Showing posts with label wild cards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wild cards. Show all posts

Sunday, 17 May 2009

Tickets, Timing and Terminators

What's this? An update early on Sunday night? That's what you get with a day off and a head full of things to say...

May 11 - Opportunity Missed

today did not start out so well. I was up very early in order to head into the city for an opportunity I've been thinking about for a while. I left the house at a quarter after seven and turned onto the highway... only to find a traffic jam stretching as far as the eye could see to the south. Seeing as I had an 8 AM appointment this was not a good thing, so I made good use of my local knowledge and took the first side road I could off the parking lot that had formerly been a highway. This was the first time I had ever seen traffic backed up as far as that highway exit, or as early as that in the morning. Through a minor miracle, I managed to arrive at my appointment exactly on time, only to be told that the group had already been taken inside and there is nothing to be done. Needless to say, I was devastated, but by this point in my life I have learned to take the big sucker-punches in stride, along with the little things we shouldn't worry about.

After spending a shaky half-hour in a nearby Starbuck's calming myself over a chai tea, I headed home for the rest of my day off... cursing the clear open lanes of the highway not even 2 hours gone as I traveled in the opposite direction homewards. The rest of the day was a wash, as I distracted myself from my disappointment by working on my NWN project, among other things. I soaked my cares away in the hottub twice in the evening, and went to bed early to dreams I cannot recall.

May 12 - Community Creation

I'm considering installing a method to track the various origins of visitors to my blog, which have more than tripled in number since I installed Google's AdSense last month. C|Net, that wonderful old standby of the internet, recently published a list of a dozen or so candidates, which I am reviewing right now. If anyone out there has actually used one of these programs, or can recommend another one to me, please do so - I'd really like to know where all the extra visitors are coming from!

Online communities are great, and are extensions of the old play-by-mail / penpal snail-mail groups that have existed for decades, long before BBS's and the internet came along. One such neat place is SciFi-Meshes.com, where thousands of dedicated souls design spaceships. Almost every ship that has ever existed in SciFi, be it film, book or other media, has a mesh somewhere on this site, including quite a few from my own beloved Babylon 5 series. As well as this one - a ship from one of my favourite books when I was a kid, called Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD, which had tons of cool-looking futuristic spaceships... combat ships, mostly, which were even cooler. As the author on the mesh site says, the book was very influential, with games like Homeworld( also one of my fave video games ever )and many other projects showing inspiration sourced in this book. There is even a history of the book series here, which I was fascinated to find - I learned that there were more books beyond the one I had managed to get!

Similarly, people can band together for various projects from across the globe, sometimes for profit. GetAFreelancer.com is such a place, where professionals( and amateurs too )from every country can buy or sell their skills to various projects covering almost every topic you can think of. My own NWN project is a tiny fish by comparison, but the group I am working with are all doing it for free, from our love of the game and our bond as gaming comrades... plus a little bit of performance ego too, I will bet.

May 13 - Write, Write, Write!

A friend told me today about an amazing story that he had just read called "The Old House Under the Snow" by author Rhys Huges, whose website you can check out to see his massive story list. He plans to write at least 1000 stories, and is up to 483 so far, most of which are published or in the stages of being so - nice!

There is also a nice little article about the Four Myths of writing that i found this week. While not an in-depth commentary on the craft, it does touch on four of the most common misconceptions about the writing life. I also loved a short piece called Freelance Writing Tips, which gives some excellent advice for those who are new to the field - in my case, still totally untried... so far. I think I will be browsing more often over at FreelanceFactor.com, which as you may guess is home for a large community of freelance writers - my kind of folk, in lieu of hanging around with published authors and garnering useful advice. An especially gritty site with insight( heh )on becoming an author is... Ten blindingly obvious things I've learned in my first year as an author at FreelanceWritingTips.com, another great site.

I will also be checking out the Top 10 Blogs on Writing, whose 2008 listing you can find here - tons of great info there, which I am slowly perusing for inspiration and direction in taking my own writing career out of the Stalled Bin. I would love to pursue voice acting as well, but for now I think writing is the better ticket in a down economy... from my research, voice acting is not for the faint of heart, though Steve Saylor has bravely ventured forth into that field. Mind you, he has a LOT more experience than I with media of most types, having spent time on Call for Help among other shows and generally being a very talented guy. I wish him well - make sure you take a look at his work over at The Voice-Over Chronicles.

May 14 - Wild Cards in the works

Me and my post-apocalyptic junkie-ism: I've just discovered a new show coming to TV called Day One, from the creator of Heroes. The show is set in California, and follows the adventures of a group of apartment residents who are trying to find out what happened to cause the cataclysm that ended their world. There is a preview of the action over at io9.com, which is a good place to peruse for SciFi news and other related media tidbits.

Some more SciFi goodness this week: one of my favourite shared-world series is getting a facelift. The Wild Cards universe is set in an alternate timeline starting back in the Fifties, when an alien virus causes millions of humans on earth to... change. Most die, some are horribly mutated and a very few develop super powers - the mutated are called Jokers, the supers called Aces... you can extrapolate the rest from there. I just love the fact that these stories are set in the modern age, and deal with topics and issues relevant to each decade that the stories cover. Numerous top-notch writers have contributed to the series, which was started in 1987 and I happily manage to have every single book of, despite most being long out of print and hard to find. The series creator / editor George R.R. Martin of Song of Ice and Fire fame talks about the relaunch here - I can hardly wait!

After work I came home... and worked some more, outside. The landlord had delivered a load of topsoil as promised, and I spent a happy few hours getting good exercise shovelling it all onto the front lawn. Yes, that's right: the lawn. When this place was hooked up to the municipal sewer system a few years ago, they ran the pipe under the front lawn... leaving a large speedbump most of the way across it, despite some settling. Not being one who enjoys looking out on( or cutting )a patchy, ugly lawn, I was more than happy to provide muscle power if the landlord would provide the fill. She's great, and has loved the fact that we as tenants are willing to improve the place in various ways to make it more enjoyable to live in. Very different from living in a condo or apartment - I like the exercise, the feeling that I am doing something to make my living space more comfortable, and that I am outside enjoying the lovely climate.

May 15 - Plane Ticket News!

I received some AMAZING news today, from a phone call after work. A good friend of mine, whom I have known most of my life( and will remain nameless until I get his OK to mention his generosity here )has offered to use his Airmiles to get me a ticket back to Niagara this summer, in time for Shawna & Nigel's wedding. I was floored - such generosity is so rare, especially since I have not said much at ALL along the lines of trying to afford the plane ticket on my own... I had a silly grin on my face for the rest of the night, and I still smile like a fool now whenever I think about it - things like that make me marvel again at my luck in having such fantastic people to call friends, and so darn many of them too. Makes it all the more important to live up to their examples!

For those of you who own DVR's( digital video recorders ), you may already be familiar with the one thing that can drive you crazy by owning one: running out of space. Much like computer hard drives, you may think that you have a ton of room, but all too soon though saved shows begin crowding each other and you have to decide which ones go and which ones stay. Though this is not as hard a choice in the age of DVDs, sometimes you just don't want to spend the money on buying a TV series or movie.

Happily, there is now a solution: cousins of the external hard drive, the PVR Expander has arrived. While not cheap, it means that for certain brands of PVR's, you can just plug in the external drive and breathe a sigh of relief as you can now keep far more shows... until it fills up again. unfortunately, my own PVR is not compatible with any of the current solutions on the market, which means I have been trying out various ways of recording the shows onto other media. So far, nothing has worked satisfactorily, as last week's blog entry about the Dazzle video capture device illustrates quite well. Still, it does point out that we are moving towards a point where we could choose where and how we will store our media, which more than likely means it will be on a hard drive home media server, which can be accessed by various types of devices around the house. Which also means that it won't be cheap either, at least until everybody starts wanting one like plasma TV's and netbooks.

May 16 - Invariably...

Following up on my mentioned last week about fraudulent e-mails, I bring you this week the topic of: identity fraud and theft. Again, C|net has written a great primer article on the subject, which I highly recommend everyone have a look through - knowledge is power, and protecting one's good name in economically troubled times is vitally important.

In case you hadn't heard, there's a new animated show coming out: Stoked. From the creators of 6teen and Total Drama Island, this is another flash-based animated series from incredibly talented people, including my good friend Mike Hogue who has placed a trailer for the new show on his own website - go have a look!

What really takes the cake this week though is... a cake. Not just any cake though: one made in the shape of the Millennium Falcon! This is one incredibly detailed - it looks more like a model than a cake. Too bad all that remains today are the pictures.

Work was slow today, nothing unusual there... sad to say, things do not look to be looking up anytime soon. Which makes me sad, as everything else about work has been, er, working out, of late. I am a fifteen minute bike ride from home, located in a plaza well away from any downtown weirdness, and I no longer have a glass barrier between myself and people, leading to a more relaxed attitude. Not to mention less fear of making a mistake in cash handling; the HAL 9000 cash dispenser does away with that worry, as it sits brooding like a black panther in the middle of the floor. Scary, sometimes, these machines...

Which brings me to Terminator: Salvation. Yep, it's the fourth film in the franchise, and to date I've been enjoying the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, though I have yet to get to the second season( there will never be a third: it was cancelled last month! No! ). Salvation looks amazing though, as it is designed as a war film - the previous films have given us a few fleeting glimpses into the future Skynet war, but the fourth installment is all about the apocalypse, baby! If it is good enough, I may put it on my Blue-Ray list... not that I have a Blue-Ray player yet, mind you, but eventually it looks like I will have to switch, market forces be damned.

May 17 - Sun_day at last!

Today was spent almost entirely outdoors from mid morning until dinnertime. It was a stunningly gorgeous day, with a clear blue sky and no wind to speak of save a gentle occasional breeze, for most of the day. I dug dirt, pulled weeds and hauled rocks around the property, focusing on the entrance drive - I will take a few pics of it to show the massive amount of work that I have done so far, mostly on my own with some help from my dad. I took breaks on and off until late afternoon, when I washed up and then spent the remainder of the beautiful day simply relaxing in my portable hammock. The lake area was serene for most of the day, even with the odd Victoria Day Weekend celebration getting a little loud here and there a few doors down.

What I wish I had was one of these - kids these days, so lucky.... all I had was a pool and a garden hose. And bugs.

And what would be a blog without bacon? Actually, it's... duck bacon. Qwack?

I spoke to Rene tonight, who caught me up on happenings in Niagara... well no, actually, we talked about most everything else but. I was most impressed by his reading lists; he manages to come up with the most interesting books, whereas I have no talent at finding anything that's not already in a list somewhere. What I should really do is compile a list of my fave authors and dig through their books at the local library - saves spending money at a time when it is tight all around. I used to visit the library a lot years ago, but as it became less convenient I stopped going... the Port Dalhousie branch was the last one I really frequented, as it was fairly close to home while I was living down that way in the late eighties. I hope it's still there!


All for now - going to go soak away my aches and head to bed, working the holiday tomorrow and all next week.

Tuesday, 20 January 2009

Holgrams, Humour and Hunger

Well, we went from 5 comments the week before, to 0 comments for last week; kinda like the yo-yo stock market. Which may be good, as things go, so maybe no news is good news, in these turbulent(-ish) times. So this week's and next week's blog: minimalist. Cue applause.

Jan 12th - Sunshine and Vikings

Just a gorgeous Monday here in Victoria; sunny all day, highs around ten degrees with no snow. Of course, the lovely weather means lots of people out, and I get to see a lot of foot traffic from where I am, stuck in a glass box. Which is nicer than being stuck in a back office with no view on a sunny day, though less cruel in some ways. I really, really like the lack of snow here... makes me smile.

I almost didn't have an entry for Monday, apart from that, until I read about this movie: Outlander. It's a story that took 18 years to bring to the screen, it has vikings in it... and aliens. Looks like quite a film, as it has a ton of solid names attached to it, including John Hurt and Ron Perlman of Hellboy fame. Watch for it!

Jan 13 - Superpower Boxes

The apartment is stacked with boxes now, some of them higher than I am, due to the extreme lack of extra space. Having learned from my last moving experience, the boxes are now simply numbered with a master list kept by yours truly so as to avoid temptations for boxes labelled 'camera' to disappear en route. Fortunately it is a short move, as such things go, so I hope that the two days off I've booked will be more than adequate for everything needed to be accomplished.

No superhuman moving efforts from me this time around, as I've not the energy. Though I could wish for superpowers, sometimes having them is not all it is cracked up to be, as this blog shows us. I have a few books on second-string superheroes, which are great reading; not to be confused with sidekicks, these heroes are stand-alones whose powers are not quite up to playing in the big leagues.

I've always been a fan of the Wild Cards series, edited by George R.R. Martin, which takes the superhero and plunks the concept right down into a universe very similar to our own. If you've never read it, you owe it to yourself to pick up at least the first book in the series and have a read. S'good.

Jan 14 - 7 of 9? I wish...

Existence is a fragile thing, but usually you can get a handle on reality even if you need a few supplements to make the picture sharp. However, a new theory may blow the socks off that: researchers at a German facility studying gravity have found data that suggests the universe is in fact a supermassive hologram - no, I'm not kidding.

Maybe those researchers should call up the writers from Star Trek: The Next Generation... nobody else has greater experience with the ways of holographic life as those guys. Especially how it can go wrong.

Or maybe it doesn't matter, in a world where people are more than willing to escape to such places as Second Life, where they can craft a better reality much more appealing than their dull daily existence here.

Still, life is what you make it( heh - still life! ). Eventually you'll end up surrounded by family as you pass from this mortal coil, or the other extreme: alone in your vast mansion, surrounded by sycophants who are only there to ensure a place in your will for a piece of your vast fortune.

Either way is better than a lot of other alternatives... well, except for immortality, but nobody's quite got that figured out. Yet.

Jan 15 - Day 9 of 9 and a Visitor

Today just rolled by, as I was feeling rather beat on this, the last day of 9 in a row working. I was glad to go home and relax, despite the chaos of boxes all around. Most of my plates and cutlery are packed, with a few left for daily use, along with all my books and DVD's so entertainment is limited to the 'net and the Xbox... which will also be packed shortly.

I had an unexpected visitor at the door today, one who has been by to see me several times already. More on this next week, I hope, when I have pictures.

One nice thing is that the NWN group I game with has seen a rise in numbers since the holidays, with a surprising number of new players dropping in to see the server. I've been stunned to encounter several folk who had actually read some of my Nichneven stories, which tickled me no end, I tells ya. It's good to be 'established' in that regard, in that people arrive fresh to the server and already have a sense of 'place' when they wander around to explore. Warms m'heart, it does.

Jan 16 - Lunch on the Prairie

I was up early today( my 1st of 3 days off )to fill in my passport renewal application, which was a nice change from having to go through all the rigmarole of getting one in the first place. The office was right here in Victoria, which was also nice; it moved into the top level of the Bay Center, which makes it quite convenient to get to and as an added bonus for the employees, it is set next to the food court - lunch breaks!

I didn't have lunch there though; instead, I wound up at the Prairie Inn, a place out in East Saanich that was established back in 1859... which perhaps explains why there is no website for it. The pub decor is eclectic, the ceilings are low and the whole place has that ramshackle feel of rooms added one by one as the space ran out. But the food: that's what has kept this place open. I had a large turkey pot pie that was baked to a perfect golden brown, with just the right amount of thick gravy and a huge side Caesar salad. The chunks of turkey inside the pie were thumb-thick, perfect white meat... my parent's meals were equally generous in portions and equally perfectly cooked. We all left with take-home boxes and the feeling of being quite full.

I spent the afternoon and evening packing more boxes, thankful that I had kept all the old bubblewrap and other moving materials from the last move in my storage locker here. Makes the job easier in some ways, though as always it comes down to fill box, tape, label and repeat. When all is said and done, I expect to have over a hundred boxes all told, plus furniture and bags of various soft items like linens. One can only imagine how much easier this would be if every book I had was an eBook... fifty boxes right there, give or take.

Oh, and Battlestar Galactica had its season premiere tonight... which I didn't see, and don't plan to until after the move. For now, I will content myself with a few BSG webisodes, which may be the wave of the future: smaller, less expensive side-plots to the main show that fill in unanswered questions and such.

Jan 17 - Star Wars Nerds love bacon?

While g33k culture has flourished, the stereotypes of the geeky cousin, the nerd living in his parent's basement, remains strong in today's society. While I don't normally endorse ridicule of such unfortunates, I did come across a hilarious mockumentary of the D&D gaming nerd called Fear Of Girls, which oddly has a very spartan companion website - odd, given the series' popularity. The comic writing is spot-on, and the production quality is rather high overall, given the medium. Go have a laugh.

If you liked that, you'll snort milk from your nose when you see this: The first Star Wars Trilogy as told by someone who hasn't actually seen it... in less than 4 minutes.

And what would this blog be without mention of bacon? This week, for those of you with a BBQ gleam in your eye for the first day of spring( months hence )I present: the Bacon Explosion!

Jan 18 - Half-Life 2

While I was out yesterday, I picked up The Orange Box fairly cheaply at EB Games. I've been waiting a while to get this compilation set, simply because my old PC couldn't handle it: it contains HalfLife2, both expansion Episodes, Team Fortress2 and the award-winning Portal... well, HL2 won a bunch of awards too, you know. I played it on and off all day, in between packing various things, and eventually played it well into the late hours of the night. I have to say I loved the graphics for the characters, but the background objects left something to be desired: often ladders and such appeared, well, flat... which is bad for a 3-D game. The story is decent, and the gameplay itself is solid... there are even such notable actors as Lou Gosset Jr and Michelle Forbes, who is also voicing a character in the upcoming Chronicles of Riddick videogame. Eventually I stopped playing, due to a combination of fatigue and the onset of a headache... the high pressure system here is still hanging around, which is great for the weather bu lousy for my constitution.


More cardboardy goodness next week, as I discover where I hid those missing parts for my computer... plus tell you about my visitor. Don't forget, you can always review my past blogs from the menu on the left, by year and by month - click on the triangle / arrows to see a month-by-month listing, etc.