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Monday, 21 September 2009

Blurg arg nooooorg.
Guh.
...
Braaaaiiiinnnss...

Wednesday, 28 November 2007

Books I've read in 2007:
On Stranger Tides
Strange Itineraries
The Lady in the Lake
The Little Sister
Ex Machina 1-5
Goethe's Faust: Part 1
Infidel
Storm Front
Fool Moon
Declare
The Third Policeman
A Curtain of Green, and other Stories
This is the Way the World Ends
The Time Traveler's Wife
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai
The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"
The Sumerians: Their history, culture, and character
1491
The End of the Story
Ultimate Spidey vols 1-18

Thursday, 19 April 2007

Currently Reading
Infidel
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
see related

Playing World of Warcraft has been a strange and informative process. I get a little time in here and there.
There are two broad factions: Alliance (humans, gnomes, dwarves, night elves, and dranei, which are kind of like satyrs but not really) and Horde (orcs, trolls, undead, tauren, which are kind of like cow people, and blood elves). Players pick a race, and with it comes the faction. There's no going turncoat. You run around, sticking mainly to your own lands, but inevitably you have to go to the same places as the opposing faction goes, it's written right into the game.
The factions are enforced by in-game mechanics. The game designers made it so that players from one faction can't talk in game to players from another: it comes across as gibberish. The game designers also made it so that you can't cast helpful spells on players from the other faction. And you can't trade or give goods to opposing faction members. Basically: I can stand there and do nothing. I can vaguely gesture to them. I can spout gibberish (maybe I'm insulting their mothers). And I can fight them (I'm on a player vs player server; otherwise, I'd have to get their permission first). That pretty much covers the options.
Thus there's an insurmountable suspicion toward players of other factions. Let's say my orc is in a cave fighting yeti. A human shows up, also fighting yeti. Do we fight it out? If neither strikes first, he may just be waiting for a more opportune moment to strike. There's no way to point out that we're fighting the same npcs, there's no way to find a common ground. I couldn't, for instance, heal him as he's about to die from fighting something too big. I could fight the thing that's killing him, but then I'm distracted, and he could just fight me: now I'm fighting his NPC opponent and him!
Maybe I could put on a little show for the opposing player, running around, jumping, dancing, hooting and basically acting like a nut. A female dranei did that once, had me in hysterics by the end. But I was ready to kick her ass at the slightest provocation, because in a similar situation, another had player blasted me minutes after harmlessly running around showing off his war elephant. (It was a cool elephant, I'll give him that.)
They haven't introduced the ability to learn the languages of the other side, claiming that it would lead to more provocation, not less. You see, the designers feel that the hostility is already there, and communicating would just fuel it, not dampen it. I see their point. People make a big show of spitting on your corpse, sitting on your corpse (or maybe it's supposed to look like they're taking a dump), and otherwise showing no grace in victory. Imagine if their mirthful hate were given voice.
I happen to be overly kind: unless an opposing player acts against me, I'm fine with leaving them be. And I'm not one for cheap shots. If I happen across a human going down to a stronger NPC, I don't finish him off. Of course, I won't help out, either, because once it's my problem, I could easily be fighting it and the player I've just saved. And I've gotten in trouble giving right of way to opposing players. One guy sat down after a hard fight against a yeti, bandaged himself up to full health, and charged me anyway, even though I hadn't taken advantage of him. So slowly I'm learning to change my nice act. Maybe if I play long enough, I'll be just as ruthless.
I'll let you mull over the (extremely) warped mirror this holds to real life. I've got to get back to work. Speaking of which, I'll talk about quests next.

Thursday, 01 March 2007

Currently Listening
Serpent's Egg
By Dead Can Dance
see related
How to get the most fun out of life

How is it March 1st? How is it already brisk and pleasant outside? How is it I arrived at the here and now?
I've been putting in steadily increasing hours for the past two months, and I've been bored out of my mind doing it. The task I'm undertaking has far reaching consequences yada yada but it feels like a lot of book keeping and shuffling and dancing and cutting and pasting. And it's almost to an end, but not really. There's still the hefty step of documenting and dissemination and if I actually told you what my job is, you'd have to kill yourself. Security through boredom. And this doesn't end, not for another month and a half. It culminates in a week of training folks in Utrecht and then a few days overseeing processes I hate. And the more hours I pull, the more tired I become, and the more I stitches I start to drop, until it's everything I can do to keep everything unraveling.
But the really great part of all this are the games I've finally flooded my precious time with. My gaming has greatly declined over the years, though it had never risen to such heights many of my friends have achieved. I've never actually owned a console, for example, and the last MMORPG I played was the first MMORPG, Ultima Online, back in the beta days, and even then not so much. The GameCube at my house, its controllers, the games that go with it, they're are all on a fairly extended loan from a friend of mine who has no place for it in his new house. It's there for occasional multiplayer play.
But still, I don't play these things, I can do more productive things with my time. Like socialize, and read, and maybe on rare occasion write.
So, of course, months ago, I bought a DS, and then bought like eight games for it. (Hey, if anyone has Animal Crossing for the DS, drop me a line. I've got all the fruit and my animals keep telling me they want to meet other people. Assuming they haven't fled from the onslaught of weeds that have no doubt sprung up in my absence.)
Then when the Wii came out, a friend of mine offered to pick one up on my behalf. He stood in line all of an hour (a feat, but at least it was during the day and "only" an hour), got the Wii and all the remotes and nunchucks and a bunch of games. (And, yes, if anyone has a Wii and wants to be my Wii friend...) And finally, in a nice little coup de grace, I bought Supreme Commander.
Well, in truth, the big thing of course was the two week free trial for World of Warcraft I signed up for. Two weeks for free! I could see what the newest MMORPG was like without any commitment. I knew I wouldn't go past the two free weeks. Any MMORPG has a massive time sink built in, esp. when you've got friends in it to keep up with, which I kind of do. But with two free weeks, hey, that's enough time to dick around, see what it's like.
The funny thing about telling yourself something is that it doesn't do you any good if you turn a deaf ear. So if you're on the Mal'Ganis server, give me a shout if you see me. I'll be playing Yehbuhtai, an orc warlock. (And, yes, there's a not so subtle lesson in his name...)

Friday, 09 February 2007

Books I've read in 2006:
The other half of The Emperor of Dreams
Naked Pictures of Famous People
The rest of the Avram Davidson Treasury (not much)
Howl's Moving Castle
The Bone Series
The High Window
Black Sun Rising
When True Night Falls
Crown of Shadows
The Areas of My Expertise
Memories, Dreams, and Reflections
Fast Food Nation
The Smartest Guys in the Room
A Wild Sheep Chase
Dance Dance Dance
No Man Knows My History
Freedom Evolves
Last Call
Expiration Date
Earthquake Weather
Minority Report