12.04.08

Some Minor Housekeeping

Posted in Gaming, Movies, Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News, Television at 7:10 pm

In case anyone’s planning to rob my house really interested, I went ahead and updated the Collection page, over to your right. I’ve been on the verge of wanting a second ‘big’ shelf to put the cabinet stuff in for quite some time now, and while I still have plenty of room, the primary purpose of the big shelf is to give me an at-a-glance look at the backlog. Despite my best efforts, this is becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish.

Anyway. Enough bragging, I go now to eat and relax for a little while.

11.22.08

Setting Up Shop

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Shameless Self-Promotion, Writing at 3:26 pm

I seldom make blog posts “in the field”– the fact that I use the WordPress app for the phone makes me glad it was free– but right now I’m sitting in a Panera Bread in Monroeville, my usual writing place, and I’ve just hit the halfway point of the new draft of Blueberries. I still haven’t figured out a new, more appropriate title for the book yet (Blueberries stemmed from a conversation near the middle of the original draft), but that’s later. Right now, the halfway point is as good as any to give the usual update on how things are going.

( Beyond this cut there exist spoilers. Read at your own risk… » )

Overall, I’m looking forward to being able to present this to you guys when the time comes. With Thanksgiving coming up, I’m certainly not going to be able to get the whole thing done before the first of December, but I’ll definitely hit the 50K mark; I’m just barely under 40K right now (and I really ought to get back to that, in point of fact) but I’m planning on getting a couple thousand more each night before I head back to the homestead on Wednesday morning. Trust me, you’ll know when I hit 50.

Oh, and once this writing is all done (and the thing is formatted properly), I’ll be doing quite a bit of catching up; I’m looking forward to announcing my 30/30/109 list. Ciao, kiddies.

11.13.08

Xbox Gamerscore Milestone: 5000 Points

Posted in Gaming, Shameless Self-Promotion at 8:31 pm

This evening, my Xbox Live Gamerscore reached a grand total of 5125 points over 278 Achievements. The achievement which brought me to the 5000-point mark was “Return”, worth 50 points, for completing the ninth mission in Halo 3. It has been 112 days since the last thousand-point milestone. My achievement value average is 18.44 points. It is interesting to note that I have only acquired one non-mission related Achievement for Halo 3 to this point. As with the 4000-point level, this personal milestone offers absolutely no significance whatsoever save a small amount of pride.

11.02.08

Knuckle Up

Posted in NaNoWriMo, Rants, Shameless Self-Promotion, Writing at 6:54 pm

So, a fifteen-grand-word weekend. Not a bad start, if I say so myself. Of course now my hands feel like they’ve been stomped on repeatedly by the Incredible Hulk. While he was wearing golf cleats. Do they even make cleats in his size? If they do, they fell on my hands.

So I’m calling it a night fairly early; I got to bed late last night, the time change has screwed my time sense up beyond all salvation, and I want nothing more right now than to collapse into my warm comforting bed. So yeah.

I might just be able to swing daily blog posts this month, too. Don’t count on it, but I’ll do my best.

07.25.08

Xbox Gamerscore Milestone

Posted in Gaming, Shameless Self-Promotion at 10:11 pm

This evening, my Xbox 360 Gamerscore reached a total of 4000 points. The achievement that brought me to that point was Story Clear (Sakurako) from Senko no Ronde, worth 30 points. Obviously this is ultimately a meaningless milestone, but it is somewhat interesting to note. I still have not yet acquired every achievement in any one game (not even Avatar: The Burning Earth– I couldn’t seem to get the timing right for the last combo achievement).

07.16.08

Into The Rabbit Hole

Posted in Appleology, Rants, Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News at 1:46 pm

So. A few days have passed since I made the jump to the Appleologists’ communication tool of choice, the much-vaunted iPhone 3G. It’s probably not a big surprise that the device has seen almost constant use in that time– heck, I’m using it right now. I want to touch on some of the differences between the iPhone and my previous primary music device, the iPod Touch, and make a few comments on the features of the new device that make it ( a sweet, but ever so slightly sour, experience… » )

Overall, I have to say that I really like the iPhone, though I suppose that’s fairly evident. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but what it provides works for my purposes, and gets me thinking about other things I could do. I think that the hallmark of a good device isn’t one which just does what you want, but also one that helps you do things you couldn’t feasibly do before. In that regard, the iPhone is perfect for me, because it allows me to expand my horizons a bit more on the spur of the moment. I’m a very spontaneous person when left to my own devices, and if I can avoid having to do hours of prep work before I take a two-hour trip out somewhere, that helps me and gets me out of my shell a bit more. And any experiences I have become fodder for your amusement: expect a lot more livetweeting, random journeys, and other weirdness on this site, folks.

Later this week, on the LJ, I’ll talk a little bit about E3. What I have to say is… unkind.

06.28.08

Just A Note

Posted in Anime, Gaming, Movies, Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News at 9:18 pm

Today saw a great many chores being done, but the most interesting of all is the only one really relevant to the usual readership of the site: I updated the Collection page, over there to your right. For the first time since last July, you folks can see what I’ve got on my shelves. The picture came out a little hard to read– I wanted to get both shelves in one shot– so I added the helpful and very long legend underneath it. Granted, it is a little bit more show-off-ish than I usually am, but I figure that if it only gets one update a year, then it can afford to be a little showy. (Before you ask: yes, there is an organization system. I just haven’t figured it out yet.) Anyway, enjoy it.

05.03.08

Peace Out

Posted in Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News at 6:01 am

Well, folks, by the time you guys see this, I’ll be offline. I expect to see it through to the end, though if there’s an abject emergency– say, someone’s body parts are no longer all present and accounted for– give me a call. I hope nothing like that happens. Anyway, I’ll post on Sunday morning to let you know how it went.

Ciao.

04.29.08

The Week Before The Words

Posted in Rants, Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News, Writing at 4:40 am

I’ve spoken at some length about Essay Week, without actually giving the skinny on what it is or what its goal is for the May session. I figure now’s a pretty good time to get it taken care of. Those of you who were around for the last EW, back in August, might consider yourselves excused, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stick around; the explanation’s a little different this time.

Well, first, to address the question on everyone’s mind: “What right does this jerk have to write these long, ridiculous diatribes and expect us to care?” Funny thing is, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’m not particularly notable and I don’t really aspire to be; if I do become famous, I’d rather be known as a storyteller than as a commentator or discussion-master. Still, every once in a while I get these urges to try to speak my mind in what’s been called “the new marketplace of ideas”. (I’ll get into this more on Monday, when I talk about Web 2.0 and social networking.)

So, put short, Essay Week is five straight days on the blog about a handful of topics I feel the need to speak to. I come close sometimes outside of the designated Week, but usually scrap those because the topic on my mind at the moment is (nine times out of ten) fanboyism, and I’ve kinda done that one to death. The purpose of the week, when I first did it last year, was to give me some time to work through a game without having to worry about writing for the blog (recall I was working on the nonstop-posting challenge). This time it’s a little bit of an inversion– I’m writing so that I can, in essence, focus on my writing; the draft, specifically, needs some solid attention without interruption, and this coming week is an excellent way to do it. So, by prepping five long posts ahead of time, I can ensure that content stays flowing while at the same time giving myself a break.

Now, if that’s the purpose, why not simply take the week off from the blog? After all, Shutdown Day is coming– why not just stay offline and out of relative contact for the entire week? That’s more than a little impractical in this case. First off, I’m flirting with inertia enough as it stands. Recall my rules of writing– if you stop doing something long enough, eventually you stop doing it altogether. The second reason is that I do pride myself on having “something” up when I say I will. Even the excuses I’ve habitually posted, in my mind, count– it’s not that I don’t want to write for the main page. Sometimes things just come up, or sometimes there’s nothing really I want to say (or what I did say isn’t just bad, it’s whiny and annoying and you really don’t want me to post it, trust me). Finally, I did make a resolution to try to keep up a consistent set of updates, and I intend to keep that promise. (Maybe next year I’ll try daily updates on both sites…. hrm.)

So, now you know what it is, and why I’m doing it. Just to give you all a little taste, the five topics I have in mind– I’ll be writing the essays tonight and tomorrow– are as follows: “On Social Networking”, “On The Tantalizing Fringe”, “On A Lack of Organization”, “On Reinventing Oneself”, and “On Being A Programmer”. I do hope that you enjoy these topics.

One of the things I’d like, really, is to see people start discussing the topics a bit more. I always feel a little self-conscious posting all this crap up, as if I were some sort of twenty-first century Walter Cronkite telling you all The Way It Is. As much as I style myself a Forum Tyrant, I think there’s room to challenge me on a few things.

One way or another, I hope you’ll all join me in at least exploring some of the things I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while.

04.15.08

Tekko Report Up

Posted in Anime, Shameless Self-Promotion, Site News, Writing at 6:58 pm

As you can see to the right (or here if you’re one of those weird RSS people), the Tekkoshocon 2008 report is up. I’m still working through what few photos I do have, and once I get them all into Flickr I’ll post a link to that set, but that might be a while longer. In any event, I hope you like text.