E3 Exposed

The other day I realized that May was long past, but I hadn't gone to E3, a convention in LA also known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The reason for this, of course, is that E3 was officially canceled after the 2006 convention, saving me the cost of a cheap flight to LA, but also denying me the opportunity to wallow in the sheer ridiculousness that is E3.

E3 is (or rather, was) a yearly convention for video games. Yes, even video games have their own convention. Like many "trade-show" oriented conventions, the main event was the expo floor, where companies could peddle their wares. Except in this case, the wares were whatever video game titles were coming out soon, and the games weren't really sold at all, but rather, hyped with the marketing power of a thousand suns.

I had been going to E3 since 2002 or thereabouts, but I wasn't going to learn about new games. Being something of a video game connoisseur (or addict, take your pick) there was almost never anything revealed at the show that I didn't already know about. Rather, I went because I wanted to laugh out loud at the sheer over-the-top atmosphere that was E3.

E3 was always: 1) Incredibly loud (every booth was trying to drown out the sound from their neighbors), 2) Incredibly flashy (30+-foot high light shows, wrap-around projection TVs bigger than my apartment complex, random celebrities, fog machines for no good reason) and 3) Filled to capacity with slack-jawed nerds. Think of the main strip in Vegas, but instead of bright lights, gambling and strippers, you have bright lights, video game demonstrations and "booth babes" (who were often strippers making some extra cash on the side). Here's some example pictures I took of Nintendo's booth from two separate E3s:






In addition, there was always a special section of the LA convention center (Kentia Hall) reserved for smaller companies trying to get people interested in bizarre games and accessories that no one had ever heard of.

My personal favorite E3 was when I went as a member of the self-aggrandized gaming press. I was writing for a gaming website at the time, and thus was told to make appointments to talk to game producers and find out what they were doing. I waltzed to the front of a long line at one booth and was ushered inside an "invite-only" room where I was served drinks and snacks, sat on a comfy couch, and had a company representative walk me through their in-development games. At another booth, a company rep walked me around the booth, and abruptly kicked "regular nerds" out of the booth when they were in the way of something she was trying to show me. Ah, the halcyon days.

The problem, however, was that most companies really had very little to actually reveal, but tried very hard to over-hype what little they had. This was the real reason behind the eventual demise of the convention itself. In 2006, the committee behind the convention decided that the overall signal-to-noise ratio of the show was so skewed, that it would benefit mankind as a whole if E3 was just canceled. The committee has since announced a new show to be held in Santa Monica, but this is a "press-only" event of a much smaller scale. Likewise, other organizers have announced wanna-be E3 replacement shows, but for me at least, the party is over.

Which is a pity. Most conventions, even trade-show-based ones, cater to some sort of professional. E3 catered to nerds, plain and simple. 16-year-old backpack-wearing nerds who worked for minimum wage at Gamestop rubbed shoulders with people who worked on games for a living. Rarely have I seen the true nerd spirit celebrated so profoundly, and in spite of how pointless the show really was, I will miss it, just a little.

I, Roomba

Several years ago, my sister's family bought my parents a Roomba. My Dad is something of a clean freak, so a little round robot made to clean the floor seemed like an appropriate gift.

The model my parents received was (at the time) one of the more high-end models. Unlike lower-end models, this Roomba had the ability to locate and return to a docking-station if it detected that it was running out of power. That's right folks, it had learned how to feed itself.

I think my parents were somewhat skeptical about the robot vacuum, but they gave it a chance, and it did do an effective job at removing daily dirt and dust around the house. Some time later, however, my father noticed an odd behavior in the little round automaton, and notified my mother about it.

"I think Oscar is getting lazy," my father said. They had named the Roomba 'Oscar' for some reason I still don't understand.
"Why do you say that?" my mother asked.
"I set him up in the bedroom room and close the door. 10 minutes later, I don't hear any noise from inside the room. I go back in and Oscar is sitting there in his little recharging station."

'Oscar', apparently, had learned an important lesson from us humans. The lesson of 'how to be a slacker'.

As it turns out, the roomba was actually having some sort of problem with its power connections, causing the battery to drain too quickly. An emergency "battery-transplant" was attempted, but this did not fix the problem, so my parents acquired a new Roomba instead, and 'Oscar' was retired. With extreme prejudice.

Well, not quite. 'Oscar' is now sitting in a box under my desk. Roombas have a "Serial Control Interface" (basically a serial port) that lets you reprogram it to work with different sensors, or program a new path-finding algorithm, etc. More info on this can be found here (pdf). At some point when I get some free time, I'm going to see what I can get the Roomba to do. Clearly, it will need to be something that demonstrates it has lost its slacker tendencies. Perhaps I'll start with having it do my taxes.

Cast Iron Forum

As a video game nerd, I often read various web sites devoted to games. You have to have a pretty strong stomach sometimes if you're reading these sort of sites. The writing quality is usually terrible, and the actual content, when you manage to dig through the noise, is along the lines of, "Nintendo releases exciting news that they have no news!" In part, I blame myself, since I used to write articles for such web sites. This is how deep the rabbit hole goes.

What's worse are the various public web forums. While the forums on IMDB.com may win the award (or at least be in the running) for most useless, immature drivel online, game-related forums aren't much better. They're usually populated by angry video game nerds, just waiting for someone to bad-mouth their favorite title.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised, or at least amused, to recently find a thread on a gaming web forum I visit titled: Cast Iron Skillets. Some gamer nerd was asking his fellow nerds about what to do with a cast iron skillet he recently acquired. He asked:

"I have a filthy skillet and not sure what to do with it. I mean, its FILTHY."

The response on the forum was immediate. I was amazed at how knowledgeable (and passionate) some of these gaming nerds were about cast iron cookware. An example response:

"You IDIOT. The best thing about a skillet is that it gets better with each meal you cook. The skillet absorbs the flavors and powers of the food cooked within, and becomes something more. Something better. I own a skillet that's been passed down the family line since my great grandmother's time. It radiates with the flavor of a thousand dishes. It is one of my most prized possessions. A skillet should not be thrown out. A skillet should last forever. A skillet should be passed to your children."

Following the thread, the original poster decided to provide a picture of said "filthy" skillet. The rest of the forum posters were encouraging, in their own way:

"(Expletive deleted) YEAH that skillet is salvageable. Follow the cleaning instructions in this thread, get some damn Crisco, and fry some (expletive deleted) chicken."

The thread actually went on for pages and pages, so I won't go into more details. But the entire experience opened my eyes to both the secret interests/knowledge of the angry video game forum poster, and, of course, the power of the cast iron skillet. So, the next time you find yourself holding a cast iron skillet and wondering what to make for dinner, remember the sage advice of the angry video game nerds -- warm up the oven, turn on the burner, and fry some (expletive deleted) chicken. And for God's sake, do not try and scrub it clean afterwards with soap!

This...is...Marble...Madness

When I was a teenager, I once visited an arcade (I think this might have been near Indiana University, of all places) that had a coin-op arcade machine called Marble Madness. The objective was simple -- roll a marble through a pseudo-3D maze using a large track-ball interface. It was great, and reminded me of the various pinball-like animations done for the Electric Company TV show years ago.

Later, I acquired the PC version (some would call this a "port", except it came out years later) of the same named game. It didn't have quite the same appeal on my Dad's monochrome Hercules graphics card PC-XT. The keyboard was the primary interface to control the rolling marble, which was hardly ideal. Nonetheless, I managed to find enjoyment in this. Exhibit A: Young Nerd with no life to speak of.

I accidentally stumbled across a secret level in the game, which according to Wikipedia is traditionally known as the "Water Maze", and was not available in the coin-op arcade version. It really was a strange accident. To uncover this level, you had to have the marble sitting in a particular location at a specific time. When this occured, part of the ground would slowly drop down, taking your marble to the fabled Water Maze. When I first witnessed this happen, I think I may have freaked out a little.

I could never beat the Water Maze, however. It was quite unforgiving. Any sort of mistake would immediately end the game, rather than the usual replacement of your lost marble with another. There's an archived write-up of the level here, complete with screenshots.

The write-up isn't entirely accurate, however. Based on my experiences, it is technically possible to get past the first screen without two players, at least on the PC version. If you rolled your marble onto the correct lily just so, it would take you to the entrance to the next part. I do admit, however, that once I got that far, I was stuck. I could never successfully take my marble down the elevator without instantly ending the game.

Apparently nothing particularly interesting happens if you did manage to finish the Water Maze, however, so I guess I didn't really miss out.

Will Work for Free Vest

Long ago, at a company I used to work for, the head of Sales dropped by my cubicle one day, looking like he wanted a favor.

"Dan, I need a favor," he said.
"What?"
"I need you to come with me to a client site and give a presentation."

I didn't work for sales, and it's not like I had nothing to do already, so I was hesitant. He detected this, and added:

"If you do it, I'll give you a free vest."

He then produced a sample vest. It was one of those blue, fleece things similar to something you'd find at REI or Lands End, except it had our company logo on it.

"It looks a little large," was my first response.
"We've got all sizes. What size do you want?"
"Medium," I said, assuming that, like most corporate clothing swag, the only available sizes were Large and Extra Large.
"No problem. So I'll tell Julie to set up your plane tickets," he said.

I then realized, to my annoyance, that my acceptance of the vest meant that I had agreed to do the favor. Those sales people are rather tricky.

Fortunately, the actual client in this case was Nintendo. More specifically, Nintendo's offices in the US, also known as Nintendo of America, which is currently located in Redmond, Seattle (but possibly moving in the near future).

I remember being somewhat disappointed with the actual Nintendo office building. It was a fairly non-descript white 4-or-so story building with the Nintendo logo. It was nestled in the middle of a business district in not-so-exciting Redmond. You could probably drive by it and not even realize it was Nintendo.

When we entered the building, I was not greeted by an underpaid teenager dressed in a Mario costume. Instead, I was greeted by a stark white entry room with a surly looking security guard behind what appeared to be bullet-proof glass. We went through the usual song-and-dance of signing papers indicating that we would never tell anyone about our visit, etc., given visitor badges, and then ushered in by a second security guard.

The Sales guy at this point decided to ditch me to hang out with more entertaining people, so I was instructed to follow the guard to the meeting room where I'd be doing the presentation. As I followed the guard, I noticed several things:

1. The guard was actually armed with a large handgun
2. The interior offices were just as non-descript as the exterior. Mostly beige cubicles, with the occasional Mario-themed decoration on a per-cubicle basis.
3. At the intersections of pseudo-hallways between blocks of cubicles, there were these strange faux street signs. I looked closer and noticed that they displayed Nintendo-themed street names, like "Mario Way", or "Peach Alley". I'm making those up, by the way.

When we got to a certain point, I was handed off to another armed security guard. We clearly had passed through some sort of internal check point. I'm not sure if I remembered to save. We finally got to the meeting room, where I sat, laptop at the ready, for about 10 minutes until three (count-em!) Nintendo employees showed up. I gave my roughly one hour long presentation, was thanked, and then escorted back to the outside world by more armed escorts.

I've learned since this visit many years ago that the Nintendo offices actually have a separate "visitor" section which is a little more lively. You can read more about it here. Suffice to say, I did not get to see this section at all.

After we were done, I learned that I also needed to give a last-minute presentation at Digipen Institute (which was practically next door). The sales guy was lucky I was feeling generous that day. The Digipen presentation (fodder, perhaps, for another blog entry in the future) went well enough, but left me feeling rather drained as we drove back to the airport.

Back in the San Francisco bay area, when I got back to my desk the next morning, there was a blue vest on my chair. It was, of course, size Large. I gave it to my Dad, who tells me it's very comfortable.

The Algorithm is Being Ignored

I went to an open house event at the main Google campus in Mountain View, CA, last week. It was hosted by the Partner Solutions Organization division. A friend who works at Google suggested I go, even though he has no idea what the PSO group does. Neither did I, so I figured I’d take the free meal and the free information.

I’ve already been to the Google campus several times by now (invited by actual employees, of course). It was somewhat amusing to read the email instructions that said, “Event will take place at the Tunis auditorium in Building 43” and actually have a rough idea of where that actually was. Google has surprisingly lax security by the way – if you’re in Mountain View looking for a good meal, don’t know anyone at Google, and are short on cash, dress like an engineer and try to mingle your way into their cafeterias. You’ve probably got a 50-50 chance of getting in.

When I arrived, there was already a crowd. I did a quick count of chairs, and estimated that they were expecting maybe 200 people. Mind you, this was just one open house event for the PSO group out of several that they’ve been doing for the last couple weeks, all over the world. From what I understand, the PSO group isn’t even that big compared to the rest of Google, so basically there are hundreds of people applying for possibly a handful of positions. Google really is growing by insane amounts, and it does seem like everyone wants to work there too. As someone put it to me, “Google is the black hole of silicon valley”.

The place filled up in no time. They gave some presentations, all moderately informative, and then had a Q&A session, where they actually were throwing free T-Shirts to people asking questions. I felt like I was at some surreal convention event. People asked some fairly serious questions too. Well, except that one guy that was trying to be funny and ask about the quality of the free food. Cherish that free shirt, buddy. No, it was not me.

I noticed an odd air of arrogance in the tone of some of the Google speakers. I don’t think it was on purpose though, it was just a by-product of their crazy amounts of success, so in many ways, it’s perfectly deserved. I visited Microsoft more than 10 years ago on an interview tour, and I have to sadly confess, the feeling I came away with was that Google is at the moment very similar to a young, energetic, still-viable Microsoft. They’re rolling in success, and feel pretty invincible. Places like AskJeeves should really just throw in the towel now and save themselves the trouble.

I thought about this more while I was filling out the online Google employment application form the next day. They ask you for your SAT score, by the way.

Aliens vs Predator Was Not a Good Movie

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at just what made it so poor (note that there are some spoilers in the following text, so anyone still planning on seeing this film unspoiled should stop reading now).

Number one, the plot. It’s contrived, poorly paced, and really just serves to get the audience from one action or effects scene to another. Both of the original Alien and Predator film series were known for building tension at key moments. AvP doesn’t do this, even when the opportunity is given. For example: At the very beginning of the movie, a bunch of people head directly for Antarctica to investigate some strange satellite readings. When they get there, they find a huge hole drilled deep into the ice that leads to some ancient buried temple. There's no build-up here -- it's not like some naval crew is lost at sea and uncovers some weird ancient temple after days of exploring some strange sightings. Nope, they find a convenient hole, and go straight to the main event. If memory serves, one character even says something like, “This hole could not have possibly been dug by any man-made tools” (The Predators dug it with a giant laser, apparently), the characters all nod and look at each other for about 12 microseconds, and immediately proceed down the hole. I could practically hear the director shouting: “Hurry up, get to the temple, the action sequence starts in 20 seconds!”

Number two, the characters. Granted, the plot gives no real opportunity for character development, but even the base material is flawed. None of the human characters, save the single “tough female” Ripley rip-off, lasts much past the first 30 minutes of the film. During that 30 minutes, you are introduced to some extremely two-dimensional, forgettable characters: Some French scientist guy, the pretty blond woman, Lance Henriksen, some gun-carrying military toughs, and so on. The non-humans aren’t much better. It’s easy to forget that there are actually three Predators in the movie, probably because they look and act similar, don’t actually speak, and two of them are also killed off rather quickly.

Number three, the “fan service”. I’m not really sure what to call it. The movie felt like some 15-year-old boy had just watched all the films in the Alien and Predator series while drinking a gallon of Mountain Dew, and decided to write a scrap-book script that contained only the “really cool” parts of all the movies. Face huggers leaping across a room in slow-motion? Check. A giant queen Alien, angry and unstoppable? Check. Shoulder-mounted Predator Plasma Caster? Yep. Interesting well-developed plot and characters? Well, no.

Let us not forget the incredibly awkward and disturbing sequence near the end where the surviving Predator and surviving human female, standing comfortably in near-freezing temperatures, are staring into each other eyes and seem on the verge of sharing a cross-species intimate moment. I kid you not. I retract my statement – it is better to forget.

When I actually saw this movie some three or so years ago, I honestly wasn’t expecting much. I liked (most of) the predecessor Alien and Predator movies. I figured I could waste a couple bucks on a matinee. The one thing I figured would be worth seeing was the key “reveal” of the movie, which I assumed would be the explanation for how Aliens and Predators finally made it to Earth. Imagine my disappointment when it’s revealed, very early in the movie, that these two species have just been hanging out on Earth for thousands of years. Exsqueeze me? Baking powder?

While trying to wrap my mind around this, I heard a baby crying somewhere in the theater. Some parent had brought their young impressionable infant to this awful film. Perhaps they thought the PG-13 rating was the sign that these sorts of films were becoming more family-friendly. Perhaps they were insane. Regardless, as the poor emotionally scarred child continued crying, I realized that I myself was on the verge of tears, for different reasons.

Yes, I paid money to see this movie when it came out in the theaters. Yes, I’m still recovering from it. Yes, people are actually working on a sequel to this movie as I write this. May God have mercy on my soul.