I’m not that brilliant at it, frankly.

I’m still getting the hang of it (again). It’s nothing like the Volito 2, which is not a very good tablet to say the least. I’m very pleased with the size, feel and sensitivity. And though I don’t use the touch features much, it comes in handy sometimes (though not for drawing).

One of the issues of the tablet is that you still have to know what the heck you’re doing with it. My drawing skills aren’t all that, but I’m improving.

Macy

I did that through Sunday and Monday, and still haven’t quite figured out how to do proper brushes at the time. I for one would like to say that I’m quite pleased with the result. Wouldn’t it look great with pastels?

After I figured out how to do proper brushes, I also decided to do a sketch of Auberdine, which looks a bit more realistic.

A sketch of Auberdine

I still find it a bit difficult to get used to the feel of a tablet. But I’m getting there, I think. I’m specifically having troubles with achieving exact angles, much more so than on paper. Maybe I should go back to just paper for a while, eh?

Start with the assumption that you, dear reader, are nothing but a mere lost soul in a great ocean of successful people and that the only light at the end of any tunnel is the crack under the door from your basement where you live to your parents’ house. Feeling trodden down yet? No, OK, I didn’t mean it quite that way. Lots of people are talking about things nobody cares about, not even their friends. For instance how this twitter search actually comes up with results – not only that, results keep being discharged by the collective rectum of the internet.
The point I’m trying to get across is that you are nothing. Nobody cares about you. The internet is full of drivel as it is, and nobody wants to talk to you unless they:

1. Want to feel better about themselves by smearing you
2. Want to have sex with you
3. Feel they have an overwhelming duty that they must carry out by talking to you

Wanting to avoid 1, and probably 2 (or just not being the object of number 2) there’s still number 3. There’s always a plan B… or C.

You may ask yourself, how come I don’t have such frequent debates with (most) people around me in the same way I do with the internet personalities that surround me? Could they all be internet superheroes? Of course not – the answer is simple: You can’t punch people on the internet.

I suppose protection from physical harm is what leads to these cans of worms be readily available for quick opening. So considering the alternatives, it’s a no-brainer. All gain for no risk and no cost, other than your reputation, sanity and oh look – a slippery slope. It’s the get rich quick scheme of attention (negative and otherwise), which leads me to my first lesson, maybe inspired by Colbert’s tips for a healthy marriage:

1. A smart poster knows how to post with at least some tact

But you know that one guy who religiously defends something, who stubbornly shoves it down your throat and feeds it to you on every damn occasion they get. Sometimes more gracefully than other times.

I, too, know a few people like that. First, an immigrant co-worker who (somewhat ironically) hates Arabs and finds annoying ways to say it sometimes and brings in a wide array of manners to express his right-wing views. Second, my cousin who is a staunch communist and would never miss an opportunity to tell us over family dinner how the government caused the recession on purpose, that phone manufacturers insert flaws into their devices on purpose. They’ll get… very emotional when anything opposes their extreme views. They don’t have that “poster tact” and won’t hesitate to get into a very heated discussion with you to defend their ideas.

Those exist in all walks of life, on the ‘nets as well. So, here, have another tip:

2. A smart poster knows to pick their battles

And what about when you have to? A sense of duty exists in us all, and I wouldn’t bother denying it personally (neither should you). We all have a soft spot in us when somebody mentions that one thing that ticks us off:

3. A smart poster has a second account/handle/username they can use to be everything I said they shouldn’t be without any risk

I guess the internet is a place full of cruel ironies.

I so happened to come across this blog post about airport security. Although that story is about the passenger section, or as we cool kids in freight call it, “pax”. Pax usually have these more personal stories and it’s only one in so many who do get pulled out of the line – although, don’t get me wrong, each of them equally sad in its own way. So you guys in pax: wtf?

First, allow me to preface this and say that I personally haven’t really experienced being held up for security for very long first hand - being caucasian and having an Israeli name and passport aren’t really the types of things that get you pulled out of queues. I even had an airport access permit at one point (an “‘A’ tag”). But I do have strong opinions about this whole “security” charade in Israel regardless and thought I’d get this off my chest.

Working in airfreight export at the moment gets me face to face with airport security. Here in Israel, the terminals (Maman and the smaller Swissport) have security teams whose jobs are to identify bombs and so forth so they don’t blow up airplanes. Fair enough, except there’s one tiny problem…

They’re completely, way, way way off. Waaaay off. Customs rarely ever hold shipments for more than an hour or two, and rarely request physical examinations of outbound cargo. But then… there’s security.

If you’re a more casual type of exporter, your shipments are likely to be delayed for about 24 hours on “security status 3″ (can’t fly until further notice). Eventually, they’ll be released (“security status 1″) and hopefully in time for the flight, though you might just find yourself missing a few just because security decided holding your shipment for 24 hours is like, a wise choice somehow and will save planet earth from its demise or heaven knows what.

But here’s what really, really ticks me off. For instance there is one Arab exporter I work with. Based in Ramallah, arab name and all. It’s unmistakable. Their shipments always get held up for security. And we’re talking days here. And then when those shipments are released they enter “security status 7″ which means they can only be flown on freighters (cargo only aircrafts) and that the decision is not negotiable unlike “security status 2″ which will eventually be released. It can make the whole thing much more expensive for the exporter and sometimes means you have to book new flights if you don’t know it in advance.

Seriously? Seriously, guys?

While I’m at it, here’s another story. I take the train to work. Upon entering the station, I have to put my bags through an X-ray machine. In addition to the X-ray machine I have to go through a metal detector in gate configuration to make sure I’m not carrying any weapons. Strangely enough it never goes off even though I have a belt with a metallic buckle and my house keys on me and that usually triggers them at the airport. Then when the train arrives, you can’t board it until the “security examination” (a 23 year old running back and forth, that is) is over.

Oh and did I mention they have 1-2 large dogs they keep around and that all train personnel including drivers are armed with real live pistols?

But the best art is: soldiers carrying M-16s are free to walk in unchecked if they present a slip of paper showing that they’re allowed to carry weapons.

Wonderful…

I’ve uploaded three new pieces to the gallery from Thrusday and Friday’s sessions.

Under the Highway

Under the Highway was shot right by the Rishon Le-Zion train station in a kind of highway underpass. The version uploaded now is the final one, and needless to say, I’m very pleased. I especially appreciate the subtle texture and gradients that the light creates.

Abandoned Building and Abandoned Warehouse are both shots of the same building from different angles. Turns out that house served as part warehouse, part office for the winery right across the street.

As usual, they’re licensed creative commons, so knock yourselves out!

A while back I spotted an old abandoned building and promised myself one day I’ll shoot it. I did it, and I’m still not happy. I didn’t actually get inside even though it’s pretty easy. I guess that’s what you get for being a coward.

The thing is, the building is somewhat raised above the street level, has no stairs and has a fence all around it. Nothing you can’t get past, but enough to ruin shots. The only shots of it which I could take were my usual “looking up at a building” shots.

I was pretty frustrated and decided to at least climb up there, but decided not to step over the fence. I won’t be trespassing just yet.

But then a few blocks away I spotted another building, and this time I was a bit more satisfied with the result. Also, it was a bit more accessible.

Now I also found myself making obvious mistakes. Naturally it’s been very long since the last time I honesty held a camera. I came back home to discover exposures like this:

Stone wall. Note the top-left edge.

It is not really wrong per se except I wanted to get both the shadow and light. I should have compensated for it a bit (half a step maybe) to at least get the values somewhere out there. But in this case I simply pushed it beyond the end of the range, so it created some clipping. I should have known this stuff when I shot it…

And just as a bonus. I saw this cat nearby. I never thought that there were cats like this in the neighborhood. They’re usually aberrations with missing limbs, eyes and sport a wide array of congenital issues. But not this one. It also looked at me when I took its photo.

Friendly neighborhood cat

I’ll take some more, soon.

This one is a shot of the underside of the highway underpass, looking up.

Much like The Stadium, this one focuses on the shapes, texture, shadow and light of the building in question.

It was shot on December 10th at around 19:33. I came back from work and immediately decided to get my stuff together and get out there. Right by the train station, I saw this (among other things).

Most of the exposures weren’t all that great, thanks to me screwing around with the camera.

Under the Highway

And you know I wouldn’t just settle for any one.

So, coming soon, I’ll post the first batch of photos. Hang on tight, yall.

I figured I have a lot of material I don’t really use in the form of tweets. 1,832 of them.

When I started writing this blog post I wanted to gather a bunch of tweets and just call it The Best of Dushkin or something. Then I started looking at what those tweets actually contained.

Common themes include:

1. Being generally PO’d with the state of public transport/commuting:
   

   The automatic announcer that’s supposed to make up for the shortcomings of the Israeli train schedules didn’t go off and I missed a train.

1. Boring work related things that nobody who isn’t in my particular position would ever in their right mind understand or want to understand:
   

   The guy who did the friday shift didn’t trace right.

2. Playing (boring) games:
   

   I played some plants vs zombies. It was cool actually.

I began to wonder if that’s the future of my communication with the outside world will be conducted in 140 characters or less and be about terribly simple things like playing Plants vs. Zombies (update: it’s a good game).

So perhaps it won’t replace it completely, but I wonder just how many of these tweets could have been expanded upon and become fully fledged blog posts. Not that a blog post is much of a step up from a tweet, let’s face it.

So I promise I’ll write more meaningful things, more often.

MMOGs have been around since, arguably, the MUD. MUDs, for those of you out of the loop, look something like this:

Bathroom
The stench here is overwhelming. Your nostrils are quite
literally on fire. That said, you wish you had never
stepped into the room to begin with.
You see a slime in the room.
> look slime
The slime seems to whirl about in a most uncanny way.
> go west

This is an approximation, of course. I don’t think any MUD truly plays that way. That exact way, anyway. But the idea was there. We all connect to one world and all do something together. Whether it was to chat, RP or share our furry fantasies (they have MUDs for that too. Frightening.)

So let’s go back to the beginning of MMOGs. The first “real” MMOG would be Ultima Online. It introduced the world to graphics. Not only to graphics, but to interesting combat. It felt more like a game and less like “you see a slime”.

That was still not quite the “outbreak” of MMOGs yet if you will. It took one thing before MMOGs could truly burst out and become what they are today: a change of the consumer’s idea of a game.

Suppose you went to the store. The year is 1994 and you’re an average “gamer”. Suddenly, Ultima Online catches your eye. Unlike other games, there are two thoughts that will certainly go through your mind at the time:

• “I need to be connected to the internet to play this” which at the time would mean you had to connect via dial-up.
• “I need to pay a monthly fee to play this” which at the time was unheard of.

For the first, we just had to wait until DSL became common. As for the latter, once we had the precedent, the rest was much easier. Then, we had to have a change of approach, that of the players’ towards the industry. It took some years of this before the MMOG market became what it is:

A MASSIVE FREE FOR ALL! MMOGs are springing left and right and some of them suck so incredibly hard. It sometimes feels like the Atari – with titles springing up left and right and they all suck about the same. Perhaps I’ll educate you, developers, and enlighten you about the things that really make us feel warm and fuzzy inside.

We like ongoing plots

If I wanted a static world, I would have played Final Fantasy. No, really. People who play MMORPGs don’t play them to just have the same static world the entire time so they can grind the shit out of it. People get tired, oh so very tired, from doing that. Fact of the matter is, that content is sometimes not rolled out as often as we want it to be rolled out. Or alternatively, that it’s not presented in the proper manner.

Some players appreciate exploration. I would in fact go as far as to say that most players like it, just some seek it far more actively than others. We get a little disappointed when the only way to find out about the plot is by reading it on your site, rather than seeing it for ourselves.

Why do so few MMOGs have actual game masters and employees progressing the storyline? I would gladly take up such a job, and I wonder why companies don’t around ten of those per game server for the purpose of spicing up the world, even a tiny bit?

We like player-driven content sometimes too

Going back to the idea of the sandbox. The all too familiar theme park analogy which we sometimes take too far. I’ll assume that you already know of it by now. Myspace did not become a hit (rather, plague) solely by merit of social networking – no, it got there because idiots could flood their pages with shiny GIFs and piss poor HTML. Facebook is popular because you can add these backwards viral applications to your profile and write about your most private things on your friends’ walls. Expression became key on the internet. From an extension of the television (providing content) it morphed into an extension of our local neighborhood and circle of friends.

That’s why MMOG developers have got to get their game together and offer us customizability. Not just changing colors, I’m thinking shape the world we’re in. Build buildings, capture cities, and then – customizing them.

EVE goes halfway there. Yes, you can build space stations in places of space you own, and yes you can change the course of things. But still, it’s not as though one can jump into a new area of space and see marvels of construction put up by fellow players. Not so. Player owned structures are generally hidden way out there.

Different regions of the world play differently

There is actually a fairly large MMOG industry in the Far East. Nothing against these guys, but their games really, really don’t appeal to a western audience.

Let’s take Aion for example. Initial reactions were that it looked pretty, you could fly in it and whatnot. For a while it was hyped. 7 hour-long queues started. But then, a few months in, the novelty fades and it starts getting reviews along the lines of:

“I want to reiterate how bland PvE is from [level] 1-25. [..] Most quests are either kill 10 rats, collect 10 rat tails, or deliver ten rat tails. Considering how boring and unrewarding the quests are, it’s just more efficient to find an even-con spawn of squishies and let your eyes glaze over (i.e., grind).”

- Brooke Pilley, A retrospective of Aion’s first month (part 2)

Yes, a grind MMO with pretty animes and wings (zomg). I don’t think it’s unexpected. It’s nothing new, but the real question is why NCSoft (who put out other, better games) didn’t learn the lesson already. Edit: I almost feel as though I want to take that back. I was going by City of Heroes, which as it seems was developed by Cryptic who later sold the IP to NCsoft.

Or for that matter, why didn’t anybody learn their lesson? Now go kill 10 rats and leave a comment.