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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Daniel M. Kane's LiveJournal:
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| Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | | 11:48 am |
| | Thursday, January 29th, 2009 | | 4:50 pm |
| | Monday, October 20th, 2008 | | 2:38 pm |
NEWS!
My sister's going to have a baby in March! I'll be an uncle! Rock out! Posting this a little late because I was frantic with bachelor party stuff all weekend. ~me Current Mood:  cheerful | | Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 | | 2:14 pm |
| | Friday, September 26th, 2008 | | 4:11 pm |
The Week in Mac Lab, Plus: WaMu goes bust
My bank got seized by the government and sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co for $1.9 billion. Joy. Let's see... -- on Sunday we had Indian food from Pakwan, I think. That may have been when we saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I liked. -- On Monday we had Chinese from Dim Sum Bar, to get the memory of the fucking awful sweet and sour pork from Tsing Tao out of my mind. I think we watched A Life Less Ordinary on Hulu at my instigation, which everyone enjoyed thoroughly, despite it having a terrible inappropriate movie poster. -- Tuesday was... Indian food again, I think. Watched the Heroes season premiere. Amusing, but not as amusing as A Life Less Ordinary. -- Wednesday was cheesesteaks from V Cafe. House season premiere. -- Last night we had more Chinese food from Dim Sum Bar. No front desk show, alas! That's all the news from Lake WobeMacLab. ~me (...where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average!) Current Mood:  anxious | | Saturday, May 17th, 2008 | | 6:27 am |
BSG, Utena, *ramble ramble*
This season of BSG is bugging me. Michael wassiface (Andressi?) seems to be getting his big ham writing hands into it again. Last night's episode was full of stupid pointless shit that was supposed to OMG ADD TO THE TENSION. Actual, I dunno, plot points cause enough tension that random shit only deflates the real tension. GAH! Way too much selective stupidity in the last couple episodes.... though I liked this one better than "Faith." I'm not going to suggest any staff writers get drug out into the street and shot, but a good fifty lashes can't hurt. Also, I had to consult the web to find out who the hell a character was, since they bring her into play once a season, and expect everyone to remember who she is. After giving her the same haircut they give every other supporting female. Maybe dropping some dumb sports metaphor to remind me she was on Anders' team of professional athletes-slash-guerillas? It's certainly not bad this season, but there's so much weirdness going on that at this point the series should be fucking dripping awesome until the end! Randomly rewatched the first episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena, plus the last two, since I had them lying around. I'd almost forgotten who innocent and whimsical it begins. Those last episodes give me the shivers. A character in a girls' anime* becoming a princess was never, ever so bleak a thing. Many other bad things happen, but that moment... heartrending. If you haven't seen Utena, I'd totally recommend it. Bit of a long buy-in, unfortunately -- 39 (20-minute?) episodes, and if I recall rightly there's a lot of filler in the first season, but almost none afterwards. Also, they really goof around with genre tropes, right down to spotlighting new characters in elaborate frames with spinning roses in the corners. Found the style kind of off-putting, but I stopped noticing after a while, 'cause the story's amazing. To me, anyway. Sometimes I think I'm weird. Just a little. ~me "Oh, stubborn and reckless hero, you let me have a small taste of true friendship. Farewell." *girls apparently demand more characterization than powering up to fight a bigger bad guy! Current Mood:  dorkyCurrent Music: BOA - A Girl | | Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 | | 2:49 am |
"Player stories will always be more powerful than scripted stories that we try to tell the players."
It's late as hell, so I didn't watch all of it, but this should be Will Wright's talk in which he introduced Spore at GDC 2005. I certainly recognize some of the volunteers caught on camera. :-D http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-262774490184348066I've seen the actual Spore demo parts of it, but not the rest of the lecture. Ought to finish it tomorrow. It touches on an argument I was having with tabaquis regarding MMO immersion - she says the onus is on players to create living worlds. I don't entirely agree, but the current state of PC-NPC interaction (i.e. the conversational depth of a lobotomized goldfish) isn't exactly a solid foundation to work off of. Remind me to coherently write up my rambling ideas on "narrative pathfinding", which I've been meaning to do for a while. ~me P.S. -- my internets broke. Will leave this open overnight and post it when I get up or something. Someone yell at me if I broke the video link. Current Mood:  contemplative | | Saturday, April 26th, 2008 | | 2:31 am |
Some WoW memories
Talking to fmk (pretend I actually used an lj user tag >.>) about his guild site and its lack of pictures made me think of my screenshots. I looked through 'em (I was never the most prolific, mind you) and picked out my favorites that I hadn't already posted as part of the character blog. http://www.daniel-kane.net/files/wow_screens/Highlights include Olm's lovely face, the University of Kalimdor field trip to the Dark Portal ("It is our sin."), facing down with nemesis Valgasha, Malvina learning how to be a lady from vile warlock noblewoman Paxineau, various shots that I just thought looked cool, a cute one involving holding hands while watching Booty Bay fireworks, and Olm in a dress. Not including the "outtake" in which Tabaqui tells him, "you're the one wearing a dress." Fear the power of the lantern! I got so much mileage out of that quest reward. If anything piques your curiosity, ask away. I'm waxing nostalgic, though I remember all too well why I stopped playing. ~me "(( Scenes with Olm are so much more fun with some CTT ))"* *Crazy Troll Theatre P.S. -- this got me thinking about the end of Olm's, Malvina's, Tizzie's, and Vuruf's intertwined storylines that never got set down in words. The only thing that's certain is that it didn't make anyone happy, and it made someone dead. P.P.S. -- actually renamed images to something other than default screenshot indexing Current Mood: amused | | Monday, April 14th, 2008 | | 1:01 pm |
| | 2:41 am |
"Do dragons have penises?"
Some RPG.net forum necromancy revived a thread from 2002. Not too much of interest in there, except for this absolutely amazing post by Ron Edwards: http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=376873&postcount=22While it is discussing reproductive organs, I'd consider it work-safe. ~me "Holy crap. shanoxilt just resurrected a five-and-a-half-year-old thread. Dang, but that is some powerful voodoun." Current Mood:  tired | | Saturday, April 12th, 2008 | | 2:38 pm |
The only problem with universal healthcare...
... is the number of fingers you'd have to pry out of the pie to make it cost-effective. Multi-billion-dollar industries make campaign contributions, hire lobbyists, and invest heavily in the status quo. How many Americans could those profits insure? I was trying to pull up a Locke quote about corporations and services in a free economy -- he'd be rolling in his grave to hear about corporations selling services in a "free economy!" -- but stupid new-fangled fuzzy google keeps pulling up crap with "lock." GRAH. S'all for now. ~me "I'm still amused by the thought of tanking Hillary Clinton." Current Mood:  aggravated | | Monday, April 7th, 2008 | | 2:34 pm |
REIGN chargen tool
Mapache's made a pretty snazzy Javascript one, and I'm tinkering with a slightly more random PHP version. So far I'm thinking that REIGN is pretty awesome. Technical issues at work are making me sad. Five minutes to unpack a 2MB zip? Spinning beach balls while editing text files? Leopard upgrade makes me grumpy indeed. ~me P.S. -- my roundtable notes are a #3 hit on a Google search with 1350 results! I'm way more excited by that than I should be. Current Mood:  energetic | | Friday, April 4th, 2008 | | 12:55 pm |
| | 7:19 am |
Dreams
Remembered three dreams in the past week. Kinda ran the gamut, though I never really have nightmares. Ranged from implacably mundane to wish-fulfillment fantasy to disturbing morality-questioning. Don't usually remember dreams -- once a week is a lot. Probably because my sleep schedule's been more irregular than usual lately; I remember them more often when I wake up and go back to sleep. Still, it's different, and things that are different concern me. Also, one of them involved me shooting a yellow lab that attacked me, and then trying to shoot it again once it was disabled and helpless. Regardless of me then nursing it back to health, in the dream I was scared enough to want to kill, even after the crisis was over. That bothers me. Is it something I'm capable of, or just something I'm worried I might be capable of? Stupid subconscious, be less opaque. >:( This may have had to do with watching Dexter, where "may have" equates to "probably." ~me "Psssst. Dude. Your balls are showing." "Good to know." P.S. -- Phil emailed and said that Paula called him into a meeting to express her concerns that I was forcing him to trade days with me against his will. I lol'd. I took it at face value to start with, but my cynical side is wondering if she's doing damage control on employee perception of her. I mean, honestly, who the hell would think that I'm pressuring someone who's been working there four? times as long as I have to work Sundays for me? And if I would, why hadn't I done so earlier with someone else without as much seniority? My italics should be indicative of the level of craziness this conclusion implies. Current Mood:  uncomfortable | | Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 | | 4:59 am |
| | Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 | | 5:21 pm |
| | Friday, March 28th, 2008 | | 2:56 pm |
Just finished the first season of Dexter...
... and I thought for a bit there, especially in the second-to-last episode, that I may have to spew distressed vulgarity into this blog. It's strange -- I saw a half-hearted reveal coming, and then was bored through the "dramatic irony" of principle characters being oblivious. But when two of them found out different painful truths, I empathized pretty strongly. Poor Deb! Poor Dex! That's all. The season was a little inconsistent but had an impressive high water mark. Look forward to seeing more. ~me P.S. -- haven't thrown up a quote for a while. Here's one from me in an RPG.net "knight vs. samurai" thread: "I should leave this thread for a while. I just had the incredibly inane thought, 'who would win in a fight: Guan Yu or Saint Patrick?'" Current Mood: impressed | | Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 | | 7:29 am |
Hm.
Reading this thread on RPG.net gave me a serious hankering to start up a Spirit of the Century game. Every player needs to have a character concept in mind, but doesn't define ANY skills, aspects, or stunts before play. Whenever the player wants to use an as-yet-undefined stat or perk, they announce what they're filling in on the character sheet and fill it in. F'rex, Mal's gotten himself into a brawl -- not that that's ever happened -- and his player declares that Mal has Good-level Fists, then begins to relate, "so there I was, enjoying a quiet Unification Day drink with Zoe and Jayne..." He might also choose to define the Aspect "Your coat is kind of a brownish color..." that he was thinking of. In theory, it'd key the players into each other's character quirks -- especially Aspects! -- in a fun, organic way. Not sure how well it'd work in practice. ~me P.S. -- holy Hell I need to go to bed. Current Mood: sleepy | | Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 | | 1:15 am |
Hee hee hee.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw"I don't know if it makes a better example of two randomly generated Superheroes with hugely different powerlevels, or point-buy Superheroes with hugely different levels of min-maxery..." -- dcampbell on RPG.net ~me P.S. -- rather than another post: Premise: Angstful swordsmen quest for glory in a virtual world. Genre: Noir/Dungeon Crawl/Martial Arts Premise: Hedonist Zoroastrians come of age in a subterranean wonderland. Genre: Crime/Martial Arts Premise: Odious detectives sate their thirst for blood in modern-day Ireland. Genre: Epic/Cyberpunk Premise: Time-traveling megalomaniacs perform bizarre rituals in modern-day Greece. Genre: Pulp/Martial Arts/Alternative History Premise: Terminally ill underachievers play whimsical games on an artificial world. Genre: Adventure Random premise generator! http://www.penguinking.com/premise.phpP.P.S. -- Premise: Amnesiac Satanists fight in the name of Communism across infinite dimensions of time and space. Genre: Noir/Romance Current Mood: amusedCurrent Music: Boa - Angry | | Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 | | 3:18 pm |
I'll confess it: Obama irks me.
The man is such a cipher. I haven't seen him say anything of substance that could possibly be taken as controversial. Reduce dependence on foreign oil! Stop obsessing over race! Stop getting troops killed in Iraq! Preserve net neutrality! Make America better! Politicians historically make lots of promises during campaigns, especially promises that favor voters vs. corporations... since corporations don't vote. The man is smooth, smooth, smooth. He could probably win the election based on personal charisma alone. I like him much better than Hillary Clinton -- but I can't bring myself to trust him. After all, race and gender shouldn't matter, right? It's a total coincidence that he appeared on prominent daytime talk shows hosted by African American women to be incredibly charming (as is his habit) and woo female voters. He's cunning and very, very smooth (did I say that?), no doubt about that. His voting record really doesn't help. In all the senate votes he and Clinton both voted on (last I checked, anyway), there were perhaps one or two in which they opposed each other. However, there are a lot more votes in which he didn't cast a ballot at all. He's generally pretty good at keeping his mouth shut when he wants to. Clinton criticizes Obama for lack of experience; Obama snipes back that she's just a surrogate for her husband. They've been doing this the whole time, the only difference is that he's so personable about it all. I just can't see what the fuss is about. I haven't found any substance under the rhetoric, the charm, and the sly politicking. ~me Current Mood: cranky |
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