Monthly Archive for February, 2008

Game Politics

I was poking around my Xbox 360’s blog on 360voice.com and  I noticed they had a link to google twistedsymphony. I google my name (both TS and my real name) every so often just to see what pops up. Usually I get links to my various websites, articles I’ve written and a whole lot of new posts about my Saturn 2 360 controller adapter. I noticed that their search query added the term “xbox” to the search as well. I clicked it expecting to get the usual, but a few links down from the top I noticed that GamePolitics.com mentioned me.

GamePolitics is the foremost internet publication discussing political issues surrounding games.  In general they act as an unbiased source of news about new game related bills being past as well as prominent lawsuits. I don’t frequent the site but they pop up on the radar quite often when big things start happening.

This is why I was flattered to see that my analysis of the ICE Raids on Modchip shops last year: The Legality of Modding, garnered two whole dedicated articles on their site. The first article captured the overall theme of what I was going for and used it as the voice of the modders side of the story describing it as “the most lucid, detailed and passionate criticism we’ve seen”. The second article was dedicated to a small bit of irony I noted at the end of my rant pointing out that the “gallery” provided by ICE was comprised entirely of copyrighted images that they themselves were infringing. This time they referred to me as “embittered”, which is accurate but somewhat humorous considering how my analysis was described by them just days earlier.

This is mostly old news but for all the writing I do online it’s nice to see that other people read and appreciate it as well.

FWIW I haven’t done any modding for quites some time now. Right now it’s just not worth it, I haven’t put a soldering iron to a console since long before I wrote that ICE Raids rant, nor I  have I even used any homebrew software since then.  I still write my Representatives and Senators regularly about my opinions on these issues.

I’m not giving up by any stretch of the imagination, I just feel that my efforts would be best served towards some goals that don’t walk the blurry lines of legality according to the DMCA. “The Scene” is pretty boring overall right now anyway. You’ll see something analogous to my Saturn Adapter sometime this year. In the mean time my efforts are pointed almost entirely towards my latest pet project: CollectorsEdition.org, which is coming along quite nicely.

My New Toy: A Light Tent

Over the Weekend I picked up a Light Tent. If you’ve never heard of one of these things it’s basically a white tent with a felt like material on the back and bottom and the top and sides are made of a semi-transparent white tent material. Color corrected lamps are placed outside the tent  and shine through the sides defusing the light. This is basically the kind of thing they use to make professional product photos with a pure white background and no shadows.

Professional tents can cost thousands and then you still need to buy lamps but this one was less than $100 and included the lights . It works exceptionally well for what I’m using it for. The included felt material comes in gray and blue (for easily cropping out the background in photoshop), I might look into  picking up some white material  and building some stuff to keep it under tension to keep out ripples and reduce shadows further.

In any case I’m more than pleased with what I got for my money. You can see the first photos I took with it over on collectorsedtion.org