Time to get less social

I discovered there are hundreds of comments and personal messages waiting for me at Twitter. The trouble is, I never log in to my Twitter account so I didn't read them. My Twitter was automatically populated from my "Favorite Links and Detailed Activities" feed, that's all. It has no other use.

The solution: I am no longer putting anything on Twitter (manually or automatically).

Dozens of people ask me to "become friends" with them at Foursquare. I don't get it. The reason for being connected at Foursquare is to know when YOUR FRIEND is sitting in the pub somewhere so that I can stop by. I never met most of these people. What could be the reason to add them as friends at Foursquare??? So that I can see that someone who I don't know is at the pub nearby? If they want to know where I am for any reason, they can see that on the top right of this page. I have less than 10 "real" friends on Foursquare and most of them don't update their status there. Also, after experimenting with Foursquare, I have doubts about its usefulness, with many venues duplicated and many having wrong adresses / locations which no one fixes (I tried reporting them, nothing happened).

The solution: I am blocking my Foursquare account.

I am also getting extremely irritated by Facebook: For example, I once "Liked" the movie "Kick-Ass" at imdb.com and I immediately began receiving "News" from IMDB to my Facebook account. News that have nothing to do with Kick-Ass. I also became a member of the Facebook Group "KickAssCZ" and I found out later that I now have "KickAssCZ" as my favorite movie on Facebook, without me adding it there (ignoring the fact that there is not any movie called "KickAssCZ"). Worst of all, I clicked on someone's bizarre Facebook link, which resulted in ME sending the same bizarre link to my FB friends. Again, without me knowing about it and without possibility for removing this link.

The solution: The solution does not exist so far, I am afraid, because I have to keep my Facebook presence intact for now (because of my work). But note that I am only adding people who I can call my friends to my "Friends" list - read about it here.

If you somehow want to see what I enjoyed seeing / reading on the web, there has always been one single best solution: Watch my "Interesting Links" feed. Several links appear in it every day and it can be viewed using anything that handles RSS. It's generated by Google Buzz / Reader but that doesn't matter. If the Google ceased to exist, this feed would still be at the same address, generated by some other means. If you want to be more social and comment on these items, I suggest using Google Buzz (which is connected to this feed).

In any case, please note that my Google account is "fuka@fuxoft.cz". This is my e-mail, my Jabber/GoogleTalk id and also my Google Wave id! If you still have my old Google account mentioned somewhere (fuxoft@google.com), please delete it, I no longer use it (for several years now).

My other "live feeds" (my blogs, my photos etc., including the "Everything Fuxoft" feed previously used to populate the Twitter) are explained on my homepage.

The decision factor

This was the final reason why I voted for his party:



P.S: This is real, not photoshopped!

Bruno would've loved this game!

...and you should too. It's called Robot Unicorn Attack and it's magical.

His Name Was Sonic

Today, I found a hedgehog on a busy road.



I took him home (riding on Metro throught the whole city), showed him to Jitushka and the dogs, tried to feed him and then let him go.



Note that if I'd left him alone in the first place, he would be certainly killed by cars.

How Much Freedom Can You Have In A Game?

I like games. And videogames. However, I don't like the fact that vast majority of today's games are all the same. That's why I enjoy seeing something that dares to be different. Unfortunately, most game publishers don't dare to be different. Apart from some freak coincidence (like Ubisoft rather succesfully trying to re-shape RTS genre for consoles), the exceptions usually are independent developers and Japanese companies.



One of the things I am still waiting for is: When will you really have freedom in the game world and when will you be able to really shape the story? I don't say "Dragon Age: Origins" is not a great game but it's very clear, even with all the supposed "freedom", there is rather rigid "master story" that you have to stick to if you want to play the game. You are never really "in character" because you are always trying to "cheat the system", where "the system" is a computer program which can never anticipate all your intentions. For the same reason I don't like pen & paper RPG games where most of the gameplay is based on rolling dice and consulting charts (i.e. "Dungeons & Dragons"). I very much prefer things like Universalis where you have freedom to create any sort of world and characters you imagine (without knowing what exactly you are going to create in advance).

This requires, even with today's computing power and advanced AI, a live person as the "moderator", or "Dungeon Master". However, that still doesn't solve all the problems.

Even computer games like "Neverwinter Nights" (with live "moderator") don't work very well because the moderator can only do things that are prepared in advance and present in his "library" of locations, characters and actions.

I almost thought this meant that games where you can do whatever you want can only be done as pure text games (or MUDs). However, I am very glad Jason Rohmer proved me wrong.

His latest game, "Sleep is Death" is based on an ingenious twist. There is one player and one "controller" ("Moderator" or "Dungeon Master"). They exchange "turns", each of which must take less than 30 seconds. The genius is that the game provides you with an audiovisual interface which is so simple it can be used to audiovisually represent very broad scope of ideas in those 30 seconds, including modifying or creating new game assets! Have a look at these examples of play sessions and don't tell me that isn't amazing.

I very much hope this game (or rather, "interactive fiction tool") breaks into mainstream and starts a torrent of new exciting game ideas.

As a first step, I am sure with today's technology, something at least as good as "Sleep is Death" could be implemented as a purely browser-based game!

P.S: There is some interesting discussion in the comments below.

The Fragile Story Of Forbidden Love...

(Dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky)

Oh, those Facebook games...

This is a very sad day for me...

I never expected this. My girlfriend and my dog got their international internet fame, rather than me... :(

Let's All Get Along!

Yes, Virginia, there are Japanese Rape Simulators

When talking about Japanese weirdness and how much I like it, my ultimate trump card is casually mentioning the 200+ page rape simulator catalogue I've got from Japan. Again and again, people think I am making this up or at least exaggerating.

Well, here is the cover:



And here is one of its 224 pages (most definitely NSFW). Try reading the Japanese text, there are some interesting English words hidden in it. The censoring of the images was not done by me, that's how the page looks. In fact, I am pretty sure even the games themselves contain this censorship because in Japan it's illegal to display images of sexual organs during the intercourse (unless it's an intercourse with a demon or an octopus, which is OK).

Believe it or not, I am really not into rape simulators very much. However, I sort of admire the fact that the people who are into this sort of thing can legally satisfy their urges in Japan. And it seems there are actually fewer rape crimes in Japan than in the rest of the world...