James Wynn

You may or may not have read Dinesh D’Souza’s article, in reference to the Virgina tragedy, asking where Atheism is “when bad things happen.”  Despite this article’s poor quality and flawed/skewed perception, it has sparked a brilliant article about Atheism and compassion.  It shows a excellent complement to the logic of Dawkins, who seems to get so much press.

D’Souza asks why no one asks Atheists to speak at tragic events, and I too question this.   Why do people look for supernatural comfort?  Why is faith in your fellow man not enough?  Perhaps this is a poor time to speak of “faith in your fellow man,” after the acts of a sociopath, but how could the explanation of supernatural evil be any more comforting than the idea that it is just one disturbed individual.

VDare has an article giving yet more exposure to what many have already noticed, but too few have tried to do anything about. Public education is a farce, and the industry knows it.  Test scores are falling, standards are sinking, and the budget is increasing. It’s obvious that the current measures being taken by the DoE are inadequate if not malformed. If raising standards for students and giving more money to teachers is not fixing the problem, perhaps we should try raising the standards for teachers.

Force teachers to compete for their salaries; their pay would be based directly on the success of their students. If only 10% of their students are proficient in the requisite material, then the teacher makes less than a burger flipper, but can climb to higher paying salaries by improving their students’ performance. Many schools already participate in a testing system, why not use this as the basis for their funding?

Education NEEDS to be competitive, our educational standards are embarrassingly low internationally. If future generations are really going to clean up all the mess that the current are creating they need to be as well educated as possible, else we are all of us doomed.

Granted I’m not a huge fan of football video games, but this one really stinks. I’m not the type of person that would go out of his way to play one of these, much less spend money on one. I only have it because EA gave it to me for free.

As a video game itself, it falls short. The input is laggy, the menus are convoluted, and the gameplay could use some work. The only things that really seemed polished are the character animation and sound, but even some of the sounds seem out of place. If this is really the result of about 8 years/iterations of these games, I’m really quite puzzled by both the fact that it continues to sell and the fact that EA managed to get exclusive rights with it.

On a scale of 1 to 10, including gameplay and polish, I would give this game perhaps a Suck minus.

So, I attended the Game Developer’s Conference 2007 in San Fransisco. Was a rather good time. Hanging out with tons of people who love making games, playing games, and drinking. It hadn’t occurred to me that game developers would be notorious binge drinkers, but it really makes since after some thinking. After all the sessions ended, if everyone didn’t go to an after-party to get smashed on free booze, we just wandered around the expo center and pillaged the free beer from the studios/vendors.  A good time was had by all.

I shook the hand of the man who invented Tetris, saw Shigeru Miyamoto talk about Mario, and Eiji Aonuma talk about Zelda (both of these talks were nothing less than spectacular), and met the directors/developers of many studios who make some of my favorite games.  Most of the vendors/studios were giving out tons of swag; picked up numerous t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc.  One of the things I got was a free copy of Madden 2007, which I will rant about later.

After talking to many recruiters and other developers I’m feeling much more marketable now.  Not necessarily in comparison to them, but in comparison to what they are looking for.  It really puts the industry in to a slightly more friendly and tractable perspective.

In short, the conference was an absolute blast. Will definitely have to make it a habit.