Treetoe in the Wetlands

Taken just after Sutter and I vanquished the raptors. Sutter subsequently fell off the ledge. Noob.

Please call me...

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(Evan dropped off the Unicode Standard in hardback at the Bloggerarium today - who knew it could be so fun).

Proactionary

In the latest issue of the Bay Guardian, Paul Reidinger wrote the following:

If gay seems to have become slightly passé of late - dissed on the one hand by the young, who prefer new or no labels, and ignored on the other by the flood of rich hetero immigrants who since the late 1990s have transformed this once bohemian city into a precinct of urban suburbia with monster houses and countless babies - then at least one blessing of the shift is the advent of a postgay restaurant like Thai Chef

Wow. To think that a restaurant review could contain such "ain't what it used to be" angst.

Obviously, this review caught my attention because it's so on the nose. As a Boom Era immigrant to SF, I frequently find myself using my hetero-riches to construct monster houses in place of gay restaurants and fathering scads of motherless babies swaddled in dot-com schwag. That is, when I'm not playing World of Warcraft.

The other thing that's incredible in this sentence is that it's a veritable socio-rhetorical Golden Spike - connecting the extremes of progressive and reactionary worldviews. Regardless of whether you pine for the former glory of pre-Boom SF or pre-hippie America, believing in the greatness of a not-so-long-lost past is a hallmark of modern conservatism.

When combined with the belief that what was lost was in fact taken by an immigrant population ... well, now we're cookin'!

Empaneled

Just got done participating on the Blogging Showdown panel here at SxSW. I think we underdelivered on the Showdown portion ... but definitely got to talk some blog.

Next time I'm gonna start out by popping Anil in the nose. Maybe wear a unitard to set the right tone. You know, mix things up a bit.

Howard and Nestor

I hear (via superelectric) that there's a new New Order album coming. You can check out the video for the lead single and everything.

The thing is ... well, New Order will always have a special place in my heart as the First Band I Ever Truly Loved. The first time I ever heard Bizarre Love Triangle was in the back seat of a Honda Civic while driving through the Loop in St. Louis. It was a magical night and when I fell in love it wasn't just that I thought it was the best song I'd ever heard, it was as tho' I'd never even heard music before.

That being said, hearing that there's a new New Order album is sort of like hearing that there's a new issue of Nintendo Power coming out. If Nintendo Power had come out like once every 8 years or something.

WarCrafting

Blizzard should create a Construction System in World of Warcraft.

Creating a base, building barracks, upgrading lumber mills - this is the heart of the previous generation of WarCraft games. It's the fundamental mechanic behind most real-time strategy games, really. But nowhere in the wide World of Warcraft can online players create structures that stay.

A player should be able to train the Construction skill and contribute to the manifacture of a new asset for the town. You could build a barracks to replenish the stock of town guards, upgrade an armory so that the guards have plate mail, create an outpost for a new rouge trainer, or get your guild members together to build a hall.

I'm not advocating a system whereby users create arbitrarily styled or defined buildings. I'm not arguing for the type of license that some MUDs afford their users because one of WoW's greatest strengths is the consistency of its design. However, a system can be defined to allow users to build pre-defined structures in specific locations.

This would also create an incentive for players to create characters on new servers. When the world is new, Stormwind won't yet have its Cathedral and you'll have the opportunity to contribute to that monumental effort.

And building something as big as a Cathedral should be difficult and take a long time to complete ... but once it is, you'll be able to look at the corner stone and see your name listed as one of the contributors. As much as I value my rugged leather tunic simply because it carries the label "Made by Towena," helping to build a structure that stays would be a true in-game accomplishment.