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.

FileMaker Variables

Me: Hmm... I need to store some information while I'm looping through records, but I don't want to act on this info until after I'm done looping. A local variable should do the trick.

FileMaker: wats a variable?

Me: Um. It's a symbol that can store values for a... wait, what? For serious?

FileMaker: oooh! I can store things! i haz fields for storing things!

Me: You mean columns?

FileMaker: no fields. fields r for storing things.

Me: Okay fine, fields. But fields are meant to hold data specific to the given record. I want to store information that isn't directly related to any record, and only for the duration of the script.

FileMaker: um um ummmm... oh! i noe! global field! :D

Me: Come again?

FileMaker: field haz same value for all records. u set value in dis record, and u get same value inn dat recorde.

Me: Really? All I'm looking for is a simple temporary place to store a value. Instead, you want me to go into the database schema (kicking everyone out of the DB), add in a new column. and update every record. All for what essentially acts as a global variable that will only be used by my one script? Are you kidding me?

FileMaker: *beaming* im so smrt!

Me: *facepalm*


---

Yes, newer versions of FileMaker understand variables. But this is what I get to work with, and it won't be changing any time soon. It's a little sad that FileMaker went the route of "global fields" before going for variables >.>

Looking forward to...

Cataclysm - 30 hours to go.
Holic - In its final arc! Series likely to end either this volume (19) or next? I didn't like the Holic Rou ending, I hope the "official" ending gives something better.
Dawn Treader - Hoping it lives up to the book.
Gate7 - New series from CLAMP, but still 3 months away :(

The Last Airbender

I watched it on the flight to HK. My expectations were low, as I had heard from everyone that it sucked. My expectations were not low enough.

I had assumed people were just hating because it couldn't match the scale and depth of the source material, since there's only 2 hours to cram in a season's worth of stuff. I'm generally okay with film adaptations taking a somewhat different interpretation, given that the story is still cohesive and well-executed.

Well-executed is key. The Last Airbender was not well-executed. It was like watching those video skits we made in highschool, but without the excuse of it being highschool. The dialogue was emotionless and forced, as if they were reading the script for the first time. That alone distracted me from any good points the movie might have had, for the rest of the movie. The action scenes provided some reprieve from the pained dialogue, but not much. As always, the scenes shown in trailers are the most interesting bits; the rest wasn't particularly impressive.

I watched Toy Story 3 immediately afterward, to cleanse my mental palette.

Despite general agreement that the movie was horrible, it looks like production of the second movie is going to get the green light. Apparently the film did well enough internationally to pass the $$ goal set by the studio. My theory is that the film was carried by countries where it was dubbed, thereby negating the crappiest aspect of the movie.

Japan Pictures

Japan Trip, 2010

A whirlwind bus tour through Kansai and Tokyo.

Mrow

Japan has the awesomest stuff.

TGIF

Normally Saturday is my catch-up-on-a-week's-worth-of-sleep day. I've had plans the last two Saturdays though, so I haven't been able to do that. As a result, I've been feeling like crap at work for the past week and some, even with 7-8 hours of sleep a night.

I was told in my Psych 101 class that there was a max limit on the total amount of sleep debt you can accumulate, but Wikipedia appears to disagree. I'm probably about 10 hours in debt right now, which works out to 2 Saturday's worth of sleeping in, while still getting 8 hours on weekdays... or 10 hours a night for the next week =/

I'm really looking forward to going home and crashing.

Reminiscing

I was looking at one of my old oil paintings the other day, and realized that I don't know how to do it anymore. Several years back, I started painting a scene of my backyard, to try and retain some oil painting ability. I lost interest after the first layer, and I think I've also lost my reference picture by now >.>

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure where my art supplies are at either. Do I even own a palette? And is the thinner still any good after all these years?

Il'y a des oiseaux... dans la fenêtre

From Unusual Words:

Defenestrate: To throw out of a window

I lol'ed. My office is really quiet >.>

(...Pamplemousse?)

Coffee <3

Ah, Coffee... mornings are so blurry without you.

PDF: Problematic Document Format

Apparently you can embed a lot of crap in PDF files.

I hate trying to open PDFs of Brampton Transit's route maps. It looks like it's composed of 50 layers of vectors. The layers cannot be manipulated to show only the route you want either, so I really don't see the point of keeping all the separate layers. Just flatten it all into a raster image and be done with it. As it is, everything is redrawn when scrolling around the map, which can be a painful experience on a slow computer.

On an entirely unrelated note, I was greeted with a sadly familiar smell when I walked into the office today: the magical blue smoke had been freed from my coworker's box :(

Who comes up with these names?

There's a new Gundam series airing right now. Guess what it's called?



That's right. Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn.

Excuse me while I go laugh in the corner.

Summer Wars

Summer Wars is an anime film from 2009. I found the Megatokyo rant to be fairly accurate, especially the bits about "an anime version of Second Life" and "networks don't work that that".

It also reminded me of one of the Digimon movies, particularly the design and animation style of avatars in the virtual world. I looked up the director after, surprise surprise. It was a good hour and 45 though, I'd definitely watch it again.

eBooks and Readers

I've been wanting an eBook reader lately. I started reading books again last summer, as something to do during lunch (I can't eat at my desk, and I've already devoured the newspaper during my break). I think the biggest reason for my wanting a eBook reader is that online stores are always "in stock", so to speak. The most convenient bookstore for me to frequent is a small Coles a block down from my office; however, being a small location they often don't have the items I'm looking for. The Chapters at Square One has much better stock, but it's very out of the way :(

A netbook or iPad is also a possibility, as I want to be able to write notes as well. Netbooks don't have as nice a form factor though, and to be sitting in the canteen with a mini-laptop seems overly geeky.

As for the iPad... it has 3 big turn-offs for me. One, it's a closed system. Software is only available through the Apple Store, which seems silly for what is essentially a tablet netbook. Getting data on/off the iPad requires iTunes, which is an extra layer of work that shouldn't be necessary. Two, jumping on the Apple bandwagon. Three, when the iPhone was first released, a much better version was released a mere 3 months later. I wouldn't be surprised if the iPad did the same, which is very much a de-motivator for buying one now.