Guru Meditation Released

Om for Atari and iPhone

After two years of off and on development, I’ve just released my relaxation game Guru Meditation, simultaneously for Atari VCS and iPhone. The game is a re-imagining of and homage to old Amiga lore, an exploration of what a game that legitimately deals with inactivity would feel like, and (through the iPhone version), an exploration of attention and compromise in… read more

Pink, Puzzles, and Piano bars

Apple's Idea of Mother's Day

Thanks to a direct email advertisement, I had the opportunity this week to behold Apple’s idea of what mothers like. You can see it below: Just in case you can’t see it clearly, Apple manages to pull out every mom stereotype they could connect to their products. Moms like pink, they like casual games, and they like classic female recording… read more

Top Ten Reasons I Returned My Kindle

This week has witnessed much talk about Amazon’s possible release of a new, larger Kindle eReader designed for newspapers and textbooks, culminating in an article in the New York Times that claims confirmation of such an impending announcement. That’s on top of talk from magazine publisher Hearst’s announcement that it intends to produce its own reader, not to mention the… read more

Atari VCS Programming in Xcode, Revisited

I’ve finally updated my Xcode Tools for Atari VCS Development, such that syntax coloring works in Xcode 3.1. Apple keeps changing the specifications for it, so every version I have to figure out how it works again and retool. This is just a pointer post for those of you who keep track of such things.

A Hatchet Job on Me

The nice folks over at Hatchet Job had me on their podcast this week. You can listen to it on their website, or subscribe via iTunes. Topics covered include the Atari, games and activism, Karl Marx, ice cream, and. It’ll be up to you to judge how my reputation emerged, but there’s no denying those cats did a hatchet job… read more

The Wheel. Reinvented.

The Onion Kebabs Apple

Satirical news source The Onion is funny every day (something that can’t even be said for The Daily Show or The Colbert Report), but sometimes they manage to elevate deadpan to the sublime. Today’s piece on the fictional announcement of the Apple Wheel is such a one. Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard Everything about this piece is… read more

The Geek’s Chihuahua

A Review of the iPhone

Despite attempts to maintain my geek cred, despite my propensity for gadgeteering, despite my favor for the cult of Apple, despite my lust for shiny things with microprocessors, I didn’t get an iPhone when it first came out earlier this year. Indeed, I also didn’t get one when the new versions were released this month. It’s not that I wasn’t… read more

Resisting the Membership Economy

Photography, Flickr, and Me

As regular readers may have noticed, I have an interest in photography. I’ve started a photography section on this website, where you can view some of the photographs I have taken. Right now I’ve added galleries for Objects, Places, and People, as well as a photo project I’m slowly working on called Street Portraits. Over the last year I’ve gone… read more

Technical Evolution and Creative Constraint

The vices and virtues of selective color shift at high ISO in the Sigma DP1

One of the problems with digital SLRs is their large footprint. Not only the size and weight of the camera, but also that of the lens attached to it, especially for serious photographers interested in large apertures and high-quality glass. This is an issue that affects professionals and amateurs alike, since both groups might want to have a smaller, more… read more

Stuff White People Like

Straight Outa Canada

This week I was in Canada, which is the country immediately north of America (“the States” for the rest of you). I like to read the newspapers delivered to my hotel room when traveling, so I inhaled today’s issue of the Globe and Mail, which is a national coverage paper in that country. Among the many things I learned about… read more