|
|
The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
Oh My God, the RSS Feed Actually Works!
Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
"The Blah is becoming a daily destination for me." - Richard Marsh, Playwright
"I like it, and I don't." - Fiona Hogg, Teacher
"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen ... lend your ears to these people. I come not to bury them, but praise them.
Arik
Bill
Dan
Cole
Emily B
Emily G
Helena
Jee
Jewelz
Kaila
Kathryn
Mac
Robin
Slim
Souris
Mr. West
My TIME articles
All magazine articles (subscription required for older stories)
Online column index
|
|
|
|
|
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Air Hockey is the new Halo
One final word on the E3 madness, and then I'll shut up about it. So I spent the week with the herd, wandering around the booths that only seem to get noiser and more laughably macho every year. (Even Nintendo, the least testosterone-driven of the major companies forced its poor Japanese president to pepper his talk with phrases like "who's your daddy?") The demos all blended into one. Every company had a Grand Theft Auto or Half-Life 2 knock-off. I salivated over Civ IV, of course, but not all my fellow journalists are into such sweeping historical strategy games. Indeed, none of them could agree on a clear winner, a killer app. There was no Halo 2 this year. They all seemed to have adopted my weary cynicism about the industry, best summed up in the Macbeth quote that kept popping up unbidden in my brain: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
On Wednesday night, though, my friend Dan (of Wired News fame) and I took a walk down Santa Monica pier, and we found a couple of games that utterly outshone all the crap we'd seen during the day: Foosball and Air Hockey. The latter I'd never played before, and it was an absolute revelation. The speed, the energy, the smoothness of the puck as it sails across an oceanic airstream ... it was love, and I immediately knew that my dream home must contain an Air Hockey table. You're not staring at a screen, and yet the 3-D physics are dynamite. You actually expend real calories. And is there any more satisfying sound than that clunk when the puck enters your opponents' goal? Sometimes game technology reaches perfection, and all the Cell processors in the world can't outshine it.
|
|
|
|
