Up late talking games & writing? You're...

Misc: I hate to sound like an old fogey, but it occurred to me this morning that the age we live in is pretty amazing, and it's something I'm afraid that younger people (and really, I'm not that old) won't be able to appreciate.

It's MAGIC!!!

What brought this up?

My son has been watching the same kids' videos over and over, and while I understand that children his age are big fans of repetition, his mom and I are starting to go just a wee bit batty. I was looking for something else age-appropriate that he could watch for the sake of our sanity, and I randomly remembered a cute show with a car that I had seen once or twice a few years ago.

Twitter is awesome.

I could not remember the name of this program, just that it had a car and it was live-action. I hopped on Twitter and posed the question, and I had an answer (literally) within a few minutes. After that, I went onto Netflix to see if they had any listings for it. They did. In fact, not only did they have the program available, it was available as an instant-watch download.

Just think about this for a minute.

Within the span of a few moments, I solicited an answer to an obscure question from someone living thousands and thousands of miles away, and then was able to take that information and instantly call up the material on my television with no more effort than typing a few words into a keyboard.

People today take this sort of thing for granted, but it's pretty mindblowing when you break it down. Really, I don't think I would have ever imagined being able to do all this fifteen, or even ten years ago.

I mean, I can remember a time when no one had cell phones. I can remember a time when no one had computers in their home. I can remember when you had to get up off the couch and walk to the television in order to change the channel -- and you likely only had twelve channels at best!

Smelly and dim.

Technology has come so far, so fast that it's truly amazing, and younger generations will grow up not knowing how things were different. I suppose it's the same as when my grandmother used to tell me she used kerosene lamps for light, and how having electricity in a home was a real wonder. Still, I can't help but think that it's a little bit of a shame that people growing up now likely won't be able to appreciate how incredible technology is getting within their own life spans, let alone compared to those that came before.


Games: It's been coming for while, but I think I may be taking a brief break from games soon. Nothing drastic, probably just a week or two off, but I'm getting to that burnout point when nothing is interesting or exciting, and putting controllers down for a while is starting to look appealing.


Hoot hoot.

I'm still wrapping up Peace Walker and I've been playing a few levels a day of Legend of the Guardians (a.k.a. “the owl game”) so once I finish with both of these, I think my self-imposed hiatus will likely begin.

What will I do instead?

I've got some edits to do on my second book that are long overdue. I've also got a pretty tall stack of comics that need my attention. Besides the comics is an even taller stack of books to read... China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station, Brian Keene’s Lehorn’s Hollow collection, and Stacia Kane’s Unholy Ghosts chief among them. Besides reading, I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-two million movies that I've been meaning to watch, and there are still plenty of Dr. Who (and other television series) that have been on my list.


Basically, I don't think I'll have any problem filling the time that games used to occupy, and I have a feeling this mini-vacay will help restore the shine and newness to my favorite hobby. Absence does make the heart grow fonder, after all.