Author: Jason

A City of Heroes

Gaming, Random Thoughts

CalvinMeeksThis is what regret feels like.

EverQuest wasn’t my first MMO, but it will probably always be my favorite because it gave me, at the time, exactly what I wanted and what I needed. Coming off of three years of hardcore Team Fortress playing, I found a new community. The game itself was only moderately fun, but what saved it were the people. I’ve been looking for that game ever since and haven’t found it again.

But in late 2003/early 2004, I was accepted into the beta for City of Heroes. While I never found the same type of community that I had in EQ, what I found was a game that inspired me. On many levels, the greatness of the game is that, despite what some theory-crafters out there will try to sell you, every character, no matter the build, is playable if you just learn how to play it. But what really sold me on the game, what caused that inspiration, was that the game allowed me to play in the way I wanted to play, even when that was different than everyone else.

To the right you’ll see a shot of one of my characters, Calvin Meeks, writer for The Front Page. He was an investigative journalist who knew no fear, and when he got in trouble wouldn’t hesitate to call in the big guns. For his entire career he never did a mission solo that required super powers, because he didn’t have any. He followed the leads and when violence was called for he phoned up one of the heroes he’d gotten to know while working the beat and together they would take down foes. It was strange and exciting to be able to play the game this way, to join a group and follow them into enemy territory like an embedded combat journalist.

Of course, I played City of Heroes normally as well. I had a few supers who ran around pounding bad guys into the dirt, but I was most excited to play Calvin. And I’d like to think that there are people out there who really enjoyed being the muscle for me.

Eventually, I got caught up in WoW and I wandered off through a series of games, each less satisfying than the one before, mostly because so many of them lacked the basic community that EverQuest and other early games had in spades. And now it just might be too late. NCsoft, faced with losses in other areas, have chosen to close Paragon Studios and to shut down City of Heroes. Efforts are being made to try to save the game, but I don’t hold out much hope.

I logged in last night to check out the protest, and found my old friends list filled with lit up names. I chatted with a few of them and we all had the same regret. “Why did I ever leave?”

If, by some miracle, the game is saved and stays online, I’ll be back. In fact, for the three months that remain, I’ll be there. I need to get in as much of this wonderful game as I can before it disappears forever.

State of Decay

Gaming

Undead Labs has been working on two games, one they call Class3 and the other Class4. The first is a regular game, the second in their MMO, both are zombie games. This week they unveiled the true name of Class3: State of Decay.

To say I am excited would be an understatement, but I’ll say it anyway. I am excited.

How I Review

Reviews, Writing

Since I’ve been writing over at Shakefire, I’ve gone through several phases of reviewing style. Back when I was being given lots of music, I tried to make sure I listened to the album, in full, while driving, while doing other things around the house and while actively listening to the music. That sort of regimen takes time which is part of the reason I don’t review music for them anymore – that and 90% of what they want me to review is music I don’t like, for some reason it was heavy on the hip-hop, jazz and screamo metal, though perhaps it’s just that their other music reviewers didn’t want to do those either.

These days, I’m mostly reviewing movies and some TV for them and my approach has solidified, and as such I figured I would take a post to talk about it.

First, I watch the film. I try not to subject myself to any trailers or ads about it, and half the time I don’t even read the back of the DVD/Blu-ray case. I’d rather go in blind. I’ll look at the cover art, maybe the tag line and determine if it’s horror or not and then watch the movie. At the end, I jot down my opinion at a letter grade, which is one form the ratings for the site go into the system as. So, for instance, I might finish a movie and throw down that it was “D” effort.

Next, after having seen the movie, I’ll start in on any extras. Outtakes, deleted scenes, other featurettes. Sometimes I’ll watch these immediately after, and sometimes it’ll be on a later day – I usually have most movies in my hands 2 or 3 weeks prior to needing to turn in my review. If there is a commentary track, I’ll watch the movie again with it on, usually 2 or 3 days later, though it may be sooner if a Blu-ray has multiple commentary tracks to give myself the ability to skip a day between viewings – the only time I’ve ever not watched a commentary track was a movie (I forget which) that included 3 full length commentaries, I watched two and just couldn’t do the third because they’d all been terrible.

If the disc includes multiple cuts of the film, I’ll try to watch them all, but before doing so I’ll go online to see if I can find out how different the cuts are. I just watched a film that had the theatrical and director’s cuts on the disc, the director’s was 5 minutes shorter and supposedly bloodier, but damned if I could tell – they looked identical to me.

Lastly, I write the review. When I go to the site, there is a form I have to fill out, with names and dates and upload a cover images and Amazon product IDs and such. After I’m done with the busy work, I drop into the main text box and just start blabbering about the film. What I remember, what I liked, what I didn’t like, were the extras good, etc. Then I’ll go back through it once or twice, move some sentences around, change some wording. When I’m mostly happy with it, I’ll re-read the whole thing and try to gauge how I think “the author” feels about the movie and compare it to my initial gut reaction score. Upon reflection, most scores change. A movie I thought was a “D” effort might get upgraded to a “C” once I realize how much of the film stuck with me and there were things I enjoyed despite a movie’s flaws. And something I originally called an “A+” might get downgraded to an “A-” or into the “B” area if it turns out the flaws stuck with me far better than the good parts. Once I re-score, I’ll go back and make another pass through the review to ensure my words reflect my score. If I’ve upgraded a movie from “D” to “C” it doesn’t track that I called it “shitty” because “C” is average, so I might replace it with “middling”.

Not every movie gets a grade change though… things with an “A” or “A-” are likely to stay there since I probably recognized my reservations from the start and didn’t give it an “A+”, and something I wrote down “F” for after my initial watch is probably going to stay an “F”. In any event, now that I’m happy with the review and the grade, I have to score the grade. Yes, it sounds stupid, but the site tracks letter grades as well as a numeric. The number is a 0 to 4 (but not really, more on that in a minute) and an “F” covers from 0 to 0.79, so a movie that is terrible through and through will get an “F” and a “0”, a movie that has a terrible plot and poor production values, but has one actor who managed to be memorable in a good way will get an “F” and maybe a “0.70”. On the top end, the highest number is 4.5 (yep, that 0 to 4 scale goes to 4.5, so a movie can actually get a 4.5 out 4, which is like giving 110% … ) and through most of the ratings I used the corresponding numeric range similarly, the number gives the letter a weight – I go to the low-end of the range for something I feel just barely earned that grade, and I go to the high-end of the range for something that I felt earn the grade and were knocking on the door of an upgrade.

Once I’ve settled the numeric score, I tidy up a few last details and post the review.

On a side note, the grade I give a review also influences the amount of spoiling I’m willing to let myself do. The higher the grade, the less plot details I want to give out. Sometimes I have to force myself to write more on great movies because I’m temped to just say, “This was great. Go see it.” On low rated items, I consider it a service to spoil the film. Perhaps if you hear in exact detail how stupid the movie was, you won’t waste two hours watching it like I did.

Anyway, I enjoy reviewing, at least, I do now that I get stuff I like watching most of the time. The only thing that could make it better would be if my reviews (and Shakefire) were included in aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes or metacritic – not that I like aggregate site, I abhor what they’ve done to the gaming industry, but since they are likely here to stay it would be neat to be a part of it rather than just a victim reader.

They’re Coming to Get You…

Gaming

Zombies have been popular for a while now, to the point that some people are over them entirely. Not me though. I can’t get enough. And as long as they keep putting out Dead Risings, Left 4 Deads, Dead Islands and similar games, I’ll be a very happy camper. Which is why the following games, either already out or coming out soon(tm) make me very happy…

MineZ

One of the first things I wanted to do in Minecraft, way back in the alpha/beta phases, once survival mode was introduced, was to turn off everything but zombies. It could be done, but you had to jump through a lot of hoops. Now someone has made a server-side mod, MineZ, that allows lots of people (up to 100 per server) to play in a block laden pixel art style world of the zombie apocalypse. I haven’t had time to play it myself, but I’ve watched a bunch of YouTube videos and I’ll be carving out some time in the near future to go check it out.

If you want a little more info beyond the game’s own site, check out this article at RPS or the official sub-reddit.

DayZ

If shooters are more your thing, and you happen to own ARMA II and it’s expansion Operation Arrowhead (you can buy them both in a 2-pack from Steam for $30 – or cheaper if you wait for a sale), you can get the free mod DayZ which lets you play in a world overrun with zombies. I’ve heard it described as being a little harsh – but then, that’s what I would expect a zombie apocalypse to be like. Although, I imagine most of the people who are dicks in the game would be crying and pissing themselves if it were real. The Internet makes cowards into cock-sure braggarts.

I haven’t played it myself, because I don’t have ARMA II. But it was recently announced that DayZ will be developed into a stand alone game, so I’ll probably wait for that so I don’t have to buy the game twice.

The War Z

Last but not least, The War Z, a game calling itself an MMO and promising 250 players per map, no levels, a hardcore mode with permadeath and a normal mode where dying locks you out of the character for a period (not set, but currently intended to be 24 to 48 hours – and since you can have up to 5 characters, being locked out doesn’t mean you have to stop playing). You can read more about it over at IGN. This one doesn’t have a nifty trailer for me to show you, but their site has images. I suspect I’ll have to upgrade my PC before I can play this – my five year old Dell just isn’t going to cut it for much longer.

Of course, I’m also still eagerly awaiting the MMO from Undead Labs because it’ll be on the Xbox 360, and I won’t need to upgrade that.

The Desk That Helps

Random Thoughts
“Hello. How can I not help you?”

So, you have a company and you have customers and they might have problems with your products. You need to provide a method for them to redress those problems. First thing first, decide if you are building a Help Desk or a Call Center. Hopefully you are building a Help Desk, because if you aren’t, I will cut you.

Now that you are building a Help Desk, the next thing to do is determine the avenues you wish to open for support. Phone support is a tried and true method, but you can also do support by email, text, live chat, message forums… So many options. Which ones work best will depend on the type of products and services you provide, but the key is to just avoid confusion. It should be clear to your customers how to contact you and the level of feedback they should expect.

Feedback is very important. If I call and leave a message and then no one calls me back, I feel ignored. Next time I go to buy a product, I might not buy yours if there are other options. The same goes for emails and forums and texts… anything asynchronous needs to have a response time, a point by which you will either have an answer or you will contact the user and tell them you are working on it. I worked for a company once that funneled all support calls to a voice mail box, then when a caller left a message a pager would go off in the office, the person in charge of the pager would listen to the message, create the ticket, and assign it to a tech. We would only call the customer if the message was unclear. The tech would have 60 minutes to respond to the customer, either with an answer or to get more information. The important part is that we explained exactly how this worked to our customers, and while some people I know predicted we’d be flooded with messages that said “I have a problem, call me” the opposite happened. Our customers began leaving extremely detailed messages. Later we added an email address they could send problem descriptions and screenshots to. Again, some people predicted we’d get lots of “I have a problem, call me” emails, but instead we started getting well written narratives with pictures. It was great. But the point is that we established an expectation – report a problem, get contacted within the hour – and since we never ever failed at that, our customers worked to maximize that system, providing the best detail to speed response and increase accuracy of solutions.

Now, the next step is one that nearly all help desks/call centers I’ve interacted with fail at on some level. Assume you are in the business of providing phone service. Now assume half of your network has shit itself and half of your customers are experiencing problems. You need a way to communicate to your staff that the problem is known, how to identify if a caller/user is affected and what to say to them to explain the problem. If I call your help desk to report a phone service problem and your people there happily take my information, assign me a ticket number and tell me a technician will call me shortly without even a mention of a wide-spread outage, you have failed. And the failure will just get bigger because in an hour when I’m still having problems and no technician has called me back (because he’s too busy trying to fix the problem), I’m going to be furiously angry and possibly seeking out a replacement for your service. What would have fixed that? “Oh, this issue is linked with the current company wide outage we are experiencing. Our technicians are working to resolve it as we speak. I will put your name on our call back list to notify you of any significant updates or when a resolution is found.”

The final part of a good help desk (besides good help) is the followup. After the problem has been resolved, probably the next day, someone from your company is going to call the customer and ask them if everything is okay and if the problem was resolved to their satisfaction. Don’t outsource this. And I don’t mean to another country, don’t outsource this to people who don’t know anything about the problem. I work with one company and their followup call is a person who not only doesn’t know anything about the problem, the only thing they know is my name, my phone number and the problem ticket number. They can’t even tell me what the problem was, which is a problem when I have a half-dozen open tickets. 83759374 doesn’t tell me anything worth knowing. And when I ask, “Is this concerning the [insert problem description here]?” they can only reply, “I don’t know.” And I can’t fault them, because they don’t know, they haven’t been given the tools. However, I do fault the company, and it means they exist with one strike against them all the time.

I just don’t understand how so many companies can get something so simple, so basic as setting up a functional help desk that provides actual help and makes their customers feel helped. No, wait, sadly I do understand. Lots of people just don’t care.

Email: The Lost Art

Random Thoughts

I suppose I should entitle this something like “Reading & Comprehension: The Lost Art” because that’s really what’s about to happen, but since I’m most irritated with the way people treat their email, I went with this instead. Anyway, onward…

Let’s pretend I send you an email. And let’s pretend that in that email I ask you two questions. When you reply, answering only the first question and I have to send you another email with the second question, you look like an idiot. Emails aren’t twitter. Don’t stop reading at 140 characters. Read the whole damn thing.

Extending this, if you are sent an email asking you to do something – for example, to look into a previously reported problem and find out why it doesn’t appear to be being worked on – and your first thought is that you need more information – continuing the example, the ticket number of the original problem report – before you fire off an email asking for the information – “Do you have the ticket number?” – you should probably scroll down and read ALL of the emails in the chain – including the one right below the one you are replying to, in which the ticket number is given. When you don’t do this, you look like an idiot.

Some people – idiots – will defend this behavior, often citing reasons such as “I was reading this on my phone and the screen was too small.” As a solution, try this: Don’t read emails on your phone if you can’t properly read emails on your phone.

Lastly, sometimes when a company sends out an email – specifically an automated one – to which they do not expect a reply – probably because they are just informing you of a status or error – and within the body of the email, either at the top or the bottom or somewhere in between, it says “this email comes from an unattended mailbox, do not reply” or some variation thereof, when you reply to that email, get no response, and then later call up angry that no one replied to your email that you send to the totally non-functioning mailbox that the sysadmin only checks to see if it’s getting a large number of bounces or other error conditions, you look like an idiot.

Seriously, though, I’m saying this for your benefit – and mine – because you don’t want to be thought of as an idiot – and I’d rather get stuff done than repeat myself or listen to you complain about a problem that isn’t mine. For the sake of all that which you hold dear, read your damn emails! In full!

I Still Write for Shakefire

Reviews, Stuff on the Net

Shakefire.com… such that it is.

  • Accident : A team of killers create elaborate accidents to take out their targets, but now they are falling prey to accidents of their own, or are they not accidents?
  • Falling Skies : I got to preview the first four episodes on the new season.
  • Trial & Retribution – Set 5 : The UK makes some pretty good cop shows, and this is another one.
  • Road Trip : It was funny when I originally saw it, and it’s still funny now.
  • The FP : This movie is a comedy, but it’s done in the style that the film takes its subject very seriously, leaving the comedy to be found by the audience. The subject? Gangs who battle through a Dance Dance Revolution type game.
  • Franklin & Bash – The Complete First Season : Love this show!
  • Rogue River : Some horror films make sense, and some horror films just get made.
  • A Necessary Death : This was far more interesting than I though it would be. It captured the idea of following around a person intending to kill themselves very well.
  • Destination Truth : I watched the first couple episodes of the new season and mostly concluded that these guys seek truth without science, and thus will never find truth.
  • Freakshow Apocalypse: The Unholy Sideshow : I’d ask who gives these people the money to make a movie, but clearly they spent very little on making it. Terrible.
  • Warehouse 13 – Season Three : I love this show.
  • Extraterrestrial : Simply the best romantic comedy set against an alien invasion ever. This was hilarious and fun.
  • Sanctuary – Season Four : It’s a shame they didn’t get a fifth season, but this works as a good finale.
  • Ghost Attack on Sutton Street : Is this a documentary or a horror movie?
  • Lady of the Dark, Genesis of the Serpent Vampire : This might have been a good short film or music video, but it is a terrible movie.

And there you have it.

Transformation

Writing

Over at the Broken Forum there is a thread for writing in which one of the community is running a series of writing exercises, the first of which is due today. The subject: a transformation. This is short-ish, and I want to revise it again. A couple of trips through editing and I think it could be pretty good.

Anyway, enjoy….

I scratched at an itch beneath my watch band, then turned my wrist to see that she was a half hour late. The dinner rush was still a little while off but the restaurant was busy with the employees setting up all the tables, switching out the afternoon settings for the evening finery.

The waiter brought me another basket of rolls, my third, refilled my water yet again and asked me once more if I wanted to go ahead and order or if I wanted to wait. I told him I would wait. He rolled his eyes at me and walked away.

Another thirty minutes, a basket of bread, and three glasses of water later, Clara finally stepped through the door.

She was looking as good as ever. Her red hair was pulled into a loose pony tail, and it swayed across her back as she looked around the room. I shrank in my seat a little. I wanted to see her, but something made me want to hide, to run.

My waiter tapped her on the shoulder and pointed in my direction. As she walked toward my table I became mesmerized by the measure of her steps. She was tall, nearly six feet, and the grey dress she wore was short enough to reveal her legs with every step. Each foot touched the ground in time with the steady slow beat of my heart.

I exhaled as she reached the table.

“Hi Clara.”

“Jeremy,” she said. It was stiff, not the friendly hello I’d been hoping for. We hadn’t spoken directly to each other in nearly ten days. Trading voicemails, emails and texts.

I stood and pulled out her chair. She sat. There was a little smile as she did. I wiped a droplet of sweat from my brow and then took my own seat.

My forehead bumped the table as I leaned forward to scratch an itch above my ankle.

“Did you say something,” she asked. She’d been looking around the bar. It was getting more crowded.

“Me? No. Nothing. It’s good to see you.”

She didn’t smile. “You too.” It was matter of fact, not pleasant. “Should we order?”

I laughed nervously. “If we don’t, the waiter might explode.”

“How’s that?”

“Nevermind. I’ve just been here a while, drinking water and eating bread.” I indicated the empty basket, the half empty one, and the array of water glasses.

“Sorry, I lost track of time.”

She buried her nose in the menu. I glanced down at mine as well. I didn’t need to look as I was familiar with it, I’d even memorized the prices and which items were recommended as lighter fair for those watching their waistlines.

The waiter approached and asked if we wanted to hear the specials. I shook my head and Clara launched directly into her order.

“I’ll have the chicken fettucine, with the house salad.”

The waiter didn’t write it down. “And you, sir?”

“I’ll have the same.” He nodded and started to turn. “I’ll also take a steak, medium rare. No, make it rare. Can I have two of those?” He nodded again and wandered off.

Clara was staring at me. She blinked slowly and collected herself. “Should we start talking now, or should we wait for the food?”

“Now is good.” I pulled at my collar. My hand went to loosen my tie and then I remember I wasn’t wearing one. I pulled at my collar again and drank another half glass of water. “Where have you been?”

“I’d ask you the same.” Clara unfolded her napkin and laid it out on her lap. “But I already know. You’ve been at home, on the computer perhaps, or maybe you’ve been down to the bar.”

“I went to see a movie.”

“Of course you did.”

“I’ve just been trying to get back to normal.” My left shoulder itched, so I rubbed it through my shirt with the opposite hand.

“And I’ve been trying to avoid normal, Jeremy. I don’t think I can go back.” She sipped a little water from her own glass. “I’ve changed.”

“Is everything so different since we went camping?” I tried to keep the pleading out of my voice but I didn’t succeed.

“It’s all very different, Jeremy! We almost died!” People were looking at us as her voice raised, but then she breathed deeply and regained her composure.

I was scratching at my thigh without thinking of it. My nerves were frazzled now and I was sure I was breaking out in hives. “It wasn’t that bad. We ran them off.” My voice trailed out at the end. She’d actually run them off, while I was busy holding the bandage. It had been sort of amazing, like she was some Amazon warrior princess or something.

“Since we’ve been back, though, all you want to do is stay home, which isn’t much more than we did before. But I want to get out.”

“And do what?” I slugged down another glass of water and the waiter brought me three more along with our salads.

She busied herself with her salad. I could see she was trying to pick out all the right word, she was preparing a speech, or perhaps just recalling from memory she’s already written and practices.

I mopped at my brow with my napkin and pushed my own salad aside. My stomach grumbled. I could smell the kitchen, the steaks being lightly cooked, just enough to warm them without browning. I swallowed the saliva that was pooling in my mouth.

“I started biking to work.” She said it between bites.

I kicked off my shoes under the table and curled my toes. “For exercise?”

“Not really. Just to see more of the world. You know?”

“I guess.”

“I took a pottery class.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Down at the continuing education building. I’ve also signed up for some self-defence, and I joined a book club.”

I ran my hands through my hair and kept tossing glances at the kitchen. I was starving but I also felt like I wanted to bolt.

“What’s wrong?”

“With me? Nothing. Why do you ask?”

“You’re just very fidgety.”

She was right. My hands almost didn’t stop moving. I scratched at the itches on my wrist, my thigh, my shoulder. I was using my feet to scratch at my shins. I rubbed one hand behind my ear and mopped my brow with my napkin again. I took in a deep slow breath and tried to calm myself.

Clara and I locked eyes for a moment, and then she looked away. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

She took another sip of water and pushed the remains of her salad to the side. “I met someone.”

“What?” It came out higher pitched than I wanted.

“It’s just, I’ve changed, and you haven’t, and I need someone who fits the new me.”

“It’s only been four weeks,” I snarled.

She sat back in her chair, pulling away. “A lot has changed in four weeks.”

“We almost died and you run off and find someone new,” I growled. I growled.

Her eyes opened as wide as they would go, and then as I stood they opened wider. I could feel the low rumble in my throat as I rose. My fingernails dragged along the tablecloth.

“Who is he?”

Clara’s mouth moved but no sound came out.

I asked her again, slower this time, stopping after every word, the rumble in throat coating each one with anger. “Who is he?”

She managed to squeak out, “I met him in my pottery class.”

“Pottery,” I grumbled through a mouth now full of extra teeth. I looked down at my hands and saw the elongated nails. Past them I saw my feet. My toes had ripped out of the end of my socks. I glanced toward the bar and caught my own reflection. My ears were pointed just slightly at the tips, my eyebrows were thicker and my hair was growing as I watched it. Hair was appearing at my wrists and my collar.

I thought back, four weeks, to the camping trip, to the attack, to the bite on my arm.

The waiter arrived with our dinner.

I stared at him and the low rumble emanated from my throat again. He didn’t flinch. He looked bored.

“I’m going to take these to go,” I said as I grabbed the two rare steaks from their plates with my increasingly furry hands. “She’ll get the check.”

I ran out of the restaurant, howling into the night.

2012 and still they fail

Random Thoughts

NOlympicsIt’s 2012 and companies are still failing at The Internet.

The Olympics have begun, and NBC has made available every event online for streaming so you can watch them on your PC or tablet or phone. BUT only if you are already paying for TV. If you are one of those people who decided to cut the cord and go back to getting your broadcast TV by antenna or through websites on the Internet, then you are shit out of luck.

NBC had a real opportunity here. They could have allowed people to purchase an online package to get access to the feeds without needing to have Comcast or Cox or DirecTV or some other service. The pitch could have been, “Get access to all the Olympic events streaming on your PC, tablet and phone for $99!” with a perk of “Or, if you already pay for TV through one of our partners, get it for FREE!” Instead though, we are left with “If you are already paying for TV, get access to the Olympics events on your PC, tablet and phone for FREE!”

I really want to give NBC my money. I’d be willing to set aside a number of activities for a couple of weeks while the world’s best athletes compete for the gold, but I can’t. I cannot give NBC my money. Instead, I have to give Comcast my money, so that Comcast can give NBC a tiny fraction of that.

Well… fuck that! I’m not about to pay Comcast a bunch of money for access to 300+ channels I will never watch just so I can stream Olympic events to my PC, completely not using a TV, a set-top box (that Comcast requires) or even Comcast’s internet (since I’d be watching more stuff at work than at home).

This is crazy ass backward. I know why they do it though. It’s because the subscription cable/satellite business is too much to give up. It’s the same reason you can’t get HBO Go without already being a PayTV subscriber and already having HBO through that. I’d love to give HBO my money, but they won’t take it unless it comes filtered through Comcast and their ridiculous pricing plans that force me to get 300+ channels so I can watch 5.

Oh well, I guess I won’t be watching the Olympics. Maybe they’ll get this sorted out by 2016.

And I was doing so well…

Site News

Two weeks. And not long before that there was a ten day gap. I blame a lot of things. The untimely end of the Rebuild project was a bit of a blow. I had intended that to be a weekly feature here on the blog for a long while, and my motivation to start back up has been flagging. I will though, as I plan to sit down on the coming weekend and play through the entire game in one or two sittings to get all the details and screen shots I need, that way the game can’t delete on me again. This will have the unfortunate side effect of me knowing how it ends before I start, knowing who dies before I create them, which is less fun for me as I enjoyed the idea of being shocked and then forced to write out the scenes. I also needed to revisit how I did the screen shots. Before I was manually doing Alt+PrtScr and then pasting into GIMP, but now I’ve got IrfanView which will give me a simple key combination that will screen shot directly to a file in a directory of my choosing, so I can speed through the game. Then I’ll probably take a week or so off and start writing, hoping I’ve forgotten exactly what happens to any individual character.

I’m also working on Season 2 of Man vs Wife. I’m calling it Season 2 because of the, at first, unintentional break we took. In part this was because Dungeon! was such a bad play. I mean, I like the game, but the 2 player version in the manner we chose to play it was rough. The wife hasn’t really felt like playing much, though I did manage to get her to play Fluxx (the write-up for which is going to be hilarious). Any way, so I decided that we are going to line up about 8 games and then do a marathon weekend, which will become Season 2, eventually. I just need to find 8 games worth playing. And I might cheat in order for me to actually win a game – I’ve got a copy of Trivial Pursuit, Genus Edition from the mid-1980s that I’ve played a lot, plus I am a fountain of inane and useless information, and she isn’t.

In spite of not doing much writing for the blog, I’ve actually been writing quite a bit. Reviews for Shakefire as well as my own stuff. I got crafty and took a couple of Sharpies to my NEO and now instead of being Sherman Tank green it’s black on the back and has a nice blood-red top. I haven’t colored the keys yet, and I’m not 100% sure I will. I kinda like that the keys stand out. I’ll post a picture at some point, once I’m sure it’s done.

Speaking of crafty… Dragon*Con is also coming up, and we’ve been trying to actually put together ideas for costumes AND execute them. That second part will be a new endeavor this year as we usually just dream them up and never do anything.

Also, I’ve been sort of working on an idea for a podcast. It’s still in idea mode and I’m working out some of the logistics, but I think it’ll be pretty cool, and different. Maybe… it also might suck royally. Or I might drop the idea and simply not do it.

Anyway, more to come, I promise.