The Confederate Bohemian

Hey, jerks!

2010-01-10T03:29:16Z

In addition to my marvelous, frequently updated blog, I now have a twitter account. It is, of course, fantastic

twitter.com/Nfinit

Basically I'm everywhere on the net* and you cannot escape me! Succumb now or feel my wrath!

(*note: Everywhere 'cept here)

Necropost!

2009-10-12T04:21:15Z

For those of you still hanging out here and not on my wicked sweet facebook page; I'm regularly updating my new gaming blog at Wordpress until I get bored and wander away from it again. But the URL is new, so there's that:

http://bigredcoat.wordpress.com/

Mark vs the NPD Group

2009-03-10T02:40:04Z

I"m trying to draw a correlation between the marginalization of the Street Fighter series in the late 90's/early 2000s and Activision's hilarious attempts at pissing away any relevance Guitar Hero still holds. I mean, you wind up with Activision releasing stuff like Guitar Hero Metallica edition, that's blatantly silly and lame to anyone who's not a hardcore fan of the series, and compare that with, say, Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold.

I'm not sure if this is a particularly strong argument for an op/ed peice though, as I find myself biased towards Capcom's SFII series and against Guitar Hero, despite something like fifteen years, three hardware cycles and completely and wholly different gameplay models separating the two.

Perhaps a stronger argument could be made in regards to Gutar Hero's narrowing focus on what will ulimately result in a dwindling hardcore fanbase. That sounds good in my head, and relates to my earlier The Fighter is Dead article, in how shumps and fighters and racers were ultimately reaching the ragged ends of their own fanbase.

Thing is, for any of these arguments to prove themselves out-- or to be defeated-- I need to find the Lifetime To Date sales figures for Guitar Hero and it's various mutations. The only real source of that is -- gods help me-- NeoGAF.

Pray for me, Confederates.

More Mark, More Often.

2009-02-28T00:41:04Z

Not that I"ve completely given up on Livejournal, but I"ve mostly moved to Facebook for the whole social contact thing. It's pretty much made for random spurts of conversation and has the added benefit of not being owned and operated by the Russian mafia.

Anywho, friend me and whatnot.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=677274571&ref=name

Sometimes it works

2008-11-05T06:35:13Z

The Boomers are gone.

Vietnam is over.

This is what history looks like.

I was on the other side of this, twice, four and eight years ago. I was pissed off. Bitter, even. Convinced my nation, my great nation, had been fooled and betrayed. I said here, four years ago, you can be right and you can be good, and it still not matter.

What I failed to realize what that my party's failing was no the failing of America. We were right, yes. And we were good. And no, that' wasn't enough-- it wasn't enough because we assumed everyone else thought the same way, that our rightousness was as obivous as it was true. We didn't stop to consider that when the majority of Amierica rejects what you're selling, that there may be a reason for that, a perfectly logical and understandable reason.

All things have a reason. The reason Barack Hussien Obama is your new president isn't because of conspiracy or stupidity. It is because America had finally had enough. Enough of division and anger. Enough of attempts to legilsate a very narrow morality. Enough of being told to settle, to make do. Enough of being told that government is essentially ineffective and that we were on our own, helpless against greed and avarice.

Now the next four years aren't going to solve all this. America isn't stupid. That's been Obama's main point over the past six months. That we're not stupid, that we're not beholden to the same division that we've been subjected to for the pas eight years. That we deserved better-- That we deserved to fight for a better future, because the alternative was to huddle in a corner and await the dark time to overtake us.

This is why I stand with Obama. Because I believe it is better to fight against that dark horizon; that, even if it is futile, that even in the end we're all doomed that we will at least be able to meet the barbarians with blood in our teeth. It is better to fight than to cower. It is better to struggle than to give in. It is better to try. It is always better to try.

Today we were given a choice. The choice to await the darkness or rail against it. We have chosen to fight. We will meet our enemy with blades drawn. We will not succum to apathy. We will make our parents and our children proud. We have chosen to shape history.

We are good. And we were right. In the next four years we'll show you why.

10-3-08

2008-10-04T02:06:29Z

I'm still not tired of Time's Square.

I have, however, reached the point where I'm baffled why all these people are taking pictures of the freaking Yahoo sign.

Dear fellow North Carolinians--

2008-09-26T23:47:38Z

WHAT DID YOU PEOPLE DO WITH ALL YOUR GASOLINE?!

SERIOUSLY GUYS, WHAT THE HELL?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go see who owns my bank.

Maps of the World

2008-09-17T00:42:11Z

Everyone is given a world. And each world is unique.

Through poking and prodding, experiment and blunder, we stumble upon the shape of our worlds, writing our maps in the process.

And each map is unique. And precious. And we think our maps are stable, will last forever and ever, reassured by the logic of the cardinal rose. But in truth, these maps are fantastically fragile, it takes is but one singular event to rend them asunder, to make them foreign and useless. The Sun rises in the West, the Southern Cross is moved and rearranged, North rendered meaningless. And the shape of that world--your world-- is changed, forever. And nothing you try, will bring that world back. All that's left to do is begin drawing your map again.

The worth of a person is not measured in possessions or wisdom or even that most precious of things; education-- It lay in how these events are reacted do, and what we are able to take away from them.

As for the status of my own atlas, and that of my friends, I cannot divulge. Those that know, know. Or will soon enough.

But I can tell you that I'm going to be alright. And I think everyone else is going to be, too.

Whither Wordpress

2008-09-16T03:05:39Z

Only a couple people reading this have probably noticed, but I've been updating my gaming blog at http://bigredcoat.blogspot.com/ regularly for the past month now, crossposting to platformers.net. And now while my life has settled down and I feel comfortable doing the whole smarmy gamer blog thing again, I suddenly remember that Blogger is a broken, useless, aggrivation that forces a persont to work against the tools given, not with them. And seeing as how this sorry state of affairs hasn't improved in the past 12 months, it wouldn't appear Google is in any way interested in resolving the issue.

The next sensible step I suppose is Wordpress, but it's a tad daunting, what with it's sophisticated controls and expectations of some minmal knowledge of programming and the necessity of finding your own hosting. While I'm eager to take this next step, I'd also rather go in as fully armed as possible, and perhaps have an option or two to turn to should this not work out.

So among the more technorati among you reading this journal-- what should I know before making the move to Wordpress, and does there exist any software that I can use to compose my post and layout bigredcoat itself?

KMB, circa 2008

2008-09-04T18:01:42Z

I was going to put this behind a cut, but this stupid drooling Russian tech social networking site as a UI roughly as inscrutable as the instructions for keeping Chernobyl from exploding.

Anyway, this is me after 10 months of the city. And my hovel.

Standing on the corner of Stienway and 31st

2008-07-26T23:52:15Z

coming back from Starbuck's, and in the length of time it takes for the lights to change I count a dozen identical black Lincoln Towncars, driven randomly about town.

Twenty hours of sleep a week is having an effect on my reality.

From far better than I:

2008-07-25T22:37:12Z

"You're probably wondering what the point of all this ugly rambling bullshit is. It's this:

The future is inherently a good thing. And we move into it one winter at a time.

Things get better one winter at a time. So if you're going to celebrate something, then have a drink on this: The world is, generally and on balance, a better place to live than it was last year."

--Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan.

In other news

2008-07-23T23:37:54Z

I have reached the stage of adulthood when you plan on the day of the week you're ordering Chinese and look forward to it.

Holy god I am so incredibly white.

Dear Universe:

2008-07-19T23:32:02Z

If just once you'd make some fucking sense, that'd be cool.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/wireStory?id=5407447

Regards, KMB.

Peliminary Final Fantasy Tactics A2 impressions:

2008-06-28T04:31:50Z

Words words words words words words words words words words words words words FIGHT! words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words FIGHT! words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words

Also, Ivalice bunny girls make me feel dirty.

We have discovered a -thing-.

2008-06-23T04:14:00Z

In space!

We don't know what is is and we're fairly sure it's never been seen before.

This post brought to you by Science, Outside Context Problems, Ben And Jerry's Heath Bar Crunch Coffee ice cream.

Or do I have a half gallon of cottage cheese?

2008-06-21T22:16:44Z

So I haven't been paying close attention to my fridge. Yesterday, I discovered I am in possession of a nearly full half gallon of something that may have resembled milk two weeks ago, but is now a congealed mass of foul-smelling protein.

Keeping in mind that I live in a small basement studio with poor ventilation, how do I dispose of this without making my home unbearable to live for the next month and a half?

State of the Mark Report

2008-06-16T23:51:15Z

Ate a tin of Altoids in under 20 minutes.

Probably gonna regret that.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

2008-06-14T02:00:50Z

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14130-first-space-ad-targets-hungry-aliens.html?feedId=online-news_rss20:

on the morning of June 12 2008, the EISCAT high-powered space transmitter station on Svalbard used its array of radars to beam a Doritos ad at a solar system 42 light years from here.

For six hours, the MPEG video file was repeatedly pulsed at system 47 UMa, in the Ursa Minor constellation, which was chosen because it seems to have a circumstellar habitable zone. 47 UMa does have two Jupiter-class planets outside the HZ, although one of them is so massive that it very probably does weird gravity things to the outside edge of the HZ. This means that, if there are Earth-like rocky planets inside the habitable zone that we just can’t see yet, there’s a fair chance they’ll be small, lumpy, thirsty and ugly. Like a man in a Foster’s commercial. Or, presumably, a Doritos one.

EISCAT, which has had funding problems, has received an undisclosed but presumably substantial donation from Doritos in return for the broadcast, which will help them meet their actual aims of performing radar astronomy experiments. The director of EISCAT is quoted as saying: ""Some years in the future, the money that comes from this kind of commercial service could be used to fund pure research."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Things

2008-06-13T02:09:25Z

are nominal.

Trying to define normal. I feel like I should look for a 4th Ed group, or get involved in the local political structure here. Sort of takes the fun out of it when you're not the underdog, though.

How odd that I transplant myself to a solid blue state and the very next election North Carolina is on the verge of being in play.