I just realized, thirty-six hours after writing it, that a better title for my last post would have been “The Slow Zone.”
SEE?!
Page 30 of 181
I am not a fast reader
Time it took me to read A Deepness in the Sky: about a year.
Time it took me to realize that the plot is an endorsement of free-market capitalism to an almost Randian degree (minus the class issues): about six months more.
Time it took me to grasp that the localizers in the book are a pretty clear metaphor for the actors in an idealized anarcho-capitalist society: eight months after that.
At this rate, I should be really catching on to some of the subtler symbolism ten years after I’m dead.
Dear the entirety of the medium/genre formerly known as “performance art”
Thank you! That’s enough. You can go home now. You are, at last, demonstrably irrelevant.
My posts aren’t showing up on LJ. I don’t know why.
Which means that a bunch of you haven’t seen the last Proserpina story, or at least the last within the context of Anacrusis. (And indeed won’t see this, since the NFD feed isn’t working either.) At 65 entries over 29 months, it’s the longest continuous series I’ve written, and at 6565 words, one of my longer stories.
It needs to be longer yet–I haven’t come close to answering several of the questions posed in the very first one, much less figured out what happens to Radiane and Elijah. Also the next part is basically Proserpina Down Under, which will be difficult to write until I manage to get to Australia. But none of these things will be going in 101-word boxes.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the story so far, and that you’ll find its next incarnation an improvement.
Thanks to everybody who commented on the project management software entry, by the way
A few weeks ago I attended my second Go Play Northwest, and as before, it was one of the best weekends of my year. I played a lot of games, and wrote up reports on some of them, including Attack of the Crimson Apes (with Danger Patrol), Steam Tank versus Marble Army (with Principia), and Saga of the Goblin Headbag (with Lady Blackbird). I also ran a game of Rubble (discussed), and played my second game of Mythender (discussed, although it may not make any sense). I played just enough of a game of Anima Prime to make me want more.
Finally, I played in a game of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach adapted to take place on Wall Street in 1986, which was very funny and which we will never discuss again.
I did manage to go the entire weekend without playing a single game with Jackson Tegu or Joe McDonald, which, I mean, what the hell guys. They were (along with John Aegard and the Richmond-Smiths) two of my most potent catalysts in getting involved with the Pacific Northwest gaming scene, and now they’ve retreated back to their frozen Canadia. This will be rectified, gentlemen!
GPNW alone is enough to make me reconsider moving to Seattle every year. Then I try to get anywhere in its blighted hellscape of streets and quickly discard that notion.
Why aren’t you reading Bobwhite?
Magnolia Porter is better at character-based humor than I will ever be and she is, like, twenty. READ BOBWHITE GODDAMMIT.
Do ba doo ba deedeet! Doo ba da doo.
Matt twittered this thing called the ToneMatrix by André Michelle, which is a nifty Flash piece that combines a musical sequencer with visual effects. It was interesting to play with because I started by making what I thought would be interesting musical patterns, and they did in fact sound pretty and interesting, and then I realized that you can pretty much just scribble any old thing on there and it still sounds good because it’s all keyed together. It’s the harmonica of Flash music sequencers.
But! That same fact means that you can have some faith that, if you copy any arbitrary simple black-and-white pattern onto it, it won’t sound awful. I’ve been thinking about pixel art for a secret project anyway, so I started drawing some 8-bit sprites onto it. You can highlight and copy one of the strings of numbers below, then go to the ToneMatrix page, right-click on it and hit paste see it yourself.
I think the fire flower is the prettiest!
- 0,12288,18432,85744,110476,130366,126766,63750,30982,63750,126302,130916,118092,84180,20576,12288
- 3968,7392,30800,38984,68808,69572,81892,68852,67708,79996,67700,68840,40904,31120,4320,3968
- 960,17456,47112,71952,77984,86160,127240,69636,69636,127240,86160,77984,71952,47112,17456,960
- 7168,8960,82048,49216,57504,12176,76040,42504,26120,108808,20368,8352,8256,24704,123648,7168
- 48,62408,68740,69636,40964,24584,49668,82178,81922,49154,16610,17412,8424,6148,1924,120
- 0,3584,768,7552,10320,18528,21184,4224,4224,21184,18528,10320,7552,768,3584,0
- 101888,97160,68254,68850,69780,74228,84466,87330,71138,81856,51072,51072,74496,79128,85862,115010
- 60816,118200,104892,113596,113556,105428,121812,56024,40152,7752,23624,18700,10540,47400,114088,101680
- 4672,1042,8872,1344,2720,38720,11920,24424,6096,7120,28648,1936,23360,1152,43304,144
A Selection of Weapons from the Version of Duke Nukem 3D I dreamt last night
1. Ice Claws
2. Hand Freezing Positions
3. Spare Clip
4. Brazee
5. Luger
6. Snake Pose
7. Panda Pose
8. Tiger Pose
9. Stop Dancing
It should be noted that I almost always seemed to find myself wielding the Stop Dancing, even when I was trying to use the Brazee (a street in Portland). I think my brain is trying to tell me something.
Project Management Software Survey
Hi. Do you work in an information-based company? Do you use some form of project management software? I would like your input.
At my job, we use a motley collection of software–a hosted timesheet solution with integrated project tracking, Outlook, and most recently Bugzilla. Because I work remotely, my exposure to these is actually pretty minimal, which can cause problems.
I’m curious about what features of project management software you or your colleagues actually use. Do you just create projects and subprojects and assign them to people? Do you track hours or just tasks completed? Do you use Gantt charts or critical paths? Automated risk highlighting? What features do you personally depend on, and which parts just seem like annoying busywork?
Comments are turned on for this post (for real this time), or you can email me.
The Brothers Bloom
I loved Brick so much that I wish I had more and better things to say about Rian Johnson’s follow-up movie. There were some beautiful shots and some very good gags, and it actually earned a little pathos by the end. But the cleverness was worn way too obviously, there was a surplus of voice-over, all the Double Shyamalans got old, I never stopped believing that Mark Ruffalo was Mark Ruffalo, and there were some distinctly Orientalist aspects to Bang Bang that made me uncomfortable.
On the other hand, I think it passes the Bechdel Test–Rinko Kikuchi and Rachel Weisz are actually the best parts of the movie. And the Brick cameos tickled me. And the movie at least had the sense to joke about its own very overt, very LOOK-HE’S-WEARING-A-WHITE-SUIT symbolism.
I don’t know! It was okay. I’d see it if I were you, and I hope Johnson’s next movie is just a little less ambitious, and meaner.