Today's Gameshelf column: Similar Journeys in Very Different Games, on how a puzzle hunt I played over the weekend is like Shadow of the Colossus. I like it.

I have quietly modified my internal definition of The Gameshelf to be less the home base for my video series of the same name, and more the home of my weekly-ish column on games. I have ( Read more... )

I've been continuing to write columns every week for The Gameshelf. I still spend a solid work-day laboring at each one, but have yet to regret my time so spent.

Most recent work:

• My Vicarious GDC Takeaways

• St. Gulik Added You as a FriendThen PAX happened, and I didn't write anything the following week. Then I wrote only about PAX for a ( Read more... )

After accidentally leaving my nice notebook on the train last weekend, I took the opportunity to pick up a Moleskine, the brand of notebook that I've heard a lot about over the last year or so. (Probably I've been hearing about them for longer, but since I didn't get into the habit of using a paper notebook again until early 2009, I didn't hear any ( Read more... )

Kotaku, a very popular video game fansite, picked up my most recent Gameshelf column, reprinting it (and modifying the headline somewhat) with my permission. Though I put on airs of being a snootypants indie game critic, you know that this made my day ( Read more... )

I'm two weeks in to a writing experiment, posting a long opinion piece about games every Monday to the Gameshelf. I'm not limiting myself to Mondays only, but the rule is that there has to be something there on Monday no matter what. The columns I've written so far are Farewell to Megaton and Shelf Space, intended to be my first couple of steps in ( Read more... )

This is a curious image of a reporter writing in shorthand, found by dougo.

My whole life I understood the word "shorthand" as a synonym for "abbreviation", not a complete and formal writing system that looks like alien script to the uninitiated. But the commenters on that photograph say it's so, and Wikipedia agrees, with yet more graphic evidence. ( Read more... )

I've been meaning to note for a while that I am no longer in hell, and am once again happy with my work situation. I say this fully realizing that I also said this last summer before I fell flat on my back. But I know exactly what I did wrong then, and it's a mistake I won't make again ( Read more... )

Spotted via Making Light, some charming and understated one-page comics about famous writers at work. Linked is Ben Jonson; others linked below that. (Dorothy Parker's is LOLable.)

Thursday was a sick day. Clobbered and miserable. At the end of the day I greeted the returned classicaljunkie and she gave me Tylenol cold & flu pills, which (after an hour of sleep) snapped me back into sensibility like a light switch. I swear by this product now ( Read more... )

Suddenly I find myself a defender of modern literary theory by making two article edits and one talk-page edit on Wikipedia's Fahrenheit 451 article over the last couple of days. Weenies wander in occasionally and change it to state that the novel's about TV, not censorship, because of a very recent interview where Bradbury said as much, and ( Read more... )