Vet member here to plug some new content I’ve been posting to a new site of mine. It’s a repository of writings and opinions that’s updated week-daily for both warm-up writing exercises for my freelance work, as well as a portfolio-site on my latest designs, and written-word.
I’m particularly pleased with reactions to the comics section so far.
Some article exerpts / samples are included here as well.
Enjoy,
Monty Gabrys
mgabrys@doomsday-clock.com
Expert from Tech: - Apple to Retailers “Try and Stop us”:
[Note: The following portion of this article is personal background - which has little bearing on the article in-progress. It is included only to put to-rest questions about bias and other piddling crappy details. Details I’d rather not have to answer in the form of hundreds of repetitive email responses to frothing-at-the-mouth-MacJihaders which pile out of the woodwork when ever Google finds the word “Apple” in a webpage. I’ve already tested this with the aforementioned “Apple Doomsday Clock”. A web-experiment specifically created to prove this theory-now-fact - of how utterly insane a fan-base can behave.]
Super-sucker sample: I was only one of 50 thousand who actually bought a NeXT computer. If you have to wonder why that would make me a “super-sucker” - ask yourself this. How many computer companies managed only to produce 50 thousand personal-computers over the course of 5 years? Now wonder how stupid I would have to be to actually - “buy” - one of them. Only the Air-Force, the CIA, a Hollywood concern called the William Morris Agency, and some boobs at Prudential Real-estate in Redmond CA still brag about the likes of their 260 NeXT computer technological white-elephants-in-black-hardware.
But, this means I’m happy to see NeXTstep’s latest incarnation in the form of OSX. This is because - to be blunt - apart from BeOS, “all” consumer-grade operating systems have been horrifying piles of dung. Apple and Microsoft were - both - horrifying excuses on how to ruin an end-user experience (Apple after 7.0 onward was the worst - Microsoft before and after Windows 95) and don’t get me started on Linux.
After Solaris, NeXTstep, and Irix - I pretty much only appreciate computers that have a decent UI piled on top of some flavor of - stable - Unix. [Note 2: Linux has yet to have both a UI that doesn’t choke - and end-user applications that I can actually get work done with. Sorry penguin fans]. Now that “NeXTstep - the NeXT generation” is out with more productivity apps than I can shake a stick at, with the entire NeXTstep application development suite thrown in for free - I can only gripe about prices and hardware performance like all the other Mac-schlubs.
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Expert from A&E: Nintendo’s new Link “Someone stop us”:
The new-maturation of the video game market might be validated by titles like Grand Theft Auto 3 - which has sold in excess of 8 million copies over a 1.5 year lifespan (a single-title retail curve not seen since the likes of Pac-Man) - and it’s follow-up Grand Theft Auto Vice City - which sold more than 7 million copies of itself in the first week of it’s release. When asked about Grand Theft Auto in the pages of Wired magazine - Miyamoto only commented: ” I am not sure whether that sort of extreme subject matter is always appropriate”. It may not always be appropriate - but it does raise the bar in ways that Miyamoto seems either uncomfortable doing - or be rendered incapable of doing, by the marketing strategists at Nintendo.
Grand Theft Auto is actually quite a confusing product for most Japanese developers - it seems - given the cornball and hackneyed add-ons recently thrown onto titles that have emerged since GTA3’s release. Games like “Dead or Alive” from Namco now feature strippers and bars. Features that are either laughingly implemented outside the boundaries of good-gameplay - or in ways totally unrelated to the overall theme of the title. I’d like to point out now, that it takes more than a couple of polygon-generated tits to create a game the like Grand Theft Auto 3. In fact, I think a cultural argument might hold some sway, because the current chart-topper - Sony’s “The Getaway” - was developed in England - the same country that produced Grand Theft Auto. The Getaway is a successful post-Grand Theft Auto 3 title which contains many of the same adult themes and in-game elements - without being stupid or goofy.
“Goofy” is the only word I can use to describe previous “mature” titles from years past. Titles featuring “farting squirrels”, “lakes of poo”, and enemies that could be vanquished by “peeing” on them. Acclaim - the video game company whose only consistency to the gaming culture is it’s ability to get absolutely nothing right - has attempted to match the adult wave with BMXXX - a game that features topless models on BMX bikes (a bewildering combo that defies explanation - in this column anyway), and so many cornball adult stereotypes - that it profoundly cements Acclaim’s reputation as one of many companies that “just” - “don’t” - “get-it”. It’s also my own personal opinion, that the correct way to pronounce Acclaim is “Ack-Lame”.
