| A Question For The Audience |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|07:37 pm] |
If you play World of Warcraft:
Why Warcraft?
I don't mean "Why Warcraft as opposed to some other MMO?"--that's pretty obvious. I mean, "why Warcraft as opposed to some other hobby?" What is it that you're getting out of the MMO experience? To what extent do you think those things would be replicable in a non-MMO format? |
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| Help Wanted |
[Oct. 15th, 2009|06:31 pm] |
Seeking partner for easy, fast, potentially lucrative project. Candidate must be capable of generating (and coloring) simple and cartoony drawings with punch. Must also be possessed of advanced geeky sensibilities. Experience w/ ninjas, dinosaurs, explosions, etc. a plus.
If potentially interested, please comment in this post. |
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| I Told You There Were Sprites |
[Oct. 12th, 2009|06:40 pm] |
Yeah, yeah...the maker is vastly less robust than Gaia's, and the product is basically an incomprehensible mass of pixels. But I *like* SNES-style graphics. Makes me feel somehow like there might be a *real* fake RPG in there somewhere.
More may come later.
( Read more... ) |
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| Brief Review: The City and the City |
[Sep. 8th, 2009|11:55 pm] |
[Look, I have to have some occasional non-avatar-related content here.]
As far as I can tell, China Mieville has an amazing talent for generating literary fast food. You eagerly procure huge quantities of it, and keep consuming it until it's all gone...but that's not because it's *enjoyable* as such. It's just full of stuff designed to manipulate your unhelpful pre-rational reflexes. And not only does it fail to nourish, it actually leaves you feeling uncomfortable and unhealthy at the end.
This has always been my main comment on Perdido Street Station. You can't look away from the constant kaleidoscope of the worldbuilding--"Wow! The city is cool, and its various imaginative sentient races are even cooler, and the monsters like the handlingers and the demons and the Weaver are even cooler than that..."--and then you put it down, and you realize that you just read a gazillion pages about some unlikeable and uninteresting people, and that the main conflict centered around beating up giant hungry monsters.
The City and the City has one leg up on that, at least; its protagonist/narrator, a bog-standard McNultyesque homicide detective with simultaneous addictions to enigmas and justice, is perfectly tolerable and even vaguely charming at times.
But other than that, the situation is disturbingly similar.
There's a world with a Really Cool Gimmick. In this case, it's that the cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma occupy the same interstitial space, such that you can cross from one into the other by shifting slightly or even just by changing your perceptions. But there's only one legally recognized boundary between them; any other interaction between the two is "breach". Breach, and breach alone, draws the ire of a seemingly omnipotent magical authority that shows up out of nowhere and disappears people. So Besz and Ul Qomans alike have elaborate mechanisms for "unsensing" each other's worlds, and for dealing with (e.g.) driving on roads shared by cars that you're officially not allowed to notice. [It even occurred to me that the "cities" might actually just be a single, ordinary physical-space city with very weird cultural restrictions, since you can usually tell Besz and Ul Qoman people and stuff apart by appearance, which made for an interesting way of thinking about ordinary urban life.]
That is, indeed, a Really Cool Gimmick. It's cool enough that I quickly plowed through a dry murder mystery whose progression was mostly pointless and whose resolution managed to be both predictable and incoherent. I just wanted to see more about the cities' interaction, about breach, about how these people dealt with their impressively stupid situation. And, true to form, Mieville dropped delicious fatty nuggets of worldbuilding at regular intervals.
But--and this is the real killer--even the worldbuilding doesn't pan out. Eventually we learn more about the breach-punishing guys, about the cities' overall situation...and there's no explanation at all for things are the way they are, why anyone thinks breach has to be prevented, why this painfully baroque system is allowed to continue. It's just Mieville playing with the shiny new toy he came up with. And that was a tremendous fucking disappointment. |
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| 108 Stars: Solicitation |
[Sep. 7th, 2009|04:19 am] |
So, with the reintroduction of some old favorites, we've clawed our way to the point where there are fewer than 30 avatars left to be made. That's about the point where I should start trying to list everyone I *should* include before I run out of room.
1. I know, with absolute surety, that I'm forgetting several important someones. A little help?
2. There are some people I haven't forgotten, but for whom I really don't have any good ideas. If their names spark anything in anyone else's brain...that'd be awesome.
( Read more... ) |
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| 108 Stars, Again |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|01:12 pm] |
There have been enough changes and enough updates by now that I figured it was worth throwing
it out there again for thoughts and suggestions. As ever, read only if you care.
Guessing game has been updated with answers for them what want them.
Current Stars count: 82
( Read more... ) |
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| Wow. Just...wow. |
[Aug. 15th, 2009|12:49 am] |
I don't know how many of you out there have heard of Agrippa's Trilemma (also apparently called "Munchhausen's Trilemma"). I certainly hadn't before tonight. But it's a concept that I've been groping at for years, and one that I'd more or less nailed down, in a vastly sloppier and less elegant way.
Really, philosophical education should start with this. Once we've established exactly why it is that it's so damn hard to argue anything conclusively, this awful weight comes off everyone's chest.
So...yeah. It feels weird to be giving an LJ shoutout to an ancient tidbit of logic theory. But still--check it out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_Trilemma |
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| Avatar Frippery |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|10:24 pm] |
This one's a waste of time, even by the rather sad standards of my avatar-making projects. It doesn't really exploit any of the coolness available in the generator except for the wide variety of pretty dresses. But after hearing that beautiful rendition of the story at Milk & Cookies, and finding this rather delightful background, I thought some time-wasting might be in order.
Any resemblance to individual persons real or fictitious is, of course, completely coincidental.
With that, I give you
( The 12 Dancing Princesses ) |
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| HRSFA Magic Set |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|11:52 am] |
We're, uh, making one. And have been for a while.
Mostly, we're trying to be pretty quiet, since it'd be nice if we could generate a genuinely surprising and delightful product for people to draft with. (The existence of Journeyman makes this a far more feasible proposition.) But in terms of flavor/top-down design, I would like to throw the floor open for ideas.
What HRSFA concepts are distinctive/awesome enough to merit their own Magic cards?
These don't have to be famous pan-HRSFAn institutions, although obviously those are great; localized references and inside jokes are welcome. Bonus points you can suggest an obvious card slot that the idea falls into (e.g., "big green dude", "removal", "bounce", etc.).
Some starter ideas, just to get the ball rolling:
* The Hour (Chronos, disciples of Chronos, burning clock)
* The Wyld Hunt (stag, hunters, possibly antlers/woad)
* The Myld Hunt (fox, hunters)
* Noncon elections
* Night arrows
* Schmowell House
* Not stopping the beat
* Salt hippos (?) |
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| Survey Question of the Day |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|12:46 am] |
What's the name of your Gundam? You know, the one that embodies your philosophy-of-action?
(If it's more appropriate to your narrative, you can give me the name of your flagship frigate or Star Destroyer or whatever instead.) |
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| Seriously, you guys... |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|08:00 pm] |
Mainline liberal bloggers have a lot of irritating habits. Enough of them, in fact, I'm reluctant to discuss any of them due simply to pissing-in-the-wind reasoning. Furthermore, talking on my livejournal is obviously not going to accomplish much more than venting; there's a grand total of maybe-kinda-sorta-one person amongst my readership who might actually be able to *do* anything with the things I'm saying. But this particular thing just bugs me so goddamn much...
Stop pretending that liberalism is the cool kids' club.
You see this fucking everywhere. Lefties are young, beautiful, smart people who eat delicious food, have fantastic sex, and live fulfilling and stimulating lives. Conservatives, meanwhile, are bitter morlocks who can't get laid (or, alternatively, are trapped in soulless and repressive relationships) It is at least implied, and sometimes stated, that their entire philosophy consists of wanting to tear the cool kids down because they're just envious of how awesome we are in comparison.
If you're a liberal blogger reading this: knock it the fuck off.
Not because it's obnoxious and rude, although it is. Not even because it's wrong, although it's that too...poll after poll has shown conservatives to be happier overall, and there's a reason for that. You should stop because it's the LEAST ATTRACTIVE THING YOU COULD POSSIBLY SAY. The cool kids are, almost invariably, loathed intensely. Anyone who reads your self-congratulatory blather, and doesn't immediately think of himself as one of the Beautiful People leading a charmed life--to wit, virtually everyone--will want to crush you and all your allies simply out of spite. I certainly do, and I fucking agree with your politics.
If you think you're right, then say so. This particularly ugly form of ad hominem is just painful. |
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| 108 Stars Is A Go |
[Jun. 2nd, 2009|02:12 pm] |
OK, so TekTek just released a swarm of new toys. Which include not only things I'd been wanting for a long time--like an open tome-style book and a more functional rapier--but also things I hadn't actually even thought to hope for seriously. Like, say, a small blue dragon. I'm taking this as a sign.
108 Stars will be revived and completed with maximum efficacy.
This post exists primarily to ask for input amongst interested parties. In particular, if you have any requests or ideas for your own avatar--concepts, desired props, etc.--this is where you tell me. TekTek has what it has, but I'll do the best I can.
The project still has a generic fantasy J-RPG theme, but at this point I'm loosening most of the restrictions in the name of giving people what they want as much as possible. |
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| Question in re avatar generation |
[May. 27th, 2009|03:05 am] |
For them of you what care about my Tektek projects:
I've gotten the idea, from several independent sources, that this tactics-RPG thing doesn't have anything like the same kind of widespread appeal amongst my readership that the 108 Stars did, and that I might be better served by reviving (and finishing) that one instead. I should point out, at the outset, that the 108 Stars tends to fizzle out for a reason: it's hard (for me) to come up with 108 people who are well-enough known to enough people for it to make sense, especially if they also have to have fantasy-RPG personas that 1) make sense and 2) can be represented with the available sprites, and the difficulty is only compounded by the fact that reviving old Tektek projects necessarily entails making a bunch of fiddly edits and upgrades to accomodate new toys. Nonetheless, I'm willing to give it a stab, if it would brighten enough people's day.
I should point out that, if 108 Stars is going to be complete, the first step is going to have to be coming up with a comprehensive list of people matched with avatar concepts. This patchwork version isn't working. Help with this would be very much appreciated, especially given that there are lots of people whom I should really know but don't (like the undergrads).
What say you? |
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| Avatar Time |
[May. 26th, 2009|01:16 pm] |
Yep. There's a bunch of new toys on Tektek, and y'all know what that means. I can't exactly say that it's the *most* wonderful time of the year, but...one way or another, it happens.
Note that this project doesn't consist primarily of making sprites for specific people in my circle of acquaintances--although a few of them may sneak in, here or there, in some form or other--so if that's what you're here for, you can move along without regret.
As usual, I don't actually expect people to be interested in this, because it's *very* silly and pointless. Even more so than usual this time, really.
CURRENT CLASS COUNT: 53
( Read more... ) |
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| Idle Thoughts on the MBTI |
[Mar. 17th, 2009|03:46 am] |
So, if you're at all immersed in the wonderful world of personality testing, then you probably know something about the relative distribution of Myers-Briggs types in the population. Specifically, you know that SJ types are common, SP types slightly less so, NF types rare and NT types very rare. The alleged statistics get thrown around all over the Internet. See http://everything2.com/title/summary%2520of%2520MBTI%2520types.
I have to admit that those distributions make a sort of intuitive sense; it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the world worked like that.
And yet, when you actually go poking around the places where you find people talking about this stuff, you find *lots* of people claiming to be NTs and NFs, and virtually nobody claiming to be SJs. (Also more Is than Es, which is comparably surprising.) There are apparently many active mailing lists and community websites for all the NT types, or at least all the INT types; I'm pretty sure that this is completely untrue for the more "common" types.
I can think of three easy explanations for this phenomenon:
1) The data is wrong.
2) For some reason people think it's desirable to be an NT or an NF, and are lying/deluded.
3) NTs and NFs are the sort of people who care about personality tests, or who spend their time talking about themselves on the internets.
Thoughts? |
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| The WPA |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|07:17 pm] |
...really as cool as all that?
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/422902.html
I'm going to hold off on comment, for now, because I happen to find this particular guy *really* convincing in general. Commentary from my more economics/finance-type friends would be appreciated. |
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| This Is To Satisfy A Friend |
[Jan. 22nd, 2009|06:51 pm] |
Lois McMaster Bujold
Once put her best writing on hold.
With the series suspended,
Her fans are offended;
She'll have Miles to go 'til they're sold. |
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