K-Pop has been making a splash in America in a big way. Although they have nearly subsumed all music in Asia and are getting big in parts of Europe and the Middle East, K-Pop in the USA seems to be about where J-Pop was during the height of the anime/manga crazy in the last 1990s and early 2000s. That is to say, huge within a niche group that’s made up of expat/second gen immigrants and Americans who love asian pop culture despite often not completely understanding all the lyrics. Of course, things were brought into mainstream attention with last year’s “Gangnam Style”. There are quite a few articles that examined why Psy emerged as the face of K-Pop. If I had to pick out the top reasons, I think it would be the easy and silly dance, the catchy beat, the fun of yelling “Oppa Gangnam Style!”, and the fact that he’s a pudgy Asian man who doesn’t threaten America’s notions of Asians. As to that last reason, Dan sent me a few articles during the height of the Gangnam craze that suggested part of the reason other artists like Rain have had a hard time penetrating is that American can only accept the goofy asian (Jackie Chan, The Donger, Kevin Jeong, etc) or the Karate Asian (Mr Miyagi, Jet Li). Even though the 1800s are long behind us, we can’t accept the pop star sex symbol Asian man. If there is interest among my dedicated readers, perhaps Dan can post links or do a followup blog post. At any rate, there’s a much higher chance of female-led K-Pop groups infiltrating the USA - given that we already have the stereotype of the sexy Asian woman coupled with the fact that there is a huge emphasis on gender, sexiness, and cuteness in the K-Pop system.

In a lot of ways I really don’t care what happens in the video game console world. In the last 2-3 years I have rediscovered computer gaming. Actually, to be more accurate, game publishers have rediscovered computer gaming. I remember in my youth when the best of the best games came out for computers and the consoles were mostly just arcade ports. At some point the pendulum swung the other way and, other than the Civilization and Blizard’s franchises, gaming had mostly died. Whatever games were released on computers were an afterthought and pretty poor quality. I don’t know if it was the unusually long console cycle leading to a lack of graphics innovation or the success of Steam making publishers realize they couldn’t afford to leave money on the table or a combination of the two, but computer gaming is back in a big way. (And, I’ve been saying computer gaming because Apple has seen a resurgence in gaming unlike any it has seen since the early to mid-90s and, thanks to Steam, Linux gaming is finally becoming a thing that doesn’t need WINE) So everything but the console exclusives - Halo, Mario, Uncharted - now come to computers. If I’m going to have a computer anyway (and I will), why ALSO play $300-400 for a gaming console? In the years since I’ve bought my Playstation 3 it’s been used WAY more often for Netflix than anything else. A Roku box serves that purpose a lot cheaper.

[caption id=“attachment_6698” align=“aligncenter” width=“400”] The “Family Dinner” Early July[/caption]

Unfortunately, my work situation dictates that Scarlett does not have any local grandparents; one set’s in NYC and the other’s in Tampa. Scarlett’s current age  necessitates being taken care of by someone who’s raised children, so Danielle and I don’t get to go out to the types of places you’re not supposed to take kids like uber-fancy restaurants. When we went to Tampa recently my mom wanted to give us the gift of some time away from the baby so she gave us tickets to go to Universal Studios. So we jumped in to the middle of the pond and learned how to speak rather than dipping our toes, so to speak. Scarlett was left with my parents,adopted brothers, and dog all day long. A day or two after that my parents took us to a nice restaurant to help us celebrate our anniversary and left the baby with a close family friend for a few hours. A week or two after that, we found ourselves in New York City on the same night that my sister/brother-in-laws were getting together with their best friends and cousins for their monthly dinner. My sister-in-law invited us so we left the Scarlett with my mother-in-law. Finally, as I write this, a couple weeks before it appears on the blog, we left Scarlett at our house with my visiting mother-in-law so we could have a nice dinner out.

I mentioned about two weeks ago that my scheduling for the site might temporarily fall apart. I finally got caught up so now I should be able to focus on meeting my weekly schedule. I’m going to try not to let things get that far behind again because I had to discard about a dozen blog post ideas because, while I saved the URL, I didn’t really feel the passion to write about that topic anymore. In some cases I couldn’t remember exactly what point I wanted to make. In other cases, I just couldn’t muster the same feelings for the topic so I just dropped it. I hope you do enjoy what I’ve written and queued up. I know I’m enjoying the comments of my regular readers.

[caption id=“attachment_6598” align=“aligncenter” width=“443”] Rock the Universe (1999)[/caption]

The last time I went to Universal Studios Orlando was nearly 20 years ago for Rock the Universe 1999. It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done - enjoying the park by day with all my close friends and then a series of concerts at night. Despite getting soaked by the night-time storms we had a blast.

I first blogged about Wordpress 3.6 in April. I was extremely excited about the new Post Formats UI and the new theme Twenty Thirteen. At the time there was a month left before the release. Then, things got pushed back a bit which messed with my image formatting. Then, at some point, they decided they would have to remove the Post Formats UI for this release. And then they went silent. Weeks passed; a month passed. When they mentioned Post Formats and the new Multimedia features - embedded video and audio - it sparked a creativity in my brain - a way to use the site that would make use of what was unique about the web rather than just being a public journal. And I haven’t known when I could schedule these posts or even write them because after the Post Formats UI decision, they stopped updating the releases section of the website. Look, I’ve been involved with FLOSS software for about a decade now. I know all about the Release when It’s Done method, aka The Debian Way. It tends to lead to better quality releases (keyword: tends). But it also causes a lot of frustration - hence the reason for the Ubuntu fork. Really, all I wanted (and based on a few comments I’ve seen on the web from people who use WP to make a living - designing or writing training materials) was some communication. I understand that you might not know exactly how long it would take to untangle the Post Formats UI from the code. But an estimate would have been better than nothing.At least we’d know you cared what we think. And that’s just human psychology. It’s the reason why all the theme parks have signs telling you how long the wait is going to be for any particular ride. If you know it’s going to be an hour you aren’t as pissed as if it takes an hour and you had no idea. So next time, keep us in the look, Wordpress.

On 8 July I wrote a blog post asking Why is Pop Culture so Anti-Women? Danielle usually comments on my blog posts, but she also doesn’t always have time for that because of Scarlett. So we discussed it at the dinner table. What she told me was that “you get used to it. You just figure -that’s the way the world is.” Hearing that response was one of those times where I felt two opposing feelings. I felt sad that the response is getting used to it. Although, given the power of the media in our youth and its continued (yet hopefully diminishing) power today - I could see that feeling angry and hoping for change would be a lost cause. At the same time, I felt hopeful for Scarlett and for the ~150 million women and girls in America because Danielle transcended those images, tropes, and stereotypes. She does not feel the need to dress or act how society supposes she should. She does as she wishes and is a successful woman. She was an extremely successful worker in the workplace - always getting the highest accolades. She is completely interdependent with me rather than dependent on me. That’s what I need to impart onto Scarlett and she’ll be fine. Pop culture will still suck, but she’ll be fine.

Singapore has attempted to bring websites under the same decency standards are other media.

The Singapore government just announced an intention to begin regulating websites that report on the country, requiring a S$50,000 ‘performance bond’ and compliance with any takedown notices from the government within 24 hours. The reason for this is apparently to regulate content which solicits for prostitution, undermines racial and religious harmony, or ‘goes against good taste’"

It’s once again time for my biweekly Photojojo post.  For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service.  Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

Again mostly Scarlett, but also a scan from a photo I took when I was in High School. Dan’s all the way on the left, in the water.

[caption id=“attachment_6568” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”] Costume Quest - DLC[/caption]

Costume Quest (7 hours) - I completed the main Costume Quest and then continued on to the DLC. The game continued to be charming and I enjoyed playing it as well as the simple story arc of the brother and sister realizing they didn’t hate each other that much. Gameplay-wise the game is not too forgiving when you make a mistake. There aren’t any items to use for healing so any mistakes in the Mario RPG-like mechanics (hitting a button on a certain timing to empower your attack or reduce an attack against you) could lead to losing an encounter quite quickly. I think it took me about 5-8 tries on the final boss of the main game to get just the right combination of add-ons (which increase HP or allow you to retaliate when hit) and costumes to make it through to the end. It also doesn’t help that the enemies appear to level up with you. That is to say, if there’s enemy X at the beginning of the game and you come up against him later, he has more HP and hits harder. That’s a bit different than the mechanic used in most of the Squaresoft RPG games I played in my youth. That said, there aren’t really any consequences to losing a fight. As far as I can tell, you don’t even lose candy when you lose a fight. You just end up right where you were before and you have another chance to start the encounter again or move away to change the costume equipped.