Well, we’re back from vacation. I’m still not motivated to do much of anything except look at pictures and listen to surf music, though.
Category: WWdN in Exile
wil’s summer vacation
I am on vacation with my family, and I’m not especially motivated to do a whole lot of blogging.
Regular posts will resume in about a week.
windows open and raining in
I came across some really interesting items while Propelling today, which I wanted to share, because I can:
Farmers Put 220 Acres Under Glass to Create Vast Artificial Environment
On the chilly Isle of Thanet in Kent, England, farmers are placing 220 acres of land under glass so they can grow vegetables all year round. The greenhouse, when completed, will house 1.3 million plants and increase the UK’s crop of green vegetables by 15%. Called Thanet Earth, the project will be a series of 7 connected grenhouses with a relatively small carbon footprint. And nothing grown inside Thanet Earth will ever touch soil.
This interests me a great deal because I’m considering some hydroponic gardening in addition to my regular gardening here, as we attempt to reduce our carbon footprint and become more self-sufficient. Climate change played an important part in the worldbuilding of the novella I’m working on, so I’ve spent a lot of time researching the future of agriculture; it’s interesting to me to see people experimenting with different techniques in the present.
A Professional Gambler’s Take on the Tim Donaghy Scandal
Haralabos Voulgaris leads a rare life.
He’s one of very few people — Voulgaris estimates there may be as few as four or five — who have achieved a high level of success betting full-time on the NBA.
And he does very well at it. “In the last eight years,” he explains, “the 2004-2005 season was the only year where I didn’t turn a nice profit, and I lost very small.”
His approach is intensively evidence-based. He has his own massive database that would be the envy of any stat geek. For instance: Given two line-ups of players on the floor, his database does, he says, a good job of predicting which players will guard each other. The database also tracks the tendencies of individual referees, and factors all that and much more into forecasts. Voulgaris also watches close to 1,000 games a year.
He designed the database as a tool to outwit oddsmakers, and it works for that.
But it’s also a fine-tuned machine for researching the claims and career of Tim Donaghy. And having used this database, and his contacts in the sports betting world, Voulgaris says that his confidence in the integrity of the NBA has been shaken, to the point that, despite his big income, he’s looking for ways to stop betting altogether.
“The league has made a big mistake,” he says.
I sort of knew Haralabos back in my poker-playing days, and really liked him because he was one of the first players who was really kind to me, even though he had no reason to be. I knew he bet on sports, but I had no idea he was as serious as he appears to be. His perspective on this whole scandal was fascinating to me, especially how his data and analysis support Donaghy’s claims. He says the NBA has done a great job of sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Unfortunately, I agree with him.
Warner Bros. plans on releasing about a dozen 22 to 26 minute webisodes to help make the complex story of Watchmen easier for the uninitiated to digest. Recently, WatchmenComicMovie was shown a teaser trailer for these webisodes by an anonymous source. From what we saw these webisodes are going to be really well done.
The series of webisodes, which will be titled Watchmen: A Digital Graphic Novel, will be less like a slide show of original comic panels and more of the comic book “brought to life” with rudimentary animation techniques.
The teaser is simply a conglomeration of different scenes from the comic book given motion and set to dramatic orchestral music. In order to animate the comic, the production team has apparently dissected the elements from each panel that they wanted to move — such as a cloud or a character — and animated it in front of a restored or “filled in” background.
For example — they animated the iconic comic panel that shows The Comedian’s funeral from above to not only have falling rain and lightning, but wind that realistically blows the coats and clothing of the mourners surrounding the open grave. In another, Ozymandias sits in front of his monitor bank — each commercial and T.V. program on the screens in motion — scratching the back of his pet Bubastis’ head. For lack of a better way to describe the trailer, it’s like you’re watching an episode of Watchmen: The Animated Series.
DUDE! Even though living in a post-Phantom Menace world has made my default position on all these thing “apprehensively optimistic” I can’t wait to watch these. It seems like everyone involved in Watchmen truly gets it, so it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep my hopes nice and low . . . they want to go up and up and up.
This last story isn’t my submission, but that’s just because my fellow scout Keith beat me to it:
The Prisoner remake: details emerge?
The Prisoner Appreciation Society (Six of One) is reporting that this classic, surreal sci-fi/adventure series is set to return for a six-episode miniseries run. The announcement coincides with The Prisoner’s 40th anniversary.
Reports have Jim Caviezel playing the heroic Number Six — actor with a penchant for playing long-suffering characters (Bobby Jones, Jesus). Sir Ian McKellen would play arch-nemesis Number Two, while cementing his status alongside Christopher Lee as the greatest nerd project actors of their generation. Between the two of them, they’d own Star Wars, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Dracula, Frankenstein and X-Men).
The Prisoner is my all-time favorite TV show, ever. EVER! After watching marathon after marathon of The Prisoner, I grokked what makes people become Trekkies or Browncoats. It did more than entertain me, it inspired me. I know that’s weird to say about something that’s so Orwellian, but it’s true. The Prisoner spoke to me when I was a teenager. I bought the GURPS book, bought all the video tapes, and picked up every fan-made book and map of The Village I could find. I bought rub-on transfer letters in the Albertus font so I could make my own signs for my dressing room, and I painstakingly drew my own Number Six badge to wear on my jackets. I read and re-read the graphic Novel Shattered Visage fruitlessly looking for clues about . . . stuff. My first big external SCSI Mac II hard disk, which I think weighed in at a mighty 30 Megabytes, was named KAR120C. Again, living in a post-Phantom Menace world makes me a little nervous, and we’ve been talking about this remake almost as long as we were talking about a Watchmen movie, so I don’t even know if this is as reliable as it seems. Regardless, I’m hopeful that there’s someone out there who can treat it right. And a six episode mini-series would be freaking brilliant.
Okay, one last bonus link before I go: years ago, I did an episode of The Outer Limits called The Light Brigade. I was watching The Time Tunnel last night on Hulu, and saw that The Light Brigade is there, as well. It’s useless for non-US visitors (can you use a proxy to fool Hulu? I haven’t tried) but if you’re in the US and want to spend 44 minutes watching me . . . um . . . act, I guess is the word I’m looking for . . . now you can.
2008 geek tour updates (with an update)
This is how the GeekTour ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Bad news, everyone: I’m not going to San Diego Comic-Con. I was planning on attending with TokyoPop, and when they laid off a ton of staff (including my editor, which made me sad) they also pulled out of Comic-Con.
There is a very slim chance that I may crash a booth with a couple of friends, but I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to justify the expense; it’s become increasingly difficult for me to break even, let alone turn a profit, at Comic-Con. I’ve got a kid in college, so justifying expenses, even for superhappygoodtimes like SDCC is increasingly difficult.
More bad news, everyone: I’ve sent a couple of e-mails to Creation about the Big Honkin’ Vegas convention in August, and I haven’t heard anything back; not even a “No. Now please go away.”
Last year, they’d sent me an invite by May. Since I haven’t heard anything yet, it’s already mid-June, and several people have asked via e-mail and comments here if I’ll be going, I went ahead and contacted the same guy who’s booked me the last two years. He hasn’t replied, so I’m left to assume that they’re not interested in having me participate in the con.
I have to say, this makes me really, really sad. I was really looking forward to both of these shows. I can’t do anything about TokyoPop pulling out of SDCC, but I’ve made what I feel are reasonable efforts to contact Creation. If I keep asking, “Hey, guys! Can I please come to your show and help you make money? Can I? Can I? Please? Please? PUH-LEEZE?!” I will start to feel like a chump. In fact, I already feel like a chump. And pretty demoralized, to boot. Maybe I’m “not part of the Star Trek family” again. Sigh.
UPDATED 6-14-08: I just double-checked my spam folders, and I see that the e-mails I’ve been sending to my contact at Creation have been bouncing back to me, getting marked as Spam. I’ve just tried a different contact at Creation, so hopefully this one will get through. Now I’m hopeful that perhaps Creation isn’t ignoring me, but just didn’t know that I was trying to make contact with them.
A little bit of good news, everyone: I’m still on for PAX, where I’ll perform from Happiest Days, and rock your world on MarioKartDS. Also, Rock Band. Oh yes, there will be emm effing Rock Band, emm effers.
how to create your very own ogre deathcrotch
Yesterday, I told some friends of mine who are writers that I feel this need to write, and I certainly want to write, but my brains aren’t cooperating with me at all. I asked them for advice, and was relieved to learn that I’m not the only writer (who doesn’t feel like a writer at the moment) who experiences these weird and annoying patches of malaise.
I applied everyone’s advice, so I’ve gotten to play some GTA IV to recharge, read some comics and genre fiction to reinspire, taken some walks to clear my head, and now I’m writing something totally unrelated to my work, so I can hopefully kick stuff loose in my head and hopefully get back to my assignments.
I think I had this sudden lock-up in the brain-u-lo-tronic region of my skull because I’m kind of overwhelmed by both life and work. I think I may have taken on too many creatively-demanding writing projects, so yesterday I thought I’d make a list of my writing commitments, including their various deadlines, so I could get a better picture of what I need to do. The idea was to put everything onto paper, tape it up next to my desk, and feel a little bit better knowing what my responsibilities were.
Um. Yeah. Didn’t quite work out that way. Seeing how much I have to do has really freaked me out; I have an August 1 deadline for this project that is unlike anything I’ve ever done before, and though I’m looking at 51 days until I turn it in, I don’t feel like that’s enough time. Yikes. Fear is a good motivator, though, and I work well when I’m terrified, so I’m hopeful that once I get past a couple more milestones, I’ll be able to enjoy this thing, instead of . . . uh, whatever it is right now. Which is mostly paralyzing fear.
I also made a list of things I want to write but probably shouldn’t until I get my paying gigs handled. On that list is the last entry in our trip to New York, and a review and commentary about D&D4E. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I’ve been enjoying the fourth edition core books so far, and that I like a lot more than I don’t like. Because of all these commitments I have, though, I don’t know if I’ll have time to play or run a campaign — or even a one-shot — before summer is over. I don’t think it’s particularly responsible to write much about fourth edition until I get a chance to play it, you know? (If you’ve played or run a fourth edition adventure, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to leave ’em here.)
Anyway. On to the cryptic title of this post: John Kovalic, creator of Dork Tower, illustrator of Just a Geek, big bossman of Out of the Box games and all-around insanely awesome dude, has also been reading fourth edition. Today, he writes:
The designers of Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition must be having a real roller-coaster time, at the moment. On the one hand, this epic labor of love is finally in readers’ hands, to much acclaim. On the other hand, it will be slowly nibbled to death by gerbils as every gamer under the sun points out the one or two nitpicky things they dislike in the nearly-thousand-page Opus of Awesomejuice they released.
(I, for one, don’t understand why The “Customizing Scores” method of character generation starts with 8, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10. Would it have been that much to throw a couple extra points players’ ways – creating 10’s across the board – and thereby making the subsequent table of point additions that much more elegant? Nitpicky, nitpicky, NITPICKY!)
I will say, however, that the Monster Manual gives me greatest pause. Not due to any mechanic. Simply because of the sheer number of monsters that now go by MODIFIER-title MONSTER NAME (or MONSTER NAME modifier-TITLE). Yes, I realize this is due to the seemingly endless subdivision and stratification of monsters and monster types necessitated by new monster Roles: artillery, brute, controller, soldier, fishmonger (or something like that).
[…]
Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that D&D 4th edition has a specific way they’d like you to differentiate monsters. Now, anybody can be a critic. But it takes a better man to offer constructive advice – to put forward something POSITIVE. And so, in that spirit, I humbly offer KOVALIC’S SCROLL OF SWARMING FOURTH EDITION NOMENCLATURE, for those who want to create monsters or name new Player Characters the right way…the Fourth Edition way. Roll some dice and try it out!
What follows is an awesome and hilarious table intended to allow DMs to randomly generate silly names that fit into the unique fourth edition nomenclature. If you’re wondering, I used my very own dice to determine the type of ogre referenced in the title of this post.
If you roll up a monster name — I mean really roll it up, not just pick two funny entries and put them together — feel free to share your creation in the comments. I, for example, have also just created . . . a Bitchyhulk Oni, who I’m just certain is a level 9 controller.
You know, I can’t imagine not being a geek.
. . . and I’m very grateful for that.
To make an already geeky post that much more geeky: WWdN reader kendiara shared some thoughts on 4E that were interesting to me. (Is there a good signal to noise 4E discussion online anywhere?) Maybe they’ll be interesting to other geeks. There’s also some really funny monsters that were rolled up, including the Kobold Dreadlard, who I think must be a really tubby Kobold with a Dex of 5, and the fearsome Ogre Meatspike, who could be rather NSFW, depending on how demented you are. Eww!