07.08.08
Posted in Appleology, Rants
at 12:17 pm
It’s a little funny to think that in less than 72 hours, I’ll be in line for an iPhone 3G. Considering how much I pooh-poohed the original, and how much I claim not to be a true finds-no-faults Apple fanboy, I can’t deny that it’s a little awkward to be so excited for the device; particularly when you consider that the out-of-the-blue Song Summoner game isn’t compatible with it (but I still have Momiji for that, should I so desire). Still, ( the whole thing is a bit more to me than just a new phone… » )
I can’t promise that this will be the last iPhone post, but I can say it’ll be the last one for a little while, at any rate. Definitely the last one before I have the device in my hand, but certainly not the last one overall. Sorry for being so annoying with them.
There’s going to be another Game Clear today or tomorrow, count on it– then Tactics A2 gets started. For right now, though, I’m going to give 150cc (MK Wii) a shot just to see how badly I screw it up. Later, folks.
Permalink
06.30.08
Posted in Rants
at 1:14 pm
On Saturday, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider announced they have discovered the Higgs Boson particle. While ordinarily this would be good news, discovery of the particle has triggered a freak collapse of the spacetime axis, resulting in massive worldwide time inflation. In international trading last night an hour closed at seventy-one minutes, and future futures traders are speculating that an hour could reach a hundred minutes by the end of the week, if “the end of the week” ever actually gets here.
Permalink
06.24.08
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Rants, Writing
at 9:30 am
Most folks I know tend to have a handful of words or phrases that they use with alarming regularity. Recently, I’ve noticed the word “actually” showing up in my work with a bit more frequency than I really want to see it. Overusing a word or phrase treads the fine line between a stylistic hallmark and a meaningless filler-word, and it can be the sign of a stagnating vocabulary.
I decided to avoid using the word unless it was absolutely necessary. So, in order to facilitate the negative reinforcement of using the word, I set up TextExpander to automatically replace the word once it was typed with an extra space. There are easy ways around it– for example, TextExpander can be fooled if you don’t type the letters all at once (for example, starting with “actu”, typing the next word, then arrowing back to finish up with “ally”)– but it’s more work than just typing the word straight-up. That thought process leads me to think of something better to put in its place– or, more likely, to rephrase my thought so that I don’t use it.
The principle can be applied to any text replacement program available on any platform, but it does require that you know what words you’re seemingly overusing.
Permalink
06.20.08
Posted in Rants, Site News
at 9:46 am
Hey. I’m still working on getting the MGS4 thoughts together, as well as a full review; also, I’m starting to compose some thoughts on Avatar. That might have to go over to the LJ just to have some content over there; the last post from there is dated the 10th, and while if I post it today it’s still technically following the “once per week” goal I’d set forth, it’s not exactly optimal, now is it? Anyway, content is content.
But this weekend I’m taking some time to clean my happy little craphole, and also to take care of a few bits of business that have been hanging over me for a while now. Fun business, mind, but business nonetheless. As for Panic Mode, it’s been shifted away from my work day and into my personal time during weekdays, so weekends are going to be hyper-valuable from here on out. I’ll keep you all advised as the situation warrants.
Catch you all when I catch you.
Permalink
06.17.08
Posted in Gaming, Rants
at 6:50 pm
So, Fourth Edition D&D. Our DM took us through the sample adventure at the back of the Guide, so we could all get a pretty stable frame of reference. The adventure was being played with an emphasis on combat and the battle specifics; while roleplaying wasn’t specifically disallowed, I wound up being the only one doing it, in the interests of “breaking” the system. It was only very light roleplaying anyway, but it did wind up getting everyone a little more into the game.
Anyway, the biggest difference came in the first-level combat abilities. A character at 4E level 1 is roughly as capable as a character at 3.5E level 3 or 4. It is a bit of power creep, but it’s understandable: few people wanted to play a character from the very beginning under the old regime. New characters in this setup have two or so at-will abilities regardless of class, an encounter ability, and a daily ability. It is MMOish, but if I had to place it to any one online game I’ve played, I’d say it resembles FFXI’s skill distribution; the daily skills are instant-effects that can’t be put completely to waste if they miss. Some of the longer spells from back in the day have become what are called “Rituals”, which we didn’t get to use this time, but are strictly out-of-combat techniques– though I would be willing to bet that there would have to be a way to use the effects of a recently-used ritual in combat; after all, the rules are made to be broken.
Being first-level was not dull at all. While the dungeon was kind of cookie-cutter, the group moved fairly quickly through the encounters. We didn’t have any noncombat encounters, just because the DM didn’t add any into the trip, but in four hours of gameplay we got through three fairly tough battles. I can picture seeing a character through the first ten levels or so over the course of maybe five or six sessions; since this was a one-shot, we didn’t tally up XP. When I got home Saturday night I leafed through the adventure and figured out the general idea of how we did and what we’d have been awarded– we’d be splitting maybe 3500-4000 between the six of us just for the battles and traps we’d dealt with to that point, taking us a good way towards level two. If we’d managed to finish it off, we’d definitely had all hit 2.
Simplifying the skills made the game flow a little quicker. As part of my required abuse of the system, I tried to find a way up a 10-foot wall without having to use my relatively poor Athletics rating (only a +2 bonus; I had not been trained in it). As a Rogue, I had good Dexterity, and had been trained in Acrobatics, so I used a rope hanging from the ceiling to swing my way up the wall, aiming for a baddie on the wall. I missed the bad guy, but everyone was in agreement that that was much cooler than just climbing the wall normally (the DM dropped hints that it would be easier to do so, hints I boldly ignored).
Anyway. The point is that purists decrying the death of D&D should probably spend a little bit less time screaming at people to stop having fun and start hoarding their old-edition books. 4th Edition is fun. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t “feel” like D&D, or that it changes too many of the more traditional things (remember THAC0?)– it’s fun for what it is, and while it will eventually succeed 3.5, it does not destroy it. I’m thinking this might be a good way to start up a story idea… I’d said in the Twitter line Saturday night that I was setting up a campaign, and so shall it be.
Catch you folks later this week, with thoughts on MGS4. Those… gah, I don’t know if I can put that in the LJ. I’d hide the spoilers behind a cut, but the RSS feeds dislike lj-cuts. I also want to talk, of all things, about Avatar: The Last Airbender, which has inexplicably captured my attention and subsequently throttled it. That’s very likely to be done on this side, and probably later in the week. See you then.
Permalink
06.09.08
Posted in Rants, Site News
at 6:44 am
Due to an inordinate amount of trackback spam coming very close to getting through the comment filters, I’ve decided to disable trackbacks along all posts. This shouldn’t affect most of you but unfortunately it means that anyone who links to any of my posts won’t get an automatic link-back. It’s not necessary, it’s one of those nice-to-have features, but when the amount of “trackback awaiting approval” messages coming in starts to outnumber the real, important e-mail I need, that’s when I take action.
Catch you all later, then.
Permalink
06.06.08
Posted in Anime, Gaming, Movies, Rants, Television
at 5:26 pm
In certain cultures, the number 4 has unlucky or dangerous connotations. Some folks associate it with death, while computer geeks associate the number with loss (as in “404″). However, this coming weekend and the week thereafter, the number 4 is looking to come up with alarming regularity. To wit:
* I’ve just picked up the core rulebooks for Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, and will be reading over those to provide impressions at some point in the near future.
* I currently have four “active and new” series to watch: Avatar S1, School Rumble, .hack, and Veronica Mars S2. Furthermore, I’ll be starting Disc 4 of V.Mars.
* Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out on Thursday. There are 4 midnight launch parties at Gamestops in Pittsburgh (none of which are the store I pre-ordered from).
* And I’m thinking about taking a run through Wild ARMs 5 or XF. The connection’s not obvious until you realize that it would be the 4th Wild ARMs game I’ve cleared (I skipped 2 and 4 thus far).
There’s a fifth incidence as well, but mentioning it here would be bad. Anyway. I’m likely to be hip-deep in dice for the rest of the night, so I’ll catch you folks later.
Permalink
05.22.08
Posted in Coding, Gaming, Movies, Rants
at 5:33 pm
So… ( The promised Iron Man minireview is behind this. » )
In the interim between writing the above discussion of Iron Man and the retooling I did of it here at lunch, something else has started to bug me, and I feel it ought to take precedence over movie discussions. Most of you know that the little scrolling thingy at the top of the blog front page is powered, normally, by Twitter. I was introduced to Twitter through one or more podcasts that I listened to, and found it to be a pretty clever tool. Twitter’s primary function is as a micro-blogging tool; you’re given 140 characters to describe what you’re doing or where you are. It feels almost like a haiku, actually; you have a very small space to work in yet complete freedom within that space. Needless to say, I love the concept. I’ve even used it to somewhat great effect here on this ol’ blog.
Twitter’s implementation, however– and this is being nice about it– sucks.
Now, I’ll be completely honest in that my utilization of Twitter is not exactly what the developers intended. I imagine that the Twitter team felt it would be a slower-paced version of instant messaging; more akin to passing notes around class than a live conversation. To some degree, then, my use– posting thoughts without devoting the amount of time it would take to make a full post on the blog– could be considered a case of “you’re doing it wrong”. I’m fine with that. The problem is, however, that my “wrong” use of Twitter stays perfectly within the provided capabilities of the service. I’m not hacking anything, haven’t made any bizarre customizations, and nothing I’m doing is anything someone else couldn’t do. It’s the intent I’m conveying that seems different from other Twitterkin. That’s not my complaint.
My big complaint, in all honesty, is the same complaint I had that forced me to move from Blogger/WordPress.com to a custom tool back in 2005, and then back to WordPress in ‘06. I did not want my ability to work on my site to be reliant on an external application which fails repeatedly and inconveniently. Yesterday’s post exemplifies the fact that Twitter’s instability is causing problems for me. Therefore, I’m thinking about a way to do more or less the exact same thing as Twitter… but just for my site. I don’t want to knock the efforts of the Twitter team, but the constant downtime and slow access of the web client are more than a little irritating.
To that end, I’m thinking maybe I could create a small Windows or OS X client to carry around (ultimately creating an iPhone/iPod Touch version as well). I’m actually leaning towards creating an AIR-based client to start with, as that would easily let me prototype what I want the actual client to look like. And, you know, use it before I do the native clients. We shall see, of course. I imagine I’ll have a web-based mockup available soon.
Catch you folks tomorrow.
Permalink
05.21.08
Posted in Gaming, Rants, Site News
at 8:46 pm
I want to make brief mention of my enjoyment of Wii Fit, We Ski, and Penny Arcade, yet Twitter is down. I recognized this fact, internalized it, and calmly went about other business. Then I decided that I wanted to complain that Twitter is down, but did not feel the need to post a full entry on it. So I opened up Twitterriffic and stared at it for a good ten seconds before it really sank in. It was one of those weird “the phone isn’t working, so I can’t call the phone company to come and fix the phone” moments. Which leads me to believe that I ought to finally quit Twitter.
As long as I’ve got you here, then, let it be known that We Ski is pure liquid awesome pressed on a disc.
Permalink
05.09.08
Posted in Essay Week, Rants
at 9:05 am
Essay Week Spring 2008 runs from May 5th to May 9th, 2008. Each day Iíll present a short essay on a topic of concern to me; I have the option of including a pre-essay post giving updates on ongoing life events if necessary. All the essays this week will be here; the LiveJournal is on hiatus while I concentrate here. Some of the elements in these essays may be controversial; I hope, however, that most will be well-regarded and at least read with an open mind. If you have anything to say about them, please feel free to leave a comment; I read them all, even if I may not respond due to time or other concerns. We wrap up this long, strange trip with a recounting of the equally lengthy and far stranger journey John’s undertaken to get where he is today, and helpful tips for avoiding that fate.
Eight parts carbon. Ten parts hydrogen. Four parts nitrogen. Two parts oxygen. Arrange them in a figure-eight pattern with two three hydrocarbon outcroppings and two oxygen spines. Ingest, and allow it to block your adenosine receptors. Feel the increased levels of epinephrine and serotonin coursing through your brain. Do this every day for four years, staring at a computer screen for eight hours each of those days and typing at the keyboard for the majority of that.
That’s nowhere near what it’s really like to be a programmer, but at least you’ll be chemically equivalent to one after that much caffeine.
( Continue Reading… » )
Permalink