Here are some of the things I have done with my iPhone:

Played Colossal Cave, Aurora Feint, and Cube Runner.

Taken photos of my cats.

Ordered a pizza.

Found the nearest convenience store.

Remotely accessed my entire music collection and streamed music to my office.

Let the iPhone listen to a song I didn’t know. It identified the song and told me where I could buy it or watch the music video.

Updated my Twitter.

Kept track of an eBay auction.

I dictacted a note which then got transcribed into text on a To Do list.

Watched an anime music video.

Got directions to a concert.

Texted my friends.

Remotely controlled my Mac via VNC.

Made a few calls.

Let me preface this by saying that some of what follows may reveal me to be an arrogant, elitist asshole and I may indirectly hurt your feelings. But I need to get this off my chest.

I just got back from Origins, a huge convention celebrating all aspects of geek gaming culture. There were board games, video games, LARPs, and role-playing games going on pretty much 24 hours a day. Seems like a geek paradise. I had never been to a convention of such magnitude, so this was my first exposure to such a dense concentration of geekdom.

It started off great. It was neat to wander around and see all the cool events, play games, and wander around the dealer’s room. But a few days into it, something started to shift for me. I felt disconnected from the people I supposedly had so many common interests with. I overheard debates about Firefly, 4th Edition D&D, various movies, etc. I had no interest in participating. This growing unease culminated in a sudden realization: “I don’t *like* these people.” And by “these people,” I meant geeks. [read more… ]

Just a heads up that I will be at the Origins game faire from Wednesday to Sunday. I will likely be offline while I am immersed in a massive sea of geekdom.

Those of you on an RSS feed will not see the new Twitter widget on my site. I finally gave in to the narcissistic cry of the microblog. Witness stray thoughts caught in a net and reprocessed into bite-size nuggets. Of course, it is only a matter of time before I warp Twitter’s intended use for some deviant purpose, such as a micronovel or esoteric broadcasts from the aether.

As promised, a photo of the new ride. I dub it the Swordfish II.

My friend Cory and I decided to check out the Screenburn Arcade at the interactive portion of SXSW. We were walking through the main hall outside the auditoriums and I saw Jonathan Coulton standing there with his guitar. We walked past and then I thought “No, wait, I can’t just keep walking.”

So I backtracked and said hi, asking if he was doing any gigs during the festival. He said he had done a non-SXSW show last night (curses!) and then he was playing at some party tonight. I didn’t have a pass, so I wouldn’t be able to get in. But it was cool to meet him and chat briefly and burst out in uncontrolled fanboy gushing. I did that later. In private.

A star went out this morning. Gary Gygax is gone. He didn’t simply help create Dungeons & Dragons. He created a whole paradigm. An entire industry exists because of him. His creation has impacted just about every arena I care about.

My present course was set by Gygax when I was but a child. He, along with Will Crowther and Don Woods, set my mind alight with the possibilities of a collaborative narrative, a story that could live and grow. I became a gamer and role-player at a very young age, but, more importantly, I became a storyteller and world-builder.

Thank you, Gary. You changed my life. One day you and Dave decided it would be cool to add storytelling to wargames and make people roll funny-looking dice. And it has meant everything to me.

Thank you.

This has been a hard day for me. This is the first time I have experienced the loss of someone who was so influential in my life, someone whose contribution helped direct the course of who I would become.

For the record, if Will Crowther, Don Woods, or Roberta Williams die, don’t ask for much of me that day. If it is George Lucas, Neil Gaiman or Stephen King, I’m not even getting out of bed.

I have to give props to my homies at the GeeksOn podcast for scoring a guest appearance by Joss Whedon.

Have a listen here.

Then come check out their forums. You may even see me there.

Ryan turned me on to FriendFeed. It’s a site where you can obsessively keep track of all the various internet services, blogs, web 2.0 sites and social networking sites you and your friends use. It is basically fire and forget: you just sign up, register each service you use and it generates an amalgam feed of what you’ve been doing. Then you can add your friends and see what they have been up to.

It totally feeds into my love of lists and casual voyeurism. If you sign up, don’t forget to invite me!

I know you can go over to Aint It Cool and read Harry and Massawyrm’s more involved reviews, but I thought I’d summarize my thoughts on what I saw for those who may be interested.

Diary of the Dead - I didn’t actually see this movie as I don’t usually like zombie movies. George Romero was hanging out with the fans afterward and he seemed like a cool guy. Diary was not part of his “of the Dead” series of movies. It presupposes a world where no zombie movies exist, so when a group of college kids stumbles across a zombie outbreak, they must learn about it the hard way.

Wicked Flowers - Japanese indie film about a group of people trapped in a series of rooms. They have to watch a short play in each room and piece together the answer to a question before a time-released toxin kills them. It’s David Lynch meets “Cube.”

Time Crimes - One of my favorite films of the festival. The world premiere of Nacho Vigalondo’s first film. A clever, tightly constructed, no special effects time travel story in the vein of Primer, but more accessible. Nacho is a really great guy and he hung out for the entire festival. He told me he was very worried that no one would like his movie, but it was a festival favorite.

Aachi and Ssipak - Completely insane Korean anime about a future world where the only fuel left is human feces. Wildly original and hyperviolent.

The Entrance - Awful B movie about a cop who investigates a bunch of criminals drawn into a deadly game by a fallen angel. They actually do the scene where the rookie cop makes the late night call to the detective on the case: “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’ve been doing some digging on the Internet and there might be something to this demon thing after all!”

Spiral - Genius thriller/black comedy. It’s The Office, but Tim might secretly be a serial killer.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - Satisfying anime tale of a high school girl who discovers she can leap back and forth in time. Not as wondrous as a Miyazaki, but still well done and touching.

Southland Tales - Reviewed elsewhere. It’s growing on me.

Sex and Death 101 - Daniel Waters (Heathers) film about a man who discovers a list of every woman he’s ever had sex with as well as every woman he *will* have sex with until he dies. Very funny black comedy with a slight sci-fi element. Renewed my crush on Winona Ryder. The director and most of the cast were there, drunk out of their minds. Winona thought it was next week and didn’t show up.

Sword Bearer - Long-winded Russian film about a man who can spontaneously eject a sword blade from his palm, a la Wolverine. I was never clear on what the film was trying to be.

Moebius Redux - I was only peripherally aware of Jean Giraud’s art before this movie, but now I’m a fan. He’s the artistic genius behind the visual design of Tron, Alien, The Fifth Element and one of the founders of Heavy Metal magazine. Fantastic documentary which I highly recommend. It has been playing on Canadian and British TV recently.

Retribution - Boring J-Horror crime drama which tries to be so unlike The Grudge, The Ring, etc. that ends up being really ordinary.

The Cold Hour - One of the best sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a while. I won’t say anything about it at all. You need to walk in to this with no information. You will be richly rewarded. This is a must see.

The Orphanage - Guillermo del Toro presented the two first time writer and director of the film. It was a very atmospheric Spanish ghost story which I enjoyed. There was an especially grisly scene in the film which the writer later explained as his message to the American writer’s workshop that suggested they sanitize the film for American audiences. The message was “Fuck off.”

Death Note - I loved the anime and I was pleasantly surprised at the live action adaptation. It definitely shuffled the story around to make it work for the movie. The characters all remained intact, though: Light was an arrogant, evil bastard and L was a semi-autistic genius who ate nothing but sweets. They were showing Death Note 1 & 2 back to back, but I was too sleepy to stay for the second movie.

There Will Be Blood - I didn’t make it into this one, but apparently this was a big movie for some people. I was waiting in line and PT Anderson walked by. Two guys next to me started flipping out. I was relieved that I wasn’t missing Darabont’s the Mist. I even tried to make Anderson into Darabont with a scruffy beard.

And that was my Fantastic Fest experience. I went ahead and bought a VIP ticket for next year (already sold out) so I wouldn’t have to put up with this waiting in line for three hours and not getting in nonsense again.