| Monday, November 29, 2004. |
7:54 AM - Last Minute Movie Club. There are times when I go to a movie by myself. Usually J is off to work and it's a movie she does not want to see. I decide where and when at the last minute (a few hours notice) and send out invites. Usually nobody even reads the email before I get out of the movie.
This week was Alexander (   ) All I can say is that Stone didn't really know where he was going with this film. Epic, real man, homosexual, conquerer, god, etc. He tried to cover everything in the film. Things I liked? The camera work -- the pseudo documentary feel was nice. The colours. The women -- in a movie where most of the male leads liked boys, it left the pretty girls to me. The battles -- c'mon, I am a D&D player; as long as they swing a sword, I can get into it.
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12:14 AM - Trying to decide whether to go on a typical blogger hiatus or just shut the friggin thing down. It just doesn't seem to be me these days. In the meantime, here's a link to A Good Beer Blog.
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| Sunday, November 28, 2004. |
12:00 AM - Eww revisited. Yummy.
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| Saturday, November 27, 2004. |
11:49 PM - Nope, I haven't ever experienced this. Nor have I contributed to it. Nor have I apologized as I became the third person in a short succession to contribute to it explaining, "Unfortunately we are actually required to do this, annoying as it may be. Sorry."
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| Thursday, November 25, 2004. |
11:20 PM - Eww.
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| Wednesday, November 24, 2004. |
11:54 PM - I don't know why people are surprised when they read about things like this. It's rampant in every industry these days, from web shops to restaurants to retail. And moreso when the employees are salaried. Overtime only exists in places with hardline unions and in those not under such, they really cannot afford to say no to the behaviour. Work is scarce for most. Money is even scarcer. Leaving a job to find a better one is scarier than hell.
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| Monday, November 22, 2004. |
7:54 AM - Ten plus years ago when I would see a professional photographer standing with his Hasselblad on a tripod, I would make the joke to J, "You distract him and I will grab it and run like crazy." I might not be joking so much if I saw someone with this.
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| Sunday, November 21, 2004. |
11:55 AM - Geez, and I thought I watched a lot of cartoons. Imagine taking a dozen or more cartoons and anime/manga based characters and piling them all together. You get PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi. Extreme talent there. (via jeremy)
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11:33 AM - OK, I would link to the actual game studio for Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II but they went away and are never coming back. As my friends know, I have never been much for RPGs on the PC or console. But since J and I want some multiplayer cooperative fun (rather than me on the console and her watching anime) we got this one. I figure the latest of a line of Forgotten Realms based games would be 3.5E (or at least 3) and well rounded.
*zink*
Wow, it's not really D&D and it's not well rounded at all. Sure we are still going to play but... First, I say it's not D&D cuz of the way they chose to alter it to allow for longer console game play. Characters, even at first level, have way more than 5-10 HPs. And you heal realllllly quick. Goblins take about 10-20 pts of damage before they die. Toughest fucking gobs I ever killed. I am playing the Drow Monk (sexxxxxy) but I have no incentive to not fight with the biggest weapon I find or wear the heaviest armour I can buy. There are no mechanics that penalize this. The same for the Necromancer / Wizard. Armour is fine. Well, I base this on a lack of anything being mentioned in the booklet. Or any obvious reflection in game play.
Well rounded? Ugh, well I hate invisible walls. And I hate representations of grand cities as 4 square blocks of non-interactive buildings. It's been years since Diablo II so I am eager for more interactivity. And the NPCs... Hey, I am not very far removed from the lonely geek I was playing D&D 5 nights a week but man, do all the NPCs have to be babes in cropped tops with big boobs? Well, there is the city guard who looks like me but c'mon guys, a drow with a thong is not really required.
OK, with all that said if I look at it as a game with no preconceptions, just as a computer game with swords & spells and monsters & combat, I don't mind it all so much. Handy combat systems, easily accessed "powers" for all classes and a half-decent story line -- well, I have yet to really pay attention to it... just want to kill something. Oh, and dying is a pain in the ass, "Where was the last point we saved again?"
Speaking of, I have been tooling with the idea of a pen-n-paper D&D game that provides you with the possibility of "save points". Some deus ex machina Magik allows the characters to choose to go back to certain points in their recent or far history and pick a different path. There might even be auto-triggers based on death.
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| Friday, November 19, 2004. |
8:39 AM - Over the past three weeks I have begun interposing words and letters. It is happening on paper and typing where in all my past life I only ever backed talkwards. I see it happening where I write "srteet" but cannot seem to stop myself until the word is done. And it's not clumsy typing or speed writing. It seems deliberate. Where exactly is my brain going right now?
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8:38 AM - With D&D's 30th Anniversary happening this year, a few (actually positive) articles in real paper newspapers are popping up. Like this one in the Boston Globe. Many of them are old timer dungeoneers talking about introducing it to their kids. And all I can think about is how I want a certain kid's Xmas present to be this but I don't think he is old enough yet. Damn.
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8:32 AM - On our mutual week day off, J and I did some shopping ("sale pants!") and stopped by the Tarantula. I always look at the wall of new RPG products I will never buy and she peruses the wall of manga she might never buy. I saw a book and tried to pick it up. Then I grunted, shifted my weight and picked it up. It was the World's Largest Dungeon, a thick mother of a book that made me giggle.
It's a tome of a supplement for D&D that presents most people with their next few years of weekend gaming. Imagine starting at first level and having your characters progresses through thousands of rooms fighting thousands of monsters. There is no logic to this massive complex, just a lot of fun. Now, where do I find my guinea pigs... I mean players.
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| Thursday, November 18, 2004. |
8:07 AM - *snicker*
The new dancing baby ??
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| Wednesday, November 17, 2004. |
7:20 AM - OK, the Elektra trailer definately looks better than the movie she spawned from did. But for some reason, I keep on thinking about Mortal Kombat, the movie when I see the scenes.
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| Tuesday, November 16, 2004. |
10:49 AM - I can see myself reading the The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog daily but the ad material is kind of overwhelming. Plus, I don't know if it's Firefox 1.0 but it looks like crap. Which is not saying much for a weblog about the number one software used to comp webpages.
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10:39 AM - Work. Dishes. Fable. Work. Fable. Laundry. Josie's CD. Fable. Work.
Not much else.
So my guy already has his halo. I've just done the arena and I think I am doing a pretty good job of following the Path of Light. But I have accidentally slain 3 villagers. Don't get in the way of my fruckin' hammer when I'm squashing Hobbes. Amusingly enough, Marmy also has her halo & butterflies and she's been killin' off wives & villagers by the cartload. Speaking of wives, it's interesting how the game replaced a female lead by allowing you to be gay. And while I haven't tested it, I guess Albion is like Ontario in that you can marry if you are gay.
It's a fun RPG, the first I have ever played on a console. I am actually not that fond of RPGs on pooters as I am a diehard pen-n-paper kinda guy. But this is fun as it has a lot of hack-n-slash. Next, I have Knights of the Old Republic waiting in the wings for me. I didn't know it was based on the d20 Star Wars rules. Neat!
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| Friday, November 12, 2004. |
6:54 PM - A good mental note. Upon awakening to a bright and sunny day off and thinking, "What a great day to make the downtown trip to snap photoblog material !!" and then noticing that it is 1:20pm at the time of your waking; well, don't wait until 3pm to actually leave the apartment. It's almost dark before you step off the subway. And in the canyons of Bay & King it might as well be 9pm.
But I must say, the oases of the urban centre -- those parks or openspace areas between large office buildings -- are quite beautiful in their lonely, stark wintry state. All that open space, interesting angles and statuary left empty but for me and another man with a camera. Bet ya he has a photoblog as well.
P.S. While Googling to find out if the plural of oasis is indeed oases. I found a site that has been to the exact places I was at. But for other reasons.
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| Tuesday, November 09, 2004. |
10:22 AM - If J can absorb hundreds and hundreds of anime episodes via BitTorrents, I suppose this lil notice can remind me of a few shows I wanted to see.
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10:16 AM - Life has become a series of unconnected events interrupted by dishes needing to be washed. My spare tire is being mistaken for my hug-pillow and my errant eyebrow hairs are picking up WiFi. Burning out at work doesn't apply when the hogs are already feasting on your roasted flesh. I have new toys and old shoes. I have bright lights and layers of dust. I have lost friends and am afraid of losing others. This is not a rut, this is a gorge.
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1:16 AM - Mike, to answer your question:
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| Sunday, November 07, 2004. |
12:00 PM - OK, this is just amusing. And it says a lot about web celebrity-hood and it's place in the real world. Kottke quotes himself and links to the place where he made a comment. The comments immediately diverge from being about the post and into how self-centered Jason is. Isn't criticizing someone for taking themselves too seriously, taking it all too seriously?
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| Saturday, November 06, 2004. |
1:05 AM - It's like those photostreams over at Flickr but better. It's 26 Things by your waitress.
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| Friday, November 05, 2004. |
8:59 AM - It was only a matter of time before some sort of created trend that was mobily connected would end up making people look stupider than the guy with the earbud cellphone talking to himself on the subway. Now, we can get a collection of white corded pod people all dancing in the same space, to a different tune.
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| Thursday, November 04, 2004. |
7:15 AM - Matt writes In the land of the dead, a zombie story that is not rom-zom-com.
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7:14 AM - Yes, it frightens me that he is back again down there. But what frightens me even more are the people who supported him leaving comments on other people's pages. Nasty scary stupid people.
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| Monday, November 01, 2004. |
7:52 AM - Now if E the Musicophile had his music on paper and this collection of turntables he wouldn't have to worry so much about his collections of thousands. Just open one of the library of binders, take out DJ Spooky piece from 2001 and place it on the table. Well, as long as he didn't spill a Coke on it.
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