20061104
being a gold farmer in wow is a fascinating profession
I find the tone of cyberpunk espionage in this article to be fascinating. It is a very complex world, the MMORPG.
20061028
guess how i did at state champs!
Round 1: He has Zur the Enchanter, Confiscate, and Copy Enchantment. Black cannot kill enchantments.
Round 2: He has 3 Call of the Herds in his opening hand. The next game, he has Stormbind. Black cannot deal with six elephants. It also cannot kill enchantments.
Round 3: R/W Storm is not a very good deck. I win!
Round 4: Creatureless Rack + discard is not a very good deck. I win!
Round 5: It's a mirror match, but I play stupidly.
Round 6: "Gain 4 life" is not fun for an aggro deck to hear in Standard. Also, black cannot kill Paladin en-Vec.
I drop.
Round 2: He has 3 Call of the Herds in his opening hand. The next game, he has Stormbind. Black cannot deal with six elephants. It also cannot kill enchantments.
Round 3: R/W Storm is not a very good deck. I win!
Round 4: Creatureless Rack + discard is not a very good deck. I win!
Round 5: It's a mirror match, but I play stupidly.
Round 6: "Gain 4 life" is not fun for an aggro deck to hear in Standard. Also, black cannot kill Paladin en-Vec.
I drop.
20061025
rpg status update
While I have the 2nd act written, i need to script the action sequences, which is harder than you'd expect because I'd like to make them actually interesting. That's hard to do in turn-based combat. I also want to do little stories for what happens to the characters in the year between, but I have those about half done. Oh, and I need to make the 3rd act interesting. It could be much better. But these things will hopefully be done one day, and then maybe sometime Bryan and Young will start calling me back, and then we can play. Maybe.
20061018
some things
It's pretty much officially autumn now - the leaves are dying, the crows are out in droves, and there's cold in the air. This is pretty much my favorite season, but it's too bad I don't really have anything to do on Halloween.
A quote from Jen Graves, Stranger art critic and guest speaker in my Contemporary Art class: "Richard Serra has stopped throwing molten lead."
Games I've been playing reviewed alongside girls from my classes:
Jade Empire: This game is very Americanized Chinese. I mean, ornithopers? Scantily-clad women? Come on. It's too bad the combat kind of sucks, too. Other than that, it's very very pretty and Bioware is still good at characterization. Although there isn't a single female character that I care about in the game, so it sucks being a male character.
Angela: A Chinese girl in my Japanese class who is cheerful and somewhat interesting. We have similar taste in cute things. Facebook tells me she is a conservative Christian.
Chrono Cross: The bad thing about hard bosses in RPGs is that, if you lose, you can't learn how to beat the boss like you could in an action game. No, you have to make your characters stronger. I don't like that.
I stumbled upon a ruined futuristic city, and I was all thinking "Wait, this is going to be another Miyazaki ripoff like FFX now, isn't it? Technology is evil and all that." But then the futuristic city turned out to actually be from the future. Bravo, Chrono Cross. I applaud your ingenuity.
Sarah: I'm just going to put an 'H' on her name because I don't know how she spells it. She's from my Native American Art History class and I pretty much like her. She's pretty cute, bright, and interesting, although I wish I knew more about her. She likes anime, I guess, and is a better artist than I am, although that's pretty much true of everybody. Unfortunately for me, she doesn't seem to have a lot of free time, but I think she might have my phone number. Not that she's called me, mind.
Time Spiral: This is a pretty fun set. The best part about the timeshifted cards is that I keep forgetting what's in them. It's like a surprise every time!
Nat: Another name I'm not sure how to spell. She's Sarah's friend, with a pretty nice dry wit. We seem to end up talking about slash fiction more than seems logical.
Dead Rising: This game is pretty much the most fun I can think of having on the Xbox 360. Beating zombies is fun. Beating zombies with pretty much anything you can find is even more fun. Taking pictures of them afterwards is pretty much the greatest.
Swan: She makes her own jewelry for a living and she's extremely friendly. She lives in Beacon Hill and it's too bad that she has a boyfriend. Oh well. She's from my Contemporary Art class.
Just Cause: I haven't actually played this game, but seeing how it's Grand Theft Auto meets CIA-sponsored regime change, with parachutes and grappling hooks, it's pretty fun to watch. Stealing helicopters in midair is excellent.
Nabe: A communications exchange student from Seoul, in my Contemporary Art class. Her English isn't necessarily the best, but she's really friendly. And she apparently lives in my building, five floors up. But she has a boyfriend too, of course.
Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Sticking it to the Man is fun. Spraying grafitti is fun. I just wish it were a better game.
Also: I've decided to update weekly now. Tell your friends! And be sure to punch me when I don't update.
A quote from Jen Graves, Stranger art critic and guest speaker in my Contemporary Art class: "Richard Serra has stopped throwing molten lead."
Games I've been playing reviewed alongside girls from my classes:
Jade Empire: This game is very Americanized Chinese. I mean, ornithopers? Scantily-clad women? Come on. It's too bad the combat kind of sucks, too. Other than that, it's very very pretty and Bioware is still good at characterization. Although there isn't a single female character that I care about in the game, so it sucks being a male character.
Angela: A Chinese girl in my Japanese class who is cheerful and somewhat interesting. We have similar taste in cute things. Facebook tells me she is a conservative Christian.
Chrono Cross: The bad thing about hard bosses in RPGs is that, if you lose, you can't learn how to beat the boss like you could in an action game. No, you have to make your characters stronger. I don't like that.
I stumbled upon a ruined futuristic city, and I was all thinking "Wait, this is going to be another Miyazaki ripoff like FFX now, isn't it? Technology is evil and all that." But then the futuristic city turned out to actually be from the future. Bravo, Chrono Cross. I applaud your ingenuity.
Sarah: I'm just going to put an 'H' on her name because I don't know how she spells it. She's from my Native American Art History class and I pretty much like her. She's pretty cute, bright, and interesting, although I wish I knew more about her. She likes anime, I guess, and is a better artist than I am, although that's pretty much true of everybody. Unfortunately for me, she doesn't seem to have a lot of free time, but I think she might have my phone number. Not that she's called me, mind.
Time Spiral: This is a pretty fun set. The best part about the timeshifted cards is that I keep forgetting what's in them. It's like a surprise every time!
Nat: Another name I'm not sure how to spell. She's Sarah's friend, with a pretty nice dry wit. We seem to end up talking about slash fiction more than seems logical.
Dead Rising: This game is pretty much the most fun I can think of having on the Xbox 360. Beating zombies is fun. Beating zombies with pretty much anything you can find is even more fun. Taking pictures of them afterwards is pretty much the greatest.
Swan: She makes her own jewelry for a living and she's extremely friendly. She lives in Beacon Hill and it's too bad that she has a boyfriend. Oh well. She's from my Contemporary Art class.
Just Cause: I haven't actually played this game, but seeing how it's Grand Theft Auto meets CIA-sponsored regime change, with parachutes and grappling hooks, it's pretty fun to watch. Stealing helicopters in midair is excellent.
Nabe: A communications exchange student from Seoul, in my Contemporary Art class. Her English isn't necessarily the best, but she's really friendly. And she apparently lives in my building, five floors up. But she has a boyfriend too, of course.
Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Sticking it to the Man is fun. Spraying grafitti is fun. I just wish it were a better game.
Also: I've decided to update weekly now. Tell your friends! And be sure to punch me when I don't update.
20060929
circumference
Last year, I decided to walk all the way around Lake Washington, a few hours at a time, using the bus to get back and pick up from last time. This weekend, I finished it. Here's the photos. Although I forgot my camera for some stretches, so you're out of luck there.
20060911
readership survey
So I would be interested in knowing just who reads this on a regular basis. Therefore, please comment and tell me who you are.
20060906
synopses of recent interesting dreams
Me and some other people are trapped by some invisible force or threat in a small group of buildings, one of which is a department store. The person preventing us from leaving is a man who resembles a creepy Steve Buscemi. Periodically, he invites us to his private office. People who go there disappear, and then reappear later, leading me to suspect that he is draining us of energy. He calls me into his office. Thinking fast, I compliment him on his abilities and wonder if I might become his apprentice, secretly plotting to use his powers to defeat him.
I am watching Aladdin fight a giant cyclops, or possibly two. He is very acrobatic, leaping and swinging around on the monster's body and using his scimitar to slash at vulnerable spots. Upon waking, I reflect that it was probably the Prince of Persia and not Aladdin, although I got the distinct impression that I was part of his crew, so it may have been Sinbad.
It is the end of the world. I am waiting at a bus stop. A bus pulls up to me, but there are no walls and no seats, just the skeletal metal frame. Later, I am on a beach. It is sunny and clear, but it seems cold. There are huge slabs of metal sticking out of the beach, apparently wreckage from some large vehicle or complex. They are painted a dull red. I am inside a ramshackle building. A line of large blue beetles flies past me, all chained together. The scientist tells my that these are souls, and that this island is set up to do experiments on people's souls.
My family (not my actual family, though) is being hunted by a giraffe with psychic powers. This is much more terrifying than it sounds because the giraffe is completely unstoppable. We drive down to the police station, but the police say they are powerless to stop it and we are inclined to agree when it blows a hole in the wall and stoops its neck to climb through. We drive back home and hide. I am looking out the window of my room when I notice a giant version of Darth Vader's face mask (without helmet) in the neighbors' yard. It turns around when it notices me, and summons a giant robot who immediately begins to punch through the side of the house. I consider fleeing across the lake in the kayak, but the robot (who is working for the giraffe) would more than likely notice me so I choose to wake up instead.
I am a prisoner on a strange prison in the middle of a cold, stormy sea. There are two towers, connected by a metal net with a walkway on top. The towers are shaped like screws, in that they flare up at the top to form a platform that is likely a helipad of sorts. There are no guards. A freight ship passes close and offers us (the prisoners) a chance to escape. We take it, and jump on board. We are soon enlisted in bailing out the ship, which is quickly filling up with water. We make it to a port, where gigantic cranes tower over the docks and there is a precariously high bridge connecting two cities over the water. When I wake up, I remember that this port has shown up in my dreams before.
Bonus Dream Links
Slow Wave
David Firth (Sock series)
I am watching Aladdin fight a giant cyclops, or possibly two. He is very acrobatic, leaping and swinging around on the monster's body and using his scimitar to slash at vulnerable spots. Upon waking, I reflect that it was probably the Prince of Persia and not Aladdin, although I got the distinct impression that I was part of his crew, so it may have been Sinbad.
It is the end of the world. I am waiting at a bus stop. A bus pulls up to me, but there are no walls and no seats, just the skeletal metal frame. Later, I am on a beach. It is sunny and clear, but it seems cold. There are huge slabs of metal sticking out of the beach, apparently wreckage from some large vehicle or complex. They are painted a dull red. I am inside a ramshackle building. A line of large blue beetles flies past me, all chained together. The scientist tells my that these are souls, and that this island is set up to do experiments on people's souls.
My family (not my actual family, though) is being hunted by a giraffe with psychic powers. This is much more terrifying than it sounds because the giraffe is completely unstoppable. We drive down to the police station, but the police say they are powerless to stop it and we are inclined to agree when it blows a hole in the wall and stoops its neck to climb through. We drive back home and hide. I am looking out the window of my room when I notice a giant version of Darth Vader's face mask (without helmet) in the neighbors' yard. It turns around when it notices me, and summons a giant robot who immediately begins to punch through the side of the house. I consider fleeing across the lake in the kayak, but the robot (who is working for the giraffe) would more than likely notice me so I choose to wake up instead.
I am a prisoner on a strange prison in the middle of a cold, stormy sea. There are two towers, connected by a metal net with a walkway on top. The towers are shaped like screws, in that they flare up at the top to form a platform that is likely a helipad of sorts. There are no guards. A freight ship passes close and offers us (the prisoners) a chance to escape. We take it, and jump on board. We are soon enlisted in bailing out the ship, which is quickly filling up with water. We make it to a port, where gigantic cranes tower over the docks and there is a precariously high bridge connecting two cities over the water. When I wake up, I remember that this port has shown up in my dreams before.
Bonus Dream Links
Slow Wave
David Firth (Sock series)
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