Why bother? A response to a question
For the last few months, I’ve been helping to organize a project as a tribute to Chris Reimer, a friend of mine who passed away in 2012. It’s officially taking place through the not-for-profit where I work, the Quickdraw Animation Society, but most of the organizing has happened outside of office hours, and with help … Continue reading
Boxed Worlds: Christmas picks
Think of this column as one mighty stone being used to kill three birds. It’s a holiday gift guide, a catch-up on some notable, new-ish (for board games, at least) releases, and an intro to the tastes of three of Calgary’s prime board game institutions: Myth Games, Sentry Box and Dickens Pub’s Gamer Sundays. Because … Continue reading
Boxed Worlds: Agricola
(Originally published at ffwdweekly.com) The best online resource for the game-obsessed is easily BoardGameGeek.com, which uses two different rating systems to rank games: the average rating and the geek rating. That second one is almost always the lower of the two, and usually rewards games that are all about pure strategy — games where every decision … Continue reading
Boxed Worlds: Avalon
(Originally published at ffwdweekly.com) Lying to your friends is surprisingly fun. Outside of a few explicitly co-operative exceptions, almost every game requires some sort of deception, whether it’s bluffing about your hand in a game of poker or misleading your opponents about your intentions in, well, anything else. But there’s something special about a game … Continue reading
Boxed Worlds: The Obligatory Catan Column
(Originally published at ffwdweekly.com) So. For the sake of avoiding a clichéd introduction about how board games are back and better than ever, and those crazy kids and their vinyl records and suspenders, let’s assume you’re already curious about board games. Maybe you wanted to like them when you were a kid, but you got … Continue reading
An open letter to Jason Kenney
This is the letter I just sent to the Hon. Jason Kenney, in response to the increase in fees for international touring artists in Canada. As that article makes clear, these changes are going to hit smaller Canadian venues hard. Before people call this an attack on the arts, though, remember–it’s more likely that they … Continue reading
Five reasons why an opt-out porn filter is not a good idea
Spurred by the UK’s new anti-porn filter, Canadian MP Joy Smith is proposing that our country jump on the bandwagon and protect our children from viewing explicit content online. Naturally, Twitter responded immediately, with many worrying that this will amount to censorship of the internet, and with Smith responding that clicking a button to opt … Continue reading
Artists are People
Cross-posted from FFWDWeekly.com. The following is a response to Patrick Finn’s piece, Artists are Dangerous, and the video below. You should also read Dr. Finn’s response in this week’s Fast Forward. I am better than you. I am smarter than you, work harder than you, and am more pure in my aims. What I do … Continue reading
What to watch at CUFF 2013
So the Calgary Underground Film Festival starts today, and in my relatively biased opinion (I’m on the board, but I’m not the guy who picks the movies), it’s definitely one of the best things you can spend your time on this week. The programming team has yet again put together an incredibly solid line-up, and … Continue reading
Everybody borrows: Talking to songwriters about creativity
Right now, we’re legislating based on ideas about creativity that are hundreds of years old. They might be true, but they also might not. It may turn out that the approach we have to copyright law right now is the best way to promote the creation of new culture, and to make the world a more vibrant place. But it might turn out that it’s actually counter-productive, that we’re stifling more creativity than we’re encouraging, and are keeping valuable new ideas from spreading. The only way to figure that out is to have a better understanding of creativity, and talking to artists seems like a pretty intuitive way to build that understanding.
The Consumption 