10.31.07
Clearing the Decks
Tonight’s the night of magic, folks. In order to prepare for that, though, I think it best to just do a great big thought-dump and have all the stuff cluttering my mind just out. So, here we go.
Tabula Rasa starts up this week– pre-order folks are already enjoying the game. I logged in last night and intend to do so again tonight; the quick verdict is that I’m really excited. I hadn’t played the beta much– well, at all– since about early July, and that was due to the fact that it was a beta, and I was sort of impatient. I’ve since learned my lesson that I’m not exactly the kind of person suited to being a beta tester, which makes sense now, but disappointed me initially. Regardless of my own perspective, though, I can honestly say the game has made significant improvements over what I saw in June and July. It’s rock-solid and fantastically engaging, and many of the issues I’d had with performance are completely gone. Yes, it is still a level treadmill, but it’s a fun one. I’ll probably be playing it off and on through November, while the last mass-access bugs are kinked out and while the majority of my time is spent writing, but in December, things should heat up on that front.
Speaking of games, I’ve been quite reluctant to play The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but I did finally swallow my pride and set the game on my rental queue. It should arrive tomorrow or Friday, and likely won’t be touched for weeks. But I’ll at least make an effort. The thing is, I haven’t really gotten over my distaste for Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker just yet, but I’m hoping that the new rendition will be worth a look. It’s the same thing with the Final Fantasy games; some of them have been less than stellar, but I’ll more than likely always give them a try to see if the next one will be good. Though I will say this, actually, about FF: the WiiWare-exclusive game, something about the “small king”, looks really interesting.
Continuing a little bit with yesterday’s random incursion into “More Posts About Writing And Food”, I had to get Halloween candy this morning, because I completely forgot about it up to this point. I wound up getting a bag of Smarties. Now, I realize that some of the non-American readers might wonder at the bile I have for relatively inoffensive candies. What are called “Smarties” in, say, Canada, are chocolate bits covered in candy shells; Americans know those as “M&Ms”. I like M&Ms. What Americans know as “Smarties” are in fact small, button-sized multicolored discs of pure, flavorless tart sugar. Outside of the US they’re known as “Rockets” or “Fruit Tingles”. Presumably the different colors indicate different flavors but they all taste like pure concentrated citric acid to me; I actually have a hard time taking vitamin C pills because they remind me of the taste so much. They are the single most vile candy on the face of the planet, and I despise them unequivocally. So, naturally, when I was a child and I went trick-or-treating, I would invariably wind up with a ton of them in my bag. So, yes, I willfully bought candy I would never even consider eating myself, for two reasons: One, at least I’m not the jerk who hands out raisins or pennies or something silly; and two, if I had to eat those nasty things, then by God, the kids of today are going to eat them too. I also bought a bag of Dum-Dum pops because I actually like those, and because I am a pretty big jerk, in point of fact.
GMail is nice, and I’m pretty much pot-committed to it– it’s got the better part of four years of email in it now. There are, however, some minor issues I’m shocked to note are still in the service. Primarily, the fact that there’s no “Mark as Read” action that can be applied to incoming messages via filters. Good Lord, this is something that’s been in Outlook since day one! I am a bit of a pack-rat, admittedly, so I keep every non-spam email I get, but I don’t need to have my Receipts label permanently bolded because I haven’t taken the time to read the receipts that pile up in there. There’s reports that a new version is coming soon, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the filters get improved as much as the contacts tool did.
Unrelated: Kotaku’s comments system is just plain broken; I tried making a remark on this bit of Pokemadness but the login button didn’t respond for me in Firefox. While I was able to log in using IE6, I then couldn’t actually submit my comment. I am irritated.
Back to food, I went on a neat little rant about blueberries this afternoon and I’m thinking it has a place in the novel. You know, establishing the nature of the kids. I’ll save it for the book, where it will be expanded.
I go now to frighten and mildly irritate children who dare pass my threshhold. Catch you all in November.