12.11.07
Inconvenienced
If anybody asks, this is what’s been keeping me from obligations:
12.10.07
Temporally Strained
Well, no better sign than to start off with the now-obligatory Harvesting Blueberries Update: The Twitter feed is a lie. 96K words is correct, yes, but now I’m up to 10 scenes left to write. Given an average of about 2,000 words per scene, this works out well. I just have to remind myself to take my time and let the conversations flow naturally; there’s no longer a real rush, story-wise or externally, and skimping now will just make it harder later.
I take that back, there is sort of an external rush. Anyone who ever tells you being a writer is easy work is lying. I’ll be in dire need of a vacation once this draft is finished. Fortunately, I’ve been trickling through a couple of anime series here and there in order to have a rolling start once the draft is done… but that’s still at least a solid week of writing away. Maybe. Depends on how much I can manage these next few evenings and this coming weekend– the last weekend I’ll have before Christmas break, actually. But, well, I’m this close. I’m not going to give up now.
I also want to try to manage one more Game Clear notice before the year is up, but that might be something I do over the break itself, or more likely over New Year’s Weekend. Two long binges are incoming, and I’m really looking forward to them.
Ciao, folks. We’ll probably have Bailout tomorrow.
12.09.07
Do Not Want
So. I’m normally in support of any experimentation with regards to existing properties being taken in different directions, mostly for the sheer novelty of it. But after reading the headline to this announcement from Del Rey and Marvel, my immediate reaction wasn’t just “no”. It wasn’t just “hell no”. It went even beyond “excuse me wtf r u doin”. No, this pretty much is the epitome of “what are you smoking, why haven’t you stopped, and for the love of crap please don’t share next time because that way someone might be able to stop you from carrying this idea to its end”.
Really. “X-Men Meets Fruits Basket”? And then they go ahead and try to explain it further, in the hopes that it won’t sound so dumb. It doesn’t work. Mark my words: This Will Not End Well.
11.29.07
Back In The Saddle
So. The first thing of interest, really, is that I took some time last night to go back into “hardcore writer” mode, and managed to pull a 2,000 word night. This was in addition to managing to get the outline written for this final stretch of the story. ( Writing drivel behind this cut. » )
Anyway. I’m also on a little bit of an anime reclamation binge, collecting a couple of series boxes for later consumption once I’ve got the draft in the can. We’re honestly maybe a week or two away from that point– barring a huge rush of productivity– so don’t expect me to be able to comment on that too publicly just yet. The big series so far are Ai Yori Aoshi and Fullmetal Alchemist. I realize I’m late to the party on both of these, but in my defense I’m a cheap bastard and I waited until the lower-priced boxes came out. I’ve also got my eye on the Evangelion Platinum metal box set; apparently that claims “full extras”, so I’ll have to see if it’s as advertised. Perhaps if it is, I’ll look into the Nadia box as well. Incidentally: The Reclamation List stands at 53% reclaimed or set to “will not reclaim” (62/117; 39 reclaimed, 24 disapproved). Most of what’s left are older PS1 games and the better movies. Then, of course, there are the Holy Grails that I lost… but those, I think, are going to take a long time to reclaim.
The Rock Band Replacement saga continues! Last night I finally got the tracking number situation straightened out, and discovered the most magical, wonderful thing about how the UPS tracking system works. Here it is: it doesn’t. ( Gaming drivel behind this one. » )
So, that’s about it. There’s likely to be more writing news as things progress… I’m hoping that I can at least break 80K before the end of the month. We’ll see. Catch you cats tomorrow morning.
11.18.07
Quick Shots
Link Wednesday? On a Sunday? It’s more likely than you think!
Let’s start with FATE/unlimited codes. I guess the SD tiger colosseum for PSP turned out to be pretty damn good, huh? Early rumors point to this one being a traditional 2D fighter along the lines of Street Fighter or (dare I say it) Guilty Gear, but no real information will be available until the 21st. That’s, like, Wednesday. We’ll all have something to be thankful for then.
On a break from the writing last night, I popped into my RSS feeds and found Chain Factor waiting for me. Ostensibly part of an alternate-reality game for Numb3rs (the TV show), it manages to stand out as an addicting little web game in and of itself. Well, enough of one to make me waste an entire hour’s worth of battery power sitting in Panera and playing the damn thing, anyway.
In the “low-hanging fruit” department, we also have troubling news that the 360 Avatar game’s Achievement points are ridiculously easy to get in full. Now, here’s the sitch– when you port a game to the 360, and you have to put Achievements in, you can basically do it one of two ways. You can do it the Final Fantasy XI way, which is to make them absolutely impossible to get (you get one for each job that you level to 75, which means that I have, oh, zero and no way to actually get them– and those are the only Achievements in the game); or, apparently, you can do it the Avatar way, which is to just make them throwaways and subvert the whole purpose of the Achievements. Now, I have my issues with the 360, but the Achievements are not one of them (by and large– it could, as always, be better). I dig the idea behind giving even an ephemeral extrinsic reward for accomplishing cool stuff in the games. But please, please. Make us earn them, and make sure they’re not all overtly ridiculous.
I’m in Panera Bread again today, but only for a little while. This was completely unexpected, mind, as I was positive my errands were going to take me longer than they did. Plus, I think I’m addicted to their “Muffies”… as overtly pornographic as those sound, they’re actually very innocent and tasty cookies made out of the tops of muffins. They’re soft, sweet, and delicious. …..right, digging myself deeper now. Back to writing for me.
11.10.07
It’s Always The Quiet Ones
Out of all of the clips from AMV Hell 4, there is one which will never fail to set me off laughing. While I do encourage everyone to watch the whole thing– there’s some really funny stuff in this section, the lame One Piece joke that starts it off notwithstanding– the clip in question is at around -5:20 in the below video. (Though there’s also something to be said for the one starting at -2:00… it might actually get me to look into Death Note.) Enjoy.
11.03.07
Hi-Five My Remix
I’d been vaguely aware that the current issue of Wired– which I read only occasionally, sadly– had something rather interesting, but for the life of me I couldn’t quite recall what. (This lapse certainly could not have been the result of my Pokemon obsession, or my furious and frantic NaNo preparation, no sirree.) As it turned out, the feature that had caught my attention was a look at the manga industry as it exists in Japan. I’ll start by briefly recapping the article, then give my thoughts.
(EDIT: Incidentally: I was surprised, after my voice gave out yesterday, to find copies of Leopard at freakin’ Best Buy. I mean, the most stridently anti-Mac place I could think of now has a huge Apple display where they maybe once had a plasma screen showing off the latest DDR. Meh. You win some, you lose some, really. Related to this, Leopard is nice, very nice. Installing Leopard is unimaginable pain. Right, back to the Wired rant.)
( That all depends on your definition of the word ‘brief’. » )
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.