Mar 20 2009
For all my loyal readers…er, both of you (hi, mom!)…I apologize for the interruption in service. My hosting service has to suddenly move data centers, and DNS entries shift, and it’s chaos and confusion for a bit. Well, a day. Not so bad.
Anyway, I’m back online, where I was. So, I suppose I ought to start writing something useful again. Let me ponder this, and get back to you.
Jan 14 2009
If you never gone out to see a live performance of, well, anything, I encourage you to change this. A concert, a play, a musical, an orchestra…we can watch these things on television all the time, but live and in person can be an exhilirating experience.
OK, now the PSA is out of the way, I was checking my e-mail((one of them, at any rate)), and saw a slew of newsletters from ticket venues. I like the thought, as performers have come to town and left town, often before I’d heard anything about it. So I don’t mind a bit of spam from somewhere like the American Airlines Center who’s just told me Fleetwood Mac is coming in April. If the Mac were my thing, I’d be well prepared to buy tickets when they go on sale later this month.
The Bass Hall also had a newsletter today. I’ve probably see more productions there than the AAC, so looked at it first. And what marvelous entertained did they want to inform me of? What special, advance ticket purchase did they wish to extend to me, one of their loyal patrons?
The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.
At the Bass Hall.
Cheerleaders.
Dec 29 2008
I haven’t fallen off the earth again, it’s just been very quiet the last month. So, if you are here, um, look in your stockings for any digital gadgets like thumb drives, digital photo frames, etc., and make sure they’re clean. In fact, if you haven’t got one, find a decent anti-virus for your home computer. You could do worse than AVG-Free. You could, in fact, do better if you weren’t such a cheapskate, but hey, I’m not judging.
Nov 11 2008
So, I joined up to Facebook awhile back for one reason: to play Dungeons & Dragons Tiny Adventures.
Go ahead, when you stop laughing, I’ll continue.
Feel better? Good. Anyway, it’s a fun, little, no-effort sort of game where you pick “quests” and let your little character go off at them. You don’t actually do anything except buy and sell loot between adventures. So, you can turn it on and ignore it while you go about your day. I’ll usually start an adventure in the morning, and check in on it around noon time…reset, do the same at the end of the day.
I admire the creativity in the quests, not just for the brief stories, but even the random encounters. They vary from silly to serious, reasonable to outrageous. I just checked on my little human warchief, and sent her on a new mission against some Orc Lord. Here was the description:
The orcs caves deep in the forest used to be a fun place for adventurers to gain experience. Now the orc lord has begun inflicting his wrath on travelers and he has become a great threat to the good people in the world and must be dealt with.
Well, GEE, humanoids have been wandering through your home for years, randomly slaughtering your people for their possessions and “the experience”, I think I’d be a little testy too. I’m trying to picture these people..”let’s go kill some Orcs, it’s FUN!”
Dungeons, Dragons & Psychos? Yeesh…
Mind you, I am SO gonna kick that Orc Lord’s butt. I mean, come on, there are standards to maintain.
Oct 29 2008
Sorry it’s been quiet this week. I keep crawling the web for your entertainment, but everything out there is all election, election, election! So, once that goes past maybe I’ll find something more interesting to put up here. In the meantime, go vote! Early voting is still available in many areas, if you want to beat the rush next week. There is no voting after Tuesday! Which I figure would be obvious, but I hear some states are having a problem quashing the rumors. Oy.
Oct 08 2008
In last night’s Presidential Debate, there came a bit near the end where the formal back-and-forth order broke down for just a bit and the two candidates traded some “follow up” comments1 In discussing an energy bill, McCain said,
“You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one. You know who voted against it? Me.”
The particular comment, “that one,” has bounced around all the major news outlets, with varying degrees of reaction. There’s a strong suggestion that could posses racist overtones, although no one is explicitly claiming there was racist intent behind it.
Perhaps my multi-cultural radar is off, but even as a southerner who still hears enough off-color jokes at family reunions to make me cringe, I didn’t see anything in that comment to suggest a racial epithet. I rather suspect McCain is looking at the national reaction in honest surprise.
Watching the debate myself, what it did make me think of was, Continue Reading »
Aug 11 2008
I felt he did a pretty decent job, all around. Over on something called MTV’s Splash Page (by way of the Superman Homepage) is an article about reboot the Superman movie franchise by ignoring Superman Returns.
I’m not nearly as critical of this movie as I should be, and it’s largely due to how happy I was simply to see a partly decent Superman movie after so long. I’m very much a fan, and I’ll admit to bias here and now. The movie, however, was far from perfect. Even now, as I watch it, I often simply skip to the plane rescue (with some of the general crime fighting that follows after) then forward again to final action scenes, catching the Daily Planet globe and lifting the Kyrptonian island into space.
MTV spoke to Grant Morrison, Mark Waid and Brad Meltzer for their thoughts, and the general consensus was pretty spot on.
Jun 10 2008
After far too much time, in an on-again-off-again relationship with City of Heroes, my original character, Hero14, has finally reached ‘50′. This is the highest level for this game, and unlocks an ‘Epic Archtype’ called the Kheldians.
I’ve been playing one for a few days, and just got one it to lvl 6. It’s an interesting type for the game, combing different “forms” to let you play multiple concepts in a single character. So far, it’s not too bad except for the lack of customization in the alternate forms. I’ve got my own hero I can tailor to my liking, and now at lvl 6 I have a floating squid form. Yay.
On the opposite side of the game, City of Villains, the most recent game update introduced Villain Epic Archtypes, or VEATS. On the whole, these special archetypes look much more interesting to me, as it’s expanding on one of the core mythologies of the game. The Kheldians, frankly, always struck me as cobbled together tack-ons. You could excise them from the game entirely, and the overall story arc wouldn’t suffer.
Plus, I still don’t forgive them for that horrible ending to the original CoH comic books. Interesting characters, interesting stories, then all of the sudden: Look, Bob’s a Kheldian! Read all about ‘em at our website. And oh, we’re canceling the free comic now.
The recent update has helped whet my appetite for the game. I’ve even learned to accept the arbitrary economy forced on the game through their auction house system. Mostly, because I’ve now learned how easy it is to exploit it. For example:
With mild effort, any character can keep themselves in enough cash to keep up to date in regular enhancements, without having to touch Inventions until much later in the game. And since the lvl 25 invention enhancements pale next to lvl 25 SOs, this isn’t a bad thing. Still, it feels too much like weekly grocery shopping to keep my characters in beer and skittles.
Plus, I saw a blurb on their new loading screens that “The game was not made more difficult for Invention Enhancements”. So, uh, this Enhancement Diversification was just for fun? Really?
Sometimes I feel like I’m in an abusive relationship. I don’t want to enjoy CoH, but I do. At least, until an alternative ever comes out.
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