Flight Recordings

So anyway, Dragon Age: Origins. I can't say this game thrilled me very much from the outset, as I seem to be pretty hard into intriguing world setups. To give you an idea of how the thought processes work...

Planescape: Torment -> OMG Ringworld at the Nexus of All Planes!!!

Bioshock -> OMG Decaying Art Deco Underwater City!!!

Dragon Age: Origins -> Um, elves. Ooh, ooh, and dwarves. And guess what -- the dwarves live UNDERGROUND and are big into ROCKS. And here's a twist -- elves? You know, elves? THEY LIVE IN THE WOODS. Huh? Huh?

In fact, the major selling point seems to be Look At All The Blood! Seriously, this game seems to do for spattering blood all over what Dead Space did for dismemberment. Basically we have (1) elves and (2) blood blood blood. Anyway, as a result, I was gonna give the whole thing a big yawn and pass until word started filtering in that playing DA:O is, like, making love to chocolate-covered cheesecake on a stick with sugar-frosted fireworks on top.

So, I ask you, the Internet: Is it really All That?

And, on a more practical level, does the DLC require Internet authentication on each launch like NWN's Kingmaker?

So, is it "Blue Canary in the outlet by the light switch who watches over you" or is it "Blue Canary in the outlet by the light switch, who watches over you?" Are we describing the Blue Canary or addressing it?

As has been previously mentioned, I recently embarked upon a quest to kick-start my ability to write prose, which has been somewhat worn away of late due to a lot of Skin Horse scripting and, well, not much else. So, I blew a wad of inspirators all in one big fell swoop and wrote a reasonably lengthy chunk o' fan fiction set in Jessie Tracer's Thirteen Ribbons, a furry-heavy soft science fiction universe where shiny shiny brightly colored funny animals race each other for fabulous prizes at exotic venues all across the solar system. If that sounds like your Thing, and you are similarly not averse to said funny animals occasionally cussing and being naked for the textual camera, feel free to read...

One In A Million

...and watch me try and exorcise the demon of my writer's block the only way I know how.

If, on the other hand, this does not sound like your thing, stand clear for a bit and hope, along with me, that this will help me get back on my feet.

Okay, how awesome is it that on Here Comes Science, They Might Be Giants actually went and composed a whole new song explaining the core factual inaccuracy of "Why Does the Sun Shine (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)"? The answer is that it is hella awesome that they did that.

If you are playing Rock Band, and you are at the microphone, and you are doing your damndest to earn points by matching intonation and pitch... DO NOT PICK A BOB DYLAN SONG TO SING.

DO NOT DO THIS.

Yeah, um, seriously? I am like the lamest-ass Rock Band player ever. Everybody else is picking stuff like "Chop Suey" and "Down With the Sickness" and when it's my turn at the mic, I'm all like, "Oooh! Norman Greenbaum!"

I am a bad modern person.

...fans of the 80's Henson Company television program "Fraggle Rock" will probably enjoy my birthday present from feech, a virtually pitch-perfect single-episode screenplay for an episode of that program.

Okay, Venn Diagram Fun time! To the tiny subset of y'all who are both (a) on my friendme list and (b) actually local to my home state, I would like to announce that I will be appearing (and likely making a fool of myself) as a panelist for a short panel at Geek.Kon on writing for webcomics. Come bask in my magnificence. Or heckle me and watch me cry. Whichever you prefer!

Anyway, on the off chance that you care, my panel's at 10:00 A.M. on Saturday 10/24. This will be my first attendance of Geek.Kon and only my second formal scifi-esque con; for a (newly!) 35-year-old guy, I am really behind the curve on this.

236 kilobytes of raw text in a little over two days.

I fall over now. *thud*

Trying to get the LJ feed for Skin Horse up and running again. The squirt generated from Webcomics Nation (http://www.webcomicsnation.com/rss.php?type=series&series=3739) seems to be intact and updating -- does anyone have any idea what might be wrong with skinhorsecomic that it's not picking up on it? The "Next Scheduled Check" information seems permanently stuck on 9/12.

Hoban "Wash" Washburne



Wembley Fraggle



Discuss.

(Thanks to feech for putting this completely unuprootable idea in my head.)

Oh my crap, I want to write a science fiction rock opera so bad it hurts.

Related to this note, beyond the obvious (AN EVIL LAND DEVELOPER STRIKES, OH NOES), can anybody actually tell me what "Preservation, Act One" is actually about?

Finally, check the hell out of my new icon, courtesy of feech, or more specifically, art_by_feech! I know the lemur thing is y'all's major association with me, and it is indeed legitimately dear to my heart, but Goose and I go even further back; it's just that I keep those cards a lot closer to my chest, so to speak.

So, I've just figured out a damn spiffy set of powerup items for my remarkably-successful Oblivion character to wear which will make her nothing short of a god on earth...

...but, unfortunately, they also make her look like a complete head case.

Holy crud, it's like my inner prepubescent boy and my inner prepubescent girl are in a cage-match slap fight.

( Overly esoteric details behind the cut. )

From the TES III: Bloodmoon walkthrough:

"5. Convince Seler not to die and that life is worth living."

...

...well, I'm glad *that's* something you can do by clicking at a dialogue tree, eh?

Please tell me this whole thing is some sort of bizarre high-concept "Mornington Crescent"-esque gag that I'm just not in on.

Please tell me this.

Okay, since it's been established that there are folks reading my blog who are not following the Sunday announcements, I suppose I better report this here:

I HAS BOOK NAU.

Obviously, it is something that you can also has. You just need to gives us a money.

Look at this sad lemur, courtesy of Rae Bruner. He is sad because he only has two varieties of color receptor in his retinas.

Also, Horror/Sci-Fi filk for the win.

Oh, custom-enchanted Drain Health (100, 1 sec.) / Soul Trap (1 sec.) (Grand Soul) ebony dagger, I am so very fond of you.

You can never supplant the Armacham Type-7 Plasma Weapon in my heart, mind you. But you come so very close.

In the fall of 1994, while I was still a sophomore in college, Feech and I brought home a tiny little sable-colored unit of fuzz, a little brown ball who failed to completely fill even a half of the already-small apple box we chose for her first bed. Techie was an orange sable Pomeranian puppy but did not appear particularly orange at this point. She didn't have the breed's characteristic ruff, and was actually little more than a more-or-less uniform ball of brown fluff with tiny little black eyes and a little black nose. I had only just turned twenty and was coming off a summer that was indistinguishable from my high school ones: living at home, working at a grocery store nearby my hometown, things like that. I could vote but not drink and for all practical purposes I was not actually an adult at this point. I had been introduced to Poms through Diku MUDding, of all places (one of the possible "pets" for your character was a Pomeranian puppy) and after a little research, I rapidly became smitten with the fluffy little Spitzy things. To a large extent to humor my whims, Feech chose a Pom as the new apartment dog. I moved in shortly thereafter.

I had a lot of dreams and plans at age twenty, very few of which have come to pass. The fact that I eventually did marry Feech is probably the one thing about my future that I got right. The rest of it, all the things I was going to do and be, have more or less fallen by the wayside. I had no idea I could write. I had the vague impression that maybe I could act. I was going to be a famous researcher and/or a vocal coach. Shaenon, currently #5 on my list of "Most Important Humans", was still seven years away from functionally existing. My life is nigh-on unrecognizable to the one featured in the Plan.

Through it all, though, there was Techie, a.k.a. Betty's Poms Pyrotechnics. Never cobby like a proper Pom, she was nonetheless, I thought, extremely adorable and well-formed. She was also a little spitfire -- her incendiary name turned out to be particularly apt. Tearing skirts out from under the Christmas tree, growling at cameras we used to take pictures at her, inexplicably barking her head off whenever you pointed a pen at her, Techie was an adorable little handful, and remained so her entire life.

Now I am a thirty-something writer and civil servant. By grace of God I am married and by grace of God and the bank I own a home and seventy-some acres of land in south central Wisconsin. I co-produce a webcomic. I can't say there was no such thing as a webcomic when Techie was born, but to give you some sense of scope, Techie came into the world a bit after the one-year anniversary of "Doctor Fun", while I was still MUDding from dumb terminals and attempting to type URLs into the command line of my university UNIX shell and wondering why it wasn't working for me. Through all this time, there was Techie.

She was with us through four different homes in two different states and about forty thousand changes of life. And today I had my hand on her flank as the vet quite peacefully stopped her heart for good, and all I could say was that it was a relief to not see her shaking anymore.

It's dark out now. There are sparklers left over from July Fourth sitting here on the table. I'm going to close this now, put the Labradors away, and light one off in her honor. It seems like the right thing to do.

Requiescat in pace, little firework.

...but I'm bored. Sue me.

(via toob...)

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence and these instructions.
Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST book.

"Let the puppy explore, under your watchful eye of course, and let him come to know his new home without stress and fear."
--Mrs. Darwin J. Martin, Schipperkes.

Tossup between that and the Gideon Bible I have in my other desk drawer. I wasn't about to get out a tape measure.

(EDIT: Oh, boogers, I forgot about The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf. I still think it's possible that Schipperkes was closer; it depends on what part of my body you're talking about, I guess.)

So a matched set of animal-themed enchanted fur armor was apparently added to Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Predictably, the armor provides enhancement to your skills and abilities corresponding to the sort of animal each piece is named for. Greaves of the Monkey improve your acrobatics, you know, that sort of thing.

Fine, so far. But why on earth does the Helm of the Lemur provide magic resistance? Is there some obvious connection, mythic or otherwise, I'm missing here?

Also, though it was buggy as all hell on initial release, pushing through the Thieves Guild questline is pretty much the only actually satisfying way to play this damn game.