The Balsa Man Experience

Balsa Man turned out to be a good bit of fun -- if delivers a slice of the Burning Man experience in a compact and easily accessible morsel.  There were a lot of Burning Man in-jokes to go around.

- Many of the attendees are Burning Man veterans who were very involved in big projects there.  I met a woman who did a little tiny Center Camp -- she worked on the big one's build crew for six years.

- The guy who used to do the Piss Clear underground magazine at Burning Man did a Dress Warm underground magazine at Balsa Man.

- Someone else brought a mini Crude Awakening too.  He gave me a fuel-air contraption to help my structure burn more impressively.

- Small, unpredictable fires and fireworks shows close-up are more intense and impressive than big predictable ones far away. 

All in all, it was fun, though I do miss going to the full-size Burning Man and will definitely go next year.

 

Paul Addis wannabes try to burn the man early

 

   

Also, it's actually really gratifying to set your own work on fire:



See everyone's photos on flickr

Virtual girlfriends with manipulation that puts Zynga to shame

The WSJ has an interesting article about virtual girlfriends.

Japan's solution to any pressing shortage (eg elderly care) is usually technological (eg robots), and this is no exception.  New virtual girlfriend software for the Nintendo DS allows lonely guys to get (some smidgen of) the experience of having a girlfriend. 

What baffles me is that all the girlfriend characters appear to be very passive-aggressive and needy.  This was a deliberate choice by the software creators to sell more virtual goods -- if the girlfriend doesn't receive a certain amount of virtual gifts (paid for with real money), she sulks and becomes cold and withdrawn.  There are now real-world tie-ins, including a vacation resort town in which you can please your virtual girlfriend by going on a romantic weekend with her *in which you pay the couples rate* at the hotel.  If Farmville were like that, you'd have to periodically visit expensive real-world seminars on crop cultivation in order to prevent your virtual crops from dying. 

I don't understand why people who are into virtual girlfriends would choose a "challenging" one that so obviously manipulates them instead of one that's more supportive yet still interesting.  What they should have is one that helps them build social skills so that they can eventually get a real girlfriend.  Actually, it would be cool if some of the virtual girlfriend's behavior was puppeted by real-world people (say, a low-cost outsourced team in India) using instant messaging to provide more interest and variety.  Instead of spending their money on virtual goods, they could pay a monthly rate to have a live human create a much more intricate experience.

Then again, I don't understand the "shower a girl with lots of expensive gifts" mindset, so perhaps there is an appeal to the manipulative passive-aggressive virtual girlfriend.