There is a really cool feature at Forbes.com all about various forms of communication. They’ve got interviews with some incredible people, like Arthur C. Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Goodall. They’ve also got a discussion about blogging with me. A brief excerpt:

Wil Wheaton is a writer and actor. His Web site, wilwheaton.net, is one of the most popular blogs on the Internet. He has written two books, Just a Geek and Dancing Barefoot, and has a third due later this year. As an actor, he is best known for roles on Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the film Stand By Me.

wil_wheaton: believe it or not, in all these years I’ve never done an interview over IM

david_ewalt: since we’re doing stories about communicating, this will show a whole other way in which people communicate

wil_wheaton: i was talking with my stepson the other day about this

wil_wheaton: he’s grown up in a world where IM has always existed

wil_wheaton: he spends time IMing with his friends like I used to sit on the phone with mine

wil_wheaton: and I have iChatAV on my
laptop and my desktop, so when I travel for work or whatever, I can
stay in touch with my family visually.

david_ewalt: this, in fact is why i wanted to talk to you…you seem to have mastered many of these new forms of communication

david_ewalt: that’s the nice way for me to say "you’re a geek"

wil_wheaton: w00t

Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade drew a funny-because-it’s-true comic on blogging, and Bob Jeffery supports my theory that traditional channels of media and distribution just aren’t that important anymore. The whole thing is awesome, and it’s an easy way to lose several hours filling your brains with thought-provoking Slurm.

In addition to my regular Games of our Lives column, I’ve got a review in The Onion AV Club this week.

Games of our lives looks back at Thief:

You robbed the bank. That’s good! But you dropped the money all over
the known universe. That’s bad. But you have a spiffy car to drive
around and pick it up. That’s good! There are cops everywhere. That’s
bad. But you can occasionally blow them up for big points! That’s good!
You want to play Pac-Man, but you can only find a cheap imitation! That’s Thief!

Gameplay: Using a joystick, you drive your little car around
the ugliest maze in the world. Your goal is to pick up all the dollar
bills so you can advance to the next level. Opposing you are four
little police cars. They don’t have names, but you could safely call
them something like, oh… let’s randomly say Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and
Clyde. If they touch you, you’ll blow up in a magnificent fireworks
display. However, if you pick up one of the dollar signs scattered
around the maze, a siren will sound and your enemies will become ghost
cars that you can run into for bonus points.

[. . .]

It’s a little embarrassing to watch Thief try to be as cool as Pac-Man,
but it’s still a really fun game that works extra-hard to keep players
happy. The game plays a super-cool police-scanner soundtrack right out
of a ’40s movie, and when you’re down to your final life, Thief helpfully says "This is your last chance!" Can you remember the last time Pac-Man said as much as "Hello" to you? Didn’t think so.

And I reviewed X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse:

Whether to get out of homework, exact revenge on a bully, or just
impress a potential date, every kid wants to be a superhero. But the
Earth’s yellow sun gives its native population sunburns instead of
superpowers, and radiation is likely to make you a cancer patient
rather than a mutant. So what’s a wannabe to do? Retreat to the
basement with X-Men Legends II, of course! In this follow-up to 2004’s X-Men Legends,
Apocalypse threatens to destroy Earth. In the face of this mighty
adversary, the X-Men team up with their arch-rivals from Magneto’s
Brotherhood to defeat him, presumably so they can get back to fighting
each other.

Final judgment: X-Men Legends II is more of an
action-based button-masher than a sandbox RPG, but there’s nothing
wrong with that. The few limitations are easily offset by just how
enjoyable it is to play this game.

I realyl liked both of these games. In fact, Legends 2 is so much fun to play, I got a copy of it for PSP so I could play it when I wasn’t at home . . . which brought to mind an interesting idea: wouldn’t it be cool if you could have some sort of online place to save your games, so you could play them on different platforms and keep your progress in synch?

If I had to pick one way to change the world, if there was only one thing I could do, I would eliminate prejudice and bigotry, and ensure equal rights for all people. Period. That people are so ignorant, and so stupid that they can judge others based on factors which are randomly assigned by the universe, rather than the quality of one’s character, just baffles me.

When I heard yesterday that Rosa Parks died, I wanted to write something about it, but I couldn’t find the words. It’s hard to imagine what her world was like way back in 1955, especially since 99% of the people who have the ability to read this blog will probably never know a life a billionth as challenging as hers — and none of us are going to make one tenth of the difference she made. So what could I say that would matter?

Crooks & Liars managed to say it for me:

Try to imagine
yourself as Rosa Parks did when she left work that day in
1955. Exhausted from working long hours in the department store, she
looked to take a seat like always; but making sure she sat in the right
section of that bus at the risk of being handcuffed. You can’t-can you?
It took this incredible woman to refuse to give up her seat to a white
man on that bus to change the course of American history.

Think about that, and honor her legacy whenever you can. I challenge you all to make a difference, in some positive way, in someone’s life today. And tomorrow. And the day after that . . .

I can’t believe I forgot about this: I’m all over VH1’s I Love The 80s 3D. I wasn’t in much of 1980 or 1981, but I did about 9 hours of interviews with them, mostly focused on 1985-1989, if I recall correctly. Check local listings for maximum Uncle Willie Snark and your USRDA of funky giant post-Walter sideburns.

There has been a lot of fun poker in the last few days for me. The Friday WWdN Invitational has been a huge success two weeks in a row, and seems to be growing, I had a BLAST at IGN live, and the PokerStars Blogger Championship yesterday was a whole lot of fun.

I posted a live blog of the Friday Game at CardSquad:

5:04 PM – We’re at the first break. This is incredibly fun. What
a great group of people! I have 3105, and I am third at my table
(leader has 5400). Average is 2533. Our chipleader is the poker princess  herself, with 7285. There are 90 players left.

5:05 PM –
First hand after the break, I get KK in the cutoff. I raise it up 3x,
no callers. It’s funny to me that I get nervous when I see cowboys now.
🙂

5:27 PM – CJ from UpForPoker just got moved to my table. He’s REALLY good, and has position on me.

5:34 PM – wwdnposse just got moved to my table. His avatar is the image from "Wil has a posse." That is too weird.

5:35 PM –
I’m all-in UTG with pocket eights. One caller, plus CJ who also pushes.
I hope I’m in for a race here. Oh. No I’m not. CJ called me with KK.
Can I crack Kings? No, there’s a King on the flop. I go home in 54th.
What a disappointing finish. I really wish I hadn’t donked off those
chips like a dipshit, but I had a LOT of fun, and now there’s only one
"wil" avatar at the table.

5:37 PM – Join us next week for the WWdN: Up4Poker Invitational! (Tournament number 14090593, for you early registration types.)

The whole thing is at CardSquad, includng the final table, and the cash game I played with a bunch of other poker bloggers after I busted out. While you’re there, you may want to check out the recap of the Blogger Championship:

I was playing from IGN Live in Anaheim, where I was signing autographs and playing in SNGs for PokerStars. (Note: IGN Live was really cool. If you get a chance to attend one, GO!) I
was seriously multi-tasking at one point, when a reporter from Area51
radio sat down and talked with me about my books, poker, Star Trek,
gaming, voice overs, and all that other crap I do.

I moved up to almost 3000 chips early, but I missed some draws, got
pushed off some hands by GRob, and slowly dropped back down. I went
into a shell as the blinds came up,  and with just over 900 left, and
the blinds at 75/150 I was way behind par. I pushed from early position
with a A-8o. It was folded to ohthen, who called with pocket nines. The
flop came ace, ace . . . nine, giving ohthen a full house against my
set. The turn was a queen, and I caught the case ace on the river to
make quads and double up! Dems quads, beetches!

I’m working on a couple of posts for the next few days over there, that I think will be of interest to beginning players.