Cataloging the Detritus of my Life
The above animation can be yours as a program or screensaver for either Macs or Windows if you give absolutely anything to the Americares Foundation which is raising money right now to help those caught in the on-going disaster in Japan.
This is a really nice piece of pixel art and you can proudly show it off on your desktop and do something nice for those in need!
You never forget
The words of
A vagrant prophet
A junkie messiah
Anointed in the
Castoffs of the
World, spiced
By the rancid
Odor of
Rotting teeth
No
You never forget
Never mind
That he’s deranged
Consumed by
A hunger
Nothing here
In reality
Can provide
In hoarse words
He assaults your ears
Spitting preacher’s words
From a waste bin pulpit
“The world opens
And shopping
Carts fall in,
Then you
Will know
The age of
Garbage has
Come
The rise of the Refused.”
Powerful words
Even when they
Mean nothing
For a mere coin
More such street
Wisdom can be
Bought
For a bottle of
Cheap liquor
An Apocalypse
Is yours
Just remember
The given words
Are yours alone
For this destitute
Joshua leaves
All his memories
At the bottom
Of empty bottles
Trying to free
Himself of the demon,
God.
PS – If you enjoyed reading this, if this touched you in anyway. Please let me know. This is one of (many) poems I am considering for submission. I’d like some feedback and critique though, as I can’t get it anywhere else. So, if you have a moment please leave a comment with your thoughts. Thank you.
That’s the video pitch for the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in San Fransisco. MADE is raising money right now on Kickstarter to rent out a space where they can set up the Museum (as of this writing they had 50 more days and only $8,000 more to go.) I’ve already given money to the program. I’m writing this though to tell you why you should to.
Unlike books, movies, music, paintings, sculptures, and every other artistic work. Video games don’t have museums, galleries, libraries, or archives to preserve them. They don’t even have the recognition of being works of art in many circles. Videogames, as seen by the mainstream, are just more disposable entertainment. Sadly, this view is too often held even by game designers and publishers who have been only too happy to condemn design documents, artwork, and code to the trash heap.
This problem is compounded by videogames digital nature. Digital storage mediums degrade at a rate that would give archivists heart-attacks. The hard- and soft-ware necessary to run much of this code does not only degrade with time, but some of it is irreplaceable and no one knows how to repair or maintain it. Code can be preserved but art has to be delivered in a context and much of it is being consigned into landfills or recycled at e-waste centers.
That’s where MADE comes in! They want to not only preserve videogames as artistic works but to present them in their original context. Old Sierra On-line games running in DOS, Atari 2400s hooked up to old CRT televisions, etc.
To read more about the preservation crisis that the video games industry is facing please see John Anderson’s articles on the subject [1, 2]
I know that the space MADE sets up is going to be small. But, I can envision a day when MADE is just as large and important as the MoMA, or Smithsonian and where people will come to see and experience the work of past designers who were able to meld story, art, and interaction into what we so commonly call “games.”
I know you’ve got five dollars lying around you aren’t using, so why haven’t you clicked over to Kickstarter and helped preserved our heritage?
This was more of that “needs more metal miniatures” I was talking about last weekend… So here are some pictures of the various HQ units for my Ultramarines Army in Warhammer 40k. I think I painted these seven or eight years ago before I came up to college. I bought into 40k during third edition. Instead of saving the money I made at my job for college I spent large amounts of it on little toy soldiers and their accessories.
Since moving up to Davis I haven’t done a lot of painting or playing WH40k which is a shame because I really do enjoy the game and the hobby. (Worse I have friends up here who want to play it with me!) Maybe if you see these and tell me how great they look, how you want to see more, and wonderful things like that I might find the energy/time to finish assembling, painting, and playing with all the models I have lying around.
I don’t know how Games Workshop or Privateer Press takes pictures of their models… However they do it, I wish they’d share. I swear while these might not be professional grade models they don’t look as bad as these pictures make them appear. If the pointer hovers over the image you’ll get some inside commentary on painting these little guys!
There is an apothecary in that group photo but every picture I tried to take of him was a blurry, white mess. That’s it for the HQ. If I continue doing this I’ll put up pictures of my Elites next.
