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Dear Blizzard,
Roommates’ hooked. Send credits.

As I write this, across the room my roommate is killing Great Plainstriders with my L13 Tauren. I brought my 17″ 8ms LCD display down to the living room and set up an ergonomic little gamespot there (another roommate warned that addiction becomes especially bad when you retreat into your room). We hooked up the […]

I am not a natural at this. This much is clear. I have a level 13 Tauren thanks to the best armor that Grimhorn’s gold can buy (and I have the ability to use), and thanks to Buenaventure’s patient co-questing, which involved saving my ass a number of times. And when he logged off and […]

Thanks to Grimhorn! Or, at least I think that’s his name. It all happened very quickly and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. This “Chat” stuff is still confusing.
He traded with me. 3 gold for nothing. I’ve never even ever had more than 13 silver, and BOOM! 3 gold. I dunno what […]

I played only one more hour with sweet bunkins, and then tonight I got on the PVP server that some of my more knowledgable classmates were on, and I started a new character, a female Tauren Druid named Divine Bovine or, for the sake of faster in game chatting, “Db”
And I’ll say this: The Tauren […]

Her name is Bunkins
Where have I been? It’s a bit embarrassing actually, regardless of which audience in life I speak to. I’m playing video games, specifically World of Warcraft, and less enthusiastically some others. And I’m blogging about it at regardinggame.
To many “adults” I’m wasting time on a frivolous and potentially damaging (immoral etc.) game: […]

Sweet sweet bunkins is now level 11. To celebrate, we scrounged Dustwind harpies for copper and bought ourself ax training. Then we quested the harpies, got their stolen supply bags, and bought a two-handed ax. Now I have to go to work.

Servers have been down for scheduled maintenance for toooo long (all day). Finally got back on at 9pm with a lot of catching up to do.
Somehow I’ve ended up in Orginar, in the Valley of Honor, where even the measliest weapon training is 10 silver (I have 3 and change). So, I suppose I could […]

Well, it looks like I won’t be joining America’s Army. I can’t get past the Obstacle course. At first it was frustrating, but now it’s no longer frustrating. It’s over.
Let’s go over my options. I could fight my way through it, and maybe eventually get to love something that’s pretty much against everything I hold […]

I hate that I have to completely exit out of AA to check my email, etc. How dumb.
the good news tho’ is that, after failing basic familiarization twice, I got the hang of it, and earned a sharpshooter badge. Mom would be so proud — all those formative years with the BB gun shooting sparrows […]

I think I’m moving slowly, relative to the young 6th level folks who are doing the same quests that I’m on. In the cave I’d previously gotten lost in, I recently saw 4 young twerps take out the boss there. And in the sailor/marine ruins, I joined a “group” temporarily with two 6 levels to […]

Went back to the valley of trials (from Sen-Jin village) because the tigers on Echo Islands kept killing me. Back in the Valley I”ve been starting fistfights with boar critters ups my unarmed score, gives me quick pelts for cash so I can get all the training I can afford, and miniscule but cumulative experience […]

very sleepy. Killed more boars and pygmy cybersurfers and scorpids than I can count. Only got one of the creatures on Ellis Island (my memory for names and typing is shot). Must sleep now. Still only level 6. More tomorrow, no doubt.

Upon finally getting the updates updated, it allowed me to choose a race, class, profession, etc. and I chose to be female Horde Hunter Troll. So I got dropped into the land and control-clicked on the exclamation point guy for a quest, and he mostly just got more and more annoyed. Now on most Mac […]

I’ve installed WoW, clicked two Terms of Use screens, logged in, and tried to play, but it needed a 185MB update, which took most of the afternoon to download.
So I waited for it to download, restarted it, clicked two Terms of Use screens, logged in, and tried to play, but it needed another update. […]

I was numbed and disturbed by David Cronenberg’s Videodrome when I saw it five years ago or so, and as I was watching eXitenZ, I got a similar feeling of emptiness. But it’s an entertaining and stylized look at some of the issues of moving between virtual and real worlds, the role of freewill vs. […]

If I ever get deployed, I want a joystick or mouse or something other than a trackpad. The army equipped with trackpads is the army that will lose.
The “feel” of the game is clunky and sluggish, like moving through an ethereal pudding with nuts. Of course America’s Army is a high tech army that spends […]

Created and distributed courtesy of your tax dollars, this sucker is a heckuva beast to download. Besides being 797MB, and taking a while, it’s very difficult to track down a downsload server for it. From the Main site, you’ve got to click through another four or five sites before the download actually begins. Any game […]

This is the semester to study games. I will be immersed. It’s been a long time coming. Although I’m officially ABD (all but dissertation?), I’m sitting in on three classes: Jim Gee’s “Video Games and Learning”, Kurt Squire’s “Theories of Interactive Virtual Environments”, and Constance Steinkuehler’s “Research on Online Virtual Worlds”. Additionally, I’m volunteering to […]

There are times that I notice things I usually take for granted. My butt’s comfort on my daily ride is one of those things. I love my Brooks B17 bike saddle. I think I’ve mentioned that I love my fixed gear bike, but really, a big part of it, I’m sure, is that my butt […]

There have been a number of really interesting announcements in the news this past week at CES and MacWorld, as well as a number of developments that have occurred over the past year that could offer great opportunities for us.
I put the ones that are most applicable to our research in place-based gaming together into […]

Associated Press
Update 1: BlackBerry to Support Google Messaging
01.12.2006, 12:06 PM
BlackBerry e-mail devices will soon support the Google Talk instant-messaging and Google Local mapping programs, the handheld maker said Thursday, extending the Internet titan’s push to put its services on mobile devices.

I’ve been wanting a waterproof digital camera for years. I once had Olympus Stylus 35mm “Weatherproof” camera that I loved. It worked in rain, and I didn’t worry about it getting splashed in a canoe, although I did put it away in rapids or rough water situations. When I went whitewater rafting on the Kali […]

It occurred to me, as I’ve been thinking about all this “life” stuff that I used to spend so much time getting excited about (before grad school distracted me with its demands), that I’d spent years designing houses and looking at house plans and ideas, and I’d always wanted to do a “green” house. Passive […]

As a newly-engaged sorta guy, I’m prepping for wedding and rest-of-the-life-type discussions — china, flatware, houses, etc. — and it’s actually kind of fun. I’ve since discovered that her Mikasa china is our informal china, and upon further inspection of it, I can definitely live with it (it’s actually pretty good; fancier than I’d pick, […]

From CBS:
The first satellite in the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation program was launched from Kazakhstan on Wednesday, a major step forward for Europe’s answer to the United States’ Global Positioning System.
Why is this potentially important to us?
Last year, U.S. President George Bush ordered plans for temporarily disabling GPS satellites during national crises to prevent terrorists […]