People often talk about “work/life balance,” which really boils down to prioritizing your time. For a lot of creative professionals, it’s more of a “work/life/pet projects” balance. There’s only so much time available to spend on that third category, and even within that, priorities are rethought and shuffled around. Some don’t make it past the shuffling.

Aliso the Geek is a casualty of that shuffle, at least for now. Just as the past three months have demonstrated, I won’t really be adding new posts. I will still be moderating comments and replying to them, and all my content will still be here for reference.

Will I pick up this blog again in the future? I don’t know. That’s my honest answer.

I won’t be disappearing from the blogosphere, though. My husband and I are starting Two in Queue, a blog for gaming couples. It will have game reviews, opinion pieces, discussions about games or the gaming lifestyle—all coming from a couples or co-op point of view.

Two in Queue hasn’t launched yet, but you can sign up for the mailing list to be notified when it does.

One final note: A profound thanks to all my readers for helping to make my blog a success. It has been an awesome experience.

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Transmit is my favorite FTP client for the Mac. It has been ever since I bought Transmit 3 back in 2006. Well folks, the day has finally come for Transmit 4! I won’t be commenting on its features at all—for that, you can go to their website—but I will be pointing out their awesome new app icon. Even that got an upgrade!

Transmit 3’s icon:

Transmit 4’s icon:

Vroom vroom!

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In my quest to learn Dvorak and reduce my wrist and hand pain, I ordered a TypeMatrix keyboard (in Dvorak) last week. It arrived today! I’ve only been using it for an hour or so, but I figured a blog post would be a good way to practice on it and give my first impressions.

The Good

• One of the two distinguishing features of this keyboard is the alignment of the keys: they are in a grid instead of being staggered. This means your fingers aren’t reaching up and down at an angle. This is making touch-typing in Dvorak a lot less annoying, because it’s easier to find keys outside of the home row.
• It looks awesome. It’s small, sleek, and very “techy”-looking.
• It’s well-made. I can’t attest to its durability over time, but it feels very high-quality. The keys are sturdy, the frame is sturdy… nothing about it feels flimsy.
• The key presses are somewhere between an old-school keyboard and a laptop keyboard—low-profile keys with a somewhat deep press. Takes a little getting used to, but feels pretty comfortable after a while.
• It worked out-of-the-box on my Mac. No drivers, no hassle.

The Bad

• Some of the really customized keys—like the Calculator, Mail, Browser, and Desktop keys—don’t work on the Mac. I can’t figure out a way to make them work, because the computer doesn’t even register them as key presses.
• There are no little retractable “feet” to make it sit at an angle. I’ll need to get a wrist pad in order to really use it comfortably.

The Neutral

• The other big difference this keyboard has from all others is the placement and size of common functional keys, like Backspace, Enter, and Shift. The Backspace and Enter keys are in the center of the keyboard, so you press them with your index fingers instead of your pinky. I really like the concept for two reasons: one, your index fingers are stronger so having them in the center makes sense. Two, it forces me into reaching for keys with the proper hand. Hitting the “Y” key [on a QWERTY keyboard] with my left index finger now means I’m hitting the Backspace key. It’s messing me up a little, but hey, I should be using my right hand for that key anyway.
• The Shift keys are tall rectangles instead of long ones, which means I’m much more likely to hit it when I aim for it and I’m not looking at the keys.
• I had to switch the Alt and Command keys in my System Preferences so they’d be in more familiar positions. This is also the only way to get Command keys on both sides of the keyboard instead of only the left.
• The non-staggering of the keys means I’m hitting a lot of wrong keys in the top row. I’ll get used to it, but it’s a learning curve nonetheless.

I bought the Dvorak package that included a clear skin for the keyboard, and also a black QWERTY skin. The skins fit perfectly on the keyboard and stay in place while I’m typing. The texture on them is really nice, too.

There is a one-button switch to go between QWERTY and Dvorak, with a little indicator light so you know which mode it’s in. If you’re on a Mac, switching to Dvorak on the keyboard and in the System Preferences makes the key mappings all messed up, so be sure to do just one or the other.

So far, I really like this keyboard. I’ll write another review with my final conclusions after I’ve been using it for a week or so. In the meantime, wish me luck on learning Dvorak! It’s slow going so far, but I’m improving…

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Need I say more?

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When I got my first stick shift, we (my family) had to sell my automatic to afford it. My only option for driving, then, was the new stick shift I hadn’t learned yet. I sucked at it at first, but I quickly got a lot better. It’s like learning a foreign language by living in a foreign country. And so begin my adventures in learning Dvorak.

The chain of events leading to my decision to become even geekier started with one of my favorite pasttimes: aimlessly surfing the web. I came upon this blog post that talked about the Dvorak keyboard layout being a much faster & more efficient way to type. Well, I like efficiency, so the next logical step was (of course) to drop all plans for the night and learn it. I followed his link to DVzine.org and printed out their comic about the history of keyboard layouts, and if there was any convincing left to be done, that did it.

Next I decided to pop the keys off my keyboard and rearrange them, which turned out to be a bad idea, because I bricked my keyboard in the process. (I’m typing this on a spare.)

Anyway, a couple of typing tutorials later, I got bored, so here I am. I’ve been typing this entire post in Dvorak, and I’m cruising along at a whopping 10 words per minute. But just like being forced into driving a manual transmission by losing my automatic, I know that this is the quickest way to learn it. Wish me luck!

Oh, and if you do decide to follow in my footsteps, don’t brick your keyboard!

Update: The hardest part of this is definitely keyboard shortcuts. I never realized how much I looked at the keyboard for those.

Another update: Keyboard shortcuts can be saved! There’s a second Dvorak option in Mac OS 10.5 (it’s one of four options in 10.6) called Dvorak – Qwerty that converts the keyboard to Qwerty when the command key is held down. I will probably try to get used to the keyboard shortcuts in Dvorak eventually, but in the meantime, I won’t accidentally quit an application when trying to cut and paste. Hooray!

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I’m blogging from 30,000 feet again, on my way home from NYC. I feel like I got to see a lot more of the city compared to the last time I was here. Even though I was very unfamiliar with the subway, or had never been to Little Italy before, I recognized buildings and details everywhere I went—recognized them from video games.

Every time I walked down the street of a new neighborhood, I had recollections like:

I remember jumping off of that building as the Hulk.

I remember beating up a SWAT officer on that roof.

I remember jumping through that plate-glass window.

I remember dodging obstacles from on top of the subway train.

Of course, most of the games I would think of were not actually set in New York. They were set in fake New Yorks, or fake Chicagos, or fake San Franciscos. One game in particular resonated more than any other, though, for two reasons: One, it was actually set in New York City, and two, it was the game that started my life as a gamer. Can you guess? It was Deus Ex.

I have nothing but the fondest of memories for that amazing game. It was my first time playing a first-person shooter, it was my first time playing an RPG, it was my first time pretending to be asleep so my parents would go to bed and I could get up and play until 4:00 AM. It is undoubtedly the game that made me a gamer.

On my first trip to New York last year, I actually got to see Liberty Island and Battery Park. Walking through them was like taking a trip through time to when I was a teenager, gaming on my first computer. Not my family’s first computer, but my first computer. It was in my room, it had my stuff on it, and no one else used it. I named her Doris.

But I digress.

Strolling through Battery Park last year, I remembered what my Cherry Coke tasted like and how the glow of the CRT monitor felt on my face in the dark bedroom. I could practically see Denton in front of me, walking around with his GEP gun (or crossbow, depending on which playthrough it was). I pictured the guards walking on their pre-programmed paths, and I remembered where the great hiding spots were. It was really an amazing feeling, and one I will never forget.

This year was similar, but because the games I’ve played since were not actually set in New York, the memories weren’t always as vivid. Still, scenes from Mirror’s Edge were playing back in front of me, even though the buildings in that city were all a stark, perfect white. I was looking for red pipes to run towards… but then I realized I was walking around with Damian and Neal, we were on our way to lunch, and I wasn’t an Asian free-runner.

Am I too much of a gamer? I don’t think so. Others might disagree, but I always remind them that I don’t live in a basement OR drink Mountain Dew.

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I’m on a plane to New York right now, along with my boss, Damian. (It’s his birthday today, by the way. Happy Birthday, Damian!) We’re headed out there on a project for Brave New Media in which I’ll be making a custom Flash app for USB drives. I’d say more, but I’m not sure what I can reveal about it on my personal blog, and the person who would be able to answer that is asleep in his seat across the aisle.

Some of you might have seen my posts about PAX appear and then vanish. Well, PAX was another Brave New Media trip, and my blog posts needed to come down until after the blog posts for the client were live. It was my mistake. However, those blog posts are live now on BlueberryMuffinTops.com, so I can post mine again. I will be back-dating them to match up with the actual days they cover. Days 2 and 3 aren’t written yet, so those will (hopefully) be coming sometime this weekend.

I won’t be having much downtime while I’m here, because like PAX, this trip is filled with lots of really fun work. In the time I do have, I’m going to do—you guessed it—daily blog posts! As with past trips, I’ll be posting in parallel on the Brave New Media blog.

That’s it for now. Look for my Day 0 blog post tomorrow morning!

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You can catch all my PAX coverage here or over at the Brave New Media blog.

I expected Wil Wheaton’s opening keynote to be pretty good. Really good, even. I didn’t expect it to be utterly fantastic! He spoke about his experience being a gamer, growing up playing D&D, and how it all impacted his life. It was interwoven with brilliant humor, some digs at Jack Thompson, and lots of gaming references for the enjoyment of the hundreds of geeks in the audience. By the end of his speech, I felt more proud than I ever have to be a gamer.

My favorite part of the entire thing was his example of being emotionally invested in game narrative: Dragon Age. I won’t repeat what he said since it contained some major spoilers, but for anyone who may have seen/heard/read the keynote… damn. It almost brought me to tears.

It was followed up by some hilarious Q&A with Gabe and Tycho (a.k.a. the Penny Arcade guys, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins). The best part was when someone decided to narrate an impromptu round of Action Castle and start Gabe and Tycho off in a cottage with a fishing pole:

(Sorry about the shaky camera; I was laughing really, really hard.)

For those who have no idea what is going on in that video, it’s a nod to the old text-based adventure games that were notoriously picky and repetitive.

After the Q&A, it was time for some dinner (which meant I wolfed down a tuna croissant sandwich from Starbucks) and then time to walk in the way-too-cold-for-no-jacket weather (with no jacket on) to the nearest Best Buy. As you can see from the quality of the video above, I was using the standard lower-end Flip camera (instead of the HD version I was supposed to bring with me). I needed a Flip Ultra HD badly enough to speed-walk through downtown Boston with my eyes trained on the blue dot on my iPhone’s GPS.

I got back to the convention center just in time for my next panel, Bringing Up the Next Generation of Geeks. The panel consisted of the assistant editor and five contributing writers to Wired.com’s GeekDad blog. I walked up to the theater 15 minutes before the panel was supposed to start, and they were just announcing that it was down to standing room only. I weaved my way through the crowd and grabbed a spot on the back wall. That panel was fantastic, and it was filled with great “oh that’s so damn cute” anecdotes of little mini-geeks. It also addressed some great topics like how technology affects kids growing up today, and how gaming can be a tool to make kids more well-rounded and cultured rather than less.

I left that panel early to make it to the Girls & Games panel, which had a line longer than that of the Wil Wheaton keynote. The panel got started late, and I barely made it in the line before it got cut off at max capacity. The panel itself was, unfortunately, pretty disappointing. It was much more dry and boring than what I expected.

Anyway, after that, I decided to spend my final 45 minutes in the convention center waiting in line to buy a t-shirt. I followed that up with a chocolate ice cream cone from a nearby Ben & Jerry’s, and came back up here to dump my video and write this blog post. Now it’s time for bed!

Tomorrow is the big Blueberry Muffin Tops/Joystiq breakfast. Woot!

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Today I arrived in Boston, MA, where I will be heading to PAX tomorrow!

It was fairly entertaining to watch dozens of people in hoodies and black jeans file into the fancy hotel lobby today. There are gamers everywhere! I didn’t think so many of them would look like the stereotypical gamer, but I can’t help spotting them from a mile away. Amongst all the hipsters on the streets during the day, the tourists on the Freedom Trail, and the business people leaving work at 5:00 PM, the gamers stick out like a sore thumb.

On our trek down the Freedom Trail today, there was one thing in particular I enjoyed a lot. We caught a few minutes of a highly entertaining street performance:

It’s late here… feels like 10:30 to me, but I’m not that lucky. One hour makes a lot of difference when you have to get up before 7:00 AM. Check back tomorrow night for coverage of PAX Day 1!

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KA-POW!

HTML 5 rocks my socks. Now my blog is built with sock-rockin’ code of the future! I wanted a fresh look to go along with the new code, and also to go along with my trip to PAX in two days!

That’s right, I’m off to my first ever gaming conference. What kind of gamer has never been to a gaming conference before? Me. I’m beyond excited… I’m bouncing off the walls. I’ll even be armed with a Flip camera to record all the awesomeness.

Just like my trip to Big Nerd Ranch, this trip will be covered both here and at the Brave New Media blog. I leave on Thursday, which I’m dubbing Day 0 of the PAX Extravaganza. Check back Thursday night (or early Friday morning) for my first PAX post!

In the meantime, head to blueberrymuffintops.com to read about the team I’m going to PAX with.

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