Tim and Eric movie?

[Alina, Arvo Pärt]

Look!

I love Tim and Eric, but I hope this doesn't mean they're selling out. Either way, I'm excited to see some new material by them.

Flow

[Listening to as I write this: Kurr, Amiina]

I mentioned before that I've started reading Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who, incidentally, is Hungarian...I thought there was a good chance of that, given his dauntingly difficult to pronounce surname). I'm only 77 pages in as I write this, but feeling pretty moved already. I'm not without complaints (I love pop-sci, but some his examples are growing repetitive, and the therm "psychic energy" makes me cringe...I'll likely have more to say about that later), but this book will really get you to reconsider, or at least re-articulate (I imagine I'd fall more in the latter category) what it is to truly enjoy your life. The book ostensibly offers lesson about achieving happiness, but I find myself reminded of a conversation with a friend who told me that being "happy" is not actually all that important. Life is about growing as an individual an understanding one's self. As I read this I realize that Csikszentmihalyi and my friend are actually saying much the same thing (I just think Csikszentmihalyi would call that such self-actualization IS happiness).

But anyway, the specific thing I wanted to point out here was this passage:

When a person invests all her psychic energy into an interaction - whether it is with another person, a boat, a mountain, or a piece of music - she in effect becomes part of a system of action greater than what the individual self had been before. This system takes its form from the rules of the activity; its energy comes from the person's attention. But it is a real system - subjectively as real as being part of a family, a corporation, or a tem - and the self that is part of it expands its boundaties and becomes more complex that what it had been.

Whoa. This sounds a whole like an extended mind proponent talking, and I'm what Csikszentmihalyi thinks/knows about that business. Interesting to think about, and I'm going to keep it in mind as I keep reading. Maybe it will be worth getting in touch with him about it at some point. Hmm.

Ok, ok, ok...

...Cupid, that is. I sent out two okCupid messages tonight, bringing my grand total of initiated conversations to three (well, I uppose a conversation requires two-way communication, so the total remains zero for the moment). I've received a few messages, but passively waiting doesn't seem like the best strategy.

But anyway, I don't really plan on writing at length about my lack of love-life on okCupid (though it's actually a socially and intellectually interesting topic...perhaps another time). It was more of an excuse to get me to post on here again, which has been a challenge, but now seemed like a good time.

I write this in a hotel room bed here in Sunnyvale, having returned for a week of fun (?) at Yahoo, unfortunately saddled with some sort of head cold that's had me sniffling, etc. for the last 48hrs or so. But more importantly, I'm feeling introspective more so than usual, which I credit to the confluence of finishing the semester (alleviating the stress of papers and such and giving me the simultaneously pleasurable and disconcerting chance to actually THINK more), beginning to read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, and traveling back to California. It's strange how even a short term relocation (I'm here for only two weeks) can provide a perspective shift.

So that's where I am, to overwhelmingly condense things, and unfortunately I'm too tired to write more now, but I want to start fleshing some of these things out in the days to come. Hopefully I can pull it off this time.

Back on the horse?

Damn. I seem to be repeating my unfortunate pattern of not keeping up with any blog I attempt to work on...

But it's summertime now, and assuming I can resist the pull of Fallout: New Vegas, I should have time to get more content up here. Here's hoping.

Oh Axe Cop...

I was afraid you were losing your touch, but then you reminded me why I always loved ya:

More stuff up on Motivate.Play!

I've got a new post on Motivate.Play on gamification in education. Travis has a bunch of new content covering GDC (he got to on NSF's dime...lucky bastard...). Anyway, check out!

Neil Gaiman on piracy

I only recently became aware of Neil Gaiman, but his work is pretty impressive. I've almost finished reading American Gods - it's quite good. Anyway, when I came across this video (on Gizmodo, one of the best blogs out there, imo, and the original source, and a major source for material you'll find here), it immediately caught my eye.

Gaiman offers an interesting take on piracy, essentially making for an argument for how it's managed to actually help him sell more books. That's great, and it's good to see that the shift towards common piracy might be a good thing (at least in some cases).

Not long ago I would have filed this as just another victory for piracy as an institution in general, but now it has me thinking a bit more about thing than it would have in the past. I've been reconsidering my stance on piracy lately, as I try to fit it into my generalized moral framework. It hasn't led into any changes in my actual online behavior yet, but it's on my mind.

Another Sagan vid

This is the second in a series of videos by Reid Gower promoting NASA (and space exploration in general), combining beautiful imagery and voiceovers by carl sagan. Great stuff.



Here's a link to the first one.

Cleaning out my insta...closet?

Instapaper is great - it's a simple tool that let's you save webpages to read later, and I use it all the time. Probably too much, actually It's only serious shortcoming is that your saved articles aren't searchable, but then again the idea is to actually read through the stuff put in there.

Anyway, I'm going to start whittling away at my huge queue and read/watch/whatever the stuff I've saved in there, and I figure the blog is a good way to share stuff that's worth remembering. So I guess expect a lot of random, outdated, but hopefully funny/interesting/noteworthy tidbits.

For starters, here's something from College Humor, the occasionally hilarious, often dumb, but always at least chuckle-provoking purveyor of supposedly college related humor (how's that for a sentence, hm?): "If Everyone Grew Up to Be What They Wanted as Kids".

I'm not sure which one is my favorite...I'm torn between these two:

Jane McGonigal's TED talk

Jane McG is a pretty inspiring character - I wrote about her on Motivate.Play a while back, and I'm in the process of reading her book, Reality is Broken. This talk does a good job of summing up how she thinks games can create positive change in the world. It's awesome stuff, and I really hope it works. And who knows, maybe my research will end up taking me in the same direction she's going someday...

Galactic Timelapse

From Gizmodo:

Alma Timelapse, Atacama Desert from Shannon McDonahue on Vimeo.

New MP post on Killzone 3 and the PlayStation Move

I've got another new post on Motivate.play - read it here.

My Kitty!!!!

I mean, he's pretty damn cute, right?

Jane McG on the Colbert Report

Jane McGonigal is pretty awesome (she designs alternate reality games that are meant to change the real world). She was on Colbert Report last night. Good stuff.

Here's the episode.

Amazing video on the forgotten side of NY

An "urban historian" (not sure if that's a real thing) leads us on a tour of some hidden gems of NY City, from 200-year-old sewers to abandoned subway stations. A nicely-made little documentary - quite, beautiful at times, actually.

UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo.

New post on Motivate.Play

Part two of my experience with MW2 hackers is up on Motivate.Play. See it here.

Great Carl Sagan Video

This video's an oldie but a goodie. I've been seeing more and more Carl Sagan lately, and I realize more and more how flippin' awesome the guy is. Here he talks about how astrology is a bunch of pseudoscience bullshit. I tip my hat.

Motivate.Play

So as I already mentioned, I'm one of three founding members of the blog Motivate.Play, where we talk about games and science. To be a bit more specific, we look at the intersection of gaming and the social sciences, drawing from cognitive science, psychology, economics, and more. We're still in the relatively early stages of this venture, but it's coming along nicely and is definitely worth checking out. So far I have posts on:

-Videogames as choice environments

-Zynga (the makers of Farmville)

-Alternate reality game designer Jane McGonigal

-The new strategy League of Legends is using to deal with unruly players

-The first half of the two-part story of my experience with hackers in Modern Warfare 2

-Plus a couple miscellaneous short posts

Check 'em out, please comment, and expect updates on new posts as I write them.

Starting out...

Ideally I would like to get a Wordpress blog set up, but my knowledge of MySQL databases is non-existant, so for the time being this will have to do.

I'm hoping to use this as a dashboard for getting information worth sharing out where others can find it. This means random interesting things related to my research, links to posts I make on Motivate.Play (a blog on cognitive science and gaming that I co-manage with Travis Ross and Jim Cummings), and other miscellanea.

Let's see how it goes.