Monthly Archives: January 2010

On This Week’s SNL: Holy Callback, Batman

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A bit of spoiler, but I don’t think I’m giving too much away. Besides, these days, I think I’m in the minority of people who watch Saturday Night Live fairly regularly and care about it.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this week’s episode, which can be summed up by this line.

“Wait a second… You’re the frigging Closet Organizer guy, aren’t you?”

I don’t remember a time when a multi-sketch callback was used on Saturday Night Live. Monty Python’s Flying Circus had a couple here and there, and HBO’s Mr. Show had only sketch transitions with callback.

But in Saturday Night Live? Someone comment if they have seen it before. I’d like to find that episode and watch it.

Callbacks in sketch shows make me enjoy the show all the more. I’d like to think that more effort was made to ensure that all associated sketches would melt harmoniously into one giant ball of funny. In this instance, Will Forte’s and Jon Hamm’s characters reliving the past infomercial sketch, followed by the suggestion to go home and help clean out a closet… hilarious.

Just wanted to share. Here it is on Hulu.

Note On Kindle Upgrades

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Kindle Software Update Version 2.3

We roll wireless software updates out in batches to groups of users to make sure everything goes smoothly. If your Kindle has not yet received the most recent software update, rest assured that you’ll receive it wirelessly in the next few weeks.

Not knowing this, I sat around trying to figure out why the heck PDFs were not showing up on my Kindle.

At one point, I did go into settings to find that “Update My Kindle” option to be greyed out. So I assumed it was up to spec, and starting messing around elsewhere.

Turns out, the magic pdf happiness starts with 2.3. And I only had 2.2.

It wasn’t 100% clear, and so this is why I post this here. Go to the update page on your computer, download the update file on your computer, place it on the root folder, and then click on “Update My Kindle”.

It would make sense for the 10.4 MB update to be available without the help of a computer by clicking “Update My Kindle” whenever an update was available, but I wonder if this is disabled because of needing to pay for the 3G bandwidth. It’s a bit annoying, but it’s not like there are point releases happening all that frequently.

Now back to saving trees, one “book” at a time.

Considering Moving To Tumblr

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Considering some drastic changes here, and I might be changing blogging engines.

As soon as an export tool was written by Marco Arment, Tumblr became one of the candidates.

On and off, I have been blogging (and tumblogging just should be a word, and I’ll stick to this stance like I did against the word “blogging”) at joshkim.tumblr.com. If you’d like, you can follow to me there.

Things are definitely all up in the air, but you can bet I’ll be blogging it when it all falls down on the floor.

Depressive Realism

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Depressive realism is the proposition that people with depression have a more accurate perception of reality, specifically that they are less affected by the positive illusions of illusory superiority, the illusion of control and optimism bias. It must be understood that this refers specifically to people with borderline or moderate depression – while normal people see things in too positive a light, severely depressed people see things in too negative a light, leaving a “grey” area in between that leads to the most accurate perceptions of reality.

From Wikipedia.org, Depressive realism.

Who knew there was a phrase for this?

Sparks Begets More Sparks

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The initial spark of inspiration fades quickly over time.

In high school, I happened upon a hidden cache of matchbooks. Completely disobeying the familiar warning of not playing with matches, I started lighting them on fire, one by one.

Then I got curious. I wondered what would happen if I set a whole bunch of match heads on fire at the same time, rather than doing so one by one. So, I took one match, ignited it, and set the rest of the matches in the matchbook on fire.

Something awesome happened. The sucker exploded into flames.

Sparks

The spark could be something small. In this case, it was thinking about indie games again which got me to record a podcast episode.

The spark could be something big. One example of this would be to write a feed reader to replace my need for Google Reader.

At the beginning, things seem so wonderfully exciting. You’re ready to start something new. And then you wait. Whatever the reason, you start to wait. And then wait some more.

The need for perfection? The lack of prioritization? The lack of focus? The crippling side-effect of freedom? For me, it’s been all of the above.

By acting on the inspiration quickly before the spark dies, you cause more sparks with greater intensity to appear, which carries you onto the next phase.

And with this realization, I push on.

Capcom: Hardcore Gamers Have Disowned The Wii

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“Development on Wii [is] very difficult, with an oversupply [of games] and a gamer market that has radically changed,” states Seux. “[Hardcore games] are selling less and less on the console, [be it] MadWorld or Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop or House of the Dead: Overkill. Two years ago, there were still [hardcore] gamers on Wii, [but these have been] diverted from this console in favor of the new generation.”

Capcom France Antoine Seux, via Destructoid

The funny thing is that I bought a Wii to play many “hardcore” games, including Capcom’s amazing Resident Evil 4. For a second time. I played it first via a friend’s Wii, then I had to play through it again because I loved it so much.

Then, after I was done with the library of games available to me at the time, I sold it off, and moved onto the Xbox 360. The rest is history.

I’m not sure if I’d call myself a hardcore gamer, but maybe the terminology of “core gamer” would do. I’ve felt snubbed by Nintendo and their entire line of first party titles. Apart from Mario Galaxy, I have yet to play a first party game that I thought would move systems.

There are some really interesting third party titles that have caught my eye, but I have an enormous list of games I would want to play on the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

It’s a vicious cycle. I choose not to buy a Wii because the Wii doesn’t have any games for me. The game devs don’t make games for the Wii because people like me won’t buy the Wii.

UPDATE:

“Further to comments made in a recent article on French website Gamekult, Capcom would like to confirm its commitment as a multi-platform developer and publisher of interactive software,” the statement read.”

Capcom, via Eurogamer

Backtracking. Fun.

An Imperfect Post On Perfection

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I am amazed at how imperfect I am, and yet here I am, somehow typing on a keyboard to write words to form sentences to for a paragraph that comes to a point.

It’s been tough to write the past couple of days because of this. I’m so imperfect that I can’t see the imperfection I personify.

And so we return to the concept of meta, and its crippling effects on anything if not used in moderation. Like all things if not taken in moderation.

And with this throwaway post, I restart once again.