Perhaps you've been linked to the Copyright Alliance's letter to the US President and Vice President recently! Let's think a little about what you're signing, shall we?

1. If you've ever pirated anything, ever, you have no business signing this letter. You don't really support what the letter says.

2. All this letter really stands for is that copyright law is an antiquated US-centric method of allowing middle men (record labels and Hollywood, we're looking at you) to protect their outdated business models. Which is what "our vibrant digital age" seems to be necessitating, if anything.

From their "about us" page (bolding is mine):

The Copyright Alliance believes that copyright law promotes creativity and job creation and strengthens the U.S. economy. Those who create, render, and publish copyrighted works rely on the copyright law and its enforcement, for their creative and financial success. Without it, these creators would likely cease to exist, or at the very least, cease to produce these important works that are enjoyed by billions of people around the world.

They are not talking about you, they are talking about Britney Spears and teen movies. Stop helping the RIAA and MPAA to continue this farce.

Okay, srs bsns post.

Remember how we lol'ed about a "clean feed" of the Internet in 2006 and agreed that such a plan could never work?

That plan's getting pretty close to being implemented, and it's actually a lot worse than what we were laughing at two and a half years ago. Essentially, you can't opt out of this filter, and the blacklist is subject to the whims of the Family First party since this has always been one of their core policies and they hold the balance of power in Parliament. From a BrisbaneTimes article (emphasis mine):

The first tier, which internet users would not be able to opt out of, would block all "illegal material". Senator Conroy has previously said Australians would be able to opt out of any filters to obtain "uncensored access to the internet".

The second tier, which is optional, would filter out content deemed inappropriate for children, such as pornography.

Stephen Conroy is labelling anyone who doesn't agree with him a paedophile, which I suppose is proving quite effective for political arguments of all sorts lately.

Even SAGE-AU is pissed off at this, but I am hearing little to no discussion among the people who this affects most... us! Regular people who love the Internet for the trainwreck it is and know exactly what they're doing when they use it.

So start the discussion! Visit the No Clean Feed website to read up on the proposed policy and find out how you can take action. evilhayama and I are planning to join the EFA and write to our ISP at the very least; we're grown-ups, we can take care of ourselves and we like our Internets just fine as they are!

I got bored tonight and started digging around on Vox. The Culture section is a great read, especially the Food and Drink section. It's like all the people who can write coherent posts are sitting in one place, writing about things I like! Unfortunately I found out what Delia Smith (an old-school UK TV chef) is up to these days, which is never a great thing. She may have given me some great tips on cooking eggs once upon a time, but what I read made me angry enough to write this post.

This may be a very touchy subject if you are:

• a vegan or vegetarian
• way more extreme about your animal welfare views than me (I'm at Animal Welfare League level, not PETA2 level)
• the type that feels ill when they remember that meat = animals (I have met people like this)
• the type that rolls their eyes whenever I start harping on about food again

In which case you may want to skip past the cut to the nice vegeterian foodporn. :D (Or not, if you're the fourth type.)

( tl;dr: I am an unrepentant agriculture student, I like chickens and I hate Delia Smith. )

Sigh. Anyway, it's perfectly possible for recipes to exist which contain cheap and readily available (even fresh!) ingredients, don't take long to make, are healthy and are delicious to boot! As proven by tonight's dinner. And I'll probably grab a copy of Nigella Express eventually - girl always knows what she's doing.

I rarely blog about "things in the blogosphere" and I do it even less about games, but this needs talking about!

Jade Raymond is the producer of Assassin's Creed and the main spokesperson promoting the game. She has a Comp Sci degree and is a G4 host. She's also pretty good looking, which apparently negates the last two sentences. Dave Cheung drew a reeeeally dodgy comic about her that could not possibly have been about anyone else. Ubisoft issued a cease and desist notice to SA for linking to the image at some point or another (silly Ubisoft). It's the internets, so it won't get anywhere, but for once I completely agree with the spirit of the C&D. Here, have some links:

Feministe: The Trouble with Jade

Broken Toys: Clearly, We Do Not Deserve Nice Things And/Or People

No Cookies For Me: Character Assassin's Creed... More Misogyny in Gaming

the ANGRY pixel: Aftermath: Jade Raymond - 7 Days Later

For what it's worth, Jade is not the reason we own Assassin's Creed. The reason we own it is because it looked like a fucking cool game, and it is one!

What's amazing about this whole situation is that these nutto commenters are still blaming Jade for just existing. It is somehow her fault that genetics has made her female and given her good looks alongside, gasp, a brain. She is a "slut" for no reason that jokersama and I can figure out other than "she has boobs and she's a good public speaker". Game producers apparently do nothing for the games themselves, and yet we all seem to worship at the altars of Shiggy, Hideo and Suda51 (okay, so that's where everyone I know worships).

The reactions to all of the above, many of which have been uncool, point to a wider problem in male-dominated arenas: it's really hard to be considered solely on merit when everyone around you insists that only men can have merit in the first place. I'm not asking male-dominated workforces to hire more women solely because they are women, a common accusation levelled at feminism. I'm asking them to see past the boobies and realise that anyone can have mad skillz, one of the purest interpretations of feminism you can get.

I'm kind of disappointed in Kotaku over their coverage - I'd always seen them as a laid-back but credible news source. This year most of my games news has come from LJ, Ars Technica, Penny Arcade and Major Nelson, and you know why? Reader comments either don't exist or are easily ignored. With anything else my eyes drift to the comments section and more often than not it's a complete waste of time.

And Dave? You're obviously not great at sandbox games, and with that kind of attitude, you'll never get that geeky girl you're dreaming of.

Just FYI, it is "SNEAK PEEK"!

SNEAK. PEEK. Look at the two words and think of what you're describing. SNEEK is not a word. PEAK is pointy and has nothing to do with sidelong glances.

While we're at it, RIDICULOUS and WITHDRAWAL are what you're after. I don't care how you pronounce them, this is how they are spelled!

(I'm actually in an incredibly good mood - must be that sunlight thing! - I've just seen one too many "sneak peaks" this week XD)

Oh, yeah. Here is my favourite page on Wikipedia right now.

Woogh, full weekend for once.

I bought Cooking Mama for Wii yesterday so now the Wii is my friend again! It's still a little frustrating, but I think that's always going to be tied to its silly control systems. In one sense the supremely bad translations delight us (there is one voice actor for everything, and she is a Japanese girl, and her English coaching is a little lacking in places hee hee) and on the other hand I am facepalming at the inconsistencies that will probably stump someone with lesser food knowledge. "Mochi" morphs into "rice cake" and back. You cut up a "tuna" at the beginning of the sushi recipe, but later you are asked to make "maguro" sushi. Sure I know all these things, but isn't it being mean to the Japanese-food-impaired?

Also, you cannot have ever watched Iron Chef if you can't translate オマール海老 correctly (Homard lobster, you fool, not "omaru shrimp"), which means you're not worthy to translate a cooking game! At least get someone who cares to edit the text after translation! D:<

The game does look really nice in 480p though. ;_; And kinokofry, I added you to my Wii friendslist - my code is in this entry.

Hayase! today was pretty awesome, and the cafe is hinting that we should do another exhibition there at the end of this year. Maybe we should just go for the games theme after all, yeah? And here's a bunch of random sketches since I'm trying to design a business card in the next week or two and also need to put something in the Hayazine...

( Worksafe but manservicey. )

While I'm on comics, the Comikaze 24 hr Comic Challenge is happening real soon! Still deciding whether I should register since I know I'll get an absolute ton of inking done that weekend, but having so many drawingpeople around usually drives me to do at least 8 pages.



As for work, the annual report should be going to the printer at lunch time! I can't wait to see the end of it. >_> And in anticipation of never seeing those damn files ever again, I caved in to a desire I've been harbouring for more than a decade now... pyjamas by Peter Alexander.

( Read more... )

The order is being sent by courier (!) so it should be here in a few days. Hooray! ;w;

DEATH TO MICROSOFT PUBLISHER AND ANYONE WHO USES IT THINKING IT MAKES THEM A DESIGNER

AND ALSO DEATH TO PEOPLE WHO SEND ME IMAGE FILES IN WORD DOCUMENTS, OR BETTER YET, LOGOS WHICH ARE PARTLY MADE UP OF TEXT IN A WORD DOCUMENT (Castrol did this to me once. Castrol. WTF where's all the money going?)

Ahem! I dropped 9€ on last.fm today because I wanted to see if there was any difference. Submitting's still kinda broken, but it's nice to get a fairly constant radio stream when I want it.

I got Civilization 4 for PC on the weekend and it has been very, very bad for me. Something about Sid Meier games just makes me play and play and play and I can't stop (Alpha Centauri for Mac had me glued to the keyboard whenever I decided to pick it up again... OSX was a godsend in that I couldn't play AlphaCen or The Sims any more). To all of the Mac haters who use "doesn't run games" as a reason for the hate, you're fucking crazy. I can't get anything remotely productive done with Sid Meier so close at hand. XDDD

I was noodling around the internet earlier tonight and found PithHelmet, an ad/plugin/netnasty blocker for Safari. It's $10 shareware but you can try it out for free.

Suiko V is going well too, though I really have missed a bunch of stars now... but I definitely want to replay it. This is quickly becoming my favourite instalment of the series.

evilhayama ordered Beatmania IIDX a while back and it arrived in the mail today =D Go look at his journal for some controller pron!

Finally, a very serious and disturbing link from fallingforward: Bush knows best! (Use bugmenot if it tries to force you to register.)

Warning: Steve Cannane is my hero and I get way too much thinking time in the car.

( I hate Tom Cruise and I can't shut up! )

Hum. Also: