I am seriously busy this time of year.  I'm starting to feel the onrushing train of my committments bearing down.  I have a party in Lafeyette today,  which I have to dress up for.  Then I start work at my new job Monday.  Which happens to be the day of their annual Christmas party, so I'll be dressing up again to go to a formal dinner at White Oak Plantation with my new company.

A friend of mine is getting married this month.  A friend of Rachael's is graduation this month.  I'm sick with a nasty and persistant cold.  And oh yes, there's that whole Christmas thing coming up!

"May you live in exciting times..." 

Speaking of things that are like news: I got a new job!  Yeah buddy.  I'll be starting work at ProSys on Monday.  Ironically, that's also the day of their fancy Christmas party.  Serendipity, or am I just that good? 

One cool bit is that my new job pays more.  So losing my old one actually got me a 2 month vacation and a raise!  Let me tell you, just knowing I can start back to work soon is a giant weight off my conscience.  

While I assume most of my friends are down with the PA, I'll have to guess that some aren't, so maybe you missed...

ZUNEGATE!!!

The shocking news that President-Elect Barack Obama might use a Zune instead of an iPod to enjoy his totally legal MP3s. Say it ain't so!
In case the story of the centuary somehow passed you by, catch up with:
The original article that inadvertantly started the whole mess.
The article trying to backpeddle on it.
And the article making a big deal out of absolutely nothing.
Truly, the human race is doomed if this is the most important thing we have to say about the guy while nerds get ready to start a civil war over who has the cooler music player.  From a guy who spends at least 4 hours a day gaming: get a life.

The title is a bit of a double entendre: I'm here to tell you what I'm doing, and I want to know what you're doing!

So here's me: I got my profressional blog up, and I'm posting to it with some regularity. That's at Dark Spire Design. I feel really good about it, I finally have a place to put my writings that no one around here wants to read, and maybe eventually I'll start getting some readers over there to chat with about game design and programming and writing.

That leaves this blog free for personal stuff, and for chatting with friends. So I'm still job hunting. Oh yeah, I got fired. Forgot to mention that. :/ Job searching sucks, to put it bluntly. Every week it's "God, I hope that place calls me this week and offers me something. I think I'd take the first offer that comes along at this point." And every week it's been a mixed bag of rejection and new opportunities that's got my emotions all in a rut. Also, my six year old laptop finally died today. The power charger is no longer sending energy into it.

Thankfully, I do have some good stuff. My relationship with Rachael is great, couldn't ask for a better girlfriend. She loves me, and I love her, and we get along so well it's sickening. I'm working on a Flash game, so I actually feel moderately productive during my days lately.


Alright, so that's what I'm doing. Who is still reading this? What friends do I have left on LJ after a year-long hiatus? What's going on in your lives?

Hey! Anyone out there miss me? Yeah, been gone for a really long time now, I know. What can I say, work got the better of me and life has been great in some regards and mediocre in others, so I lost much of my will to get any typing done.

I'm trying to get a fresh start though. I'll be going back through, at some point soon, and fixing my friends list to include just my friends and people that I want to read about. I probably won't be posting much around here though.

I'm moving my blogging to my own website. Dark Spire Design I've owned that domain and webspace for 2 years, and just renewed for two more years. You know what I've done with it in all that time? That's right, bupkis. Nada, zilch, nothing. What a waste, but I'd like to get about correcting that.

The "problem" with this here blog was my tendancy to write some game design thing one day and then whinge about life the next. My new blog will be much more focused on the "Chris posts cool things like game design musings and discussions about programming." Yeah, exciting, I know. I want to get some professional blogger credentials though, and that's the way to do it.

You can use LJ's built in RSS reading to still get my witty banter straight to your friends list form my new page. And I'll try to keep up with my buds as well.

Well everyone, I said I had big news to report on, so here they are!   First... I graduated!  I hold a Bachelor's of Science degree from LSU.  I can't believe I'm finally done with school, it's a weird feeling.


Second news is that I got a new car!  My graduation present, of sorts, is this lovely Scion TC.  It's a great ride and I just looooove it!   Anyway, that's the news!  Happy new year everyone, hope Christmas was good to you all!

Some nights, when you step out into the crisp bite of the recent and suddenly chilled air, the taste of smoke lies heavy on the ground and you can hear the trains running not too far off. Those are little moments of magic for me.

I've got some Big Deal News coming up in a few days. I'm holding off on getting a little more information before I make my announcements to the LJ world, but it's good stuff.

Dear Santa... Dear Santa, This year I've been busy! Last week crazyamster and I robbed a bank (-50 points). Last Tuesday I broke luminadarkn's X-Box (-12 points). Last Wednesday I stole rantipole6's purse (-30 points). Last Thursday I set ksof143's puppy on fire (-66 points). Last Sunday I turned vendalah in for eating carbs (3 points). Overall, I've been naughty (-155 points). For Christmas I deserve a spanking! Sincerely, CodexArcanum

Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username:

Alright folks, you heard what the jolly fat man said. So who wants to administer the spankings? ;)

I get game ideas pretty often, and have wisely begun to write down my ideas so I don't forget them when my mind wanders over to other things. So it's always a good time to locate one of my "Projects" folders full of half-baked and half-written ideas. They're like little treasure boxes in the attic, filled with old crap and a few shining heirlooms.

Dug up a file recently for a game I called Adrift. The driving design was to make a game that would appeal to gaming newbies, by tying it all into reality television. Players guide the characters on a Survivor-style show through the motions of finding food and shelter, interacting with each other, and doing various challenges. I think it's an idea with some potential, and a few clever ideas.

Here's a link to what I've written in PDF form. I don't think I even got all the way to mechanics. If you couldn't tell from context, I think it was meant to be roll 2d6, modifiers, and test against a target. It obviously isn't finished yet, as I'm working on Cyborg mostly. Still, I think the interaction between the three point pools is pretty neat stuff.

Thinking about it now, I might try to make it more board gamish, with no player controlling any one character. And no complex point pools to master, just ever shifting relationships built using a grid-chart that you "slot" character cards into. Maybe players could wager and vote on characters to see how things work out, mixed with dice results to preserve randomness. Kind of like a turn-based strategy game, but with "real people" instead of medieval warriors and "immunity challenges" instead of battles.

I don't know how many designers actually look at my blog, but it don't really matter since I just write to read myself later and have debates with the me of yesterday over what I was smoking and if my cracked out old ideas still hold. Anyway, on to todays idea.

For Cyborg, I really try to drill out and distill the most basic elements of gaming. One concept central to the whole game is that everything has cost. Seems obvoius, no free lunches and all that, but the implications get pretty interesting. In Cyborg, there are three ways to pay a cost: risk, narration, and resources. Risk means you roll the dice. The price is a risk on whether you will get what you want or not. Narration means you contribute vividly to the scene. And Resource means you spend from a limited pool of points the characters have.

But what are you spending on? Many things. In an RPG, really, everything comes back to narrative importance and rights to speak. Is your character important enough, at this very moment, to do what it is that you want him to do? If not, how can you pay up to increase the value of your contribution until it is?

Narrating a trip across town has a cost, but you pay that cost as you incur it with the narration. But trying to impose states onto someone else's property, their charater and their stories, has a higher cost. So you have to pay, either points or risk. And so it goes, with the in-game economy of power constantly in flux and costs always being paid. In most games, this process is entirely unacknowledged. Once you realize it's there though, you can play around with it. Fun stuff.

Or rather, I'm embroiled in the world of these roles-playing games again.

I'm trying to restart my REIGN game, but it looks to be dead in the water. Meanwhile, I started a Play-by-Post game of the vernerable Unknown Armies and it is sailing high. Seriously, I posted the thing at midnight and had 4 Requests-to-Join in less than an hour. We've capped out with 7 players at the moment, so it should be a rather intense game. Players joined from Brazil, Germany, the UK, and elsewhere. I may well be the only U.S. American in the group.

Started writing on Cyborg, again. I think I've actually got all the system fiddly bits worked out though. Just need to write up a first draft, playtest that bitch, and then start planning where I'll store all the money.

I also dug up a bunch of notes from "on-hold" game ideas. If I actually wrote all of these, I'd be in "work" for months, or years. Hmm... I wonder how much beer money I can make off selling games...

I realize I didn't discuss Thanksgiving much.  I visited my family in Mississippi for the holiday, my parents picked me up on their way through from Texas.  We had a good time, lots of food and family gossip.  Coming from a small town, gossip is all there is.

Nothing really changes in a small southern town.  Teenagers get pregnant, old people die, everyone takes care of their kin and life rolls right along.  My cousins have a lot of kids too.  There was babies around, and some adolescent youngins, and it just makes me feel old.  Seeing my cousins beautiful 6-year old daughter also makes me want kids, but I guess that's a discussion for later.  Much, much, much later.


The whole end of the year and graduation and life changing brings me back to many things spiritual.  Chaos is nature, and all things change.  As my many teachers have imparted onto me, change is constant, and happiness is knowing when to act and when to flow.

I've been cleaning up the house over the weekend. As I did so, I started thinking about my pet rats.  I think I've about gotten tired of taking care of pets.  It was a fun experiment, and I enjoyed having them, but really, I don't play with them.  They don't get any attention from me, just food and water occasionally.

It's not really fair to anyone.

So if you or anyone you know might be interested in two sweet pet rats with a cage, and food and such, let me know.  I think it's about time I put my babies up for adoption.

tired, so tired. need rest, need sleepy time GOTTA PEE no it's sleepy time no urination PEE PEE uh uh, sleep but I have to go pee grrrrrrr TIRED aaaaahhh my eye hurts why does it tingle OhAH ooooh just popped a joint, that felt nice, STILL NEED PEE SHUT UP SHUT UP i'll go in a minute let me sleep VIDEO GAMES nooooooooo pee I mean sleep damnit what am I saying... thinking.... I have a paper to write no you don't you have sleep to get no homework URINATION!!! SHUT THE HELL UP

hey I should blog about this, my head is a weird and funny place Yeah and then go pee, sigh... fine then pee, then chai tea, then homework THEN sleepy time

Because I played until 6am today. These are not smart things I do. It ensures that I will most likely not sleep tonight. I also just yawned, because oversleeping at funny hours just makes you tired too.

But now, I have responsibilities to which I must attend, and so I shall go to my business. For this is the way of the world. Then I shall play more games, because screw the world, when I'm done with business I'm doing it my way!

I shit you not, they shaved an orangutan and used it as a sex slave for years.  Some wildlife folks finally rescued the poor thing.  It was covered in pimples and sores from being shaved so often and scratching at mosquito bites, and had been trained to "present" herself to any males entering close proximity.  Really, really fucked up story. 

This Site is Really Not Safe For Work I'm Not Kidding, But Full Story Here.

There's also a video floating about the intarwebs of a man shooting a bear out of a tree, then having sex with his wife/gf on top of it, and then letting his dogs eat the dead bear.  I won't linky that, but search "Shake that Bear" on google if you need some mind-melting video to get you through the day.  It's pornographic, so don't be looking at that in class or the office either.

There used to be this band, I think my dad mentioned them or something, called KISS. I'm being a bit facetious here. They still tour, still sell a shit ton of merchandise, and still seem to rocking right along. Front man Gene Simmons, however, proves that he basically has no idea how money or the internet works in this interview:

Gene Simmons Says College Kids Killed the Music Biz

Yep, illegal music downloads destroyed the music industry. THANK. GOD! Maybe now we can get back to enjoying music and rewarding artists.

Not that this fact is in dispute or anything.  I've been a fan of the iced chai latte for a few years now, but I've discovered another amazing property of the wonder beverage. 

Fresh and hot chai, aside from being absolutely delicious, has a perfectly balanced caffeine content.  It doesn't just keep me awake, it makes me completely non-tired. No bad crashing afterwards, just a smooth up and down ramp of energy.  I'll have to find a huge pot and boil up a few gallons of the stuff for finals week.

I seriously need to clean out my friends list and start blogging again.  I need to do a lot of things lately, like get invitations sent for graduation, schedule a doctors appointment, and all kinds of other good stuff.  Sigh sigh sigh, getting to it....

Well sort of.  I didn't really do anything but install some files, but I'm now using my iPod with an open source firmware.  You can do it too: http://www.rockbox.org/.

Right, so why would you do this?  Couple of reasons for me:

1. Freeing myself from the stylish white noose of Apple.
2. Finally able to put songs on my iPod without iTunes and without hassles.  Drag-and-Drop, for the win.
3. Games, utilities, and custom themes.  I can change how the interface looks.  I can play... Doom.  Fucking Doom, on my iPod.
4. Because it makes me feel all cool and elite.  I'm running a hacked iPod!

Best part is that it's a dual boot iPod.  It regularly boots to the Rockbox firmware, but I can force it to reset into normal iPod interface if I want.

I had a strange dream last night, distinguished foremost for it's clarity in my mind's eye. Allow me to recount it for you.

I'm standing in a queue, waiting for food. I'm outside, on the grass, and everyone around me (including myself) is wearing dirty clothes. We're very much like refugee's, a feeling which is further enhanced by the state of the city around us. It's in ruins, buildings fallen over, and what looks like flood damage mars many buildings. Maybe I'm in New Orleans.

So I get up to the building, and it's the husk of a Taco Bell. The purple roof has fallen in, a wall is broken, and people are lined up to the drive through window to make an order. "Two tacos and mexican pizza, and a large coke," someone says, just like any other day. I walk inside and up to what's left of the counter. There is a rack beside me, with bagels on it and other small breads. There is also some of that sausage that's flat and patty-shaped. I'm sorting through the breads, trying to decide what I want. I'm pretty hungry.

Finally, the cashier asks what I need. She's a pretty girl, wearing a purple Taco Bell uniform that has dirt on it and holes in it. I decide to go big, I order a large meal, then look at see a perfect pumperknikel roll on the rack, so I get that and a sauasage for it too. Then the girl screams and scrambles to a corner. I run behind the counter and see a mouse has terrified her. It's tiny, the size of my thumb, has huge almost-Anime eyes, and a tail that is something like a foot long. I try to catch it and it scampers from me, so I chase, but my alarm goes off and wakes me up just as I'm trying to get my hands around it.

And now I go off to work with those bizzarre images rerunning through my brain. I wonder why it is that cities in my dreams are also decayed ruins or inscrutiable mazes?

So when do the contractors arrive, let's build this bad boy!

Your home is a Philanthropic Gamer's Mansion Your kitchen is stocked with chips, dips, and assorted caffeinated beverages. There's a pantry with emergency backup caffeinated beverages. You also have some breakfast cereals in there, but you haven't had breakfast since last Spring. Your master bedroom has blankets printed with images of Mario and Link. Your study includes unread copies of various gamer magazines, each purchased for the free demo CDs. One of your garages holds your collection of ferraris, and is measured in acreage. Your home also includes a guest wing and private quarters for your servants. Your guests enjoy your collection of every console and associated game ever made. Except the Intellivision -- those controllers drive them NUTS. Outside is your hedge maze and gardens, meticulously tended by a team of world-class botanists. And, you have a pet -- a koopa named "Shelly". Below is a snippet of the blueprints:

Find YOUR Dream Home!

( Bonus - My Summer Home )

I don't know if I've mentioned this previously or not, mis amigos, but I've been interested in this new web browser, Flock. It's pretty neat.  They call it a "social browser" and it's got some nice features.  For instance, built in blog posting utility, that I'm using right now.  It also let's me hook straight into my flickr, youtube, and del.icio.us accounts. 

I haven't tried it yet, but supposedly, you can even drag pictures from your flickr feed into the blog window, and it'll build all the links for you and stuff.  Pretty damn sweet if true.  Hell, let's test it.

( Picture below the cut )

Neat!

Anyway, I thought it was cool. It's based on Firefox, so if you like that, give Flock a try. You might really like it.

Been having a rather good, if somewhat odd, day. Let's start with the sordid tale of good old deep south homophobia. No offense intended to anyone on my list who (for whatever reason) is against homosexuality. Some people just take it to a new level of hate though.

The case in point, an opinion editorial in yesterday's edition of the Daily Reveille, our uni's newspaper. Michael Denton wrote the awe inspiring article "America Needs to Stand Against Homosexuality". I got pretty pissed about the whole thing, and wrote a response letter. I was not alone in my outrage, and my letter was published in the paper today. That would be readable here. I felt bad about insulting the guy, and suggesting that he didn't have a right to free speech. So I wrote him an apology letter.

Anyway, I've been getting compliments all day for writing in and standing up about it. Pretty cool, kind of ego boosting. The third letter to the editor, from a Dr. Fletcher, is far better worded than my own. Seriously, read and agree with what he says, not me. Still, it felt good at the time to stand up against a misinformed bully and tell him off.


My second "I'm awesome" moment came in my Theater class. We were practicing our monologues so the teacher could offer critique. I forgot my lines twice, real smooth. However, I did such an amazing job with the actual acting that I got a huge applause from the class afterwards. I think I shocked a few people, because I'm so quiet and reserved normally. I'm talking real, genuine applause, none of that golf clap stuff. And then after class, several of my peers came up to tell him how great I had been and how much they enjoyed my performance. I've been beaming all afternoon.


And right now, I'm waiting for a meeting to start. I got free pizza for coming, but that's not why I'm here. It's an information session for Teach for America. I saw a poster and decided to come hear what the deal is. Can you imagine me teaching? I could go to San Francisco or Los Angeles, finally see the Pacific, and do some real good in the process.

I haven't been around LJ much. Reading a little, writing none.

My life feels in flux lately: not good, not bad. Not sure at all.

School started, and I'm really enjoying this year. I'm enrolled in some management and finance classes. No ISDS courses, which is ironic considering this is my last semester. That's right, I graduate in December, and then I'm done.

I'm also taking an Improv Theater class. I love it, so much. I think I really missed my calling. It's so enjoyable, such a great break in my day.

The relationship is doing good. We went dancing Saturday, and had a wonderful time.

I need to write more. So much more. I've had a few good story ideas lately. A lot of good game ideas. I need to finish a lot of things.

I think I'm scared that it's almost over. Scared about the end of so many things in my life. I have no idea where to go next. None.

I still want to see the stars over the ocean.

Posted without comment, taken from MSNBC news:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20394685/

Vt. town to drop nudity ban as weather chills
Historically clothing optional community banned practice last month


BRATTLEBORO, Vt. - Vermont’s clothing-optional capital is stripping off its temporary ban on public nudity.

A month after passing the temporary ban, the Brattleboro Selectboard voted 3-2 on Tuesday to reject a proposed ordinance that would have made it permanent. When the emergency temporary ordinance expires next month, public nudity will be legal.

It’s all about tolerance, one board member said.

“We in this country are going down a slippery slope these days,” said Dora Bouboulis, noting a national newspaper recently published an article about the emergency ordinance under the headline “Tolerant town gets intolerant.”

She said it wasn’t up to the town to restrict anyone’s right to dress or undress.

Before the vote, residents weighed in on both sides of the debate.

Michael Gauthier gave the Selectboard a petition with signatures of 967 people who support a nudity ban.

“What is the point, other than shock and awe, that the nudists are trying to make?” he asked.

The Ocean! The fucking ocean!!! I need to see the water, that's this longing, lost feeling. Where's a good beach along the Gulf? Mississippi/Texas/Louisiana region. Somewhere I can stay until past sunset, I need to see stars over water.

Where?!

I spent waaay too much money yesterday. Ryan wanted sushi, so we did that. Ka-ching. Then we went to Sam's to look for Bioshock, which they didn't have. But they did have Robocop Trilogy, hells yeah boy. Ka-ching. Then we went to EB and I bought Bioshock. Chika-ching.

I wrote up a full review of Bioshock, but the home internet went out before posting it. So you'll have to wait on that. Short review: best $50 you could possibly ever spend on anything.

Sigh... come on payday!

I found out today that 9 hours is, in fact, not enough for full time. I need a 3 hour course. I also can't add new classes until Thursday. Groan!

I'm seriously considering MUS 2175 - Beginning Folk Guitar. I can't do a language class, because I don't have the 5 hours to spare. Otherwise, I'd consider Russian. ;) Any other suggestions? Maybe women's studies, or introduction to figure drawing, perhaps science fiction english. If only I could combine classes: introduction to the study of women's figures in science fiction. Now that's a class!

OKC has a feature that shows you which people have been looking at your profile. It's neat, and it's fun to wander over and see what kind of people have been scoping me while I take some random quiz or what not. How to keep oneself busy well into the wee hours of the night.

Anyway, two of my recent (as in, since the last time I check my profile 3 months ago) viewers have been bisexual guys. One of whom dressed like a tiger. What is perhaps saddest to me is that I'm not surprised in the least. I'm often teased about how gay I act sometimes (so I like cooking and fashion, excuuuuuse me *snap snap snap*) and how pretty-boy I used to be with my long hair. At this point, nothing shocks me anymore.

Actually, I am a little weirded out by this one girl who was apparently checking me out. She claims 23 but looks like a 12 year old girl. Oi, the kinds of people that roam the wilds of the internet. I'm glad to be smitted and taken by another, so I don't have to deal with such things.

...to ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE!

http://hurricanedeanpath.ytmnd.com/

Now that I'm a man (a man man manny manny maon!) I have to read real man-news. Mostly about dieting and fashion. ;) Actually, I've just been reading a lot of MSN news, because it pops up everyone morning when I come to work and get on MSN messenger.

Anyway, today there was a neat story. Apparently, the trend in cosmetic surgery is headed away from the pretty-boy, metrosexual look, towards a more retro manly-man style. Big chins and noses, powerful pecs, hairy everything.

A short, but interesting, bit of tabloidesque reading.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20218432/site/newsweek/?gt1=10252

Speaking of everything changing, I'm convinced that LSU is trying to flush itself into a giant toilet as fast as possible, or at least change everything before I leave.

They tore down the first dorm I lived in the year after living in it.
They remodeled the second dorm I lived in.
They've blocked all the streets and started trying to remodel everything.

And I just heard that they renamed CEBA to "The Taylor Building," after some guy who passed recently. Sorry, outside my monkeysphere, can't be bothered. Don't we already have a Taylor Hall though? Anyway, that's a dull name. I liked CEBA, it has a certain... elitness to it, you know? Other kids went to "Whatever Hall." CEBA sounded like a hidden government lab, full of education. Like CERN or something. Now agitating freshman are going to be asking me where "Taylor Hall" is and I'm going to have to cause them pain.

I'm old and crotchety and I don't like change!

I feel like everything in my life is breaking down. Not in the emo sense; naw, that's all great. Girlfriend is good, job is good, life is good. I'm even running an awesome game of Reign online.

I mean, litereally, all the junk I own is starting to break. I lost a tire today on my car. The treading stripped right off at the steel belt. Ironically, I was on the phone with the shop at the time, discussing bringing my car in to be looked at. The damn A/C is still randomly cutting on and off.

My internet connection at home has been shit, off and on at random intervals. Cox won't do shit about it and I'm worried our modem is broken.

I did upgrade my computer! I also bought the wrong parts. :( I bought the wrong CPU, and I waited too long to RMA it, so I'm stuck with a CPU I can't use. I need to buy a new power supply for it as well. I'm thinking of just getting a new motherboard and RAM, and just going for a full upgrade. That'd be the third motherboard in a year though, which is getting a little ridiculous.

I guess that's it. Everything's dandy besides that. Seems like the whole house started collapsing after Adrian left though. The place doesn't feel quite the same without her. It also reminds me that I'll be graduating soon too. *Sigh* I'm not ready for this yet.

I stayed up all night playing Oblivion. Damnit, I wanted Mehrune's Razor and no vampires or dark elf army would stand in my way! At 6:30 am, I achieved my goal, and the daedra prince's blade is mine!

Now I have to face a far worse challenge: staying awake through a 9 hour day. Ugghhh, pass the coffee and red bulls, here comes the office zombie.

Every once in a while, particularly at work, I'll find myself reading the blogs of rather intelligent people who work in the information industry. I do this because they write insightful and education things, often about topics related to the work I'm doing. It's research. Along the way, it occurs to me that I don't write nearly enough on the subject of information theory, which is a shame because I love it and I feel like I know a decent bit about the matter.

One issue that's been on my mind lately is related to that. It's the concept of finding content. Not managing it, there's already about a million ways to do that. The challenge is not storing and sorting the things you write or the pictures you take; the trick is finding and sharing it.

Now you say to me, "But Chris, we've got blogs with RSS feeds to share our words and Flickr accounts to share our pictures and Last.FM accounts to share our music and..." And do you see the problem yet? We're logged into a dozen different sites to share our thoughts and ideas, one for each subject at the very least. I write my thoughts here on this journal, I also post to a message board, I also have the Facebook, and MySpace, and there are dozens of other places I could post my thoughts and comments and things.

What we need now is not information management but information confluence.

Microsoft, giant of giants, has tried this idea with Passport. One password, dozens of services, all of them useless. Passport died within a few years. The open-source crowd is trying, slowly, to get there: RSS feeds bundle up information and ship it out, while APIs for popular web services allow new interfaces to be written for them. No monolithic, singular program will suffice to everyone's needs, but that's exactly what everyone really needs!

I think the ideal would be something like an internet-based operating system. Instead of logging into Windows or OSX, you just log into the Internet. Your "folders" open to Flickr instead of MyPictures and a remote document store instead of My Documents. This is the age of outsourcing, why are you storing things locally? Your hard drive is inefficient, compared to a company that specializes in storing things. And what sounds better to you: 300 gigs of local storage space, or 3 terabytes and growing daily? Most people don't even need more than 30 gigs, but for those who do, the space is never defined but always getting bigger.


What I'm getting at is that it's hard to reach out and grab all your internets at one time. It'd be great to have an easy way to get to everything, and share it with anybody that wants it. The problem is, you can't force everyone to use one service, and you wouldn't want to anyway. Diversity is the spice of life, but it makes it awfully hard to share and sets up a lot of redundancy.

I stole this from unsane1 who stole it from it's source.

Wikipedia is like an evolving ecosystem of ideas, where every sentence, every word is under selection. The term “Darwikism” has been coined to describe this phenomenon. Occasionally some deleterious mutations occur, such as false information or vandalism making its way onto a page, but such mutations are quickly weeded out. The result is a body of knowledge that is rapidly growing, rapidly changing as news happens, and more closely approximating the truth as tens of thousands of people pour over it.^[1]

So why did I repost the same thing? Because as unsane put it, "Witness the birth of a neologism, only 7[8] Google results as of this writing." Memetics is a field I have great interest in. Web 2.0, the expanding idea of what information is and how information moves, it all fascinates the hell out of me. So I want in on the ground floor of this meme!

Last night, MC Chris played at the Spanish Moon, so Gary and I hit that like a natural 20. If you don't get that joke, then the show just wouldn't have been the same for you.

The evening's entertainment opened with local(ish?) band "No Feugo." They're a punk/metal/something-really-noisey band that wailed on their guitars while one dude played a bagpipe, and they have a Spanish name. If the set-up isn't confusing then the music will be. For about, oh, 5 songs, we had to suffer the terror that was a thrash bagpipe revival. I felt bag for the guy playing it, because it honestly added nothing to the music in the least, and I'm a fan of the pipes! Several songs opened with them, which was kind of neat. The guy doesn't really play them well (too much air, so they sound reedy) and there's no lead up. If the guitars faded in, or maybe a little drum work up into some celtic inspired rock, that would have been extreme. Instead, he plays the pipes for a minute, then every single other instrument (including the singer) cuts in at the same time to utterly destroy any hope of enjoying this band. You can no longer hear the pipes, so that's worthless, and it didn't actually lead into anything. Eventually, he put them down and started singing too, giving this band 3 singers, 1 too many instruments (at the least), and an extremely generic sound with no real hooks. Blah, 2 out of 5 stars.

That's all ok though, because the second act was the most amazing music I've ever heard in Baton Rouge, and I shed a tear for this. "The Secret Handshake" is a Dallas based electronic/indie set, which was pretty much just two guys. Luis Dubuc played keyboard, laptop, and sings. His voice has some heavy distortion via the electronics, in the style of Daft Punk or Imogen Heap or a few other bands you might have heard with electronic influences. There was also a really good drummer, who isn't listed on the site, so he might be a per show kind of thing. My one complaint for these guys is that their audience sucked. Seriously, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with Baton Rouge, but the audience was bitching and complaining and getting wrestless for MC Chris. One asshole would not shut up, for a half-hour of non-stop bitching that the guy used a laptop to play his music. The irony will hit you in a bit.

So the Secret Handshake (MySpace) was just pure awesome. The guy has a great voice, catchy lyrics, and the beat is perfect. This was pretty much the best dance music I've ever heard in this town, and it got about 3 people moving, which is just damn sad. The guy was really working the crowd too, and people were just bitching that it wasn't MC Chris. Goddamn, I hate this city so much. I hate the tastless, cultureless people who come to a show and then don't bother to enjoy it, like that would be uncool of them. I damn near punched that one guy, and I guess I'm thankful I wasn't drunker or I might have done it. SH is on tour in Europe now, but maybe they'll come back through again when they return to the States. 4.5 of 5 stars, for a great show that didn't quite understand how lame it's audience was.


Finally, the headliner, MC Chris. This is the guy of Resident Evil rant fame, and also a contributor to Adult Swim. You might know him as MC Pee Pants from Aqua Teens. He puts on a good show, has a lot of stage presence. He's a real entertainer, using jokes and short skits to transition. The crowd loves him too. I guess the one thing BR can appreciate is a white rapper, and they just don't get much whiter than MC Chris. His high pitched voiced effortlessly flies over such deep, street topics as D&D, the joys of marijuana, Star Wars, and getting high on Robotussin. Ironically for the asshole behidn me, MC Chris doesn't have a band, just a mac book. That's his whole set up, a mac book on a stool, and a microphone. The boy does kick it though. Early in the show, a girl wanders up on stage (smashed out of her mind) and requests that MC Chris rap just for her friend, who's birthday it is. MC calls her a drunk bitch, tells her friend "happy birthday fuckface" and then pulls up a random guy and stage and proclaims that MC Chris is rapping for this guy right here. The crowd eats it up, and he really works them. The man's a cyncacle pro. With SH, I sensed an optimism that maybe if the crowd wasn't all douchebags, he could get them to dance with his awesome tunes. MC Chris isn't delusional, he knows about the best he can get is a sing along and some hand waving, so he pulls that out to good effect.

His set, I must mention, was pretty awesome. He opened up by singing the theme song to Duck Tales (I think Gary wet his pants at this point.) then tried a few lines of The Outfield's "Your Love." I think maybe 10 people in the crowd knew that one, including myself, but we loved it. It's a great song, classic 80's, if you don't know it. Then it was straight into all the awesome MC Chris songs that I don't know. He did eventually get around to "The Tussin" and "Fett's Vette," the two songs I did know. He also did a fantastic cover of Weird Al's "Dare to Be Stupid." That was amazing. We ended up having to leave a little early and miss the closing of the show, but I don't feel like it was a big loss. 5 stars, for bringing the nerdcore down to this town with style.


The worst of the night was that the entire time, I couldn't stop staring at all the cutesy couples and missing Rachael. Secret Handshake really made to want to dance with her, and that was a feeling that lingered all night, like there would have been nothing better than to have her there with me to dance along and enjoy it with. But, I'm going to see her today, so there is that! So I better get dressed and on the road if I'm going to make the day last. Later folks!

If there are one or more people on your Friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and whom you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Hey, I haven't been around much, but isn't that how it always goes when things are well. Here are the highlights:

Gaming
We haven't played Reign since last time I talked about it, but I hope to this week. Just have to drag everyone together in one room, but it's been rough with Adriann doing tests and getting ready to graduate. *Sigh* It's not going to be the same with her gone, and I don't just mean the gaming.


Love
I met a really great girl, we've been seeing each other for about 3 weeks now. It was unexpected but it's been great so far. I picked her up from Lafayette on Saturday and we spent the day in BR. Went and saw a movie, ate lunch, cuddled, took a nap together, etc. All the fun couple's things. I have mixed feelings about her living an hour away. On the one hand, it's a pain to have to drive 60 miles to see her. On the other hand, we both get to live our lives and it gives me something to look forward to. I don't feel so crushed or obligated to see her, so the distance helps me feel independant. And when we do see each other, it's all the better.

I hope this feeling lasts, I really would like to do this relationship correctly.


Work
Is about the same. Doing projects, trying to focus my ADD mind into actually doing work and not slacking off.


Writing
I've been working on a game design. I hope to actually release this one, maybe even try and sell it. It's ironic I guess. A lot of the work I've been doing trying to find my own perfect system ended up meshing well with the ORE system that I love so much from Reign and Wild Talents. I've been writing up a cyberpunk game using my heavily modified variant on the ORE system. It's weird, but I'm hoping people will get a kick out of it and what I'm going for. If nothing else, it should end up like my previous game attempts: weird and quirky, decently fun to read.


Video Games
Played Jade Empires on PC a bit, and that's fun. Mostly, been obcessed with Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin on the DS. I think back over the last year, and I've played way more DS games than anything else. I just really enjoy handheld gaming. It's light, entertaining, not a lot of heavy committment required to the game, and I don't feel like I'm leashed to the TV or computer. I can play on the bed, or at the coffee shop, or whereever. I really wish they'd just make an endless swarm of handlheld games. I'd kill for some indie content on DS right now. Nethack for DS? Yes please. Well, at least N is coming to DS. That's going to be completly awesome, and I predict many lost hours to it.

It's a movie promotion, but answer the 5 questions about me and my little Ocelot might change into something else. Neat!

Here's the latest session of our new roleplaying campaign. It's a lot of text, but I hope it's an entertaining read.

Shadows Rise: Session Two
In which our bold champions unleash a power hundreds of years old, to stave often being devoured by a maddening horde.

( Good lord that's a lot of text! )

Who ranks as the highest? One who does not harm anything. One who never retaliates. One who is always at peace regardless of the other person's disposition.

What interests me in this quote is the nature of the translation, what it iss saying in English and how it could be interpretted. My thought is that Buddha wanted to say that all three qualities describe this person who is of highest rank, the pacifist in all things. In English, however, it seems as though there is a choice, which puts an odd challenge in my mind.

Who is the more worthy? One who does no harm, or one who commits no revenge? Is the man always at peace the greatest of all? There is even a layering of values here to explore. Doing no harm is an moral, a restraint to action for the good. Doing no retaliation is an ethic, for the better of society and our interactions with each other. But peace is a spiritual state, an internal state that goes beyond even a moral. A moral is just the way you act, but inner peace is a way in which you are.

I think that's the most important of all, and while it seems the most difficult, the first one to try and achieve. Cultivate the spirit, strive always for inner peace, and the rest will follow as your internal calm reflects into an external one.

So I went on my date last night. The drive over wasn't too bad, sun shiney, good music in the car, but my damn AC is broken so even with the windows down I was sweating the entire way. I'll actually state my thanks though, it's been a mild summer and the winds have been very cool and pleasant this season. I could have been AC-less in Arizona or something.

The plan was dinner and then go to a cafe to see this band play. We mostly stuck to that. I picked her up at her place, and met her older sister (who is the same age as me. Girlfriend is 19). We drove over to the park, walked the pond, and sat and talked on the benches. Then we going to go get pizza, but couldn't find the place, so we went to a diner instead and ate. It was fun. The band afterwards was really good. They're a three-person group that does contemporary Irish folk music: featuring flutes, whistles, bagpipes, and an accoustic guitar. All three sing at various points, and they're quite good. R and I got up and danced with the music, making complete silly, goofy fools of ourselves, and having the best time I've had in forever.

(This was the band: Drowsy Maggie)

It was a great night, so much fun. I'm really conflicted about the whole thing. On the one hand, I'm wary about a lot of things. Used to be I'd just throw myself whole-heartedly into any romance like it was a foredestined love right from a fairy tale. Now I'm so cautious, so worried about giving people the wrong expectations or getting into situations that I can't deal with. On the other hand, she makes me feel special and happy and optimistic again. We talked and talked and really enjoyed each other's company, I was so sad that I had to drive home alone after such a great evening.

As to the facebook thing: we'd been talking online all week since we met last Saturday. Meeting again last night, everything seemed so right, and we really liked each other, so we decided to "officially" be a couple. I'm happy, she's happy, the world turns in a brighter way.

I have a date tomorrow. I'm worried, but not about getting along with her. We met last weekend and we seem to get along very well. I worry about two things:
1) She reminds me of my least favorite ex, physically and a bit mentally. I feel like I attract a certain kind of people, and I worry it might be the kind who are insane and a bit desperate. I hope very much that I am paranoid and incorrect.
2) I worry that, if things are good, that I'll mess it up anyway with paranoia, fear, or apathy. I'm going try, Lord help me, but I just hope I don't mess this up.

We're going to dinner together, then a concert. Should be fun. She's really into me... I just want her to be really into me in a *healthy and normal* way.



Second thought:
Buffalo Chicken Pizza is the dark lord satan. Seriously. It's hot sauce on pizza, with undercooked chicken. What's the appeal? Give me pinapples, mushrooms, and olives anyday. Speaking of, it's time to go pick up my carry out order. And then, we REIGN again! Mmm pizza and roleplaying, time for a geeky evening.

We roleplayed! It's about time, jeez. Tonight I got to try out Reign, which I've been super excited about. A, R, and D rolled up random characters, and got a fun but reasonably diverse bunch. I'll go into details under the cut, my musings about the system or the game are in italics to distinguish them.

( Read About the Game! )

Elsah is opening for Cracker tonight at the Varsity! (Is it sad that I'm looking forward to the opening act waaaaay more than the main show?)

Anybody going?

I know you've probably all already seen this, but just in case:




Secondly...

I met a girl at a party over the weekend. She seems pretty awesome, and we had a great time together. We're looking at meeting up again next weekend (she lives in Lafayette). Life is so unbelievably ironic and weird.

"
Tonight
I am the drug you can't deny.
Tonight
I'm gonnna get you high.
My light is electric.
hey hey hey
my light is electric, yeah.
"

NOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Damnit, my book arrived today. Reign is here! Waiting for me in the goddamn main office of the apartment. Those fuckers, I was just there at noon looking and the girl told me UPS doesn't run on Saturday. Sure enough, I check the mailbox later and there's the pink slip. They came, delivered the box (to the office, they never come to the apartments) and left. The office closes at 2 pm. My damn book is stuck in limbo until monday, and I won't be able to read it until I get home from work that day. ARRRRRRggggggggg!!!!! This sucks.