OMG, Jimmy, Get a Better Picture

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, is a legend. I cannot understate that fact. He has created a phenomenon which actually makes the Internet useful. Every second, all over the world, thousands of people turn to Wikipedia for every informational need imaginable -- from the simple to the scientific, from the inane to the sublime. It's all there in one place. And the best part is, thanks to the "bazaar" principle (and that's "bazaar" as in "communal marketplace", not "bizarre"... although...) Anyway thanks to the "bizarre bazaar" principle, the stuff in Wikipedia is mostly accurate. Because if it is not, if someone punches in some incorrect or unsubstantiated info, then some weaner who has a special interest in the Folk Songs of Madagascar 1900-1949 will hop right in and correct it.

Oh and did I menation WP is in dozens of different languages?

So in spite of what detractors bleated when Wales started the Wikipedia project, and what they continue to bleat today, Wikipedia works. Don't ask me how... just accept it.

"Jimbo" Wales will surely go down as one of the most influential people this century, young as the 21st is.

Now the Wikipedia Foundation is having its annual money drive. Because, as if Mr. Wales were not legend enough for creating the Wikipedia phenomenon, he made it all free of advertising. That's right, you can browse the length and breadth of WP without having you eyes assaulted and your bandwidth choked down by flashy, bloated, rubbishy "come buy me" banners. But of course giant computer systems don't run themselves, and money doesn't grow on trees, so WP can only survive on donations from the very people who benefit from it. Fair enough.



Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut....... I refer you to a personal letter of appeal from Wales himself, here. Specifically, near the top of the page, to the picture. Oh dear God! Surely that isn't... no I'm afraid it is. That is Jimmy Wales' personal mugshot. Not his idiot half-brother, the one they keep locked in the attic and feed a bucket of fish heads each day; nope, it is a portrayt of the can't-be-understated legend man himself. (In case the link is dead, take it from me, the piccy was atrocious.)

Jimmy Wales, for the love of God, please get a better picture of yourself!

Computer Games are Still Evil

Bastard things. This time round, I got myself hooked into writing a game. That's marginally better then playing, I told myself, since it actually requires four or more brain cells. And a healthy dose of frustration.

ICYAAAI (In Case You Are At All Interested), I wrote a poker machine game for the Vic-20. WTF is a Vic-20? It's a 27-year-old system which also happened to be the first computer I ever got. It is one of those ancient "home microcomputer" jobs that old timers like me rave about -- shaped like a shoebox, plugged into a TV set, "booted up" immediately, and saved its programs onto audio cassette (unless you were lucky enough to own a floppy disk drive.)

So anyway, the game I wrote was to run on a computer system which has not been in the marketplace since the 1980s. It was nothing more than a pitiful stagger down nostalgia's muddy track, a sad attempt at snatching a tiny gleaming wisp of my happy childhood.

That's not to denigrate the technical challenge I set myself: It takes brains to write a workable game in machine language, with funky (chunky) graphics and heaps of features, all in 3.5k of memory (that's "k" as in "kilobyte", not megs or gigs). I mean, the young-uns coming out of University these days with a so-called computer engineering degree are clueless. It's all virtualized-this and automatic-garbage-collection-that. They have no idea what goes on at the machine level. "Need an application? Ah just drag and drop the bits-n-pieces in your favourite IDE, and there ya go! What, it's a piece of elephantine bloatware with the performance of an oil tanker? Ah just throw another couple of gigs in the machine!"

Of course the funniest part is, I don't even own a Vic-20 computer. What I have is an emulator which runs on my PC, which does everything the old Vic used to do in perfect faithfulness. Heh.

Computer Games Are Evil

That's right, you heard me. Computer games are the incarnation of evil. They are the tools of the devil.

Now hold on a second. When I say "computer games are evil", I don't mean like they cause sweet little boys to turn into murderous psychopaths and go shoot up a school. That's what the knee-jerk pencil-necks would have you believe. "Computer games made them do it!" Rather than seeing it as the opposite situation, i.e. that murderous psychopaths are naturally drawn to games which involve killing things.

No, the real evil of computer games is their addictiveness.

Ever since some backyard junkmeister soldered together some contraption that plugged into a TV set and featured a square ball ping-ponging between two bats, the world has never been the same. Over the intervening 35-odd years literally millions of man-years that could have spent on frivolous activities such as curing world hunger or beating cancer, instead has been flushed down the humungus slime-encrusted time sink which is computer games. All that wasted effort sacrificed to the wanton and jealous Great God of Pew-pew.

Children who could be making something of themselves... learning a real skill, becoming a genius at something, creating footholds into successful careers... instead sit unblinking and slack-jawed in the mind-numbing wash of a flickering display, their opposable digits rapidly punching buttons like lab rats at a feeding tube.

Hey look, I understand. After all, I grew up in the feed-the-20-cent-monster era, which was followed closely by the "Dad can I plug in the TV game" era. I can well understand after a crap-filled day dealing with moronic dickheads at school or work, one just wants to zone out in a fantasy world or blow a bunch of things away. We all know it is make-believe (except for a tenured retard few), and it would only be time spent drooling in front of the TV anyway. What's the harm in a little escapism?

Nothing at all... when it's in moderation. But there is nothing "moderation" about computer games. Just ask some parent who has to drag their pasty child away from the console by the ear, or the person with a partner who would rather tool around with a bunch of teens across the world than talk with their own lover.

And things have taken a turn laughably for the worse. Now they have computer games which mirror reality. You sit at your gaming console and control a little feller or chick who gets out of bed, takes the bus to work, goes shopping at the mall, eats, craps, sits in front of the TV (!), and finally goes to bed.

I sh*t you not. Yessiree, that's just how some people spend their time escaping from daily life for a while... by playing another daily life. Oh my f*cking god how lame.

Then you get the online games, MMORPGs like WoW and Everquest and whatnot. I thought there was a glimmer of hope for a while, since it at least these games involve interaction with other human beings (or gamers anyway). But these evil things turned out combining the worst of all possible worlds: The human relationships are twisted mockeries of their real-world counterparts, with no one knowing where the avatar ends and the real person begins, if anywhere; no one really caring about the well being of their mates except to fulfill their obligations in the context of the game; gameplay reduced to a repetitive drudgery of endless mouse-clicking and NPC farming, for ever-reducing returns.

In short, life in a MMORPG devolves into an unpaid second job, toiling with a bunch of people who don't really care about you, and who you probably would not even like if you met them in the street. Thence it spirals into an obsession, precluding all real world relationships, jobs, commitments, even personal hygiene. In the extreme case you get some idiot who drops dead in front of the monitor, spouse long left with the kids, found only when the police break the door down after neighbours complain about the smell, his cockroach-ridden corpse wallowing among chips packets and coke cans and his own filth. Urgh.

Now where was I... ah yes, in my case I've thrown many thousands of hours of my life down the toilet, time which I'll never get back. It always seems gaming takes precedence over doing other cool stuff like building Lego sets and updating this blog. Games are an addiction, and when you get home in the arvo it's just too easy to plonk down and start playing, engaging in hours of useless activity which require neither brain nor physical effort.

There's one game in particular which has had me hooked over the past few weeks. It's a plinky-plunky little thing called "Master of Magic". Like all good games "MoM" is pretty, easily mastered, infinitely replayable, and doles out rewards often enough to keep you hooked. Although released in 1993, before many slack-jawed gamers were even born, it has not outlived its playability. MoM is a turn-based strategy; gameplay involves building your small settlement on a Tolkien-esque fantasy world into a thriving empire, expanding your magic and military power until you are force to be reckoned with. Your ultimately goal is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.

Then after you do that, you start another round with another world and different enemies, and do it all over again.

So it is MoM, that evil little homunculus, and its remorseless brethren, which has been the waster of my free time of late. I can hear it calling now... "Play me! Play me!"... Arrrrgh that's it I'm off bbxbcbjdfsjdfhiwfhdskjnd