4 Rather Senselessly Snowed-under

As much as I love moving along with the times, I can't see the point in RSS feeds. I mean, I understand the logistics, and see the reasoning behind why people are supposed to subscribe. But really, why would you want to?

There are eleventy-billion ways to use the internet, but for me it usually comes down to these three:

1. Keeping up to date with friends/contacts, which I usually do by checking email and Facebook (and perhaps now the people I "follow" on Blogger). Facebook has it's own "news feed" so everything I want to see is right there anyway, and Blogger seems to have the same kind of thing - listing details of the blogs that you follow on your "dashboard".
2. Looking for a specific thing, e.g. the answer to a question (usually to prove I am right), a map (so I know where I am about to go) or what's on sale at the supermarket.
3. Surfing!! Yes, actually looking around and discovering new and exciting things out there.

Perhaps my view on RSS feeds stems from the fact that I'm basically a "phaser". I'm often interested in something new - I'll really get into the swing of it, try to learn what it's all about, and imagine I'll become mistress of that particular domain; before realising I probably won't and moving onto the next new thing. That is, I go through a lot of "phases".

Take gaming, which we know I love. While gaming itself is not a phase for me, the games I play usually are - I go through long periods of playing nothing followed by equally long, but intense periods of playing the next new thing (think Korean Gamer).

To cut to the chase, I'm never invested enough in any one thing to want to read about it every damn day. Having Google Reader on my plate is just another thing to have to check, and no doubt would lead to me becoming (R)ather (S)enselessly (S)nowed-under with information I probably didn't really want in the first place.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'd rather go out there looking for information myself.

0 Book Review - Fallen

Fallen by Lauren Kate

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This one PROVES you should never judge a book by its cover!

Unfortunately it wasn't worth the time it took to read - the characters are bland and under-developed, making it hard to invest any real interest in their plight.

The first 300 pages are basically a waste of paper. They should have been used to develop some semblance of plot and to make the reader care about the characters - instead whole chapters are wasted on poor attempts at emo-pleasing simile and pointless pockets of dialogue.

If you're looking at this book thinking "Gee, I'd like to read that", go read Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzgerald instead.

You can find Fallen on the City of Gosnells' Library catalogue here.

Better yet, you can find Hush Hush on the City of Gosnells' Library catalogue here.

View all my reviews

4 Stepping away from the Console

When I’m not yelling and killing people (on the Playstation, of course!), I step away from the console and go about doing real world things™.


I figure now that I’ve bored you with a couple of posts about gaming, it’s time to show you my “softer side” with the use of Flickr. Woohoo!

One of the things I love about our digital age are the cameras (including my iPhone cam). You can take photo after photo (just clicking away like a professional photographer) and it doesn't matter if you only get one gem out of 20, because it's not costing you a thing!


Before commencing the Web 2.0 training, I already had a Flickr account, but admittedly hadn’t done much to it since opening it and adding a pic or two, so it’s great to be re-acquainted.

If you’d like to check out my photostream, you should be able to find it here.

If you’re too lazy to click on the link (and really, you should be ashamed), here’s a few of my foto-faves (yep, another new term I just coined):

Garden of Tulips - This photo was taken in Sapporo, Hokkaido - the north island of Japan  - when I was there in 2000/2001.

Cheeky skink - This little guy was in my front garden. If you look closely you can see he is poking out his tongue. Cute! He also appears to be growing a new tail.

On the road to Bunbury - I LOVE this picture! I took it with my iPhone from the car window while traveling at 100kms per hour!! Not bad, huh? It almost looks like a painting.

(P.S. As an aside to this exciting photo-post, I must apologise for the weird spacing between paragraphs and such. I am having quite a time trying to get my blog formatting the way I want it. Could this be because I am using a Mac? Or should that make no difference? I have no idea. What a noob :P)

5 Warriors AND Women

Meet Violet. This is my avatar in the game Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout is quite possibly my favourite game of all time (although, remember I’m a bit of a noob, and haven’t yet played a HUGE number of games to compare). 

There are many, many reasons why I love this game - far too many to go into right now - but one of the main reasons is that you can play a female character of your own design. Of course, as in most video games, the design choices are limited - she is still generally young, she is heavily made up and has a figure I could only dream of - but at least she is dressed for her environment (as opposed to being half-naked), and if I wanted to, I could make her older (but alas not fatter).  

When I think of the (roughly twelve) Playstation games I have played so far in my noobtastic career, I can think of two where you could actually choose to have a female avatar, and two more where you could kind of play as a female, while the main emphasis still remained on the male characters (think Madison Paige in Heavy Rain). 

Now, if we think about the statistics I quoted in my first post, the fact that there are more games with male avatar choices than females makes sense - the game developers want to appeal to a male-dominated (only just!) market. 

But why, oh why, does the majority (of this minority) of female characters have to be the half-naked, anatomical equivalents of Barbie™? Is it because male gamers won’t play a game where the female characters aren’t “hot”?

If you’re up for a bit of heavy reading, you should check out this “feature” by Shaylyn Hamm (which is actually part of her thesis on the aesthetics of female video game characters). In this “feature”, Hamm talks about the wide variety of male characters (in terms of body shape, clothing and facial structure) and the limited design of female characters over a number of different games. 

As a part of her thesis, Hamm designed two new female characters for the multiplayer game Team Fortress 2, based on the male characters already in the game (the Medic and the Heavy Weapons guy). You can see her female characters here. 

I love them.

Neither of them are “pretty” or “ugly” and they are both dressed for their environment (i.e. fully clothed!). To me, they look like real women just doing their job, and I can honestly say if given the choice, I’d rather play as these women than the Barbie doll doppelgangers of most video games today. 

What do you think of Shaylyn Hamm’s designs? If you’re a guy and the option was there to have either a male or female avatar, would you ever choose to play as a girl? Let me know! :)

7 A blog of my pwn

No, it’s not a typo. It really says pwn. I actually meant to write it that way. Really!

If you’re a gamer, you probably didn’t think twice about seeing the word pwn. You probably read it as “own” (or maybe even “pown”) and moved on without a second thought.

But for my loyal readers who don’t game (you know who you are - the ones that read my blog for my wit and eloquence ;) ), here’s what I have to say about “Gaming Linguistics”.

If you read my previous post, you already know about Noob (sometimes spelt newb and n00b), so let’s go straight to pwn.

pwn = own. What on Earth does this mean and why would anyone ever use it? 

Urban dictionary (the place you should go to find out what your 16 year old is saying) describes pwn as the “act of dominating an opponent”, which is basically the point of any multiplayer game, is it not? This has become such a common term now that I have heard people (usually a tad younger than myself) use it in regular conversation - generally, when making a joke at the expense of another. In addition, there is a television show that airs on the ABC called “Pure Pwnage” (and yes it’s spelt that way), though I am yet to watch it. 

The development of the internet and the subsequent success of gaming, in particular online multiplayer gaming, has led to a whole sub-set of linguistic terms, known as “leetspeak” - many based on mistyped words, such as teh and pwned; abbreviations, such as FTW and AFK; and the substitution of numbers for letters (e.g. leet is often spelt l33t or sometimes even 1337).

Along with the weird and wonderful abbreviations commonly used in SMSing (one of my personal favourites being “c u l8er!”), has leetspeak changed the English language forever? Or is it simply a part of the internet/gamer subculture? 

Given their use on TV and in social conversation, my money is on the former.

If you’re not up to snuff with the finer details of leetspeak, you can find a fantastic overview of the “language”, including an English to l33t translator here.

I’d love to hear your comments - why not try writing them using some l33t?

5 Noob

I'm a bit of a Noob. 

Really, it’s true. I have no idea what I’m doing half the time and I often feel like I am the last one to learn something new.  

“What’s a Noob?” you may well ask. Excellent question :) 

Wikipedia (quite possibly the best informational resource for any true Noob - though don’t  go referencing it in your academic work) describes Noob as “a slang term for a novice or newcomer, or somebody inexperienced in any profession or activity”. If you’re really interested, you can read more about Noobs and the origin of the term here.  

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a computer Noob (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I can write a blog (well, here’s hoping anyway). Heck, I even have my very own Facebook page. But, while I am reasonably computer-literate, my true Noobility (yep, I just coined that one) lies in the world of Video Gaming.  

Yes, I’m a Noob Gamer and I’m a girl. 

The story is simple - girl meets boy, boy plays video game, girl tries to stand between boy and game, boy doesn’t even notice, girl wonders what’s so good about stupid game, girl secretly plays while boy isn’t home, girl likes it and becomes noob gamer. 

Actually, it’s more common than you’d think. According to this article written in May last year, two-thirds of Australians play video games, with more than 46% of gamers being women. Long gone are the days of gamers being pimply teenaged boys with a moon tan and bad grammar. According to Kotaku (the online “Gamer’s Guide”), 2 out of 5 gamers are female and the age of the average gamer is 32. 

Sounds like me to a tee. 

So, with that in mind, and the incredible luck of being a Librarian involved in the Western Australia Public Libraries’ Web 2.0 training, I am going to try and write this blog for Gamer Librarians everywhere. I think you’ll be surprised by the relationship between the two! 

If you’re not a gamer, don’t be put off - I also love reading (did I really need to add that?), watch a lot of movies and have been told by many that I think too much (is that even possible?). So I can guarantee my blog won’t be filled with relentless gamish techno-jargon (yep, just coined that one too!). Stay tuned for news, reviews and general ramblings - and happy gaming to all!