狂い死に

It’s been a while since I have had time to write (the eternal lament of the lazy blogger), but now that the recent turmoil in my life is beginning to abate, I feel it is time to once again put finger to keyboard.

I was reading a story in this week’s Economist about another famine looming over the beleaguered people of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is like many other countries in the world; where the news is perennially bad and the disasters line up for a shot at the downtrodden. Myanmar/Burma, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe spring instantly to mind, but there are many others.

While in many cases foreign aid and/or general recovery is hobbled by the incompetence or malfeasance of local governments, this is not a reason not to give. It is not the fault of the starving child or the helpless parents that they are trapped in an unwinnable situation.

Granted, without competent or caring government, there is no immediate road to self-sustainability and that any contribution is little more than a hand-out. There is truth in the old proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime”, but it only works so long as he does not die of starvation while building the rod.

In any case, I will not belabour the point. We all know that it is our moral duty to help the poor. What that means exactly is often the real question, but today I only want to address one aspect of that. I myself, like a great man others, have often thought of giving to a charitable organization, but I am afraid that I will choose the wrong one; that my good intention will be squandered in administrative fees or by wolves in the guise of sheep.

I recently stumbled across a website that helps people with this problem. It’s called Charity Navigator. It tracks the public filings of a great many American charities and some international ones. It helps you find a charity that focuses on the issues you care about (ideological in nature or a geographic locale) and then helps you evaluate your chosen charity to see if they are worthy or your giving.

As I perused the website, I certainly came across a certain share of crooks and a bit of the bizarre (”Improving the plight of the American donkey“), I was also heartened to find some which lived up to promise of a true charity. And of course many, many in the middle. Not even charities, it seems, are immune from the tyranny of the bell curve.

In my own mind, I have settled on Direct Relief International (DRI; website). I checked them out pretty thoroughly and looks as though the numbers at Charity Navigator are accurate. A full 98.8% of your funds go towards their intended purpose. I am not sure how this will play out in terms of my own giving, but I am glad I have a place to start.

DRI and perhaps Child’s Play. While Child’s Play targets people whose circumstances are perhaps, when taken in a global view, less desperate, I sincerely believe Gabe and Tycho’s hearts are in the right place and will work to keep the charity efficient.

I do not intend to badger, guilt or cajole with this blog entry. Simply to act as a reminder that we should give and present a worthy medium for doing so.

It’s been a bit of a crazy month (illness, death in the family, changes at work, etc) so I’ve been a bit slow with the new posts. It seems everyone with a blog says that, but that’s the nature of things I suppose.

Example of the Rikaichan translator

I was at the game industry nomikai this week and a friend was looking for some good Japanese resources. Instead of hiding them away in an e-mail I thought I put them here so everyone could reference them.

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This has made something of an impact on the gaming community recently, and I felt compelled to share it with you. This is a translation of a story written by someone in Korea. It reminds me very much of my own mother. Mom, I love you.

Animal Crossing Story

Happy New Year everyone. I’ve been a little tardy on my posts lately, but it’s been a bit hectic despite the holiday. Some things are coming up that will be the subject of a future post.

I did get to play a few games over the holidays, although not as many as usual. I’ll be posting about those games separately.

Yesterday I got something of a pleasant surprise. One of my Christmas gifts from playasia.com came in late. It was Picross DS for (shockingly) the Nintendo DS. I’m glad it came as I was just on the verge of buying it; I love this kind of game.

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So today I activated my jump clone, purchased some second tier implants and made preparations to head out to my new home in nullsec. I decided to travel in a covert ops frigate that allows me to go into stealth mode, or “cloak”, whereby enemies cannot see me. This makes bypassing hostile ships a lot safer and easier. I can’t carry very much cargo with it, but as I’m just exploring right now, it’s not a major concern. That said, even with the ability to cloak, there is still risk.

Since I don’t really know the political situation out in the wilds of 0.0, I decided to base myself with Mordu’s Legion Command (MLC). Since MLC’s territory technically belongs to the game and not any player faction, it cannot be conquered. Thus it seems unlikely that I’d be stumbling into the middle of one of Eve’s many ongoing territorial wars. Basically, my hope is that Mordu’s region is a relatively peaceful area of space with enough people around to still have a functioning market.

This is not to say that it is safe. As I plotted my course from my offices near Jita, the galaxy’s predominant trading hub, to Mordu’s Legion’s Testing Facilities, I noticed something troubling on the map. The border system between Empire space and nullsec, Torrinos, had had 19 ships destroyed in the last hour and 12 pod kills (that is, the destruction of an escape pod). This was clearly a gate camp.

A gate camp is where a group of pirates sets up a no warp field around a gate and wait for an unsuspecting player to try and pass by. The no warp field prevents ships from easily getting away from the predators. It is, in essence, spiders and their web waiting for their flies. Once a “fly” stumbles into the net, the small ships will “tackle” their prey, slowing it’s escape further while the bigger, meaner ones blast it to the verge of destruction. At this point the pirates usually extort money from their victim by requiring a”toll”, or simply blow them away in order to steal cargo or because they are just jerks. With all the pod kills, I was betting on jerks.

As I approach the stargate in Torrinos, I prepare myself mentally for whatever lurks on the other side. Maybe nothing… Maybe a large group of pirates… I activate the gate and it asks me if I’m sure; the warning saying that 0.0 is lawless and the police can’t help me if I go forward. Pausing for just a moment, I hit the Accept button.

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Well, I’m super pleased tonight. As many of you know I’ve been playing an MMO for several years now called Eve Online. For the last several months I’ve been grinding to get faction (doing repetitive missions in order to curry favour with in-game governments/companies) with the Lai Dai Corporation to get access to their cloning facilities. Early this morning I finally made it and have a shiny new jump clone of my own.

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Valve has produced a number of cute videos to promote TF2 which show off it’s new visual style. I’ve got four videos for you from the “Meet the…” series after the jump.

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For those of you who don’t follow the gaming scene, one of the biggest games of the season is Team Fortress 2, which comes as part of The Orange Box by legendary developer Valve. The game is receiving a lot of well-deserved press over its art direction which brings a fresh, cartoony style to a genre which generally opts for a more drab, uninspired motif. The result delivers not only delicious eye candy, but enhances both gameplay and visual longevity as well.

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I’ve got to admit, this is a stupidly great idea. At FigurePrints’ website you can order a custom figurine of your very own World of Warcraft character.

After you’ve chosen a pose and a base, they’ll 3D print the figurine and ship it to you. The quality of the figure looks a bit dodgy, but it’s hard to tell without seeing one in real life. And really, does it matter?

With 9 million WoW fanatics players in the world today, even at $99/figure, these guys are going to make a ton of money. Heck, I hardly play WoW anymore and I want one of these.

Here is a series of ads from Japanese TV advertising Fanta soda. They’re just hilarious, particularly for all you Japanophiles out there. Mr. Shogun is my favourite followed by Mr. DJ.

Many people don’t understand the Mr. Blackbeard one. Basically there is a game out here (for kids or for drinking) called “kurohige” which literally means Blackbeard. It works pretty much as shown; there’s a pirate in a barrel and you take turns plunging the coloured swords into slots until he pops out. It’s a game of luck, but still fun (I played it in a bar in Akasaka).

P.S. If anyone finds a high-res copy of this let me know.