Can I be a non-profit too?

I never like mentioning this woman's name. It is what she wants, it is what she craves, and it's the driving force behind her so-called activism. But silence of a single person means little. However, adding to the voices of dissent might do much more.

Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian has, through some horrid little loophole, turned her video-making enterprise into a non-profit organization. Rather hilariously, it falls in into class 501(c)3, where you will also find religious and anti-animal cruelty groups. Yup, her little webisode series soapbox for the evils of chauvinism in the media now groups in with PETA and the Roman Catholic Church.

This turns my stomach. Not because of the existence of her ridiculous, pointless drivel that passes as some form of revolutionary, thought-provoking series of insightful videos, but because now she has a legitimate way to pay herself a salary while at the same time hiding in a tax shelter that doubles as a criticism shield.

"Oh, you can't say that I am doing this for money. I am a non-profit, so I am not seeking money for me! It's for the project!"

The reality is that Sarkeesian exists in an echo chamber of her own creation. She repeats what she finds to be popular feminazi dogma (and before you say I am exaggerating, remember, she is in the same camp as those who see disagreement as being worse than rape threats, where men are incapable of any form of understanding of women's rights issues, and where women can get PTSD from Twitter), then makes a passively decent video to try to prove how the media pushes those ideals.

This helps no one. It's the ultimate first world problem. Women in the developed world are forced to see how sex still sells, and how some genres still have lazy tropes tossed in for the sake of justifying a character's motivations. Oh dear god, nothing worse exists in the world for women, right?

I mean, it's not like there isn't a country where there is widespread rape and murder of women, right? I mean, it's not like there is someplace where women are so marginalized by the legal system that their rape and murder isn't even really a huge crime, right? Um, have you looked at this story from India? Or, what about the Sharia, laws still enforced in some countries. I mean, that's not really important, even though it allows for honour killing of women without punishment, right?

You see, it's hard to take any of these feminazis seriously when real feminists like Margaret Atwood exist. In fact, these feminazis have poisoned the well badly enough that even she has backed off on calling herself a feminist. See, that's the problem, this over-privileged, myopic and ultimately pointless people are becoming the face people think of when the word feminist pops up. They are seen as these crazy, irrational women who want to stomp men into the turf and take control, when the reality of feminism is simply the desire that women should be seen as equals as far as human rights, pay and opportunity for advancement.

I will definitely not say that even the US is there yet. We still have a baffling pay inequity. women are still routinely seen as a second-best choice, and there are fields that could use more balance of the sexes, mainly because having another viewpoint, regardless of sex, is better than an old boy's club of people who all agree.

Validating Sarkeesian's pointless video diatribes with the self-righteous stamp of non-profit is a step in the wrong direction. It gives her a pseudo-credibility with anyone who does not think hard enough on the fact that the company, not herself, is non-profit, and that non-profits are fully able to pay staff so long as the net gain for the business is 0. The only advantage I can see is that as a non-profit, she will be required to file her income, and that will be information we, the public, have a legal right to.

Avoid Spacial, get RadioDJ instead

And now for something completely different...

Almost no one knows about this, but on the weekends I do some hobbyist level radio streaming. Nothing major, and no, no links to it will be posted. It's not that I am not proud of it, it's mainly because the stream I rent is very, very tiny from a listener limit standpoint, and posting a random link online might end in me being overloaded. Maybe someday I will do a large-scale broadcast. You know, when the lotto money comes in...

But more seriously, when I started, I wanted a premiere software to do this with. I tried out Winamp as a solution for free, but it was atrocious, and very difficult to set up. After asking around and a few searches, I found Spacial's SAM Broadcaster. The software looked great, complex for me at the time, but great. I downloaded the trial, found it met my needs, and went to for it.

The software, at the time, cost $300 and change.

Now, to ease the pain, I did it in payments. It was no worse than buying some games or any other hobby at that point. My first misgivings happened at the third payment. For some reason, they didn't attempt to pass it, and at one of my attempted streams, with people waiting on me to stream, my software stopped working due to an expired licence. I had to call it off, and contact Spacial. It's then that I found out $300 doesn't buy you shit these days.

Their support, what little of it there was, utterly sucked. They were unresponsive, took forever to actually fix the issue, and in general it was a pain even finding how to get support in the first place. It should also be noted that, at this time, they announced that their software was getting a new version... which I could get for $50 for a limited time!

Given that I was already having issues, and the only bonus I saw was Windows 8 compatibility, I passed. I was not about to get suckered in for more cash when they had shown a blatantly bad amount of service thus far.

Flash forward to present day.

I just bought myself a fancy new rig... with Windows 8. Now, I had thought that they would at least patch or give a work around for their software to run under Windows 8. I tried contacting their support to see what, if anything, they would do. Shockingly, their support had gotten WORSE. Before, you could chat live with them. Now, it just drops you into creating a service ticket. However, nowhere on their site can you view the ticket. It just goes off into the ether, never to be seen again... until they email you a survey about how you liked the service you didn't receive.

On top of this, that $50 offer was gone like smoke. Instead, now they ask a whopping $179 for the same patch to Windows 8. Not anywhere have I seen it have a single new feature that is not already in the software, this is strictly compatibility.

Fed up, I tweeted at a DJ resource twitter account if they had heard good things about Virtual DJ. VDJ is a far more complex remix software. It is software I'd love to know how to use someday, but it vastly outstrips my basic knowledge today. It, like SAM, costs $300 In way of reply, a follower of the same account, Gary, tweeted that I should check out RadioDJ instead.

It was uncertain of this, some random twitter person linking me to some odd domain, but I went anyway. I am so glad I did. What I found is a software I wish I had found 2 years ago. RadioDJ is, in essence, SAM 2.0. It has more powerful automation features, a much more reliable stream management software that allows for dead air (something SAM most assuredly does not), it's light, fast, powerful... All the things SAM is not. The best news: It's free. That's right, 100% no charge, zip, zero, nada. There is a donate button (which I happily used once I had full knowledge the software worked), but aside from that, no money is required at all.

And the support, my word the support. This is a one-man operation, but he is surrounded by fans (for obvious reasons). He still does support as much as he can, and all his user support one another.

There are downsides, small ones. There's no installer, so you need to be used to dealing with software like that. You need to install the database yourself (SAM does use a database, but installs one for you), and you have to install your own streaming software. However, all these steps, with links and videos and so many supportive users, are provided right there on the website.

Spacial's homepage says you can be up and running in minutes. The same goes for RadioDJ, except you will still have money in your wallet! The learning curve may be more steep with RDJ, but for a free piece of software, it's worth the invested time. I only wish I had that $300 to give to Marius, the developer of RDJ. He deserves it far more than Spacial

Why it is wrong to not have female assassins in Assassin's Creed: Unity

First, let me start this off by saying that no, I'm not going to cry sexism. It's the low hanging fruit of this discussion, and really it isn't the reason why there are no women in Assassin's Creed: Unity. I know, many blogs and commentary pieces are going to beat that horse until the meat is mashed into the turf.

No, the real issue here is that it showcases UbiSoft's slide back from creative and diverse developer to shovelware distribution house. Assassin's Creed, as a franchise, has been bent over the table and thoroughly used in the most foul of ways to make a buck. And while there have been shining moments, overall each new entry has gone further from the original concept of the game in order to include other elements to be more "popular", or to have "broader appeal."

It's the same road that led them to turn Deux Ex into an app, rather than producing a sequel worthy of the series. It's the concept that the game would do better if we do what everyone else is doing. It's the creative void that has sucked the innovation and fun out of gaming, and leading us to have cloned franchises that run concurrent sequels year after bloody year.

So why would women be excluded? Because, quite literally, they were too busy tweaking the male characters in order to cater to whom they see the game appealing. They wanted to allow customization, which is shorthand for "We need a way to squeeze micro-transactions in here". Rest assured, there will be a customizable appearance system where part will be unlocks, and the rest either incentives for pre-order or purchasable content.

I am willing to bet that you will have every race of man available, with tons of different outfits, paperdoll style, to pick from. And during this process, they either considered the frat boy survey that was used build buzz around the time games like Remember Me and The Last of Us came us, or, more likely, simply decided to invest in a bankable idea.

Everyone likes the Assassin's Creed visual style. Cosplayers the world over do it up. Hoodies are sold by the dozen bearing the look. It's marketable, and gives you a great way to give all your distributors exclusive content without a ton of effort. However, doing double duty for the art department wasn't priority, it would lower the margins some, and not gain much money.

It's games as a business trumping games as a medium. That's the true evil. It's the same reason a gay lead won't do for an UbiSoft games. In an interview, Lucien Soulban, an openly gay writer for UbiSoft Montreal, stated that we won't see gay heroes "... for a while, I suspect, because of fears that it'll impact sales." There it is. Not a bias because gay heroes are icky. Because it could cost them dollars and cents at the cash.

That's what this is. Not sexism, it's that good old bugbear of packaged goods guys running the show, rather than a creative, open mind wanting to experiment and risk in the medium. So the next time a feminist says that gaming is sexist and mentions UbiSoft, correct them. This isn't about women, it's about money.

To our lost gift

These are words that you will never read, for we will never get the chance to teach you what they mean. Those same eyes will never see the joy that learning you existed did create. You were a dream come true, a wish plucked from the heavens made flesh. Neither of us understand why you could not stay, and we both bear the weight of that sadness.

We cannot be sure when life begins, but we do know when it ends. Just know that a house full of love awaits you if you choose to come back.

8bitMMO Review

Have you ever wondered what an MMO would look like if it were made in the Nintendo/Sega Master System era? Well, keep wondering. This isn't that game. Crated by Robby Zinchak, 8BitMMO was apparently hailed by a couple indie game cons that I have never heard of as being good.

It decidedly isn't.

First, the graphics of the world look in theme, but the actual characters look utterly cheap. The controls are horrible. You move with either the WASD combo, or via the arrow keys, and attack with the space bar. Here is the thing, your character only ever faces left or right, and  only marginally. And your sword attack direction is in the last faced direction. This makes combat problematic. The "animation" for the game looks and feels cheap.

Hailed as a 100% player built world, oh dear god does it ever look like it. Towns are half finished and devoid of any NPCs, there are a few enemy generators which spawn some supposedly humourous enemy types (one styled after Yahtzee Crowshaw's avatar for his videos, for example), but there is virtually no content.

There are about 4 actual quests before you are dropped into the hell that is player generated quests. These quests amount to wandering around looking for a reward block which you click on to complete it, then you run back for another. Depending on the nastiness of the individual, the warp to there can be safe, or just a death trap. And I mean a literal death trap, placed on spikes that insta-kill you, for the lulz I suppose.

Now, with a dedicated, motivated community like the Minecraft one, which is obviously where the creators mind was, this could be a fantastic game. In reality, combine free with player creation, and suddenly your game becomes an utter garbage heap of useless, time wasting crap.

What makes this a special kind of hell though is the massive amount of lag. Supposedly there is a player versus player option, but I didn't bother to try it. The game lags so hard that you frequently warp across the screen, or keep moving long after you stop. You freeze up, you fall off walkways, and in general have a terrible time.

The final straw is the economy of the game. You need gold to build. God comes from questing, which we have established is hell. It also comes, slowly from killing enemies. OR if you purchase the game... Yea, it is one of those brilliant, pay for fun style games. So afraid of the big guys using this, we forgot the little guys can too.

While the horrible lag issues do showcase why MMOs need steady funding to be viable, this is not the game to fund. The player created content idea sounds great on paper, given how player created content has really revolutionized different games, even creating a entirely new genre of games. However, without a guiding hand or structure from a dedicated creator, what results is what resides in this game: an utter goddamned mess.

When Film Critics Attack

So, recently, I was on Twitter, when Bob Chipman, better known on the Internet as MovieBob, retweeted this article by Devin Faraci. In it, he makes light of the backlash that the Wolf of Wall Street was made. Also, he refers to another blog/letter, saying, and I quote, "I can call you Marty and Leo, right? It's all the rage with dummies penning open letters to you guys."

Now, I love a good laugh, and the article was actually funny. I figured the linked article was someone missing the point that, even if the film may somewhat aggrandize the lifestyle of the scumbags the movie is based on, it will also condemn them. I figured that the author of the piece missed that.

Boy, could I not be more wrong.

The linked article was written by Christina McDowell. The name shouldn't sound familiar, but her former last name, that of her father, Prousalis should. He was a former associate of the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort. In fact, in his trial, Belfort was supposed to be a key witness, but his testimony was silenced to avoid further revelations of even deeper corruption.

No, this was not a critic of the film, it was a critic of the morally bankrupt Hollywood looking to take a horrible slice of many people's lives, film it in glorious technicolour, and then go about collecting accolades for being "brave" and "risktakers." She was attacking the fact that Fox Pictures paid the Wolf 1 million dollars to obtain the rights to his story, even when he had a judgement outstanding for the $110.4 million he stole from those he conned.

And yet, she is the "dumb" one.

I saw this as a total lack of class. I called him on it via Twitter, and their responses were.... well....

@the_moviebob @pawkeshup it's pretty clear she didn't even see the movie, so she's a dummy for going out w/ a public statement like that
— Devin Faraci (@devincf) December 28, 2013

@Pawkeshup @devincf no, she "deserves" it for her, frankly, DUMB level of cinematic understanding.
— Bob Chipman (@the_moviebob) December 28, 2013

Then one of their friends jumped into the extended conversation with this gem:

@the_moviebob @Pawkeshup @devincf accusing Marty and Leo of trying to "profit" off of her misery is just the lowest, most ridiculous thing.
— Andy Crump (@agracru) December 28, 2013

Oddly, when I reminded all these fine gentleman that the villain of the film, the Wolf himself, had actually profited yet again even in just obtaining the rights (forget any other ways he could parlay his new-found resurgent infamy into something more), they all fell oddly silent.

You see, before you start preaching about how people don't "get" cinema, you should first realize that when you talk about a movie based on real events, featuring people who have living relatives and, in this case, living victims, sometimes you should show some goddamn base level of respect when they object to paying and glorifying a piece of scum like the Wolf of Wall Street.

Edit:

As of this writing, the movie was already nominated for an award and had drawn about $22 million, not yet clearing the $100 million production costs. It would be nice to see it stagnate at around the $50 million mark, making it a loss for the studio overall.

Edit #2:

Well the Twittering continued between myself and Andy Crumb. And while I think we disagree on some points over the film and what it could me, I can say that from my side I do respect his insights and think that, honestly, he can at the very least see mine.

This movie, as even he said, is going to start a civil war of words, and that might be the best thing that can come from it. The one thing that we both do agree on is that anyone who comes out of this film feeling as though they want to be Belfort, they should immediately feel ashamed to lower themselves to the level of scum he truly is.

August 27th, 2013, at 12:50 pm

That is the day and time that the woman who brought me into this world, left it.

It has taken some time to come to grips with it. Even today, it doesn't feel like it is real. Just this summer, my mother came here to Ottawa to visit with me. She was so alive, so much herself. Yet I could see the years had worn her down. She no longer could walk as long, and had a huge bag of pills to maintain various health conditions.

And I was never under any delusions that she would be around for all of my life. I am the youngest child, one had later in her life, so I knew this day would come. And yet, my mother seemed to be invincible. I guess that’s how most children feel about their mother. But I had good reason.

My home life wasn’t the greatest when my parents were together. My father was a poor drunk, and free with his fists where it concerned my mother. When my mother needed to have dentures put in (rather early in life), my dad had taken her to the dentist to remove her teeth. He only removed half and told her to wait for that to heal. My mom, fearing my dad would not take her back, decided that was a wrong answer.

With a pair of pliers, my mother removed her own teeth. Re-read that. She removed her own teeth. This is the stuff my mother was made of. She was iron, larger than life, and twice as strong as anyone I’ve ever known.

As a child, the tip of her little toe was smashed off, leaving bone exposed. What did mom do? Trimmed it like a toenail. Even at a young age, she had strength enough to do what needed doing, and without sadness or misery.

My mom walked to the gallows that was her life with a sneer and a quip. She laughed often once she was on her own, and had a perverse sense of dark humour I fully inherited. There was little that intimidated or scared my mom. My mom left my dad when I was just 5, but when I was just finishing 4^th grade, I wanted to go to live with her.

I remember our little apartment. It wasn’t much. It was cold in the winters, hot in the summers, and the wind cut straight through it all year round. We did our best to combat it. At first my mom made sure I was warm under a blanket she hand-crocheted herself. Then, later, when we went to a larger apartment in the same drafty house, she got me a sleeping bag to help keep me warm.

She always bought me cupcakes when I asked. She baked cookies when I didn’t, so we always had something nice to nibble on. She did her best to always have good food for my lunches, and make nice meals for our dinner, even if I was a finicky eater back then. She worked a job she hated, and was far from our home just to make ends meet. And she always made sure that I knew I was loved.

She wasn’t perfect. She smoked, which in the end help speed her death. But beyond that, she was just human. She had her flaws, but she always tried to do her best for my siblings and me. She didn’t let life beat her, she kept fighting.

When I left there, Mom actually picked up and moved south, sick of the winters in New York State. She moved down south, and of all things became a security guard. My tiny, just over 5 foot mom, a security guard. I somehow find that thought both frightening and funny. Frightening mainly because my mom could be quite intimidating for a short little thing.

She kept working down there, eventually shifting from guard work to a packing plant. And it was on her way home from that one night that she lost control of her car, and slammed into a guard rail.

She impressed the doctors by surviving the initial crash, one they said that would have killed people a third her age. But then, her smoking came back to haunt her. Her heart was ravaged from years of a bad diet and smoking. It wound up being the true cause of her demise. A bitter irony, a heart that suffered and gave to others didn’t have enough to save herself.

She will never see me remarried. She will not see if I have any children. She never got to physically meet my fiancée, or see how happy she makes me. She will not be there for me ask advice from. And never again will I be able to hug her and tell her I love her.

When I was flying back to Canada, I was sitting by a window looking out where the plane would come. On the floor, I found a bobby pin, like my mom always used to put up her hair. I’d like to think it was there for a reason.

Thank you Mom, I miss you. You will live on in my heart.