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I want to find a job doing whatever in Merrickville:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrickville-Wolford,_Ontario

It's 10 minutes from our house, and super charming!

I hesitated at first, to post these comments over in this community, choosing instead to keep it over at my blog. But, upon reflection, I figured that I'd like to hear more opinions of others on the subject. It's jsut cut-n-pasted from my own space, and some of the preface is full of info that I'm sure most of us already know, so ( I'd like to hear what you think, as well. )

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=207324

The following applies to both yuletide and 3_ships. And generally for anybody who wants to write fic for me. And anybody who would like to talk about SPN, nuTrek, SGA, Gossip Girl, Earth 2, the Courtney Cox show, NCIS: Los Angeles, or The Vampire Diaries! *g*

( Dear Authors... )

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=207723

Dragon Age: Origins is a game I've been excited about for more than a year. I loved Baldur's Gate II, and its expansion, and I lost more time to Neverwinter Nights than I ought to admit. So a new single player fantasy RPG by this company, billed as the "spiritual heir to baldur's gate" (spiritual because this new one is their own IP, and not a D&D game - though the mechanics are very similar) got me all giddy with anticipation!

And it's great. I've been having a really good time playing it. It isn't without it's flaws, but the overall experience is good enough that I've been all too happy to overlook the frustrating bugs. The onion AV Club gave it an A though, which I'm not sure I agree with entirely. I wrote a big comment on that AV Club review. And here it is!

The bugs in this game are frustrating.

The two big ones are:

- Quests that don't register their completion can leave you running around an area in frustration after fighting, say, the hordes of bad guys in the Redcliffe castle mission, wondering what small thing you haven't yet done. Only looking on the internet led me to the conclusion that something had gone wrong on their end. Reloaded a save game, fought the battle again, and CLICK - cut scene. Also, it didn't help that while I was trying to figure out what was going on, the aggravating fight scene music kept playing! It's great and cinematic when actually fighting, but while running around in empty areas trying to figure out what to do, it sure adds to the frustration!

- cut scenes sometimes screw up, and you'll go through a cut scene, make one of the games (actually pretty interesting) moral choices, and then suddenly be watching the cut scene again. I chose a different choice the second time, and was then moved forward in the game as though I'd only chosen the first. Later, other characters alternated between acting as though I'd chosen A or B. It sort of took the wind out of that choice. This happened to me in the Redcliffe section, as well.


That said, The game has some very good things in its favour, too:

- the moral choices themselves feel more satisfying. I really like the game's system of having the choices affect the world itself, rather than some arbitrary slider of how good or evil you are. You make a choice, and your companions approve or disapprove, sure, but also you'll find that your future options in the game world have changed, too. It really adds to a sense of immersion.

- The combat's good. Not too simple, but not ridiculously complex either, and the tactics reward the learning curve that comes with understanding how they're interpreted by the game. After playing with the tactic programming for a while, I found my party members acting just how I needed, which was useful for adapting to harder fights and made the combat feel genuinely tactical rather than like a mashfest.

- Some of the characterization is great - Morrigan and Shale are both fun and interesting, and I like the way they fit into the game world, and the major events of the game, rather than just having discreet stories of their own. Some of the characterization is sort of lame, too though. (The voice acting also runs from very very good to characters who seem to change voice actors mid-dialogue, again, in the Redcliffe quest, which led me to have most of my doubts about the game. Maybe the people in charge of the Redcliffe quest

- The skill trees feel well balanced, and it's fun to play as a warrior or mage or rogue (except for some rogue dex issues that they've acknowledged and which are being fixed in an upcoming patch) and for the most part the specializations really give a different feel to your class when you get to that stage. And a couple of the specializations are tied to the game world in a fun way. In a lot of these games, specializations just add a couple generic skills. Extra damage, and such. In this, they add skills that tie into the story sometimes. "Blood magic" being a big one, and that sort of detail really adds to the feel that you're a part of the game.

- The game gets its title from a system where you can choose your "origin" - each of which is a different way to start the game. The origins are a couple hours, before merging with the main storyline, but which will affect the game further down the line, too. Every character has to go to the dawrven city to seek aid, for instance, but that visit has a very different tone if you are a dwarf noble who was falsely accused of killing her brother the heir to the throne and then exiled.

I would give it a B, or a B- (with it moving to an A after a bug patch or two for sure.) A lot of care and love went into the game, and despite the couple frustrating bugs above, I've put in a couple dozen hours since it's release and haven't lost interest yet!

Penny Arcade had a pretty funny comic about how they do downloadable content. There are characters you come across IN-GAME, who describe the DLC for you, and the dialogue options say "downloadable content" right on them, which takes you out of the game a bit. ( I have, of course, downloaded them )

Have you played it? What do you think?

• 16:36 twitpic.com/osx8v - More of Mom's whackadoodle taste.

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I've got a story written for the XMMFicathon that I'd like to get a beta on. It's a one-shot, about 4500 words. It's a Scott/Jean story with no explicit sex and some implied slash. It's meant to be able to be read as a standalone, but is also consistent with my X1 series that begins with I Know What You Are, which is where the implied slash comes in.

I'd love to get two betas - one who has read my previous fiction and one who hasn't, so I can see if it works for both kinds of populations. If you'd be willing to help me, you'll earn my everlasting gratitude (and I'll be glad to beta for you sometime too). Please comment here or write to me at mogbrg@yahoo.com.

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• 16:39 In Charlotte airport awaiting flight home. Utterly fried and exhausted, which is exactly how one should feel after a seminar like this. #
• 20:28 Landed in Boston, awaiting bag. One foot swelled up on plane. Can't wait to see my cats! Going to get in bed with laptop and some soup. #
• 20:51 So we've been waiting over 20 minutes and the baggage belt finally started moving! Three bags came out and now... Nothing. WTF? #
• 20:53 Get this. Those three bags are still going around and around, unclaimed. But at least more are finally starting to come out now. #

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( Girl Genius Comic for Monday November 09, 2009 )

<3 Phil and I will be at Windycon this weekend! Yay! Also, We now have SQUEEZY CASTLE WULFENBACH AIRSHIPS in stock! Woo, I say. And also Hoo.

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It was downright warm, bordering on hot today, which was weird, but not unpleasant. The light was gorgeous, too (Moss and I theorize that we get awesome afternoon light up here in exchange for early sunsets). Anyway, we went on a rambling walk, arriving home just as the sun had set. If you have some misguided notion that I wouldn't a) take pictures, and b) post them, then you clearly haven't been paying attention.


The bikepath all awash in golden afternoon light.

( follow the path to birds, leaves, water, and trees )

Tomorrow, maybe I will feel up to providing some non-picture content. Today, though, I think we should all just look at pretty things.

I've tried to sit down and post about the party and the visit and the chaos that ensued before, during, after (the good kind of chaos), but I haven't found the words yet.

I'm still decompressing, me thinks. Yesterday was the first day in a week where I spent more than 3 consecutive hours at the house since the party. So, it's like it yesterday is really the day after.

I love my friends from all over and I miss them so much when they come and go.

In other news, we raked the yard and built a compost.

The best part was when we were throwing pumpkins off the deck onto tarp below. fun fun!

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=204321

It's 2pm where I am and the sun is shining right into my living room. My desk and sofa are all bathed in gorgeous light, which makes me very, very happy right now. I'll be leaving later on today to buy a few last items of furniture for my apartment: another small table to study on, a coffee table, and an armchair. (Sorry atomicduck! I know we discussed the downside of buying more furniture—you'd have to eventually get rid of it, but I've decided that I might as well invest in a few pieces because if it turns out that I can take them to where I'll be next in a few years, I'd rather have pieces that I like and needed.) I'll have to go next week sometime to buy a mattress—after three months here, it's getting to be embarrassing that I still don't have a bed.

I recently started watching the TV series The Mentalist with Simon Baker and I like it so far. He's a quirky Sherlock Holmes-esque character with keen powers of observation, which allow him to read people, win at card games, etc., etc. This skill comes in handy in his role as a consultant for the California Bureau of Investigations (CBI) in solving crimes. Baker's character also has a habit of telling suspects exactly what he thinks of them, which generally takes them by surprise and makes them mad. ♥ I have to admit, I like Baker a lot more in this role. As Hathaway's foil? in The Devil Wears Prada, I found him sleazy-charming and the classic move of attempting to speak French and the slow smiles just made my eyes roll. I admit, though, that I like seeing Baker smile in The Mentalist. His character has a rather tragic past, which is hidden beneath the playful, quirky exterior. And remember my thing for Daniel Craig's eyelashes? All I can say is that Craig has nothing on Baker in this department. Hahaha. Side note: White Collar is turning out to be a very funny and awesome series.

I'm reading The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon right now and I'm a little conflicted. While I find her style objectively beautiful and the story compelling—Aristotle and Alexander the Great? heck yeah!—I also find her technique a little too...opaque. It's like when you're watching a magician's performance and are able to see through the sleight of hand tricks—'disappointing' might be the right word. We'll see what I think by the end.

Edit: I went to the store and all three items that I'd wanted to buy weren't in stock. My friends who were with me and I had a good laugh about it but now I'm looking up the same items second hand as retribution. Haha.

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I talked in this post about reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels - the Charlaine Harris books on which the TV series True Blood is based. I'm nearly done - finishing up the eighth (of nine) books now. And I still feel, as I said in that post, that they get better with each book. In fact, I think someone starting them might do well to jump in with the second or third. She does a good job of giving you enough information that you can read them without having read the previous novels in the series, without recapping so much that she bores old readers.

One thing I find very fun - and I think other fanfic people will, too - is that she borrows from all sorts of sources for situation, plot and character. She pulls from popular culture, classics, supernatural legends and melds it all together into a frothy vampiric Louisiana concoction. One large subplot is lifted intact from Dumas, for example. Of course that meant that I (and anyone who had read The Three Musketeers) knew how it would come out, but I found that just made it more fun.

Another thing Harris does well is to avoid the major pitfall of mystery novels of the Amateur Detective variety. I find with that genre the problem is that most people never come across one murder to solve, so it's hard to swallow when someone can't go to the store without stumbling over a dead body. The reader starts wondering why no one around this person thinks it strange that anywhere s/he goes people get murdered. Some authors solve the problem by having the main character become so good at solving mysteries that people seek him or her out when there's a murder the police can't solve. Others have the character go professional. Some just ignore the problem and hope the reader won't notice.

The problem is intensified with a small town setting, where several murders in a row would likely be noticed as unusual. But Harris deals with it well, both by the supernatural element (vampires live violent "lives" and so do the other supernatural creatures she introduces) and by varying the setting. Although the first book takes place solely in the small town in which Sookie lives, later books move to Dallas and New Orleans.

All told, I'm quite enjoying the books and think they make fun, escapist reading. The characters are witty and the dialogue (and Sookie's internal thoughts shared with the reader) are often LOL funny. The plots are clever (if often borrowed) and the characters become more real with each book.

There's another series of books by the same author that I think are also quite good, in a different way. These are the Harper Connelly mysteries. They have a supernatural element, but are much more tied to the real world.

Harper Connelly is a young women with a special power: she can detect the presence of dead people. She feels an emanation from corpses and can tell family or authorities where to look for a missing person (provided the person is actually dead). In the presence of a corpse she can also tell a little bit about the person - name, age, gender, how they died. She and her step-brother Tolliver go all over the country providing this service for a fee. Families and police departments are initially skeptical, but since she's always right they're often won over.

Harper and Tolliver are great characters, multi-layered and with a well fleshed out history. I've read three of the books so far and the mysteries themselves have all been predictable, but I didn't mind because I found the characters and plots compelling. The tone is much darker than the Sookie Stackhouse novels and the writing is better. I'm looking forward to getting the rest from the library.

• 10:34 twitpic.com/oma3g - Shai-hulud!
• 11:40 twitpic.com/omivc - Flying 1
• 11:42 twitpic.com/omj7t - Flying 2
• 11:44 twitpic.com/omjgh - At rest
• 11:44 twitpic.com/omjin - Flying 3
• 14:12 twitpic.com/on7a1 - Best Dressed Baby, 2009 Award
• 14:13 twitpic.com/on7e5 - CEO of Cute, Inc
• 14:13 twitpic.com/on7h6 - Daddy and me
• 14:14 twitpic.com/on7lq - I need those quarterly reports in the morning
• 14:15 twitpic.com/on7s5 - Mommy and me

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Today's "Classic Peanuts" involves Linus talking to a big brick wall and repeating a phrase about trying to get along since we are one big family.

It was published on Nov 11, 1962.

The Berlin Wall construction began a year earlier.

http://comics.com/peanuts/2009-11-08/

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• 17:56 Just finished another long day of healing arts classes. My brain is completely full now... Soon, banquet dinner! #
• 22:40 To Rep. Michael E. Capuano: We need affordable coverage for every American. Please vote for reform. bit.ly/1xhcYF #hc09 #MA #02138 #

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A Long Time I've Wanted To Say Something

A long time I've wanted to say something
and not know the next word until
it busied my mouth. Love talk, anger, consolation,
lies, mad hints at the edge of green
water where fish and snakes swam
weirdly away from my lonesome post -
five dozen kinds of greetings
and one of severance
entered this conversation
I am having with the earth.
O world, I want to love you
better than I do, forgiving
every satellite dish bolted to the roof
and pointed towards the
ubiquity of the sky,
and all it holds within it like a gravid cloud -
darkness first of all
and then the post-mortem flare of the stars,
and fixed between both,
satellites soaking our cells
with beamed, invisible pornography
and all its stark frustrations,
its spacey coupling, its theater of vicious hunger.
How many times have I gone
home through that rain,
my body perforated by
waves of strange ecstasy?
World, I've wanted to box you
on your huge ear, or hide
something from you
that you badly want, right then, that instant,
this now. I've wanted
to pour you out
until you're empty,
worth filling up again.
I am not talking to you,
anymore. Tired
as I am of gravity
and tired as I am
of my bones, the sullen sameness of their pain,
let me just whistle
a sad song
into the newness of the air.
Let me plan out,
let me devise and arrange
and braid one lost
path to the next.
Let me save something from vague peril.
It is all around us,
after all, danger,
or love, or war,
or spontaneous jamborees on a hilltop littered with fiddles.
I am thinking of love.
Which means in my tongue
that I am praying for it
to be saved from never knowing me.

-- Paul Guest

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http://icanhascheezburger.com/?p=205147

We have this half-gallon carton of Whole Foods orange-peach-mango juice in the fridge. It's good by itself, but I just discovered that if you add rum, lime juice and a drop of almond extract, it makes a pretty convincing imitation Mai Tai.

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Publishers Weekly has issued its list of the ten best adult books for 2009 (they get ARCs, Advanced Readers Copies, so they have seen the "important" books of the year as judged by the important people of publishing). And o my stars and garters, have they raised themselves up a fuss. You see, if you look at that list, the authors are all men.

WILLA (Women in Letters and Literary Arts) is claiming bias, as are quite a few other writers and readers. PW is saying they judged fairly and freely, "without political correctness."

The response is coming now just from WILLA. Britain's Guardian reported it; The New York Times is inviting its readers to post their ideas on which books they think should have made the list. Salon, of course, has an edgier take, including this wonderful quote: Comments on P.W.'s Web site likened the list to "a flier tacked to the wall at a men's club".

I actually like Laura Miller's Salon article very much. It's well thought out, intelligent, and rational. And it's informative.

For my own part, my feeling is, why is anyone surprised? Look at the high school and college required reading lists (unless they are for women's literature or world literature or for alternate schools). They are dominated by White Males (except for Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, the rest are dead before the turn of the 20th century). Look at what's considered valuable in literary publications, and who is considered "great" in literary classes. Look at the writers who are given face and page time in journals all over the world, even when it's not about a writing-based issue. The majority are men.

The bias is an old one. Historically women have been relegated to "women's issues" (said Bryon and Shelley, patting Mary Shelley on the head--girls writing "science"!) revolving around relationships, house, church, and community. We don't write about war, the death of the soul, the future of society and the morality of man (yes, it's still said "of man"). We don't write about the Big Issues. We write improving children's books, sweet little books about family, or torrid and hysterical romances. We don't write about war which sweeps over a devastated landscape (take that, Margaret Mitchell!), or the Hero's Journey, or striving for A New Tomorrow. So it has always been in publishing, and so it is in the literary community.

( Read more )

PW did a children's list which I liked better. I'll post about that on my fan journal later today.

I'm trying to remember if I've ever seen Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion, Margeret Atwood, or any of the other highly admired female literary writers referred to as "great."

I've been scanning in old slides that I got from my maternal grandparents. It's been fun to have more family photos from long ago, as I have very few photos from that era. But I've also learned the importance of color correcting these slides. When they are scanned in, they have a colored cast that is quite distinctive and makes them look dated. I have been using the color correction tool in Photoshop (I use AutoCorrect so I don't have to set the levels myself), and the difference can be quite dramatic.

Here's the original scan of my mother and her parents (Christmas, 1962?):


Here's the color corrected version:


Here's the original scan of my brother and me (note my anxious look -- this shows up a lot in my childhood pictures):


Here's the color corrected version:


Here's the original scan of my brother (whose own son looks *exactly* like him at this age). I love this picture -- just look at that big grin!


Here's the color corrected version:


I'm curious about why there is this colored cast, though. It could be a function of the film developing techniques at the time (movies from the 1960s and 70s have a very different color cast because of changing film techniques, for example). Or it might have been done intentionally for slides, as a way of compensating for the effects of the warm light being cast by the slide projector (which would have been yellowish). Or is it just a function of these slides being old, and that the colors have changed as they aged?

If anyone knows why these slides might be off-color, I'd love to know the answer.

The scene means a lot to us. To that end, we are offering a free development service to webcomics only. If you are an independent professional, you can apply at the URL below to our open beta for a chance to get your very own free app. Best of all? There is absolutely no catch. It really is free.

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xaosenkosmos  forwarded this joke via Twitter:

An interesting anagram of "BANACH-TARSKI" is "BANACH-TARSKI BANACH-TARSKI".

[why this is funny]

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