That night, a shadow swam through the streets and alleys of the city, a figure so fast and so quiet and so stealthy that it was barely noticed by the drunks and the homeless. It slithered up a fire escape and slipped through the shadows of ventilation tubes, barely whispering across the gravel on the roof. It stopped above a skylight.
If anyone had been there to see it, they would have seen the outline of a man, dressed in Japanese clothes in various dark shades of dark and navy blue. His black hair was pulled back in a small knot, and his intense face peered down through the window, like a hawk studying prey.
He turned and glided to a nearby ventilation shaft, then folded himself into it and descended into the bowels of the building, with only the occasional slight sigh of shifting metal to advertise his passage. He found an appropriate grate, silently opened it from the inside, and climbed out into a small storage closet. A few moments later, he was in the hallway, turning the knob on a door and silently pushing it open with his left hand.
Before him was a large, empty room, lit only by the moonlight streaming down from the skylight in the center of the ceiling. Motes of dust hung suspended in the light like stars. And, in the exact center of that light sat Doodlehopper, her legs crossed, wearing her black jacket, shirt, pants, and boots. Her hands lay open on her legs, and as the intruder entered the room, her eyes opened and looked straight at him.
He held his place, inwardly surprised at this turn of events. He had not expected the girl to be so prepared. He knew better than to underestimate a prepared enemy, so he waited, gauging her. She did not move, simply watching him, for several moments.
Then she moved her hands to either side of her body and stood as smooth as a cat, the scabbard strapped to her side dangling heavily. His eyes fastened themselves on that scabbard, noting its every motion as it swayed next to her hips. Slowly, but not leisurely, she put her right hand on the hilt and tugged. Ah! It was not a scabbard; it was a bokken, a practice sword, probably made of some lightweight metal. It detached easily from the clip on her belt and she swung it forward, grasping it with her left hand to hold it upright in front of her, her eyes still staring straight at her opponent.
He put his feet together and stood straight, pulling himself up to his full six feet in height, then announced, "Please put that down."
She snorted. "Like hell."
"That bokken will stop my blade no better than a blade of grass. I do not wish to see a good instrument wasted. Please put it down."
She shook her head, slowly, keeping her eyes on him. "I have the right to defend myself with whatever I have. You're just gonna have to deal."
He sighed, like a parent confronting a petulant child. "Since I have been unable to kill you immediately, I must ask you this: Do you still protect Thomas Aznable?"
One of Doodlehopper's eyelids twitched slightly; whether from irritation or exertion, he could not tell. "Why d'you wanna know that?" she asked. "Gotta write it down in your Killing Diary?" His face clouded. She allowed herself a small, vicious smile, and continued: "'Tuesday: Bought bread, went out with Cindy, killed a guy in his sleep.'"
"Mr. Aznable is currently sleeping in a motel room twenty-two blocks from this building," the man said, his voice betraying a thin edge of annoyance. "If you are still pledged as his protector, you seem to be doing an odd job of protecting him."
Her vicious smile turned positively nasty. "You think I care what you think of me? You, a petty assassin who slaughters the innocent for a quick buc—"
And he was ten feet in front of her, his sword already out of its sheath, the thin blade glowing in the moonlight and arcing towards her right side like the grin of Death's Cheshire Cat. She shifted her weight and shoved her weapon towards his, knocking his sword out of the way with a clang as she turned back inwards and swung the blade with all her might towards his stomach and chest....
But it was no longer there; he glided out of the way and pulled himself back a few feet. How did he do that? she thought. He reversed his momentum in mid-strike!
She regained her balance and paused, studying him. His face betrayed him; he was watching her with greater intensity now. She gave herself a mental high-five for that.
"Do you protect Thomas Aznable?" he asked again, his voice as unperturbed as when he'd first asked it.
She grunted. "Persistent little bugger, aren't you? Okay. Yeah, I guess I do."
She saw him as he accelerated forward this time, giving her a larger window of opportunity to respond. But he didn't slow down, and angled past her to her left. She was puzzled for half an instant, then with all her strength she pushed her legs off the floor and slid to her right. He raised his blade almost languidly, and it flew through the air where her kidneys had been. She fancied she could feel its breath whisper along her side. He spun to face her but did not move further; she risked a glance down and saw the fabric of her jacket gaping down where his sword had cut clean through it.
She pushed down the panicked fears of a blade and a man that could cut through leather like a finger slicing through air and returned her attention to her opponent, but as she did he rocketed forward, bringing his steel around in a devastating arc that she knew could cut clean through her neck.
So she raised her blade to block. His mouth twisted slightly in amusement, knowing she didn't have the strength and the position to fully block his blow. At the final instant she twisted her hands slightly.
His steel met hers and an explosion threw his sword away, electricity arcing in sinuous waves between her bokken and his blade until he drew back to a comfortable distance. His eyes were wide and his nostrils flared in indignant surprise. She smirked.
"Wait a sec," she said. "I thought you wanted to fight?" She shifted her weight onto her back foot and yelled, "Let's fight," launching herself at him with every pound of weight and strength she could muster.
She attempted a kote, the end of her bokken reaching for her opponent's wrist. He pulled back yet further — though he was only a few feet from the wall now — and with inhuman speed spun his wrist around her thrust. A quarter-second later he was lunging at her towards his left, pulling his sword with him so as to slice into her left side. She ducked to her right, plowing into his chest and pulling the bokken towards her, hoping to trap him between its pulsing electricity and her body. But this meant grabbing his sword arm, leaving the deadly steel on its end to strike her back. Sure enough, she felt the muscles in his arm constrict, so she planted her feet and spun him away. He came to a rest nearly in the corner, and as he did she realized that he had allowed her to break their dangerous embrace, probably knowing that neither would leave it unscathed.
"You have great skill," he said, watching her carefully as he raised his sword into a ready position.
"Chudan kamae," she murmured, and his eyes widened a fraction of an inch as she leapt forward in a men uchi or blow to the head, her bokken whistling through the air ahead of her in a neon shimmer of electricity. He feinted to the right and brought his sword around in a deadly arc towards her exposed left side. She just caught his movement in enough time to swing her bokken towards his blade, making contact. Light exploded from the steel of his sword where it made contact with the crackling lightning of her bokken, then she was surprised to realize that he was holding his sword in place, pushing against her. She shifted her weight enough to let both weapons slide to the hilt, still locked, and she heaved forward with all her strength.
He held her at nearly arm's length, adjusting his stance every so often to keep her bokken from coming near him. Energy cascaded off the connected metal, sparking and flashing like fireworks. She glared grimly into his eyes, which were as calm as that of a professor studying a specimen.
She couldn't help frowning. She was just barely keeping him at bay, and he showed no sign of running out of tricks. She remembered a pitched battle against her sensei once, and his strikes and slashes were just like this. Well, not quite as deadly, but just as calm and focused as this man's.
Fear rushed into her mind, flooding her with a cold, clammy feeling of dread. She saw her death standing just beyond this man. He waited.
Now that you're done reading it, note the new poll; what do you think of this new entry?
(Note: I finally uploaded entries for the last few days, including a VR story snippet on Thursday. I plan to post a big VR story update tomorrow to make up for my lack of updates recently.)
The to-do list worked well today, too. I took my parents to the airport, then after a quick dinner at a local Asian restaurant, I picked up Molly (my parents' golden retriever, who I'm taking care of while they're away) and returned home without incident.
Poor Molly was literally hang-dog the whole time. She held her head low and barely moved for the first half of the trip, which is normal when my parents leave. She perked up by the time I reached home, though.
I then implemented a quick fix to Cronan, which I intend to send off for testing tomorrow. If that goes well, Cronan will be finished. I can't wait to get that off my chest.
I also spent a bit more time proofing that novel. Forty pages to go. This is work. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish it by the end of the week.
And I watched episode 35 of Gudam Seed, which is the last that's been released. Wow. The plot is getting heavy and pretty deep, and I am extremely impressed that Kira is turning into something approaching NausicaŠ. This just might be the best Gundam series of them all.
Afterwards, I wrote another 300 words of the VR story, which finishes part one. Yay! Part one is now a total of 18,000 words long. I now have an idea of the rough shape of part two, which will probably be another 30,000 words or so, which will bring the total to about 50,000 words, at which point I think Thomas Aznable will have reached the end of his primary character development. I look forward to seeing the shape of the story then, to see if this will remain a short novel, or if there's more story to tell. 'Twould be great if this ended up as a full-length novel that I could shop around. I could at least collect a bunch of rejections, then set up a print-on-demand thingie for it on my website.
Well, the weekly to-do list worked today, at least. I did pretty much everything:
- I tried to go to church, but the parking lot was almost empty (no doubt thanks to the snow).
- So I drove over to Starbucks and spent about two hours online there, researching accountants for Otherspace Productions, updating Syllable.org, advertising my spare bedroom for rent on CraigsList, updating SUB, and updating the OS on Navi2.
- I then dove back into Cronan, a BeOS application that I'm writing at the request of a really cool BeOS guy. Unfortunately, I've felt absolutely no interest in working on it lately, despite his great patience with me. I did manage to prototype the last big feature, so I can at least report that we're on track to be done soon. If I can, I'll do some more work on it tomorrow.
- I grouted the new tile floor at the entrance to my townhouse. The grout ended up quite rough, actually, but I did the best I could with what I had, and I'm proud that I at least did it. Took quite a long time, too; an hour and a half to grout fifteen tiles.
Tomorrow, I'll be driving my parents to the airport in the evening and bringing their golden retriever back to my place for the two weeks they'll be gone. That should still give me plenty of time to work on Cronan, though. Eh, we'll see.
Arg, forgot to upload Friday's entry, which was my penance for forgetting to upload any of the VR story last week. I'm beginning to think I should upload the VR story on a different day, since I'm sure not remembering to post it on Wednesdays.
I sort of relaxed on today. Oh, I did a few chores: laundry, a bit of house cleaning, etc. But mostly I spent the day doing things I enjoy: I cooked a pot of beef stew—an excellent accompaniment to the four inches of snow that fell today—and I watched some anime. I finished the second disc of Paranoia Agent (which started downright creeping me out by the end; while the first disc was more like Millenium Actress, the second is leaning towards Perfect Blue), Zeta Gundam (which is slowly establishing some very interesting characters, including a reticent jock), and Gundam Seed (which was good up to episode 22 and is drop-dead fabulous thereafter).
On Saturday, I also collated my Master Mind Map with a detailed to-do list I'd written a few months ago. The to-do list was an attempt to actually list everything that I want to do, broken down by category and task. After I re-arranged that list around my personal goals and desires, I found I was much more interested in accomplishing it.
So, I extracted everything in the to-do list that referenced a regular, day-of-the-week item (like strength training every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), and assembled a weekly to-do list. This list contains each day of the next week, and what I want to do on each day.
Then I skimmed the big to-do list for a bunch of one-time things I want to get done, and inserted them into my week based on when I'll probably have time. I made sure to leave quite a lot of spare time in each day for unexpected things.
So. I look forward to seeing how this works.
Not much to write about. except my apologies for forgetting to post more of the VR story this week. I'll post a bit after the following review of The Seventh Seal, which I wrote several months ago and now have a chance to post.
It's a weird film. The plot is primarily philosophical, dealing with the apparent silence of God. The protagonist is a knight returning from the Crusades and questioning his faith. After he washes up on his homeland's shores, Death appears to him in bodily form, but the knight challenges Death to a game of chess so that he can have enough time to perform one good deed before dying.
The film chronicles the next day or so of the knight's life, as he and his squire observe the people around them. The Black Plague has struck hard, and its horrible effects are being blamed on everyone from supposed witches to widespread sin. Indeed, the film is literally interrupted part-way by a procession of chanting priests and wailing flagellants who stumble past, their eyes focused upwards or inwards but never outwards.
It's a weird film. Every shot looks like a professional black-and-white photograph, creatively framed and intriguing. Ebert suggests that this is as much a silent film as a talkie, and I agree. While there's plenty of dialogue, the film relies on visual storytelling. Bergman composes his shots so that the eye always has something new to feast upon.
It's an unsettling film, too, but it's supposed to be. It's about the silence of God, after all, and the film has many awkward silences and still points. The characters seem always off-balance, like a mediocre Shakespearean company that can't quite remember its lines. Some bluff their way through life, some ignore it, some struggle to make themselves heard or to understand. But everyone and everything in the film has a dream-like unreality.
I feel like I should finish this little review by explaining whether I liked or disliked it. Neither word applies to The Seventh Seal. You're not supposed to like the silence of God, and this film makes it uncomfortable. It perfectly captures the nature of its subject matter. The film left me with a sense of disquiet, and I pondered the nature of God afterwards. How many films can do that?
Doodlehopper shook her head. "I'm not guarding your guy anymore."
They both looked surprised, then the first thug said, "That doesn't matter. They'll come after you now anyway."
She'd expected that. Groups with the cash and cajones to hire nutjobs like Grey Hackle always wanted every loose end tied up. She knew she'd continue to be a target; she'd just hoped she could get enough distance to keep the heat off...oh well.
She gave them hard looks, searching them. She couldn't shake the impression of frightened kids. And from the looks of them, that's pretty much what they were.
Finally she blew out a breath and said, "Give me the info on tonight's attack. If it checks out, we'll meet again here at, oh, ten tomorrow morning."
Their faces lit up with hope and they nodded. The second one explained, "Tonight, you'll be attacked by Zazun the Blade. He always attacks at night. He uses some sort of swords, but we don't know what kind or even how many. He's silent and not flashy at all. Usually kills very clean. But when things get messy, uhhh...so does he. I saw some of the cop photos. Blood and stuff everywhere. He'll go after you first, then Aznable."
She nodded, then stood. "I'll be ready."
![[Paranoia Agent image]](http://futurenet.ath.cx/sdomain/Angelic%20Anime/Pages/Anime/paranoiaagent/main.jpg)
It's going to be a bulleted list day, mainly because I got quite a bit done.
- Stopped by Suncoast and bought Paranioa Agent volume 2, Samura Champloo volume 1, R.O.D the TV volume 4, and El Mariachi.
- Watched two more episodes of Gundam SEED, which is becoming increasingly fantastic, and episode five of Paranoia Agent, which continues the almost unimaginable excellence of the first four episodes.
- Made chili in preparation for the Chili Cook-Off at work, and it turned out quite tasty. Easy recipe: Brown two pounds of ground beef (seasoned with salt, pepper, and chile powder), chop two onions and sweat them with some oil and garlic for a few minutes in a large pot, then add two chopped red bell peppers, five chopped chiles (heads and seeds removed), a can of beans, and a can of crushed tomatoes. Simmer for ten minutes, then add the beef and lower the heat to low-medium and cook for 45 minutes.
- Wrote a decent ending to "The Old Man," though I'm still not happy with it. I may need to write a few more endings, just to figure out how I really want to end it.
In other news, my new laptop is holding up pretty well, though it feels cheaper than Navi. The keys feel fragile and the material feels thinner, more like a child's toy than a piece of serious hardware. The hard drive's much louder, too. I don't know; maybe it's just me, and my frustration in unexpectedly having to pay $1,300 for it (which I honestly can't afford, and had to put on my already charge-heavy Visa card).
This has ended up a pretty good day. I had difficulty focusing at work, but got a fair amount done. I came home and watched more of Zeta Gundam and Gundam SEED, then incorporated comments on my November short story, "The Old Man." Now I just need to remember the ending that the writing group hashed out.
Wanted to mention: I'm less than fifty pages from finishing proofing that novel. It's been a struggle; several recent passages were tirelessly gruesome, and the author continues his tendency to open new chapters with several paragraphs of irrelevant backstory. But I'm so close I can smell the sweet scent of completion.
I've actually considered abandoning this proofing job a couple of times, mainly in reaction to those gruesome parts. I'm sorry I read them; they feel like what I've read of the exploitation movie I Spit On Your Grave. Let's watch as a character tortures and kills people in revenge! Yay! Even Quentin Tarantino knew to keep that off-screen in Pulp Fiction.
Getting back on track: I finally had to e-mail the author, who assured me that there are no more violent dismemberments later in the book. With that knowledge, I'll grit my teeth and finish it.
I should point out that the novel is not bad; it's quite good. However, as a proofreader, I have to read every single word and weigh the grammar of every sentence. I can't just read along and enjoy the book; I have to dissect it. It's a draining experience.
Draining or not, I will finish this.
Okay, this has not been a good weekend for writing journal entries, as I haven't had my normal 'puter on which to write them. So, in brief:
Navi (my old laptop) is pretty much dead. It won't even boot for more than a few seconds any more.
I bought a new, entry-level iBook to replace it, as repairing it would have cost nearly as much as the replacement did. So, $1,300 later, I have a new laptop.
However, not only did the Apple store forget to tell me when my data was transferred to the new laptop—I had to call to find out that it was ready—my primary user account wasn't transferred. To be fair, this wasn't completely their fault, as I had that account encrypted with FileVault; it wasn't supposed to be copied normally. That meant that all my primary data was lost.
Thank goodness for backups. I made a backup of my data on Saturday, so I grabbed that and was pretty much back to normal; the only thing I lost was some of my wallpapers (so I've made a note to add that to my backup procedures). If nothing else, this has been an excellent confirmation that my backup procedures work.
Unfortunately, I also discovered that the entry-level iBook has a smaller hard drive than Navi's. It has just enough space for all my music files and a few games, but I only have 1.38 GB left. Not much space. And that statement should shock me, but I guess I'm used to the massive amounts of storage around these days.
So, I've been cleaning out a few unnecessary things, such as album artwork (which is almost useless). I'm thinking of re-ripping a bunch of my CDs as something under 192 kbps, as I doubt I'll notice the difference except in concert-level performances.
Actually, I think I should rip the same song (or set of songs) multiple times at different qualities and judge for myself. Personal experience is the ultimate teacher.
(Gah! This was supposed to post for Thursday. Ah well; I'll fix it eventually.)
My long, tiring week continues. I attended happy hour tonight, which was great fun despite the fact that the grease of the pizza joined forces with the alcohol in the Guinness to wage war on my stomach. But I had a good time with the folks there, and then helped my parents move some furniture and caught up with them.
Unfortunately, I'm having iBook trouble. Several times recently, the screen has completely died. The OS itself apparently continues to function; I can blindly click on things and can hear audio feedback, and the hard drive makes noises typical of normal workings. Even rebooting didn't help today. I eventually managed to do a full reset—unplugging it and removing the battery—and it worked fine after that, despite being unhappy at the unclean shutdown.
So now I'm going to have to find time to take Navi to my local Apple Store, and hope that they can fix it reasonably soon. Navi's my only link to the internet while I wait for Verizon to hook up DSL at my townhouse (a process which I expect to take several weeks).
I am in the middle of a long tunnel. That tunnel is this week.
Okay, that's probably too dramatic, but this is a very tiring week and it's only going to get more tiring. I've been out every night this week—Monday and Tuesday all night at writing groups—and I'll be out every other night. Thursday night, I'm going to happy hour after work, then helping my parents move a dresser. Friday night, I'll be having dinner with my aunt and her son who are coming down for the weekend, after which I'll spend the night at Redemption. Saturday morning I have breakfast and spend the morning with the same relatives, then it's off to the weekly animation meeting, then I host Guy's Night Out.
Sunday, I have church, then I really need to finish proofing that novel so I can get it off my chest.
I'm not complaining; I'll enjoy it all. It's just more than I can honestly handle in one week without exhausting myself. I know that I'll be irritable by Sunday. I want to avoid exhausting myself, but then...what should I cut out?
Meanwhile, work has been an unexpected joy. I've been in training all week, but it's training with a bunch of fun people who all want to learn and teach. That's made all the difference; I'm learning a lot and connecting with people a little bit. That's why I want to go to happy hour Thursday night.
Unfortunately, I've come home exhausted and mentally unable to perform my 9:00 routine (write fiction, review Japanese, write a journal entry, and read). I've wanted to, but I either return home at 11:00 or I don't have the energy.
Though to be honest, I wonder if I'm not just fooling myself there. What if I just went ahead and wrote anyway?
On the gripping hand, I suspect that I'm mistrusting my own judgment. I probably am too tired to do those things, and if I tried, I'd tire myself further and make insignificant progress.
I have got to stop reading manga when I get home.
The manga in this case was volume four of Osamu Tezuka's Buddha, a massive epic that tells the tale of the Buddha's life. Fortunately, Tezuka's brilliant, so his narrative is breathtaking. Unfortunately, he's telling the extended edition, full-scale version of Buddha's life; Buddha doesn't even get his name until the end of this volume. As a result, this is a sprawling story, and it's easy to lose sight of the big picture in the midst of fascinating subplots.
I bought this book today, at the local Evil Chain Bookstore, just after an excellent writer's group meeting. We critiqued one short story and two novel excerpts, which were all about as different as could be:
- "The Bank Robber Wore Armani" was a humorous piece that the author had pared down for a short-short market, but I felt it pared down too much. There was just barely enough to describe the plot, and precious little to establish characters.
- "As Yet Untitled" was the first chapter of an older woman's first attempt at writing anything. In this case, it's a mystery novel. It was a textbook example of a first writer's work: inconsistent point of view, minimal description of characters, scenes that began and ended abruptly...and yet the author had a wonderful ability to evoke mood and describe details with richness and power.
- The final piece (I can't remember its name) is the emotional climax of a dramatic novel about a woman with a domineering mother, who is returning home to deal with her now invalid mother, and the emotional minefield she must navigate there. It was powerful and moving and beautifully executed. We had comments and suggestions, but were mostly blown away by the sheer emotional weight of the text.
This makes me want to write. I hope I can spend some time this week polishing my December short story, "Crossing the Border," and writing more of the VR story. I have about 2,500 words of the VR story as yet unpublished, which is a considerable buffer, but I do plan on posting larger segments as we move into the next big action scene, so I could do with some more material.
>At this point, I wish I had a better idea of the future direction of the VR story. I intentionally began the VR story with no idea of its direction so that I could just write something fun, but it's turning into a mishmash of action sequences. I'm toying with the idea of plotting out the direction of the story so that it would hold together better—
But I just realized exactly what needs to happen next in the VR story. Okay. Yes. This is going to be very cool and a lot of fun.
I am continually amazed at how much I can do when I write down a to-do list at the beginning of the day.
For some reason, typing it out on the computer doesn't help me much. When I've tried that before, I've accomplished a few of the items on the list, but not all of it. I think that typing it helped me to organize my thoughts, which made it easier for me to start on the list, but it wasn't enough to finish it. There's something important about putting pen to paper, that makes the list feel more real to me.
Anyvay. I finally cleaned up all of the mail that's been piling up over the past week, calculated out my actual bank balance (which, unfortunately, won't allow me to make any significant purchases for quite awhile), did laundry, finished updating matrix experiments lain with the artwork I got yesterday, and made a pot of chili.
I should mention that the chili is a variation on a recipe from great chef Alton Brown. It's a bean-less chili that consists mostly of ground beef, as well as onions, garlic, beef stock, beer (!), some crushed tomatoes, and of course chopped chili peppers. It's supposed to also contain roasted red bell peppers, but I left the peppers under the broiler for so long that they were almost completely blackened. I compensated with way more crushed tomatoes than called for in Alton's recipe. The resulting chili was pretty good from what little I tasted before tossing it in the fridge. I can't wait to try it tomorrow for lunch.
I actually didn't accomplish everything on my list. The one item that remained undone was proofing the rest of that novel. I told its author I'd finish it by the end of January, but even that's going to be a tough job. I'm going to be out every night this week as it turns out, so I probably won't have the time to work on it until the weekend at the earliest.
FYI, my weeknight schedule for this week is as follows:
- Monday – Mystery writer's group
- Tuesday – SF writer's group
- Wednesday – Meeting with a friend so she can return several DVDs she borrowed from me
- Thursday – Helping my parents move a dresser out of one of their rental properties in time for the new renter, who's moving in less than two weeks from now.
I'd like to fool myself into thinking that today proves I'll be able to be productive when I get home from these things this week, but I know that I'll be much more tired than I was today. Maybe I will have the energy at some point to proof another thirty or forty pages, but I'm not going to set myself up for disappointment that way.
Otherspace Productions met today, minus our concept artist. We had a good time. matrix experiments lain is nearing completion, so I think we'll be able to move forward with Summer Storm very soon.
I'm thinking about developing a documentary about the making of matrix experiments lain, sort of a "Here's how we made this animation" video. I figure we could sell it for a reasonable price, which would start generating income, which would be welcome.
The main problem lies in figuring out exactly what sort of documentary to make. How do I approach it? I don't want to make a dry, boring video, obviously, but I can't even get a grip on how to begin. It gives me a headache.
So now, to bed, even though it's late and my sleep patterns remain completely messed up.
Held the Redemption card club tonight. 'Twas a good night, filled mostly with older kids: Nik, Matt, Gret, and Richard, in addition to the four Davis'. Plus Gret's little sister and Dad.
I had a great time, though I'm usually monkey-in-the-middle on Fridays. Everyone wants to ask me a question or get my opinion or find out if I've seen a movie. Not that I'm complaining; it's great.
I did manage to sneak in another episode of Zeta Gundam, which is getting ever more interesting. The main character, Kamille, is a bit of a nutjob. He overhears a mild insult from a soldier, and proceeds to punch the guy. After he's arrested, he gets into another fight with the same officer but manages to slip away when a Gundam crashes into the building they're in. Then he steals a Gundam, uses it to intimidate and laugh at the officer who insulted him, then uses it to defect to the bad guys (at least, I think they're the bad guys; it can be hard to tell in Gundam shows). I can't tell if he's confused or evil.
I am never going to get anything done this week.
I overslept this morning, so I had no time in the morning to exercise, read the Bible, read a poem, or get breakfast, as I usually do. As a result, my entire day was off-balance. I need those things to center me.
Which is perhaps not an entirely good thing. Oh, there's nothing wrong with comforting routines in themselves, but I've begun wondering if I depend on them too much.
I've realized lately that I'm poor at embracing uncertainty. When I'm faced with a situation that makes me anxious, I tend to freeze up. This happens to me a lot at work; if I have to do something new, I need some time to get used to it.
I think I'd do well by training myself to accept uncertainty. How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci suggests putting yourself in situations that make you mildly anxious—drive down a road you're unfamiliar with, strike up a conversation with a stranger—and simply monitor your emotional and physical reactions. Learn what anxiety feels like, so you can recognize it when you have even a mild reaction.
Anyvay. Despite my off-kilter day (and tiredness), I had a productive day at work, followed by a wonderful dinner with my parents (my treat for their assistance with my townhouse), followed by a movie at my house (the Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung/Tony Leung Cool Hand Luke rip-off, The Prisoner). They left at 9:30, but my Deep Discount DVD order had arrived, and I just had to watch one of the MST3K episodes contained therein. I contented myself with "The Gunslinger," but slipped in a few short films as well. I still wasn't tired, so I watched the first episode of Zeta Gundam (which, like the first episodes of most Gundam series, was good but not remarkable, though I am looking forward to future episodes).
So now it's 2:00 a.m. and I'm at least writing a journal entry before I go to bed, despite feeling only a little tired. I fear I'll oversleep even more tomorrow morning. Well, I'll be working late anyway in preparation for the Redemption club meeting at 7:30 p.m.
I wish I had a snappy ending for this.
I am never going to get anything done this week.
I overslept this morning, so I had no time in the morning to exercise, read the Bible, read a poem, or get breakfast, as I usually do. As a result, my entire day was off-balance. I need those things to center me.
Which is perhaps not an entirely good thing. Oh, there's nothing wrong with comforting routines in themselves, but I've begun wondering if I depend on them too much.![[IMAGE]](http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/images/cartoon.jpg)
I've realized lately that I'm poor at embracing uncertainty. When I'm faced with a situation that makes me anxious, I tend to freeze up. This happens to me a lot at work; if I have to do something new, I need some time to get used to it.
I think I'd do well by training myself to accept uncertainty. How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci suggests putting yourself in situations that make you mildly anxious—drive down a road you're unfamiliar with, strike up a conversation with a stranger—and simply monitor your emotional and physical reactions. Learn what anxiety feels like, so you can recognize it when you have even a mild reaction.
Anyvay. Despite my off-kilter day (and tiredness), I had a productive day at work, followed by a wonderful dinner with my parents (my treat for their assistance with my townhouse), followed by a movie at my house (the Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung/Tony Leung Cool Hand Luke rip-off, The Prisoner). They left at 9:30, but my Deep Discount DVD order had arrived, and I just had to watch one of the MST3K episodes contained therein. I contented myself with "The Gunslinger," but slipped in a few short films as well. I still wasn't tired, so I watched the first episode of Zeta Gundam (which, like the first episodes of most Gundam series, was good but not remarkable, though I am looking forward to future episodes).
So now it's 2:00 a.m. and I'm at least writing a journal entry before I go to bed, despite feeling only a little tired. I fear I'll oversleep even more tomorrow morning. Well, I'll be working late anyway in preparation for the Redemption club meeting at 7:30 p.m.
I wish I had a snappy ending for this.
(Arrrg...this is meant to be for yesterday, but I can't change it at the moment.)
I'd hoped to be a little more productive today, but I was quite tired after a (good, productive) day at work. I managed to make up a pot of stir-fry and bake a chicken breast for dinner, but that was the extent of my productivity. I plopped onto the couch and watched the MST3K episode "Red Zone Cuba", the first episode of the anime Lunar Legend Tsukihime (which was mediocre, though anime is often mediocre early on), and the first three episodes of Paranoia Agent (which I've already seen, twice; it's that good).
I've been a bit depressed all day, actually, what with the death of Will Eisner. My favorite blogs have been talking extensively about his death, but in case you aren't familiar with him, Eisner was a comic strip guy from the 1930's who was the first to begin seeing comics as a valid artistic medium.
To put things in perspective:
It's the 1930's. Daily newspaper comic strips are just now established, particularly thanks to William Randolph Hearst's obsession with printing Krazy Kat in his papers. These comics fell into two broad categories: gag comics (like Krazy Kat) and adventure stories. The adventure stories favored heroic characters who were beginning to cross over the line into superheroes.
At this time, Will Eisner began drawing a comic called The Spirit, about a guy in a fedora who used his brains first and his fists as a backup. He was a prototype superhero.
But more importantly, the Spirit was drawn as a very human character who dealt with human problems. One classic episode has the Spirit and a lady friend stranded on a desert island, during which the hero is completely delirious. The island happens to be the home of a random criminal the Spirit put away many years ago, since escaped and holed up in a little shack on this island. He proceeds to beat the Spirit nearly to death before the lady intervenes. It's a wonderfully human problem—what happens to superheroes when they're not at their peak? They suffer.
Eisner became one of the central men in comics at the time, hiring many influential artists, including (pause while Brent consults his copy of Eisner's Shop Talk) Jack Kirby, Lou Fine, and Joe Kubert. The Eisner & Iger studio was a major training ground for talent and produced many strips.
But then, the cannons of World War II thundered, and Eisner—along with many other comic strip artists of the day—went off to war. When he came back, he tired of comics and pursued more traditional business.
Fast-forward to the 1970's (I don't know exactly when this occurred). Eisner was sitting as chairman of the board at Croft Publishing when he got a phone call from Phil Seuling, who was one of the first comic convention organizers (he helped start the now-massive San Diego Comic-Con). His secretary said, "There's a Mr. Seuling on the phone, and he's talking about a comic convention. What's that? I didn't know you were a cartoonist, Mr. Eisner."
So he went to the convention, and he "was stunned at the existence of a whole world," to quote him. He got back into comics and began writing about and exploring the idea of comics as a serious artistic medium.
Now, this was before big-budget comic book movies, and this was even before the term "graphic novels" had any meaning. This was before Watchmen and Sandman and Maus and Kingdom Come and The Dark Knight Returns. In 1978, Eisner published A Contract With God, the first American graphic novel. It's actually a set of four short stories that all concern the residents of 55 Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx, and it's full of pathos.
Fourteen years later, after the rest of the comics world began producing graphic novels, Eisner published the first critical study of comics as an art form, Comics and Sequential Art. This inspired Scott McCloud to write and publish his seminal work, Understanding Comics, which has become the de facto primer on comics as a medium.
Eisner was still drawing comics until just before he died, and was responsible for a mountain of material. He may very well have been the American Osamu Tezuka.
I wish I'd written him a letter, to thank him.
Hopefully, he's happily comparing notes with Tezuka now.
Well, today I planned to get very little done, and I did. Or, rather, didn't. Er. I did as little as I planned.
Anyvay.
Tuesdays are typically long, hard days for me. I've noticed that, on most Tuesdays, I come home tired and don't have the energy for any significant projects; I have to veg out that night. So, I intentionally planned to do only a few things today, namely, make stir-fry, leave a check out for the plumber who's coming tomorrow, and print out the submitted stories for my writer's group next Tuesday. I didn't get to the stir-fry, but I did manage the rest of it, plus I finished writing the first draft of my December short story, "Crossing the Border."
The plumber is coming for an entertaining reason. When my Dad and I worked on hooking up my new dishwasher last Friday, we found a valve that looked like it shut off the water to the house. When my Dad turned it, he discovered he was turning it off, so he figured that wasn't it. When he turned it back on, it began spraying water everywhere. After a few Calvin and Hobbes moments of fighting the streams of water, he closed the valve, but it was still dripping water, one drop every couple of seconds.
We got a bucket under it, and I tried calling a plumber...but this was four o'clock on New Year's Eve. I finally got through to one service that promised to find someone who'd give me a call and an estimate as to when she'd (!) be out. Not surprisingly, I never heard back. Fortunately, the drip was slow enough and my bucket was big enough that I could leave it over the weekend.
So I called back on Monday. Turns out they don't even service my area. Thanks for the promise, then. So I started calling plumbers again, and got one who said they'd send someone out Wednesday morning. My Dad volunteered to hang out at my place so I wouldn't have to miss work, for which I've made sure to thank him repeatedly. So hopefully, the plumber will (A) fix the leak, and (B) figure out the location of the main shut-off valve for my townhouse. If he does that, Dad says he should be able to get my dishwasher up and running tomorrow afternoon.
I have my fingers crossed, but not my breath held. So to speak.
Man, English is a weird language.
She had to admit she was intrigued. The talkative one poured out his story, about his life in the mob, being assigned to "take care of" Thomas, his failures to do so thanks to Doodlehopper, and some ludicrous fairy tale about meeting with a bunch of mafia big-wigs who had some guy chained up in the same room.
Still. They dutifully showed her the tattoos on their palms, which marked them as mafia for life. The very few who managed to escape that life made sure to get skin grafts for their palms, since one glance at those tattoos meant an instant pink slip.
The talkative one was winding down. "So, you see, we can't go back, because they'll kill us. And no matter where we go, they'll find us and kill us. There's no use running. But...errrrr...." He looked down at his hands, which were throttling a paper napkin. "You're really good at protecting yourself, and you're against them. So we figure, if we could join up with you, we could fight together. We'd protect you, and you'd protect us."
She fought the urge to laugh, knowing that that would be at best impolite and at worst an invitation for one of them to launch into hysterics.
He saw her face spasm and quickly said, "We won't get in your way! We'll make our own meals and everything. And we really are good at what we do, we just...well...you're better than anyone else we've met."
She closed her eyes and scrubbed a hand over her face. "I hate to sound cliché," she said, "but there's no way I can trust you. Maybe you've been given another chance and now you're just trying to get my guard down."
The quiet one spoke up, saying with a soft voice, "Boss is going to send another group after you. We know who they are, and we know how to stop them. One of them is going to attack you tonight. We can tell you what's going on, and I know their system enough to hack in and find out what they'll do next."
I've been writing recently about the mind maps I make for each day. Sometimes I accomplish everything on the map. Some days, I accomplish nothing on the map. Today was one of the latter days.
Work went well; despite the fact that an electrician was wiring offices all day, my computer booted and I was on the network starting about 10:30 a.m. and continuing for the rest of the day. I updated a couple of documents and completed my weekly status for the week before. Most importantly, I talked briefly with the project engineer about work to be done, which I think laid the groundwork for a deeper conversation I plan to have with him tomorrow, in which I will push forward with my takeover of more documentation work.
I had intended to go home and make stir-fry, so that I could take leftovers to work for lunch rather than going out to eat. I was so looking forward to that until I realized—halfway into the afternoon—that I had forgotten to defrost the chicken, and I had no other meat to use. Arrrrg.
So, I went out to eat at a nice restaurant, which I rarely do for dinner. The restaurant of choice was called the Longhorn Steakhouse, which serves large portions of pretty good dishes at reasonable prices. I was only able to eat half of my meal, which is good, as I can have the other half for lunch tomorrow. The chicken is currently defrosting, so I can make stir-fry tomorrow night.
On the way home, I stopped by Best Buy to use a gift card, and after deciding to purchase several things then putting them all back, I ended up with just one purchase: volume 1 of the Shaman King anime. I came home and watched all three episodes on the disc. Episodes 1 and 2 were pedestrian, but the third shows serious promise. Episode three was good anime.
Then I chatted with Saalon for awhile, about the Java programming language and the state of fantasy and science fiction literature (yes, our conversations do wander a bit). That inspired me to write a bit more of my December short story, which is now nearly done. Yay!
But my mind map remains sadly unused. I didn't make my stir-fry, I didn't fix up more of the wall Dad and I built on Friday, and I forgot to check my bank statements while at work so I couldn't go through my finances.
But I had a good day. So who cares?
'Twas a quiet day. I had very little energy or enthusiasm this morning, so I relaxed in my bedroom, reading volume 3 of the Bleach manga and generally relaxing. I eventually got the gumption to head off to work, where I intended to finish off some work and sign my timecard. I arrived to discover that the entire network was down. Arg. I'm going to have to create a correction timecard and explain the situation to my boss tomorrow. That's an unpleasant thought.
![[Gundam Seed artwork]](http://www.angelfire.com/tx2/serendipity/pboard2/gundam_seed.jpg)
I stopped by the grocery store on the way home and picked up a few things, especially a filet of tilapia (a type of fish) for dinner. By the time I got home and cleaned the sink full of dishes (I'm anxious to get my dishwasher working), I didn't want to do much of anything, so I watched Jackie Chan's Spiritual Kung Fu—a terrible film but also fundamentally enjoyable in the way of any Saturday afternoon, badly dubbed, incomprehensible kung fu film—and episodes 19 and 20 of Gundam SEED. Those episodes were a nice break from the first few episodes; a lot more light-hearted than the fifteen episodes that came before them.
Gundam SEED suffers from a problem that I see in the other Gundam series I've seen (Mobile Suit, Wing, and Turn-A): unevenness. Each show will plod along for an episode or two, then will break into half an episode of genius—character development, action, drama—then return to very little of any of that for another few episodes. Strange.
Somewhere in the middle of that, I baked the tilapia. Ironically, despite the fact that I have a talent for baking, whenever I've made a fish meal I've always fried it (unless I had a recipe). This was my first experiment with just baking fish. I put the tilapia filet on a piece of aluminum foil, brushed it with olive oil and lemon juice, wrapped the foil around the filet, placed it on a baking sheet, and baked it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. The result was flaky and flavorful, dead easy to make, and healthy.
That gave me a bit more energy, so I hauled two weeks' worth of trash out to the street, as well as some broken lumber and a broken pane of glass the previous tenants were kind enough to leave in the back yard, then proofed more of the novel I'm being paid to proof. It's definitely real work. Even though I enjoy the novel, I can't dive in and enjoy it the way I do a novel that I read for pleasure. I have to pay attention to every word, making sure none are misspelled, and judge the grammatical weight of every sentence. Some sentences are grammatically correct but feel wrong, and I have to note that too. But I'm up to page 220 out of 320 now, so I can see the finish line.
I also wrote another 250 words of my December short story (which I want to finish up so I can start on my January short story). I'm almost done with it; it should only need another 500 words or so. That'll make it 1,500 words; short, but acceptable for a short story. At my current rate, I should be done within the next few days.
Today was quite amazing. Last night, I got a call from a long-time friend who was in town for a few days, so I quickly organized an impromptu party for today (Saturday). I knew a few people might show up, but didn't even know when.
So I trekked to the grocery store early this morning and picked up a few basic supplies—hot dogs, hamburgers, and potatoes. I then returned home and wrote up a little mind map of what I wanted to accomplish.
I accomplished almost everything on the list: cleaning the house, doing laundry, making a batch of homemade potato chips, and proofing another fifty pages (only a hundred more to go). I'm sure I wouldn't have accomplished anywhere near that much if I hadn't mapped it out.
Then folks began to show up, and we watched My Neighbor Totoro and a bit of MST3K before the party kicked into high gear and I made dinner and we ended up playing games and chatting until midnight.
I'm amazed that I can say that I just had an eight-hour party at my house. I am not a social butterfly. My friends are important to me, but I don't entertain that often. And I can do a party that lasts that long?
Wow.
And here's how the England trip went:
On Friday, my wonderful parents picked me up from work and drove me to Dulles Airport, where I breezed through security and spent two hours lounging at the gate, watching Zeta Gundam on my laptop. I boarded my Virgin Atlantic flight and took a seat next to an older gentleman who was returning to Pakistan following a lecture here in the States. Quite a trip for him.
We had a minor incident on the plane: I woke up at one point and noticed the air crew half-dragging a very inebriated gentleman to the back. He wasn't loud or angry, as far as I could see; just barely able to move his own body. The captain later informed us that "the local constabulary" would board the plane immediately upon landing and would escort this gentleman out. When they did—and he still could barely move—applause broke out. Apparently he had made quite a nuisance of himself.
We landed at about 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning, so I grabbed a bus to my hotel and checked in at 8:00. I entered my room, attempted to switch on the lights in the bathroom to take a shower, and...nothing. None of the light switches worked. I tried the lamps in the main room; nothing. I figured I must be missing something obvious, so I worked up some courage and called the front desk. I explained to the nice woman that none of the lights came on, and she replied that I could get a wake-up call tomorrow. I blinked and re-explained my problem, and I think she still was confused because she just said she'd send a porter around. A minute later, a knock on the door announced a very nice man who showed me a slot into which I had to insert my door key. The electricity would only work if the key was in the slot. An ingenious way to ensure patrons don't leave the lights on while they go out for the day, and the first I'd seen this.
So I took a shower and, at 9:00, went down to the bar where we agreed to meet. After writing up a little sign that read "Syllable" and typing on my laptop for a few minutes, someone came up and asked if I was Brent Newhall. It was one of the Syllable guys.
We chatted very amiably for the next hour or so as others arrived. We maxed out at seven people, which I consider a rousing success for a small-time operating system like ours. We discussed how Syllable was different from other operating system projects (particularly SkyOS), our personal plans for various Syllable projects, and where we'd like to see Syllable in a few years. And the entire discussion happened organically, without awkward silences or forced discussion points.
I want to make this point because I consciously avoided organizing this convention. I wanted to see if the community could self-organize the event, and it came off without a hitch.
By 5:00 I could barely keep my eyes open, so I excused myself, returned to my hotel room, and fell into bed. I slept for a solid seven hours, waking up around midnight to doze and watch TV. Actually, BBC2 uses this time to air educational programming, so I was able to catch some fascinating programs about homeopathic medicine and good study habits.
My flight left at 11:00 a.m., so I set my alarm for 7:00 a.m., figuring that I probably wouldn't even go to sleep again. But I did, and when my alarm woke me up at 7:00 I was quite groggy, so I set the alarm forward by half an hour and went back to sleep.
The alarm didn't go off again.
So I woke up and blearily looked at the clock. 10:03. ACK! I threw everything together, grabbed a bus, and raced to the Virgin Atlantic counter, where a helpful Virgin employee came over and asked me which flight I was on. "11:00 to Washington," I said. Her face fell and she replied, "That flight's closed. Come on over here." She sent me to the front of a line, where they verified that they'd just closed the door of my airplane. The only other flight to the U.S. was to JFK Airport in New York.
So, being Virgin Atlantic, they brightly and sympathetically gave me a ticket for that flight. No charge.
So I grabbed a meal and sat in the cafeteria for about an hour, absorbing this turn of events and letting my stomach and mind settle. Then I was pretty much okay; I went to the huge departure lounge, browsed the Virgin Megastore (where I could have bought some Angelic Layer) and watched some of the extremely disturbing children's programming on the TVs set up around the lounge (this is worse than the Teletubbies. Imagine that for a moment).
(Okay, if your brain hasn't exploded: Imagine five people dressed in big fuzzy neon outfits that make them look rotund. These outfits end in turtlenecks, and they look like babies, but the turtlenecks obscure everything except their big eyes and bald heads. In a flashy CGI sequence, they awake out of crescent-shaped beds and fly down to a white stage on which they dance. But because of the awkwardness of their designs, all they can really do is bounce and jiggle from side to side. So they do that. For many, many minutes. Then they fly back to their star child beds and go back to sleep. Yyyyeah.)
I then got on the flight to JFK, which was on a 747 and much nicer than the plane on which I flew to Heathrow. The 747 had Virgin's newest entertainment system, with 51 movies alone (among them Ghost in the Shell 2, actually). So I alternated between random TV programming, their J-Pop radio station, and my Zeta Gundam collection on my laptop.
I arrived at JFK and decided I'd try to catch a train down to D.C. Everyone was thoroughly unhelpful, and I got confused and got on a bus to the Port Authority instead of Grand Central Station. I got back to JFK two and a half hours later. The bus did go through Times Square, though, so that was fun.
Times Square is interesting. It's definitely a lot cleaner than it used to be; it's bright and fun now. But the strip clubs are still only two blocks away. It's an odd juxtaposition; bright neon advertisements for Samsung and Coke on one side, and "LIVE ADULT SHOWS" on the other.
Also, New York is not a particularly pretty city. There's art everywhere, but the place feels grimy and worn, like a factory during the industrial revolution.
So as I journeyed through the city—and endured a self-important passenger who "never got a ticket" and "wouldn't get off this bus" then found his ticket in his pocket—I called my parents and had them look up flights to D.C. Luckily, Independence Air had a few flights, which I was sure I could catch.
I returned to JFK and managed to find the Independence Air desk, where the ticket lady was nice enough to sell me a ticket right there. It was for a flight that wouldn't leave for a couple of hours, but I was thankful just for that. I called my parents with the final details and sank into a seat at the gate.
Yesterday, I wrote that I'd planned to write about the difference in hospitality between the British and New Yorkers. Every customer service rep in England—and I had to deal with about ten, by my count—was unfailingly polite and genuinely paid attention to my requests (even the confused Holiday Inn receptionist). Every customer rep in New York was sullen and seemed to take personal offense at my requests (except the woman at the Independence Air ticket desk). The difference was shocking.
We had to walk out onto the tarmac and up the stairs into the plane. Not a big-budget operation. The plane itself only sat fifty passengers. But it was a solid little thing and the service was absolutely fine. It felt like high-end bus service. And, frankly, how much service do I need on board a plane?
It started to snow as we boarded, and we sat anxiously in the plane as we waited to be cleared for take-off. After about half an hour, the pilot explained over the intercom that we could take off soon, but we had to be de-iced first. That was rather cool, actually; buses came out and sprayed big white jets of de-icing compound all over the wings and side of the plane. It sounded exactly like the water from a house sweeping over a car window.
We were de-iced and we took off, and the flight went off without a hitch. I didn't even have enough time to watch a full episode of Zeta Gundam before we landed. My parents were there to pick me up, and we went back to there place where I collapsed into a very soft, very warm, very welcome bed.
And that was my England trip.
Arg. I lost my 'net connection yesterday, apparently due to utility work down the street. It's been down ever since. I'm actually posting this from work, so I don't have much time to write.
In brief:
- I spent much of my trip to England and back watching anime (Zeta Gundam, Full Metal Alchemist, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex). Expect more about those soon.
- I also plan to write a full description of the England adventures, including the drunk guy on the flight out, missing my flight back, horrifying British children's programming, Times Square, and reflections on the differences between British and New Yorker hospitality (guess who wins?).
- On the way back, I picked up David Allen's book Getting Things Done, which was very useful. I've begun implementing some of his ideas. Specifically, I've implemented his Tickler File
and his idea for keeping a master to-do list organized by context (at work, at my desk, at my computer, around the house, etc.). - I got my reserved copies of Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, and The Cat Returns at Suncoast today, which marks the last time I intend to buy DVDs there. From now on, I'll just use Deep Discount DVD.
I haven't the time to post any VR story today; hopefully I will tomorrow.
I'm back from a weekend trip to London, as part of a get-together with those involved in the Syllable project. The meeting itself went well, though I missed my flight back and spent all day Sunday in transit, flying first to JFK then to Dulles Airport.
While on the trip, I finished reading Vernor Vinge's excellent space opera A Fire Upon the Deep, and I've posted a short review.
I'm no longer buying anime DVDs at my local Suncoast movie store.
This may seem like a spectacularly boring announcement, but I've been buying anime from one specific Suncoast store for the past six years or so. The vast majority of my anime collection—over three hundred discs—was bought at this store.
I discovered it at a local mall. I liked the store itself, but I was particularly attracted to their anime selection. They actually had an anime selection. Remember, this was about 1998, back when nobody other than Sam Goody stocked anime merchandise (and that was one shelf of VHS tapes).
I went back during the day and found that the employees were gleefully playing Dragonball Z marathons all day. They all loved the show—cheesiness and all—and it had gotten them into anime. Morevoer, they were happy to talk about their favorite anime series.
So I kept going back to this store, scanning their growing anime selection and occasionally buying a disc or two. This grew into four or five discs at a time, and pleased recognition by the employees.
Years passed. Some employees left and new ones arrived, but they were all anime fans at some level. We knew each other.
Then, things began to change. Over the past six months, turnover has increased and new employees came in. Very few were anime fans. Today, only one employee at this store knows anything about anime.
Service began to deteriorate. There were days where only one employee was even in the store. The employees were all nice and helpful but clearly overworked.
Then, starting about two months ago, I stopped receiving phone calls when my reservations came in. I'd go in a week after my reservation was due, and the DVD was sitting on their shelves. Worse, when I presented my reservation slip, they couldn't find the receipt and my reserved DVD.
Fortunately, one of the employees at Suncoast is also working for me at Otherspace Productions, so I've learned their side of the story: A new manager took over the store a few months ago. She immediately changed every process and began scheduling people on crazy shifts. In fact, she booked one high-school employee to work during school hours. All the employees are unhappy and confused by new procedures, which results in sub-par service.
Now, I like every employee at this store. I'd like to support them. But at this point I'll save money and get better service by buying my anime online. At least they'll ship me my anime when it's released.
'Twas going to write a long entry explaining why I'm not supporting my local Suncoast movie store, but it's late and I need sleep. So, here's some more VR story:
Thomas awoke with a start. He spun, twisting the sheets around him so he could see the lean, dark figure standing on one side of the bed, arms folded. It took him a few seconds to recognize it, then he relaxed.
"Doodlehopper," he said. "Why're you...I mean...you...."
She smirked. "No worries," she said, "I'm back. Bodyguarding, I mean." Her grin widened. "And this time, we"ve got some help."
"So, whaddya think?" Doodlehopper asked.
Thomas looked across the bar at the two thugs, who were fingering cups of coffee and trying to look like they weren’t trying to look at Thomas and Doodlehopper. They looked like nervous school children waiting outside the Principal’s office.
He blew out a breath. "I don't see how we can afford to trust them, but then we can't afford not to trust them."
"Exactly how I see it."
"Okay. They're in. But let’s keep an eye on them. I'll try to trust their information, but I won't trust them."
"Heh. I don't trust anybody."
They were quiet for a moment. Thomas looked down.
![[Disney DVD cover for Nausicaa]](/graphics/journal/Nausicaa-DisneyCover.jpg)
At Suncoast today, I saw with my own eyes the DVDs for the Disney anime releases of Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, and The Cat Returns. They won't officially be available for purchase until next week, but they do exist and have arrived.
(By the way, I've noticed that the poll isn't working. I'll fix it.)
![[IMG]](/graphics/journal/NewsFireIcon.png)
A good day. I ended up not going to Writer's Group, as I awoke this morning feeling out-of-sorts. It's not illness; more exhaustion. So I spent the evening at home, lazily taking care of a few chats and getting used to RSS syndication via NewsFire. Reading blogs through RSS feels much more efficient than reading blogs via the web. I'm not immediately sure if this is a good thing. I miss the distinct design of each blog's webpage. On the other hand, how important is that?
In any event, I feel good. I feel myself settling into some habits that are good for me: a lot of reading, some drawing, some programming; my toes in a lot of ponds.
Terry Teachout writes that he is an "arts lover." He doesn't love just one kind of art. Moreover, he quotes Clement Greenburg, who wrote that "in the long run there are only two kinds of art: the good and the bad. This difference cuts across all other differences in art. At the same time, it makes all art one....the experience of art is the same in kind or order despite all differences in works of art themselves."
I like that. I think I'm an arts lover.
I didn't mention this, but I had a terrible time waking up last week. I kept sleeping through my alarm and opening my eyes at 10:00 or even later. Combine that with my router adventure last Friday, and I missed a fair amount of work last week.
So I'm making it up this week. I'll probably go to writer's group tomorrow, which doesn't start until 8:00. This is both good and bad; bad because it makes most sense to stay at work until 7:30 or so, but good because it forces me to put in a long day. Tomorrow, it will add a good couple of hours to my normal day at the office.
My new home 'net connection has greatly boosted my work productivity. I used to get in to work and check my mail first thing, merrily replying to friends and skimming through mailing lists. Once I was done, the workday inevitably paled in comparison, and I had very little enthusiasm. Now, I can just concentrate on my work.
In other news, I've been downloading and watching bits of anime from BitTorrent. Specifically:
- Gundam Evolve is a series of short films commemorating major mechs in the Gundam universe. The original series of five films were for the central Gundams in Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam, G Gundam, Gundam: 0083, and Char's Counterattack. I watched the ones for Mobile Suit and G Gundam, and they were both quite good. The Mobile Suit film is esssentially a music video in which Amuro awaits take-off in his RX-78, closes his eyes, and dreams of the fights he's been in throughout the series. The G Gundam film begins with a beautiful sequence of the main Gundam performing Tai Chi on the roof of an abandoned building, then proceeds into a typical silly fight sequence. Good stuff.
- Makoto Shinkai is an anime creator, in the sense that he creates anime himself. Completely. He does all the backgrounds, cels, special effects, CGI, coloring, etc. He even does some of the voices. He created the reportedly amazing Voices of a Distant Star (I haven't seen it yet), and I caught his "pilot" (more accurately an extended trailer) for his next work, The Place Promised In Our Early Days. I'm quite impressed; beyond being an interesting SF action/adventure, it's fundamentally beautiful. I'm amazed that, not only does he make anime, he obviously takes the time to make every shot look gorgeous.
- Uninhabited Planet Survive had such a goofy title I had to check it out. I'm still unsure about it; looks like the kind of series that doesn't get really good until about ten episodes in. It's a fairly standard SF drama, starting with an explosion inside some sort of space colony, then a man carrying his young daughter to an escape pod where he pushes her in and stays behind as the colony is consumed with fire. Almost a cliche at this point. Anyvay, she ends up going to an academy where she and a small group of students are apparently accidentally stranded on a wild planet, where they must, um, Survive on this Uninhabited Planet. The weird thing about the show is that the character designs are very rounded and simplified, almost like Digimon's characters. I'm not sure if it works in this sort of context.
- My parents were also kind enough to let me put an anime DVD on their Netflix list. It was Aura Battler Dunbine volume 1, and I watched episode one tonight. This is the series that the Gundam guys made just after Mobile Suit Gundam. It was just about exactly what I expected: a fantasy mech series with old school character designs and strong direction and an already twisty plot. I didn't expect it to move quite so quickly. I suspect that the director had seen Macross (which was released a year earlier) and was incorporating its fast pacing into his directorial style. Dunbine moves much faster than Mobile Suit Gundam, but his next series, Zeta Gundam, moves slower than Dunbine.
![[Gundam Evolve]](/graphics/journal/gundam_evolve.jpg)
![[IMAGE]](/graphics/journal/uninhabited_planet_survive.jpg)
The president of Jones Soda writes wonderfully about his views on soda. A few key phrases:
The reality is that consumers don't need our stuff. I don't mean to say that. But when you start thinking that way -- a lot of time, business people, marketers convince themselves that people need their stuff. They're passionate about how you need my new widget. You need it! The fact is, you don't need it! And as soon as you get off the fact that you don't need it you become, in my opinion, you become a better marketer, you get a better understanding of your customer.
![[Jones Soda]](/graphics/journal/jones_soda.jpg)
My daughter drinks one Jones a week. And I'm good with that. We don't sell two liters. It's a treat. And everybody wigs out on it, saying it causes obesity. It's the fact that you drink 44 fluid ounces of this stuff. 10 years ago the average size of a soda was 12 ounces. Now, the average size is 43 ounces. Well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to do the math, you morons. So we sell in 12-ounce. That's it. Have a nice soda. If you're going to drink a gallon of soda, you better figure out that that's a lot of sugar.
One year on April Fool's Day we sent a press release saying we were acquired by John Deere. That was hilarious. You sold out man! It was a joke, dude. We spelled Deere wrong. It was one of the funniest things we've ever done. We said they wanted their own weed-flavored soda. We came up with that stuff and people went ballistic. We were getting phone calls: "I can't believe you sold out. You sold out to the big guy." Dude, it was a tractor company.
Now I'm scamming. Companies are paying me to give talks. I think it's a pretty good gig. They'll pay me 10 grand to come talk to them. Maybe if I write a book, I get can that up there more. I do a good job and all the money goes to charity -- so it's not a total scam. So far we've built two schools.
Yay! After a very quiet week, things have quickly accelerated.
I slipped home early Friday afternoon so I could pick up my DSL router, as UPS was delivering it and they absolutely require that somebody's there to pick it up. The little sticker that the delivery person leaves has a series of checkboxes indicating when the delivery person will try again the next day; helpfully, he'd checked both "2:00 to 5:00" and "After 5:00". So I got home at 1:45, and he arrived at 5:45.
But at least I took advantage of that time home to putter around the house, hanging a framed cel that had been sitting around, filling the distressingly empty bird feeder, and scribbling down notes about garden plans. (The secret to garden success is to always be thinking three to six months ahead.)
When the router finally arrived, I decided to spend just fifteen minutes trying to get it set up, knowing that it would take a long time and a lot of wrestling. To my delight, I was online within five minutes. I hooked it up to my Airport Extreme and was online with a wireless internet connection five minutes after that. Wow. Smooth as butter.
I then went to Redemption, where I had a fine time. A friend of mine is in town for about a month, and he was there. Since I'd invited him to Guy's Night Out on Saturday, and he was basically home alone, he made the excellent suggestion of grabbing a ride with me back to my home, and spending the night. Fabulous! So we did, then spent the next four hours watching anime (Mighty Space Miners and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex). So now it's either very late or very early, depending on your perspective, and I'm very very happy.
Well, I re-installed OS X on my new laptop, and it does seem to be working smoothly thus far. I'm generally pleased with it. Moreover, it's been an excellent test of my backup procedures. I wiped the hard drive and was back up pretty much like before within a few hours.
![[Zeta Gundam screenshot]](/graphics/journal/zeta_gundam_screenshot.jpg)
Otherwise, I've been watching more Zeta Gundam, which has officially reached the point where I'm disappointed when I have to stop watching it. The plot has begun moving in interesting directions, and for once a Gundam series is spreading significant deaths throughout the series. The show is also beautifully animated. It was made in 1985, three years after the release of Macross, and the influence is clear. The mechs are animated in a more flashy, exciting way, as is appropriate for a combat action show.
I took my laptop back to the Apple Store on Sunday, and kind of wimped out. I described the bugs I've encountered—the CD drive disappeared, the latch won't open at times, preferences won't stick—and the techs investigated. I should have just asked them to replace the unit. They were pretty confident it was a bad OS install, and suggested I reinstall the OS from scratch.
So, I'll see if I can find the time this weekend to do that. Everything's backed up, so it shouldn't be a complicated process. But...arg, I have to reinstall my OS and hope that it works. I'd hoped to put that behind me when I switched to the Mac.
Anyvay. Today went pretty well at work. It went even better when I checked my personal e-mails and discovered that some of my job hunting paid off. I shot out my resume for two jobs on Sunday, and one place is quite interested; they wanted my resume in another format and verified a potential salary amount.
Honestly, I don't want to leave NLX/Rockwell Collins STS, where I work now. I'm doing this mainly because I want to move to a different part of the organization, but my boss' boss is reluctant to do so. I'm hoping that, if I have a job offer in hand, I can gently convince him to move me. If not, well, I can always take up the job offer. Heck, the e-mail I received today offered me more money than I'm making now.
I've started writing a new short story, this time a science fiction piece set in a space opera universe. The story itself is an adventure about a married couple who have to fight off a bunch of crazies to track down some missing data sitting in the center of an abandoned factory ship. I'm challenging myself to add lots of atmosphere to this story, as that's something I usually don't do in my first drafts.
I also started drawing again today. It felt good to be back into it. I just practiced copying a magazine photo. The drawing looked pretty poor, but I expected that for my first drawing. Now to improve....
Here's how my to-do list worked out last week: I had fifty-nine items on my list, of which I completed twenty-nine (about half). I couldn't complete two items.
Most of the things I couldn't complete were those daily tasks that I've found I'm poor at completing daily. So, I've set up next week's task list so that I'll do them less often, but for longer periods of time.
The Otherspace Productions meeting today went well; we enjoyed ourselves generally. The matrix experiments lain animation is honestly almost done with principal production. Now I need to talk to our storyboard artist and find out how much of the next animation's storyboard she's drawn. Once she's done drawing that, we can have the big kick-off meeting for it, and start production on it.
And this is why I love Terry Teachout's theater criticism columns in the Wall Street Journal:
The best-laid plans of mice and men....
My recent illnesses have reminded me of my childhood allergy to dust mites, and suggested that my allergy has perhaps not dissipated with the passage of time. So, I decided to buy a dehumidifier.
According to WalMart.com, Wal-Mart sells half a dozen brands of dehumidifier. After work, I stopped by my nearest Wal-Mart and spent half an hour wandering its aisles. They didn't have any. None at all. The two employees I asked waved me in different directions, completely uninterested in helping me actually find what I was looking for.
I got home to a snow-covered walkway. Actually, the snowfall itself was gorgeous; big, fat flakes drifting down from the sky and covering just enough of the ground to return the countryside to postcard prettiness, without covering the roads. But that meant I had to clear the snow from the sidewalk (our association tells us to clear sidewalks within twelve hours of a snowfall).
So, once I'd cleared the walkway, it was already 8:00 and I was tired. Didn't get much done today as a result. I basically just watched the MST3K episode "Red Zone Cuba" and munched on store-bought chocolate chip cookies.
But even this was good; I need a break now and then.
VOTE! On the right. It's a poll, and it's just over there. No, on the right.
'Twas a good day, overall. I kept a time journal at work, which kept me productive, and I managed to do almost everything on my to-do list (the only thing I've failed to do is practice Japanese, and that's because I can't find my Japanese book).
In particular, I finally finished proofing that novel. Boy, that was a big job. It was a pretty good book, too; it just required a lot of concentration. I couldn't just read; I had to concentrate on every word.
So I decided that, once I was done proofing, I'd return to drawing. I'd like to get some practice a couple of times a week. Nothing special. Once I get used to it, I'd even like to post something every week. Not necessarily a comic; that'd be too much. Maybe just a few panels of a comic every week. I could always make something like tailsteak.tk.
As I mentioned in another entry recently, I've realized that I don't do well with daily tasks. They get repetitive. I can do some of them, like writing these journal entries, but only the ones I find deeply, personally enjoyable. Other tasks just don't give me the same immediate satisfaction.
For example, I tasked myself with writing a bit of fiction every night, and have utterly failed at that for days. But part of that is because of my frustration with writing only a little bit of fiction at a time. It takes a little time to get into the flow of writing, and when I'm writing only a little bit, I can never get into the flow.
So, I think I'll write a few times a week, and draw a few times a week. And hopefully I'll be able to keep that up.
I mean, wouldn't it be cool if I could maintain a bunch of skills and projects all at once? Imagine if, in any given week, I made real progress on short stories and animations and comics and software development and home renovations and learning another language.
And now, more VR story.
She felt unexpected wetness moisten the corner of her eyes as she asked, "'S there any way I can back out of this?"
He shook his head. "I must kill you."
"I could say I'm not guardin' him anymore."
He shook his head again, as certain as the grave. "You may be attempting deceit." He paused, as if weighing whether to continue. "To me, you are already dead."
The fear grew and shifted into rank hatred of herself, for her weakness. This was not what it was supposed to be like. She never acted like this. She was Doodlehopper, always fearless, always copping an attitude.
Until she saw her death hovering behind a man's naked blade.
Her instincts ripped her back to reality, to the man staring at her behind his sword. She realized suddenly that he had been watching her this whole time. He could have attacked at any time and overwhelmed her, and he was so good he had to have seen her fear and lack of focus.
He saw her surprise and said, "I will not do you the dishonor of killing you when you are, eh...unarmed?" He sounded uncertain about his choice of words; she nodded grimly.
And she dropped her bokken. She slowly put her arms to her collarbone, and with a voice so even she surprised herself, she said, "You'll have to kill me unarmed."
He was silent for a moment, then chuckled. "If that is your destiny. I am not as honor-bound as all that. I will still kill you; you have made it suicide."
He raised his blade and rushed her. She knew what she had to do; she didn't have time to notice the fear welling up inside her. One hand slipped into her jacket and gripped a tazer as she leaned to one side, his blade hissing past her as her arm struck out like a viper.
He convulsed, striking his sword against her outstretched arm and collarbone, hard but not enough to cause much pain. She leaned her weight onto him, keeping the tazer on him until his eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the ground, the sword clattering to the floor.
She looked down at her arm and chest and grimaced. His well-trained wrist muscles had beat the blade into her arm. Her shoulders were in worst shape, as they'd born the brunt of his attack. Her shirt now hung in several ribbons, and blood ran in long red streams down her arm.
So she felt no shame when she closed her eyes and let herself shake and cry.
Eek! I'm almost at the end of what I've written.
![[My back garden]](/graphics/journal/back_garden_flowers.jpg)
As I type this, I'm sitting in my back yard, digesting a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of lemonade (all home-made, no less), looking out at the jumbled mulch that now hides the fifty or so daffodil bulbs I planted earlier this afternoon. I feel almost ashamed that I'm ever sorry for myself.
Now that I've had some time to think about last night's incredible dinner with T, I can actually write something coherent about it. It was wonderful, and not just because I had a good time. T was personally encouraging to me about my writing and my chances.
And fortunately I agree with his views. He said that I should expect to (A) fail, and (B) endure the harshest criticism. And that that really doesn't matter, and doesn't affect your chances of ultimately succeeding. People have ripped T to pieces over some of his creative choices, despite his obviously amazing writing skills.
He was also reassuring. I expressed concern over my relative inexperience with comics; as I put it, "I haven't been reading Green Lantern since I was eight." He replied that that's not really all that much of a handicap, and might be more of a strength, really. Too many comic readers are too invested in the tropes of the genre.
Meanwhile, a few links: Brad Bird talks about his career, from Disney to The Iron Giant to The Incredibles (and makes me slightly more sympathetic towards WB Film Animation). I really like what I see of Patrick Smith's animations.
![[Bunny Girl by Andrew Hickinbottom]](/graphics/journal/Bunny-Girl-THUMB.jpg)
I don't normally like CGI. It looks too stiff and too generated; surfaces feel harsh and hyper-real. Indeed, it's all about the feel of it. I don't like how CGI feels.
But Andrew Hickinbottom's work gives me hope that there's a good future in CGI. He's created CGI that looks like animations of clay figurines. Very pretty, and it has a style that feels more natural than typical CGI's harshness.
Hmm. That makes it seem like I hate CGI. I don't; it just normally feels off to me.
I honestly can't feel bad right now, as I just got back from dinner wtih T. Campbell, who graciously talked for two and a half hours about the comics industry and my chances of getting Red Ax published (online or otherwise). What an incredibly great guy to do that.
In other news, my gallery is now officially back online, though I still need to clean up a few bits and pieces. But at least you can browse everything in their correct categories and such.
Posted here so I won't forget to browse it at my leisure later: The Official Alex Toth Website, featuring a whole lot of artwork from a classic comic artist.
A few years ago, I had an idea for a story called Red Ax, which I excitedly hashed out with Saalon. Unfortunately, it was a comic book story with anthropomorphic characters, and since I couldn't draw and didn't know any comic book artists, I shelved it.
About a year ago, I wanted to write, and that comic book idea floated into my head. So I sat down and wrote an eleven-page script that introduced one of the protagonists. Then, since I couldn't draw and didn't know any comic book artists, I shelved it.
A few months ago, as I was working with my animators on Matrix Experiments Lain, I noticed in her portfolio that she was drawing some amazing anthropomorphic characters. So I talked to her about Red Ax and sent her the script, and she agreed to try drawing the characters. Here's what she drew:
![[Red Ax concept artwork, #2]](/graphics/misc/ax2.jpg)
Isn't this amazing?
It gets better.
![[Red Ax concept artwork, #1]](/graphics/misc/ax1.jpg)
One of my favorite comic book writers is a fellow named T. Campbell, whom I know almost exclusively through Fans!, an amazing character-based story about SF/F fans. I've traded a few e-mails with him, and ended up helping him with some of his SF Blog entries.
At the end of one of his e-mails, I noticed that he listed his address. I blinked and re-read it. That address is less than twenty miles from my townhouse. T. Campbell lives practically next door to me!
Meanwhile, I have this emerging work of beauty on my hands in the form of Red Ax. I want to figure out how to get this in front of readers, such that it doesn't get lost in a galaxy of online comics or resigned to a print run of twelve copies.
Well, T. Campbell lives practically next door to me.
So I e-mailed him with a plaintive plea for advice. He kindly responds—the same day, no less—and before I know it, he's agreed to have dinner with me this Tuesday.
So I'm having dinner with T. Campbell on Tuesday, to talk about this oddball story idea I came up with a few years ago and figure out how to publish it.
Life really is weird.
![[Herb Border]](/graphics/journal/herb_border.jpg)
Here's what I did this evening:
That's the new herb border I planted just outside my back door. The planter full of dirt was there when I moved in, and though it clearly hadn't been used in awhile, the soil was in reasonably decent shape. I dug in two bags of potting soil yesterday, then bought some herbs today and planted them. I've got spearmint, parsley, oregano, and thyme, those all being herbs that I actually use in cooking.
I had a pretty productive day, overall. Work wasn't very exciting; the highlight was my lunch with Dad, during which we chatted pleasantly about a variety of subjects, mainly the stuff we're working on. But I also managed to finish the first draft of my February short story (which gives you an idea of how far behind I am in my writing plan), practiced Japanese, and reviewed some Syllable source code.
By the way, thanks to everyone for your comments on my recent depression and soul-searching. They've all been nourishing food for thought.
I think one of the reasons I was more productive today was the fact that I wrote out my goals in specific detail yesterday. Instead of "Draw", I wrote, "Draw twenty human figures" (so I can get better at drawing people). When I looked at my to-do lists today, I also reviewed my goals, and found myself much more motivated by seeing what I actually want to accomplish in the medium- to long-term, instead of just a bunch of little immediate tasks. It's a significant psychological boost.
And now, a bit more VR story:
She smiled shyly, in that way that he found so blasted pretty. Inconvenient just at the moment he was struggling to negate any romantic interest.
"Anyway," he said, struggling to remember his point, "I can change. I want to change. I think I'm about to change." He grinned. "And I'm going to need somebody to kick my rear into doing it when I change my mind. Deal?"
She grinned right back and extended her hand. "Deal."
Karl turned to Kino and whispered excitedly, "They're shaking hands. I think we're good!"
The next few weeks were a blur. Doodlehopper dragged Thomas through the muddy streets of Thailand, making him sit in dark, spare rooms in which the air was heavy with incense, as she traded taut sentences with lean, hard men. They spent thirty-six harrowing hours chasing a lead through the overstuffed hills of Hong Kong before he disappeared completely. They spent almost a week in overcrowded basements in Norway, trading in a few favors for unfettered access to the secret undergrounds of the 'net, where nearly everything was known by somebody, and everything else could be found for a price.
Thomas and Doodlehopper were sharing the detective work, each using their own methods and, after each little success or failure, collaborating on the next best move. Kino and Karl played back-up, setting up hotel rooms or flights, finding safe places to eat, and generally being the oddest concierge service any of them had ever seen.
Thomas was on his feet for most of each day. This would have been difficult enough for his weak muscles, but Doodlehopper had begun sparring with him the first day. For hours every day, she led him through stances and mock battles, charging at him and jabbing him with her fists and feet. She never attacked hard enough to really hurt him, and her mood was always one of gentle patience. But after three days, his muscles were screaming. Two days later, he woke up so sore he honestly thought he was going to die.
I need to grow up. I've been implementing the "Getting Things Done" productivity system. It's helped me in some ways, but I'm still not very productive in the evenings. I may accomplish one or two little tasks—cleaning the bathrooms, writing a bit—but that seems marginal considering that I have a good two or three hours per night to do things. I'm sure that this is at least partly due to maturity. I get home, and I relax for awhile, and then my inner ten-year-old whines, "I don't wanna do anything except lay here on the couch and surf the web!" To some extent, I realize the importance of recognizing that as a legitimate physical response. If I feel tired, maybe that's because I'm tired. On the other hand, often I do have the energy to do things; I just can't bring myself to do them. I'm not physically tired; I just can't get up the gumption to do much of anything. Which raises an interesting question: How can I grow myself up? I'm willing to train myself to be more mature. But how do I do that? On further thought—and I can tell this is going to be an update that wanders without any satisfactory shape—I wonder if I just don't want to make a choice. I do dislike making choices. Taking the road less traveled means that I can't experience the more-traveled one. Sometimes, I can hear the voice in the back of my mind whispering, "If you just put this off a little while, you may be able to make a better decision later!" But of course, that's almost never true. Time gives us experience, yes, but it also gives us greater complexity. I may be more informed tomorrow...but I'll also have more to do (because something else will need to be done then). I don't fear failure. I fear that success will keep me from experiences other than that particular success. Or maybe I have a completely different issue, and I'm barking up the wrong tree. (Speaking of trees, the photo that accompanies this entry shows a tree near work. It looked interesting to me, a stark, bare tree against the rolling grey clouds. Very atmospheric.) I just got my art gallery back online; it's been non-functional for awhile. The site is still very basic, but you can at least browse my poor attempts at art. Didn't get much sleep last night—about six hours, and I never do well on less than eight—so I've been a little spacy all day. Awake, but unable to really concentrate on anything. Fortunately, I was able to complete a few things at work, and had dinner at my parents' followed by a showing of Shanghai Knights, which I think is one of Jackie Chan's better movies, and certainly one of the best of his later work. The photo on the right shows a sausage and mushroom pizza I made on Saturday. It's a "white" pizza, meaning that there's no tomato sauce. It's just a Boboli crust topped with cheese, hot Italian sausage pieces, onion, and mushroom slices (with sprinkles of rosemary and hot pepper flakes), baked for twenty-five minutes, then topped again with cheese just after it's removed from the oven. That's it. Easy, inexpensive, and delicious. Spicy, too; you'll want a glass of something cold to go with it. Spotted this last week, growing next to my front walkway: I planted that flower myself, last fall. Now I'm going to admit something that will probably alienate all fifteen of my readers: I really like to garden. Oddly, I don't have the reasons that I typically read about; I don't love the feel of soil in my hands. Soil's dirty. It's essentially dry mud. But I do love beautifying a space. I can take a butt-ugly landscape and make it pretty, a place where people actually want to spend their tiime. Very rarely do we get a chance to consciously make something look good. It reminds me of a sermon I heard once, in which the speaker suggested that humans have essentially two great callings: To make things beautiful, and to keep things beautiful. Creation and maintenance. I think he was right. And no, I don't have a strong ending for this entry. That's it. I tried something new tonight: I gave myself a couple of hours to goof off after I got home, expecting to get some things accomplished afterwards. I hoped that the rest would recharge me with enough energy to get me through a few hours' worth of personal duties. It worked: I had no problems cleaning, paying bills, and finishing this week's updates to Matrix Experiments Lain. Excellent! I goofed off by watching Godzilla's Revenge, a truly awful Godzilla movie about a whiny kid who dreams he can travel to Monster Island and see Godzilla and company duke it out. So half of the movie contains decent Godzilla fights, while the other half follows this kid around his mundane life in Tokyo, being picked on by a local gang of older kids and acting morose because his parents work so much. Of course, there's a Big Adventure: a couple of incompetent bank robbers kidnap him, and he has to escape. He uses a few of the tricks he learned from his dreams to outwit and outfight the crooks and run to safety. But the really intriguing thing about the film is the end. The boy is shown going back to school the next day, and on the way he's surrounded by the gang (who previously dared him to honk the horn on a bike belonging to a painter nearby). Our hero promptly rams the leader of the gang and fights him, finally winning the fight. The hero then runs over to the same bike and honks the horn, causing the painter to fall over in surprise and get paint all over himself. The hero then runs off, where he's joined by the cheering gang of kids, and they all run off into the sunset. I blinked. The heck kind of ending is that, where the hero ends up essentially joining a street gang? But after thinking about it for awhile, I realized that the kid had triumphed by finding a way to be part of the larger social group. He was no longer an individual outcast; now he belonged to a group. It fits perfectly with Japanese ideals of conformity to a larger social structure. Obviously, I don't want to read too much into an overtly silly Godzilla movie. But I can't think of any other way to understand the ethics of that ending. In other news, I've put together another audioblog anime review. The one comment I received about my previous review lamented at being unfamiliar with the series being reviewed. So, this time, I'm reviewing the first disc in the series: Gantz volume 1. I'm actually rather proud of this review; I'm not as hesitant as I was in the previous review. It helped that I had a list of questions on the screen, which I was answering as I spoke. As before, let me know what you think. I'm battling a mild bout of depression. As usual, it's fueled by things that seem both reasonable and trivial. This morning, as part of my quest to get more energy, I went out for a short jog around the neighborhood and nearby park land. By "park land," I mean small strips of land that has grass and trees on it. The "Brandon Park" nearby is a strip mall-sized rectangle of grass studded with a few lonely trees and a stream. Anyvay. The jog has left me exhausted all day, achieving the precise opposite of my intended goal. I know, I know; I haven't been exercising regularly, so my body isn't used to it. I just need to exercise more frequently. But my Left Brain rebels at the paradox. Consequently, I achieved little tonight. I managed to incorporate the latest changes into Matrix Experiments Lain—a long-overdue task—after watching Something Wicked This Way Comes. Something Wicked is a wonderfully spooky film, though it suffers from horrid editing. The characters are spliced together in confusing ways, so that in one shot they're looking in one direction, then in the next they're looking elsewhere. Ugh. But the atmosphere perfectly captures Bradbury's unique mood—dark, spooky, melancholy, exhilaration twinged with sadness—and it's a great little fright-fest. But I'm stil not doing as much as I'd like to do with the time I have. I feel like, if I have a couple of hours in an evening, I should be able to get a good couple of hours' worth of things done—writing, drawing, whatever. Instead, I work for maybe half an hour. Still. I watched a cool little movie and worked on my animation. Life could be a lot worse. (I'm also trying to wrap my head around some Otherspace Prodcutions accounting issues. What a headache. I wish I'd hired an accountant earlier. I still want to, but it's an intimidating step, as I've clearly made some mistakes and I don't want to look like a fool by showing those mistakes to a professional.) And now, finally, more VR story: "I'm sorry," he said. She looked away, as though unwilling to commit to a reply. "I was a jerk. I do need your help, and I was stupid to blow you off like that." He paused. "No, not just stupid. Stuck up. "Look. I have an ego as big as the 'net. All my life, people have warned me about that. It's...it's why I don't have many real friends. Any real friends, really." Her eyes were on his now, her face radiating sympathy and wonder at his admission. He was still looking down, his features taut with the strain of confession. "I don't like that about myself, but I've never been able to change it. I think...I think I never really had a reason to change. I could always blow it off, or return to the 'net where a big ego is an asset. But...now...." His eyes returned to hers, the penitent gaze of a man seeking redemption. "Now I have a reason to change. Because of what's happening. And...because of you." She took a step back, and for all her concern, her face wore the mask of a teenaged girl who'd been the object of too many mens' desperation. "Not like that," he hurried to reassure her. "I'm not confessing my love here. But I am indebted to you. You've shown me how I can be. You're...my inspiration." Come on, say it with me: Awww.... I'm almost finished writing a story that I want to present to my writing group tomorrow night. Unfortunately, the story refuses to finish itself. It's an odd situation, in a way. I want to finish it, but I can't make myself do it. It's like Murray—my Muse—has stepped out of his smoke-filled little office and just won't come back. What causes a writer to find himself unable to finish a story? I can certainly envision possible endings. I just can't seem to find the mental energy to get those words on paper. Or is it that? Do I have some kind of mental block that's keeping me from writing? This looks odd, but I often worry that I worry too much. Seriously. I think that I may just get so afraid of writing the wrong thing that I don't want to write anything. Worse, it's not a conscious fear; I just begin to doubt myself so much that I lock up. Doubt is a good thing; without it, I'd write nothing but pap and never improve. I just need to figure out if I'm actually doubting myself now, or something else is at work. And if I am doubting myself, how do I switch that off? Man. Writing's hard. I am feeling better now. The symptoms are at about 50%, and my energy is back to about 90%. It helps that I walked this morning. I've been trying to find ways of increasing my energy. Surprisingly, I couldn't find any websites that dealt with increased energy. There are plenty of health sites that deal with overall "wellness" and "fitness," but I couldn't find as much as a single page on "How to increase your overall energy level" (obviously, consuming a few cups of sugar would do it temporarily; I'm talking about an overall strategy). I mentioned this to my parents, and we agreed that it's the same as it's always been: you need diet and exercise. I eat well, but I haven't been exercising as much as I'd like. I pointed out that I don't like to run on cold mornings. Dad replied simply, "Walk." And he was dead-on right. I need to at least get some exercise, and if that's all I can get, so be it. So I walked this morning, and sure enough, I have a good amount of energy today. Meanwhile, AOL has changed its instant messaging Terms of Service so that it now retains the right to re-broadcast anything you send over AIM, to anyone at any time and in any form. More information. This makes me want to abandon iChat and find an ICQ client for my Macs. And on a totally unrelated note, below is a graphic showing some of the cartoons showing now on the BBC. Hey, who's that on the far right? It's an old friend. Still sick, but to quote Monty Python, "I'm getting better!" Which explains the journal blackout since Thursday. I actually have very little to report, too, since I've spent the past two days in bed, reading blogs and Newgrounds, and watching bits of anime. Which anime, you ask? Two, really: One episode of Legendz and one episode of Berserk. I have little interest in "fighting monsters" shows, but Legendz is directed by one of my favorite anime direcxtors, Akitaroh Daichi (Kodocha, Now and Then, Here and There, Fruits Basket), who has an amazing comedic sense and almost always combines real human drama with his comedy. Legendz...well, I'm not so sure about. I rarely judge an entire series based on the first episode alone—too many excellent series had mediocre first episodes. Legendz was certainly funny, and it had a great Anime Moment near the end (which the director promptly turned on its head for comedic effect). But it was just so spastic, it felt like it was trying too hard. Dunno. Berserk...now that was plain funny. Oh, it's not intentional; it's all about a Dark Hero who has to fight for Justice in a Dark Land. But it's so over-the-top that it's laughable at times. In the first episode, we're shown the token local ruffians who are terrorizing a barmaid. They terrorize her for four solid minutes. Ya think they could've made their point in two? But it's a fun fantasy action series. I enjoyed it more than Lodoss. Meanwhile, here's what my leg looks like (warning: slightly graphic). I'm home sick today, so I'm cruising the blogosphere (I hate that term!) and finding various cool links. Here's what Yahoo! looked like ten years ago. And Microsoft provides Key points for learning leetspeak. No, really, that's the actual title. A government site warning about the dangers of rollovers in SUVs. Boring, right? The creators decided to create big, Bantha-like creatures called Esuvees and relate the safety issues of driving an SUV to the safety of riding an Esuvee. The resulting website is engaging and fun. And here is a video of Steve Jobs introducing the Mac back in 1984. A very early Stevenote. He's wearing a TUX! And here's something that causes stops and blank stares: a car hanging from a power line. Who needs modern art exhibits? In comic form! In other news, here's Raph Koster's keynote speech at the 2005 Game Developers Conference, in which he posits that "fun" is a fundamental human response to learning patterns and necessary for human survival. Been watching a lot of anime lately. Hayao Miyazaki's first original work was a little-known TV series named Future Boy Conan, a post-apocalyptic environmental adventure story. I've been watching the first few episodes, and it's been interesting to watch. Miyazaki is a genius now, and in Conan his genius is hinted at. But, really, it's only hinted at. I expected an obscure work of brilliance, but thus far it's "merely" a strong adventure tale thus far. Of course, I'm still only four episodes into it. Meanwhile, I have to admit: I don't like Fullmetal Alchemist. Not that I hate it. I just don't find it particularly engaging thus far, two episodes in. The main character's a punk and his brother's a pacifier. The world looks like a fantasized version of Trigun's, and the characters' main secrets are revealed in the first episode. I don't like the characters, really. I could live with the rest, but unless the brothers get much more sympathetic soon—and they've already played the "paying for a tragic mistake" card—I'm going to have to pass on this show. I may even sell the DVD, which I've only done a handful of times. Why spend my time on a show I don't like when I could spend more time with, say, Zeta Gundam, which just improves with each episode? Oh, I have my quibbles with it, but they're quibbles. I suspect that the most recent plot twist is an attempt to make the main character more relevant. See, about ten episodes in, Amuro Ray (the protagonist of the original Mobile Suit Gundam) enters Zeta's plot. And the problem with that is that he's a much more interesting character than Kamille, Zeta's supposed protagonist. Amuro was always a bit of a bit of a spoiled kid. In contrast to Evangelion's Shinji, who is more of an average depressed teen, Amuro is a privileged boy who's spent most of his life tinkering around with robotics. He's frankly unused to work. Much of his character development in Mobile Suit Gundam revolves around his growing acceptance of his responsibilities. Once Zeta rolls around, seven years after the end of Mobile Suit Gundam, Amuro's slid back somewhat. He's nowhere near as whiny as he was at the beginning of MSG, but he's living comfortably in a large estate under the watchful eye of the Earth Federation, and he can reasonably start making excuses for his natural passivity. Of course, the story of Zeta forces Amuro out of his comfortable little shell (though it would have been interesting if he'd remained there and directed things secretly from afar), and he joins the main cast. Kamille, on the other hand, has largely come to accept his responsibilities. He's a pretty stable character now, which was a wise story decision on the creators' part—the fans don't want to see Amuro's progression all over again. But because he's so stable, Amuro's conflict—Do I want to fight again?—is much more interesting than anything going on in Kamille's life. So they added something to Kamille's life. In this case, it's the beautiful enemy pilot Four, whom Kamille meets essentially by chance. They almost immediately fall in love, which conveniently sets up opportunities for pain and tragedy for both of them, as they're forced to fight each other. To the creators' credit, this romance does not feel contrived; even Kamille and Four aren't sure if this is really love. They at least have a strong chemical reaction, like two high schoolers meeting by chance at a dance, and talking the night away, and afterwards thinking about each other over and over. Of course, it's too early to tell whether this is a stunt, or another step in Kamille's character development. If this is integrated with the rest of his storyline, I'll accept it without reservation. The show is that good. I meant to only spend fifteen minutes on this thing, and spent over an hour tweaking it. Still, it was good experience. "This thing" is an experiment of mine, an audio review of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex DVD 4. Download the mp3 (8:03, 7.3 MB) and let me know what you think. Would you like me to do this again? As always, I welcome all criticism. I recognize that I pause often when I'm speaking. I wonder how I can change that.... ...And in other news, I've just updated my list of anime owned. It's current now, except that the listings of what I have and haven't seen isn't up-to-date. Well. I've had quite a time recently. Two weeks ago, I lost my DSL signal. This was not a huge surprise to me, as I've read too many horror stories of cable/DSL/satellite service that fails and remains unresolved despite hours on hold for tech support and a parade of repairmen (repairpersons?). The day my signal died, I called Earthlink, and the nice lady on the phone eventually promised to have it looked into. That took some doing, though, as she had a very thick accent and asked me to do oddball things, like take my DSL modem outside and plug it into the phone box. I pointed out that there was no place to plug in my modem to power out there, at which point she sputtered and asked me to try something else. Strange. A few days passed, and I still had no service. I placed a couple more calls, each time dealing with a wonderful, helpful rep who knew what he was talking about and ran through as many tests as he could. Each time, he said they'd run tests, which they apparently did, as each time I called they had more information. Then, I tried power-cycling the modem, and the modem completely died—no lights at all. So I called a tech and reported this. We did some troubleshooting, and we managed to figure out that A) I had no dial tone whatsoever, and B) my modem was fried. He promised to send out a repairman (repairperson?) to fix the line and ship me a replacement modem by second-day delivery. So. The Verizon repairperson arrived and tested both my box and the local switch, and determined there was a fault in the line leading to my house. He said he'd call to have somebody take care of it that day. I went to work, and when I came back...dial tone! Thanks to some instructions left by the previous tech support rep, I was able to at least use dialup to get online. The replacement modem arrived a few days later; I plugged it in and everything worked as smooth as butter. It took two weeks, but every tech support rep was cheerful and helpful, and it was resolved with minimal aggravation (or intimations that I was the problem). So that was a bit stressful, especially as I'd built up a big list of things to do online now that I was online, and I couldn't do any of it for two weeks. Then, this past weekend, I hosted a party for some friends, which as I mentioned yesterday, lasted fourteen hours, from 4:00 p.m. on Saturday to 6:00 a.m. on Sunday. I had to prepare food for it, of course, which took up all of Saturday, then after the last guest left I crashed into bed, only to wake up just in time to head to the Otherspace animation meeting (we're chugging along there nicely). Then I got home and my parents stopped by, so I entertained them before crashing into bed again. Tonight's been the first opportunity I've had to really catch up, particularly with chores like laundry. But you know what? I'm happy. I exercised, which gave me energy, and I managed to get quite a few things accomplished. And I live in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood, with good friends and a well-paying, interesting job. That sounds trite. But I've been reading about some modern-day horrors lately—which I won't relate because why depress you?—and I truly feel grateful for my life right now. Have you ever wanted a personal advisor? Not a therapist—somebody to whom you could turn and say, "I'm in the mood for a good modern novel. What would you recommend?" Their advice mightn't always be perfect, but they'd serve a vital need to sort through the chaff of everyday life. Head Butler seeks to serve this need. Every day, there's a new essay about New Good Stuff or Great Old Stuff, as the Butler puts it. Yeah, it's at least partly a gimmick, but it's also a philosophy. I've signed up for the newsletter, and am curious to see just what it's like. I am going to write a summary of the past few weeks. Really. When I get some time. It's just that, after the party, I slept for six hours until noon, then went to animation (where things are moving swimmingly), then entertained my parents. I should have some spare time on Monday to compose a reasonable summary, or something. It's 6:25 a.m., and I just concluded a fourteen-hour party at my house. ...Cool! If you don't know anime, this will probably be lost on you. However, Real Otaku Heroes features half a dozen fall-over-laughing mp3 "commercials" saluting "the various otaku heroes that we have encountered over the years," including Mr. Pirated Anime Goods Seller, Mr. Female Character Cosplayer, Mr. Harem Anime Inventor, Mr. Self Insert Fanfiction Writer, Mr. Shoujo Anime and Manga Fan, Mr. Anime Fanservice Inventor, and Mr. Pocky Snack Inventor. Okay. The DSL modem arrived yesterday, and as expected, it set itself up perfectly. I'm back online. Unfortunately, I'm going to be quite busy over the next few days, so I probably won't be able to write much here. Why? I'm hosting a party on Saturday, which I'll be making much of the food for. Honestly, I'm tempted to just buy all the food pre-made, but I like providing home-made food for people. It makes the party feel that much more special. Anyvay. That'll take up most of Saturday, then Sunday we're going to have an Otherspace Productions meeting. Hmmm. Actually, I might just go there long enough to get the latest work from people, then come home. I don't like the idea of cramming a weekend full of activities; it doesn't allow me to rest, which is one of the things weekends are for. Sorry for the radio silence; I've been effectively offline for the past seven days, thanks to a combination of a fault in the phone line and a dead DSL modem. I should be back online by the end of the week, at which point I hope to write more here about everything that's been going on in my life. Briefly: Lots of new anime seen, big changes at work, and thoughts on a wide variety of StUFF. I helped my renter move in last night. It was a strange feeling, hauling somebody's stuff into my house, knowing that he'll be living with me for the foreseeable future. Will we drive each other crazy? This is the first time I've really lived with someone. At my last apartment, I was sharing a house with a woman whom I only saw every couple of months. Before that, I was living with my parents, which is a very different experience than living separately. So, this is a bit weird and intimidating. I'm not scared, per se, just weirded out. Intellectually, I know I can handle this. My emotions don't quite agree. Meanwhile, I've posted more VR story, for the first time in a month. I hope to get that back up to speed over the coming months, so I can finally finish the blasted thing. Unfortunately, today's post is the last of what I've written so far, so I need to write quite a bit more to get ahead. My goodness, I'm tired. This is caused partly by my mad dashes around the house, clearing out the other bedroom. Why? I have a renter, finally. A friend from work will be moving in. Um, tomorrow. As of this morning, there were still several boxes, bags, and assorted miscellaney cluttering up the room. So I got all that out, and finally cleaned out the kitchen sink. Oh, shoot; I just remembered that I had a bunch of clothes hanging in that closet; hold on while I retrieve them.... ...back. My bedroom now hosts a pile of clothing slightly smaller than Everest. Much of it will go to goodwill, I think; I really don't need twenty long-sleeved shirts. I also forgot how much mold some of my jackets accumulated; I've been meaning to dry-clean them for the past, oh, six months or so. Still, I feel good that I'm finally getting a renter. That extra $700 (USD) a month will finally give me the room in my pocketbook to buy a few goodies for the townhouse. I've been stretched thin since I moved here (which I knew I would be, without a renter), so I'm looking forward to the easier financial burden over the coming months. I had a rather strange experience this week—I joined a Tae Kwan Do academy, then promptly backed out two days later. That may seem strange, and it is, really, but I have my reasons. My 2005 New Year's Resolution was to investigate and take up a martial art. I've been hemming and hawing about that investigation, until finally on Saturday I simply walked into a local Tae Kwan Do academy. Fortunately, someone there was signing up her daughter for a practice session, so I listened to that conversation and used that info to ask for a practice session myself. On Monday, I went to the practice session, and it was a blast. After the ritual bows, I followed the 20 minute warmup routine, which did an amazing job of stretching my muscles and joints. Afterwards, one of the senior martial artists as well as the head of the academy took me through the basics of the Tae Kwan Do, and I practiced a couple of punches, kicks, and blocks. Afterwards, I made my mistake. I sat down with the grandmaster, who suggested I sign up for a three-year course. This was more than I expected, but rather than tell him that, I simply agreed. I signed a contract and gave him $150. That night, adrenaline coursed through my veins as I anticipated my growing skills. I was extremely excited at the idea. In retrospect, I was overexcited and starstruck. The next day, I began to realize the enormity of my commitment. This was a twice-a-week commitment combined with daily training at home. Considering all the other projects on my plate, was this wise? That night, I explained my misgivings to Saalon, and based on his advice, I decided to back out and look around a bit more. This lead to greater anxiety on my part, as I dreaded explaining this to the grandmaster. This evening, I went to the academy and explained myself to the office manager. She was thoroughly considerate and professional, and processed my cancellation immediately. Unfortunately, they won't refund my first month's fee, though I can use that month in the future if I decide to come back. I feel that I made the right final decision. This was more than I can commit to right now. However, I shouldn't have made the commitment in the first place. I should have told the grandmaster that three years were more than I had anticipated, and that I wanted time to think it over. I should have respected my own pace. Haven't felt like updating in a while, in case that wasn't clear from the dearth of recent entries. Plenty has been going on in my life; I just haven't felt like writing about it. Then again, I've felt a bit out-of-sorts lately. Not depressed; more like that 2 a.m. feeling of having wool between your ears. And I've found that I only feel like writing when I'm in either a good mood or a very bad one. Since I've felt neither lately, I haven't updated the site. I was recently inspired by a conversation with Saalon (interesting how many of my projects start like that) to consider a reorganization of my journal, which might excite me to write more. I'd like to aggregate several projects onto this journal page: the journal itself, the VR story, a recent photo, and perhaps a recent drawing. I'd like a page that looks more like a newspaper about my life. Pictures from a local flower show. Sorry for the radio silence. Been busy, just not felt like writing journal entries. Unexpectedly, I'm very very busy. I went to my parents' house Monday evening, had writing group tonight, will be at a church function Wednesday evening, and will be doing server maintenance and upgrade stuff with Saalon on Thursday. All good things, but time-consuming. Meanwhile, a fascinating link that I would like to investigate further at some later date: the mentat wiki, "a collaborative environment for exploring ways to become a better thinker." FastCompany has an interesting article this month titled, "Change Or Die," which includes this quote: This prompted the front cover text: It's a startling thought. We all like to think that, if the chips are down, and we're faced with tough decisions, we'll make the right choices. But statistically, we don't (at least not when it comes to eating and living healthy lives). Why not? The answer, I think, is the most common one: It Depends. Many times, it's because our poor choices are comforting to us; in a high-stress world of demanding jobs and over-busy households, when you're in line at McDonald's and you know the rest of your day will be full, who wants a salad? Sometimes, we simply don't know how to change; who can find a full half an hour in a day to exercise? I don't think it's laziness, partly because I think that laziness is usually a sign of a deeper psychological issue. I had an instructive dream last week. I dreamt I managed a large dollar store in a strip mall. It was near Christmas; snow was falling outside. Business was good, the employees were busy but happy, and the customers seemed to be in good spirits. Then I heard the buzz of the alarm. I swiveled my head to see a middle-aged woman hurrying out the doors, clutching something to her chest. Everyone carried on with their business; it was just another petty thief, not worth pursuing. Being the manager, I decided to stop her, so I left the store. It was crowded outside, and it took me a minute to find the woman and confront her through the thick falling snow. She had by now hidden her item underneath her coat, and feigned ignorance of my accusation, but when I took her arm and pulled her into an alley, she pulled the stolen item out and started yelling at me that there was nothing I could do about it. Oh yes there was; I could take my merchandise back. We struggled with it and it fell; it was a box of cards which burst open and spilled on the ground. Just at that moment, the woman's grown daughter appeared and acted highly disappointed in her mother, which chastened her. They both left. Here's the instructive part: As I gathered up the cards amidst the falling snow, I realized that I had been away from the store for quite awhile. In that weird stretched time of dreams, it had been close to half an hour. I felt bad, having left the store alone, the employees having no idea where I was and going on without me. When I woke up this morning, I analyzed that dream and recognized that bad feeling. I feel it a lot. That's when I realized: I live a life of regrets. I am forever thinking of activities I could be doing, more efficient ways of accomplishing my projects, and regretting the difference. Now note: There's nothing wrong with thinking up new projects or efficiencies. My error lies in living in pained regret that I'm not doing them. As Alexander Graham Bell once said, "When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us." Well, we got hacked, which explains my absence over the past few days. Things seem mostly back to normal now. More later, when I get the time to actually upload something. Woah! Where have I been lately? Been busy with little things, just generaly life upkeep. I've been reading pretty much every night, and baking cookies, and practicing Japanese a bit. Spent an hour on Wednesday checking fluids in my truck and cleaning it thoroughly. Nothing major. I've been a bit sick lately, too, which doesn't help me get things done. That's why I'm home from work today. I also finished Neil Clark Warren's Date...or Soul Mate? and posted a review to my library. Interesting stuff. Atom is an extremely complicated blog feed format. They've just published a draft RFC that's supposed to explain the Atom format. I've written an Atom feed generator, and I know even less about Atom after reading that RFC. How could they write an RFC that's that difficult to comprehend? And why am I writing about blog feed formats? Because I used to think that visiting each blog had advantages over RSS feeds, so I downloaded an RSS feeder (NewsFire) to prove it. Now I use it every day to read several dozen blogs in the time it used to take me to read ten. RSS has been incredibly useful to me. There are actually two feed formats: Atom and RSS. RSS is simpler, while Atom is more complicated and more flexible. I'm frustrated by Atom's complexity, but I love what you can do with it, and I want to see the Atom working group create a comprehensible, readable standard. They haven't so far. The Otherspace meeting today went well. Almost the entire company showed up, and we had a good time chatting and generally working. Monica's made great strides on Summer Storm and the others are doing well on final touches to Matrix Experiments Lain. It's interesting to observe how we've changed over the past ten months or so. What started as a nervous group just trying to figure out how to animate has turned into a comfortable team. We still have a lot to learn, but we've made amazing progress considering that we started from nothing. And it's been a great experience for me, observing that I really can build something from scratch, and that that something can do real work. Well, I've had a busy couple of days. I'm afraid I have nothing interesting to say, so if you're not interested in a litany of my recent activities, feel free to move on to the next blog. I spent Thusday evening tutoring, which seemed to go well. The goal of my tutoring is to improve my student's ability to write essays for the SAT, and now that he's becoming more used to writing essays, I think I need to concentrate more on the types of essays that the SAT demands. Apparently, these assignments amount to "Blog about how to achieve happiness" and such things, which isn't particularly hard. It's just a matter of getting used to writing about something that isn't based on facts. Friday night, I went over to a friend's house to have a pseudo-Redemption night, though we only played one game of Redemption as well as some Star Wars: Battlefront and a little Neverwinter Nights. I very much need to spend more time playing NWN, so we can play together reasonably. I spent this morning on chores—laundry, cleaning, finances, business taxes—and updated Matrix Experiments Lain with the latest from last week. And that's it. Wish I could have made this entry more interesting, but I'm kind of tired from doing laundry, cleaning, finances, business taxes, and Matrix Experiments Lain. Recently, I had a bit of a problem: I needed to buy a handheld vacuum. Easy, you might say: Stop by Wal-Mart or Target. That's the problem: I don't shop at Target or Wal-Mart. This is not due to a "big companies are evil" mentality; I happily shop at department stores and order from Amazon.com. But both of these companies have done things I find distasteful. The Wall Street Journal has reported memos from senior management, telling stores that if any employee tries to form a union, that employee is to be "made redundant" (e.g., fired) as soon as that can be done without raising eyebrows. That's illegal, besides being nasty and unpleasant. Last Christmas, senior management at Target sent a memo to stores telling them they were to not allow Salvation Army reps in front of their stores, as they "might make customers uncomfortable." Might. They received no complaints; it's just a possibility. What concerns me about these memos is that they seem indicative of the overall style of management at these stores. They're not simply isolated incidents; this seems to be how senior management at these stores normally operate. So, I refuse to buy from them. I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and found my handheld vacuum there. Consumers have so many choices these days that companies now have to be aware of their behavior. Everyone sends messages. Five years ago, this was inconceivable: The world changes faster than we realize. How does one make oneself change the world? I don't mean to ask how one would take over the world, or push the world in a given direction. I mean: Most people I know have at least one idea, one dream that would change the world. A service to provide, a product to sell, a helping hand to hold out. How does one go about making this actually happen? Because it has start within the self. Nobody else is going to do it, obviously. So how does one make oneself into the person who would do this Great Thing? David Allen suggests that one of the best ways is to identify two things: (1) Exactly what you want to accomplish, and (2) the next physical, real-world action that you need to take to accomplish it. That "next action" might be cruising the web for similar services. It might be a phone call. It might be half an hour of concentrated brainstorming. Whatever, as long as it's something that will move you one step forward towards the goal. And when you're done with that, you can move on to the next action. I tend to agree, and I notice how true it's been with Otherspace. I wanted to make beautiful, life-affirming animation. So, after joking around with a friend about an animation idea, I wrote it down. Then I wrote a detailed script. Then I drew out each shot on paper. Then I called local colleges to see if they could recommend art students who would help me. Then I met with art students and gave them work to do. And suddenly, I was making animation. PointlessWasteOfTime.com has posted an excellent article entitled, A Gamer's Manifesto, listing "20 things gamers want" from game developers. Lots of swearing and stuff, but excellent reading about simply poor design decisions, and a few forehead-slapping obvious solutions to pervasive problems. I saw the completion of two things this weekend: the Star Wars prequels and Mobile Suit Gundam Seed. An interesting juxtaposition. The Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith screening was fun mainly for all the things George Lucas didn't do. SW has become something so far beyond Lucas himself that much of my enjoyment of the films come from the little things created by CG artists or fans. The screening was full of an excited buzz, and when the "Long Time Ago" title came up, everyone cheered and hollered. Throughout the movie, Yoda received several rounds of applause. That made the movie much more fun. And it was little bits of the movie that I really enjoyed, much more so than Lucas' dialogue or plot. Obi-Wan travels to some...planet...or other to track down General Grievous. Okay, fine, whatever. But that lizard thing Obi-Wan rode was an amazing sight, a perfectly realized creature straight from Ray Harryhausen's imagination. Anakin and Obi-Wan are fighting over lava. Okay, great, nicely done. But it's the little worker droid that flies up next to them, takes one look, breeps in alarm and flies away, that sells it. This is not to suggest that the film's plot or actors are poor; everyone does a fine job (though to my surprise, I found Natalie Portman's performance mediocre; she was much better as the leader of a resistance than as a doting wife). But that's all it was: fine jobs. Good work, and all that. It's like a line drawing: the edges define the beauty of the work, not the blank spaces in between. Gundam Seed had similar problems, really. Characters are introduced, then have almost nothing to do for ten episodes, other than exist as characters to cut to and hear their shocked intakes of breath. The story itself is a borrowed collage of early Gundam storylines, which is enjoyable to a point. At some point, I would have liked to see some originality, if just in exploring the consequences of these borrowed plot elements. But if nothing else, Seed demonstrates tremendous respect for its characters. It makes you want certain characters to get back together or have a greater role, then grants those desires as appropriate. Several great characters die, but even their deaths feel right. Death is an important part of Seed and Gundam in general. Characters die. Good characters die. And they tend to die in ways that are important. Very few characters die pointlessly, and even when they do, that's also used to drive the other characters. I'm reminded of a quote by Chiaki J. Konaka: "Just as there is no such thing as a meaningless life, there is no such thing as a meaningless death....[In writing Digimon Tamers,] I felt that we must not treat death itself lightly." But it's the little things. After two important characters are finally reunited and achieve a certain peace with each other, one speaks to the other by having his Gundam's hand clasp the shoulder of the other's Gundam. It's an intimate, brotherly gesture. What a wonderful way to show that these characters had re-connected. All in all, I saw two great endings this weekend. Can't complain. As is typical, I haven't been posting here much mainly because little of note has happened in my life lately. I tend to post more when I'm extremely busy. Saturday was a bit of a downer—my allergies flared up, and while the Otherspace meeting went well, I felt unpleasant throughout it. I then went to Redemption, which was a lot of fun, though I was rather tired for that too. But I started role-playing with a few friends at the tail end of the Redemption meeting. I'm running a game set in a Cowboy Bebop-like world, in which the players are working their way up through the mafia. I'm a scared and excited GM, as I have miniscule experience with tabletop RPGs at all (I only attended half a dozen sessions of one game that never went anywhere), but the other participants have no experience at all, so I'm the natural choice. Everyone seems to be having fun, though. I spent all day Sunday at home, tearing through minor chores (house cleaning, etc.). Experienced the unique frustration of returning a phone call only to realize that I didn't have the appropriate person's phone number stored anywhere (Brennen, in this case). All these storage devices and not one of them "caught" that phone number. Today was extremely quiet at work, which was a nice break. I should get much more work for the rest of the week, and I'm looking forward to that. I don't like being bored, especially when I'm being paid to do something. How would you like a webpage that links to, in total, over one million free mp3s? Here you are. Last night was Errands Night, in which I give up any hope of productivity at home and spend the evening striding down aisles and trying to coax smiles out bored clerks. Really, I do; I look them in the eyes and smile genuinely. Usually, they smile back, though sometimes it's a nervous smile, as though expecting this to be a prelude to my head splitting open and launching a brain-devouring proboscis at them. I don't want to pull them into the abyss of a Conversation With A Complete Stranger (which is a great title for a book); I just want to insert a slightly less boring, slightly more happy moment into their day. Anyvay. I came out of Home Depot with a few things and was metaphorically slapped in the face with a cloud. This Home Depot sits atop a hill that overlooks several miles of town, so most of one's vision is taken up by sky anyway. But this was a huge battleship of a cloud, flared with indistinct tentacles, glowing with a purple aura. Amazing thing. I glanced around at the ten or so people in the parking lot. Nobody else was even looking at the sky. Everyone had their heads down, hurrying to their SUVs (mostly), wrapped up in their own thoughts. How sad. I'm always a little awed by the pervasive optimism of early science fiction art. It's not that they suggested that space travel would be easy, or loads of fun. There were plenty of dangers, and the astronauts were portrayed more often as stoic, serious men than as grinning explorers. But there was a sense in this art that space exploration was a fundamentally good, noble thing. I'm thinking about this because I was directed to Space Art in Children's Books, a wonderful example of what I'm talking about. Sure, some of the details are wildly inaccurate, but then, details often are. What's more remarkable is the pervasive positive tone. It feels as though the artists are whispering, "This may be dangerous, and costly. But it's important." My laptop is back from the shimmering halls of Apple Repair, and the drive now works like a champ, based on a few tests. I inserted Gundam Seed disc 8 as my initial test and was suddenly seized by the icy hand of fear: That's a good disc! What if the drive is still bad? I should test it with throwaway discs, not good ones! Advice I should have listened to before sending the laptop away, because it came back without the disc that was stuck in the drive. It's nowhere in the packing materials. And it's important, too: it's the play disc for Neverwinter Nights. This disc must be in the drive when I play NWN. I don't know what to do, short of calling Apple. Even if I do call Apple, what can they do? "<click> Attention all repair personnel. Would you please check your desks for a Neverwinter Nights CD? Thank you." Even so, I feel that I should call them. Perhaps tonight. By then, the laptop should be restored, as I'm iteratively running my Super Restore script. I ran it first last night, one command at a time, fixing things. When that was done, I found some significant problems (skip the rest of this paragraph if you're uninterested in geeky details). In particular, when you extract a backup, all the files are owned by whoever extracted them. I don't know how to preserve ownership of files within backup files. This is a problem when files are extracted by an administrator user, originally owned by someone else, then a different user tries to execute or access them. My current solution is to change ownership of all applications, animation files, and web files to my primary user account, as that's the user who usually uses everything. In any event, I ran it again this morning, and when I left for work it was still restoring my 13 GB of music. It should certainly be left in a better state than it was before. Yesterday was a fine day. After a quick meal, I looked at the lawn and noticed that it had grown enough to need a quick mow, and I'd just received a new plant in the mail—Zebra Grass, an ornamental, bushy grass that I plan to put in the front of the townhouse. So, I decided I'd spend some time gardening. I mowed the lawn and trimmed various tufts of grass that the lawnmower couldn't reach. I then planted the Zebra Grass, re-filled the bird feeder, and washed my front walkway. And it wasn't even 8:00 yet. So I went inside and grappled with Super Restore, then printed off a short story of mine and mailed it to Realms of Fantasy. I'd like to re-edit another short story in time for writing group in a week, but I don't know if I'll have the time. Saturday saw an incredible Otherspace Productions meeting. The entire studio met at GMU, where I laid out the storyboards and guided the crew through it, explaining each scene and soliciting comments. People had lots of great ideas, and after the initial shock at the scale of an animation five times longer than our previous project, became increasingly excited. The most reserved person was actually volunteering for things by the end. So on the way back, I let out a Howard Dean Yell. This is working! I've built an animation crew. Today was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky, balmy temperature, and occasional breezes just strong enough to swoop into your lungs and remind you that you're alive. I spent much of the day with my Mom in celebration of Mother's Day, wandering her amazing garden and just talking. Had a great time. Got home and took care of a few random things, including more work on Super Restore. Super Restore is the code name for a project that I've been working on for several weeks now. I'm already backing up all my user files and documents. Super Restore will take a compeltely clean computer with just the OS install, and will restore all my user files so that the computer will look exactly like it did when I performed the backup. All my preferences should be restored, too. So today I built a skeleton of the restore script, which will take my backups and restore them onto a laptop. I'm sure there will still be a lot to tweak once I do this. Once I get my laptop back, I want to test this repeatedly, and re-test it every six months or so. I intend to no longer fear even catastrophic computer failure. I should be able to completely restore my total user environment within a few hours of a hard disk erasure. Wouldn't that be cool? I've gained some perspective this week. I took my laptop (Navi) in to the Apple Store on Thursday, to see if they could remove the CD that the laptop insists isn't in the drive. The tech was my ideal; even though he was swamped, he helped everyone as equally as possible, while being consistently and genuinely friendly and helpful. He ran a few tests and promptly agreed that the drive was borked. This meant sending it out for a roughly one week repair, which frustrated me a bit, but I could deal with that. I arrived home to discover a note from UPS. The driver had tried to deliver my copy of OS X Tiger, but I wasn't home. Fair enough; I went home early today just so I could be around when the note indicated the driver would be back. So I checked my e-mail and browse online comics for awhile at home, then went outside...to find another UPS sticker on my door. I was fifteen feet from the door the whole time, in a completely silent house, and hadn't heard a sound. The driver had arrived and just slapped a sticker on my door, without knocking. Worse, this was the final delivery attempt. So I called the phone number listed on the ticket, which told me to check their website. Fine. I went to UPS.com and typed in the tracking number...to which the site responded that it had no information on that tracking number. Great. I re-called the phone number and got through to a live representative (within a minute, too!) who informed me that the package would now be held for five days at a facility about half an hour from my house (though close to work). So I got really frustrated and bummed around the house for awhile. Didn't want to do anything, just sulk. And then it hit me. I was depressed because one of my four computers is out for repair, and the delivery of an OS upgrade that I only plan to install on one of my computers is delayed for a few days, so I'll have to drive five minutes from my house to pick it up. And I started to laugh. Now, I'm good. I got quite a bit accomplished today, too: cleaned house, cleaned my truck and checked fluids, read the Bible (2 Peter and 1 John), and baked a dozen mini apple pies. Not bad. Just climbed into my soft, soft bed after a long talk with my roommate and a night out at writer's group. The writer's group went very well; six of us (out of seven) showed up, and we critiqued bits of two books plus my latest short story. I'm drifting back into a writing phase, too, so I hope to build on the adrenaline rush of this meeting to write a lot over the next few weeks. I'd like to revise my latest short story, rewrite another, and write a lot more of the VR story. Meanwhile, I've been thinking a lot about my productivity of late. I have a huge list of things to do, and I wonder how wise I am to maintain so many projects that I can't quite keep up with all of them. On the other hand, it's my nature to juggle many projects at once. Should I simply reduce my commitments? I don't know; that feels boring. Partly, I wonder if this frustration is due to my rhythms. I rarely progress steadily on my projects; I work on them in phases (as described in the first paragraph of this entry). But that means I'm always roaring ahead in a couple of areas while others languish, so at any given time I feel like I'm doing too much on some projects and not enough on others. Perhaps I simply need to gauge my effectiveness at longer intervals. 43 Folders writes about Your Personal Suck, i.e., "You totally suck at something, and it secretly drives you nuts every g%^d@*ned day." Find something that you really want to improve, and improve it. The personal suck that's been gnawing at me most lately is my lack of discipline on lots of small projects. I remember to clean the house and work on Otherspace, but I don't keep up with practicing Japanese or drawing. I'd like to find ways of integrating those into my daily life. I've thought of rewarding myself for doing these things, but I resist that because of the scale of juggling rewards for half a dozen little daily practices. I'm pretty good at doing things at certain times of the day, though that seems to have reached a practical limit. I can do a bunch of things in the morning before I go to work, but I get home at odd hours. I don't have an easy answer, but I'm contemplating possible solutions. Yesterday, four of us at Otherspace met at GMU in the pouring rain, then drove to a nearby Japanese restaurant, ate sushi, and plotted the future of Otherspace. I described my plans for the next animation, and my desire to make Otherspace into a world-class animation studio. Everyone else was excited and gave off an aura of being ready to go. I think we're really going to do this. "This" is Summer Storm, a five-minute short animation that will showcase our talents and blow away anyone who watches it. We've set a preliminary timeframe of one year to complete it, and we're planning a trip to the beach as a "location shoot." My mind is still reeling from all this. My plans are actually coming to life, and it's happening in a way that's not scary or weird. This all feels so good. Watched recently: If you ever plan on baking with Ghirardelli chocolate, you might want to know that Ghirardelli baking chocolate chips are delicious, and quite useless in baking. They have a melting point of about 80 degrees, so that once you start baking your cookies or what-have-you, the chips will remain melted for the next 29 hours. Oh, and by "double chocolate" Ghirardelli really means "dark chocolate." Just thought you might want to know. Tuesday night, I was invited to attend the high school graduation of two friends of mine. The ceremony was traditional in every way, from Pomp and Circumstance to the throwing of the hats. The only time I was really intrigued was during an amazing speech by a graduating senior, in which he pointed out that these students started their high school experience a few days before 9/11. He was a great speaker. Tuesday night dropped me into a completely different world than my normal one. I was in a room full of several hundred excited young men and women, freshly minted, ready to get into the world. They were starting their adult journeys. They were brimming with smiles, excitement, energy, and enthusiasm. A thrilling cocktail of human rocket fuel. What a great way to spend an evening! My desire for a stable routine has become even stronger at work. After weeks of comparatively little work, this week my to-do list has multiplied four-fold. There are sudden fires everywhere—one immediately resolvable thanks to some work I helped push through recently—and I have to keep on top of it. Thank goodness for GTD. I actually am on top of all my tasks, to a degree that sometimes amazes me. I spent yesterday playing catch-up at home, after the Otherspace Productions beach trip on Saturday, Father's Day at my parents' house Sunday afternoon, and a going-away party for a friend Sunday evening. In fact, I felt a little sick yesterday, and I think it was exhaustion. The beach trip was practically perfect in every way, to quote Mary Poppins, except for getting lost a few times on the way down. This was not completely a vacation; we spent much of the afternoon taking photos of the ocean and videotaping an animator walking down the beach. Our next animation is set on the beach, so this will all be useful for that. Everything else went well. We had a good time sending off our friend, and though it was sad to see him go, he's going because he wants to and believes it's the best thing for him. Won't argue with that. "Nowhere along the way does anyone emphasize the importance of social, interpersonal, and emotional skills in determining our success in professional life. Then the day arrives when we make a terrifying discovery: The world is filled with people." And suddenly, it's beautiful. After a week of rather punishing heat by June's standards—highs in the upper 90's—it's now comfortable and breezy, occasional clouds drifting lazily across the baby blue sky. I'm now extra grateful for the hour I spent in the garden yesterday evening, trimming lawn edges and generally cleaning up. I'm now enjoying it, as I recline on the front window seat and glance out at the lawn. It's been a great week at work; I helped track down information for a certification the company seeks, and the head of the effort praised me often, especially to upper management. It was interesting work, too; asking people about how we do things, writing up brief process descriptions (how to explain this with minimal words?), marking up spreadsheets, and so forth. And it helped to know that this entire job would be done today; I could focus intently on such a short-term goal. Unfortunately, my personal time suffered somewhat. Part of that was caused by exhaustion upon arriving home; I'm not used to that sort of pace at work. But also, I was just a little lazy this week. I spent a lot of time chatting with friends online. This is a fine and good thing in moderation, but this was not moderation. In fact, I just e-mailed them that I'm going to have to switch offline at 9:00 p.m. That'll give me time to write, draw, and read before going to bed. I just feel a need to make really good use of my time. I've entered a new phase in my understanding of the Getting Things Done system. For the past few weeks, I've been dumping everything into my system. If I notice something I want to buy, I add it to my "To Buy" list. If I think of something I'd like to do, I add it to one of my lists. As a result, when I have free time, I can't scour my brain for something to do. All my projects are out of my head, in my system. My brain literally doesn't remember them, at least not for immediate recall. This created a curious sense of limbo; I was so used to being pulled by all the strands of projects in my mind. Now, I have to rely on my system. This is a good thing, really, as I can concentrate on one thing at a time. Been watching quite a bit of anime lately. I finished Zeta Gundam, which was a brutal but satisfying experience. Almost everyone dies at the end, but in true Gundam tradition, their deaths are all meaningful. Characters sacrifice themselves for their beliefs. Similarly for the movie Char's Counterattack, though it also has the benefit of beautiful animation and direction. Finally, we get to see what giant robot combat in space is supposed to look like. I now know exactly how fighting in space 's supposed to feel in the Gundam universe. Also finished Gundam Seed, which I greatly enjoyed partly because of its cheesiness and partly because of its solid storytelling. They managed to take a jumble of elements from early Gundam shows and forge a solid story out of them. Last month, I spent several hours going through a rather frustrating process: I changed all my passwords on all my computers and websites. I now do this every three months. This was prompted mainly from my webserver, which has been hacked twice in the past couple of years. I know it's important to change passwords occasionally, but I never bothered to until I lost data on hacked websites. There's an unexpected benefit to this: I'll occasionally be reminded to return to a website I haven't visited in a long time, and my current password won't work. I'll try previous passwords until I can get in, then write down this new website. I now have a comprehensive list of sites that require a password, and I've closed accounts on a few that I no longer need. So, I've eliminated a few repositories of my personal information that had been floating around. I remember my passwords by having different levels of passwords: I have one password for throwaway accounts that don't keep any personal or financial information (such as forums and games), another for financial websites, and another for e-mail. I only have a few passwords that I use every day; the rest (for things like MySQL databases) are at least written down. All my passwords are currently written on a sheet of paper that I've hidden in my house. Moreover, all my passwords use upper-case letters, lower-case letters, and numbers; Almost all are at least eight characters long, and the very important ones use special characters (e.g., *, #, %) if possible. Is this a pain? A bit. But I feel a lot more secure. I think it's worth the trouble. Note there's more VR story. I've also uploaded all of the VR story so far to the VR story section of my writing website. The VR story is getting difficult to write. I wanted it to be a story I could just write without worrying about an intricate plot; nevertheless, a plot has evolved. And now I have a lot more that has to happen before I can finish the story, but I almost want to throw in the towel rather than spend time on the complexities of a plot for a story that's supposed to be an off-the-cuff action/adventure. I'm cleaning out some old webpage on this site, and instead of deleting them or making them individual pages, I thought I'd post them here for posterity. And here's one now! Dramatic Theory and Video Games Dramatic theory is hard to research. There seems to be very little material readily available. As a result, distilling dramatic theory down to a single reed-thin theorem is difficult. I'm going to try anyway. Good drama results from a certain pattern in the number of unanswered questions in existence in a work over time. In a very short work, that pattern is a simple peak: the number of unanswered questions rises over time until the climax near the end, and then drops back down to zero. Normally, however, that same pattern is maintained in general, but is supplemented by one level of recursion: small patterns of peaks within the larger pattern. The funny part of that theorem -- which is hardly "reed-thin," now that I look at it -- is the concept of "unanswered questions." What exactly does this refer to? It depends partly on the work. For example, a console RPG's unanswered questions usually center around the survival of the characters. A murder mystery novel's unanswered questions usually center around the motivation, methods, and identity of the murderer. Fair enough. Now, let's apply this theorem to video games, particularly combat-oriented video games. What makes for a satisfying video game? Ignoring the overall trend towards a larger climax, satisfaction comes from a pattern of peaks and valleys in the player's experience. The player should be "scared" for awhile, then not-scared for awhile. Both of these phases should be of a reasonable size. In a simple combat-oriented game, one in which the player is fighting off other monsters, this concept can be implemented fairly easily, by keeping a running tally of the number of monsters that the player is fighting. Once the player has spent a certain amount of time fighting monsters, then no new monsters are generated nearby. Once the player has spent a certain amount of time without fighting, more monsters are generated. Note, importantly, that this does not imply X minutes fighting monsters, followed by exactly X minutes not fighting monsters, etc. There will be a significant period in which the player will finish up fighting the current set of monsters, and clear out any other monsters nearby. Similarly, just because monsters are being generated nearby, does not necessarily mean that the player is immediately fighting them. Obviously, this is a brute-force implementation, but it serves well as an example. Spent a fair chunk of last night cleaning up this very website, finding little bugs and squashing them (an ugly metaphor, but apt). This is part of my desire to get all of my web material cleaned up, darn it, and into a system whereby I can check it all and keep it all clean. I'd like to take regular sweeps of my sites to clean up little problems before they require a few hours of tweaking. A good example from last night was a webpage footer I created about five years ago, back when my personal website was much smaller than it is now. This footer used neato tricks to display the last time the page was updated, automatically. Very handy: You could tell how old a page was, without any extra work on my part when I change it. Well, when I moved off of the server on which that trick worked, it stopped working. It hasn't worked since. But never removed those footers, and I used those pages to create other pages, until eventually those bad footers on dozens of pages. Ugh. Now that that's fixed, even if that sort of thing happens again, I want to catch it before it spreads. Thanks to my tickler file, I can do that.![[A tree I photographed]](/graphics/journal/cloudy_bare_tree.jpg)
![[Sausage and Mushroom Pizza]](/graphics/journal/mushroom_pizza.jpg)
![[A flower]](/graphics/journal/new_yellow_spring_bulb.jpg)
![[Godzillas Revenge]](/graphics/journal/godzillas_revenge.jpg)
![[Gantz]](/graphics/journal/gantz.jpg)
![[Something Wicked cover]](/graphics/journal/something_wicked_this_way_comes_cover.jpg)
![[IMAGE]](/graphics/journal/light_bulb.jpg){kind=small}
![[BBC Toons]](/graphics/journal/bbc_toons.jpg)
![[Legendz]](/graphics/journal/legendz.jpg)
![[Future Boy Conan image]](/graphics/journal/future_boy_conan.gif)
![[Zeta Gundam screenshot]](/graphics/journal/zeta_gundam.jpg)
![[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex screenshot]](/graphics/journal/ghost_in_the_shell-tv.jpg)
![[Wire]](/graphics/journal/red_and_yellow_wire.jpg)
![[Head Butler logo]](/graphics/journal/head_butler.jpg)
![[Tenchi, confused]](/graphics/journal/tenchi_confused.jpg)
"If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle [to avoid repeat surgery, which is probable], says Dr. Edward Miller, dean and CEO at Johns Hopkins. "And that's been studied over and over and over again....Even though they know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can't."
Change or DIE. What if you were given that choice? For real. What if it weren't just the rhetoric that confuses corporate performance with life or death, but actual life or death? Yours. What if a doctor said you had to make tough changes in the way you think and act—or your time would end soon? Could you change? Here are the scientifically studied odds: nine to one. That's nine to one against you.
![[Atom logo]](/graphics/journal/atom_logo.gif){kind=logo}
![[Christina during an Otherspace Productions meeting]](/graphics/journal/christina_at_otherspace.jpg)
![[Manga sign in Borders]](/graphics/journal/borders_manga.jpg)
![[Darth Vader]](http://www.ecrannoir.fr/films/starwars/opti/hom04.jpg)
![[Gundam Seed]](http://daily.greencine.com/archives/gundam-seed.jpg)
