I can’t support a “let’s have an electronic parliament where everyone votes on every measure” that often gets bandied about in online circles – sometimes governments need to make unpopular decisions. Populist policy is – more often than not – bad policy. Also, this sort of system inherently punishes the less educated/fortunate in society – unless you show an active interest in politics (and let’s be honest here – chances are if you do have an interest in politics you’re either a stakeholder in a business or lobby group, or tertiary educated), you’re unlikely to find the time or inclination to have a say on policy when there are other day-to-day stresses and concerns to deal with that seem more relevant and pressing.

I’d put a sizable amount of my savings on a bet – that the majority of people couldn’t tell me who their local Federal MP is, let alone naming one of their state’s Senators. This, to me, is a tremendous part of the problem. As Marsh and Barnes point out, a lot of political issues today aren’t split along simple “class” lines, or even the traditional concepts of “left” and “right” which are increasingly becoming a false dichotomy:

A conservative Catholic might oppose gay marriage but support action on climate change and live cattle exports. She might be sympathetic to refugees. An economic liberal who supports liberalising labour markets might also support action on climate change, but also ‘border protection’ and women on boards. 

You can’t force people to suddenly “pay attention” to individuals within politics – over the past 20 years, Australia has moved closer and closer to elections being “presidential style”, where the focus is more on the leader of each party instead of the representatives you will be electing into Parliament on election day. We continue to see this focus even during the course of the political term – the media rabidly feeds off of anything Abbott or Gillard say or do, providing no insight into what the rest of our representatives are doing (unless they do something controversial, and even then only usually if it involves money or sex).

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that I believe that the concept of two political parties being enough to cover a political spectrum is outdated. I’d love to see Australia take a leaf from Japan’s electoral process and give every single candidate standing for office 5 minutes of public air time – on television, radio and the Internet. Give us some insight into each individual representative and the issues they feel most strongly about. If this youtube video is any indication, you’d also get some absolute pearlers for the media to jump on to – and more importantly, a reason for me to have another entertaining election gathering (complete with the “sip your drink any time a candidate says ‘un-Australian’” rule).

Let’s not even bring “who will be Prime Minister” into the election equation – because, honestly, it’s really quite irrelevant. Once Parliament is elected, have the most qualified members for each Ministerial position take the reins of that particular job. Stop letting it be “jobs for the boys”, and let someone with credentials make the decisions. In the event of multiple people qualified for the position, Parliament elects a minister. Same with the leadership – the mantle goes to the MP that Parliament deems worthy of the role. Let’s abolish the idea that one person makes decisions for the entire country – that hasn’t been the case in quite some time, so why are we pretending otherwise?

This then generates a situation where opposition to a motion is driven by (one would hope) evidence and persuasive argument – not simply “because the other side supports it”. By-elections become a no brainer, there’s no longer the risk of a party “losing control”. Keep the existing conventions of motions of no confidence. Have the Senate resume its original intention as a House of the States, representing an entire State and not an electorate. (Ever noticed how the only people to stand up in the Senate and go “this is not good for my State, so I must object” are Independents? Yeah. The rest will usually blindly do what the party mandates.)

By having the focus be on individuals instead of parties, we may actually see some work being done by backbenchers other than playing Solitaire on their laptops. Of course, what I’m proposing will never happen – nepotism is alive and well in the political scene. You can’t exactly promise someone a sweet “safe seat” if an election is based on the electorate’s view of an individual and their morals/ethics/policies/thoughts as opposed to a party. This sort of system would decimate the power of the “big two” and those that finance their activities (and I’m not referring to the taxpayer.).

The above is a pipedream. It’s probably unworkable for reasons I haven’t even considered. But it’s my alternative. I’ll continue to vote for minor parties after becoming disenfranchised with the ALP, as it’s the closest I’ll get to that pipedream.

A .pdf copy of this essay is available here.

—

“Divergence from a story’s path is likely to make for a less satisfying story; restricting a player’s freedom of action is likely to make for a less satisfying game.”
- Greg Costikyan (Costikyan 2000, par. 1)

“Every medium has been used to tell stories. That’s true of books and theatre and radio drama and movies. It’s true of games as well.”
- Eric Goldberg (Costikyan 2000, par. 1)

Videogame studies are in their infancy when compared to other, more established fields of academic study. This has led to extensive debate within the academic community on how best to approach the study of videogames – from a purely “game” driven perspective (Ludology), or utilising the existing base of narrative studies (Narratology). The above quotes from Costikyan and Goldberg demonstrate the often “polar” nature of these debates – but I believe this is a false dichotomy. An understanding of both narratology and ludology is desirable to develop a truly critical understanding of games and game-play.

I have chosen to discuss these subjects in the context of the game Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (Dungeon Crawl) for two key reasons. Firstly, with most modern games the influence of traditional narrative is obvious – cutscenes in these games are structured and designed in much the same way any scene is within a traditional cinematic film. Voiceovers and monologues are often used to convey important plot elements. Characters will move and look a certain way in order to convey personality. Dungeon Crawl contains none of these “modern” elements – at its most basic level it is a display of ASCII characters on a screen (Appendix 1, fig 1), although a graphical “tiles” version is also available (Appendix 1, fig 2). This allows me to examine whether narratology is relevant to understanding of all videogames, or just those with modern standards of graphics and sound.

Secondly, Dungeon Crawl is a non-linear game. Whilst the underlying goal is the same each time (delve deep into the dungeon and retrieve the Orb of Zot), every single level (and its contents – items, monsters, treasure, etc.) is randomly generated each game. Most modern games have “chapters”, “levels” or “set pieces” that contain a static plotline easily tied to narrative conventions. The designers explicitly state that gameplay is their core concern and not traditional narrative in the game’s manual when they state that Dungeon Crawl “aims to be a tactical fantasy-themed dungeon crawl. We strive for strategy being a concern, too, and for exquisite gameplay and interface. However, don’t expect plots or quests” (Henzell et al 2011, par. N)

In the context of understanding games, what exactly constitutes “narratology” (or a “narratologist”) has never been clearly defined. Gonzalo Frasca notes that the primary problem in the so called “ludology vs. narratology debate” is that “narratologist” has a different meaning within the game studies community than it does outside of it (Frasca 2003, 1-2). In respect to game studies, Frasca defines a narratologist as “a scholar that either claims that games are closely connected to narrative and/or that they should be analysed – at least in part – through narratology”, but notes that in the Humanities it is “a scholar who studies narratology, a set of theories of narrative that are independent of the medium of representation”. (Frasca 2003, p. 1-2). Given that this essay deals with game studies specifically, I will be using Frasca’s internal definition of narratologist to frame what narratology means in relation to games and game-play.

To understand how narratology (the study of narrative theories) can apply to games, we must define what constitutes a narrative. Literary theorist J. Hillis Miller contends that any narrative comprises of three main components: Firstly, that a narrative has “an initial situation, a sequence leading to a change or reversal of the situation and a revelation made possible by the reversal of the situation” (Miller 1990, 77). Secondly, that there is “some use of personification whereby character is created out of signs” (Miller 1990, p.77)., using the examples of words on a page or sounds in the air for written and oral narrative respectively. Finally, there “must be some patterning or repetition of key elements”(Miller 1990, 77). Miller also notes that some narratives will draw their meaning by playing ironically against these components – narratives which have a “bad ending”, for example, instead of the reversal of the situation. (Miller 1990, 77)

As a game, Dungeon Crawl contains all three of Miller’s narrative components. The player’s character starts at the top of a deep dungeon with a handful of skills, but too weak and inexperienced to achieve his/her end goals – the initial situation. Through defeating monsters and discovering more powerful items the character becomes stronger – the sequence that leads to a change or reversal of the situation. The “revelation” or outcome made possible by the changing situation is the character’s retrieval of the Orb of Zot from the dungeon depths – or the character’s demise. Dungeon Crawl creates character out of signs - it is a stylized depiction of a fantasy adventure with a cast of different characters in the form of monsters, the player character and various deities. (Each race has its own descriptive paragraph in the game’s manual, as well as unique aptitudes that impact gameplay (Henzell 2011, Appendix 1) ). Finally, Dungeon Crawl also contains patterned structures of space (the dungeon and its various sub-branches), progress (levelling up and development of character skills) and time (in the form of game turns).

Dungeon Crawl shares strong parallels with the traditional narrative structure of the Monomyth, or Christopher Volger’s “The Hero’s Journey”. Volger’s hero’s journey consists of twelve steps (Rollings & Adams 2003, 95-96), almost all of which are directly mirrored by gameplay aspects in Dungeon Crawl (see Appendix 2). Based on the developer’s philosophy statements in the manual, this does not appear to be intentional (Henzell 2011, par. N) – which makes it an interesting angle of analysis given that this “story-like” nature that emerges from gameplay makes it possible for players of Dungeon Crawl to tell others what happened in their game in a manner that is mostly comprehendible to someone who has not played the game at all.

When players speak about their adventures in Dungeon Crawl (posts in Dungeon Crawl forum threads will often the prefix of “YASD” (Yet Another Stupid Death) for failures, or “YAVP” (Yet Another Victory Post) for successful ascensions), their gameplay experience is told in a similar fashion – they speak of the initial class/race choice they made, what deity they chose to follow, the uniques that caused them particular challenges, the powerful artifacts they found, what branches of the dungeon they visited and how they managed the journey back to the surface. Each game is a distinctly unique tale, and sharing these stories with other players forms a strong portion of the game’s appeal and longevity. Jesper Juul debates whether players telling stories of a game session is a narrative function of a game itself and warns against indiscriminate use of the term narrative, stating “if everything is a narrative, it is of course not very useful to say that video games also can be described as such” (Neilson et al 2008, p1-2) – but the ease of telling a Dungeon Crawl story due to the similarities to the Hero’s Journey should not be discounted.

Ludologists have presented a number of reasons why solely treating games as narrative is not a holistic approach – the most notable of which is that solely viewing games as narrative “can lead us to overlook the ‘intrinsic properties’ of video games” (Frasca 2003, 1-2). However, even Ludologists cannot agree entirely on what elements are necessary in a game – out of eight different game scholars studied by Salen and Zimmerman on the subject of defining games, not one aspect received the approval of all eight – most elements received the approval of three or less of the scholars. However, seven out of the eight agreed that “a game proceeds according to rules that limit players”, and three of the eight agreed that “decision making” is involved. (Salen & Zimmerman 2004, 79).

Dungeon Crawl’s core gameplay is built almost entirely around rules. (the game’s instruction manual clocks in at over 22,000 words). These rules range from how to interact with the game (button “x” performs action “y”) to limitations (you may worship only one deity at a time, Demigod characters may not worship a deity at all) and consequences (turning on “Wizard Mode” – Dungeon Crawl‘s debug mode – at any time during the game will prevent your game from receiving a score at the end as you have “cheated” the standard rules).

In addition to the rules presented to the player, the game itself operates on a series of “hidden” rules to create content for the player to explore and experience. Whilst every game’s dungeon is generated randomly, this generation is subject to rules and limits to ensure that each game is as “fair” as possible – for example, it is extremely unlikely that the game will generate a dragon or extremely powerful artefact sword on the first level. It is not impossible, however – the designers purposely left in marginal odds of things not quite going as expected to keep things interesting each time you play, even after multiple games. (Henzell et al 2011, par. N)

Decision making is central to Dungeon Crawl‘s gameplay – so much so that the designers list “meaningful decisions” as one of their four “major design goals” (Henzell et al 2011, par. N). Whenever the player is presented with a decision – whether this is in a combat situation (do I spend the time to summon a creature to distract the horde of orcs running toward me, allowing me to more effectively use “area effect” spells, or do I retreat into the corridor immediately and fight them one at a time) or an inventory management one (do I wear the Ring Of Slaying +5 or the Ring of Invisibility? Do I have enough room to carry both?) – the choice should not be obvious, or a “no brainer”.

Analysing Dungeon Crawl from solely the perspective of a “hardline” ludologist or a narratologist does not provide a truly critical analysis. Whilst focusing solely on the “game” aspects of rules and decision making reveals a significant portion of the overall “picture” of why Dungeon Crawl works as a game, examining the narrative aspects enable us to explore other valid reasons for Dungeon Crawl‘s longevity and popularity – such as the ease of telling the story of a player’s game by virtue of the game’s underlying “plot” strongly resembling the “Hero’s Journey” – and this would not be exposed through use of ludology alone. Conversely, games contain many elements that are not present in traditional narrative structures such as rules and decision making, making an approach based solely on narrative undesirable for a truly critical analysis.

Appendix 1: Images

Fig 1: Dungeon Crawl Screenshot – ASCII

Fig 2: Dungeon Crawl Screenshot – Tiles Version

Appendix 2: Volger’s Hero’s Journey and Dungeon Crawl

References:

Costikyan, Greg. “Where Stories End and Games Begin.” Greg Costikyan. http://www.costik.com/gamnstry.html (accessed September 8, 2011).

Frasca, Gonzalo. “Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place.” Digital Games Research Conference 2003 Proceedings. www.digra.org/dl/db/05163.01125 (accessed September 9, 2011).

Henzell, Linley et al. “Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup Manual.” Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. http://crawl.develz.org/other/manual.html (accessed September 9, 2011).

Miller, J. Hillis. “Narrative.” In Critical Terms for Literary Study. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1990. 77.

Nielsen, Simon, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Pajares Tosca. “Narrative.” In Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2008. 1-2.

Rollings, Andrew, and Ernest Adams. “Storytelling and Narrative.” In Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design. Indianapolis, Ind.: New Riders, 2003. 93-109.

Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. “Unit 1: Core Concepts | Defining Games.” In Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Michigan: MIT Press, 2003. 79.

—

I am Australian, I have no accent, and the amount of times I hear people go “Oh I’m so glad that you speak English, unlike the last person” infuriates me. “the last person” is someone who has just as much knowledge as I do (generally) and can do the job just as well, it’s just that people tend to be biased against anyone with an accent on calls.

You can say this is not true, but working in the call industry, this is a fact. People switch off when someone isn’t speaking 100% clear English to them.

Also, the gripe above about “It’s always the same steps”, do you know why we do that?

It’s to save you hundreds of dollars and wasted time.

That’s right.

We do it only, and soley, so that you, the customer, the one who is calling for a “simple problem”, does not have their time wasted, a technician called out, only to find out that your equipment, which, just like a car, a TV, a microwave, a kettle, or anything else electronic, can fail at any given time (yes, this includes cables). If said technician comes out, and finds it’s due to this, they will quite happily hand you a bill for wasting their time, and then walk away.

You have to pay that bill, because you did not want to troubleshoot.

So, is upwards of $100 worth less than an hour of your time? I’d think it would be, unless you get paid more than that.

If that is the case, do the basic troubleshooting, then just agree to the greatly increased chance it is your fault, and we’ll lodge the fault for you.

We’re required by law to do so. If you want to risk it, hey, who are we to try and save you money and do the right thing by you.

Also, here’s a quick study case for you:

A human being, works underground in the mines, for upwards of 12 hours a day.

He does this fine, for 4 days a week on a rotating roster.

He continues to do this for 7 years.

After 7 years, he decides he’s had enough, and quits.

Is it the mine that is broken, or the man?

It’s the man, right?

So, if something that was working, can stop working, then why can this not be the case with electronics?

I have yet to hear a good, valid reason from someone as to why things that were working, have to continue working.

“It’s brand new” Ever heard of broken out of the box?

“I’ve had this for 10 years like this” So was my uncles’ heart, then it gave out.

“It can’t be that” Who told you that? Was it someone who’s going to give you the money for the fault if they were wrong? If not, then don’t believe them.

“I don’t want to test that” I don’t want to get tested for diabetes either, doesn’t mean I don’t have it, just means I don’t know.

“It’ll take too long to test” Would you say that if you suspected you might have cancer?

“Oh, there’s this growth out the side of my face, but I don’t have the time to get it tested” sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it? You’re calling to get something fixed, not to get quick fixes. Doctors don’t do it. Mechanics don’t do it. Computer technicians definitely don’t do it; and these are people that are actually face-to-face with the problem.

Here’s an experiment for you.

Have a health issue, something random and niggling.

Call your local medical center.

Speak to the receptionist there and demand to speak to your doctor.

Complain until you get your doctor.

Proceed to explain all of your symptoms, both related and unrelated (I’ve got a sore toe, which has to be related to my illness even though I stepped on something which could have caused the sore toe), and get irritated when the doctor attempts to ask you some questions.

Tell the doctor that you pay him to fix this, not to try and play 50 questions over the phone.

Now, how far along that chain do you think you would get? Step 3, maybe? That’s right, doctors, the people you trust with your very lives, will not attempt to diagnose issues over the phone.

Yet we do it.

So, here’s a thought. If you call us, you want us to fix things, correct? (this is assuming you’re not just calling because you are angry at something completely unrelated and just want to yell at someone because, after all, it’s not like they’ve got anything better to do. Before you say this is blowing it out of proportion, I can assure you with 100% accuracy that I have had multiple calls detailing exactly that. Sure, they usually apologize after abusing call center employees, and that makes it OK, right? That’s what I say to my woman when I hit her around, it’s OK because I apologized afterwards.)

Therefore, if you want us to fix things (here comes the amazing mental leap, figured out with my stupendous powers of deduction), how’s about you be helpful with us, and help us fix things? If we ask you something, it’s not because we’re being mean. It’s not because we hate you. It’s because we’re trying to cover you, in case the tech that comes out after everythings’ said and done, tries to charge you for equipment faults. We’re being derelict in our duty if we don’t try to do that for you. We don’t want you to have to go away from the call angry because we didn’t fix things, but in the end, that is real life. That is common sense. Sometimes, things just aren’t able to be fixed first time.

And yes. Sometimes people make mistakes. If anyone can tell me, with complete veracity, that they have never, ever make a mistake in their entire lives, then I wholeheartedly recommend you contact the nearest center of organized religion to state your claim to a sainthood (or equivalent).

Let’s just pretend you made a mistake, an honest mistake. You’re going to feel pretty bad about it, right? The last thing you need, when you’re trying to fix things, or even if you’re fixing someone elses’ mistake, is someone abusing you.

After all, if these “faceless people” on the end of the phones, were actually in your house, talking to you face to face, would you really swear at them, insult them, call them liars because they’re inferring your precious hardware might be faulty, or cables might have worn out (Yes, cables, as they carry an electrical current, can get worn out. It’s much more complex than that, but it does happen. Google it if you don’t believe us. After all, you don’t pay Google, so it wouldn’t possibly lie to you, would it?). I challenge any of you to say you would. If you do say you would, then I fear for your interpersonal skills. Gone are the days where people are taught to be polite; not just “to their elders”, because that does not work, and I’ve come across my fair share of abusive, insulting, grizzly old people who do not show respect to someone only trying to help them get back online, but to anyone and everyone.

In closing, imagine if you were on the other end of the phone, or your child, or parent, or close relation. Imagine if it was someone you love. Would you really be abusing them, for just trying to help you as best as they can? Is it really that hard to think “this person is still working here, so obviously they must have some inkling into what they are doing”?

All we ask, is that you treat us with the same respect, and trust, that you yourself would like to be treated. Believe me, if all call centers treated the customers like they treated us, there would be many more complaints than there are now.

All we are, are people, trying to do a job. Let us do that without stress, strain, anger and vitriol, and in return, we will help you to our fullest extent.

Crossposted from the iiNet Blog.

It’s pretty difficult to go online these days and not see articles (or people talking) about the challenges the human race faces over the next five to ten years. Dwindling resources, an ever-growing population and finite living space are all issues that will need to be tackled by everyone – from the world’s leaders down to individuals.

Fate Of The World is one of the first video games I’ve seen that places players in a position of near absolute authority to enact change. When I’d first heard of the title I admit scoffing and rolling my eyes. “Great, I bet this is going to be one of those games where you just plonk a whole bunch of sustainable electricity sources down, penalise polluting businesses, switch everyone over to electric cars and you win.” Twenty minutes (and several catastrophes later) into the beta release, I found myself stumped.

The game’s interface is deceptively simple. You’re given a certain budget to operate within (impacted by the wealth generated by each of the world’s 12 regions) and can use that wealth to deploy agents to each of the regions or to enact policies in the form of cards that cover a myriad of different outcomes – from political change (such as instigating welfare or health programs), development of crisis management utilities (coastal walls to battle rising sea levels, soil erosion protection), research facilities, military aid or even underhanded “black ops” style extreme measures like engineered viruses.

The amount of choice you’re given (but limited in the amount of measures you can enact each year by the number of agents you have and your budget) is where the game really shines. Do you encourage the use of biofuels in the West? Better remember that a huge proportion of that grain is coming from developing nations with rapidly growing populations. Every action (even the “good” choices) has consequences that you’re going to have to manage in future.

Those consequences are often significant. Civil wars break out over resources. Decrease a population’s standard of living and pretty soon they’ll be up in arms. Encourage too much economic development without the technology to reduce the impact and you’ll be dealing with any of over 1,000 different impacts. Long story short? This game is hard. Throw your mouse across the room hard. I’m yet to win a campaign after more than eight different attempts – which really delivers an appreciation of how difficult decision making is when you’re placed in charge. Winning is possible,  however – it just takes a great deal of advance planning.

The preorder beta launches with only one campaign – the global warming / resource crisis. The full version includes a variety of different “end of the world” scenarios, complete with a “Doctor Doomsday” style scenario where you play the bad guy in an otherwise utopian planet. The game launches on March 2nd on Steam at a bargain basement price of $9.99 USD. It’s not for everyone – but if you’re the kind of person who enjoys a hardcore strategy title with a learning curve that resembles a cliff, this will be right up your alley.

Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/80200

Developer’s Website: http://www.fateoftheworld.net/

One of the most common ways that accounts are compromised (aside from the obvious – leaving your password written down on a piece of paper, making it your birthday, “phishing” emails/websites that masquerade as an authentic communication, or a “low effort” password like the ones outlined in Sandra Lim’s blog entry on “Picking The Right Password”) is via what is known as a “brute force” attack.

Essentially this involves a hacker’s machine going through random passwords with constant login attempts until it hits proverbial paydirt. It’s not terribly elegant (it’s literally pounding away at the login server with password attempts, thus the ‘brute force’ terminology) and you might have noticed that a lot of sites try to combat this by limiting the amount of login attempts you can make before your account is locked out for a period of time – anywhere from an hour to 24 hours.

However, this is still far from standard practice. It can cause significant inconvenience for the legitimate owner of the account if they’re locked out. Attempts to block login attempts by IP address are often fruitless as well since a hacker can easily ‘spoof’ (fake) what IP address their attempts are coming from, or make use of compromised machines (often known as zombie PCs).

Bloomberg Businessweek provides some interesting statistical data on the time it takes for a hacker’s computer to brute force your password based on the length and complexity of your password:

This data hopefully answers the “why?” questions our CSRs often get asked about elements of iiNet’s password policy. Any iiNet password must adhere to the following rules:

1. Should be at least 9 characters in length
2. Should contain a mix of upper and lowercase characters
3. Should contain at least one digit (e.g. 0-9)
4. Cannot be based on your username
5. Cannot contain spaces or tabs.

Any passwords which do not meet these requirements will not be accepted by iiNet’s systems. This applies to staff and customers alike. However, not all password systems are as strict. It’s good security practice to follow those five rules whenever you create a password on any website. Better yet, include symbols.

Open – Brad the Dance Commander

Covenant – I Stand Alone

VNV Nation – Standing (motion)

Depeche Mode – I Feel Loved

Suicide Commando – Dein Herz, Mein Gier

Rob Zombie – Superbeast (Girl on A Motorcycle Mix)

Gary Numan – Bleed (Sulpher remix)

Marylin Manson – The Love Song

Placebo – Taste In Men

The Pixies – Hey

Bauhaus – The Passion of Lovers

The Cure – Never Enough

10:45 – M@

New Order – Bizare Love Triangle

Transvision Vamp – I Want Your Love

Depeche Mode – I Feel Loved [2nd sight mix]

VNV Nation – Beloved [Grey Dawn mix]

Assemblage 23 – Dissapoint

NIN – We’re In This Together

HIM – When Love & Death Embrace

Rob Zombie – Living Dead Girl

Cubanate – Hatesong

Combichrist – What the Fuck Is Wrong With You

11.30 – Brad

APB – Bitch

Prodigy – No Good (Original)

Curve – Chinese Burn

Crystal Castles – Not In Love (album)

Placebo – Pure Morning

Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart

David Bowie – Modern Love

Violent Femmes – Blister In The Sun

The Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet

Ratcat – Don’t Go Now

NIN – Only (Richard X)

12:15 – M@

The Presets – This Boy’s In Love

REM – Orange Crush

Pat Benetar – Love Is A Battlefield

Dead or Alive – You Spin Me Round

Timelords – Doctorin The Tardis

VNV Nation – Cold [mg29 rmx]

Combichrist – This Shit Will Fuck You Up

HIM – Wicked Game

Lady GaGa – Poker Face [Redone Remix]

Kim Wilde – Keep Me Hangin On

Psychadelic Furs – Love My Way

Depeche Mode – Enjoy the Silence

1:00 – Brad

The Human League – Don’t You Want Me

Madonna/New Order – Hung Up On A Blue Monday

She Wants Revenge – Tear You Apart

Kiss – I Was Made For Lovin You

Marilyn Manson – Tainted Love

Fear Factory ft Gary Numan – Cars

Combichrist – Sent To Destroy

Suicide Commando – Die Motherfucker Die

Geeza – I Know You Don’t Like Me (I Hate You)

Rammstein – Engel

Muse – Uprising

The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die!

1:45 – M@

Zeromancer – Send Me An Angel

Grendel – Hate This

The Prodigy – Omen

Rammstein – Du Hast

Rob Zombie – Dragula

Feindflug – Erstasteil

VNV Nation – Chrome

And One – Panzermench

APB – Suffer In Silence [Icon Of Coil remix]

2.30 – Brad

KMFDM – Light

Marilyn Manson – The Dope Show

Smashing Pumpkins – Today

Muse – Starlight

Blondie – Atomic

The Bravery – An Honest Mistake

Rammstein – Stripped

The Clash  – Should I Stay Or Should I Go

The Ramones – Baby I Love You

Nick Cave – From Her To Eternity

Iggy Pop – Now I Wanna Be Your Dog

In “You Need To Get Off Facebook”, Ross Gardiner presents what appears at first glance to be a convincing case for you to delete your Facebook account. However, like most that have followed before him he chooses to focus on some of the worst possible cases, suggesting that a “cold turkey” style approach is going to be most beneficial to your life.

I disagree.

As with most advances in technology, the product is only as dangerous (or as useful) as you allow it to be. All of Gardiner’s complaints about the medium can be avoided with little effort required on your part – either through creative use of friends filters if you’re one of those people that simply must approve every friend request that comes your way, or through the easier act of limiting the people you accept as friends on Facebook.

Issues with tagging in photos? Again – pick your friends carefully. Only people who you have as friends can tag you. Make it clear you don’t want to be tagged, and if someone isn’t respecting those wishes, the defriend button is a single click away. “Friends” looking at your photos and judging you? I hate to point out the obvious, but if they’re doing this on Facebook, they’re doing it via other “real life” mediums too.

This brings us to the touchy subject of addiction. Gardiner claims he’s been “clean for 5 months and 17 days” – implying that he considers use of the medium an addiction. This may be true for some – but Internet Addiction Disorder isn’t exactly a new thing, (before Facebook’s screaming rise to popularity, Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft” online game was a popular target for the “this technology is ruining your life” crowd) and it’s only ever as problematic to the extent that these activities interfere with an individuals normal life.

I would argue that it is possible to have a Facebook account and use it sensibly – that it can in fact enhance that “normal life”. A number of my Facebook friends are musicians, DJ’s or promoters and the medium provides a convenient way of tracking when their gigs are on and whether it conflicts with anything else I have going on at the time. Through choosing my friends carefully, my “links” filter on Facebook is a collection of some of the web’s most hilarious, informative and controversial content – including this video. I’ve had some deeply thought provoking debate and discussion via Facebook on everything ranging from philosophy to politics.

I’ve been able to help no less than five of my friends in their search for employment through their announcement of intentions via Facebook. To anyone climbing a career ladder, the phrase “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is especially true. Social networking doesn’t form a replacement for existing methods of networking (going to the pub with coworkers, attending industry functions, etc.) but it compliments it extremely well.

To summarize – if you’re doing anything too much, it’s a problem. This isn’t rocket science. Moderate your use of everything in your life. Don’t blame the technology for “evil”, examine whether or not you’re using it correctly. The content is only ever going to be as good as those providing it – so choose your friends wisely. If Gardiner’s video makes you consider that balance (and maybe cull a couple of hundred of “friends” you don’t really need), it’s doing a good thing. If it makes you quit the medium entirely, I think you’re giving up something incredibly useful and taking the easy way out.

If that makes me a “dribbling turbospaz”, so be it.

In the meantime, I’ve been taking advantage of gaming sites jumping on to the Social Media / Web 2.0 bandwagon and created some recommendation lists on gog.com (Good Old Games) and Steam:

• http://steamcommunity.com/id/mattjpwns/recommended/
• http://www.gog.com/en/mix/matts_must_haves

If you’re looking for some reasonably priced entertainment over the summer break (or gifts for others for Christmas) you can’t go wrong with a lot of the titles I’ve listed there.

Having direct access to a search engine for my music makes it so much easier to locate a track at a moment’s notice rather than flipping through pages and pages of CD’s – on the other hand, having direct visibility of waveforms and a relatively straightforward way of setting up appropriate cue points / loops makes the work a lot more exhausting – running off CD’s in the past I was content with “close enough is good enough”, but with the sheer amount of information available to me when I load up a track, there’s a lot more tinkering to be done in the couple of minutes I have between songs.

One of the great things is no longer having to rely on memory for a good “exit point” from a previous track, being able to see the waveform allows me to have a lot more notice as to when a good time to cross over is approaching, and filter/crossfade appropriately.

Now I just need to remember to set aside a night to leave the netbook going so I can have a full analysis of the entire music collection so I can sort by BPM and the like instead of having to rely purely on memory.

—

M@ 10 – 10:45

Sisters of Mercy – Lucretia, My Reflection

Theatre of Tragedy – Element

Covenant – Go Film

Drax II Ltd – Amphetamine

Evil’s Toy – Causing Riots

Icon of Coil – Consumer

Snog – Born to be Mild

The Cure – Lovesong

Joy Division – She’s Lost Control

New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle

Xymox 10:45 – 11:30

Siouxsie & The Banshees – Kiss Them for Me

Gary Numan – Dominion Day

Switchblade Symphony – Clown

Rammstein – Stripped

Marilyn Manson – Lunchbox

NIN – Sin

Disturbed – Down With the Sickness

Tool – Judith

Faderhead – TZDV

Aesthetic Perfection – Spit It Out

M@ 11:30 – 12:15

Depeche Mode – Personal Jesus

Cubanate – Lord of the Flies

Feindflug – Ersatzteil

Rotersand – Almost Violent

Prodigy – Voodoo People

Dead or Alive – You Spin Me Round

Roxette – Joyride

Adam Ant – Ant Music

Apoptygma Berzerk – Eclipse

Combichrist – What the fuck is Wrong with You?

KLF & The Timelords – Doctorin’ the Tardis

Xymox 12:15 – 1

Alien Vampires – Rave to the Grave

Nachtmahr – Feuer Frei

Grendel – Hate This

Tactical Sekt – Capital Fallacies

Meccano Twins – Alpha Release

Stormtrooper – Todesvogel

DJ Zany – Animated Audio

Front 242 – Headhunter (Space Frog Mix)

Colony 5 – Knives

M@ 1 – 1:45

And One – Panzermench

Presets – Talk like That

Quench – Dreams

Rob Zombie – Dragula

Rammstein – Du Hast

Combichrist – This Shit will Fuck you up

VNV Nation – Chrome

HIM – Wicked Game

Bon Jovi – Livin’ on a Prayer

Kim Wilde – Keep me Hangin’ on

Haddaway – What is love?

Xymox 1:45 – 2:30

Wumpscut – Thorns

Sisters of Mercy – Amphetamine Logic

The Cure – Primary

Grafton Primary – All Stars

Ashbury Heights – Derrick is a Strange Machine

Groove Armada – Look me in the Eye Sister

The Chameleons – Don’t Fall

The Frozen Autumn – Is Everything Real?

IAMX – After Every Party I Die

Virgin Prunes – Baby Turns Blue

M@ 2:30 – 3

REM – Orange Crush

Eurythmics vs Lady Gaga – Just Sweet Dreams

Ladytron – Destroy Everything you Touch

Prodigy – Omen

Faith No More – Epic

Tism – Ol’ Man River

NIN – Starfuckers Inc.

Project Pitchfork – Timekiller (And One)

Xymox 3 – 3:30

Jace Everett – Bad Things

Concrete Blonde – Bloodletting

Garvey – Goodbye Horses

The Knife – Marble House (Rex the Dog Mix)

Trisomie 21 – The Last Song

S.P.O.C.K. – Never Trust a Klingon