You are the One, Neo. I have spent my entire life looking for you.
So, a month ago, I wrote about wanting an eInk writing device. I then purchased an AlphaSmart NEO from a seller on eBay for around $40. The idea is to have a tool, with a good physical keyboard and free from distractions, to take with me anywhere and be able to write. As bizarre as this thing may look, it’s actually pretty incredible. Though the memory is limited (not really) and you get only 8 files, the total storage capacity is around 72,000 words, which is enough to win the NaNoWriMo and then some. The screen IS small, but this isn’t an editing tool, it’s a writing tool. Just write, edit later. Boot up time? Instant. It saves after every keystroke. And it runs over 700 hours on 3 AA batteries. I’ve only used it about 50 hours so far.
I’ve hauled this thing with me to places like the Renaissance Festival, the back yard, the mall, work, the hospital. I get inspired, I bust it out and write. It helps that I’ve gotten into the habit of taking a small backpack with me most places.
One of the coolest parts of this device is how you get the files off. For most other portable electronic devices these days, you’d either be saving to “the cloud” or you’d plug it in via USB and drag & drop the files. The NEO, however, is a fully functioning keyboard. When you want to get a file off, you plug it into your PC with a USB cable, the PC recognizes it as a keyboard, you open the program you want your file in (Word, Notepad, Google Docs, WordPress, etc), put the cursor in the correct field, select the file on the NEO and press Send.
As an example, yesterday I had to take my father to the doctor. I also needed to write a review of a movie for Shakefire. I took the NEO with me and wrote the review while I was waiting at the doctor’s office. When I got home, it was lunch time, so I made some lunch. I then sat down in front of my PC, hooked up the NEO, opened up the entry form for the site and pressed Send. While I was eating, I got to watch as the NEO typed out my review. It types a little faster than I do – well, I probably beat it in raw typing speed, but it types at the same speed without stopping. And as it typed, I read. Because I could read comfortably and my eyes were incapable of glancing ahead (the NEO hadn’t typed it yet), this lead to more critical reading. It was as if I was reading someone else, not me.
In addition to the editing, there was a certain… gravity? weight? added by watching the words type out. Something very satisfying. I’ve written a lot in my life, but when I’m done I’m always done, the writing just is. Watching the NEO re-type everything I’d written, it just adds a level of “I wrote that” pride that I didn’t have before.
Another nicety, since this thing can’t do much more than write, I get more writing done. When I sit at a PC and write, if I have a question about what I’m writing, some detail, I’m tempted to Google it. Â Doing so often leads to a lost twenty or thirty (or more) minutes reading sites, checking emails, and doing stuff that isn’t writing. The NEO allows for much more focus on my writing. Sure, there are programs you can get to disable your Internet access, but as easy as it is to disable it can also just as easily be re-enabled. With the NEO there is no Internet access to enable.
Anyway, I’ve written more in the last month than I did in the previous 5 or 6 before it. The freedom the NEO has given me is unparalleled. I can’t say I’d recommend the device to every writer, because every writer has their own style, but if you haven’t found a style that works best for you yet, I’d totally recommend giving one of these a shot. Buy one on eBay, and if it doesn’t work for you, sell it on eBay.
Recently it came to my attention that I was probably paying too much for my car insurance. Not because I saw a Geico commercial or anything, but because I was randomly musing about the fact that we have two cars, one a 1997 Volkswagen Cabrio and the other a 1998 Jeep Cherokee, and they are both (obviously) old, 15 and 14 years old respectively, and that they probably aren’t worth very much, each is worth – in theory – about $2,000 for private sale or maybe $1,500 trade-in value. We currently are sporting a policy with a $1,000 deductible. Given the worth of the cars, any accident which is going to cost more than the deductible to fix is going to be 50% or more of the value of the car, thus the insurance company is likely to just “total” the car and cut us a check instead of paying for repairs. So, it seemed silly to me to pay them what I was paying them for them to not really cover anything.
So, I called them up and cut my insurance payment in half, maintaining the medical coverage and the liability (damage to other people). They were very happy to do it and thanked me for my continued business and all was right with the world. Until…
Like any average American, I have so much, I can do this. Not.
A couple hours later, I’m sitting there smiling about the money I’m going to be saving when it occurs to me that the value of my cars hasn’t changed much in the last couple of years. They’ve hit a sort of “value plateau” where the fact that they are running in good condition is the bulk of the value. Which means that I’ve been overpaying on my insurance for a couple of years. It’s going to total out to probably around $600 a year that I save, which means I’ve probably paid $1,200 to $1,800 for coverage I didn’t need.
Being a software developer, I know that it would be painfully simple to have a program that compares the coverage on a vehicle to the vehicle’s reported value (using something like the Kelley Blue Book as source) and this would generate a list of people to whom you could contact, by mail or email, and make them happy by offering to adjust their rates.
Of course, I know why they don’t do this. Something like auto insurance is seen by people as being required but interchangeable. They have to have it, and they pay more attention to the ads the companies run than to their actual policies. Most people will go to another company, get a quote and switch insurers before ever considering calling their current insurer to see if they can get a better rate. As such, companies focus more effort on signing new customer than on retaining existing ones.
For a non-insurance example, look at your local cable company. When was the last time they called to say they were running a special for all existing customers? Never, that’s when. The half price deals are for new or returning customers. Or for people who call to cancel. If you don’t leave and don’t complain, they’ll happily charge you twice what they charge new people, returning people, or people who threaten to leave.
Lesson: call your cable company every six months or so and threaten to cancel. Tell them you are switching to satellite, and then accept the new rate they offer to keep you.
You can probably do this with your garbage collection too, if you have to pay for it yourself and there is competition in your area. I’ve had the same company for a couple years, but where I was originally paying $30 a month, I’m down to $10 because they’ll “price match” any competitor’s offer, I just have to prove it’s a real offer. But they know who their competitors are, and they know what they charge. Why aren’t they sending out a letter to all their customers saying, “Hey! In appreciation for using us, we’ve reduced our rates!”
The other main reason they don’t randomly call existing happy customers to offer new lower rates is because those customer are, apparently, happy overpaying. Why would they throw away that money? Sure, being awesome for your customers might breed some loyalty, but loyalty is nothing in the face of cold hard cash.
Where am I going with this?
I have no idea. It all folds into that idea of “enough” I suppose. Some of these companies are making lots of money in profits, and they don’t reinvest that money into making the company better, nor do they reinvest it in reduced prices, they take it out of the system. Maybe they spend it back into the system somewhere else, but not at the rate it would get spent back into the system in the form of a few dollars into the pockets of thousands, tens or hundreds of thousands. Despite what the self proclaimed “job creators” tell you, a person, or small group of people, earning $5 million a month aren’t going to spend $5 million a month, but a million consumers saving $5 each on their bills are incredibly likely to spend that $5.
It just seems logical, for the better health of the entire economy… which is probably why I’ll never run a company or be in politics.
Dig through this blog and you will find a number of posts where I talk about the things that I think would make for a better MMO. These days I’m not playing (m)any MMOs, so I don’t pontificate about them anymore. But recently I got to thinking of an idea that just won’t get out of my head, so I’m going to put it down here in hopes to solidify it and keep it from nagging me.
Kung-Fu Super Hero
One of my favorite parts of MMOs is character creation. Right now, most of you, probably nearly all of you, have an image in your mind that matches this screen shot. Selecting skin tones and body part shapes and clothing options. Admittedly, this stuff can be very cool. I absolutely adored the City of Heroes character creator. I probably built a hundred characters that I never actually played, because the idea of them was more grande than playing them would be, especially since I already had a few characters to play – and ultimately, once you start playing and you’ve picked your class, primary and secondary powers, characters play the same no matter what they look like. Still, a robust creator is a lot of fun and can ignite further character developments.
Which leads me to the other half of character creation, and the part that I end up liking more, when it works. As a role player, I love filling out the nooks and crannies of my character. Their back story, their hopes and dreams, and their personality. It is one of the reasons that I still hold the original EverQuest in just high regard. That game rarely ever tried to tell me who my character was, it was always left up to me. Since leveling was kill based and not quest based, I got to pick and choose which quests to do because they are what my character would do. This is completely opposite of what many people seem to desire in games: a constant barrage of “things to do”.
In EverQuest, I got to decide if I wanted to help the citizens of Qeynos with their problems. In World of Warcraft and other games, if I choose not to help the locals, not to do quests, I might as well stop playing because leveling my character without those quests is painfully slow.
Of course, dig through the posts here and you’ll see I actually advocate doing away with levels. Another thing I advocate is the design of EVE Online, because of the dichotomy of its character/skill system. In theory, it is a classless, skill based system. You get books to learn new skills, any skill you have the prerequisites for, and then you choose to learn it. (If you don’t know, EVE is a time based advancement system. You tell the game you want to learn a skill and it tells you how long. When it’s done, you pick another skill. You can do anything you want while training happens, nothing you do effects the speed.) However, in practice, EVE is a class based game. While any character can have any skill, once you leave port in a ship the only skills that matter are the ones that apply to the ship you are flying and the modules you have loaded in it. If you have level 5 in cannons and level 1 in missiles, when flying a ship with only missiles on it your cannons skill is unimportant.
The thing I like most about this design, and why I would like to see it implemented in a fantasy setting, is that it takes class choice out of the initial character creation. At the point you are making your first character, you don’t know anything about the class you are picking beyond the couple of paragraphs that the developers give you. Well, if you’ve played other MMOs, you probably can pick up on the tank/damage/healer elements of classes, which give you a leg up on the new players. And of course, the truth is, most classes play much differently at level 1 than they do at level 50 and beyond. I like skill based equipment limited design because it allows me to choose my role in the game as late as possible, and if I decide I don’t like being a tanking warrior, I can just switch and become a damage dealing light healer without having to abandon my whole character. I just get new skills and put on new gear. (And in a design without level based power curves, I could be useful in my new role immediately rather than having to power-level back up to join my friends.)
This got me to thinking. I want freedom, as much as I can get. But in my evolving design I still had new players making choices from limited sets before getting into game.
So, imagine this…
You log into the game and you hit “Create New Character”. You are then given a map of the world with the starting cities highlighted. Selecting a city takes you to a page (or pages) of the history of that city, a description of the land, the typical lives of the NPCs there (common professions, etc). You pick a story you like, this takes you to a more detailed description of the city, largely focusing on the factions within it. These descriptions leave out words like “good” and “evil” but instead rely on giving descriptions of the beliefs of these factions and their role in the history of this city. You have to choose a faction to align yourself with. Once you do, you are taken to the “character creator” where you get to pick the look of your character. On this screen is your character, in silhouette to start. Behind it is a representative selection of NPCs in the city you have chosen. Directly behind you and surrounding you are members of your chosen faction, and at the edges are members of the other factions. You aren’t limited in color palettes or textures based on any of your decisions so far, but the crowd around you gives you an idea of the world you will start in. You can choose to make yourself look like your chosen faction, or perhaps like one of the opposing factions – maybe you are a traitor! Or you can make yourself look entirely different from anything shown to you, a true outsider.
Now we get to the crux of my latest brain bothering idea. On this screen, there are a series of checkboxes and dropdowns and sliders and color selectors, all the familiar tools from every other character creator you’ve seen, but there are some differences. For instance, there is a dropdown called “Pronoun” from which you can choose “he”, “she” or “it” (or any additional pronouns we can come up with). This dropdown selects your character’s gender identity – notice, it doesn’t choose gender – and determines how NPCs and canned emotes will address you. Other checkboxes exist for “Breasts” and “External Genitals” (or something, it needs a better term). Checking those boxes will enable your character to have those items, no restrictions. Yes, you can have a penis, or breasts, or both, or neither! And all of them will have the appropriate sliding adjusters for shapes and sizes. There could even be an option for having only one breast, left or right – your choice. Are there other options? Any “normal” option that exists, like facial hair or tattoos or scars, would be available to everyone without limit.
Despite knowing that in such a system I would pretty much always choose to create standard built males, but that’s largely because I tend to create myself in games (No joke. Meet up with me in any game and if there is the ability to make a bald white goatee-wearing male that’s what I’ll look like. Meet up with me in real life and you’ll see I’m a bald white goatee-wearing male. I like to project me into other worlds rather than to become someone else. I want to meet other people, not be other people.), this idea that enables people to make any combination they want just seems awesome to me. Oddly enough, it’s because of, not in spite of, my predilection for making myself in games, because I want everyone to be able to do that, even if in real life they are a bearded man with breasts who identifies as asexual.
After building the look of the character, they would finally be taken to the skills area, where they would choose their initial skills. I wouldn’t want there to be classes, but I would want there to be sets of templates illustrating skills that would work well together and why, probably encompassing the traditional game roles for MMOs, with, of course, a Custom option where the player could pick their own initial skills from a list of all skills.
Essentially, I want to put as many decisions as possible into the hands of the players. And I want, as much as can be, those decisions to be informed decisions, and anywhere a player has to make a choices that may be considered less than properly informed I want them to be able to easily change them later without having to start all over again from scratch. I want them to choose what they play and how they play it.
Alright, I guess that’s enough out of me for today. Hopefully this all made sense.
Once again, I’m attempting to lose weight. It seems like I’m always trying to do that, but I suppose that will be the case until I finally get down to the weight I would like to be.
I bought a new scale. The old one, it seems, may have been broken. I weigh myself fairly often and noticed that I appeared stuck at 210 or there about. A little up, a little down, but not much. On a whim, I decided that I wanted a digital scale instead of the old non-digital one we had, plus it was only $12. Anyway, first time I step on – 217. My other scale had been lying to me. Oddly enough, the previous couple weeks I’d been doing the light eating again, so I suspect that I was at 220 or so. I’m down to 216 and trending downwards.
Trending… that’s another key this time around. I’ve got a Google Doc spreadsheet I’m using to track my weight. I’m weighing myself 3 times a day – morning, after work, before bed – and recording the lowest weight for the day (because it makes me feel better), but that weight is less important than the moving average. The average will give me a better picture of where my weight really is by smoothing out the fluctuations that occur from retaining water, the occasional big (heavy) meal, and more. Also, by adding “Science!” to my daily routine it feels more like a real project and not just “eat less, exercise more”.
Speaking of exercise, I have a 10k to run in under a month, so, you know, I should probably get to training a bit. The past year has been fairly shitty for me in regards to exercise and diet so I expect to do worse than I have in the previous two years. I did, however, download a Couch-to-5k program for the old Zune that I plan on beginning, maybe this weekend. Also, you know, Rule #1 of the Zombie Apocalypse: Cardio.
Another common element of my “I’m going to start a diet” plan is cutting out sodas, which I’m doing again. Consistently, I’m drinking less sodas now that I used to – there was a time where I was drinking a 6-pack of can sodas a day plus whatever I got out at meals. Now I drink mainly on the weekends and sometimes after hosting a party at our house I’ll have some left over hanging around, and I have little to no willpower, and I refuse to let things go to waste. Oddly enough, as I was thinking about cutting out sodas again, I ran across this wonderful little infographic.
It really makes me not want to eat fast food anymore. Or at the very least, order the smalls and from the value menus. It would help my ego if they stopped calling them “junior” or “kid’s” sizes, but I think I’m just going to have to get over it. I may also start ordering food from the kid’s menu at other restaurants or trying to split a meal with the wife or something. Portions are really out of control.
Also, the CDC has some really awesome stuff about diet. Which makes sense, now that over-eating and obesity are being considered diseases. You can start with the source of that infographic here.
Anyway… enough about me being fat. I return you to your regularly scheduled Friday.
I like to write. I hate to write sitting at my desk. I would love to be able to write anywhere. Being a left hander brought up in a school system that refused to teach left-handed writing styles, I have horrible form and it hurts to write manually for extended periods, which prevents me from using pen and paper for any long form writing. I love computers. I have a completely bizarre typing style that has developed over years that doesn’t result in any discomfort or carpel tunnel issues. And when I say write anywhere, I mean anywhere, including sitting on a beach in broad daylight.
So, what I really need is essentially an eInk Kindle, in landscape mode, perhaps a slightly longer/wider screen, with an attached clamshell keyboard – a real keyword, for use with fingers not just thumbs. It could have wi-fi, but really only for some sort of wireless sync. All I need it to be able to do is create new document files, open existing document files, save files, delete files and support some form of hierarchy so that I can associate multiple documents to each other – such as chapters to a book – and see it visually. Something that simple, with no need for additional software and browsers and Internet and such, could run for hundreds of hours on a single charge, and being that the files are only text, a small amount of memory can go a very, very long way.
I know these days people and companies are in love with multi-function devices. Phones that are also music players and cameras and PDAs and web browsers and email clients and so on and so on. But I still like my single function devices too. I like having a Zune for my music/podcasts and nothing else. I like having a Kindle for reading books. And I would love to have a device that is simply for writing and not for gaming and a million other functions.
Looking around at other simple eInk tablets/readers that exist, I think this could be put together and sold for around $79, probably less, and at that price I’d buy one in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I doubt such a thing would ever exist. It’s too simple, and whenever I bring up the idea to someone they always respond with either “Get a Tablet” or “Get a Netbook”. I have a netbook and a Kindle Fire, and neither of them are what I want – mostly because the screens are less than useful in sunlight, and the Fire lacks a full physical keyboard. Plus, the battery life on them both is terrible. 8 hours? Bah!
I’d be happy to be wrong though. If there is an eInk document writer with a full keyboard, let me know. I’d be forever in your debt.
I can’t say that I have any insider knowledge, because I don’t, but in light of the recent events surrounding 38 Studios and their Project Copernicus (no links, just Google it) I figured I’d throw up a post about a tangential topic.
Want to know how not to generate true excitement for the game you are developing? Give out no details of the world or game, no videos, no screen shots, nothing, but keep saying, “We are building a really great game and world and we can’t wait for you to see it!”
If you can’t wait… don’t!
When Green Monster Games first announced they were beginning work on an MMO and started hiring people, I was excited. Then they changed their name to 38 Studios and hired more people. They announced they were working with Todd McFarland and R.A. Salvatore somewhere in there, and I was excited. And then… nothing. For years the only thing we heard was “We are building a really great game and world and we can’t wait for you to see it!”
And now we probably never will.
Every game, every developer, I think believes they have something special and awesome that they have to keep a secret, to protect it from being stolen or to save it for that shocking unveiling. The problem is, if it goes on too long, you end up with only the rabid fanboys still interested and the casual observers move on to companies who actually do more than say “We are building a really great game and world and we can’t wait for you to see it!”
Maybe 38 didn’t have anything to show? I doubt it… the video that came out in the last week and the screen shots that have trickled out, and the comments by former employees saying things like “When I left the office today for the last time, our servers were still up, running the whole world with tens of thousands of NPCs going about their business. I choose to believe that they’ll be there, remembering us forever.” I think they had plenty to show, but, for whatever reason, they didn’t.
Now we just have to wonder, if they’d been less secretive, if they’d shown more progress, could they have attracted investors and saved the game?
To everyone who used to be a part of 38, I’m sorry this happened and wish you the best in your future endeavors.
In my opinion, there is almost nothing quite as fantastic as seeing a good movie in the theater. The superior sound and the giant screen enveloping your vision and sucking you right into the story. Even the audience matters. Listening to people enjoying the movie too is part of the greatness. The gasps and laughs, the sniffing of stifled tears. It is unique and wonderful. But increasingly it isn’t worth the price of admission.
Before we even get to the literal price, there is so much more that is wrong with the movie going experience. As much as I love the idea of crowds, the reality of them is always so much less. If your kids aren’t capable of sitting still for a couple of hours and watching a movie, don’t bring them – get a sitter. Not only will everyone else enjoy the movie more, YOU will enjoy the movie more. Also, don’t go to the movies if you have trouble following plots. Nothing will annoy your neighbors more than you constantly asking your friend what’s going on. And if you aren’t enjoying a movie, consider leaving and asking for your money back rather than decide for everyone that this drama should be a comedy by adding your lame remarks in your loudest voice.
People who text or talk on cell phones during movies should be shot. And I’m not being hyperbolic here. Security should come in, drag the texter out of the theater, take them to a room and shoot them. Perhaps just in the hand. Maybe take off a finger, the little one. I bet if they lost a finger they’d stop texting during the movies. Assholes.
And theaters should be required to maintain a certain level of quality. There is a theater near me that I almost never go to because, as I say, “You pay for one movie and you get to listen to two!” The sound barrier between their screens is so poor that you literally get to hear two movies. If your movie is the loud action pack thrill ride, no problem, but if your movie is the dramatic quiet tear jerker, listening to soldiers bark commands and things explode while the main character of your film is supposed to be silently weeping his loss kind of ruins things. At the very least, theaters with shitty quality should charge shitty quality prices.
But before I get to ticket prices, it would be remiss not to mention the concession stand. I can buy a bag of popcorn at the grocery store for about a $1.50, so I wouldn’t be surprised to have to pay $3 to but the same amount of popcorn at a theater where they serve it to me – the people have to get paid somehow. But having to pay $5 to $7 for that amount of popcorn is stupid. And I’m not even going to bother with the $7 sodas. What?!? But what about those $3.75 to $5.75 boxes of candy that are only half filled? I understand that the theaters need the revenue, but every facet of their concession stand appears to be designed to make me angry and never want to buy anything there. These days I don’t even bother. Despite the hanging of signs saying it is forbidden, I bring my own soda and snacks to the movie. And don’t try to sell me on the “but if you buy a large you get free refills!” stuff, because I never leave the theater during the film if I can help it. Why on Earth would I miss part of the movie I just paid that much to see?
I haven’t even gotten into the latest trend: 3D. Currently, you pay a premium for 3D, an extra $3 to $5 per ticket. They’ll tell you that the extra cost is to cover the glasses (which they ask you to give back so they can recycle them) or to recoup the cost of upgrading their projectors. If that’s true, though, at some point they should finish recovering the projector cost and glasses production & recycling should level off that the premium should go away. It should become standard. Of course, that’ll never happen as they will be too busy enjoying the extra profits. And you know it’s all about the money as every movie seems to be getting a 3D release – and most of those are post-production conversions, not filmed in 3D with special cameras.
I am a movie lover. And back in the days of tickets being $5 to $6 and a concession combo (drink & popcorn) was $4 to $5, I’d go see a movie every single week. It was what I did on a Friday or Saturday night. Now, they’ve doubled the prices and the result is that I never get concessions and I see a movie once every couple of months. And I have to imagine that I’m not alone. These days, my Friday or Saturday nights are often spent streaming a movie off Netflix or Amazon where I pay a movie ticket a month for unlimited streaming of thousands and thousands of movies. I don’t know who is to blame for the skyrocketing prices – the theater companies, the movie producers, someone else – but I do know that it is pricing me out of the market.
I read an article once, and I wish I could find it again (but I think it was in print, not on the Internet), that Hollywood and theater owners were both lamenting “event movies” – stuff like The Avengers, the Harry Potter films, Avatar – movies that draw people into theaters. Â Part of their lament was that smaller films just didn’t sell in theaters, and it was only these giant budget risks that stood a chance. I can’t help but think that they’re looking at everything all wrong. The problem is that it’s only these huge “must see” films that get people to ignore the high cost of admission. At half the price, at $6 or $5… or in my dream world $3, I feel people would be a lot more willing to take a risk on a movie. For $3, I would pretty much go see any movie in the theater – even if it was poorly reviewed, for $3 I’d be willing to judge it for myself. On the other hand, for $12 (or $15 in 3D), the movie better be well reviewed and give me two hours worth of awesome entertainment or else not only will I be unhappy but I’m likely to avoid going to the movies for a while. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.
That third step can be the most difficult as movie distribution is a scam just like everything else. The best local theater nearest me doesn’t get all the best movies. They have 24 screens and didn’t get The Avengers, the 16 screen house down the road with lower quality got it. Two different movie theater companies, but they are serviced by the same distributor who ensures they take turns on the blockbusters and don’t compete. Lame.
You know… on second thought, you should probably just invest in a quality home theater instead.
Yeah, it’s corny – but sometimes being corny is the heart and soul of being a geek. I’m not often big on celebrating Star Wars Day, mostly because if you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose I’d have to pick Star Trek in the Star Series debate. The science just worked for me a little better than the mysticism.
Amazon is celebrating by having Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) on Blu-ray for 44% off. $79 for 9 discs – 6 movies and a whole mess of extras. Sure, you get the Very Special Re-re-edited Editions for the originals, but still – very cool.
As for me, I’m going to use this day to drag out something I wrote 13 years ago. I was sitting in the theater, not yet full disappointed in the new Star Wars prequel I was watching at the midnight showing, and there was a scene that sparked something in my brain. I went home that night and sketched out a quick idea. It took a few weeks to flesh it out, mostly because I needed the Internet to get the images from the movie I needed. I’m certain some were promotional while others were grabbed from pirated copies of the film. But I finally slapped it together and Card Wars: The Phantom Balance was born. Take a look. I’ll wait.
It’s funnier if you remember the Visa Card commercials that I’m parodying. Do versions of those even air anymore? I don’t watch enough commercials to know.
I remember at the time really being excited about that, because the movie had been a let down. It isn’t a bad movie, but the prequels represented a large series of broken promises to fans of the original. So many bits and pieces, and large plot elements, contradict things we were told in the 1977, 1980 and 1983 films. I’m not going to spend time pointing them out, just go Google “star wars inconsistencies” and you’ll get lots of results. Some are silly nitpicks, and still others can be explained away, but there are plenty that are slaps in the face. So, I was excited because I felt like, at least for myself, I had salvaged something. The movie was broken, but at least I was inspired to do something creative.
Over time, I’ve come to accept the movies in their imperfect forms. I can enjoy them, even if I still feel a twinge of sadness at how awesome it could have been if Lucas had simply accepted his own work as cannon and written within those constraints. We’ll never know…
In the meantime, if you haven’t seen it yet, there is an awesome fan made version of the original Star Wars film. Random groups of people signed up to make their own versions of 15 second segments of the movie which was then edited together. The result is worth watching.
The Georgia Renaissance Festival is pretty much the same every year. The bird show might have different birds, and the Tortuga Twins may have a few new jokes, and the various merchants may be selling a few new trinkets, but really it’s the same every year.
If you know me, then you know why I enjoy the fair so much despite the fact that little changes in the event itself, it’s because the crowd is always in flux. I love watching people, and places such as the RenFest are fantastic for seeing a wide variety of people. Better still, unlike going to some place like a mall or a concert, you are catching most of these people out of their usual element. The crowd ranges from people flaunting their particular, sometimes peculiar, interests to those first encountering the former.
The MMORPG Track went down to the Georgia RenFest yesterday, and as always I wish I’d taken more pictures. In fact, the only ones I snapped were the ones I took just outside the gate.
If you get there before the gates open, you get the pleasure of hanging around with the other people waiting to get in.
There is a story to the fair, though most don’t see it, and when entering at the start of the day you are greeted by the royals.
However, this is something I can rectify, because I’m fairly certain we’ll be going back in a couple or three weeks.
Another advantage to going more than once is that on your first trip down, you can browse without the intention to buy. And while you might potentially risk losing out on a particular unique items by holding off buying, you also give yourself the opportunity to stew on the purchase and decide if you really want it.
One thing I did notice this year is that there appeared to be a few more artisans at the festival. A couple of the people who just had racks of things for sale have been replaced with people who have racks of things for sale and also can demonstrate their art while they sell. Obviously, things such as paintings and tapestry don’t lend themselves to this, but it’s nice to see the potter at the wheel crafting another item than to just see the potter behind the counter collecting money. I like this trend, and hope it continues.
All in all, it was a good seven hours spent at the Renaissance Festival, and I look forward to going again, this year and in the years to come. Huzzah!
I’m a little late for my semi-annual plea. I missed Earth Day by about 5 days, or 371 days if you count the fact that I didn’t post last year…
Anyway, previously I’ve posted about services that help you eliminate junk mail. Unfortunately, those sites are all dead now, probably because they set their fees too low to be successful in the long-term. 41pounds.org, however, has managed to stick around. I can’t vouch for their specific service, but I can say that taking advantage of one of these services that will help get you off mailing lists is pretty awesome. They are currently running a special for $24 to cover every adult in your household for 5 years. $4.80 per year to stop most junk mail. Totally worth it in my opinion.
I also haven’t gotten a phone book in over two years thanks to their new opt-out policies. Yay!
We’ve continued the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra around the house. We generate about a bag of trash every two weeks or so, and I’ve been working harder to turn off unused electronics. I’ve gone 100% over to electronic billing, except for medical bills – hospitals insist not only on paper bills, but on generating several copies of every bill, and every bill contains the full accounting of the charges and payments. It’s a miracle that they allow me to pay online.
Both the wife and I have gotten Kindles, her the Fire and me the basic model. We’ve switched over to buying most new books in eBook form. I doubt I’ll ever buy comics or graphic novels that way, at least not until there is a cheap high quality 14 inch tablet that can view them full size without zooming or going panel to panel. And with two-page splashes the way they are, a 28 inch tablet is just impractical.
Most importantly though, and the intent of the title of this post, is that most of our efforts have actually been to save money. The eBooks are cheaper than they physical counterparts most of the time (especially when you read classics and keep an eye out for deals), electronic billing means so buying stamps and envelopes, keeping electronics off drops the power bills, drinking water saves on groceries, less junk mail means less trash bags, and so on and so on. Nothing we’ve done was specifically to save the planet. It was all done to save us money, and the side benefit is it just happens to be better for the world (or at least our continued ability to live in it) in the long run.
Now, if I could just figure out a way to afford solar panels and an electric car…
for 44% off. $79 for 9 discs – 6 movies and a whole mess of extras. Sure, you get the Very Special Re-re-edited Editions for the originals, but still – very cool.
, her the Fire and me the basic model. We’ve switched over to buying most new books in eBook form. I doubt I’ll ever buy comics or graphic novels that way, at least not until there is a cheap high quality 14 inch tablet that can view them full size without zooming or going panel to panel. And with two-page splashes the way they are, a 28 inch tablet is just impractical.