Falling off the Soap Box (part 2 of that gamer rant)

So, I made a very opinionated rant about eSports about a fortnight ago now (here’s the link to it) and I mentioned to some people that there’s a part 2. Mistake on my part, as my thoughts stopped dead in the water whilst life does its best (as usual) to present plenty of shiny things to distract me. In order to ensure that my rants stay in mind for me personally as they’re usually a good way for me to sit down and reason things out — and I won’t deny the educational value in being corrected by people who know better about their specialised fields; I’m writing smaller, sectioned rants. This one only contains a single point.

Before most of you begin reading this – you’ll probably ask, who the hell am I, and what makes me qualified to say all this stuff? To be honest – I’m not even in the eSports scene, I only dabble in it. But I am in the LAN party scene, although not originally of Australian origin (way back in the day, I was involved primarily in Quakecon, and my late fiance was involved in Dreamhack and E3) – most of my present work however, is based here in Australia through various events and teams I worked for (I’ve done over 150 events over the last 13 years). What makes me qualified? Nothing – I’m a grumpy old man who’s good at whinging and pointing out the wrongs. I’m also long-winded, but a few people who know me personally find it interesting to read about my often bumbling opinions :)

Part 2 actually doesn’t start out much with eSports organisers in mind – it’s more the LAN organisers I’m talking to here, and the notion of what’s wrong with what we currently do. Don’t worry, there’s enough here to make everyone have a bone to pick with me :D

As with part 1, this is written from my own perspective, as someone who is well known for having next to nothing to do with serious eSports stuff you’ll probably need the salt shaker for this one. I’d be happy to be corrected too by those more in the know.

Anyway, on with the ranting!

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How pinteresting

So, quick update today. Been racking my brain over some stuff at work today regarding a whole bunch of stuff I can’t talk about haha.

I looked at the pinterest site recently, to get inspiration for designs, coding techniques, cool industrial design gadgets etc. It’s kinda cool, I know everyone has that one rubbish site they visit on the internet where their brains can just gorge and feed on useless pap content. For most people, that would be sites like Reddit, 4Chan, imgur, failblog and many other sites that usually present a lot of graphical things.

Don’t get me wrong, I visit all the sites listed above (haha, I’m so productive) but sometimes, I need to unwind in a more concentrated direction. I found pinterest actually is pretty cool.

Give it a go sometime I guess. It’s great coffee table reading on your little nexus 7 or iPad device if you’re lounging around too, and you can do it in public at cool places like the cafe in the Four Seasons without looking like a weird creep.

 

A rant about eSports (and gaming events too)

Since starting up the SOGC (and subsequently MPU), we’ve never acted as a competitor to any other LAN for pretty much two reasons:

  1. There’s nothing to be gained from fighting – there’s enough space in the market for everyone, yet we’re close-knit enough at an organiser level that we all know or have heard of each other. Raising the bar with collaboration and making gaming amazing should be the goal of every single organiser, regardless of their event/community’s focus.
  2. We’ve never wanted to do eSports as our main feature – in fact, there’s public record somewhere of me saying that I will never ever like eSports. There’s actually a plethora of reasons, feelings, and politics tied to the rubbish scene that is eSports at present in Australia. And being someone who organises gaming events, but does not include himself (by choice or not) with a lot of the eSports management discussions in the scene, I get a pretty interesting perspective on eSports in the country; I know what’s involved in running an event, having had to deal with venues, sponsors and logistics. But I am devoid of bias due to having zero interest in it.

So this rant is something I’ve always wanted to put out there but always grew concerned because of how the community would react. I’m too jaded and old to really let that affect me, so I’ll put it out there for all to see :)

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The One: Not just a footNote (2)

Hi! Firstly, this isn’t a One vs Note 2 review. It isn’t even a review, it’s just an opinion piece. It’s very personal, it’s fairly frank, and it does waffle on. I never wrote it from a perspective that the general public would read this (after all my blog is one of billions on the internet, and it doesn’t include pictures of cats, so I doubt it’d rate anywhere). However, I know a few close friends do read this blog – so I thought I’d waffle on here so that I get it out of my system and I don’t natter at them at our next social :)

Anyway, onwards with the rant!

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Those new fandangled thingos…

So, a few new things:

  • I’ve added social sharing to all the content and posts on this blog – because that’s what crazy people do, they yell about everything. This is the online digital equivalent.
  • I got a new phone, and I have some rants and thoughts on it too.
  • With this new phone, I also started playing an AR game that’s been pretty much a gamified version of geocaching.

Well…I’ll probably get round to that rant about the phone soon

(It’s a HTC One btw)

One of the team

Got my work laptop today – in fact, I’m writing this blog post up on it.

It’s a Thinkpad W530, pretty beastly machine – and the screen’s res is really high (1080p) – feels like chalk and cheese after sitting on a desktop at 1280×1024 for the last 8 weeks.

Still, it’s a good step towards things. Time to buckle down and get some work done yo!

Hammerwatch

So, recently I’ve been playing Hammerwatch – an amazing game that brings back fantastic memories of a game called Gauntlet for me. It’s a hack & slash adventure, for up to 4 players both over LAN, or local (on the same PC) and more! It’s a great game, and even though the beta which is available has no chat or communication abilities – I tried it out at the most recent Ctrl Alt Defeat event – to great success!

http://hammerwatch.com/

Last time, on MPU…

(prior to my back again post)

  • All MPU Network sites now use a CodeIgniter base, because it’s pretty cool and doesn’t afraid of anything
  • We’re currently in migration from an Apache/ISPConfig3 setup to an nginx setup
  • MPU has a mission statement and business direction
  • 4 months between posts was a LONG time.
  • Northrealm is actually *alive* and working (still on 1.4.6!)
  • There are way too many projects, and the MPU team needs to grow.
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Guess who’s back *again*?!

Ugh I really should keep this more up to date. There are so many projects going on, and so many things to look at and do.

MPU is now well underway, although it’s still a juggle between establishing our websites, and working on the business facets of the venture too. Luckily, our team has now been a bit more fleshed out with extra helpers who are generously donating their time and energy to us until we become something a bit more substantial.

And a new job! Oh lawdy. I started a new job too, and at the moment it’s the biggest priority for me. Let’s see how we do juggling a dozen balls in the air.

Starting the SOGC CI based site

There’s been a couple of things I’ve done today:

  • Northrealm is back online, and quite frankly, locked in at version 1.4.6 of minecraft for the foreseeable future.
  • A proper direction for Northrealm has been determined

In LAN site stuff, I’ve started coding the SOGC site using CodeIgniter, it’s all mostly aesthetic stuff at present, but it’s coming together slowly. I haven’t encountered any serious issues yet, and this is further than I got with Symfony at least.

We’ll see how things go soon.