Emptiness, Erudition and Empathy

The word of the week is 'shǎjīng -  it's both dumb AND clever! 傻精傻精

April 11 - Dozens of Empty Cities In China

If you've ever wondered how numbers can hurt the world, look no further:

This falls under 'Looks Great On Paper, Stinks In Reality.' Of this sort of thing are economic crashes made of! 65 million new empty houses... it boggles the mind.

April 12 - Sleep Measurement, from Sweden!

For the past four months or so, I've been measuring my sleep cycles via an iPhone app named, appropriately enough, 'Sleep Cycle' - go figure. It uses the motion sensor in the phone to track when you're awake( motion )or deeply asleep( no motion )and display it as a chart, thusly:

Looking at the charts, I've tried to correlate the good nights vs. the bad for things like stress, early / late bedtimes, video games / TV before bed and the like. So far, the only thing that has shown a marked improvement in my sleep cycle is exercising that day for at least a half hour( no surprise there ). I slept the best I had in some time the same days that I walked up the mountain home; something symbolic in that.

April 13 - Autism

Over the years, one story idea that's rattled around my head from time to time has been about being IN my head - trapped, if you will. I've wondered( with some horror )what it would be like if a person was trapped inside their own mind due to an accident or illness and how that would play out. Thanks to Brian, I now know that there's a story in there, along with a person and a good dose of empathy. Watch this video and make sure you have a handkercheif handy - it doesn't tug the hearstrings, it yanks.

April 14 - Bilbo Begins!

More years ago than I like to think, the Lord Of The Rings film trilogy hit the big screen and brought Tolkien's works to dazzling life in ways that few thought were possible given the medium. They were( and still are! )glorious films that I watch when I can, but only when I have the time to enjoy each one from start to finish uninterrupted - call it escapism, if you must. How amazing then, to learn that Peter Jackson has begun filming on The Hobbit TODAY - and there's VIDEO! Here you go:

Follow The Hobbit - Start Of Production - in HD to watch it in HD on The Hobbit's Facebook page!

April 15 - Why Story Matters in games

As a writer, I tend to pay closer attention than most to the bones of a story. Heck, I pay close attention to story in MOST types of media, movies included. But when it comes to video games, story seems to be taking a back seat to graphics and gameplay - which is understandable, as a story-centric game would be little more than a text adventure from the 80's. Which can be fun, but won't work out the video card in your PC much. Working on your brain is what the story does, in any medium, and for video games, it sometimes has to be said in plain words - check out this great C|Net article on Why Story Matters In Games.

April 16 - Real Faces For TCats And Turtles

Two of my favourite 80's shows are TMNT and Thundercats, though I have yet to pick up either on DVD; TMNT tended to have good and bad series, depending on what decade you were in. There are a LOT of other fans out there who share my tastes, but thankfully some of them are a LOT better visual artists:

Maybe they should tap that guy above to work on the new Thundercats reboot? Might be an idea!

April 17 - Sunday: Not what it used to be

Sundays seem to be a bit of a wash for me, which is a total 180 from years ago when I always had them off( and thus usually gamed all day ). Now I work every Sunday, which doesn't seem to matter much as the salad days of playing COD in the morning with my friends in ON are over with - nobody plays as a group anymore, at least not regularly like we used to. Things have switched on Sundays, in that I now game in the evening in NWN, slaying dragons( or wizards, or what-have-ye )instead of shooting baddies in a crazy twitch-fest. I have to say NWN is more relaxing, in that I've yet to have a 'bad game' in NWN, compared to days / weeks in COD where my score tended to lower the median - globally. Let's hear it for magic winning over machine guns, and roleplaying triumphing over... romping? Meh.

Ack - just tired tonight. Enjoy the blog!

Spring, Silliness and SSD's

The word of the week is chipotle - everyone needs some spice!

April 4 - Coverage

Spring is here: it’s wet and cloudy, but already the cherry blossoms are out in full force all over southern Vancouver Island. It’s at this time of year that I start to think about heading back to Niagara; this year it looks somewhat dubious time-wise, but financially it should be no problem – weird, that combination. The time has to do with scheduling at work: the earliest I can take my vacation( I have 4 weeks saved up )is in late June or early July. The bean-heads at head office keep denying requests for 1 more staff member; as it stands we’re ‘fully staffed’ which means if anyone’s sick or wants to go on vacation the whole schedule goes to hell and everyone’s miserable. In effect, we’re being held hostage to minimum outlays for labour to benefit the company, not our health. Compare that to Tim Horton’s next door, which can have over a dozen people working at any one time and my ire rises exponentially – I’ve done a few brief cost analysis charts and I believe I’m totally in the right frame of costs. No surprise there, really.

April 5 - Crappy64 is back!

What's old is new again, as the saying goes - in this case, the venerable Commodore 64 is being reborn. I wasn't lucky enough to have one( or an NES, I know, it's weird... )but I do remember playing Mail Order Monsters for hours over at a friend's house. I was impressed enough at that age to have a serious look at the Commodore Amiga that was released a few years later - which I DID buy, albeit a used one. It was the first computer I had with a hard drive - before that, I had a Coleco ADAM, a freakish low-cost home 'computer' that mated with a game console and ran on cassette tapes. It was good for its day and I enjoyed the games I played on it... but I wouldn't go back to play very many of them, even on a Coleco emulator. Well, maybe Donkey Kong. In any case, I'm not sure what market the C64 is being aimed at, in this day of handheld tablet PC's and smartphones. Nostalgia will only sell so many units...

April 6 - In Darkest Night

Green Lantern looks to be the 'must -see' comic-book film of the year, arriving soon at a theatre near you. If 

you haven't seen the trailer, take a gander and wait for your jaw to drop:

I've always liked Green Lantern, especially for the clear-cut lessons it imparts about good, evil and the power of the individual. Plus, the colour green is my favourite and those power rings are just damn cool!

April 7 - Consumerism Savings

A few months ago, I mentioned The Best Time to Buy Things 2011 list  – since we're in a new quarter, I thought I'd bring it up again, as there are a few things on there you might really save some money on. According to the list, right now TV's and laptops are looking to be moved, so hunt around for some good deals. Cruises are also looking for passengers; here in Victoria over a hundred cruise ships are expected to dock here during the Spring / Summer season, which is a LOT of business. I do also hunt regularly on RedFlagDeals.com, which is fantastic site to drop by every other day to see if you can catch wind of a deal online or locally. There are thousands of sharp-eyed consumers with connections out there who post on RFD's, so it's inevitable that there will be mention of something on there sooner or later you've been waiting to buy on sale.

April 8 - BBQ?

I'm hoping that things in Niagara are going to become spring-like soon; I remember this time of year being somewhat annoying in that it was usually quite cold and rainy right up until May. Which is not to say that one can't barbeque ANY time of the year, but it's best on warm spring / summer nights. I haven't had a barbeque( or a porch, for that matter )for over a decade now and I find I miss it. Tossing some sausages and burgers onto the grill is almost a national pastime for most guys and I find myself missing it oddly most days. Except for the sausages - I always managed to forget to drain out the juices a little and so scalded my tongue on more than a few occasions. At least my taste buds seem to have grown back...

Anyone out there have their grill going yet? Want to send me some burgers? ;-)

April 9 - SSD Arrives!

After a brief morning at work, I retired to the Bean for a few hours and then was home well before 3pm, to install my new( cheaply bought! Sale! Savings! )SSD computer drive( Solid State Drive ). It’s only 64gb, so I had to first trim down Windows Vista( boring and difficult! )then back it up( again rather boring, but Paragon Backup made it easy AND it was free! )before going on to re-install it from said backup copy( about 1.5 hours of boring )onto the new SSD. And WOW, what a difference in speed! I went from a thumb-twiddling 15 minutes of loading to... 3 minutes, which is right on where Kingston( the makers of this SSD )said the speed would be, at about 5x’s as fast as a regular hard drive, which my old 200gb is. Coupled with the annoying-but-functional 500gb hybrid Seagate SSD, I can now boot my system back and forth from Win7( for my daily tasks / games )and Vista, which I use almost exclusively for NWN, as it just doesn’t get along with Win7 – at least not on my machine. So I’m a happy camper that things went smoothly( for once )and as planned. Speedy system on the cheap... and while I was at it, I tossed in some more RAM, so I now have 16 gigs of memory to use; too bad I don’t own a copy of Photoshop. Maybe next year...

April 10 - Walking Uphill

Another half-day at work; being the manager hath its privileges, even if it’s only to leave early to save on hours( at the expense of my paycheque but to the cheers of the bean counters at head office ). As usual, I could only take the bus as far as Millstream road, then walked the 4km from there up the mountain. Today I timed it perfectly: the rain had stopped and the sun peeked out occasionally as I soldiered up the winding roadway on the sidewalk. It’s a lovely, healthy walk, with little in the way of traffic noise or other urban audio clutter to distract from the solemn beauty of the green trees receding in rows towards the distant hills. The green mosses glow bright against the rocks so soon after the rains, lending a deep-woods feel to the walk as though the road is driven through the heart of the wilderness – I didn’t spot any deer today though.

The rain held off until well into the night, but as expected it lowered the temp enough outside that it was windows-closed for me. Soon enough, I'll be able to leave the windows open for weeks at a time, weather permitting, to let in that fresh 'mountain' air here... the lack of humidity here in BC is most welcome!

Cars, Crysis2 and Crops

The word of the week is serendipity- who knew?

March 28 - Finally Farscape

If you watch long enough and are patient enough, sometimes you are rewarded - such was the case this week when the complete Farscape TV series finally went on sale( briefly )on Amazon.com. Thanks to an at-par US dollar, I was able to pick up the set for half of what it is retailing for locally in Canada; even online it's not that much cheaper. I'm ecstatic, as I've been wanting to watch the series for years now from the beginning; like Babylon5 and Stargate:SG1, I consider Farscape one of the touchstone scifi series of the past two decades. I was disappointed to find that when I tried to save the episodes to my PC for easier viewing that the conversion process caused a lot of artifacting issues. So, I'll have to experiment with various programs until I find an acceptable convertor; in the meantime, I'll enjoy each DVD in order - yay!

March 29 - Crysis2 ?

This week has dragged in some ways, due to the stress of car hunting. I blew off a little steam today after work with a few games of Crysis2, but I found myself gravitating back to playing rounds of Battlefield: BC2 again due to the unrelenting pressure( and swift succession of deaths )in Crysis2. It's a good game( C2 )don't get me wrong - it just plays a LOT better with friends. At least with BF:BC2 one can jump into a decent game in a style you're used to; with C2, I'm still learning how to manage the suit powers and that makes me easy meat. Bleh.

March 30 - Dark Tower Lives!

In some ways, little things from your childhood will stick with you, whether you think they're supposed to or not. Case in point: a boardgame called DarkTower, which was one of the first 'electronic' games on the market. I though it was the coolest darn thing imaginable: a boardgame that plays along WITH you as you move your pieces. It was also rather expensive and nobody I knew had the thing, which was a shame - I'd have given a lot to have played it as a kid. Now I have the chance to play it as an adult, thanks to the wonders of the internet and flash programming - DarkTower online awaits you!

Maybe this spring I'll get out and join a local boardgame group, as long as they don't play Monopoly...

March 31 - A New( used )Car!

It was a bit of a rush morning today due to doctor's appointments and my working later on... perfect timing for buying a car, of course! We were at the local Mazda dealer a little before 9am to take the Mazda5 for a test drive and negotiate a price for the Mazda3... which went better than I had thought. I didn't manage to wrangle an incredible deal, but I did feel that we came away from it with a decent deal - not bad for being stressed, nervous and paranoid about possibly missing some important little detail. As it turns out, I was less than impressed with the cost of a 2012 Mazda( read: NO DEAL )so the salesman did what I can only describe as pulling a rabbit out of a hat: He pulled up a 2006 Mazda5( highly rated! )that hit ALL the right tick-boxes AND for a reasonable price. PLUS it only had 35K on the odo! We gave it a brief test drive and a very thorough inspection, then sat down to make the deal happen. It works out to another 3 years of lower payments WITH a solid warranty on top of that that will let me sleep at night... which is all about not wasting my money on a lemon needing constant expensive repairs. So now my mom has access to a car that she can get into / out of easily, with far more room for moving things AND it drives just like the previous one - plus it looks great! How's that for a deal?

April 1 - Fool Me Not?

For some reason, April Fool's day snuck up on me... but didn't end up getting me, in any way, which was a bit of a letdown. I remember from previous years all the jokes I've seen in the media, including one memorable one in the Toronto Star back in the 80's about the spaghetti crop in Italy failing, promising to spike the cost of spaghetti worldwide - I loved seeing the picture of a dozen trees draped in pasta as workers stood on ladders to harvest it. The Top 100 Greatest April Fool's Jokes is one list that I really recommend reading, as it goes back decades and is eye-opening as to how humans can be so easily cajoled into making fools of themselves in usually harmless ways;  some things will never change. I particularly like how #47 keeps getting recycled over the years...

April 2 - Timing and Teamwork

Talk about timing! I JUST read today that the cost of Japanese cars is set to skyrocket shortly, due to the problems in Japan with supplying parts due to the recent disaster. I could not have timed my car purchase better, I think -I believe the cost of my purchase would have gone up by 10 percent or so if the dealer had known about a shortage in parts availability before the deal was signed. Sweet! I took the afternoon off early from work to try to recover from the week - a few hours spent blissfully at the Bean and an afternoon nap( unusual for me )prepared me for an on-off evening online playing BF:BC2 with a stellar group of hardcore high-level players I seem to have fallen into this past month. They're a friendly bunch who are deadly in-game and seem to delight in showing me their secret methods for victory. Huzzah for me NOT sucking in-game enough to keep up with them AND prove helpful!

April 3 - Recuperation

It's been a long week; buying a car and having my District Manager replaced with a new, even MORE perky one has taken its toll. Thankfully, I had a decent day at work and returned in time for a fun NWN session that saw some interesting plot developments involving an evil emperor and time travel - sweet! Not much else to say about today; I've been enjoying watching Generals At War on TV as I write the blog tonight, to finish well before midnight so I can hit the hay - I'm exhausted. I definitely need to get going on some regular exercise outdoors soon, now that the weather's cleared up to be bike-friendly, as I can really use the energy boost that comes from being more active - stair sessions don't count. Adios!

I'd say I'm looking forward to sleeping with the windows open, but there's the little matter of the frog pond just over the other side of the courtyard. Those little splashers sure do love to sing at night - ALL night, and they've already started. Fresh air and earplugs it is, this spring and summer...

Foxes, Fridges and FPS

The word of the week is obviate. Check it if you feel it necessary.

March 21 - Expenditure Looming

Pressure to turn the 'old' car into a 'new' car is mounting quickly, so much so that I think we'll have it before another month is past. I do NOT like being under that sort of timeline when it comes to something that is the second-largest purchase people make on average( first being a home )so that's creating some tension. On the bright side, I've been using sites like CarQuotes.ca and CanadianBlackBook.ca to arm myself with dealer costs and get good advice, on top of what I already know. It's a damn shame that it's still a game when it comes to buying a car, as it's buyer beware - it's shocking how little people prepare on average before going in to sign a car deal or a mortgage. Just hand your money over to the bank in either case with a smile... sheesh.

March 22 - Religion

Here's something that surprised me: a report that says religion may become extinct in nine countries soon.. and Canada's on the list. Now, I grew up Catholic, went to a high school of the same faith and attended church up into my teens... but it never stuck. Blame what you will, but religion has never figured large in my life and I greatly respect those who have found it to be a cornerstone of theirs. Some people are better able to integrate it into their lives, some aren't... at least I haven't put my religious affiliation down as 'Jedi' as more than a few people have been doing in the last decade. Very odd.

March 23 - Foxy Upgrades

FireFox 4: I upgraded today( as did over ten million people, and counting! )as I've used FireFox fairly consistently over the last ten years as my web browser of choice. I spend a fair deal of my internet time on the web, so having a solid and customizable browser really helps make the daily experience more efficient. C|net( who have also been around forever, in a good way )has a great intro to FireFox4, which showcases some of the new features to make browsing better. I have dozens of tabs open at once usually( up to a hundred some weeks )so I can follow along my interests as I zoom along and refer back to sites / articles of note later on. So far, FireFox4 has been more than helpful in keeping things grouped properly, so much so that I've been referring less and less to my saved bookmarks. Which is something, as I have about 5,000 or so that I go through once in a while to see if any sites have vanished - which they do... the 'net is always changing, which is its strength and source of frustration for many browsers.

March 24 - Fridge!

Time for something fun: how about a fridge magnet? Not an ordinary magnet, mind you, but one that turns your fridge from Awfully Boring to Awesome. I actually have an awesome fridge where I am right now; it dispenses ice and filtered water at the push of a button! Except that we took out the ice maker because it made WAY too much noise at night, ALL the time, and took up too much freezer room. The filtered water was nice - for about a month, then the 'change filter' light came on and it stopped working. A lengthy search of the internet found that the cheapest place to buy said specialized filters from charges around $100.00 for two; even eBay doesn't have the things available for much less.

So we've been drinking tap water. Delicious, tested dozens of times a day, and quite cold. So much for the features of the 'high end' fridge ...

March 25 - Nanosuit!

After a non-eventful( thankfully )day at work, I picked up a copy of Crysis2 on the way home and gave it a whirl. For the most part, I liked the game due to its different pacing: you have to think about your actions in terms of the moment - go armour? Go stealth? Back off or attack? You only have limited power from your 'nanosuit' so managing its abilities is crucial... or you get fragged. A lot. Kind of like the other FPS( First Person Shooter )games I've played... the only ones I've kept are Halo2 and BattleField: Bad Company2. So perhaps the'2' in this title means I'll keep it as well? We shall see; I need to get more practice in so I can stop hitting the wrong buttons at the right time - that's worthy of a few screams of anguished frustration and a desire to armour my TV in plexiglass to avoid any controller-hurling fits.

March 26 - On Hammocks

I gave myself this weekend off, to prepare for next week when I'm short a CSR as they're on vacation - which they need, just like the rest of us. It's a lovely day here: sun's out, around 10 degrees C, and no sign of snow anywhere for almost 2 weeks now - s'why I love Victoria! I sat inside at the Bean today and baked myself next to their fireplace; the thing pumps out enough heat to keep my tea HOT just sitting on the stone ledge over a foot away from the gas flames. You want to bet that it won't be on in the summer due to the A/C costs, despite how lovely the flames look. No, today was all about relaxing and recovering my mental equilibrium; I could feel the knots in my back loosen as all I had to think about was what the next relaxing activity I could do was - not including naps. I did experience a moment's twinge when I thought about my old hammock, but I never DID have a quiet enough place to hang it before; it would be perfect here, and I have my folding one now, which isn't quite as cool in the summer as the rope one was:

March 27 - Treasure Island

I spent part of my second day off today attending a local performance of Treasure Island, as one of my co-workers was playing the part of Ben Gunn, the crazed man marooned on Skeleton Island. I was accompanied by someone that I've been growing more interested in as well these last few months, though I wouldn't put today down in any way as a date - I have NO true idea of her level of interest in me at this point. The play was put on by Four Seasons Musical Theatre( have a look for a brief video clip of the show! )which did a bang-up job on the whole production. The music was excellent( live piano! )the costumes were varied, the sets were robust and different enough to convey location and the acting was mostly solid. The exceptions were the young lead of Jim, whose inexperience showed on stage but not to the point of sinking the ship, so to speak. Also, some cast members didn't have the voice to 'punch through' the music or over other cast members, but all in all it was a lively, lovely performance that swept you along for the ride. It reminded me of my grade school years when we have The Carousel Players visit the school a few times a year, whose performances always included the audience - indeed, some shows had ALL of the audience in them! I'm hard-pressed to remember details, but I DO remember lots of colour, lots of laughs and the tiny spark of interest in live theatre it lit that has remained with me to this day, even if I'm not a stage-actor myself.

Another week gone, rolling along towards spring, when I'll soon be able to websurf from the comfort of my balcony. Not the hammock though; that's just silly.