Monthly Archives: March 2012

An interview with Chet Faliszek, writer at Valve Software

For Portal 2 the script was written mainly in Word. The Left 4 Deads have so many lines that need to fire under certain conditions; we track it all in database software – Visual FoxPro 6. This results in my often being lazy and writing directly into the tables and then writing a script to output a Word document to take to the recording studio. I think it is safe to say, L4D2 is the only game written in Visual Foxpro. I don’t really recommend it.

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What Happens When A 35-Year-Old Man Retakes The SAT?

If you’re 35 years old and you’re thinking about retaking the SAT as a kind of blog stunt, I would highly recommend you avoid it. In fact, I would recommend that no one take the SAT ever. It’s a sternly worded dinosaur of a test, graded in an arbitrary manner with outdated equipment, and it blows. The only reason people take it is because they have to. It exists only so that preppy dipshits can brag about their scores well into adulthood if they did well. I hate it. I hope the Princeton Review gets fucked by a cattle prod.

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Heavy Hangs The Bandwidth That Torrents The Crown
Andy Ihnatko:

You’re not into physical media? I’m with you. It’ll be on iTunes soon. See? The store page lists the release date. March 6. You can circle it on the calendar and everything.
You’re still frowning. What’s wrong, Scrumpkin?
Oh. You want it right now.
But — umm — the release date is only, like, two or three weeks away. Just hang on a bit. You’ll be fine.

Yes, I heard you (please, sir, there’s really no need to shout). I understand that you want it (and I hope I’m not misquoting you) right the ****ity-**** NOWWWWWWWW. But you can’t have it now. You can have it on March 6. It isn’t even as far away as you think. Remember? February is the super-short month?

(Sigh)
You’re already torrenting it, aren’t you?
Annnnd now you’re also calling me a d*** because I expected you to wait two weeks, and you’re claiming that you’re “forced” to torrent it because the video industry is bunch of turds. How charming.

I wish everyone would read Andy Ihnatko’s post before banging out their own incoherent, self-entitled posts on how the entertainment industry is leaving them with no choice to but pirate TV shows. Even MG Siegler — usually a super-smart guy and a great writer — wrote a post titled “Help! I’m Being Forced To Pirate Game Of Thrones Against My Will!“.
Seriously?
These guys should try living in Europe for a while, where HBO is a distant dream, the selection of shows and films on iTunes seems to be a cruel joke and where Netflix only just launched. I pirate my TV shows too, but only because I have issues with delayed gratification. I’m okay with that, and I don’t try to blame anyone but myself.
Everyone, just go read Andy Ihnatko’s post.

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World of the Living Dead
Browser-based zombie strategy game using Google Maps as a back-end. Gorgeous. Like a HD Urban Dead, which sucked away months of my life.

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Why Finish Books? – The New York Review of Books
This really hits home for me. I’ve been slogging my way through books I haven’t been enjoying and I’ve had enough. As the article points out: “The more bad books you finish, the fewer good ones you’ll have time to start.”

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LA Times: “All red meat is bad for you”
I’ve been seeing a lot of links to news articles about this study saying that red meat is linked to a whole range of health-related risks. The part every news article leaves out, and which the original study takes into considerations, is that people who eat a lot of red meat probably have other lifestyle factors that would contribute to their general health level. From the study: “Men and women with higher intake of red meat were less likely to be physically active and were more likely to be current smokers, to drink alcohol, and to have a higher body mass index.”

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