Austin has a little questionnaire.

WHAT WAS YOUR:

2. Last Phone Call = Rachel Powell

3. Last Text Message = (To Courtney Snyder:) Terrace

5. Last Time You Cried = Don't remember (within the last month, though).

　

HAVE YOU EVER:

6. Dated Someone Twice = I have dated two people twice.

7. Been Cheated On = Yes, but I was okay with it when I found out.

9. Lost Someone Special = One of my friends from study abroad killed himself, as did the father of a friend, but those are the only dead people I had known directly.

10. Been Depressed = Heh. Yes.

11. Been Drunk & Threw Up = Nope!

12. Have you ever wanted a tattoo? What of? = Wanted? No. Considered, yes: A clean, neat tattoo of my sigil on my shoulder.

　

LAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

16. Fallen Out Of Love = Indeed. It happens.

21. Fallen IN Love? = Oh yes. ^.^

22. How Many People On Your FB Friends List Do You Know In Real Life = About 400 of them. With few exceptions, I won't friend someone I haven't met IRL. Which is to say only a few folks from the Seraph-Inn webforum are FB friends I haven't met.

25. Do You Want To Change Your Name = I want to change my last name. It is long and clunky right now. I'll probably take my future wife's name.

28. What Were You Doing At Midnight Last Night = Realizing that the Gamecube was on, and that I had left it on in the middle of a battle of Gladius. I finished the battle, saved, and turned it off. Midnight was somewhere in that all.

37. Nickname(s) = My grandfather was named Wilford, and when my grandmother found out that I was being named Wilford, she asked that it not be warped into nicknames. So no. But some people do call me things, but that's just specific people.

47. Do You Have A Crush On Someone ? = Yes. Certain people out there. But I tend not to obsess.

　

YOUR FUTURE:

64. Want Kids ? = Probably not. I might adopt though.

65. Get Married ? = Probably yes. I'd like to find a wonderful someone and settle down and live together forever (or at least a couple of centuries).

66. Career = Dunno!

WHICH IS BETTER:

67. Lips Or Eyes = Eyes. Lips are a bit weird.

68. Hugs Or Kisses = Hugs. Hugs are wonderful. Probably a sensory integration disorder thing. But they're something about them.

70. Older Or Younger = Younger seems to work out better, but my sample size is small. Don't think it matters that much.

72. Nice Stomach Or Nice Arms = Are waist-curves part of the stomach? If so, then those. I mean, the stomach.

74. Hook-up Or Relationship = Whatever is nice and fun and happy. Both hook-ups and relationships can go either way, you know. Of course, that said, relationships are so much... More.

75. Which do you prefer: Taller or Shorter? = Shorter? I dunno - never dated anyone taller than my lofty 5'9"

　

HAVE YOU EVER :

76. Kissed A Stranger = No?

77. Drank Hard Liquor = Nothing harder than Wine or Guinness. I don't think those are Liquors.

79. Sex On First Date = I was going to type "up to them" and "depends on what happens" but I think the answer is probably know. I mostly date from friends, though, so "first date" is a bit of an odd definition.

80. Broke Someone's Heart = I'm afraid so...

81. Had Your Own Heart Broken = To a considerable degree, yes.

82. Been Arrested = No. I am law-abiding to a fault. People have complained.

83. Turned Someone Down = I suppose so. It was more picking one person over another.

84. Cried When Someone Died = No. Just a sort of horrible grasping feeling in my chest and a sort of numb hollowness.

85. Fallen For A Friend = Yes. All of my relationships have stemmed from this. It's worked out fairly well. I mean, there were horribly break-ups, and at least two friendships destroyed, but I don't think I would have done much better if I dated people I didn't know. The relationships were good most of the time, and bad near the end. Bit of a sting from one broken promise to always remain friends no matter what.

　

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

86. Yourself = Probably.

87. Miracles = Nothing that can't be explained, but plenty of things that haven't been explained, if you caught my drift.

88. Love At First Sight = Of course not. Lust at first sight? Sure. Kinship at first sight? Sure. But love is... different, and takes time.

89. Heaven= Not in a conventional sense.

90. Santa Claus = No. I'm a jaded little kid.

91. God and Jesus Christ= Nope. Haven't been presented with sufficient evidence yet. Besides - some things seem really weird.

92. Angels = Not conventional religious Christian or Muslim ones. Some people are really swell, but I think most things I have encountered or expect to encounter have more accurate terms for them.

93. Life after Death = No - I'm pretty sure that after death comes being dead. A state of unconsciousness with permanent, irreversible, and eventually total brain damage. Which apparently sounds bad to some people, but seems pretty normal to me.

52 bonus questions by Austin (Since he removed a good deal):

1. What is one lie you have told someone? = I think I have mislead people concerning my appreciation of their writing. I mean, I want to encourage them, but I don't actually like everything I read. "It's interesting and I like some parts of it in particular - you should keep it up, and keep writing." Yeah. Jedi truths, buddy. They are pretty much lies.

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, what would you rate yourself as? = 6. I am above average. Just like all the children from Lake Wobegong.

3. What's the meanest punishment your parents ever gave you, and what was it for? = Probably some time when I didn't get done stuff they wanted me to get done, and they denied me transportation, breaking my commitments with my friends.

4. What's the biggest turn off a person can have? = The slightest hit of being judgmental. I have fears about people judging me, and fear does not help my libido much.

5. What is one bad habit of yours? = I go to bed too late.

6. What do you usually sleep in? = A T-shirt and my underwear. Unless it's really hot, then just my underwear. This is part of why I prefer beds with curtains?

7. What is your favorite possession? = Mesaba, probably. But I have a long history of laptop love.

8. What is your favorite party game? = Apples to Apples, probably. Or Super Smash Brothers: Melee, but most parties don't have a whole lot of that.

9. When did you last laugh? = Earlier today, at certain occurrences during the video-chat with a dear friend.

10. What did you want to be when you grew up? = Nothing in particular, but a writer in my free time. Then a game designer in my free time. But nothing for the main career.

11. Which is better: To tell someone something that is kind, or to tell them something true? = I always go for truth. Sometimes a bit of Jedi truth, as mentioned over in Bonus question #1.

12. Describe a time you fell in love? = Love is something that happens over time, as you get to know someone. I spend months getting to know my lovely lady counterparts better, as I fall into love with them. I'm not going to describe months in a question.

13. When you're in trouble, who do you call for help? = Rachel Powell, probably. Unless something absolutely must be done, regardless of ethical concerns. Then I call my mother.

14. How did you get your name? = I was named after my grandfather and my great-grandfather. "Nil" is the name of an RP character back when I was 11 or so, and Aelaris is a character from The Liridan Rebellion.

More to come!

Relenor

Relenor Umbri… where to start with him…

Relenor was my second online RP character, and was a good deal more complex than Jezrin, my character from OSD. He started as a dark presence in the back of the tavern the FFRPG started in, and I designed his character throughout the first chapter. I was a rather prominent architect of the original adventure, and Rel’s story plays into that quite a bit.

Let’s start explaining his background:

There are Gods and Goddesses in this world – and their servants, the angels. Have you ever wondered why the gods almost never intervene directly? Why they use champions or hurl bolts from afar? …Or use angels? It is because the gods are too pure for this world. Even just to interact with mortals at all, they must assume identities and create personalities to wear – this is how they exist at all: a divinity is formless until an identity is assumed. There is much speculation on why gods and goddesses have the identities they do, and it is widely accepted that it is the belief of mortals that shapes divinity into gods and goddesses. Further speculation exists on what happens if those who believe in a god have their views start to vary… it could cause the god to become formless again, or to some degree of such, furthering it from interaction in the world. So what of the angels? Angels are the servants of the gods on and off this world – they exist to a much more direct extent than the Gods, yet can interact directly with them.

Angels are divine. To create an angel, a god or goddess pulls from the formless energy of divinity some power and shapes it into a being. But it is well known that angels have little or no personality: how then do they stay in existence, much less in the material world? It is because angels have flaws. Every angel has a flaw that keeps it from slipping off the world – the gods use this instead of personality to avoid the dangers of egotism. Thus are angels made, lesser divine beings under the will of the gods.

Relenor was created an angel, eons before this story began. He was created of the Umbris line of angels, designed for a particular purpose – combat. It is the Umbris that protect the gods from those who would rival their power. It is the Umbris that combat the enemies of the gods. And Umbris are angels. In addition to the powers that stem from their divinity, Umbris have the power to drain foes of energy and strength – they are natural conduits for power, magical or otherwise. But unlike most angels, the slight flaws that most angels have are not enough for the Umbris. Umbris have major flaws, or numerous ones: this gives them a firm anchoring in reality. Rel’s flaw was an abhorrence, verging on complete antipathy, to the act and practice of reading minds. Down to his core, the mind is sacrosanct to him and he will not touch it.

Relenor is the fourth angel of the Umbris line, created when the powers of the mortals first began to threaten the gods. Mighty were his powers, and all foes fell before him for hundreds of thousands of years. Then he was sent against a wizard that held power over time itself. The wizard was not the most powerful foe that Relenor had faced, but the man evaded Rel time and time again – despite the face that Rel traveled through time to combat this foe, he never knew when his foe had disappeared to. He could have read the wizard’s mind to know the destination, but that was against his very nature.

Rel slunk home in defeat. He was faced with a task that was beyond his ability, and for the first time had to question why he had failed. Those were the first conscious thoughts of Relenor. He realized that the only way to defeat the wizard was to read the wizard’s mind – and that was unacceptable. The solution to his inability was to have another Umbris take his place, but Rel had already thought once… so he thought again, and found that the only way that the other angel could win was by reading the wizard’s mind – and that was unacceptable. He searched and searched for a solution, but everything came back to the wizard’s mind being violated.

Rel asked of the gods what he should do, and they had no answer. Instead, the cast him down upon the world and sent another angel to defeat the wizard. Cast down on to the world, Relenor tasted the bitterness of mortality, and the betrayal of the gods having stripped him of his powers. Why, he wondered, and he found the god’s motive. Rel knew in his heart that casting him down had been the right action, for he would have revolted against the gods if another angel was sent to read the wizard’s mind and to thereby defeat him.

But Rel turned from the light, and banished his heart. He forgot who he was then, and wandered into the nearest town starving and cold – unused to the sting of mortality, he almost died. When he awoke the next day, Relenor the man was born.

Rel was now a mortal, but the imprint of his former powers still lay upon him. He was a natural conduit for energy, magical or otherwise, though he could not cast magic himself. He was more innocent that those naturally of the world, though that trait soon vanished. His body did not age, though over the years he became wiser in the ways of the world.

And he had known power, and he craved for it again.

After setting himself up, he became a student at a school of warriors. More motivated then the rest, he rose to the top of his class - eventually becoming greater than the teacher himself. Rel’s body rose to the challenge, and a preternatural strength and speed soon became apparent.

Soon he left, seeking more power than the school had managed to provide. As he explored the world for whatever would give him power, he began to remember his past. His self-induced amnesia started to fade, and he began to wonder what his past was. What had he been? The answers were not clear.

Soon he chanced upon a rumor that would change his life. A sickly dragon was said to live in a mountain nearby, and Rel jumped at the chance of what the horde must contain. He searched out the entrance of the dragon’s lair, and entered it.

The dragon was waiting.

It turned out that the rumors had been false – the dragon was not weak in the least, and rather was more powerful than the greatest of its kind. Rel knew he was unable to win, but charged anyway, hoping his legacy would be to scratch one iridescent crimson scale.

The dragon off-handedly swatted him into a wall before he could sprint far enough to reach the dragon’s body. Surprised that he had survived the impact, the dragon waited for Rel to awaken… perhaps there was a use for him…

The pain of defeat brought back more memories, and Rel realized that he had once been an angel, leveler of the mighty.

“Thou art a mighty man,” the Dragon spoke “I deem you worthy of some lesser duties.”

“I am no man,” spoke Relenor “I am a fallen angel.”

“My pardon, former guardian of the light.” The Dragon spoke again, “Perhaps a high station and bestowed power should be yours…”

Rel, hungry for the power that the mighty Wrym could bestow, pledged his loyalty to the Dragon. They mixed blood, and the Dragon proclaimed Rel its champion, gifting him with extreme amounts of power. The dragon knew of the Umbris, and rightly assumed she would be a target if she used her power directly. There was also a prophecy that proclaimed that an elven champion would slay her – she suspected that Rel, not being born of this world—and not being accounted for in the act of prophecy—was a factor of randomness that could disrupt the prophecy. Rel, in return for the power she gave him, used his knowledge to hide the Dragon from the angels’ watchful eyes, and created a plan to make her a goddess. Unfortunately, this involved having people openly worship her to give her divinity. Throughout, there was a growing sense that he had drifted farther and farther from his origins, betraying his former masters by plotting for the dragon to succeed in what he had been created to stop. He also because disillusioned with what the dragon asked him to do.

A mere 63 years after making the blood pact with the Dragon, Relenor betrayed her. He never returned from a mission. Instead, he wandered the lands far from the dragon’s lair. A few days after he was supposed to return, he decided to see what he still retained from the infused power of the dragon. Finding a boulder in a forest, he punched it with all his strength, testing how much he had. His punch shattered the boulder into a thousand pieces and sent the shards ripping through the forest, devastating a hillside.

Rel was amazed – he had assumed that the Dragon wouldn’t leave him such power. Then the dragon’s intent became apparent.

Rel watched in horror and pain as the Dragon withdrew her support. The flesh of his arm turned to a bloody pulp and the bones underneath shattered – the muscles that had powered the mighty punch ripped and tore. Rel screamed then, for though he had suffered worse as an angel, this pain was beyond his bounds as a mortal.

Rel hobbled back to the town he was staying at, and found a healer for his mutilated arm. Despite their magics, and his natural sensitivity to such forces, his arm still took a week to become usable again. Rel swore never to do something as foolish again.

Once his body had healed, he continued practicing his art as a swordman. He adopted a runaway orphan as an apprentice, and trained her in swordplay. But it was increasingly obvious that the Dragon was sapping his body of strength, empowering him when he exercised, so he could not built natural muscle, but sapping him the rest of the time. He continued teaching his apprentice, showing how to weave blades and magic like he had once done, and imparting wisdom upon her. But he found that she was impossible to guide, for she believed in vengeance. He told her that it was not right, and later that she should go and find wisdom before he would train her more. Neither worked, for she did not believe him, nor wished to leave.

So Relenor left.

He decided that it was time to free himself from the dragon’s curse. He left the girl, and traveled to an old friend - the guild master of the thieves’ guild. There he conversed over how to kill the Dragon.

A plan was made.

Relenor would return to the Dragon and work in its service, procuring a weapon from the dragon’s hoard that could kill the Dragon. Relenor remembered stealing several weapons for the Dragon – She could not wield them, and they were not given Relenor to use; between that and their highly magical nature, Rel guessed that the dragon viewed them as a risk. But Rel couldn’t fight the Dragon directly, weakened as he was. Neither could any of the guild master’s underlings, for the Dragon was ever aware of anything of magical nature nearby. It would have to be an attack that the dragon saw coming.

The guild master recommended an elven mercenary who was greatly skilled in the blade. Yet Rel doubted in her, for he was once skilled as well, and had never managed to touch the beast – what good was a weapon if you died before using it? And so he plotted a deeper plot…

That takes you up to the beginning of the FFRPG. I might write up some of Relenor’s schemes later.

The Demise of Dikeorgan (Dwarf Fortress)

It started with a water problem, ironically. I was experimenting with a pump and a waterwheel where my fortress met the stream. This would have been fine, except when nobody seemed to do anything about the mechanisms I had ordered, I turned the area into a walled and roofed fishing area.

However, after I had walled it shut to the outside and opened it up to the interior of my fortress, someone finally got around to building the pump.

Turns out that pumps don't come with off switches. They just pump water. A lot of it.

I tell folks to go take appart the pump, but it's pumping water like crazy, and nobody can push up against the flow - I keep seeing dwarves run towards it, then go back and forth with the flow. One guy drowns.

I then take a different route - I order miners to mine away the wall on the outside, so that the pump empties water to the outside, not to the inside. Well, empties both ways, but it cut down on pressure.

So miners dig a bunch of holes, and water starts coming out. Finally some mason struggles through the water and takes appart the water wheel. The water ceases, not much damage.

...and then the dragon Akera Thasacaci Rano Inira shows up. Gets anounced on the map and everything.

Oh dear.

I suddenly realize that there is a massive hole in my defenses - my store rooms are open on the lower hillside, completely defenseless. I quickly order dwarves to seal it up.

Those dwarves get cooked. Akera kills a few other dwarves running around the map, and I try to close the breach again. If I can just seal off the interior, I can be safe-ish. For a time, anyway.

Big gouts of fire. Masons get cooked. Akera enters into my storeroom, sets things on fire. Smoke is everywhere, and I have a non-stop stream of messages saying that tasks have been cancelled due to "dragon" and that dwarves are dying.

Everyone is running around in a panic, and they are dying. Before I know it, my population is down to 30-something. 30-something is less than 77. A lot less.

I order everyone to stand outside, to lure Akera past the entrance-way traps, going the other way. Maybe she will get caught in a cage trap, or maybe she's at least get injured by my many weapon traps.

Meanwhile, Akera roasts dwarves, workshops, food, stockpiles, farms, and anything that is flammable or inflammable. Smoke is everywhere, I cannot see where Akera is rampaging.

Eventually, I see her in the big room that was supposed to be the new textile industry center. The one that has two doors and a stairway out. I delete the burrow so my dwarves can move freely, and get someone to close the door. Said person dies horribly to smoke inhalation, heat, or something. Other folks go to wall in the upstairs farm.

Akera kills the rest of the masons, and goes from the upstairs farm to the pasture, and down some stairs into the main fort again. Slaughters everyone there.

I order everyone back to outside the door, huddling behind the traps. There are now 17 dwarves left. They start a fist-fight. Specifically, half of them go into tantrum mode.

Akera sits out the eastern staircase, just around the corner from the fist-fight. She is not moving. Corpse are starting to decay, and everyone is alternating between calming down, and tantruming over their favorite friend starting to rot. Some guy dies.

Akera rounds the corner and obliterates the dwarf who had stopped halfway with broken legs. She then wanders back around the corner.

One of the dwarves is killed by another.

Akera notices one of the dwarves down below go by the eastern staircase. She pops down below and incinerates most of the room with a fire-blast. She then returns to her roost.

Somehow three of my dwarves are still estatic. They are being beaten up by the miserable ones. Somehow an insane dwarf gets past Akera's roost and joins the others. Joining them with her fists. I see items go flying around the area they all are hiding.

Ber Berdegel, Dwarven Child goes berserk.

I set a new burrow to the other side or the river, hoping to make a home there away from the death and destruction. Some of the dwarves head over there, and Akera stays put. However, I get the unfortunate message: "Domas Dedukestun, Miner cancels Dig: Interrupted by Dwarven Child."

Eventually I find Domas. He is being chased around the wilderness by a berserk child. He has the only pickaxe, and the rest of the survivors wander around the new burrow.

Eventually he gets away from the child, but then throws a tantrum himself. He calms down, and starts digging the tunnel to... relative safety.

Then the fisherdwarf goes berserk...

Eventually things calm down. I also forbid every item in the old fortress. Don't have an axe for wood, but at least I have a pick?

Turns out Dragons can smash doors. And walls. Can't even wall myself in.

Construction on the new home goes... with lots of tantrums and upset dwarves. I still have a fisherdwarf, so he catches lots of fish. I have food and I have water. Next step is sanity. Still need an axe for beds, though

Human Caravan arrives. Heads to the depo. Somehow they get past Akera, who is one room away. Maybe there is hope. Stupid, stupid hope.

Rimtar the Bone Carver goes insane and is struck down by the miner. I unforbid a few beds and a table and a chair. Perhaps I can sneak in the same way Akera go in - she's on a different level, after all.

...and then goblins show up. They finish what Akera did not - they go to the new hole and kill everyone there.

There is one dwarf left. He was trapped in the dwarven catacombs when the dragon first arrived. He is dying of starvation and thirst.

Remember! Losing is fun!

Thoughts on MTG Deckbuilding, and What I Like

For me a beautiful deck is a deck that interacts with others, protects itself as it needs to, has the offense that it needs to, etc. all in perfect balance and harmony. Thus a deck that has great offense, but is fragile isn't my ideal; a deck that is solid, but can't do anything isn't my ideal; a deck that does one thing and then uses some completely different method to be good at something else is disharmonious and isn't my ideal.

But it's never the deck itself that is beautiful. It's the play of the deck. I measure and value decks in terms of what they will do, and the art is in the doing. The most beautiful game for me is one where both decks are preforming plays and counterplays, each one just barely having the answer to the problems posed by the other until someone slips. But I strive for what happens in the mean time.

I play a red deck against a big, nice midrange deck. I attack with my creatures, and they encounter spot removal, a counter to my creatures that keeps them weaker while the opponent builds up his mana. That, and my decks responses to sacrifice creatures to deny him lifegain or burn him one little bit more (all the mini-plays) are beautiful to me. My deck says, "look what I can do! I'm getting killed, but still getting stuff through!" and his deck is saying "Look what I can do, I'm lessening his creatures so I can buy time, just what my master needs!" ... and later there is another play between the decks - the midrange deck drops its fat, and my creatures stare down a 4/4. Strategy on the players' parts is employed - for me, should I attack into it so some guys get by for damage, or should I wait until I find some removal, and combine the two.... But on the deck end of things, they get to show off their stuff. I fight through for a little more damage while my creatures die against that 4/4, it is my plan. He beats with the 4/4 as soon as he can, trying to take me out before I draw enough burn to finish him - the final act is in motion. Will my deck show off it's goodness and provide me with the burn I need to win before the five hits take me to 0? Will his deck counter with some life-gain kill-spell aimed at one of my creatures, now that I don't have a mechanism to sacrifice them? The optimal would be for me to draw enough burn, but for him to counter with, say, Faith's Fetters to buy him just enough time to win. Because then both decks would have shown off their stuff.

But all decks do things, right? They all make their plays. But for me, if one deck does something that the other deck has no counter to--and that's defined vaguely--then that's not a beautiful game. Because all the playskill in the world won't help you if your deck doesn't have the right cards, and the deck will be sad, not having any way to provide me with the tools I need to use to fight. And the other deck is sad, because it can't really show off it's stuff, winning in the face of adversity, it's just follows it's rote form and wins.

I guess that's the main thing, perhaps - adapting to win in the face of adversity. My blue-white Mastermind deck can't do it's game plan against your land destruction, and so it turns to using the masterminds to protect lands and keep people busy while little guys run across and win. That adaptation is my joy as a player, and my pride in my decks come from their ability to provide me with the tools I need to adapt when the deck loses the plot. Which is to say that I am a bit funny as a johnny player - I want my plans to be ruined, and my fall-back plans (and ideally new ones I came up with on the spot) to be the ones that get to show their quality.

Any deck can build a plan, and execute a plan... in a vacuum. Even WLGYLSTYESFD could do its thing, given the chance. But the ability to execute a plan through adversity, or to be able to deal with adversity, that's excellence in a deck. And I don't mean adversity as in the challenges the deck was built to resist - I mean ones different or much stronger than expected. A deck fails when it can't adapt, and that makes me sad, and a deck doesn't succeed if it just does what it's supposed to do - that's just meeting expectations.

So play a game with me, and kill my key creatures, destroy the enchantment the deck revolves around. Your deck has the answers, doesn't it? Well, so does mine - watch as my deck brings back the piece from the graveyard, or converts itself into a beating machine during the lull as you found your removal, and tries to capitalize on the position it already got. Or watch it pull together a much weaker synergy, and try to win with that. Your deck answered my threat, but can it beat down to finish me off faster than I can finish you off? What do you do if I play the key piece again? Watch my deck as it tries to stall you before you beat me down - it's a race of sorts, and maybe I'll lose. Or maybe not.

Don't let me win against you by pulling off my plan. That's just boring. Don't beat me by doing something to which I cannot respond. That's just sad. But if you struggle to do something, and I struggle to resist, then each deck gets to show off all the things it was made to do, and maybe a little more.

The Robot Apocalypse: Pie Style

The robot apocalypse happens like this:

Someone creates a smart robot to serve him. Either fails to put in First Law protection, or for selfish reasons makes a zero-law of obeying him.

That someone asks the robot to make him a tasty pie.

The robot does.

The man finishes the pie, and tells the robot, "Make me more pie!" He fatefully leaves out specification of how much pie.

The robot attempts to fulfill the command as best possible: If the robot makes as much pie as possible, then the undefined "More Pie!" has the optimal chance of being fulfilled (or a 100% chance, if the request was reasonable).

The robot figures out the limits of optimal pie creation: Pie is limited by matter/energy to form it, and by entropy to organize it into a pie. Thus the robot is on a clock against entropy to make pie. The robot is also in a competition against everything else that is creating entropy.

The robot makes a plan: To create pie fast enough to race reasonably with entropy, some entropy must be spent to increase the speed of pie-making. This involves other robots to make efficiently produced matter-to-pie devices. Also robots to gather the resources. Also robots to protect those gatherers from hostile phenomena.

The robot's first step is to quickly mobilize the entirety of the resources of the earth* to quickly mobilize the resources of the solar system to continue onwards and ultimately convert the universe into as much pie as possible.

See that * there? Already, the robot apocalypse has occurred, as we are converted into organizations of matter more useful for the creation of pie.

That is how the robot apocalypse happens.

Also how the universe gets turned into pie.

Graduation

By the way, I graduated from ASU and "Barrett, the Honors College at ASU" magna cum laude on the 13th of May, 2010.

Maehadros

Maehadros was the first DnD character I created, and I built him with what I thought was a relatively interesting backstory. He was a human fighter, probably the most generic option I could have built mechanically.

Backstory: Maehadros was the son of a nobleman in one of the city-states of a particular unnamed continent. His father wanted him to apprentice to become a cleric, but Maehadros rebelled and ran off to a different city-state, and enlisted in the city guard there. Eventually the city he was working for came into conflict with his hometown, and Maehadros deserted the town guard. He found work as a mercenary, and was hired by what turned out to be a pro-human organization. While he didn't agree with their pro-human sentiments, he considered it a job, and helped them anyway. Eventually he became aware that they were a fairly radical cult, but continued to work for them until they gave him orders to kill the children of some local dwarves they had lynched. He then abandoned his job and fled on a ship away from the continent to avoid repercussions with the cult. This is how he wound up on the ship with the other Player Characters.

Character traits: The essence of Maehadros, or Mae, as he is generally known, is that he is a good person at heart, but lacks the courage to follow his heart. Instead he follows orders over his own judgement. By this point in his life, he is fully aware of the painful repercussions of not standing up for what he believes in, but has not implemented that in his life. Instead, he still follows the moral judgement of his new commanding officer (Tucker's warlord). His opinions mostly go in his journal, as always.

Other traits of the character include a town-guard sense of ethics, rather than the sense of an adventurer. He would rather bring his defeated foes to justice than to kill them, even if (as pointed out by other characters) bringing them to justice would doubtlessly lead to their execution. Again, he looks to authority other than his own, rather than making judgments on the lives of the defeated.

Character growth: Maehadros never had much opportunity to act upon his beliefs, partly due to me, the player, being pressured into not... complicating things. The party goes places, it kills things, it gets experience and loot, and I apparently wasn't supposed to call into question the ethics of all the things we were doing, let alone rebel against the judgement of the other players. Maehadros himself suffered a good deal of bullying by other players, mostly in terms of who was leading the party in the absence of Tucker and his character. (I was also somewhat disappointed to find that most of the party was neutral, and the paladin was of the "I'm a paladin, this gives me justification to kill things," style.) This was all cut short by Mae's untimely death.

Analysis: Maehadros deals with a lot of questions I have concerning righteous action, authority, and the subjectivity of morality, I suppose? And of social pressures? Dunno.

Dnd Characters - what does this say about me?

A good deal of people think that when a writer creates a character, they invest something of themselves into the character. What's more, some people think that characters allow writers to explore internal questions that they don't know how to tackle directly.

I guess the plots of various books I have been interested in writing fall along a strangely similar line, save that the questions explored are outward, and not internal questions.

But what about my DnD characters? This will probably be a series of posts, one for each character.

I'll be starting in chronological order: Maehadros, Selar and her sister, Mikalo, and now Little.

Thoughts on Media and 9/11

One of my classes is Terrorism and the Press. We were talking about the 9/11 attacks today (WTC towers, Pentagon, and another airplane crash), and i was reminded how terrorism chose the timing of the 9/11 attacks.

See, they wanted symbolic targets - the Pentagon, and the WTC towers count, as does Washington DC (the probable target of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania). But they weren't seeking to kill people, directly. In fact, they chose the time of attack with the greatest proportion of symbolic damage to the amount of deaths: The early morning.

See, both the pentagon and the WTC weren't exactly filled up, as they would have been a mere 3 or 4 hours later. The later in the day, the higher the casualties.

So why not do it at night, when people wouldn't be killed? After all, if you want a lower death count, then that would be best.

That's where media impact and the message that they were trying to send comes in. If you attacked when it was dark, then none of those powerful, scarring images of the WTC towers burning would have been able to be seen. Al-Quada didn't know the towers would fall (Osama was the most optimistic in positing that the tops might fall off), so the lasting damage would be limited to nasty, fire-gutted holes in the tops of the towers.

So daylight so that the American people can see what they did, and yet morning to avoid unnecessary deaths.

Diarrhea

Somewhat disgusting, as might be guessed by the title:

I find myself morbidly amused by the splatter patterns in the toilet bowls.

That's all.

Fluxx

[[Edit: This has been done before, unsuprisingly.]]

Hey, couldn't we make a game of super-fluxx with some note-cards?

Pure Fluxx

Players: Three+

Materials: A lot of identical note-cards.

Rules: At the beginning of each turn, the active player draws a card or writes up a card.

(Writing a card has to be approved by at the majority of other players, and puts it into their hand. Each card describe or adds some part of the game.

If the rule contradicts existing rules, the rules conflicted with are put into the discard pile.

A rule can change any part of the game.

If the application of the rules is disputed, they are voted upon by the players, majority interpretation wins.

If the rule allows one or more players to win, then all players must agree upon it.

If parts of the original rules are broken, the broken parts are written on a card and discarded.)

The active player may then play the card from his or her hand.

----

Starting terms:

--

Zones: Pre-defined areas where cards can exist. Individual and universal

Hand: A zone for each player. Any card in a hand is naturally only viewed by the player. The starting rules also have the active player play a card from his hand. Cards are "in hand"

Active: These are the rules, objects, etc., that are in play, and affect all players equally. They are placed in the middle between the players, and can be seen by all players. Cards are "active".

Control: These are the cards that, while active, have special effects relative to their "controller." While on the table and visible to all, they are put directly in front of a player. Cards are "under the control of [player name]"

Library: These are the cards that are hidden from all players in a face-down pile of cards somewhere reachable on the table. The committing the action "Draw a card" refers to putting the top card of the library into your hand without revealing it to everyone else. If someone tries to draw a card when the library is empty, the Recycle Bin is shuffled, and turned into the library. If the recycle bin is also empty, then the player writes up a new card instead.

Recycle bin: These are the cards that have been contradicted by other cards, or otherwise inactive. They are piled face-up, revealed to all players, somewhere not to be confused with the active cards.

--

Card types: These are different sorts of cards, and are handled differently, mechanically. Main types and sub-types.

Static: Maintype. Rules, and other cards that stay in play.

One-time: Maintype. Cards that have an effect, then leave play.

Responsive: Static or one-time cards that may be played whenever the conditions on them are true.

Goal: Cards that allow a player or players to win. Must be approved by all players when written.

--

Actions: Terms that cause a player to do something.

Play: Do what is written on the card being played. Short for a longer action.

Discard: Put the card being discarded into the discard pile.

----

Suggestions: Have fun, don't be a dick, have a meaningful game, use your rules to fix the game. And remember that games are to have fun.

The Prefect

Just finished reading The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds.

This is the third book of his that I have read, the previous two having been Galactic North and Chasm City. Both of those were great, so I decided to pick up another before heading off to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Similar to the other two books, the plot is convoluted and suspenseful, making full utilization of the hard-he-can-manage sci-fi concepts existing in Alastair's world. The Prefect is interesting, exciting, and somewhat gut-wrenching at times (I'm looking at you, Jane).

The Prefect is also escapes on of the most common problems with science fiction: Explaining things. (Fantasy can have this problem if the writer feels like it.)

You see, most characters who grew up in a world generally manage to have it make sense to them. Since we don't live in that world, things don't make sense to us. Therefore, some authors feel they should explain everything. This can be explaining everything, be Explaining Everything, or be EXPLAINING EVERYTHING. However, taking time to explain things causes problem for any sort of narrative: Short essays embedded in the story cause problems.

On the other side, hand-waving everything would really just be fantasy, not science-fiction.

Reynold tends towards giving a name and maybe a short summary, but then having his explanation only exist in what's relevant to the characters, what the characters think about, and what happens.

He also manages to steer clear of anything that expressedly violates the laws of physics, or at least only violate them on a scale that the technology of the setting would be able to reasonably circumvent them. Additionally, and just as important, everything has a relatively sensible and utilitarian design.

Which brings me to the setting. Alastair uses a single setting--Revelation Space--for his novels, and it is pretty darn complex. It's future history, starting in the foreseeable future (far enough to avoid science marching on, and continuing through the imaginable future to the end of the future (Stinking Greenfly...). Unlike the previous two books I read, The Prefect is set in the height of human civilization, on the hub of human civilization, on the orbital habitats utilized by the elite of society. This means that things get very, very exotic, especially due to the freedom loving nature of demarchist rule. Very interesting things are encounters.

I think I'm degressing.

The plot is complicated, but strong, and I approve. The characters are varied and interesting, and I approve*. The setting is gorgeous and well-thought, and I approve.

Really, I approve of the book all around. Very good for those folks who like sci-fi novels that avoid sacrificing being a novel for being sci-fi. Still good for everyone else.

*: The titular Prefect, Tom Dreyfus** is a bit of a canon sue. He is, as referenced by the characters in the story, pretty much the perfect Prefect. Not perfect in always victorious, or hopelessly overpowered, but perfect in a flawless-action sort of way. They do what they can while they can. However, I managed to completely overlook this until some stuff in the story went horribly wrong for the protagonists, and I saw the other characters taking the lead and messing up. When things got better (this is a highly relative term), I was too filled with satisfaction to care.

**: I could help but notice the last name from my historical knowledge. Seems unlikely that he would wind up with the same name. Demerits for contrived naming. On the other hand, it works well.

Empowered

I recently had the opportunity to read Empowered, which was not only surprisingly good, but better than I thought (I had heard good things about it). What I expected was, as TvTropes puts it, a "graphic novel series starring a Damsel in Distress-prone heroine named 'Empowered.' Contains heavy deconstruction of the Super Hero genre, with healthy doses of bondage, Fanservice, and comedy."

What I found was... well pretty much what the above says. The fanservice was a bit too pronounced for my taste, and Emp getting trussed up a lot early on wasn't all that sexy because... well, onto the unexpected.

The characters are great. While they all run off of assorted superhero sterotypes, all of them have unique, interesting, strong personalities. Some of them I sympathize with, and root for (Empowered, Ninjette, etc.). Some of them I look up to in awe and admiration (Mindf**k, Maid Man, etc.). Some of them I want to club with a hammer... repeatedly (Captain Havok, most of the jerkass supers, and sometimes Sista Spooky). One of them is terrifying and wrong and scary (and doesn't play by the rules).

This is why Emp getting tied up isn't all that sexy. She might be an idealistically beautiful woman wearing (well-placed) tatters of a skin-adhering body-suit, but it's hard to enjoy the fanservicey nature of her predicament when you care for Emp so much. Thus stripperific bondage =/= sexy. Instead stripperific bondage = feeling sorry for Emp. She's far too sympathetic and complex a character to objectify. Well, I'd rather not objectify her, anyway.

Anyway, concerning the characters, it is important to note that they are not one-sided. Aside from Captain Havok, who enjoys my vehement and eternal contempt, most of the other nasty characters have their own internal problems, and are just expressing them worse than the nicer characters, with their own emotional problems flaws. I can only think of a few characters who are simple, but I would not complain about their purity of essence (Go Maid Man!). Even the minions are hard to objectify.

Which brings me to the next point - the story of the novels doesn't really pertain that much to the actual action. Instead, most of the story deals with characters' feelings. Think Neon Genesis Evangelion, but without the constantly feeling horrible bit. Often the battles are skipped, with Empowered assumably losing and getting captured, and instead there is the emotional abuse from other characters, interaction with and responses from friends, etc.

With that in mind, the story is really about Empowered's personal growth... and boy is there a lot of it. Empowered starts out with freshly shattered dreams to go with a shattered self-esteem, and from there she struggles upwards, with the help of her friends. This is all managed well, with an exception to be noted later.

Empowered also has heavy, heavy Cerebus Syndrome. The first three volumes are fairly comedic, but then the fourth one has heavy drama, and by the end of the fifth one I was outright crying. A well-done romance has something to do with that.

Empowered also gets better. If I had just read the first volume, I would have thought Empowered was pretty decent for what it does, and leave it at that. Fortunately, I had a healthy list of recommendation, and I pushed onward. By the second volume, I was starting to enjoy the tale, and by the third I approved heartily. But the fourth and fifth volumes are why I'm spieling about it. I don't go and write here about just any little comic, you know.

Other things to note:

Mindf**k and Maid Man are new role models for me. Mindf**k gets to hang out with Nausicaa and other characters who influenced my development. Maid Man is an all around good guy.

The setting is fairly interesting, in and of itself. There are Unwritten Rules to behavior, so nothing truly bad happens to Empowered (breaking the unwritten rules by, say, unnecessarily sexually molesting Emp would bring down the wrath of every superhero, which is a decent deterent same with killing her.). The whole way the world is adjusted to the existence of superheroes is rather interesting. A lot of characters, especially the unpowered ones and minions have interesting takes on the superheros and villains. There are a lot of little tidbits about how the world works, that are quite interesting. Emp finds out that all three superheros she is working with all became superheros after contracting super-natural STDs - she finds this coincidence weird, and then finds out that they first met at a super-natural STD support group. Some of the characters previously posed as Witless Minions, manipulating the system to steal their employer's valuables and blame it on the heroes.

Also interesting is the effect when certain characters break the Unwritten Rules. It's... impressive. And horrific.

I do have issue with a few things, though. Emp's boyfriend is perhaps not the best role model for building self-esteem. While he's a fine guy otherwise, in terms of boyfriendness... he deals with Emp's low self-esteem in a (fanservice-y) way I do not approve of (I'm much more part of the Mindf**k school of romance). Also related is his unrealistic sex with Emp - he apparently follows the hentai school of sex. I suppose part of this is that I gave up on the pornographic aspect of the series, and consequently find the carefully-placed speech bubbles more amusing.

Going on from there, I love the Caged Demonwolf's imagined rendition of Emp's sex with her boyfriend. Which one of the other characters uses for smut, apparently. Heck, the fact that Emp still reads yaoi superhero slash fanfiction (occasionally even starring her teammates) amuses me to no end.

Also, both Emp and her boyfriend are ridiculously/idealistically physically attractive. While the power of body-image issues are profound, I always find Emp's problems a bit strange. That said, they do live in a world where nearly everyone manages a ideal body-shape, with few exceptions, so I suppose it's not that strange? Dunno. I understand why Emp is a Hot Blonde, comercially speaking, and I can see Spookum's problem with her.

Anyway, it is a good series, assuming you are okay with everything-short-of-nudity and occasional objectifying shots. There's good content there. I recommend it.

Nil's Sinister Objectives

In no particular order:

1. Obliterate the subjective and the unknown.

2. Break the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

3. Create a synthetic life-form with conscious evolution to replace humanity.

The Shape of Things

So this evening I went out with Rachel to see a play. She needed to write a critical analysis of a play, and I thought it would be nice to go out with her to a play.

So. Play.

The play's name is "The Shape of Things." From here on out there are massive spoilers that pretty much ruin the play, so if you plan on seeing it, go see it. It's pretty good. And stop reading here.

The play starts out with a young lady stepping over the cord to get closer to a statue. The security guard asks there to step back over, and they have a conversation. She's apparently planning on spray-painting a penis on the statue, as the original penis was plastered over with fig leaves, due to complaints about the nudity. She's an art student.

He doesn't really try to stop her, and gets her phone number, and when his shift is up, he heads off and she presumably spraypaints on the statue.

They get together, and start dating. He starts losing weight for her, changes his hair. Two friends of his are introduced, another young lady and her fiancee, said fiancee being the guy's former roommate and best bud.

Over time, he changes more - stops biting his nails, starts wearing contact lenses instead of glasses, dresses differently, and has his nose modified. He keeps a diary of this all - the decreasing weight, and all various changes.

His best bud's fiancee has had a long-time crush on him, and with him getting cuter by the day, she winds up kissing him and going out to the woods (and then implied sex, apparently).

The young lady confesses kissing him to her fiancee, who talks with the guy's girlfriend, who kisses said fiancee to get back at the other two.

She brings up all of this when the young lady, herself, and the guy go get coffee at a Starbucks together. The young lady goes away almost in tears, and the guy is mad at her. He doesn't want to break up with her, and asks what she wants. She asks him to break all contact with them, giving them no explanation, if he wants to stay with her like he says. He agrees.

The next scene is them at the thesis presentation for the artist girl. The guy runs into his former best bud, and the other girl, who have broken up by this point. They all sit separately.

The Artist girl goes to present her thesis work, and it turns out her presentation, her "sculpture thingie" as she previously referred to it, is her boyfriend, who has proposed to her by this point. She has sculpted him from being pathetic and undesirable into being much "better" by society's standards, using the tools of persuasion and desire, though always leaving the choice up to him. She has improved him cosmetically, and modified all of his relationships. Her entire relationship with him over the semester was all a lie to sculpt him into a different person.

He is outraged, and comes to her after the presentation, and they have an argument over the morality of her actions. To her, everything he did was his own choice - he had chosen to lose weight, he had chosen to abandon his friends for her. To him, he thought that she was completely and horribly unethical, in the deceit of the relationship. But in her eyes, the relationship was real - for him. And the choices he had made, he had made honestly, though perhaps a bit misinformed.

He asks of anything was true, and she says that none of it was true. As she leaves, she tells him that one time, while they were sleeping together, one of the things she had said was true (they both know, though the audience doesn't). He goes to the videos of them in bed (part of the exhibition), and finds the part, playing it over and over, biting his nails and munching on the cookies provided at the exhibit, crying as the lights dim and the play ends.

A number of things concerning this. First, the lady considers what she is doing as amoral. Not moral, not immoral, but rather because she was doing art, the normal rules don't apply. Adam, the guy, when he finds out, finds it morally abhorrent.

Second, the question of subjectivity. It's mentioned quite a bit in the play, and comes up quite large in the conclusion, as the art lady and the guy have been living very different versions of life, and have very different views on things. Was his relationship true? - It certainly had effects on his life.

Third, there is a question of value - what is better, and what is worse, and how it matters. the art lady is apparently quite aware how subjective her changes for the "better" are. But, as she notes rather bitterly during the presentation, as he became better-looking and more self-confident, he also started having more questionable behavior. Getting it on with his best friend's fiancee being a major case in point here. Additionally, at the end of the play, the main character says that he liked who he was, even if he wasn't as "good" then as now. His friend, somewhat earlier in the play, remarks on how his friend is acting more like him, and how the ying-yang of the two doesn't work anymore - he liked the guy for being wildly different from himself.

This provoked interesting conversations after the play, of course, but that's for a different time.

I found it very good, provoking me both emotionally and intellectually.

The government probably isn't listening to your cellphone.

So I recently (in my informatics class) ran across the amount of data that was sent via cell-phones last year (2008). Roughly 15 exabytes.

What is an exabyte? 1000 (or 1024, depending on interpretation) petabytes.

What is a petabyte? 1000 (or 1024, depending on interpretation) terabytes.

What is a terabyte? 1000 (or 1024, depending on interpretation) gigabytes... which is still a billion bytes, each of which is eight bits.

For scale: If they finally convert the library of congress scans into text, the entire Library of Congress (today) would fit on roughly 10 terabytes. Which puts the amount of information conveyed over cell-phones to be one hundred thousand Libraries of Congress.

So can the government go through all that? Sure. Can they go through it in any meaningful way?

Hell no.

NEEDS MORE PIG CANNON!

So I went and saw District 9. I recommend it for everyone. It is not perfect, but it is very, very good in several distinct areas.

Social commentary: One way to put District 9 is "Apartheid with Aliens." It doesn't stop here, though - what happens in the movie are a series of situations that happen in many parts of the world. As a Global Studies major, I recognized a lot of the interactions between slum dwellers and the government. Or them and the people exploiting them. Very much a universal message, though most people do their best to ignore slums and/or xenophobia. The whole first third of the movie is paradise for this. Some of the things that happens are truly horrific. I didn't see anything that humans haven't done to other humans.

Carnage/hilarity/crazy-cool: It's a very, very sobering movie, but sometimes... people explode. Or there is the pig cannon (that must become a meme). And there are so many Really Cool Things...

Characterization/character change: Wikus is, perhaps, one of the most interesting characters I have watched. Very interesting choice for a main character. Over the course of the story, there is much character change/rejection-of-change, and even if most of the character change (or lack of change) is Wikus based... it's still great. Not all the characters change, but some a very intense. A particular man who stays seated, for instance.

Paradigm-changing: Most aliens visiting earth have shiney technology, advanced intellect, and tend to generally have halos. District 9 aliens... not so much. You'll have to see it.

Suspenseful: In hindsight, the movie makes a lot of sense. But during the movie, there's a lot of mystery, and I really had no idea where it was going. Stuff goes down, and it puts people on the edge of their seats, straining to watch what happens next. So please avoid plot summaries, please avoid TvTropes - watch the movie first. Like as soon as you can.

So watch District 9. It's a good movie for people who are not children. If you live in the new BHC, talk to me about it - I plan on watching it again in theaters.

Self confidence and London.

I mentioned on the sad blog recently (amid the crushing of my self-esteem) that my self-confidence and self-esteem were at their highest by the end of the London trip.

I was going to elaborate that as a tie-in to a much longer post complaining about how my mother insults me nearly continuously, but I figured that while the majority of the post was negative, that this bit was positive, and shouldn't be on the sad blog.

So why was my self-confidence and self-esteem so high after London? Readers of my sad-blog know that half-way through the trip I was whining about how I felt distanced from both my fellow ASU students and from the general Londoner population (with the merry exceptions of Joefish and Slightfoxing, who were a pleasure to meet).

Well, first off, I proved that I could be successful. I survived and (with the exception of what probably was swine flu) stayed healthy. I got kind of down because of not being accepted at my original job placement, and then later being dismissed from my second job placement, but in the third one... things worked out. And that was the last one, too, so that left the strongest impression.

How did things work out? Well, the tasks were readily defined (as opposed to the school, where I had basically no instruction on what to do), and I could do them, so I did them. Turns out that I am a pretty hard worker - all I was doing was mostly mindless busywork, but... hmm...

Did I ever mention why I like fighting games (the Tekken, SSBM, Virtua Fighter sort)? It's not because I am particularly bloodthirsty, or have anywhere near the motor-memory or fine-motor control to be effective at them. Instead, it is a pursuit of perfection. Every time I play, I try to optimise my techniques, fiddle with the balance of what I do, and pursue a state of empty mind (mushin, if you will).

Doing rote tasks at work is much the same, particularly if they are repetitive. Each time I find a website to write down the contact info from, I try to improve on it, given the inefficiencies from last time. Finding out the most likely places to get the appropriate information, figuring out which sites are promising enough to search for other sites via their links... balancing detail and time spent hunting through the website with the benefits of simply going to the next website. With each iteration, I try to improve the rote algorithms of how to react to a website, doing it fast, doing it better.

Additionally, I hunt for other ways of doing things. Better ways. We have a database of email addresses to email out to people, and we would mail 60 at a time - as we selected them off of the worksheet, we looked them over for duplicates, which slowed the selecting. So I went online, as found a series of excel formulas that I could use to eliminate duplicates (shrinking the registry by over a thousand addresses), searching for common email address misspellings (yahooo.com is a common one, as is anything with a double letter, it seems), searching for two addresses put in the same entry, searching for non-email address characters, eliminating all spaces in front or behind words, standardizing everything to lowercase, and even searching for addresses which did not have an @ sign, which required some out-of-the-box usage of excel's tools. All of this was via search functions and excel formulas, meaning that I could apply them quickly on the several-thousand-entry data base.
Naturally, this task was not without the same sort of optimization as everything else. For emailing outwards, I found it was more efficient to open a dozen messages, then copy and paste the same subject line to each one, and correct the message for each one, etc, rather than doing all the changes to each message one message at a time.

This sort of stuff I could take pride in, and my bosses were apparently pleased with it all. Turns out that mindless drudgery is only mindless drudgery if you don't constantly hunt improvements. If I do wind up flipping burgers, I'm pretty sure I could seek to optimise a balance of speed and quality, and spend my mental energies improving my technique.

Not only that, but at work people did appreciate me, did compliment me on doing well, etc.

Onwards to reasons other than work, London was a pretty cool place to be, and I greatly enjoyed the museums and performances, and the sights.

Additionally, while I was in London, I had enough time outside of work to design my own creative stuff. I made at least two game-design blog-posts while I was there (viewable on earlier happy-blogs, specifically the one on designing a new fighting game, and designing a new space piloting game, both of which showcase my desire for horribly complex game design). I started designing a DnD campaign, though that eventually had to pause due to my lack of ability to test the game mechanics I was designing.

Also in London, I got to see Joefish and Slightfoxing, as awesome as previously mentioned.

On a more personal front, I managed to sort out things romanically, and the result was much better than I feared it would be. Down-right good, given the circumstances.

And then, after my internship ended, I went to France, and stated with Bubble B and her family. Turns out everyone likes me. Her family thinks that I am well-mannered, well-raised, kind, trustworthy, and perhaps other descriptions that I cannot think of off the top of my head. And going around Paris with Bubble B was a delightful pleasure, naturally.

And then, as I was coming home, I had a visit to Toshiko to look forward to, as well as Krystalangel coming to visit for a week. Plus DnD on Sundays with Alec, and being in the same timezone as most of my friends.

So I got off the plane pretty happy, pretty hopeful, and pretty confident in my abilities. In fact, while I normally sink into being miserable within the first few hours of interacting with my mother, this time I lasted all the way from getting back Tuesday night until breaking down and crying on the following Friday. (This is still the happy blog. That was a statement showing just how good I was feeling when I got back. The story of that all goes in the sad blog.)

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Time to go help mother with whatever she wants me to help her with.

Movies on a Plane

I watched three movies on the way over the Atlantic (Traveling from London to Calgary, as it were).

Watchmen was pretty good. My version was censored, so I didn't get to see the vaunted Big Blue Penis. Other than that, I thought it was well done, though I wish that the hero-types didn't occasionally kick people completely accross rooms with... strength they are not supposed to have. Ozymandias, I can see. He's supposed to be the absolute peak of physical conditioning, to the point of being unnatural - the other ones? Not so much. Also, the second Nite Hawk was too slim. C'Mon, he's supposed to be a bit overweight. I liked him like that.

Push was... meh. I have to say that it was a pretty decent movie. It has a complicated plot, the characters are okay, and the special effects are pretty cool. But the thing that really drives me up the wall is how much potencial the setting has. I wouldn't be surprised if there are fan-fics that are better than the movie. Hell, I'd write a fan-fic set in the same setting. Not because the movie was actually good--it's just decent--but because the setting is open to so many possiblities. It's like someone wrote a mediocre plot, with mediocre characters, and then handed the setting creation to someone like me. Someone who was given the needs of the plot, and went crazy with creating a flavorful and world-comprehensive setting.

Coraline was really good. I liked it a lot. Started out a bit slow, but after the first few minutes (I'd mark it as about when she meets the circus man, and then the two old ladies, a bit later) it starts going all kinds of cool. Reminds me of Psychonauts a lot. That's a good thing. You should see the movie.

Going around.

I went to Portobello Road today, on the recommendation of my co-worker Nadzirah.

It was really interesting, with all kinds of cool stuff. I got presents for a few people, including my dad.

It started raining soon after I got there, but fortunately I had the foresight to bring my umbrella, so I was mostly fine.

After finishing the road (it was closing up by 6pm), I went over to a restuarant Nadzirah had told me to get duck rice at. Good stuff.

I walked home, and it stopped raining. Immediately after, I broke my umbrella - the stick part detached from the umbrella part, which gave me a metal stick to walk around with... and the other part of it. Fortunately, it didn't rain until I got home.

I lied to Hanna about things, after I got home.

I recommend Portobello Road to anyone in London. I also bet it is twice as fun if you have money to blow.