Catching up

Wow. Busy semester. I’ve never been a particularly good blog updater type, but my tardiness has been quite annoying this time around. Here are a few things I’ve been meaning to write about.

Skype
I’ve recently had the opportunity to give the same paper in two very different contexts. Once via Skype to the Ludo 2014 conference in the UK, and once in person to an in-house symposium for students at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The excellent folks at the Ludo 2014 conference set up a Google Hangout for a few of us long-distance “attendees”, in addition to Skype link-ups for presenting conferences. Really nice of them to do both, as it allowed me to sidestep that pesky other-side-of-the-world thing, and not just to say my piece and then leave. I could engage with the conference and the other speakers despite being at home in Sydney, which I found quite rewarding.

Presenting a paper via Skype is actually quite challenging. With the audience on the other side of the world, the Skype window small enough on my screen that it doesn’t obstruct my paper, and the low-fi sound quality of Skype, there’s remarkably little feedback to be received. No turning pages of notebooks to be heard, no amused grins or muted chuckles at jokes, not even a bored expression to let you know how you’re going. You’ve just got to forge ahead, trusting that your microphone isn’t broken and that Skype hasn’t dropped out and left you with a frozen image or something. And you notice all this in your first ten seconds, and by twenty seconds in you realise it’s going to be like this for the next twenty minutes. But then they clap politely at the end, you realise it all went fine, and you answer some questions while breathing deeply and pondering a walk to the kitchen for a large glass of wine. Giving the paper in person at the Con felt substantially easier, but I’m grateful for the chance to be able to present to Ludo 2014. I think being able to telecommute is a pretty important skill for someone conducting research in such an isolated country.

The Wolf Among Us
This game (well, the first four episodes of it at least) is superb, almost to the point of being annoying. Having recently spent a considerable amount of time analysing L.A. Noire and a considerable amount of effort trying to place it within the noir tradition, it grates to see a game that fits the tradition so easily. But it only grates a little, because it’s awesome.

And something I’ve noticed about this game is how surprisingly well the music works considering it’s the second least noir thing about the game (after the fairytales). It’s very synthy, and more “artificial” than “gritty”, but to my mind it fits the game rather well. I’ll try to figure out why when the fifth episode comes out 

The Walking Dead
Never shed a tear in a video game before. That’s something new. I’ve recently bought Season 2 in the Steam Summer Sales so no spoilers.

EVE Online
My corp and I have moved out into wormhole space (as of a few months ago). EVE feels and sounds quite different out there. It’s got a brooding, ominous soundtrack – at least for the first little while, then the distinct lack of variance becomes the crushing loneliness of empty space. I’ve been listening to New Eden Radio a lot, put it that way. I know that nullsec has an adaptive soundtrack that gets “darker” according to the number of ships killed in the last 24 hours, but I’m yet to see whether wormhole space has a similar mechanic because there’s nobody there. And, to be fair, when there is someone there it’s usually me that’s on the dying side.

Skyrim
I’ve never gotten into Skyrim as deeply as I got into Oblivion, but I’ve been playing it sporadically lately and am yet again impressed by how beautiful a world it is. Top marks.

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