nothing up my sleeve

Posted on By Wil

I’ve loved magic since I was a little kid — In fact, I still have some of the magic-show-in-a-box sets that my aunt Val gave me when I was growing up — and I always wanted to be a member at the Magic Castle, but I couldn’t, because I wasn’t a real magician. Recently, though, the Castle changed its rules, and started allowing a select number of non-magicians to join as associate members … and I was allowed to join! So now I can go and watch magic whenever I want, which is awesome.

Last Friday, Anne and I went on a double date with Chris Hardwick and his girlfriend, Lydia, to the Magic Castle. We had a nice dinner, and then we spent the evening watching magic shows, including a mind-blowing closeup show that we saw from the front row.

While we were sitting in one of the shows, laughing and gasping and marveling at the magician on the stage, I realized that the real power of magic, and the reason that I still love it now, at 42, as much as I loved it at 8 and 10 and even into my surly teens, is that when we get to watch a magician perform, we can feel the same sort of wonder and delight and joy that we felt the first time we saw magic when we were kids.

I think I’m going to dig out my books on sleight of hand (for you fellow magic enthusiasts out there, it may please you to know that I still have my original copies of Now You See It, Now You Don’t) and see if I can rediscover some of the skills I once had. Maybe I’ll take some classes at the Castle, too, when I have time.

Ah, time. If I were a real magician, I’d wave my magic wand and create more time for myself. That’s a trick worth learning.

there were errors

Posted on By Wil

The entire purpose of this post is to get the error warning off the top of my blog. Apparently, this theme doesn’t like whatever was going on with the photo I posted yesterday. For the handful of you who care about things like this: It turns out that there was a URL shortening plugin installed that was causing the warning and the strange insertion into the header. I deactivated it, and reactivated the native one, so hopefully that will fix things.

begin transmission:

Posted on By Wil
bedhead20150720
This morning’s bedhead was pretty epic.

Lots of work to finish today before I have lots of work this week. I don’t feel particularly inspired to write a thing, so here’s a list of things that may be relevant to your interests:

I’ve been making some Not A Radio Free Burritos. This may interest some of you.

Wilco has a new record out and it’s free (for the moment).

Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana is past the halfway point of the season, and I’m as excited for the audience to experience the rest of the story as I am sad there is less ahead of us than there is behind us.

The adventure campaign book for Ashes of Valkana, with some additional Titansgrave setting information, is at the printer. I’ve seen the proof, and it is gorgeous. If you want to play in our world, I think you’re going to like it when it is released during GenCon in a couple weeks. Adventure Game Engine also comes out at GenCon, and you’ll need both to play. I encourage anyone who does play to write up your own stories, define areas of the world in ways that inspire and amuse and entertain you, and bring Valkana to life in your own way … and then tell me about it, because I think that will be awesome.

This makes me really mad. I didn’t give Facebook permission to do this, and I can’t see an obvious way to stop Facebook from doing this:

Facebook is creating a false sense of entitlement and intimacy, by giving the impression that people can pay outrageous amounts of money to send a message directly to someone’s inbox, even if that potential recipient has no intention of reading it.

I really like the current episode of Tabletop, even though I realized at the end of the day that we could have done an episode for each game, instead of combining them into one.

I’m still really upset that I was lied to and betrayed by my (now former) friend who I hired to help work on Tabletop. The more I learn about the last few years, the more I discover how thoroughly I was mislead, how many lies were told about me and my show to others, and how much my trust was abused … it’s not a good feeling.

Tomorrow’s Conversations with Creators is with Trey Arch, the studio that makes the Call of Duty and Black Ops games. I suck at FPS games, so I don’t play them, but I had so much fun talking with these people, I think there’s a very good chance I may give the single-player campaign a try, on the easiest setting.

Next week, I’m talking to the studio that brought us Journey, and Flow, and God of War. After that, CwC is over for the summer, and while I’m hopeful that Sony will want to make more, I don’t know if it’s going to happen. If you haven’t played Journey, DO NOT WATCH ANY OF THE PLAY THROUGHS. Please trust me on this one. It’s such an amazing experience, and you’ll rob yourself of a lot of that if you spoil it for yourself.

Have you seen the Wil Wheaton Project’s new season? It’s called Reactor, and the guy who plays me is pretty funny. He also seems like a really nice person, so I hope the network goons treat him and the show better than they treated me.

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing around with databending pictures and creating strange ambient recordings that they inspire.

 

bentbedhead20150720
Databending bedhead is … weird.

I got a Pebble Time. I mostly like it. It has an LCARS face that makes me happy. I’m not sure if I like it more than the LG Android watch I picked up from woot recently, though. Good thing I have experience wearing multiple watches for some reason.

Wil Wheaton Swatches What The Fuck

Okay bye.

the unbearable lightness of sleeping

Posted on By Wil

I wrote this on my Facebook thing yesterday:

I’ve been trying to get myself on a sleep schedule that is consistent with the rest of humanity in my timezone. This isn’t easy, because my brain naturally wants to sleep between 2am and 10am, and has been that way pretty much my whole life. But in summer, especially, I like to get up early before it’s close to 100°, walk the dogs, and feel like I’ve actually accomplished stuff before noon.

So I’ve been getting myself into bed around 10 or 11, as I attempt to slowly move the clock back. I read until I’m ready to close my eyes, and I set my sleep thing on my phone to wake me up 8.5 hours later.

By the way: if you like science fiction, you probably want to subscribe to Lightspeed Magazine. It’s what I’ve been reading every night, and it’s always spectacular. It’s delivered to my Kindle once a month, and it’s one of my favorite subscriptions that I have. Also, keep your eye on the Humble Book Bundles, and Vodo.net.

They *always* have great, inexpensive, amazing books on sale.Okay, back to … whatever this thing is.

So last night I got into bed a little later than I wanted — around 11:30 — and picked up my Kindle. Which had a dead battery. Shit. No worries! I picked up the actual book I’ve been reading (Imbibe! is a book about cocktail history, culture, and recipes), and read for awhile. I turned off the light when my body signaled that it was ready to go to sleep, and put my head on my pillow.

You know what’s coming, right? Just like the comics, my brain went from being sleepy to being WIDE AWAKE WITH LOTS OF STUFF TO THINK ABOUT in under a minute. It’s okay, I thought, I can power — err, the opposite of power, I guess, since I’m trying to go to sleep — through this. I began doing this relaxation/breathing/self-hypnosis thing that has always worked for me… but it didn’t work for me.

A side effect of one of my brain meds is that, occasionally, my left leg will twitch like crazy, and my whole body won’t let me get comfortable. Last night, it set itself to eleven and went bananas.

I think it was finally 3am when I just gave up, and sat up in bed. I grabbed my phone, and looked at Twitter for a few minutes. I hoped that occupying my mind would somehow work some voodoo or whatever on my legs.

It didn’t.

So I fired up Bejweled, and played a game … that lasted to level 11. I don’t know if that’s as good as I think it was, but it felt pretty great to play that long (until I realized that it was nearly 4am) and I got a badge that I can turn in for nothing at a redemption counter that doesn’t exist.

So at 4am, whatever the hell was going on with my leg finally stopped, and I turned off the lights again. This is when Luna, my cat, jumped up on me, snuggled into my chest, and began to purr. It turns out that the warm weight and soft purring of my cat on my chest really helped me fall and stay asleep.

Until the goddamn jackhammer started four hours later.

I got up at 9:30, because I am committed to going to sleep earlier and getting up earlier, even if it means that I didn’t get as much sleep last night as I wanted or needed.

I’m fairly sure that I won’t have much of a problem with that in about 10 hours.

—

So last night, I watched a pair of movies that I really liked: It Follows, and Ex Machina. I think it was about 12:30 when I got into bed. I read almost a full page of my book before I felt sleep coming on, so I powered off for the night … and didn’t fall asleep for two hours. Sigh.