I completely forgot what I wanted to say.Tuesday, March 7, 2006 10:29:00p: *
I added a link to my del.icio.us queue to the front page; nothing particularly amazing there. I've been thinking about signing up for delicious for quite a while now, but never did, thinking it would be a gateway drug into making a MySpace account; but after messing with it this evening I've found it to be a good way to plan out the stories I want to use for the upcoming Quicksave shows. I suppose I ought to mention that, too... especially after Rick took it upon himself to do so.
Since just after the first of January I've been doing a weekly podcast that recaps the week's big events in gaming. The name 'Quicksave' was picked because initially I tried to cram all of the stories into a three-minute timespan; since then I've realized that ten minutes or so is just about the perfect length. It's hard for me to describe the format of the show except by saying it's pretty much single-player Pardon The Interruption. It's been well-received by the Netjak staff, and I hope that that enjoyment carries over onto the other listeners. We shall see. On the plus side, I have not yet missed a show and I don't intend on doing so for a very, VERY long time.
This, incidentally, is the reason I left The Cape Radio back in late January, and also why I haven't exactly been playing in City of Heroes too much since then (though a three-hour tour Sunday night helped to remind me of what I like about the game). To be honest, it takes a little bit of time to prepare the podcast, but recording it is much, much less stressful than doing a live DJ set. I hadn't really been too technologically adept at using the DJ gear, either; Winamp continually crashed or disconnected on me, and I always left each set feeling extremely frustrated-- I'd basically sat down and steadfastly NOT played CoH for two hours. I started associating CoH with that frustration, which was a shame. So, I took a break. Good thing, too-- I got back into the console groove with WA:ACF and a few other titles (and am looking forward to cracking open Tales of Phantasia as soon as I finish writing this... mmmm, almost-but-not-quite-Skuld).
Novel progress. I kinda flubbed that these past couple months, so I have made an effort to sit down and write SOMETHING this week. Last night I wasted three hours on silly stuff and then spent an hour re-adding indentation that had been inexplicably stripped from my paragraphs. Tonight, I... well, I played with delicious (I am not going to put the proper dots in it unless it's a link, that's two keystrokes I could save and a lot of thought power in remembering where to put them). But I also have to say thanks to Ismail, who's helped me overcome a little bit of writer's block. I'm not making any promises, but I am nearing the end of a draft here. I think. It might need fleshed out a little more.
Finally, I've probably ranted about this before, but I usually try to carry a notebook with me. I picked up the habit in high school, lost it off-and-on in college, and have recently picked it up again. My biggest thing is that the notebook has to be tough; countless pads have been destroyed in the hellhole that is my front pocket. The Moleskine notebooks are among the most solidly constructed journals that I've ever come across. I bought one initially as a personal diary, then decided that was better left at home; so I bought another to hold calorie data and other stuff that I always need but never remember (like, say, directions to and hours of important stores). They're expensive-- about for a pocket-sized one (and don't bother with the 3-pack of mini-notebooks, they're not nearly as durable)-- but they're worth it.
Later, folks.Sunday, March 12, 2006 11:08:00a: Balance*
I had a great time last night playing DDR, even if I was swarmed by snotty teenagers and Persons Who Have No Business Dancing (due to their incredible lack of rythym). Didn't clear anything particularly interesting except Random All (which was Xenon, Sync Love, and.. uh... something Std, and then Superstar Challenge) and impressed a few people with what I did do. I still was nowhere near the best player there, and I still was nowhere near what I would consider 'good', but it's remarkable how quickly people will shut up when you do something even moderately difficult.
To balance out the three hours of exercise I got, I am now going to sit on my ass and play Guild Wars/City of Whatever all day today.Monday, March 13, 2006 5:59:00p: RSS Debugging*
RJ brought to my attention a slight bug in the RSS feed, so I fixed that. Also, the full text of the blog posts will be used in the feed from this point onward; bandwidth is cheap.Saturday, March 18, 2006 12:32:00a: Who's Next*
I had completely forgotten that Doctor Who started tonight. However, the folks playing CoH reminded me just in time to set up the TiVo. So, yeah. Worked out well. Bedtime now, but lots of time this weekend to look it over.
Though I have vowed that I'm going to get my main character to Level 30 this weekend. Probably by repeatedly running the Terra Volta trial, but meh. Sunday, March 19, 2006 10:08:00p: Brain Dump*
So. My main goal this weekend was to get laundry done, go to the grocery store, and then get to level 30 in CoH. I got the first two done, and as of right now I've given up on the last one (simply because it would take me much longer than two hours to get the 100K experience I need, and I'm tired). I did complete a semi-difficult task force last night-- actually this morning, as it started at 10p and ran until 2a. Overall I've been in with some good crowds, and I've been called upon to lead once in a while as well-- which surprised the heck out of me, believe me. Still, this week I'll probably get there, then have to do the next Icon mission and so on and so forth. The biggest problem I'm facing is that I don't get any cool powers for the next five levels... meh, hopefully they'll go faster than 20-30 did.
The reason why I didn't get to 30 could have been due to a lack of effort, as I sorta slacked off a bit in terms of actively seeking out a team. However, it was primarily due to me wanting to not sit on front of the computer all damn weekend. Saturday afternoon I went out to the arcade and did my usual DDR thing, not accomplishing much but enjoying the exercise and change of venue. I hit Best Buy as well and picked up a couple things-- specifically, Ah! My Goddess volume 3 and the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. (I also picked up Pay It Forward from the bargain bin, but haven't even touched it yet. Good movie, very uplifting, but I'll save it for a time when I'm not in manic phase.) Oh, and I mentioned Dr. Who and V For Vendetta already, so let's take this one step at a time.
Starting with AMG. This was sort of a split disc-- dealt mostly with Mara for the first half and Skuld for the second. I like Mara, to a certain extent. She's got a classic villainous streak coupled with excellent comedic timing. That said, she's not evil enough. All she did was transform Keiichi and try to break him up. Nothing new, nothing exceptionally nasty. I'm sure she's capable of more-- and I'm sure we'll see more-- but for now, I see her as wasted potential. Her weakness being the opposite of Urd's was a nice touch, though. Anyway, the Short Goddess is the real reason I was looking forward to this disc. Skuld... has lost a little bit of her charm from the old series. Now let's be honest, I still was glued to the screen for every frame she was in, but she just wasn't... gah, I don't know, 'Skuldy' enough. It's hard to explain, but I did sort of miss the old dub's actress at certain points. Especially whenever Skuld said she wasn't a little kid. Bah, I'm sure she'll grow on me. She has to; how could I not like her?
V. What can be said about V that hasn't been circulating through the ether for the last forty-eight hours? I'm not going to repeat what I said in the voicecast, as I'll admit that was a spoiler (but given V's mask, you knew it had to happen one way or another; journey, not destination). What I am going to say is that there is not one single element about this film that is out of place. Writing, acting, directing, cinematography, hell, even the clothing is 100% perfect. The real shame of it all is that even after all of the enormously positive reviews the film is going to get, it's going to be completely overlooked come Oscar time. Because at its core it's still a 'comic book movie', just like Silent Hill is a 'video game movie'. It's not considered 'real' cinema because the source material taints perception of it. Obviously I don't agree, but then again I'm not a member of the Academy, so what say do I have? Or wait-- wasn't that the whole damn point of the movie?
I have not watched more than the first three minutes of Battlestar Galactica. It's the new miniseries, the one before the TV series; what I did see was very good. I ripped it to the iPod for mobile viewing but intend to watch it on the main screen.
Most of you know this, but one of my most favorite movies of all time is the 2000 remake of Gone in Sixty Seconds. Primarily because of Nicolas Cage, but also because it's just such an amazingly well-characterized film. Part of that characteristic chemistry is due to Christopher Eccleston, who played that film's villain Raymond Calitri. So, imagine my surprise when, during Doctor Who, I see Christopher swinging the Sonic Screwdriver and fending off the plastic monsters. Yeah, it was certainly a paradigm shift. He's a great actor, and he's certainly been given quite a good role to play. The overall impression I got from the series, as shown by the edited first two episodes, wasn't at all like the vibe one gets from the usual 'remade or redone' series coming out of Studio City these days. The viewer isn't left with a sense of 'all right let's get the fan wanking out of the way so we can move on to new stories and progress the series, and oh dear we just got cancelled before we finished the wanking'. It was more along the lines of 'all right, let's just move right ahead and let the viewer figure some stuff out and only spell out what's really important'. The Doctor doesn't treat Rose as a wide-eyed kindergartner, pointlessly expositing to avoid losing the viewers. Likewise, Rose doesn't fully trust the Doctor, so she leaves out questions that the viewer would want to ask. It's a brilliant and time-tested storytelling device and it's very well executed. (Of course, the series isn't being approached as a remake, more along the lines of a continuation of the existing series. That can definitely color the perceptions of the producers as they work for it... gah, I'm getting into film-school type stuff, and most of it's total bull because I've never taken a film class in my life. Well, all right, I was twelve, but it was a 'keep the smart kids from snapping and bringing guns to school' program.)
Uh... other gaming. I played a half-hour's worth of Tales of Phantasia on Saturday morning. I, um, don't think I played anything else. I should have, but I didn't. Oh, and I still haven't bothered to continue Rayearth Season 2.
That's just about it. Lots to keep myself busy until the real journeys begin. G'night, folks.Tuesday, March 21, 2006 10:58:00a: *
I got a little maudlin yesterday about selling the SNES and gear, but later that night an interesting little thing happened. I started messing with emulation on the Mac mini, and found that it ran Super FX games and other titles faster than my other machines can.
Who said Mac wasn't a hardcore gamer's platform?Thursday, March 23, 2006 9:14:00a: Sub-Goal*
Here at the halfway point in my weight loss plan, I'm just about ready to finish the thing that got me a lot of this weight in the first place-- being an aspiring novelist. I'm not going to quit writing, mind you; I'm just going to get published and thus be, without need for qualifying adjectives, a novelist. So I've been poking around the web and trying to get information on how to write a query letter. I'd asked Brian Clevinger about it in what probably seemed like an overly cloying email, but never got a response. Believe it or not, that was a lesson I needed to learn.
I found some other resources online and will probably hunt for a few more as I go ahead and find them; I'm not miserly, so you can see the links in the queue.
By the way, 45,000 words and 81 single-spaced pages. And all that's really left is to wrap up the last few plot points and bring everything to a close. Of course, it doesn't help that I left the hardest plots for last... or that I just started an additional plot. Once I get through this weight thing the meter will more accurately reflect the novel's status-- right now I'd say I'm about 66% through the draft.
Oh, and incidentally, I did hit 30 last night and completed probably one of my favorite task forces (thus far). The Metal Gear jokes flew fast and furious, they did.... of course, so did the complaints as the players I worked with continually complained that we weren't 'doing it right'. This despite the fact that we were doing well enough that it didn't really matter if we weren't buffed for maximum efficiency or that our damage per second was too low. A couple defeats are normal; we weren't being wiped on a regular basis (and we only came close in the final mission anyway). And yet our healer-- who did a decent job-- just kept on b[leeep]ing over and over about how we weren't protecting her. Even though she never fell once. Yeah. Killed the fun a bit, but, 30! Casual clothes, finally! And soon I'm going to mess with the aura effects! More than anything, it gets me into new zones and new sets of missions. As much as I enjoy beating the snot out of the council, they were becoming a bit cliched.
New GASHCast. Rawk.
DDR mentioned on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". Rawk the f%$# ON. We've hit the big time when NPR name-drops the game.
Poker game on Saturday was a success, minor one anyway.
Time ticks away until Tekkoshocon. Probably going to get an early start and hit a couple video rooms. I definitely want to get into one of the game shows. Again, a full itinerary is forthcoming. Plenty of time for cosplayer-hunting.
Made it to 31 in City of Heroes, but I'm really neglecting my alts. I've not logged in to either of my villains in months, and my empathy defender has languished at 18 for a few weeks now. Ah well.
Set up my second monitor on the Justice (the main Windows game machine), and decided that the next logical step is to convert the Aestivalis to a Linux laptop. That way I'll have three different operating systems on my machines and will royally confuse anyone expecting consistency within my apartment. Namely, me. Downloading the Ubuntu hybrid DVD now (5.06, I think) so we'll see how that works.
The real reason for the changeover is because for whatever reason the card reader on the Aestivalis decided not to work anymore. Given that I decided to finally fix the damn digital camera in order to get the Tekko pics up before the end of time, having the card reader not function on the machine I want to take with me to Pittsburgh is sort of a downer. It's not that bad, really-- the memory card I picked up will hold 300 pics, so it's not strictly required that I clear off after each day, but it would be nice to know there's the ability to store more. We'll see-- Ubuntu's supposed to have a good driver base, so...
Well, not much else going on. I'll be in touch.Tuesday, March 28, 2006 7:39:00a: *
You might think it's a sin that I'm not picking up Kingdom Hearts II today. And, well, you're right-- it's a bit of a disappointment to me. But with all the chaos I've had to endure over the last few weeks, not to mention my Kafkalike metamorphosis into con-going World Traveller, I suppose I could be forgiven for having interest in the amount of zero mustered up for the title. I am, however, more psyched about Beatmania, which hits later this week (tomorrow, if I'm lucky). Ultimately, I'll likely just wait until after Tekkoshocon to pick one or both up, depending on if my bank account has entered a state of ex-death.
Oh, and, just because I can't think of a clever way to drop him into the preceding paragraph, Sephiroth. You know why.
Besides, I do have my plate largely full, what with three untouched RPGs and my City of Heroes characters. Still, it's very tempting to want to pick both up-- as it stands I might be trading in for Beatmania, depending on if it comes in before or after the con. As with all things, we shall see.Thursday, March 30, 2006 7:26:00p: Tekkoshocon 2006: Ready To Roll*
Hey, folks. This being the first trip I get to take without requiring me to be awake at 2 in the morning, I've decided to get most of the preliminaries out of the way here the night before. Right, then, pre-con checklist hyper-awesome GO!!:
No Updates For The Weekend: I've never said I would update from any events, and this time is no different. TFO.net will have no new front-page content until April 3rd at the earliest-- but, and this is strictly a recommendation, you may want to check the site out Saturday sometime. I'm just sayin'.
Con Report Forthcoming: Our dear Slipgate mentioned that it would be criminal to have teased you with the delights of a con for so long and not deliver something up in return. As a result, yes, I'll be doing a write-up of the con and getting the pictures in order. I certainly wouldn't count on it being available before the tenth, but it will be up well in advance of E3.
John Learns Skill: Cosplay (Lv.0)!: Yes. Yes indeed! It'll be kind of lame, and you certainly wouldn't know who it is unless I told you, but I will be cosplaying someone. With any luck Pez will snap some pics to show off. Take your guesses now, folks.
And with that out of the way, let me detail my goals for April:
Complete 'Inconsequential'. I've set up a NaNo-style Excel sheet for this purpose, so I'll have just as much incentive to write as I do to do my morning exercise (which is to say, having numbers to crunch gives me nerd wood). Thirty days to either add another 40,000 words or finish the damn thing. Well, at any rate, I'll have plenty more inspiration after this weekend. (Incidentally, does anyone else find the phrase "nerd wood" really, really disturbing, and does anyone know how in the name of all that is holy did I think of it?)
Finish one or more of my open games. That's what weekends are for, folks. I'll be working on the novel during the week, but on the weekends I'll be blitzing through one of these: Kingdom Hearts II (I know, I'm weak), Wild ARMs 4, Grandia II, or Tales of Phantasia. Not necessarily in that order, mind you, and certainly this might be hampered by a desire to play DDR, Beatmania, or City of Heroes, but I am not going to go into May with as many open games as April.
If I play City of Heroes, level Ayu to 20 or higher. She's my defender from Osaka. And I RP her so well, too, it's scary. Until Cryptic/NCSoft nerf the name, I'm going to keep going. Her biggest problem is that she doesn't have many attacks, and I'd really rather not respec her just to swap out Maneuvers for Rain of Arrows. Poppett hit 31 last week, so I'm putting her on the back burner for a bit (and writing more of the Keys story as well, when time and inspiration permit).
That seems good enough. Talk to you folks on Monday.