I took my meds today

I’ve finally managed to motivate myself into getting back on my meds and I am feeling it! Although by “feeling it” I actually mean I’m feeling drowsy, dizzy, dreamy, floaty, my vision is blurry, and my stomach’s been of discourteous temperment for most of the day.

I think I am both perkier and calmer, though, so apparently they are having their intended effect regardless of the side-effects. Also, I think the ADD stuff makes me pissed off all the time, because I’m always angry for no reason whenever I’m on it.

10 Reasons the RPG Maker Community is Dying

People have been saying for years now that the RPG Maker community is dying. It hasn’t happened yet, and it seems to me that a lot of it was Chicken Little-esque paranoia or as some sort of justification for RMers to get lazy (“Why should I bother to finish my game, no one’s gonna be around to play it?”). However, I must make a concession and say that yes, it does seem like the community’s lost a lot of steam over the past two or three years.

With that admission, I thought I’d ruminate a bit on why I think the community is losing that steam. I’m afraid I don’t really have any answers to the problems, but I think that if the community collectively admitted the existence of these problems and put some effort into solving them the community could get back on track and would have a vibrant future. Here are my top ten reasons that I think the RPG Maker community is “Dying.”

Abyssal’s Note
This was originally going to be a full-length post wherein I detail my reasoning behind each of the reasons, but this has been mildewing in my drafts box for like a year, and I’m just going to post the list of reasons. If you have any comments, criticisms, or questions about the list, leave a comment.

1.) People saying the RPG Maker community is dying.
2.) Culture of criticism.
3.) Self conscious makers.
4.) Community dead weights.
5.) Too many platforms.
6.) Overly ambitious projects.
7.) Dead end projects.
8.) Stinginess.
9.) Lack of resource artists.
10.) Lack of releases.

My Latest Amazon Haul Part IV

Unskilled Valley

The uncanny valley is an idea that emerged out of Japanese robotics research which found that as a robot became more human-like people had a more positive reaction to it. However, eventually after becoming very human-like people suddenly seemed repulsed before gradually becoming more empathetic to it again as it became increasingly human.

Masahiro Mori, the scientist conducting the research speculated that this was because when a robot becomes human enough but not fully human people respond like it was a malformed person rather than a human-like nonhuman. Basically after becoming a good enough image of a person, the standards shift.

Unskilled Valley
I find that in communities dedicated to amateur artistic expression a similar shift in standards occurs as imitation approaches object. As amateur work approaches the quality of professional work people will react more and more favorably to it until it gets to the point that its almost, but not quite professional caliber.

Suddenly people will be less warm in their reception of it, reacting somewhat as if the creator was less skilled in creating the near-professional work than the creators of even what could be objectively considered less professional work. I call this decline the unskilled valley and attribute it to a shift in standards that is parallel to the shift in standards of the uncanny valley phenomenon.

Generality
Further, I think a generalization can be extrapolated from these phenomena: as an imitation approaches in likeness to its object it will be increasingly judged by the standards that this object is usually judged by.

10 Things that are Overrated [Part II]

Pharyngula.

“Dancing with Kadafi” by Infected Mushroom.

Stuff White People Like.

Organized skepticism.

Angelina Jolie. She’s not as hot as everyone says. She looks fake.

Sarah Palin.

Celexa.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Abducted: How People Come to Believe They’ve Been Kidnapped by Aliens.

Guns.

Every Gun

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

Weird Dream I had Last Night…

I had an, um, interesting dream last night. I was in a really dense forest with extremely tall trees. It was kind of dark, like twilight or right before sunrise. About two hundred feet in front of me was a large pen full of brown cows that was enclosed by a wooden fence.

Suddenly an ostrich runs into view between me and the cow pen, and on its back are my uncle and my little sister. My uncle pulls a revolver from his coat and aims it into the pen. I see his target- a man in the pen dressed in camo and brandishing a hunting rifle.

My uncle fires and hits the man in the chest. Wounded and bleeding, the man in the pen falls to his knees. Then, he begins to open fire on the cows with his rifle, apparently trying to take as many of them out with him as he can. After killing four or five of the now panicking herd, he slumps forward into a pool of his own blood and dies.

And that’s when I woke up. o_0