SO, WHAT'S NEW (Posted 2014-06-18 19:36:01 by basscomm) Well, yeah, it's been a while, sorry about that. My last post was kind of a downer, and I made it sound like I would never make another entry again because I was so disgusted with video games, the internet, and myself. I didn't mean for it to sound that way, but then a few days off became a few weeks, and that spiraled into months, and, well, you know how those things go. I'm still here, doing my thing, but not writing about it a whole lot. That's not strictly true, I've gotten a bunch of articles started, but only half-completed, and then deleted. This little site turns 10 years old this year, and I started to think that maybe I've said all I wanted to say. But I don't think that's it. I just haven't been inspired by much lately. That's a weird statement to make, really. Video games and computers/the Internet are bigger than they've ever been, which is great, but also, really boring. Maybe now that I'm getting a few years older and my tastes are getting more refined, I'm finding the monotonous grey slurry of so-called 'entertainment' less palatable than I used to. We are hot off the heels of one of the biggest gaming events of the year, and for the first time in a long time, I can truthfully say that there was so little announced at the show that I was genuinely interested in, that I've already forgotten most of it. The kitschy fun stuff that I still love to play is still out there, I just have to work harder to find it. And then there's the Internet. It used to be reasonably useful, but it's shifting to the blogs, Top X Lists, clickbaity 'articles', infographics, and social media. Clicking around and discovering things used to be exciting and fun, but now if it doesn't show up in my newsreader or a Google search, it doesn't exist (and anything I click on, I just read the one article, and never go back). I honestly can't remember the last time I discovered a site by one method or another and then went back more than once. The Internet is absolutely enormous, and I visit the same dozen or so sites every single day. I'm in a rut, and I don't like it down here. I know exciting, interesting, and fun stuff is still out there [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web ] on the Internet, but just like with video games, I just need to look harder to find it. And that brings me to Gopher. Gopher is one of the many methods on the Internet to distribute information, and it competed with (and actually lost to) HTTP. You can read about gopher [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29 ] and why it's still relevant [ http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html ]. Installing a Gopher client [ http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/ ] onto my computer is exciting to me. I can visit sites that maybe don't have as much eyecandy, or popularity, or a comments page. I can visit repositories of information put up because the people genuinely love the technology and the subject matter, and who aren't necessarily worrying about driving traffic to their site by resorting to clickbait. I also have installed a Gopher server at gopher://obsolete.cartridge.technology [ gopher://obsolete.cartridge.technology ] (also available via http://obsolete.cartridge.technology:70 [ http://obsolete.cartridge.technology:70 ] to do... well, _something_ with. I haven't really decided what I'm going to put up there, and this site isn't going away any time soon. But there are so many protocols and networks on the Internet that I just plain forget to use, that I need to actually take the time to check them out. For the first time in a really long time, I'm genuinely excited about exploring the Internet, and I'd say that's a very good thing. -------- There are 3 comments on this post: Comment #1 by Nathan ( nathantolbert@gmail.com ) on 2014-07-02 14:35:37 So I somehow missed your previous 3 posts (even though they are around a year old now!), and enjoyed reading them and this. I've wondered some of the same things about video games, and my growing lack of interest. Here are a few of my jumbled thoughts that I didn't bother to nicely organize like you did: 1. I'm getting older. Interests change. 2. Styles of (mainstream) video games ARE different now. I don't enjoy these styles as much. And I don't have as much time to wade through something less interesting as I did when I was younger. 3. There's too many games. When there are fewer games, the worlds in the games seemed more "real", and less like something somebody just slapped together. I felt more like I was exploring a real place. Now, when there are 8 million more games, (and as I'm older), I can't suspend my disbelief and see the game world for anything more than a few levels that somebody hacked together. 4. Once I got past all those things, I'm content with the idea that I'm not really into video games anymore. I really enjoy playing the few games that I enjoy. I like trying out weird indie games. I like making games. But video games are just no longer my "thing". Comment #2 by basscomm ( will@crummysocks.com ) on 2014-07-13 08:00:20 Heh, no worries, I forgot to check up on this post for two weeks, so your comment has been sitting in limbo. Sorry about that. I'm with you on a few of these points. There is a wide-open fire-hydrant flow of games coming out now, all the time. Which simultaneously is great (my 10-year-old self would be beside himself if he had this kind of volume available) and horrible (gaming is such a huge market that fewer risks are taken, which leads to a lot of bland cookie-cutter titles). Mainstream gaming media and I are in two wildly different places, and I had originally chalked that up to me getting older and just not liking games as much as I used to, but I think it goes a little bit deeper than that. I still really like video games, but the mainstream industry moved in a different direction than I did. It also doesn't help that as I got older, I kind of lost that ability to sit and play games all day to the detriment of everything else. I can't play games for more than a couple of hours at a time, at the most. I don't even have kids to worry about (and the cat doesn't really count). But, what was really telling for me was when I got the NES Remix games (particularly the second one). It might be the nostalgia talking, but I got more mileage out of NES Remix 2 [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcf7Y0E2UwE ] than I have out of any other game in recent memory. I haven't decided if that was because of the nostalgia factor or because that's what I want a video game to be: something fun that I can play in short bursts if I want to, not necessarily something that I have to dedicate my entire evening to, just to make it to the next save point. Which why I think I'm drawn to checking out niche and indie-games. They feel more like video games to me than the megablockbusters do. Comment #3 by Text on the Internet « Exposing my socks to the world ( ) on 2014-07-21 07:23:28 [...] time ago (last month, in fact) I mentioned about checking out an old technology that doesn't see much use these [...] To submit a comment on this post, email basscomm@crummysocks.com or visit us on the web [ http://crummysocks.com ].