Previously, in Trip's Life...
30 June 2007 - Saturday
Food: Yummy Thai lunch!
One of the junior waiter kids is trying to grow up to be a smartass
like the best waiter. Hee hee.
Visual Entertainments: Marith and I went to see
Ratatouille. It was pretty good, although I'm not sure
portraying health inspectors as the enemy or dishwashers as safe for
living things is really a good idea.
Cats:
My apartment is full of kitties!
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
29 June 2007 - Friday
Modern Medicine: Apparently I am mostly a good
parasite, although like everyone I should eat less and exercise more.
Work: Check. But so sleepy. Fortunately I was not
called upon to think more than a trivial amount.
Best Haiku Ever:
Hippopotamus.
Antihippopotamus.
Annihilation.
Visual Entertainments: Disc one of Moon Phase.
I blame Ratty. It was pretty good.
Ruby: Victory! Once I started removing the correct
element from the array on each pass, it all started working much better!
Cats:
Bennie seems to have discovered the possibilities of "up", and has been
jumping up on the coffee table and computer table and couch and
what-not. Yay Bennie!
Writing: Check.
Best Haiku Ever by Ken (Mon Jul 2 18:15:33 2007)
Humph! There's no seasonal reference! I maintain the best haiku ever is as follows:
Saru saru yo.
Saru saru saru yo.
Yukidaruma.
Which translates as:
Monkey monkey!
Monkey monkey monkey!
Snowman.
posting by Ken (Mon Jul 2 18:16:40 2007)
Now why didn't it preserve line breaks? Buh.
Re: Best Haiku Ever by Trip (Mon Jul 2 18:44:40 2007)
You mean not everyone knows when antihippopotamus season is?
If there's a chunk of text delimited by blank lines, but without an HTML tag at the beginning, it gets <p></p> slapped around it. If you put an HTML tag (like <p>) at the beginning, then it won't be messed with, so you can use <br>. Like this:
Saru saru yo.
Saru saru saru yo.
Yukidaruma.
Make a comment!
28 June 2007 - Thursday
Work: Check.
Visual Entertainments: First disc of Desert
Punk. I'm not sure if I like it or not.
Brain: Ruby doesn't seem to like in when you use the
same name for a loop variable as for a regular variable outside the
loop. It's almost as though it's not a separate namespace.
Now my program never finishes, but it does at least compile and
execute.
Cats:
Aspen-pettins continue to be permitted at breakfast-time! Benny spazzes
out and runs away if I touch him, though.
As per Ayse's request, I told Benny that he is stripy. He looked
startled, but had no immediate comment.
Aspen still hides under the couch in the front library when I do
alarming things like walk down the hallway with obvious intent to seize and
devour her, but no longer spends her time hanging out there. Yay
kitty-bravery!!
And in other news: Where
kitties come from. (Insert standard disclaimer about information from
New Scientist, but at least they aren't violating any
conservation laws this time.)
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
27 June 2007 - Wednesday
Work: Check.
Gaming: Ken was flat from being oppressed by the
oppressive stupidity of oppressively stupid people at work, and Ayse was
flat from teaching teenaged girls to stop apologizing after kicking people
in the face, so we bailed on Dragon-Blooded (but not until we got xp!) and
played OotS instead. (Well, Dave and Mike and Ken and I did; Ayse sat in a
corner hugging kitties both live and plush and twitching feebly). This
time, one person did get down to Xykon's level! At this rate, in only two
or three more game, we may actually finish one!
Ken and I tied for first even though he was Ken and playing Roy, and
I am me and playing Vaarsuvius. I don't know if Ken was off his form, if
the dice were favoring me, or if he was incorrect in his initial
assessment of V as a weaker character.
Brain: Debuggingu, debuggingu, la la la! Not sure
how that list of adjacent rooms in the maze algorithm is getting rooms
that aren't actually adjacent. Bah.
Twisted Genius: The
Great Old Pumpkin.
Cats:
More Aspen-pettins! I even got to pet her when her nose wasn't buried in
gooshyfood! Once breakfast was over, though, she resumed her usual wary
ways.
In the current Making
Light open
thread, someone mentioned having to euthanize his cat, which makes me
miss Dani a lot. :( The various sympathetic anecdotes make me think
I probably did okay by her, which is good, but meep. No more Dani purring
on my lap while I waste my life on the computer. :(
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
26 June 2007 - Tuesday
Work: Crushed a couple of longish-running issues
beneath the weight of my cranial carapace. Yay.
Visual Entertainments: Neil and Marith both bailed,
so no Tuesday Night Anime, sniff! Maybe next week.
Bereft of companionship, I was reduced to watching the first disc of
The Irresponsible Captain Tylor. It wasn't bad, and a better
incarnation of the Fool archetype than most, but it didn't grab me enough
to make me want to get the second disc. Also: wow, that's some dated
art.
Brain: I guess I implemented all the algorithms I
thought of last night, because after poking at ruby all evening I didn't
have any trouble falling asleep.
My program sorta worked, so I tried fixing one bit and ended up
increasing the run time by a factor of at least a thousand (I killed it
rather than wait for it to finish). I think I know how to get rid of at
least a factor of N in the run time, though.
Cats:
I petted Aspen for the whole time she was devouring the gooshyfood and
she didn't run away! Even when the bribe ran out, she just wandered away
without spazzing!
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
25 June 2007 - Monday
Work: Check.
Gaming: Did I mention I suck? Okay then.
Brain: Eventually I will get the pile of ruby to a
point where I can execute it. Perhaps then I will be able to get to sleep
without thinking about stupid algorithms. (Obviously I'd rather think
about clever algorithms, but that seems to be beyond me.)
Cats:
My apartment is full of kitties!
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
24 June 2007 - Sunday
Food: Ken made us Reubens! And strawberry-rhubarb
pie! Yay Ken!
Gaming: Adventures of Jehanne & Alazaïs. We
disposed of one of the master vampire's remaining coffins, and have a
lead on another, but I still suck a lot and should die in a pit instead of
gaming.
Brain: Ah hah! When one uses the * operator to make
an array out of N copies of a literal array (eg, row = [0] * n),
it works as one would expect. However, if one uses an array with a
variable in (eg, grid = [row] * k), one gets references
to that variable, which means that assigning to one element of one's
array will change all of them. Solution: I used a loop with dup
to get independent copies of the array. (array.fill()
might also work, but I haven't tried it yet. It might fail in the same
way as *.)
Cats:
Further evidence that Ayse is right about Marmalade and Aspen! I looked
into the back room and found them both lying on the bed looking very cute
and completely innocent! (But Aspen always looks extra-striking on
the dark-colored bedclothes, because she is Beautiful Kitty.)
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
23 June 2007 - Saturday
Brain: I have written a small stupid program in ruby.
It runs, but apparently ruby has mistaken me for Jeremy and is changing the
rules on me so my two-dimensional array doesn't win. Bah!
Cats:
Tussling! Adorable tussling!
Aspen seems to actually like the cat tree, and will sit upon it for
extended periods, even while not eating. Perhaps it is like the pedestal
her beauty entitles her to.
Writing: Check.
Ruby on Rails by Jeremy (Sat Jun 30 10:19:43 2007)
Well, that confirms my decision to stick with Perl/Java/Ajax. Thanks for the warning!
Re: Ruby on Rails by Trip (Sat Jun 30 10:50:54 2007)
Once I started looking things up for myself, it became much more consistent!
Make a comment!
22 June 2007 - Friday
Work: Moved to a new desk, which is less crowded,
but puts my back (and monitor) even more toward the rest of the world.
Maybe I need an opaque spirit-deflecting screen to put across the
entrance to the cube.
Visual Entertainments: Disc 4 of Madlax.
The thot plickens, definitely. Given that Madlax's Modesty Blaise maneuver
was only shown in silhouette, though, it seems unlikely that her and
Vanessa's relationship will ever become explicit.
Cats:
I tried luring the cats even closer with their morning gooshyfood, and
Aspen happily stood over my ankle to eat. Her tummy is so warm and
fluffy! Benny was all skittish and didn't eat his gooshyfood until I
moved to a less alarming position, though. Oh well.
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
21 June 2007 - Thursday
Work: Technical interview thing at Taos to see if
I've learned anything in the past year+. I have, but unfortunately it's
all fairly specialized stuff and doesn't contribute to my general
employability. Bah!
Visual Entertainments: Finished the disc of
Master Keaton. Still not sure what the genre is.
Cats:
Miau miau miau! So cute and furry!
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
20 June 2007 - Wednesday
Work: Check.
Visual Entertainments: Yay Tennimon! It
hurts people's brains!
Perhaps I will die in a deep deep pit.
Cats:
When I got home and sat in front of the fan to think sullen thoughts
about my DSL, all three cats came and sat near me and looked cute! There
was still no pettins except with Marmalade, of course, but wow! My
apartment is full of cats!
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
19 June 2007 - Tuesday
Work: Check.
Visual Entertainments: Tuesday Night Anime! This
week we started the El-Hazard OAVs. How could I have
forgotten the underage lesbian nymphomaniac action? (The preceding
sentence, when taken in isolation, does not convey an accurate impression
of the series.)
Cats:
Aspen and Benny don't mind incidental contact with me if it involves
gooshyfoods! I tried sitting with my legs to either side of the plate, and
Benny hunkered down next to my leg to eat. After he finished, Aspen's
fierce eating pushed the plate so far that she had to stick her nose under
my leg to get the last bits.
Bribery: it works!
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
18 June 2007 - Monday
Work: Bah, Monday.
Gaming: I finished rereading The Order of
the Stick, after being sucked into the archives last night. It still
rocks with very large boulders.
Visual Entertainments: The Madlax
battle music reminds me of Rah Xephon. Huh.
Master Keaton is not what I was expecting. I'm not
really sure what genre it is. I do like it, though.
Cats:
Benny is so insistent about his gooshyfood breakfast! "Miau! Miau miau
MIAU!"
Marmalade eats a little gooshyfood, but isn't nearly as enthusiastic
as Aspen and Benny.
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
17 June 2007 - Sunday
Exercise: I encountered Dave on the way to Jeremy's,
so instead of taking the bus, I walked. To Palo Alto. In the sun.
(Uphill! Both ways! Through the snow pollen!)
It sure felt like I sweated away several kilos of water!
Gaming: In a shocking turn of events, we encountered
an alternate Sunday on which Earl was not dead or out of town,
so we were able to finish the Agon quest against the Cyclopes! The
Cyclopes were killed until they stayed dead (which was harder than one
might think), the sacred spring of Artemis was purified, glory was
apportioned, fun was allegedly had.
Visual Entertainments: As of disc 3,
Madlax is still very much what it is.
Perfidious Technology: My DSL has been out or
intermittent all day, which saddens me. I'm not sure what's wrong with
it, since power-cycling the modem or futzing with the wiring sometimes
makes it happier. Bah!
Cats:
Aspen appears to have forgiven me, at least when confronted with
gooshyfood.
Also, Bennytussling!
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
16 June 2007 - Saturday
Thermions: STILL DO NOT WANT
Cats:
I may have traumatized Aspen by trying to catch her and recollar her
while she was eating the gooshyfood. I am so perfidious!
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
15 June 2007 - Friday
Work: Yay Friday!
Visual Entertainments: Finished the disc of
Happy Lesson. It is pretty silly.
Cats:
So furry! And cute! I got to pet Aspen a little while she ate her
gooshyfood, which made me happy.
Writing: Check, ish.
Make a comment!
14 June 2007 - Thursday
Thermions: DO NOT WANT
Work: Check. Bah, phones. It is very sad that
phone calls make customers happy.
Visual Entertainments: Watched a couple of episodes
of Happy Lesson, which is a strange variant on harem
comedy.
spore has been torrenting Bleach episodes like a mad
torrenting thing! If my net remains working, it'll be done downloading
episodes 188 - 129 by morning, and probably done seeding most of them.
Cats:
Marmalade and Aspen have been hiding from the thermions by flopping out
on the linoleum under the computer table. It is too hot for snuggling,
but they are definitely sharing the Zone of Coolth. Aw!
Writing: Check, ish. See above for not doing much
with spore.
Make a comment!
13 June 2007 - Wednesday
Work: Check.
Gaming: Dragon-Blooded! The whole session was one
big fight scene. Admittedly, we started late, but still. Champions would
be faster, and I don't say that lightly.
(Of course, a smart parasite would finish Antihero, which will be
just as cool as Hero but much faster. Really!)
Silly Computer Games: DragonFable has been hung by a
bug in the baby dragon code for about three days now and I haven't
bothered to reload the page. I think I have escaped.
Cats:
So very adorable! And furry! But only 1/3 snuggly.
Writing: Check.
Make a comment!
12 June 2007 - Tuesday
Sapience: As usual,
PZ Myers writes
eloquently about the
uselessness
and counterproductivity of religion. Because he rocks with
tentacles.
Someday, I will eat his brain.
Work: Check.
Gaming: I suddenly realized how to do The Great
Machine better. But too late!
Visual Entertainments: We had full attendance for
Tuesday Night Anime! Yay!
I had forgotten about the teaser at the end of the last episode of
Mezzo Bah!
The doom in Honey and Clover increases, as it
should. This episode of Mushi-Shi was much more
fairytale-like and less surreal than some others. Bleach
is, well, Bleach, but Rangiku got to be clever and
competent and not just decorative. (Poor Orihime got left behind to take
care of the wounded, but she is the one with healing powers, so
I can't complain too much.)
Cats:
When I got home from work, Benny was all nested in my blankets! So cute!
Writing: Check.
cats by kits (Thu Jun 14 09:46:14 2007)
Sounds like they're settling in. That's good. :)
Re: cats by Trip (Thu Jun 14 21:31:47 2007)
They are! Practically every part of the apartment meets their approval, it's just that there's some big clompy thing wandering around! If only there could be gooshyfoods without monsters, life would be perfect!
Make a comment!
11 June 2007 - Monday
Work: Check. Monday. Blah.
B3ST THR34D 3V4R: LOLwocky.
Gaming: I haven't even read all of
this
but I know that The Great
Machine sucks in comparison because I am a huge loser and should
die in a pit rather than ever pretending I can game.
Visual Entertainments: Najica Blitz
Tactics could be okay action-adventure if it were not so
panty-intensive. Also, does underwear in Japan really only come in
white?
Cats:
Maintaining standard levels of cuteness!
Writing: Check, barely.
Make a comment!
10 June 2007 - Sunday
Exercise: I walked to the pet supply store by Lee's,
because I wanted to get some exercise. But the bus only runs once an
hour, at most, on Sundays, so I ended up walking all the way back with a
bag of heavy cat supplies. Then the clock told me that I could only make
the 14:00 showing of Paprika if I left right away instead
of lying down in front of the fan and drinking lots of water. Such a
sweaty parasite!
Visual Entertainments: Paprika was
definitely by the same mind that produced Paranoia Agent:
similar art style, similar music style, similar themes. Visually stunning,
had a plot, had reasonably flawed characters, and did I mention it was
visually stunning? Also, extra points because gur sng rppragevp trrx trgf
gur tvey.
Gaming: For the first time in quite a while, we have
played Adventures of Jehan & Alazaïs! We destroyed one of the
master vampire's coffins and kept him from killing our NPC ally with the
magic jar/possession/suicide gambit, which was enough like
success to get us XP! We hardly died at all!
Food: We did not have to resort to cannibalism because
Ayse made food! It involved chicken, hominey, and chipotles! It was
tasty!
Cats:
I don't know what cute things my cats did today because I wasn't home
very much! I am pretty sure they were cute, though.
Writing: Check, barely.
Make a comment!
9 June 2007 - Saturday
Visual Entertainments: Earl and I went to see
Day Watch, but sadly cannot recommend it to others. There
were many fairly cool bits, and gobs of atmosphere, but not so much the
coherence and plot.
In the evening, I sat by myself in my apartment and watched the first
disc of Solty Rei. It's sort of like Bubblegum
Crisis from the other side, but lighter. Sometimes there are plot
twists.
Cats:
Aspen and Marmalade were both curled up on my bed! Not snuggled together,
but next to each other. Ayse thinks this means they are having an
affair. I am dubious, but they are darn cute!
Writing: Check. Didn't make up for yesterday,
though.
Cats! by Lucy (Mon Jun 11 10:10:41 2007)
If you get cute pictures, email them to Ellen, she loves to see how the cats are getting on. We all do - you get very attached...
Marmalade has a girlfriend! by Ayse (Mon Jun 11 15:55:37 2007)
I don't think I'd go so far as to say 'affair', but I really do like singing "Marmalade has a girlfriend" repeatedly... even if it's not at all true.
Re: Marmalade has a girlfriend! by Trip (Mon Jun 11 18:51:31 2007)
Marmalade certainly deserves snuggles from pretty girl cats! He is so splendid and orange!
Re: Cats! by Trip (Tue Jun 12 22:55:07 2007)
Kitty pictures!
Make a comment!
8 June 2007 - Friday
Work: No! I have unilaterally taken today off!
(I have like five weeks of vacation stacked up, so why not?)
Food: In honor of my sixth year at Taos, I got food!
But also victory, as I was able to turn my current and former staff
managers, as well as Bernie (who isn't dead!) on to the wonder that is
Chef Chu's.
W00t!
Musical Entertainments: Ayse and Dave and I went to a
concert by Alexander James
Adams, Heather Alexander's "heir". His voice is not fully transformed
or developed or whatever the correct term is, but I think will be good when
it is. Some new songs, some old songs, HOW MANY OF THEM CAN WE MAKE DIE?
His "inherited" fans were all very supportive, which was nice to see.
Cats:
Aw! Benny and Aspen curled right up together on the couch in their room!
Kawaii!
Writing: FAILURE. But I talked about
writing with Ayse!
Make a comment!
7 June 2007 - Thursday
Work: My work is okay. Ken had some hair-raising
stories about his work, which I may not repeat here. Gah.
Gaming: Actually, coming up with setting material
for gaming is not useless. It's counterproductive, because players won't
remember it and then I will become frustrated and sullen. (I don't
remember other people's setting material, so this is perfectly fair, but
still not satisfactory.)
Okay, this isn't quite true. Setting information revealed slowly during
play will often stick. But it's hard to do that for an unusual setting,
like the distant star cluster where one finds the aforementioned Death
Squids of Alpha Centauri1 and Antarean
Wasp-Soldiers, unless the PCs are supposed to be n00bs to the setting.
1: Yes, they are also found nearer to Earth.
Hm, but White Wolf, TSR Zuul, and the like appear to
make money from producing endless setting books. (I don't count modules,
because most D&D modules fit into any instance of the Generic Fantasy
RPG Background without changing its nature much.) On the other hand,
World of Dimness is all about secrets, so players don't necessarily find
out anything except during play. D&D World is, well, generic, I guess.
Everyone knows fake-medieval.
Bah!
Visual Entertainments: MST3k: Manos: The Hands of
Fate. I don't drink, but if I did, I would have. I can't say it's
the worst movie ever, but I don't think I've ever seen a worse one.
Cats:
Benny is very demanding about his gooshybreakfast, and will come within
arm's reach of me to eat it! Aspen will also eat my presence, but is not
as demanding. She is, nevertheless, getting to be quite plump. Chasing
her around more is not likely to endear me to her, though.
Marmalade came and kittybreaded my arm and snoozed on it while I was in
bed! I guess he's forgiven me for the Midnight Spazzing Incident!
Writing: Check.
Setting by eyelessgame (Fri Jun 8 19:42:22 2007)
Sullen frustration is something with which I am intimately familiar. At least when using D&D rules.
But yes, setting's a problem. I asked, years ago, 'I love Glorantha. But how do I get players to get into it without assigning them the equivalent of a graduate-level class of reading material?' Mike decided to introduce Glorantha to people by completely violating the premise of Glorantha and importing PCs as WoD werewolves. (Trying to introduce it by having you be know-nothing primitives and domesticated animals still involved you all having to know way too much.)
I've considered introducing PCs to Traveller by having them be 20th century humans kidnapped by aliens and put on a relativistically-shortened trip that moves them 3000 years into the future. (The problem with that would be that Silkie would spend the entire campaign florning that everyone her character ever knew is dead.)
Champions has the advantage of being a photographic negative of WoD. It's this world except for the obvious differences (as opposed to WoD where it's this world except for the hidden differences). And Champions has massive metasource material that's part of geek subculture, so "Batman except as nuts as the Joker" is all it takes to explain, say, Foxbat, and people get it.
But settings are hard, unless you fall back to the weenie solution of using something where they already know the setting (Star Wars, Star Trek, Lovecraft, Elric, Pendragon, Black Company, Middle Earth, etc. etc.)
Or you come up with something that people will intuitively get. Ars Magica was "Earth's real middle ages as the people then thought it was, with secret magic wizard towers". The easy and cheap thing that looks inventive is to do what medieval/classical people did when inventing horrible monsters: start with two familiar things and mash them together to make something odd (fish + nekkid chick = mermaid, wolf + human = werewolf, Bela Lugosi + mosquito = vampire). Hence all of Bryant's Mashups and Earl's Wodehouse-meets-Lovecraft.
Re: Setting by Trip (Sat Jun 9 12:42:15 2007)
I think there are two levels of setting description that are being conflated here.
The high-concept, elevator-pitch description is almost always easy. For example:
It's the future of 30s space opera: atomic rocketships to the stars and ray guns to deal with the (often humanoid) aliens there, but no computers or genetic engineering or anything like that. You are members of the Pleiades Rangers, assigned to a frontier sector to enforce the law and keep humans and aliens from preying on each other.
Or, in mashup terms, "old-old-skool space opera with a dash of Western".
It's at the next level down that problems start to crop up. In "Medieval Europe + wizards", everyone capable of reading knows the options for where to put their secret wizard tower, what their characters did before becoming wizards, what the Church thinks about magic, etc. (Or they think they know, but if everyone has the same stereotypes, that's nearly as good.) In a novel secondary-world setting, the GM, after inventing all that information, has to dump it into the players' heads without the benefit of twenty years of schooling/reading/TV. Most people can come up with some sort of image for medieval British, but who knows anything about the Death Squids of Alpha Centauri?
Making the PCs new to the setting allows this information to be fed at a reasonable rate, and with emotional metadata to aid in recollection ("The Death Squids?! Those bastards let the Dread Space Pirate Fnagle get away!"), but also strongly constrains the kinds of stories you can tell, so it's not a perfect solution. Sometimes it's not even a mediocre solution.
"Gaming is hard. Let's hide under a rock."
Re: Re: Setting by Trip (Sun Jun 10 16:59:26 2007)
Actually, there's another way to get complex background with oppressing the players until they revolt, which is joint creation. I think this has to be done officially and together; it seems like throwing a wiki up somewhere so people can contribute to the extent that they have ideas would work, but in practice it devolves into the person who has the least of a life doing all the writing and everyone else having to read it.
I know of two games that officially do this, Universalis (which is a story-telling game that is not a role-playing game -- all director stance, no actor stance), and Mortal Coil (a more standard although diceless RPG). They both give each participant some number of tokens, each of which can be used to state one fact about the setting. I haven't actually played either one.
The downside of this is that some players like playing in exploration mode and being surprised by the setting, and this makes it more difficult. On the other hand, if they like being surprised, you can give them games where the PCs are n00bs.
The rock still seems inviting.
Downloading Settings into Players' Brains by Chrisber (Tue Jun 12 12:30:27 2007)
I have nothing to add, really, except to agree with the previous comments.
This problem is even worse in LARPs, where PCs often don't have GM handy to verify particular cultural or historical facts. If you make things up, there's no good way to record and propagate the new information.
BradFRP involved a lot of PC input into the PC's particular culture, and exploration of the rest, which was sort of DND-medievalish. That might work for SF, too, with the PCs being from an uncontacted planet, whose culture they develop, but who then venture out to explore the rest.
Both these options make the PCs n00bs in some sense, while not completely isolating them from the rest of society, but both also require a lot of pre-game creative work by everyone.
Re: Downloading Settings into Players' Brains by Trip (Tue Jun 12 13:01:03 2007)
Hybrid solutions are definitely possible, yes.
BradFRP started out as a PBEM, which probably makes pre-game creative work easier, or at least makes doing it online feasible by selecting out players who don't want to read and write lots of stuff on a computer. Or perhaps that was a consequence of the players' general lack of life at the time, which has since been mostly rectified. :)
Make a comment!
6 June 2007 - Wednesday
The Future: We're getting closer to real
medicine!
Work: I filled out my self-assessment form for Taos.
It was only like pulling a few teeth.
Gaming: Death Squids of Alpha Centauri! Antarean
wasp-soldiers! Bat-People of Tau Ceti! But making up aliens is easy.
Giving them plots is hard.
Visual Entertainments: No Tennimon
tonight, because Cat and Earl are still knackered from their
cross-continental expedition, so I stayed home and watched some Space
Pirate Mito. It was silly. Also, I can't imagine even the
Honey and Clover characters being interested in knocking up
the eponymous main character. (But it's not the kind of show where that
is gone into at all.)
Cats:
I got to pet Aspen a bit! But only a bit.
Writing: Check. But horrible.
Make a comment!
5 June 2007 - Tuesday
Work: Check. Bah.
Visual Entertainments: Despite having no Marith and
only half a Neil (apparently Stacy, having survived pneumonia, has now
gotten in a car accident (fortunately a very minor one)), there was
Tuesday Night Anime. Hah!
You know, Mezzo has way more cheesecake in the opening
animation than in any episode. Possibly more than in all the episodes
together.
On the other tentacle, I think Honey and Clover has
negative cheesecake (Hagu-chan). I really wonder about some of the male
characters, too...
Cats:
Marmalade used Flopping Over Sideways Technique in his tussling with
Benny! Kawaii!
Writing: Check. But still awful.
CATS! by Lucy (Thu Jun 7 08:13:07 2007)
How are Aspen and Benny getting along? Sounds like Marmalade is having fun squishing kittens!
Re: CATS! by Trip (Thu Jun 7 10:33:48 2007)
They are well, although still not friendly toward me. I think I am doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what.
They get along fine with Marmalade, though. Sometimes I will sneak in and find them all curled up on my bed, or arrayed in various positions around the front library.
Feline thawing by marith (Thu Jun 7 18:47:52 2007)
Lucy, I bet you know: how long does it usually take feral cats to warm up to their new owners? Is there anything we can do to acclimate them faster, or should we just be patient? :)
Thawing felines by Lucy (Fri Jun 8 08:08:09 2007)
Patience is the name of the game... Walter stayed in my closet for 6 months. By the end of his very short life, he wasn't even running away from the Safeway delivery man. Charlie has only let Paul pet him twice in the 3 months we've had him (he's a Mummy's boy). Bribing with food (baby food is another to try) and playing with long distance toys (I'm assuming Ellen gave you a kitten tease?) are good ways to go. Try to spend time where they are so they get used to you, and be patient...
Defrost! Defrost! OK! by Trip (Fri Jun 8 16:02:03 2007)
I guess I'm doing well, then, since they'll come right up to me to get their gooshyfoods in the morning! They certainly are not closet-hiding!
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4 June 2007 - Monday
Work: Check.
Anime: The retention bonus/6-year-anniversary gift I
got from Taos has been transformed into a Cube Of Anime! Muahaha!
I have: My-HiME, Bleach (commercial, to
replace some of my fansubs), The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi
(ditto), Kami-chu, Hyper Police, Super
GALS! season two, Coyote Ragtime Show, a replacement
for my lost El-Hazard OAV boxed set, and something for Marith
because I don't know if she has it already!
But I don't want to watch any of it because either I've seen it
fairly recently or I want to show it at Tuesday Night Anime! Sniff!
Cats:
Marmalade got to help me with laundry and bed-making, because he is a
peculiar cat. But adorable!
Writing: Check.
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3 June 2007 - Sunday
Food: Yay dim sum! Although it was very inconvenient
that someone decide to hold an art fair outside our dim sum restaurant
and we had to park in the catacombs.
Carl didn't make it, but Ayse's friend Saori was there, so yay!
Gaming: Chrisber and Adam don't game any more and
Earl is still on the road, but Dave and I got together with Jeremy to
play Primordial Soup (Dave won) and Roborally (Dave won).
I was doing so well in Roborally, until we realized that there was a
wall hiding under the edge of the flag counter and I hadn't actually
shot the forcefield several times. That and being out of position for
the real approach to the flag let the other two catch up and Dave
crushed us like the insects we are. Bah!
Still thinking about 30s Pulp Space Adventure. If the PCs are members
of the Pleiades Rangers, charged with protecting humans from aliens as
well as each other, and also with protecting aliens from unlicensed
human exploitation, then I can recycle each crime three times...
Visual Entertainments: More Planetes.
Animation is clearly the win for depicting life in microgravity. For
fairly obvious reasons, all the characters tend to line up on roughly
the same level, with their heads in the same direction. I wonder if it
would actually work that way in spaces that large?
Cats:
This time Aspen came out to eat the gooshyfood when it was not too
close to me. She hunkered her body down at a safe distance, and used
Snaky Neck Technique to lick the gooshyfood into submission. Such a
silly cat!
Writing: Check.
30s Pulp by Zyklon, Emperor of Phobos (Mon Jun 4 20:18:49 2007)
I, Zyklon, Emperor of Phobos, demand that I appear in your puny and pathetic Earthling game. I, Zyklon, Emperor of Phobos, will lend a touch of class to your game as I destroy your so-called heroes with my Ultra Mega Phase Invertertron! Surely they will be unable to do more but quiver in terror before my glory and power as-
Wait, what are they doing? Guards! Stop them! They're getting away, you fools!
Re: 30s pulp by ZIM (Mon Jun 4 21:20:01 2007)
Stop that at once! The puny heroes belong to ZIM, to be crushed beneath the might of the Irken Empire! Also you! And any small canine life forms that may be under your ownership on Phobos!
Minions! Push more buttons! Pull more death ray lev- what? "Thirties" pulp? Fool! ZIM is not merely postmodern millenial pulp! ZIM transcends your feeble genre boundaries! ZIM can be in four colors if he wants to! Launch the Photoshop tool, Gir! No, NOT THE ERAS
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2 June 2007 - Saturday
Visual Entertainments: First two episodes of
Planetes. Wow, Hachi is a jerk. But so is Tanabe. Maybe
letting people out of the barrel at 18 is too early.
Cats:
I tried to lure the new kitties to me with gooshyfood. It worked on Benny,
sort of. He sniffed my hand very cautiously, and I think he may have
snorfled my back! (Unless that was Marmalade being sneaky.)
Writing: Check.
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1 June 2007 - Friday
HAPPY HAPPY KIT-DAY!
Kit has the most magic head ever!
Gaming: This
is what the world of Ars Magic must look like. If it doesn't, you're not in
paradigm!
Cats:
Miau!
Writing: Check.
birthday! by kit (Sat Jun 2 03:00:43 2007)
Thank you!
Ooh, you should link to it when that guy posts more about his worldbuilding, or at least email me so I keep reading. That's cool. :)
Re: birthday! by Trip (Sat Jun 2 10:10:16 2007)
Yay Kit!
this finishes the first creation myth of Genesis, it looks like. Next, the second creation myth!
Genesis by Trip (Mon Jun 4 11:56:05 2007)
More here.
Re: Genesis by Trip (Thu Jun 7 10:40:56 2007)
And even more here, although mostly not cosmology.
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