Browse: Page 36

The Guerilla Art Kit

By on 3 January 2009

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So, a couple of weeks ago I was in a fancy stationery store, which sells all sorts of satisfyingly tactile papers, pens, sealing wax, etc. Which was where I looked down and saw a book called the Guerilla Art Kit.

It’s a celebration of public artwork, such as posters and stickers posted on public buildings and signs. More destructive forms include graffiti, but this celebrates less permanent forms of public expression.

The author points out that public spaces benefit from artistic expression. The creation of beautiful artwork, and posting them publicly, helps society. Imagine the random people who stumble upon a cheerful sticker or thought-provoking quote taped to an out-of-the-way wall.

It’s also psychologically freeing. It says a lot about a person who’s willing to display their homemade artwork in a public space.

The book provides dozens of different ideas for guerilla art, from the easy (chalk art) to the daring.

So, it has lots of neat idea, and it just might push a few folks to try something outside their culture zone that expands their creativity. Sounds good to me.

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Stock Music.net

By on 2 January 2009

For those of us who actually create media, it can be really hard to find good music that you can publish as part of your own work. Whether it’s a trailer, a music video, or a larger work like a film, licensing can be really complicated.

Which is what makes sites like StockMusic.net so wonderful. Each song costs $30, and you can use it effectively anywhere, for any reason, as much as you want. And they’ve got hundreds, perhaps thousands of songs. Downloadable in AIFF, WAV, or MP3 formats, with a free demo of every single one playable in your browser or downloadable.

A great little service.

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The Abominable Charles Christopher

By on 1 January 2009

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There are so many good webcomics. And so many good artists.

The Abominable Charles Christopher updates only once a week, and it’s a four-panel strip, so not much happens. It’s slow. And it’s beautiful and emotionally involving.

It’s drawn by an artist who works at LucasArts, so its beauty should not be surprising. But the strip has a poetic, deliberate feel to it that I rarely see in Western-style stories. It has the kind of steady hand on the tiller of story that I associate with, say, Jeff Smith’s Bone.

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The Advantage of Familiarity In Regards to Huge, Slavering Hell-Beasts

By on 31 December 2008

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I’ve noticed something. Of those wonderful people who think up horrifying monsters for players to encounter during a tabletop role-playing session, many of them struggle with originality.

They strive to create thoughtful histories and almost complete ecologies for their creatures, in the attempt to create a monster that’s not just another vicious humanoid.

I’d like to take a moment to say: They don’t need to.

If I’m questing through a dark, eldritch forest, and something leaps out at me, I want to know how to react. Do I swing my katar at it? Do I make threatening moves? Do I very much not make threatening moves? Do I close in or keep my distance?

If I’m fighting a completely original creature, I’ve no idea how to react to the thing. So I usually have to resort to careful investigation (“Does it seem particularly muscular?”), trial and error (“I poke it.”), or having fun with it (“I rush in and stab it, screaming the whole time!”).

How much fun is that? Not much (for me, anyway). And certainly not if the same scenario occurs for creature in an adventure. I need some facts I can grab on to.

If, on the other hand, I encounter a bear with lizard-like skin, I know roughly how to react. It may spring plenty of surprises on me, but at least I have a framework within which to act.

Which is fundamental to role-playing. One reason for D&D’s popularity is its medieval universe, which is familiar to all of us from reading The Hobbit under the covers as children. We know how to react to most environments in the world, at least basically. The challenge lies in keeping our characters alive and achieving their goals, which usually have nothing to do with the originality of the random creature that drops on their heads as they creep through the Sapphire Caverns.

Now, I love a well-thought-out, unusual creature. I applaud it. But if creature #5 is basically a wolf, don’t worry. It’ll still be fun.

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Something’s Going On. It’s Called Life.

By on 30 December 2008

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My Christmases have always been quiet. I may spend more time than usual shopping or baking, but I’m able to keep up with everything.

Not this year. A perfect storm kept me busy every hour of every day for the past several weeks. I was left breathless.

After several wonderful, quiet days at home this past weekend, I’ve recharged. I’m back to “normal,” whatever that is.

I’m analyzing these busy weeks. I’ve since re-negotiated several things that were holding me back, such as teaching, which I don’t need to do as much of now. I’ve also looked at my work. I made a lot of cookies, which were great, but did I really need to make that many? Could I have made fewer, and still delighted people? Yes, and I would have better managed my time had I looked at that more closely.

Because time is precious. There are so many things left in my life that I want to accomplish and experience, and do so fully. Not rush through so I can tick them off a list, but deeply experience an autumn in Maine or a week in Japan or an afternoon at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

And one key to achieving that is constant re-appraisal of your life. Trivial things constantly battle for our attention. We must fight them. And live.

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New York City?!?

By on 22 December 2008

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I’m back from my first trip to New York City. Briefly: It was very cold, I saw The 39 Steps, and I took a lot of pictures.

Less briefly: I’m glad I went; it’s worth seeing New York at least once in your life, if just for the change of pace. It’s breathtakingly diverse; there’s always something to do or see. One could spend the rest of one’s life just sampling restaurants.

And the people are…hurried. Not rude, though that depends on your definition. They just expect everyone to keep moving. Sit down and talk with an average New Yorker, and you’ll find someone as nice as anyone else.

And, to my surprise, New Yorkers stick together. Everyone in New York feels like a native, much more so than in other places I’ve visited.

It’s a city of movement: people moving, lights moving, taxis and bicycles moving.

I’d like to go back when it’s warm, and I can take a couple of days to explore some neat parts of the city. I don’t think one needs a week to appreciate New York City, but one needs more than a day or two.

As with so many things.

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Great Television, Archived Online Forever

By on 18 December 2008

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I’m conflicted about whether I should write about the Digital Archive Project here. I don’t want to get it into trouble.

See, despite TV’s bad reputation, there have been a few great shows over the decades. Many of them were canceled early; others left the airwaves and have never received any other release. The only exist on a master tape in a vault somewhere in New York City, and on dusty VHS tapes scattered around the world.

Then there are shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000, in which every single episode requires license wrangling for the original movie rights.

Enter the Digital Archive Project. Its goal is to put every episode of these great shows (except those that have had a legitimate DVD release) online. Essentially forever. All in one place, using BitTorrent technology.

If you go to the site and create a free account, then click on the Categories link in the left-hand navigation pane, you’re presented with a list of great old shows. MST3K. Freaks and Geeks. Max Headroom. Cartoon Planet. Brimstone.

All of them downloadable, most in high quality. Until there’s a DVD release.

Now that you know about it, go forth and watch some great TV.

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How to really use Twitter

By on 17 December 2008

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Okay, so you’ve signed up for a Twitter account, and maybe posted a few times. How do you move to the next level?

Here are some suggestions for improving your Twitter experience:

  • Go to the Everyone stream. See who’s talking, and about what.
  • More importantly, see what catches your attention. Observe effective use of 140 characters, so you’ll know how to tweet more effectively.
  • Look at who’s popular on Twitter (via Twitterholic). Read their tweets. You probably won’t want to follow all of them, but they are popular for a reason. I follow about half of them, for whatever that’s worth.
  • Get on Twitter frequently. It’s really most effective when you can check it several times a day, at least. Fortunately, this doesn’t take long.
  • Check your @Replies often. While you’re away, someone might reply to you about something you tweeted yesterday, and you may not see it in your regular stream.
  • Check your DMs (direct messages) often. See above. Also, DMs function more like email, and they’re very easy to miss.
  • Post original content. This is a personal peeve; I see folks whose stream consists entirely of “@gozo Yeah, and you know what that means” and “@hiroyuki Oh, I know it!” Little real content. Instead, as you’re browsing the web, tweet about the websites you’re reading. And as you sit down to your computer and load up Twitter, think about what you’ve been doing, and tweet about that.
  • Look into an aggregator application, like Twhirl, TweetDeck, or PeopleBrowsr. These will show all your feeds (including @Replies and DMs) on one screen, making it much easier to notice important topics.

But above all, don’t go too nuts. Twitter’s fun and useful, but it’s not a place to spend your entire day. It’s only Ones and 0s.

Hope this helps.

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Practical Advice: Initiative Cards

By on 16 December 2008

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I believe that speed is essential to good role-playing. Think of a good action movie or an engrossing book; the story rockets from revelation to revelation, leaving you breathless. Not that a GM should rush from one plot point to the next, but there’s no point in taking a plot slowly.

Unfortunately, many of the rules and resolution mechanisms in role-playing systems slow down the game as players roll dice and compare numbers. They’re necessary, sure, but the time they consume needs to be minimized.

Enter initiative cards. This one of those little tricks that drastically speed up a game.

Imagine a 3×5″ card that contains the following information:

  • Character Name
  • Initiative score
  • Max HP
  • Current HP
  • Standard attack
  • Vulnerabilities

Imagine writing up one of these for each character (player and non-player). When a battle begins, write down the initiative scores, and order the cards by that score.

Boom. You call out the name of the player on the first card. The player attacks an NPC. You pull out the NPC’s card, note any damage, and slip it back in. You then flip to the next card and announce that player’s turn.

And battle zips from one player to the next. No need to write down a temporary initiative list, and all vital stats are in one place.

Even better, on subsequent battles you just sort in the appropriate NPC cards. Takes about ten seconds to set up for a battle.

It’s greatly sped up my games. I’d prefer to just do away with initiative altogether, but that’s another blog post.

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Kong Kings

By on 15 December 2008

A few weeks ago, I watched The King of Kong, a documentary about competitive Donkey Kong players. Which sounds geeky, until you watch it.

It’s about guys who take on these classic arcade games as a challenge. A test of skill. Those old games, like Pac-Man, Q-Bert, and Donkey Kong, were very hard; one group claims that the average Donkey Kong player will never progress past the third level (out of 22).

It’s fascinating to watch grown men—very smart grown men—take on that sort of challenge. Sure, it takes a certain kind of person, but not the introverted nerd you might expect. The documentary focuses on two men, one of whom is a successful independent business man, and the other who looks like a middle manager at Microsoft. They each have a full-time job (well, one got inerested in Donkey Kong during a period between jobs), and a wife (and, in one case, kids).

They’re just fascinated. It’s a puzzle. A very hard puzzle that requires quick reflexes as well as a quick mind; the enemies move according to both complex patterns and random directions. Plus, the game has only four different screens; higher levels repeat the same screen, with more enemies that move faster and in more complicated patterns.

Not only is there nothing wrong with their fascination, it’s noble. They’re bettering themselves: their brains, their hand-eye coordination. They actively seek out new challenges and new frontiers to explore.

May we all do the same.

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