Month: May 2009

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DeadRising Wii Feedback Needed

dead-rising-wiiNoah just upgraded from 12 years old to 13 years old. He went into Target with his birthday money and came out with a Wii game called "Deadrising – Chop Till You Drop" The kids play first person shooters but Tommy brought one home from a friend’s house once that had so much foul language that I had to ban it from the house. I like to keep violence in check with the children. I am realistic about it. Play acting or gaming violence is part of being a kid. Today’s games do have the opportunity to be far too graphic. This one is rated M for mature and says 17+. The element are "blood and gore," "intense violence," and "language." I have more hesitation on this one because the Wii is in the common area, it is likely to be seen by the 4 and 7 year olds.

So, my gaming friends, do I let the 13 year old keep this game or force him to return it and buy something less violent and graphic? Having the Wii spewing out profanities is probably my biggest concern.

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Drunk Bastard

Can you imagine growing up and having to explain at every pool party why the letters D-B were on your shoulder? "Oh, that means my father is an a**hole."

Floyd County Georgia authorities arrested a father for what he did to his three year old son. Investigators say he tattooed the letters "D-B" on the boy’s right shoulder. The father says it stands for "daddy’s Boy." … the father admitted to police that he was drunk … [Source, WDEF News, Father Charged With Tattooing His 3 Year Old]

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Coder’s Block

Yesterday I had a huge coder’s block. My day started off with a very specific goal and was soon interrupted with a disturbing administrative problem that had me leave the house. When that was corrected and I returned my mind couldn’t get on task.

Usually I can get past a blockage by playing a game of Sudoku, something that makes me think but uses a different process than the way I solve programming problems. That didn’t work. In hindsight, I should have gone outside and worked in the yard for a bit. The exercise and fresh air would have done me well and cleared my mind. Wait. I think it was raining. Okay. Cleaning the garage, scrubbing the floors, or doing a home repair would have helped. I should have taken some time away from the screen.

Here’s hoping for a more productive day today!

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I don’t think people know how to use the Internet

I was just looking at my stats today. They are fairly unremarkable as usual. 9 people today used a search engine to find Reality Me by searching for "naked women" and 3 people used a search engine to find Reality Me by searching for "naked females cutting tree chainsaw" for a total of 12 people mistakenly thinking this is good place for finding naked pictures of women. Somehow, of these 12 people, 14* actually ended up at 32 naked women with chainsaws which is a textual, not pictorial, post simply linking to a art piece with 5 women composited into looking like 32 women are wearing only boots and hardhats while cutting up a fallen pine tree. Here’s why I think people don’t know how to use the Internet: Of those 14 people, only 2 actually clicked through to the picture. So here’s my conclusion: a large number of people think using the Internet consists of doing a Google search and clicking on the link Google gives you and never going any deeper. So, if that is true, how should our web design/site presentation change? This seems to imply that typical hyperlinks don’t make sense to common users.

*These numbers are based on the WordPress Stats plugin and not a detailed analysis of the server logs.