SimpleWeblog

Comic Review - Kabuki, Volume 1: Circle of Blood

I like a lot of Japanese stuff. The giant fighting robots, the cool animation, bizarre video games, sumo wrestling, udon and ramen noodles, ninjas and samurai - the list has been nourished by all forms of media I consumed as a child. It seemed so different and so cool. At least, to a kid growing up in the suburbs of Wisconsin it did.

Kabuki is set in a futuristic Japan. It contains a fairly coherent, reasonable plot, good artwork, and lots of references to Japanese stuff. So I'm not sure why I didn't like it more.

I don't read comics expecting some profound insights into life, I read them to be entertained and hopefully find some neat new idea. Some comics do start approaching a higher level, asking questions about the nature of heorism and individuality and power, but that's the all-too-rare exception.

I think something just seemed a little inauthentic to me, like Mr. Mack, who wrote and drew the entire series, had done some research but hadn't really captured the true spirit of the culture. And I realize this is totally ridiculous for me to say, since I know even less about it than he does, I'm sure. But something didn't quite seem right.

It was also disappointing that I wasn't able to connect to the characters any better. It even had a reasonable explanation for a conspiracy organization! How can you have that and not more... believable characters? Believable is a dangerous word. Maybe my experiences don't fit well, but it works for other people.

But the artwork was nice, lots of different takes on visual presentation throughout the story, which seems to be only the start of what will appear in later volumes, based on a quick flip through some of the other books.

And I think that is what will make or break it for me, whether future volumes build on this, or if it stagnates. I think it shows promise, but maybe the storytelling ability isn't quite there yet to really carry it off.

But there is a little hope left, which is good.

Video Games

I stayed up too late playing *Onimusha Warlords* for the playstation 2. It's actually a fun game, despite the Resident Evil-style directional controls. Lots of hacking up demons with bladed weapons.

And there was a part where you have to fight through level after level of demons, trying to get the best weapon in the game. It reminded me of the old computer BBS door game The Pit. I loved those old door games! Operation:Overkill, Land of Devastation, Barren Realms Elite, and a bunch of others that I still remember parts of.

I know I shouldn't be, but I am surprised there is so much info on door games available.

I guess I'm not the only one who has these fond memories of weird ANSI graphic games...

Mimio

Running meetings effectively is something that has been on my mind lately, since my team at work is doing nothing but meetings. And there is a lot of stuff to worry about when running a meeting. Then there's also the technology component of how you capture the meeting in a form that will last beyond the meeting.

Technography is a term I've seen used for technology used to help facilitate meetings. I don't think the term is too popular, or maybe people don't worry about the problem much.

My team recently got a mimio, which captures whiteboard writing into a digital format. It is kind of neat, but not quite everything you want. There are some technology problems - pieces of letters missing if you write to fast, or at an angle, the limited space it is able to capture, the inability to switch between boards. But I think my main problem is that you need to transcribe things afterwards anyways, so it doesn't save you much time. And if you would have typed your notes into a computer as you went along anyways, it probably takes you more time to use mimio. Although mimio probably handles drawings better than most computer applications.

I think it is hard to convert the whiteboard - useful for notes to yourself, or to gain concensus for a group of people in a meeting - to be used as a format for creating notes that are supposed to be meaningful to people outside the meeting. I have even had trouble with remembering what the mimio notes meant for meetings I was in a few days earlier. OK, some of this may be our inexperience with the technology, but I think there may be an underlying problem.

So, is it easier to fill in a Wiki page or Excel spreadsheet during the meeting? Some people said that the computer is too distracting, that they like whiteboards, or that drawings or diagrams are too hard to do. But I haven't seen evidence it's distracting, and we don't really need to collaborate on too many drawings or diagrams.

At least, not yet.

Anyways, I think I am still searching for the perfect solution. Having whiteboard sized touch screens, so you can load up old images for editing and save new ones would be nice. A little technological improvement to mimio, to enhance resolution and accuracy would be great. Maybe just a digital camera to capture the occasional whiteboard drawing as needed, and a familiar editing tool on a displayed screen?

It seems like there is still a lot of potential market for this stuff.

Someone must be building the meeting room of the future, right? Or does no one do that kind of research anymore? Maybe that is another topic for another time.

Goals

I have a long list of things I would like to be able to do, or do better. And I think the main thing stopping me is my lack of ability to stick with something day after day, putting in the practive time to see the improvement. Like the lack of sticking to updating this weblog, which results in entries like this...

Anyways, here's the list, not exhaustive, of course:

* Drawing

* Writing

* Play bass guitar (or regular guitar, I guess)

* Sing

* Dance

* Programming in my free time

Yup.

Actually, I made the categories broad enough the list doesn't seem too long.

Heh.

Short Film Idea

This came to me in a dream, as a movie idea. Weird.

A kid gets locked into a huge department store after it closes. A montage scene ensues as he thinks of all of the possible things he could do with unrestricted access to all of the stuff in the store. It cuts away to morning, with birds chirping, sun shining, and cops moving in with guns drawn to arrest him. He's at a computer, playing a video game, which is what he did all night.

Like I said, a short movie.

Gaming

It's OK to admit this, right?

I was a gamer.

(OK, I still am, sort of...)

Not just video games - who doesn't do that these days? I'm talking hard-core, pre-teen kids huddled in a basement rolling dice and arguing about rules gaming. Actually, that makes it sound like I could have been involved in some cool gambling thing. So let me try again - I played role-playing games.

Yes, like Dungeons and Dragons.

I can identify the number of sides on a regular polyhedron without thinking.

I can still remember obscure details from the games I played. I still have binders full of notes detailing worlds I never quite finished creating.

And I think it actually was a worthwhile thing for me as a kid. It was a way to express creativity, spend time with friends, and learn obscure trivia and vocabulary.

What happened? Well, most of my friends gave up on it. Found other things to do with their time. Got involved with girls and drugs. So I gave it up, too, checking in once a year to go to GenCon with my girlfriend, just to see. And I got to see the RPG industry falling apart as the card game industry rolled in, led by "Magic: The Gathering".

It seemed cruel to me, because the company that made that terrible game that helped destroy the industry, had been the one that was going to save one of my favorite games, Talislanta. They put out a new edition of it, were promoting it... then the card game stuff came along, and the RPGs got dumped...

Anyways, that is a too-long introduction to the Salon article about the history of the company. They got big, bought TSR (the company that made D&D! That was a shock to find out when I did my occasional wistful look into the gaming world online...) and then sold out to Hasbro.

Hasbro???

Anyways, here's the article.

It's interesting to see that people there felt the same way about staying true to the games.

It was also interesting to see how difficult it can be growing a company, especially if you want to try to stay true to core principles that the company was founded on. Not that I really agree with all the principles that Peter founded WOtC based on, but how companies change as they get bigger is an idea that hits close to home these days. But that is another topic.

Comics writer

Here's a neat website:

DigitalPriest

It's the web site for Christopher Priest, who has been a comic book writer for over 20 years.

This page is a particularly interesting place to read about his propensity for working on comics that get cancelled.

I think it is interesting because I would love to be a comic book writer. Come up with interesting stories, explore any type of idea, have virtually no restrictions in what you can show or do. It's such an interesting, underutilized medium.

And his stories about the business side of it make me think that this is a fantasy best left unfulfilled.

Blah.

Like working for a videogame company, I think. It seems like it could be so neat, so creative, but will probably become full of lameness and politics just like any job.

Just because you like the final product doesn't mean the process to make it is as enjoyable?

Anyways, Mr. Priest is also one of the few African-American writers in the comic book industry, which leads to some interesting stories as well. He's also a minister, which is a little off-putting to me, but I'm trying to be less judgmental on these things. I haven't read much beyond the comics portion of the site, so I'm not exactly sure how it is.

And the site is horribly oriented to IE.

Blah.

Ack

The silly old version of IE at work doesn't seem to like handling things properly on the first attempt, so that last one got double posted. And this is an attempt to cover it up. (What did I think about Dave Winer's editing of his weblog? Hrmm.)

(It's version 4.72, BTW.)

Functional Design Meetings

Here's some notes from Chris on how to run a good functional design meeting.

Remember - it is a working meeting. Decisions need to be made in the meeting. People should not leave the meeting to get things done so it can be approved at the next meeting. This takes a while to get used to if you are used to doing deisgn on your own.

First, identify what problem you are solving. Then, agree on a methodology for approaching and working through the problem space. Everyone needs to agree with the approach, but it doesn't usually matter what that approach is. Explain the scope of how much time there is to work on this, how many meetings have been scheduled, etc.

As you move forward, the facilitator needs to provide an almost "over the top" explanation of everything to make sure everyone completely understands what is being said and discussed. Everyone needs to reach an agreement at the higher levels before getting into more specifics.

Trap open questions as they come up so they can be discussed later. You don't need to get sidetracked when they come up, but you don't want to lose them.

The facilitator needs to make sure to write down exactly what someone means, not your interpretation of it. Repeat what they say, make sure they agree to the wording.

The facilitator needs to make sure everyone is on board and contributing. Ask questions of people who are not contributing. Look for people that are giving expressions indicating they are uncomfortable with what is happening.

At some point, a decision needs to be made. The facilitator needs to identify when progress is not being made but discussion is continuing. Someone needs the authority to make the decision and move on.

Remember that everything being written on the whiteboard is for a future audience, so it needs to be clear and understandable.

The facilitator should let people come up to the whiteboard and draw if they are having a difficult time getting their ideas across verbally.

A top-down approach is usually good for approaching the system from the user's perspective, which is what you want from a functional design phase.

Be careful of criticism of suggestions because you don't want people to stop contributing, but you do want to be able to critique things.

If needed, make a list of items you can't mention during functional design. Usually these are technical terms, like data model or JSP. Decisions during functional design should be made about the functionality with only a little thought about implementation difficulty. After functional design meetings, there should be a scoping design meeting where these questions can be addressed in more detail.

Every day

I need to post on here every day. Practice to improve these writing muscles, right? Let's see if I can think of something fun today.

Functional Design

We started the real functional design stuff this week - today was the first meeting for my piece of things, the Project Engine. It's really all of the basic architecture stuff, though. My manager came up with the project plan, revising the numbers to spend more time on functional design than originally estimated. The theory is that we need to do a good job, to avoid the problems of before, and it should lead to less time we need to spend in later phases, and less of the huge problems that crop up at the end that need to be dealt with. I think we're all nervous about it. It seems like we are coming up with good stuff, but it is taking time, and we all feel we don't have much time.

So I'm writing this down so I can look back later and laugh.

Testing

Moved everything, need to test.

First time caller

So I'm trying to create a real entry here, and I'm a little nervous.

What's my plan for this? Reviews? Commentaries? A journal?

I guess there's only one way to find out, and that is to just start trying stuff.

So first up, since it is early morning, is a lame-ass dream I just had:

I was driving with my mom, and complained about how slow she was driving. She then started driving too fast. We finally stopped at the foot of a long staircase. A bunch of people I knew where there, and we raced up to the top. I won, because everyone else became too tired [obviously a dream]. At the top, there was a giant bird's nest with eggs in it. My friend John from high school jumped down into it, and slipped between the eggs. He looked like he was dazed. The bird, which looked like a huge crow [do crows have nests?], started to chew on John's arm in its beak. I jumped down and started jumping on the bird's head with both feet, which dazed it a little, but John started getting pulled into its mouth more and more.

I had another dream, about liquid hand soap beng converted into a squeezable bubble.

Shrug.

Programming movie idea

There's a system no one remembers how to program anymore - the language is ancient, the processor obsolete, the documentation long ago recycled. But the system still runs something important, and someone needs to change it. So they start tracking down rumors of one of the old-timers who may still have enough mental faculties to remember how it was done...

[see _Close to the Machine_ by Ellen Ullman, or her article _The Dumbing Down of Programming_ for a little inspiration.]

Google rules

And this popup thing is ok, but the IE stuff is crazy.

Google

Entry 2

Just a little more text to try out the templates with.

Test

Look, it's the first entry.

Not much excitement, yet.

We'll see how the extended rants go.