Am I Geeky Enough?

I am not sure if I am as geeky as I ought to be. It is time for an analysis.

I have never been someone who has made friends easily. Throughout my life most of my friends have been few, and borne of circumstance rather than true appeal. This is not true of every one of them, but enough to make me wonder.

At ages from birth through to ten, I had three friends of any significance, and that was because I lived in a small seaside village out in the country. The population was barely 150 people, and the kids who were listed as my friends were within 12 months of my own age. That's generally how it works; anything beyond is that nebulous range called either "the older kids" or "babies" both of which you stay away from.

Though we went through periods of disliking each other, and I was a weird kid even then, I had those friends throughout my childhood until I hit my teens and High School, where they were instantly abandoned as I discovered people with the same sense of humour as me. This overwhelmed me, that I could actually make friends with people I could relate to, and we spent the next five years joking around about the nerdiest stuff ever, ranging from British TV Comedies, Fantasy Action Films, and any other weird stuff that would make us giggle.

We kept to ourselves, in our own little out of the way corner of the school playground, and it never once occurred to me that we were nerds or geeks or whatever the word-du-jour was for our kind. We just did our own thing and enjoyed ourselves. And yet we discovered Computers together. Video Games! Adventure Games! Computer Graphics! We rushed to book the "Computer Room" each weekend when the schedule went up (our school had two computers back then, both Apple IIe clunkers with greenscreen CRT monitors. It was heaven!) If that didn't compartmentalise us, what did? We weren't really aware of it, but the truth is we were card carrying nerds; dictionary definition outsiders; obsessive Star Wars geeks. And yet we had no idea. Unlike how US movies tend to demarcate things, we were an amorphous bunch of kids, and all our circles overlapped. Even some of the girls liked computers at least a little bit.

Speaking of whom, girls generally dismissed us as not worth bothering with. Except both my friends got girlfriends over that time (then lost them again, I might add) while I did not. Girls have never been interested in me, despite my being interested in them just fine, and this has not changed throughout my entire life. I've given up caring about that facet, though, and now prefer my solitude.

When my friends started to gravitate towards other interests and important events occurred in their lives, they left High School, while I went through a bout of loneliness and loss. My Dad died when I was 14, but it wasn't until I was 16-18 that I started to really miss him, having reached the age where I could have used some guidance. So I felt like I was adrift. Unfortunately this lasted right up until I was about 25, and I aimlessly meandered through a sad grey little life doing almost nothing with myself.

I moved away from the little village at 19 years of age, and moved to the nearby metropolis, population around 80,000. There I stumbled upon friends who would shape my future. First a comic book artist who urged me to participate in the comics he himself either produced or contributed to. Then a movie geek who wanted to make his own films, preferably involving prosthetic make-up and pyrotechnics, who also introduced me to acting in the theatre. Then a few friends from that world, one of whom went on to be a film Director who I did some storyboard work for.

The new friends I met during the "making movies" stage of my 20s were very influential, but ultimately just as aimless as I was. Though we all had big dreams, we had no money, few opportunities, and didn't know what the hell we were doing. This has plagued my whole life.

Then I discovered the internet. Not only did this open up the literal World to me, but also the Web, a new frontier which required something called Website Designers. Could it be that two of my favourite things, computers and art, were no longer impenetrably obscure sciences, and could be accessible by poorly educated little old me at last? It was where I felt I could make an impact, and though I have continuously struggled with getting my head around the technology which consistently forged far ahead of my skill level, I have made something of a small career out of it.

When my movie-making friends all moved away to new cities, I was left behind just as my first Web Designer job ended (the Manager was a completely useless idiot). Suddenly, and it was very sudden, I had no job, no friends, and no idea of my future. I figured the best way to kick myself in the butt was a complete restart, and the easiest way to do that, I thought, is to move to a whole new country, preferably one with as little a culture shock as possible. So I moved from New Zealand to Australia.

I quickly found more work in the Internet realm, as a Web Designer and beyond, and also made new friends, who initially were just open to any Star Wars fan who happened along, but I was instantly a hit with a couple of people for my storyboard experience for the films they were making. Eventually I moved onto doing visual effects, and after ten years that's where I still am today. These friends have been great companions for the most part, and we've had a lot of fun, but still now, as before, I am not a very social person, and tend to enjoy my own company more often than not. I happily stay at home most days and do my own quiet thing in my own little corner of the world.

So, it seems to many I am sure, that clearly I am a geek. I like comics and computers and movies and the internet. I used to wear glasses. I am skinny and balding, with a beard. My hobbies include CG visual effects and fantasy books. I even wrote a script that was a classic mediaeval fantasy film, and my other unfinished screenplays are also somewhat fantasy-based. I have a decently large DVD collection, and was the first of my friends to get a big fancy TV (which is now outdated and old compared to theirs).

But... I do not obsess over things to infinite detail. I am not any kind of expert in any subject. I do not have encyclopaedic knowledge of anything, useful or obscure. I laze around and try to find shortcuts to even completing any of the fun things I do, and would much rather not do any work for anybody at all, if I could get away with it.

Am I a geek? Or am I just a lonely man with hobbies?

I can't tell.

I'm not sure if it even matters.

I Lament The Loss Of Beige

I am a night owl. That is, I prefer to work in the afternoon and evenings and into the night. I do not like getting up early, even though that is a very pleasant part of a day.

This means I tend to work when it's dark outside, and it goes further, in that I prefer to work with the lights out. I will probably have the TV on, which is four or so metres away from me, and my desk will be illuminated by the LCD monitor, but otherwise it will be completely dark, just the way I like it. I don't even have a lamp.

In the days of CRT monitors, the illumination afforded by the screen was enough to let me see everything on my desk before me. It helped that all the items I use are in a lighter tone, beige or grey. But two things have changed in computing that has caused me some bother.

LCD screens no longer have illumination power. They light themselves up, but as for my desk, I can barely see my own fingers.

And computer peripherals have foregone beige entirely, and are all almost exclusively black.

So with no light, and a dark keyboard, I cannot see what I am typing (Yes, I am a two finger typist who still needs to look at his keyboard to type. I am far from alone in this, so get over it).

This has not been a huge bother to me, because I still possess my favourite keyboard, a quiet cheapie I got from Dick Smith that has held me in good stead these past ten or more years. I even remember which store I bought it at. And it is beige, so is a light enough tone to be seen when barely illuminated.

But my other computer, the one I use for my 3D Graphics work, has a black keyboard. Not only is it impossible for me to read the keys in the darkness, but the arrangement of keys is slightly different to my other one, which I am much more familiar with after ten years of constant use, so I often hit the wrong key or have to go hunting at close quarters to find my way. Believe me, hitting "Delete" when you wanted "Page Up" is not a fun mistake to make.

And worse still, my favourite keyboard model is now discontinued. There are other beige or silver keyboards here and there, but with a different arrangement of keys, and there are properly arranged keyboards out there, however they are all black, at least so far as I can find locally.

I remain vigilant, and if I ever stumble upon another keyboard of the right colour and key situation I will pounce on it. But I fear it may be a long time before beige ever comes back into style.

One Way Out

I'm not very good at video games. I don't play them very often, certainly not as much as I once did, but even back then it was an infrequent pastime, as I was universally crap at almost all of them. Much like board games, and sport, and most other similar activities.

I do still occasionally open a video game up and give them a burst of effort, but it's half-hearted and brief before I get frustrated, or bored, or more likely killed eight times in a row, and so give up and move on to something else.

There are a couple of game types I like more than most of the others. When I was a kid, text adventure games were my favourite. Espionage Island is a title that leaps to mind. I was continually frustrated by them, though, as the aim wasn't to solve the game, but figure out what the right word commands were. Was it "pick up rock"? Or "get rock"? Or "throw rock"? And then it would crash and you'd have to reload it.

Then graphical adventures started to appear. Same idea, but with cool pictures to go along with it, sometimes even animated in a limited way. This gave rise to such classics as King's Quest, The Secret Of Monkey Island, and Myst.

I did play other games, platform or shoot-em-ups or whatever, but generally I found them less satisfying, especially as death was the usual and frequent outcome, whereas with the LucasArts and Myst games you couldn't die or lose the game, you'd just get stuck for a while, desperately clicking on every option until you'd stumble upon the answer that was, in retrospect, obvious.

Then along came 3D when Doom appeared on the scene (okay, there were precursors, like Wolfenstein, but I believe Doom was the true turning point). I liked that game, but even better was the appearance of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. That game was perfect for me! It had all the elements of adventure I liked, i.e. the exploration, the puzzles, the discovery; coupled with the action adventure that was just at the right level to be challenging, but, if you were prepared, easily overcome and never overwhelming.

As the Tomb Raider games developed, I followed along with them, but the most recent versions have changed their control system to the standard gamepad method, which I find inexact and confusing, so I have lost interest. I still go back to my favourite in the series, Tomb Raider II, which in my opinion had the best locations to explore, including: the canals of Venice, a huge Opera Theatre, an Oil Rig, an enormous sunken Ocean Liner, and a Monastery in the snowy Himalayas, each of which were split up into multiple Levels. Unfortunately the graphics are so outdated now it's a little disappointing to revisit, but the gameplay and controls still stand up and are just at my level.

The most common games are still the 3D shoot-em-up alien, soldier, zombie type, where it's wholesale slaughter from start to finish. Or it's the colourful kiddie platform games where you bounce around collecting stars and rainbows to free the princess from the evil genie. Or it's the weird Wii games where you have to do... something with the... weird thing to... save the... whatever (see Mirror's Edge, Spore, Portal, Flower, etc).

And there are numerous other genres, like Strategy, Management, Driving, Simulation, Role Playing (MMORPG's especially), Sports, etc. Most of which I have no interest in (except for Driving games. I can get into them sometimes, even though I don't drive in real life).

It occurs to me that there ought to be a perfect game to suit my interests. Surely I'm not the only one who would be into this particular idea I am about to suggest.

We are all familiar with mazes. You start at one end, and you try to get to the other end, by following a route, and getting distracted and lost down dead ends. A very simple concept that has been around for thousands of years, still popular today. There have been numerous maze-like video games, from the obvious and simple like PacMan, which are more like obstacles than puzzles, to the complex labyrinthine 3D tangles that you find in Doom or Tomb Raider. Most other shoot-em-up or 3D games tend to have complicated multi-level locations, but not really a true maze (some even lead you all the way with flashing arrows and on-screen maps).

What I want to see is an epic 3D Maze game, where there are multiple Levels, each of a different distinct location. For example: an office building; an oil refinery; an Egyptian pyramid; a shopping centre; a cinema complex; a multi-story car park; a mediaeval castle; a city block; a sewer system; etc. Each place would be fully complete and accurate, with every room, alcove, corner, elevator, fire escape, and floor in place. Everything would be interactive, from desk drawers, to cash registers, to food items, to bedsheets, to tools.

But the key would be, there is only one route to get from your start point to the end point, with lots of dead ends and red herrings to distract and confuse you. There would be no other characters seen in the entire game, though there would be evidence of their existence. There would be puzzles that require items you need to pick up, found in logical locations. There would be clues, such as notes and phone messages, that would help you if you got stuck. There would be certain routes that would be a struggle to get through, where you would not be able to go back the same way. There would be some back-tracking required to get missed clues or items. You would only be able to carry a limited number of items at once, so you may need to drop one useful tool to access another, then drop that one again to pick up the previous.

Nobody shoots at you, nothing leaps out and tries to eat you, no deadly traps or dangerous risks. It's just a maze.

So it may go like this:

You begin in the foyer of an office building. The front doors are blocked by fallen masonry, and the outside is chaos. You need to get to the roof to be rescued by helicopter. There are two elevators. Neither call button is working on this floor. You can access the stairs, but the only way clear is down. You head to the basement, where there is a maintenance room full of useful tools. You select a crowbar and a wrench.

You keep heading down, until you get to the underground carpark. There are four or five cars, but the rest of the spots are empty. You check your pockets and discover you have a car alarm lock, which opens your own car. Inside you find your mobile phone, but the battery is flat.

You head back up the stairs where you use the crowbar to dislodge some of the debris blocking the way up, and manage to get to the next floor. This is where a small finance company work, but the floor is scattered with debris. You can get into some of the offices, where all the desk drawers can be opened, and some useful items, and notes in diaries, contain clues useful for later in the game. The computers are all down. But you can pick up a whiteboard pen.

One of the elevator buttons works here, but it can only travel two floors up on this eight storey building. These floors are for the cafeteria and a mobile phone company that has chargers lined up. Though there is no power, there are charged batteries, and you find one that matches your phone.

And so it goes. You can climb out onto the fire escape to get to the next floor, where the second elevator works up to the top floor, where the Penthouse suite is which has luxurious places to explore and fancy items to use, etc etc etc.

And imagine that kind of scenario at an airport, or a science lab, or a prison, or even a jungle setting.

It seems to me that this is an untapped idea that could really sell. Sometimes you just want a game where nobody is trying to kill you, or infect you, or invade your world, that you can spend twenty minutes making your way through the attic of a cathedral to get to the bell tower. It uses existing game technology, or "engine", and therefore would be mostly pretty easy to put together, without requiring huge complexity or fancy new weapons that blast away at things in ever more spectacular ways.

Somebody should make this.

Thar She Blows!

When it rains, it pours.

I was sitting doing ordinary regular computer stuff the other night, when the screen suddenly went *plink*. I assumed it was a power surge crash, as has happened before, though it only affected the one computer, and my clocks weren't blinking "12:00" so wasn't sure.

I rebooted the computer, only to get a blank screen, and my monitor's power light to be blinking a regular pattern at me.

It turns out, for no reason whatsoever, my monitor just died. Gone. Kaput-ski. I have no idea why, or if it can be fixed, but for now that's that.

I have a second computer with a similar monitor, so I swapped them over, and set up an older monitor for the second machine, so I'm still capable of using both, but it sucks that I will have to buy a new monitor.

And then my external hard drive, that I keep all my creative files on (movie trailers, writing, mp3s, video files, that kind of stuff, mostly) started whining in a high pitched "I'm about to die" way. I left it going for a while, trying to copy over the files to spare space on my other HDD, but I switched it off overnight, and this morning it was totally dead.

I have a spare hard drive, so put that in to the external enclosure, but that didn't work either. That means it wasn't a hard drive death at all, but a failed external enclosure.

Buggery bollocks.

After some crazy fiddling around, I hooked the HDD to my other computer, and it worked fine, all the files are there. But it's not a practical method for me, I need a new hard drive, and may as well get a hefty big one, a terabyte or so, as that seems to be the default these days.

These are two expenses I could've lived without having to sort out. I am not pleased.