then things get wonky. This time around, I get an error message, on boot-up, along the lines of:
lsass.exe — system error indicates a revision number encountered or specified is not one known by the service. It may be a more recent revision than the service is aware of.
Huh? I swear I never touched lsass.exe! I’ve never even heard of it! Nevertheless this rendered my PC completely unbootable. After trying everything, I went to Google, looking for guidance. (Thank goodness for the laptop!) The nugget of wisdom that Google bestowed upon me came in the form of this site.
The steps were followed, windows was fixed and I was playing Guild Wars by 8:30. I could go on a rant and say how wonderful consoles are because when they crash (if they ever crash) a simple hard reboot fixes the problem 99.98% of the time. But I won’t, because my consoles don’t have 2+ years of baby pictures and movies. Or 4+ years of emails and contacts. I wasn’t so desperate that I was ready to wipe everything but I was close. Thanks to Google problems were solved and I have once again regained my throne of technical superiority in the eyes of those who care (mainly my wife).
Man it feels good to be a PC-fixing super hero. Now let’s see what happens when I put that memory stick back in…
Update: As Bobster noted in the comments, the problem was my Kensington Memory Stick being incompatible with Dual Channel Operation. Whether it some how corrupted data on my hard drive is unknown, I blame it completely for all my hassle.
So I’ve taken this as an opportunity to do a fresh XP install, clean out all the gunk and get back to a streamlined installation. Guild Wars is gonna fly now!
One of my favorite web desitinations is the Wikipedia. It is entertaining, educational, and never ceases to amaze me. I warn everyone I tell about it that it’s easy to get lost in its intricate maze of crosslinking. It’s amazing, the amount of information that is available. And everyone is always surprised to find out it’s 100% volunteer work and is freely editable by anyone. Calling it an ambitious endeavor may be the understatement of the century.
Recently I was contacted by the administrator of a similar project called the GamerWiki. In a nutshell it’s a video-game Wikipedia. I know they are lots of places to find video-game information (including Wikipedia) but having a central location seems like a pretty good idea. Take a look around and if you feel like participating I know they can use the help. I’m going to take a stab at helping out as well.
Thomas has taken the Carnival of Gamers and thrown it on a 5.25 Floppy Disk and loaded on his Tandy 1000. And the results look fantastic. Go check out the 2nd Edition of the Carnival of Gamers. I haven’t had a chance to read any of the posts yet (sleepy time) but I had to make sure I posted this now so everyone checks it out.
I’ll have a chance to digest it tomorrow and I’ll check back in.
Update:: The second stop of the Carnival seems to have been a success. There were some great pieces. My vote for best quote goes to Maggie at The Game Chair:
After all, no one game appeals to all people – so why in the world would one game appeal to all women gamers? Each of us is looking for different things in a game, regardless of sex.
Excellent point. The whole thing was very well written and enjoyable to read.
I’ve read Foton’s AFKGamer for a while now but I missed this about his benevolence as a an EQ Guide. Foton granted god-like powers? Scary.
Josh hasn’t been given enough credit for the work his put into the Illinois video-game law happenings. I’ve read them all, fearing the worst. But honestly, aren’t we all helpless when someone says “Think of the children“?
Finally, I can no longer avoid it, I am giving Fate a try. I’ve been reading about it in numerous places but Bill lays out the goods.
Thanks again to Thomas for putting this together. I have a handful of new bloggers to read, which is great. My bloglines subscriptions are getting rather full. I look forward to the next Carnival stop. I’ll update the Carnival page when I return home from the in-laws this weekend.
I mentioned early this year that I have the world’s greatest wife. Well, now she’s out-done her latest show of greatness. She’s packed up the kids and went to her parents house for the week. In the process, she’s left me a to-do list that consists of mowing the lawn and playing video games. I’ll only have to do the former once. The latter will be done over and over again. Mostly Guild Wars but I’ll sneak some other stuff in there. Man, this is beyond love. Sure I have to work everyday but she didn’t weigh me down with a to-do list of unattainable magnitudes. Just two things I can actually do
Like I said early, that’s true love defined.
I thought that since I was involved in starting this whole “Carnival” thing, the least I could do was centralize it. I’ve made a “Headquarters Page” that will be a place for any information regarding the Carnival of Gamers, including contact/submission information and future hosts. Make sure to stop in any time you’re looking for information about the Carnival. After all the feedback we’ve received on the first one, I’m thinking of installing a suggestion box.
And don’t forget, the Carnival of Gamers #2 will be hosted by Thomas at Mile Zero. Head over there for all the details!
Here you will find the latest information about the Carnival of Gamers, a travelling show of the best (and worst) kept secrets in the world of Video Game Blogging. We’ve had a successful, inaugural stop of the Carnival here, at buttonmashing.com and the momentum never stopped. The next stop is right here at buttonmashing.com on April 6th. You can always check back here for up-to-the minute information about the Carnival of Gamers. You can also read the Frequently Asked Questions after the Carnival Schedule
Next Carnivals: (in the waiting room: Urban Retro Lifestyle, Gamers Radio, Gaming Nexus)
#21 January 2007: Coming soon
Coming Soon:
#20 December 7th, 2006: MMOGNation
Current Carnival:
#19 November 2nd, 2006: Unfettered Blather
Previous Carnivals:
#18 October 5th, 2006: Man Bytes Blog
#17 August 17th, 2006: Dota 2 Accounts
#16 July 6th, 2006: Grumpy Gamer
#15 June 1st, 2006: �on pampers, programming & pitching manure
#14 May 4th, 2006: buttonmashing.com
#13 April 2006 6th, 2006: n3rfed
#12 March 2nd, 2006: Virgin Worlds
#11 February 2nd, 2006: Slashdot Games
#10 January 5th, 2006: Kill Ten Rats
#9 December 1st, 2005: The Game Chair
#8 November 3rd, 2005: Aeropause
#7 October 6th, 2005: Flicker Gaming
#6 September 1st, 2005: AFK Gamer
#5 August 4th, 2005: Unfettered Blather
#4 July 7th, 2005: Cathode Tan
#3 June 23rd, 2005: Man Bytes Blog
#2 June 9th, 2005: Mile Zero
#1 May 26th, 2005: buttonmashing.com
Carnival of Gamers FAQ
What is this Carnival of Gamers you speak of?
The Carnival of Gamers is a bi-weekly monthly gathering of video game bloggers at a central location. The premise behind the Carnival of Gamers is similar to those of other “Blog Carnivals†— it is a showcase of blogs that are about video games. Some of the participating blogs are almost exclusively about video games while others deal with a wide range of topics, from music and movies to politics and punditry to video game design. The Carnival of Gamers has an open format. Anyone wishing to participate in the Carnival is welcome. While the Carnival is hosted by a different blog each time, its entries are currently unedited and unfiltered. We reserve the right to filter entries in the future, but as it stands now, we accept all entries and present them as-is. This did cause a bit of a furor with the first Carnival but that seems to have settled down now.
Interested in reading more about Carnivals? Here’s a site with some great information.
Who can participate?
Anyone with a blog and an opinion about video games can participate. You can visit this page for a link to the host of the current Carnival, along with information regarding the Carnival in general.
Where do I submit my entry to the Carnival?
Josh of Cathode Tan has set up a Carnival Gmail account. You can submit your entries to carniegrue@gmail.com and the Carnival host will have access to that account. After you’ve submitted your entry, just sit back and wait for the next Carnival to be posted!
There are now TWO ways to submit your blog post to the carnival. Along with directly sending an email to the carniegrue email above, you can also submit via the Carnival Submit Form at Conservative Cat. Just select the “Carnival of Gamers†from the list of Carnivals, fill out the information and click “SUBMIT YOUR POSTâ€. It will send a copy of your submission to the carniegrue email as well, but I set this up at the request of a commenter on the last carnival. This way more people outside of our “blogosphere†can find the Carnival and hopefully they’ll take part in the fun.
What if I want to host an edition of the Carnival?
I thought you’d never ask! We are always looking for hosts and gladly welcome anyone willing to put up with the hassle. So if you’re a brave soul wishing to host the Carnival, send an email to buttonmashing@gmail.com and you’ll be promptly added to the list!