Details

I have no idea how I did this.I have no idea how I did this.

Okay, here’s my review of Amberlight.

It’s a fractal program with a unique set of features and a nearly-decent price (more on that), and it comes up with some interesting effects.  Capable of merging with your pictures and even into Photoshop, it’s a pretty nifty tool – but can it stand up against others in its class, like Chaotica?

Let’s find out.

Add a comment

Details

"This"This

Wired has published a fascinating piece on the end of the big-name videogame designer in Japan.  The article’s author, Chris Kohler, states that the videogame industry is “too expensive, too risky a business to be left up to the creative whims of a single auteur. But that’s precisely what the Japanese game business was, for a long time”, and that the departure of luminaries such as (by dint of the studios they were once attached to:) Konami’s Hideo Kojima, Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, Namco’s Toru Iwatani and Sega’s Yuji Naka.  Sure, there’s still Shigeru Miyamoto over at Nintendo, and Goichi Suda over at Gung Ho, but they’re special cases: in the former, he’s far more involved with executive decisions than the actual games, while in the latter Suda left Human Entertainment for his own company (Grasshopper), which got swallowed up by Gung Ho.

So, Kohler’s right: the age of the auteur is over.  Welcome to Hollywood, Part II.

Add a comment

Details

Looks like someone was happy to be there. Actually, I lied; she hated it too.Looks like someone was happy to be there. Actually, I lied; she hated it too.

Hours later, we’re counting down the debris from Ravencon.  It wasn’t a happy trip, though it wasn’t a complete waste.  I really hate to be that guy (especially knowing how hard it can be to plan a con), but this con has been, quite frankly, the worst one I have ever gone to, and I likely won’t be back.  Basically, stick your head in a blender, press “frappe”, and you will likely have a better and more productive time than I did, for the most part.  I guarantee I’ll be sending the Ravencon con chair my complaints and suggestions.  It remains to be seen.

And for the record, I’m not even talking about the whole Brianna Wu fracas, which I discussed in yesterday’s post.  That could have run smoothly (or not at all) and all the myriad problems would have still continued.  I’m not going to go into full detail, because I don’t want this to be a rant, but these are the gasps of a dying con, as I see it, and a con named Ravencon moving as far away from Baltimore as possible is either a sign of heading into the sunset or hasn’t changed their name yet.  Obviously you know which one I think it is.

But hey, like I said, there wasn’t all that bad.  Here’s what else happened:

Add a comment

Details

And now time to plug my friend Steven Savage‘s book, Fan to Pro! You owe me, Steve.And now time to plug my friend Steven Savage‘s book, Fan to Pro! You owe me, Steve.

Okay, aside from missing a little something you might have heard about last night, I’m not going to go into that safe to say that in my opinion, Ravencon handled the whole thing badly.  Regardless of whether you support Brianna Wu or Ethan Ralph, the whole thing falls on the shoulders of Ravencon.  They should have placed a no-recording policy prior to the event starting, they should have informed Ralph of what was going on, and they should have given a better response than they did.  This was on top of an incredibly rude and baiting Twitter feed, and a general Facebook response that continually gets worse.

But this is par for the course here at Ravencon.  A fellow former convention chair (who shall not be named) and I spent our day at our respective tables talking about the numerous failings (as we see it) of this convention.  This is run more like a first-year con than one celebrating its 10th Anniversary (as they’ve so loudly proclaimed).  In all my years of conventioning (that’s a word now, I claim that), I’ve never seen a con so badly run – and I’ve seen some, ahem, “beauties”.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a few things here that the con is doing right.  And I’ve been told that some of the mishaps here are due to the untimely passing of their vice chair.  That being said, this is a pile that needs fixing.

But enough of that.  On to other things.

Add a comment

  1. Ravenizing the Ravenness…or something like that! Ravencon, Day One
  2. Gettin’ a Little Loopy Here…. Amberlight First Impressions