The Lost Temple

Not sure how much posting I’ll be doing here for a while, but in the meantime, I recommend you look at this site instead.

Via Kotaku, this guy in Buenos Aires is doing a remake of Metroid 2 using the updated graphics style from Fusion and Zero Mission, all blog-orifically documented. If Nintendo isn’t going to make OOP GameBoy games available on the Wii Shop Channel, projects like this are the next best thing. Someone hook this guy up with some Asian video game pirates so I can pick up the final product in cartridge form the next time I’m in Bangkok.

Read this portion of the text aloud to your players.

You return home from work/school and turn on your computer. Upon checking your e-mail and RSS feeds, you discover the horrifying news: Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died.

Roll 1d4 to determine your response:

1 - ‘Who’s Gary Gygax?’ you ask, knowing that your status in the eyes of the Secret Masters of Fandom has dropped to a new low.

2 - Quickly clicking the link to your blog, you spread the word around the internet before donning your blackest, geekiest tee-shirt as a sign of mourning. [Sigh with memories of a ‘better time’ when anyone who rolled a 1 approaches you.]

3 - ‘I will roll/role no more, forever,’ you declare, as you heave your polyhedral dice into the makeshift funeral pyre. Like General Nogi following his Emperor into death, you commit seppuku rather than spend another moment in a world without Gygax. [Look at anyone who rolled a 1 scornfully as you twist the knife into your bowels.]

4 - Wasting no time, you go to your closet and dust off your wineskin, 50′ of silk rope, and a 10′ pole. As you pack these and other items, you contact your old comrades and arrange to meet outside the cemetery where Gygax is to be buried. No doubt great treasure and opportunities for bravery will await inside the man’s tomb. [Take anyone who rolled a 1 with you; you will need someone to be the Cleric.]

Adios, Mr. Gygax. Here’s hoping you find the Outer Planes hospitable and that you don’t come back as a lich.

Wizards of the Coast is releasing D&D Insider, a program that allows for tabletop Dungeons & Dragons to go digital (i.e. it’s not a video game). I can’t wait to go tell me from 1993 to 1998!

Angkor is big.

Ask National Geographic! (I especially like the bit about Angkor’s urban sprawl, considering how much the jungle has reclaimed over the centuries. Reminds me of The World Without Us. Referring to it as a ‘Lost City’ is a little out-moded; it’s not like the Cambodians ever forgot where it was.)

Ask me!

A) Last year my wife bought a new laptop from Averatec. This caused me to look strongly into getting a new computer. When her free Vista upgrade (a.k.a The Great Disappointment) arrived in the mail, I began looking into Linux distros and OS X. By the time her motherboard failed, forcing her to send the entire laptop in to Averatec, where it has remained for the last two months (lesson: don’t buy Averatec unless you enjoy not using your computer), I had firmly decided to go the Apple route. However, this was not without researching a variety of different options, among them Asus’ Eee PC.

Anyway, as my wife’s laptop still hasn’t been returned (we’ll see how much weight the Better Business Bureau has), I’ve been looking at other options for her. Laptop weight is a big factor for her, and while she likes the look of my new iMac, she feels (and I agree) that the MacBook Air is too expensive. This feeling, then, brings us back to the Eee PC.

B) I am a frequent reader of Lifehacker. While Adam Pash’s ‘Hack Attack’ posts are often either over my head or beyond my needs, they intrigue me with their possibilities. His Hackintosh post is especially impressive. What has impressed me even more, however, has been how the original post has spawned a number of other projects, among them an effort to put Tiger OS X on the Eee PC.

(By now, you’re probably thinking I’m a little obsessed with Asus’ little toy and/or Mac shiz. Actually, though, I’m going somewhere else with this.)

C) Let’s go through a little reading list, shall we. Start with Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths, with its discussion of a book that is simultaneously a labyrinth. This is, perhaps a precursor to hyperfiction, a type of writing I associate with the Serbian author Milorad Pavic. Pavic’s Dictionary of the Khazars or Landscape Painted with Tea challenge readers to parse the text in ways other than the traditional cover to cover method. Of course, hypertext jumps to mind as the most modern way to go beyond cover to cover readings, but the variety of content on the Intertubes provide a myriad of possible styles to choose from. Still, there seems something a little strange about, for example, writing something with novel-like content in the form of a blog. Shouldn’t the content and the form have a closer relationship if a digital hyperfiction isn’t to come across as a bit contrived?

A + B + C = ???

I am fascinated by the Tiger on Eee PC wiki, or rather, with its potential. Were one going to compose a wiki-fiction (which is to say a fiction in the form of a wiki, not a fiction editable by the general public), wouldn’t it stand to reason that such a fiction would be most believable if it were about something that plays to the traditional purpose of a wiki? I imagine a wiki-fiction that chronicles work on a project - and for those who doubt the drama of this, read the discussions on the Tiger/Eee wiki. The kernel modifications, the hardware malfunctions, the broken torrents! Presented in the right way, such things can be as great a source of emotion as they are of motivation.

Mind you, I have no idea how a writer could make money with it, but still, I want a believable wiki-fiction!

FYI, this is my first post composed (via Safari) on my new iMac.

It feels so good.

So much junk makes its way to Hawaii, if only there were a way to curb the flow a bit. I know…!

Stop Styrofoam Hawaii

(I doubt any Hawaiians read this site, but if you do, visit the link and support the bills before the state House and Senate.)

… or a strange account of a day in one man’s life. Both would be good titles for the event I’m preparing for tomorrow, but I personally prefer:

Jade Buddha’s Rockin’ Chinese New Year’s Eve!

Follow me from daybreak to dusk as I bring you constant updates (via Twitter), live from Honolulu, as the day unfolds. With my strange observations, links to articles of the day I find interesting, and whatever else pops into my head, this will either be the inauguration of a new Lost Temple tradition, or a one-time train wreck we can all laugh about later.

Wish me luck!

Why does this bit in Gawker make me not want to read or submit to McSweeney’s? Maybe it’s this description of the ideal reader:

…The ideal McSweeney’s reader (or writer) lives in Brooklyn, wears interesting T-shirts, has a blog he works on in coffee shops, and knows it’s cool to oppose globalisation but uncool to go on too much about it.

So the idea reader is kind of a prick? Also quite funny are the comments, where Haruki Murikami makes an appearance as the anti-McSweeney’s writer. Quaint.