Social motivation

I'm interested in a lot of social / relational things about the Net. My personality is such that I desire deep connection with people. I have always been somewhat impatient with shallow polite conversation. I want to know what deeply moves a person. What makes them tick.

What things do they fear the most, in their darkest moments? What things do they love the most and what do they do to pursue what they love? What stops them from that pursuit of what they love?

What has been their greatest hurts, their highest moments of greatness? What's the best thing someone ever did for them? What's the best thing they ever did for someone else? What gets them through the daily grind of life? What hopes do they hold for the future? What do they hope to look back on at the end of their lives?

The questions in my mind about people I meet is endless.

I'm a deep dreamer, and want to look deeply into the souls of those around me. To connect. To understand. To find understanding.

How does this apply to gaming? Well, I find the social conventions of normal real life relationships often make it difficult to establish the sort of connection I'd like. We wear so many masks. We have such busy lives. We are often shy, fearful, uncertain and self-protective. We are hurt and walled up behind barriers of emotion or memory. We are different. We are sometimes blind to the hearts of others or not empathetic enough to see how someone else is the same as ourselves in some way.

Online, and in the past when I have corresponded in long-distance paper letters, there is the possibility for more. More trust. More feeling of safety due to a buffer of time and/or distance. More willingness to offer understanding. More effort expended into the relationship, because it takes effort to communicate by writing your thoughts, and when you take the time to do it, you are making an investment. And so you tend to be forgiving, in order to protect the investment you've made in the relationship. Isn't that odd? I find it fascinating.

For a while now, the biggest barrier for me has been lack of time. I haven't spent time online around the types of people I usually get along best with (the creatives and thinkers - whether artists, musicians, writers, programmers, gamers/game developers, geeks in general, etc).

Deciding to start gaming with TF2 has been a w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l experience for me personally. More than just the entertainment of the game. It has been a fascinating place to observe social interactions in a gaming environment, especially because Valve has created such a special environment with TF2. They have put great thought into making it something that ENCOURAGES teamwork, working together with strangers, establishing rapport and communication and ability to connect in a short time with others of such varied traits.

I realize not everyone is wired the same as I am. My husband never talked about the social aspects of the game as anything special or a reason to play the game. I think that's a guy thing (if I were to make free with a gender stereotype).

Even if you think of it as "just a game", take a moment and ask yourself about some of your most satisfying moments. Was it when someone noticed your contribution to the team? When you found a teammate who was willing to work together to destroy a difficult target? When you dominated the stats and several people friended you after a match?

What are some of the things you like about the social aspects of TF2?

iPod Shuffle without iTunes

The Hubby surprised me with a wonderful treat the other day: an iPod Shuffle. Cute little thing, metallic lime square made to clip on your clothes unobtrusively and deliver audio-yumminess directly in your ear. YES.

So I settled down next to the laptop to make it go. We have a thing against iTunes in our household, so the search began: how to set the thing up to play music without iTunes.

It was actually pretty easy once I found the right pieces. Here's what's worked for me (for anyone interested):

• the script below requires Python, so download and install that first
• then run rebuild_db

The instructions on the rebuild_db page made it smooth as cheesecake. Except that I missed one little detail the first time around. When they say "initialize your iPod with iTunes (that is, give it a name, and enable its usage as a mass storage device)", I missed the part about enable it as an MSD. Which led me along the following rabbit trail:

I gave it a name, but then I couldn't access it via drive letter. It wouldn't show up in an explorer window for me to copy files.

The iTunes interface is highly self-serving, which makes it bad interface design, imho. They push a lot of propaganda at you, so once in the main window for my device, I had to click 2-3 buttons to say "No, I don't want to register" and then "Cancel" JUST to reach the normal view of my iPod contents. It's the sort of grief that pushes folks to give up their privacy to registration just to shut the thing up. Anyway...

Once there, you click the tab at the top for Settings. Towards the bottom is the checkbox for "Enable disk use".

Side note: I'm not sure about the songs vs. data slider bar. It seems logical to me that you'd want to give it more room for data, since iTunes probably only counts "songs" as songs that it is managing. So that's what I did -- set the slider for more data and only left room for about 10 songs to iTunes (just in case I ever find a CD in iTunes format that I really want and don't have time to convert it before sticking it on the iPod). If anyone knows better about the data vs. songs, let me know; it's just a guess on my part.

This all did the trick, and I was able to copy my .mp3 files onto the iPod and they played perfectly. Awesome.

Another nice feature: the rebuild_db "smart shuffle" feature (part of the script by default in recent versions) is a better random than the default shuffle. Have you ever been annoyed by "random shuffles" that keep hitting the same song or album, or don't ever seem to hit others? This one is better!

A little more tweaking of the Python script (they have some sweet little options for folks that like to listen to audio books or lectures), and everything is now just the way I like it.

Beautiful.

It's stuff like this that keeps me saying, "Ah, technology" (to the tune of "Ah, amore!").

What cool little tech hacks have made your life more enjoyable lately?

Mood: Expectant

For me, starting to play Team Fortress 2 was a bit like having children.
(but only a bit)
(in fact, just enough for literary purposes and no more)
The first time you do it just because your friends seem to be enjoying it, and it's just expected that some day you'll join them. ;-P

You look forward to it, but perhaps with a little apprehension at trying something new. You're not sure if you'll like it.

At first, it's really hard. There's a lot of "firsts", new things that you've never experienced before (if you haven't played similar games). You ache in places you never ached before (even though I used a wrist brace right from the start!). You stumble around figuring stuff out. You make some friends along the way (hopefully) who show you the ropes when you need it most.

The game grows on you over time. Becomes more familiar, a bit easier, more enjoyable. Less time thinking about how to play and more time just playing. And then one day, you experience a tough firefight -- and you push -- and you survive! And you realize that it's all gonna be easier after this. You've gotten past the newbie stage and are doing pretty good.

It's an awesome feeling.

I've played predominantly medic in my TF2 time. It's extremely satisfying to me to play a class that is generally needed (it's rare I find a team with too many medics already there, although there are some maps that make medic less useful or a lot less fun). I love providing ubers to my team. It satisfies both my desire to watch things go "KA-BLOOEY!" and my desire to save lives.

But after a while, playing ONLY medic wasn't enough. I realized it was time for something new. Going back to the "having kids" metaphor, it was time for an addition to the family. And even though I knew it would involve a lot of work, there wasn't the same nervousness as the first time. I knew how to walk, how to strafe, how to shoot -- I could "carry" this child easily, remembering the first time.

The frustrations and times when it just seems impossible won't be so bad knowing that they will pass. And someday, perhaps, I will see my name as number three (or one!) on the game stats -- and this time it wouldn't be as medic.

It will be as...

Spy.

After some conversations with other players to figure out if I really wanted to try this reputedly difficult class, I've begun my spy training (thanks, Vision!). I can tell it's gonna take some work. But I have several friends (and have encountered many "enemy spies" in-game) who inspire me to think spy will be really fun once I get the hang of it.

Ah, the glow of an expectant woman.
(Sorry, guys, for the woman-centric reproductive metaphor... Kaliki, you probably understand)

What future TF2 moment do you look forward to right now?
(an achievement? new weapon? doing something amazing that isn't even listed as an achievement?)

"Enthusiasm" is my middle name!

People that know me well know that I get inordinately excited about the littlest things -- mostly because I believe the universe is made up mostly of little things. Little things that come together in marvelous ways to create miraculous things like life, the universe and everything. Forty-two! And thanks for the fish!

So my enthusiasm for Team Fortress 2 is partly a reflection of that innate enthusiasm for life and its details. I tend to see more miracles in simple things than other people I know, and often draw conclusions that are appreciated by a smidgen (or less) of the population of the world. But that's okay. Blogs are a niche life form, after all.

One of the fun things about TF2 is that it encourages people to get excited about something. Excited about defending the point. Capturing the point. Popping the uber and whacking stuff. Winning the round. Taking the intelligence. (And even if you're playing with a bunch of silent gamers, Valve made sure that when you win the round, you hear people shouting and clapping over the victory. Thanks, Valve!)

Some other little things that keep me laughing in TF2:

• people's names (screen names / Steam ID)


• when people burst into spontaneous singing


• quoting various "cult classic" movies at appropriate moments


• the taunts and quotes of the various character classes


• getting sent to respawn by my husband (when we don't get on the same team)

As you can see, it can be the simplest things. It sometimes takes a bit of work to make a habit of looking on the bright side and milking every last drop of enjoyment out of life. So give it a little practice now:

What little things in TF2 make you smile?
Come on, don't be silent bob -- leave a comment!

testing one, two, three

Hey, guys and gals!

*buttercup clears her throat and steps to the front of the 12-step meeting*

My name is buttercup, and I love Team Fortress 2.

I'm pretty unassuming in the game, as I still feel like a bit of a newbie (only been playing since the tail end of August 2008), but there's a lot going on in my head. I suspect it's the same for you. I'm hoping this blog might become a place we can chat a bit and exchange thoughts, ideas and tell the tales of our best (and worst) moments in the game.

So, excelsior! Read on and don't forget to comment (or email me) with YOUR thoughts on life, the universe and TF2!