A lady gamer's rant: Sexy Videogameland

Phew! Recently I got back from a big birthday weekend. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy bday and to all who came to help me celebrate it. I had a great time!

I've been slogging through the stuff that's piled up while I was away, and this evening I read this post. It shitted me, and I'll tell you why. But first, I'll show you what made me unsubscribe from this blog and what made me angry enough to come steaming back to my neglected little corner of the web.

Such a novelty is it for [guys] to discover a neighborhood gal who presumably "plays video games all day" that they seem over the moon to find a girl they can talk about games with. This should make me feel cool. It makes me annoyed.

Yes! Gosh, I am totally sick of that breathless shocked tone people use whenever they discover that there are women who play, work on, talk about, and enjoy video games. It's super irritating when people think that lady gamers are so rare that people would actually pay to play games with them.

I imagine any gal who's an avid gamer even for a hobby, not for a living, has to deal with the same thing, endless barrages of breathless shock from guys that can't believe you exist. And maybe gals for whom it's just a hobby find this flattering. I don't.

Um. Excuse me?

I get your point, Leigh, I think. You're sick of people being shocked to find a woman who works in the games industry, and wish that sometimes people would respect your desire to leave work at work. I get it. But why is it only girls who work in the gaming industry that are allowed to be upset by this?

Aren't all women allowed to feel a shade miffed that the gaming and greater public seem to think (incorrectly) that girl gamers are a super rare occurrence? It's one thing to wish people in the outer rings of your social circle to put in a bit of extra effort when it comes to casual conversation topics, and on principle I support greater visibility for females in the gaming industry.

However, I think it is another, entirely unhelpful thing, to exclude regular gaming gals from your eye-rolling. We're just as over the rare unicorn treatment as anyone else, and just because we don't get paid to talk about games doesn't mean we enjoy being oggled by the ignorant.


Picture credits: gruntzooki, Liqueur Felix, ..thomas.. & tracer.ca

New layout!

Oh by the way, for those of you who read this via an RSS client (hello Google Reader I love you did I mention that today?) I did a little work on my blog's appearance. It is a lot more spiffy now. So go Check it out!



A gazillion thanks go to the folks at Blogger Buzz for their post about the wealth of free blogger templates available out there. I was recently complaining to a friend about how fugly the default Blogger templates are, and how even with my amazing Google ju-ju I was unable to find something even resembling prettification.

So if you have a Blogger and you want to make it look nicer, or if you just like to see cool design skillz, check out the links at this post.

Sunday Secrets

You've all heard of Post Secret, yes? It's a blog run by this dude who gets sent often very creative postcards, with the one proviso that they contain a secret, something that the postcard's author has not revealed to anyone, and they now wish to convey to the whole internet. I have bought one of his books, and I read the website every week, but lately it has essentially been bullshit.

I did chuckle (actually out loud) at a couple from this Sunday, though! Such a rare occurrence I was driven to make a post about it.

Bravo, Frank. Bravo.

Oh dear god, the furbies

Do you remember Furbies? I don't remember ever wanting one. I always knew they were creepy and a few steps behind terrifying robot animals enslaving the human race for their own nefarious ends. Here's a video that will give your morning a very strange start, should you chose to watch it.



"The art he practiced was a performing art rather than a creative one: Doctor Jest was the Chief Interrogator of Melniboné. Reaching out with his free hand, he expertly seized the genitals of one of the male Furbies™. The scalpel flashed and the resulting music grew louder and more complex as the Furbies™, their vocal cords surgically operated upon to sing but one note each, screamed in perfect harmony. Even the young emperor was moved by the sinister echo of their songs. 'Why should their pain produce such marvelous beauty?' he wondered. And the Emperor Elric closed his eyes."

via BoingBoing.

Creepy virtual actor looks real

The lady in this video looks like a real person, but she's not. She's a digital replica of the actress Emily O'Brien created by Image Metrics and Paul Debevec at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. She is also creepy as hell!

The Emily Project, via BoingBoing

Women in the Israeli army

You may have seen this already, and I'm sure I've come across a few of these images, but not the whole collection.

Photographer Rachel Papo's Serial No. 3817131 is just a stunning collection of amazing photos depicting the everyday lives of women in the Israeli army. The project is named after the photographer's own ID number during her service.

Incidentally, I had to use kroxy to get to the gallery, because the photography is apparently unsafe and categorised as "weapons". Filtering, you're doing it wrong.

Serial No. 3817131 via BoingBoing

Neato Flickr Set

Some interesting shots of travel souvenirs shot with proper perspective, superimposed over their original locations.

Set, via Laughing Squid.

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

A friend of mine (HI BRYAN) is currently doing a digital cultures class at uni and has been nattering non-stop about it for the past few weeks. Luckily it is all very interesting stuff and this video he sent me was really an amazing piece of work. It totally articulated some of my thoughts about the value of this goofy little video sharing website and by extension the entirety of the ways people share information online. It's an amazing video and if you have an hour to sit and watch it, Michael Wesch will totally blow your mind.

Dinosaur Lamp

I want one of these so bad! Fairly affordable, at $US26 too!

Here, via BoingBoing.

Do I Hate the Cloud?

A post over at Lifehacker has been sitting in my mail for about a week now, waiting for the article that is in my head to get written. It's called Do You Trust the Cloud? and focuses on the risks and benefits associated with having a web-based presense. That's email, calendars, contacts, photos or data storage, that is primarily accessed via an online service like Gmail or MobileMe.

The "cloud" refers to the system of what Apple calls "push", which is where your mobile device or computer speaks to a "cloud", which is connected to the internet, so you're informed of updates like a new email, without the need for your email application to be actually open. The LH article focuses on recent outages and what you do when your entire digital presense just disappears whenever there's a hitch, but it prompted me to think more on a recent dilemma I have been experiencing lately, and that is: Do I Hate the Cloud?

I spent four hours in line for an iPhone, and I knew ahead of time that I was also going to get one of those fandangled MobileMe accounts, because I really liked the idea of using a web-based email program that looked like a native OS application. All things considered, it was not a problem I really needed to spend approximately $100 solving.

And now, instead of using Gmail, I use MobileMe. Or at least, that's the plan. My iPhone certainly beeps at me when I have a new mail, Blackberry style, but when I'm at work I tend to just have gmail.com open. Here's why.

At my work, we hotdesk. It is unpleasant for many reasons, but one of them is differing levels of insane user restriction. Some computers will let you install your browser of choice (Firefox 3) but not the flash plugin, some will let you install flash but it won't run with sound, some will let you do nothing of the sort, etc etc. I used to solve this by running Firefox Portable from a USB stick but MobileMe and FP did not get along. Not even a little bit. Seems that MobileMe needs a little too much juice than the USB stick can provide.

But apparently it is also taxing for some of the computers at work themselves, so I never know when I sit down what my day is going to look like. I also hate that MobileMe does not automatically filter messages into folders, like every other email solution has been doing for the last five years. Oh, and it hasn't got any web-based chat option like Google Talk, which is a great way to waste time in between news bulletins.

Apple needs to at least get folders and auto-filtering working, ASAP, as well as working out whatever causes all the hanging and freezing. It is a laughable to call this a syncronised or mobile solution to email.

Zombie Flashmob

One of my favourite flickr sets shows a flash mob of zombies invading a train in San Francisco, and according to Laughing Squid they are at it again.

Pic courtesy of Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

Stupid IT Measures

In the media industry, I think the notion of blocking any websites is completely ludicrous. Any source of information is arguably a crucial piece of research needed at any point of the day by the folks charged with staying abreast of current affairs.

Which is why I find the blocking of one of my favourite atheist blogs, Friendly Athesit by Hemant Mehta, totally freakin' lame.

"Cult/occult"? Would a website about Catholicism or Christianity be blocked for the same reason? A quick Google search says no.

Conveniently, I had already seen the comic that Hemant was linking to, as I have a handy dandy RSS feed of xkcd already. I don't know a great deal about how they compile a list of websites to be blocked, but it appears to be ultimately futile, infuriatingly unfair, and a breathtakingly stupid study in trundling, archaic mediocrity.

Good thing I got this out before Blogger was blocked for the reason "IWSS Security Event, Content classification: OH SNAP".

Meme Timeline

Sometimes I wonder how all of this "internet" stuff is going to look to our distant descendants.

The Internet Meme Timeline, via Laughing Squid.

New Torrid Site

Every month I set aside approximately $AU100 for the Torrid.com clearance half price sale. After my first ginger tiptoes into the brand's sizing, I quickly established my groove and can easily come away each month with a few t-shirts or singlets, and a pair of good quality trousers, or amazing shaper stockings, for the same price you can often spend on a single item.

They've just announced a new website, which looks great. They've not added the functionality to search by size just yet, but when they do, I just might branch out of my monthly sale splurge!

It's great to get a hold of quality plus size gear that is not completely lame, and their gorgeous models are all bigger gals, so it minimises the chance of that post-parcel-opening disappointment that can sometimes come after an impulse online buy. A plethora of realistic pictures is the closest thing to actually trying the items on when you're shopping for clothing online, and the ability to snare a pair of pants for under $10 on sale is a great, risk-free way of investigating that website's sizing.

I don't always like their range, and they don't accept non-US PayPal accounts, but there's so little choice when you carry a few more than common, Torrid's stuff is a welcome blast of chic and style.

Google Lock Out

Link, via BoingBoing

Scary!

Google has apparently suspended the account of CrossTech Media President Nick Saber. He tried to login to his email and was informed "Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]" An email response from Google's customer support described an inconclusive investigation and claimed they were unable to reveal any further information about the account due to privacy and security concerns.

An entire Google empire was gone. Google Talk, Picasa, Google Docs, and the additional storage he paid for. That's nuts! I've had my account suspended once after trying to send a stupidly large attachment, but it was all squared up pretty quickly. I hope Nick gets his issues resolved soon!

Fairfax Digital Tries to Pass Off Google Street View as Own

This is so lame.

Fairfax's real estate arm, Domain.com.au today emailed its subscribers an update on their website's search functions, in light of Google's release of Street View for Australian cities.


View Larger Map

The email, and a special Domain.com.au page set up to explain the changes, contain no reference to Google, and features a screenshot of the Domain website's toolbar, featuring an un-branded version of Street View, integrated into the rest of Domain's tools.

Now, I read No Logo in high school like the rest of the world, and am a fan of the generic as much as the next lady, but this is just poor form, Fairfax!

I generally use realestate.com.au for my unending search for the perfect apartment, with a great location and cheap rent, (so far zilch, by the way) and haven't been on Domain's website in a long time, but when I saw this email, I wondered why they were trying to pass off Street View as their own creation!

It is totally sweet to be able to hit up a view of a house from its street (and check out any potentially disastrous neighbors while you're at it), but by not providing any acknowledgment of where Domain.com.au are getting this service from, this appears to be a completely shameless attempt to capitalise on Google's work.

Links and credit are due on your tutorial page immediately, Fairfax Digital! It's 2008 and you should know better than to at the very least flout netiquette, and at the worst, try to take credit for somebody else's work.

Eww!

Check out these gross little lizard snake things, apparently the tiniest of their kind. The snake (herein named Professor Scales, in honour of T-Rex's tiny friend) was discovered in Barbados by Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist, who co-discovered the lizard in 2001.

Squirmy!

From here, via BoingBoing.