When I just stated college, I got into an internship in what was in 1994 called “New Media” at Sony. I got to work with this really incredible woman, Nicole Miller, who taught me to be an information seeker. remember  reading wired, and sitting in on meetings with these people with ideas for set top boxes, seeing the new hi-def TVs, having conversations about how hypercard stacks worked and Moore’s Law… It was an amazing time of my life. It’s a period of my life that never really ended. Although, it seems I became a grip and a blogger rather than a new media executive, which is what I wanted to be when I grew up. 

One of the things we would always talk about was that everything was going to come together in one box.  They talked about “set top” boxes that would replace cable and television. This was years before the Tivo. This was years before Direct TV. I remember we got an advance Playstation that was stolen by someone at the Sony Pictures lot. It was kind of a big deal.  They would talk about these boxes like they were some kind of magic box that could do anything.

In some ways, my laptop fills that role. I use it to communicate, store music and videos, shop, browse the interwebs…. but somehow, it is less of an entertainment device. I still like to watch movies on a bigger screen and sometimes socially.  The Xbox360 had long ago replaced my TV for me. It costs as much as a graphics card for a PC and you don’t need to upgrade it every 6 months. I just buy a massive amount of games, I’ll admit it.

But they just released this new free interface update for the xbox. It’s WOW. It’s called the New Xbox Experience (NXE).  Not to get too fanboy about it, but holy crap. Basically, it syncs with your netflix account and lets you stream videos live. It creates avatars of you (similar to the miis in wii sports) that can interact in parties of eight online. You ca store games on the xbox 360 hard-drive. You can share pictures with other users.  I still will be watching DVDs. And it still plays games. But the cool thing about the netflix streaming is that I can watch CURRENT episodes of TV. I’m not a serious TV watcher, but that is pretty sweet! Now they gotta build a web browser into the thing. Forget “I want my MTV,” they just release every video ever online. Social media is also just at it’s infancy of connectivity.   

But I digress. We are entering an era where everything is coming together. My phone, my laptop, my watch, my TV my game console, my mp3 player, my car, my wallet… t is all rapidly becoming one.  The smarter scifi writers predicted it: Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Phillip K. Dick. In their messages were warnings. It is for us to heed the call and not lose our humanity into the machine. 

As we get closer, people will talk more and more about the Singularity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity This is all related. Especially in the sense that it will accelerate us forward.  All information soon will be available to all people.  At least, that is what I am hoping for. That’s the game I am playing for.

The media is so fricking excited about GTA IV (Grand Theft Auto IV).  It’s metacritic.com score is 99 out of 100! How is that even possible?  I have no desire to play this game at all.

The media is so fricking excited about GTA IV (Grand Theft Auto IV).  It’s metacritic.com score is 99 out of 100! How is that even possible?  I have no desire to play this game at all.

I missed a couple of blogging days. I did however spend a bunch of time on my personal writing projects. So to get back into the swing of things, I will do another 10 Things.

TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY LIFE

1. I am trying some new web blogging programs. Today I am trying Wordpress (thanks everyone). I like it. I just need to figure out a way to post date posts and get all my old blog posts from tribe into this other site. I am really loving my blogging lately. It has been such an opening for me.

2. The media I have been getting into lately. It has all been so good! I am rereading Promethea and in the process relearning magick that I thought I had all figured out.  I finished BSG season 3. It was absolutely incredible! I saw Forgetting Sara Marshal last week with Alicyn and it was so much better than I expected. A friend loaned me the new series of Dr. Who. It makes me want to time travel! And then there are my podcasts and audiobooks I am listening to. Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth and Tim Ferriss’ the 4-Hour Workweek have been rocking my world! I guess being freelance and unemployed does have it’s benefits.  I am really just amazed at how good everything is!

3. Despite being without work this week, I have no concerns for money. I am just not worried.  Flow.

4. Through my good friend Sammy and his wonderful girlfriend I have a connection with HBO’s experimental webfilms division. It has me really thinking what less than a minute kind of short films can I get out there?  Obviously, I am going to need some help. Who’s in? Last night, I did a list of my production resources and holey moley, I have great resources!

5. Between working out and the no sweets and booze… I am really loving my body.  Not like loving the way it looks, but treating my body like I really love it. It’s been really fantastic.

6. I love my macbook.  The other day, I got to go to the Mac Store to deal with a minor missing program that I accidently deleted. They replaced it lickity split and I ended up spending an extra $60 on a program and iphone case. I left happy. By contrast, when I called microsoft to just deal with an extra $2 charge that I wanted to get removed,  I had to deal with 2 emails, an hour of phone time, mostly made up of hold time, I talked to 4 different people, and got hung up on. The $2 issue, still not resolved.

7. Another benefit of plenty of free time is that I have been sleeping really well lately. I have these amazing dreams, full of incredible special effects, dazzling characters and spectacular scenery.

8. Birds. It’s springtime and several families of birds have taken up residence all around my house. It’s so beautiful.

9. I also have a pool. Wolfie pointed out that with a pool comes certain maintenance responsibilities. For instance, on hot days, sometimes you have to just hang out around it to make sure your responsibilities are handled. Cold drinks and music add to the quality of this maintenance.

10. Number ten is always difficult for me. Okay. Flowers. My roommate is a gardener. He has this habit of cutting fresh flowers and putting them around the house. It’s nice. It is also nice that all around my house are all these beautiful flowers this spring. It’s gorgeous.

Yeah… It’s a good life.

I am a gamer. I have been since I first got in front of a computer. I played NES, and Genesis and SNES and everything in between then and now. I am an XBOX 360 enthusiast now.

But I want to make something very clear. I am by no means a hardcore gamer. I play regularly, yes. But, I am not hyper-competive, I don’t play until dawn anymore. I like Xbox Live, but do not play many games against people. I would say I have an average skill level. I am a softcore gamer.

I also have a very full life outside of my 360. I play tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve been playing for years. I love comics and movies and would consider myself a pretty serious geek when it comes to that stuff, too. I also throw underground parties in the LA area.

My purpose for this blog is to open up the converstaion for the soft core gamer. I want to create a place where people can get straight and realstic information on games and game culture. Let’s see what unfolds.