Unfinished Post: The Humble eBook Bundle

Blogging is a lot of work, and time-consuming when I'm not just barfing my stream-of-thought directly onto the page. I've got a good dozen or so half-finished drafts sitting in my queue (and even more started-but-couldn't-get-past-the-second-sentence drafts), that are now very out-dated and unlikely to ever see the light of day.

My most recent (ha!) draft is about the first Humble eBook Bundle, which I started back in...... aaand I've just broken the date stamp on it by hitting Edit instead of Preview, so I don't know when I started that post. It was probably two months or so after the first eBook Bundle, therefore [googling...] 10 months ago? ^^;; The post is still only half-finished, but I figured I'd share it anyway, because it's not ever going to get posted otherwise. Book reviews are always relevant, right?

Humble eBook Bundle

I have finally gone through at least the first chapters of all the books that were part of the Humble eBook Bundle's initial lineup.

My two favourites of the bunch are Old Man's War and Pump Six and Other Stories. Surprisingly, both of these are debut novels for their respective authors. Surprising because they don't feel anything like the work of a newbie, but of people who have a very good grasp of storytelling.

Old Man's War is about a future where, at the age of 75, you can choose to leave Earth, permanently, and enlist in the Colonial Defense Forces. The CDF has technology that  somehow allows a senior citizen to become a lethal fighting force. After your term of service, you are given a homestead on a colonial planet, and a chance to start your life over new. Old Man's War follows the protagonist as he cuts his final ties to his life on Earth, and discovers what the universe is really like. Interesting technology, a lot of action, solid plot. I also liked most of the characters, though the fact that the protagonist is an Invincible-Hero-That-Continuously-Defies-All-Odds is a little annoying. Nonetheless, loved the book, and have started reading the sequels :)

Pump Six and Other Stories is a collection of short stories, most of them about dystopian futures, and the everyday life of trying to survive in them. I found the first story to be slow, especially after the more action-y books I had been reading, but once I got into the mood of the stories, they were all very good reads. What makes the stories so powerful are the lines connecting these worlds to ours. That is, the idea that if we aren't careful, these stories could become reality.

<...some unfinished thought about world-building here...>

Those last two sentences need some serious rewriting, but there you go. Old Man's War and Pump Six. Read them.

My TT-RSS Feeds

I use Tiny Tiny RSS now—I'm still angry(×2) at you, Google—and lately I've been poking around at the article publishing feature. It's a lot like sharing from Google Reader, from before sharing got gimped. It allows me to share articles to a feed that others can subscribe to, and also lets me add my comments to the articles. Where it is lacking (by design) is in the one-sidedness of the commenting (others can't comment back), and feed discovery (i.e. other people being able to find this feed). The latter is why I'm posting here: I figure the only people who are likely to see this post are those of you who actually use RSS feeds. Sooo... here be my share feed.

I have also recently discovered the Share Anything feature (must enable the bookmarklet plugin for this). It lets me add things to my published feeds directly, instead of needing to share someone else's article. I haven't used it yet, but there have been plenty of times before where I have wanted to share [amusing thing] without all the extra commentary from the article I found it in, so this should fill that gap nicely.

Looking up the links for this post also led me to Generated Feeds, which I sort of knew about from flailing about the TT-RSS interface, but what was new to me is the ability to specify filters in the URL. It makes it possible to do things like sharing just the published articles from my Web Comics feeds. It's not something I see myself using, but who knows?

Google Plus is pretty much dead now—plus having to think about who I wanted to share something to every time (and the 5+ clicks needed to do so) was getting annoying—so hopefully this works out better. Though, being one-sided, if it doesn't work out, I'll probably never know ^^;;

The Secret World: Subscriber Numbers

Apologies for all the TSW posts, but I'm obsessed with this game :D

Unofficial subscriber numbers have shown up for TSW, and they aren't looking so great. The estimate is about 50k subscribers, which surprised me. I had expected a 6-digit number, though not as high as Funcom's expectations (up to 490k subs). The huge gap in actual subs makes me a sad panda.

While I'm aware that it's a bit of a niche game (modern setting, atypical character progression, requires thinking + knowledge from outside the game), the blog posts I've seen about the game have all been gushing positive, so I had assumed that the game would have a pretty solid following. I guess many more people were just indifferent to the game, or maybe they're like me, and are waiting for a better time (and price point) to dive into it.

I hope this doesn't affect Funcom's ability to keep the game running. I don't know when I'll burn out on my current games, but I'm hoping TSW will still be waiting for me when I get there.
 

MMO Melting Pot: The Secret World

MMO Melting Pot did a round-up of posts about the TSW celebration weekend, which more or less covers my experience from the weekend, and much of my lost post. Worth checking out if you're curious about the game.

Some additional thoughts on the game:

• The game's atmosphere is very grim/creepy/scary. Not the kind of game I can play on my own (played with a friend over the weekend). But I get freaked out playing the second half of Portal, so your mileage may vary.
• Solo instances need to allow other party members to join in. See above.
• The game ran well despite my computer being below spec. Graphics quality was low, and load times were very long, but the gameplay itself was smooth. Unlike a certain other celestial conflict MMO. Still bitter over that one.
• I like idea of the ability wheel, and the idea that you can eventually train all the abilities. I like being able to switch my skills around whenever I want, and if I want to try a different play-style, I can do that without needing to make a new character. It's just a matter of collecting enough skill points to train in the new weapon/abilities.
• Trying to see the synergies between abilities can be difficult, because you can only pull up the descriptions of a specific subset of abilities at any one time. Some abilities build resources, some consume resources, and cause status effects, and some take advantage of status effects. It's all written in text though, with no other visual cues, so you have to hold it all in your head while paging through abilities. It's a bit overwhelming for a newbie.
• Agartha is really pretty. It's the hub realm with the world tree that connects to various places and times of the "surface" world. It's all bright and glowing and a little steampunky, with a Victorian era conductor and his two giant automaton aides. Makes me want to check out City of Steam, hehehe.
• Love that you can customize your clothes right at character creation. The gear pieces with stats on them are all talismans/accessories and such that aren't visible, so your look isn't tied to your stats.
• Assault rifles are for healing. Who knew?
• Facial expressions and natural body movement in cutscenes, +10. Creepy eyes, -1. Might be related to my below-spec video card though.

No plans to get get the game at the moment, as there's a game with pandas on the horizon with my name on it, but I might consider it after my next computer upgrade. And after conning others into getting the game too (See point #1 above).

The Secret World: Summary

So I had a really long post here reviewing The Secret World and what it is and what I like about it and how easily I get freaked out and how you need to use your brain and also the internet, but Blogger ate it and won't give it back, and I am sad now and don't want to rewrite it.

In summary, I like it, but it's scary playing solo, and my computer needs an upgrade.

And Blogger needs to make it not so easy to nuke posts.

In Which Lose My Esteem for Penny Arcade

I stopped actively following PA a few years ago, as their brand of humour isn't really my thing, so I've only just come across this controversy today. It started in August of 2010, escalated in a very tasteless way, was never apologized for, and seemingly continues to this day. I have lost a lot of respect for PA now, and for Gabe in particular, as he has done little to temper those that are acting in his support (in a very bad way), and also continues to aggravate the issue nearly 2 years after the original comic (see Tentacle Bento). /sadface

Other thoughts:
- Thankful that none of the guys I know are so bullheadedly insensitive. <3's for all :)
- PAX is now tainted to me. Regardless of how awesome it was when I went, there are now associations that I can't un-read.
- I have never considered myself a feminist. I mean, we won, right? Women now have equal rights, we teach girls that they can do anything the boys can, etc., etc. Feminism now is just trying to grab for more than our fair share, right? But the more I read about sexism in gaming (and elsewhere), the more I realize how very, very, deeply ingrained misogyny (and also gender issues as a whole) is in Western society.
- Thankful that I have only had light brushes with sexual harassment in gaming. Hoping it stays that way. I tend to play games that aren't predicated on player conflict (PvP), which probably helps a lot.
- Hoping to see sexism on its way out within my lifetime.

Google Reader--

So it's back to Blogger now that I can't share on Google Reader, and the people I intended to share with don't use G+.

First off... monochrome? Really? What happened to the Google that would run numerous A/B tests for the smallest colour changes? I'll admit that the old way was a bit extreme, but straight up ignoring the user experience isn't any better.

I also don't see how the new Reader in any way provides better integration with Google+, or vice versa. Let's recap: people petition Google to allow sharing items from Google Reader into their G+ stream; Google revamps Reader, taking out the sharing elements, no RSS functionality added to G+; People still cannot post items from their Reader into G+, and now they also can't share, period. GG, Google.

Not a happy camper.