Posts

Posted on

Julian Dibbell’s Professional Gameplaying Conclusion

Julian Dibbell’s goal simply stated was that “On April 15, 2004, I will truthfully report to the IRS that my primary source of income is the sale of imaginary goods — and that I earn more from it, on a monthly basis, than I have ever earned as a professional writer.” April 15th has come and gone and Julian disappointedly admits, “the numbers are in. And as predicted, they are short of the mark. Six hundred and eighty-three dollars short, to be precise.”

I’ve been following Julian Dibbell’s Playmoney blog for the last 6 months after I found a link to his site about PayPal’s policy on the nature of the intangible. Since then I’ve kept up with his current posts and read a little out of the archives.

Some of my favourite posts are:

The one about Michael Slavin and how he played a counter-strike nonstop for nine days.

The one about a professional Ultima Online cheater and the clarifying post that followed.

The time Julian almost got scammed out of all the money in his PayPal account (even if it was only $121).

I really liked his post about the ethics of selling stolen virtual goods. In the game, learning to be a good thief is a skill. So the question is, is buying items from someone using that skill and then selling the “stolen merchandise” for cold hard US cash morally wrong?

The break-down of how much money he’s actually making per hour. Would you believe it’s $85 / hour?

All in all, Julian not only entertains but informs. Oh and when he’s not playing video games and blogging about it, he’s also a pretty damn good writer. His “Rape in Cyberspace” article was required reading in my Seminar for New Media class.

Update: Wired Magazine has a few words to say about Julian’s endeavour, and here are his own concluding thoughts.

Posted on

Brain and Behavior

This article backs up what I have felt happening throughout my life. I don’t know if others experience this, but often times when I get an “Aha!” feeling from certain types of art or when I think of something particularly clever I can actually feel the right side of my brain react and send shivers over the rest of my brain and to the rest of my body. Now they have electromagnetic pictures to show what is happening, at least in the brain.

Posted on

LethbridgeHouse.Net

Production Management is done. It was the class that has been giving me the most stress this semester that’s for sure. The prof. put our website online and it’s live at http://www.lethbridgehouse.net. Some of the navigation is tricky at best and downright confusing at other times as well some works are better than others, nonetheless here it is in all its craptacular glory. For my part, I helped make the 3D driving game.

Posted on

Long Distance Plans Suck

I just got my phone bill and despite my efforts to reduce the amount of long distance I’ve been using I realized why the bill has been so high lately. On September 4th somebody, either myself or someone pretending to be me, signed up for a $23.95 long distance plan from Telus. The reason I am so angry about this is that I use the Yak Alternative Long distance service, that is I dial 1015945 before all of my calls so that I only get charged $.05 a minute no matter when I call or where ever I call in North America. Since I was paying for a Telus plan anyway it would have been cheaper had I not used the Yak thing at all! That’s eight months of careless bill paying and I imagine about eight months worth of wasted $23.95’s. I’m 99.999% sure I wasn’t the guy that signed up for that plan. Needless to say I’m pretty pissed off. I wonder if Telus recorded that conversation because I would like to have the voice of that person identified, then brutally punished to the fullest extent of the law. I hope it wasn’t me.

Posted on

Go Leafs Go – Raise That Interest

I have a fixed mortgage so it doesn’t affect me personally but apparently every time the Toronto Maple Leafs do well, the interest rate in Canada goes up.

Again via Plastic QL:

A BMO economist has found some uncanny correlation between the success of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Bank of Canada interest rate policy.

Posted on

Vandal Captured

Have you ever been splashed by a car while riding your bike or walking out in rainy weather? I hope you didn’t do what this guy did, slashing some 2000 tires and doing £250,000 as pay-back. He’ll be cooling his heels in jail for the next 16 months.

From the BBC:

Recorder Stephen Lennard said: “In December last year, motivated by frustration and anger at what you considered to be the inconsiderate manner of motorists as experienced by you as a cyclist and a pedestrian, you embarked on your astonishing and extraordinary campaign.

“The scale of the damage and the financial consequences of it are breathtaking.”

Posted on

To Blog or Not to Blog?

The New York Times writes about the dangers of careless blogging. Maybe that’s why lately I’ve been refraining from writing too much about my everyday life. Then again maybe I just don’t get out much and therefore don’t have much to write about – no I like that first reason better.

Posted on

Keith Hollihan’s "Reality’s Apprentice"

“Reality TV may seem a world away from real life, but what happens when Donald Trump’s The Apprentice moves in upstairs? Worse, what happens when it seems to be a sham? Keith Hollihan reports with a fascinating account of his life’s surreal intrusions.”

I have only watched one or two episodes of The Apprentice, but as luck would have it I did catch the episode in which the participants had to renovate and rent an apartment in 48 hours. It never occurred to me what the people living below that apartment thought. The people living below were Keith Hollihan, his wife and two children.

“They didn’t care that we couldn’t sleep. This was the Iraqi invasion of reality TV shoots, and we were embedded — whether we liked it or not.”

Keith puts the reality in reality television. If you like the show then you’ll love the article.