Barcraft

I find I rather enjoy the barcraft events. It's entirely surreal to sit down in a bar with a bunch of other geeks and cheer on video game matches, in the sense that such things simply aren't done by people like us. If it happens it's typically a rare event, a convention or held in a private place for a tourney. I feel the weirdness almost adds to it though. It's certainly something I'd like to see more of. Proving that us geeks enjoy eating nachos, drinking beer, and watching people fight on screens as much as anyone is probably not the noblest of goals, but it'll be nice if we can see it expand. 

I had a chat with Josh about what's happening to geek culture as it integrates into mainstream society recently. One of the potential concerns is how it may lose it's individuality as this happens, becoming more or less a series of stereotypes that we believe we should adhere to instead of 'genuine geekiness', so to say. Essentially following in the footsteps of movies, the crowd that truly examines and admires games would diminish in the face of an overwhelming 'casual' crowd, that'll enjoy a severely marginalized experience and take nothing deeper away from it. 

I see barcraft as a sign that we may avoid this fate. Following, of all people, jocks and sports fans in practice. Barcraft and events like it could allow us to form small socially accepted and persistent communities fixated on games and gaming. Its inside these communities that I could see the rest of our culture continuing to survive, if not more easily grow. Sports grow due to their depth, fans becoming more tied up in the game the more they understand it, and this is a mentality that lends itself to critical examination. Typically applied  to which of the fan favorites is more likely to win, but still - critical analysis and joy from said analysis. The key roots to enjoying games as an art form. 

Now I don't honestly expect bar crafts to transform into events to purely explore the artist merits of games - no, it's hard to drink to that. Difficult to express a high ideal when your face is full of nachos. However it will create a culture of people open to complex games, that will pass around new games and recommend favorite titles. 

It provides a link between the mainstream crowd, that will see us as nothing more than a new type of football fan, and the passionate crowd that wants to see games expand and take on new levels. The e-sport crowd may very well be the best thing to have happened to gaming.

So, uh, long time no see.

Whoops? I mean, damn, it’s been a while. I had this crazy idea that after I word-punched my way through a half dozen essays they’d die off or something. That doesn’t exactly work. I’m not certain whether to use zombies or zerg as an analogy for them, but frankly either works. Maybe even undead zerg.

Essays don’t stop coming, and the ones that you finish just come back in new and horrifying ways (cue the mid-term). A professor’s ability to make last week’s work this week’s horror is unprecedented and I’m almost certain unethical. I had this amazing notion that I’d just churn out blogs in the few meager breaks I have in my monolithic days – yeah, you can tell right off the bat how well that one worked. A man needs to eat, and no, there doesn’t come a day when he suddenly finds that lunch isn’t important, no matter how many you go through.

Thus I’ve been more than a bit quiet.

Well shit, that’s not news-worthy; all no one who reads this has already realized they haven’t not been reading in the last while, so I suppose I need to come up with a new gripe.

Oh, I know; Terry Practhett, the damnably fantastic man, has come out with a new book. In fact he came out with the (by all accounts) magnificent thing around October 13^th, but apparently not in Canada-land. We’re still heathens or something, I’m not certain, but whatever we are it means we only get to see it by November 22^nd. Granted, my next move (upon finding this out within the hour) is to simply download the ebook when I get home (T-minus 1 hour and 6 minutes), so I can’t really be outraged per se, but I am a bit irate. I like reading books, more so than Ipads. I’m always worried that I’m going slowly blind whenever I go through a book on that thing, and besides – they look like shit on a bookshelf.

Which brings me to the next issue; I’m going to end up buying the stupid thing in hardcopy anyways. While my ethics on the internet tend to fluctuate wildly depending on what’s being talked about it’s pretty firm on the topic of beloved authors. I don’t steal from them. They gained the entirely un-ironic adjective ‘beloved’, so they’ve managed to win enough respect for that at least, I’d hope. But that means I’m going to likely end up spending $20 for some 3 megabyte file off of Amazon or one of it’s clones and still have to fork out another $23 for the hard cover when they finally deign that us mere canucks can have the book. Joy.

By the way ebook dealers, thanks for lowering the price three fucking dollars, that’s making the Ipad worth it! At least I have, y’know, the entire rest of the Ipad to feel better about. Those poor bastards who bought kindles aren’t exactly laughing right now. I’d like to see some slow change of price in ebooks, but in an industry that honestly has something like four times as much theft as total sales I can’t image them hurting their already hilarious model anymore. On the other hand, it’s not like they lose anything because people steal from them – they’re computer files dammit, they don’t need to print out ebooks or anything. It makes me occasionally wonder if as many people would steal as much if the prices weren’t so insane for the product given, and indeed if the additional sales would make up for the drop in individual profit. The fact that no one has bothered to do this suggests they’re either all A) fucking retarded, or B) Did do it and it failed so terribly it was wiped from public memory. If it’s B, I must admit I’m sincerely sorry, though the lack of big gaps in my memory makes me doubt it somewhat.

Ah well, this has been a really twisty rant. You have no idea what it’s like to be regularly churning out inane crap for five months straight and then practically go cold turkey overnight. I have random crap to talk about; a backlog so fiendish I think it’s a hair’s breadth away from sentience. Barcraft, University life, TED, philosophies, ideas on law, and crazy shit I’ve been mulling over about human nature. No, it’s not normal topics, but instead the endless ramblings that skip through the landscape of my mind. Bizarre though it may be, I enjoy these things.

I’m already out of time. I must make a better effort to come back to this blog in the future – good gods, it feels a relief to have managed this much so far.

Videos are bloody expensive

Just as it says folks.

This shit is getting expensive. Between the adapters necessary, the possible cords, and the TV  that we need to even get high quality in the first place I'm starting to doubt we're going to have a rolling HD series anytime soon. 

Thankfully if we give up on any hope of producing in 720p there might be ways to get going for a meek $200 after tax, a number that bumps to near $300 if Josh can't brow beat an online ordering service into accepting refunds. 

Until we can get all that stuff sorted out we'll be taking another swing at PC games. No idea if we'll get anything like a series going, but it's certainly worth a shot. This time it's Dues Ex the Missing Link up to bat. Persistence in the the face of absolute failure; they will surely write poems of our forays into the wilds of the Internet. 

Videos up whenever we flail at them, hopefully this Tuesday. We'll see.

Video Capture Device

Apparently that's what we needed, and now we have one. Huzzah and whatnot, yes? Yes. 

Well, when I say have one I mean there's one en route. Lord knows when it'll show up, what condition it'll come in, how well it'll work or if a lion will jump out of the box when we open it, but it IS coming. Given it's our best chance at running reliable Let's Plays it's perhaps an understatement to say I'm eagerly anticipating it's arrival. 

I mentioned the various videos I'd like to see the others try and make and received the common response; a note of agreement and a vague commitment. We'd all like to be able to run these various videos, but we're starting to be more and more aware of our success rate at any large project we undertake. Thinking about this I was stuck by a bizarre idea; we need another Master of the IPod. A large communal project we all participate in that actually succeeds. It needn't be as big as designing a full game, nor as ambitious as starting up a whole series. No, I think we simply need a project that we stand a good chance of doing and will be proud of completing, then we must push to finish it. 

We need to undertake a project that comes near our limits but doesn't push them - not for the moment. Breaking this line of failures is the point here. 

But what? 

Making a short YouTube video isn't enough. It never drew us all in and seems to only be a small piece of a bigger production, it hasn't inspired the imagination. Completing a full Let's Play series might do the trick, but I'm worried that we'll lose enthusiasm somewhere down the road. 

I need ideas. I'm wracking my brain trying to find something appropriate, but it's failed me so far. We may have to just try the Let's Play and hope for the best. If we get it going within the first week of Silent Hill's release we may even get views. It's perhaps unfavorable to hope that some small number of views will invigorate us to greater achievements, but unless an epiphany comes knocking it's all I have at the moment.

Oh, studying

Essays and midterms galore!

Yes, there's a reason for my recent silence aside from incredible laziness. Essays, essays, essay. And still two more due before the end of this month! It's going to be a busy little while, I suspect. I admit it's somewhat difficult to write even when I find the time; not for lack of topics of course, but a form of mental exhaustion. There is some work put into formulating even something as casual as this blog. It's not significant usually, but several dozen pages deep into essays exasperated things quite pointedly. 

Regardless, I am here now; ideas must be spoken of. Videos have returned to the table for our little group, diminished in numbers though it may be. We've done absolutely nothing so far and may very well fail at doing things again, but I still take heart in this. The idea of producing our own little Internet channel has caught on, and even if we don't excel at it the notion wont die. It means that we'll keep trying, and that's incredibly heartening. 

We will give it another go and see what happens. The hope this time is to find a proper way to record from the television to make better let's plays. We find some of our best games are on consoles, and they're certainly easier to play as a group with how the room is laid out. I suppose our hopes lie on Trevor and myself to sort out the technical difficulties. It'd be nice to get a series or two rolling, I could easily see us putting the content together. 

I suspect we would have already succeeded at this had we actually moved in to an apartment as a group, it was a half formed plan a while ago. The lack of time to do things holds us back. It's irritating to think that we need to give up what time we have to hang out to do work, so the editing the videos slows down and ideas slowly disappear. A bizarre cluster of schedules wouldn't hold us back if we all hung out in the same house. Ah well, that's just a faint thought for the future at some point. We'll see how this attempt goes. 

Yay! ....Law....courses...

Law is terrifying.

I'd like to dance around the issue to put forward an appearance of confidence, but I don't think that's possible any more. I suppose I could clarify it to the say that the people I have teaching me Law are terrifying, but at the end of the day I'm going to regard the course and it's instructors as a whole any ways, so It's just quicker to sum it up like that.

Law is god damn terrifying.

I have the joyous luck to have stumbled into the one professor who takes pride in her exams and the jaw-dropping confidence obliterating difficulty they're rumoured to have. What's worse is I can't just pass these things as simply that; rumours. No, even the teaching assistants are warning us about how the mid-term will kick our collective asses up between our ears. And that's not a "Study hard or you'll do bad!" sort of warning, no that's them trying to tell us so we'll be less disappointed when it inevitably occurs. It seems that if you haven't been devastated by one of these exams in the past you simply cannot adequately prepare for one.

Which they then naturally used as a segue to how they'll attempt to make us fail slightly less. It was not the world's greatest hope-inspiring speech, I feel. My one tiny consolation is that I genuinely find the class interesting and am eagerly awaiting additional lectures - even if they do insist upon taking place at the crack of dawn on Monday. Though I admit I'm probably not the most popular person in the world for enjoying law. It's not exactly a hobby that recommends itself to the masses, even if my friends have managed to avoid killing me over the number of times I bring it up.

Ah well, at least the rest of University is going pretty easy. History will require a lot of reading, but the topics are interesting and the lectures entertaining. Psychology hasn't really begun to trundle along yet, but the professor is likeable, knows his stuff and appears eager to teach it; good signs all around. English is making me exam books closer than I usually bother to do, and prodding that tiny part of my mind that I somewhat shamefully confess gets excited at the notion of debates and intellectual discussion. How deprived for talk do you need to be to fall into that category? 

Regrettably the last course I'm taking, Introduction to Computers, is making a fair bid to outright kill me through boredom. Case in point I think my heart might have stopped for a while when she spent thirty minutes explaining what USB drives are and how they're used. And no, I don't mean how they function, what the components are - just literally what they look like and how to plug them into a computer. I don't think anyone deserves a lecture on that. Ever.

Well Damn, no BETA spoiler videos for you.

So it turns out that Bioware might maybe possibly have some way of tracking recording of their games, and might maybe possibly have included it in the Beta they handed out like razor-lined Halloween candy. Thankfully I came across this info before I pulled down anything myself via fraps, so I didn't get to test out whether the rumors were true first hand. However, this means I'm not going to be editing any videos for release ASAP. No, the most I have from my weekend of running around TOR's finest is a handful of screen shots and some memories.

It's tough to tell how well TOR is going to do at this point in the game. It's succeeded including a couple of largely unseen elements into the MMO genre, but not enough thatnt my mind was blown away or anything. Of course, on the other hand it still has the names Bioware and Star Wars attached to it, which is pretty much a marketing team's wet dream. They'll inevitably have a solid player base for a while at least, but it's still up in the air as to whether they'll be making much money off the game. The expenses were astronomical from all reports.

School Year

We're diving into the University school year and it's going to be a battle to keep posting here. Don't get me wrong - I still enjoy writing, but honestly the way I've set up my week isn't exactly built to help it. See, I'm basically doing two days of school, and that's it. Just both of those day happen to be 10 hours long and have very little in the way of breaks in them. My usual method for blogging consists of using it to unwind at the end of a work day, and those have suddenly become scarce. I'm doing two or three shifts a week now, but while that means things won't disappear entirely they could take another drop.

The solution is more random posts about nothing to replace the drop off, but I'm not entirely certain if I can get my lazy ass in gear to make those. I tend to need incentive to write, and that doesn't jive with spouting any old crap. I'd say we can shift back to games we've been playing, but frankly that slowed down a bit. Adding in the RPG as a regular for the nights kinda threw them through a loop. We'll have to see how that develops in the coming semester.

Ah well, I'm really rambling now, so I'm gonna go cut orkz in half for a while.

Stealth Gameplay

I finally managed to finish Dues Ex in about 24 hours of gameplay. I'm not entirely certain this'll be the average for most players, since I not only explored while running around, but played a stealth style that by nature took quite a bit longer to get through a lot of the action oriented parts. However, as I mentioned last time the stealth gameplay proved to be quite superb. 

I must admit my experience with stealth games is somewhat limited, the only big  series I've played with it are Assassins' Creed and Metal Gear Solid games. Both of these games used it in much the same way Dues Ex did; which is to say it was more or less optional. A valid path to go through the game, but not the only one. After all, as much as I enjoyed sneaking around in those games there really isn't any reason Ezio couldn't just cut through whole hoards of enemies, and I distinctly remember the option to play MGS3 with a crocodile hat, lab coat, and massive machine gun. Likewise one can pick the beefier armor and combat augs in Dues Ex and turn the game into a poor imitation of Gears of War. I think I mint have to punch anyone who did that though, if only for the experience ruined.

Mechanically speaking Dues Ex is somewhat simplistic, or at least familiar to many gamers. It combines things rather than inventing new stuff. After all, it doesn't actually really have a stealth system - at least not one like MGS's camouflage. The enemies have alertness levels, but aside from that the game essentially hands you a couple of optional sneaking abilities and asks you to use the environment to remain undetected for however long as you so choose. It uses a cover mechanic similar to every third person shooter in existence right now, but couples it with a first person perspective the rest of the time to gives the combat a more traditional FPS experience if the player desires such. The combination of the two gives a sense of awareness to the player without just handing them an over-top view, making the game both challenging and unique in feel.

The story is interesting but I admit probably had my vote from the get-go regardless of execution. It's designed to be at the 'just before' stage for a half dozen old traditional sci-fi stories would happen. I pretty much always enjoy this time period in both sci-fi and fantasy, as it creates a world were you can't help but wonder how it'll all evolve and clash. In terms of ways to get the viewer involved in the story, I can think of few better. Though if you want a quick spoiler clean summary I'd have to bring up an old conversation a couple of my friends had.

One is a loyal and long time fan of the MGS series, but the other always had mixed views on them. I remember he summed it up best by saying he'd probably love games if only they didn't have all the insane weird stuff that crops up in the story line. And that's pretty much what Dues Ex is; it has a bunch of twists and turns in the story, it's just as complex in presentation, but you don't fight a man whose main power is bees. Many, many bees.

Dues Ex Again

So I caved. Just between our little group we have four copies of Dues Ex. I don't think I really need to point out that it's a damn good game to anyone, but just incase any of our Ukrainian readers were still on the fence; ya, it's good.

I'd like to write up a full review but I haven't got near enough into it to feel comfortable doing so. A good chunk of my opinion is going to come from how the roughly ten zillion story lines play out in the game, so I'll need to either finish it or make it most of the way before I can start talking. Same thing goes for the stealth gameplay - it's struck me as incredibly fun thus far but we'll have to see how that evolves with use of augmentations later in the game before I can properly gush.

Right now it's just ludicrously ripe with potential and forcing me to cut this blog short because I really want to play it. On a closing note though, mini bosses in the form of conversations has to be one of the more interesting things I've come across in a while, and not one I was expecting from an action FPS RPG. It's a welcome addition though.

Now I'm going back to playing it already.

Psychic Community

My latest attempt to look into the the world of magical psychic Ki wizards took me local. My goal was to try and identify if Ottawa had any sort of community dedicated to this stuff and hopefully get in contact with some of them, possibly even manage an interview or two. The follow up to this would of course be to try and find out if any of the locals had ways to prove what they were doing was in fact real, since I assume the question must come up often enough that anyone significantly involved in the community would have at least a response to it, even if its only scowling and telling me to fuck off.

I've come across a stumbling block however. It seems the various occult communities of Ottawa are isolated, with very little to no contact between them, or at least nothing on an leadership level. There may be friends between the assorted groups, but certainly nothing so convenient as a forum or regular meet up. I've found their organizations to be very similar to the way Martial Arts dojos are set up. Each has it's own creed, lineage and tiny supporting community, but very little intermingles on an official level. They may all work in largely the same area of expertise but the tiny distinctions in philosophy and practice distinguish them enough that they retain a very definite sense of identity separate from the other groups.

What's more most of these groups are operating out of houses or other very private settings, making any sort of unobtrusive investigation difficult at best. I'm not entirely certain how to proceed from here. I'm hesitant to commitment myself to any of these groups in order to learn more about them. There's often a financial cost associated, but even in the groups that don't necessarily require a fee I can't be certain I'd be able to get very far if I was frank about my intentions to verify their practices rather than merely participate. I could lie of course, but it'd be quite time consuming to try and investigate each independently like this, even assuming I'm convincing in my lies.

My personal experiments in meditations and psiballs have remained inconclusive, I can't for certain distinguish what I'm feeling from anything other than voluntary nerve firings and have failed in my attempts to prove anything through external tests. I need another practitioner that can verify these tests, preferably some one who is further along and more confident of their abilities, so as to not bring the results into question with incompetence. I may just have to bite the bullet and commit myself to a local community to see what results I can find.

Dues Ex

We're maybe four to six hours into this game, and I'm finding it incredibly entertaining. Granted, this might be more because of our tendency to punch out anyone who so much as looks at Adam funny while we play, but that's still an entirely valid part of the game. Besides, the remainder ain't too shabby either. The combat is proving to be difficult, but difficult in the sort of way that makes you feel proud when you over come the long odds, not the sort that makes you look up walkthroughs on YouTube. 

Speaking of such we've made it a bit further into the Catherine and it has become clear it's going to be completely impossible for us to pick one of the moral sides to commit to before the end. Even when blatantly trying to skew our answers to get a 'committed' ending we've managed to stay firmly middle ground. Maybe we're just bad at this stuff, or maybe we should just Do What Robertson Would Do whenever we get a choice. That seems to be the only consistent path we can take.

Actually, despite the fact that Adam Angryman from Dues Ex doesn't look a thing like our red bearded enormous nosed dwarf he's quickly becoming a Robertson Of The Future. Oddly enough I'm not getting this impression from the few moral choices we've been presented thus far, but rather from our general demeanor whenever we play an RPG as a group. The Robertson seems to be a our default personality. I'm not sure what that says about us, but it can't be good.

More Dresden RPG

Okay, so it turns out making an entire city down to the personal level of detail is a lot of work. I mean a really, really lot of work. 

I didn't think I had at any point deluded myself into believing it'd be particularly easy, but damn, if I want to give the guys any real chance to run around all over the place I need to build quite a bit. Also most of them seem to be under the impression that they don't really need to know about the city to play the game, but I'm getting the sneaking suspicion if I just cobble something together myself I'm going to get a lot of blank stares when I ask them what they want to do next. They need to know about the world to interact with it, or it'll basically be a bunch of tourists floundering around.

Luckily we've more or less finished character creation, though it appears I didn't put enough emphasis on the characters needing to know one another. I was sort of hoping they'd put a probably reason for them to help out one another into their backstories, but it turns out they've all picked characters who either hardly know one another or actively disdain social contact. I'm going to have one hell of a time making up a unifying story unless Trevor does something close to a miracle with his yet to be finish character. To give a reference for how likely that is, the last idea he had was a neo-nazi that hunts other nazi's... In Canada... Just kinda because. In morbid fascination I tried thinking up a way I could actually make that relate to our story in ANY way, and I think that just made him latch onto the idea more.

I'd like to entertain the false hope that he'll have a new idea come tomorrow, but not even I can bullshit myself that much. I think my best hope will be bluntly telling him his character needs to be friends with both Peter's and Josh's characters. Like best buds forever. I'll mull on it all tomorrow. Maybe I can make both of Trevor's path-crossng experiences be apart of some big adventure central to his character and involve the other two. I just need some sort of precedent for them working together.

Dresden Files RPG

Apparently I'm going to be GMing again. I'm not certain if this is a good happy thing or a terrible horrendous one. I'm somewhat excited since we're using the Dresden RPG and I think the system is incredibly interesting and fun, but I'm also dreading how things'll go. Last time we tried my style of stories they pretty much all crashed and burned. I haven't recently had the best of track records running things in others games at that. But hey, no one else knows the source material as well as I do, so that makes me the man for the job. I'll get my game face on and see what happens.

I'd love to sit back and begin hashing out ideas for how the story will run, but frankly I can't even begin to touch upon that aspect of things until we hammer out characters and a setting. One of my favorite parts of this system is how it's important to have all of the characters connect with each other and the setting before things even start, but it also means I can't do much pre-planning. With that in mind I'm going over all of the system rules again to get a better grasp of them. I'm going to have to explain virtually all of it, probably several times, so I suppose it's a good thing to have most of it committed to memory. 

The system itself is an intriguing one. It places all the emphasis on character traits, and using them to flesh out the story, giving players part of the world-creating role that GM's usually have - even on an individual scene level. By creating aspects of their characters, such as 'Serves the Law', the player could decide to behave with that in mind when playing the game and earn fate points if done properly. Fate points can then in turn be used to either make themselves better in certain scenes or even make declarations that change the world slightly, like suddenly knowing the closest place cops hang out when bored. It could allow the players a chance to manipulate the game in ways other than just blowing shit up. While the latter is always fun I'm eager to see what the guys can come up with in this system.

As for where we'll play I suspect it'll end up being Toronto or somewhere similar in North America, it has the benefit of being big enough to include all the various supernatural communities and being familiar enough that we aren't bullshitting literally every second of the game. Given the players have the ability to affect the setting its not like I can just research where we're going to explain things to them, they need to know about it in general terms before hand.

Anyways, we're going to meet up tomorrow and figure out everyone's characters and the city itself. Should be fun, though I expect it to be quite time consuming.

Videos and Magic

What? I like multiple topics, even if they don't relate to one another at all. It's what makes this place such a varied and exciting blog, right? Damn straight pretend-audience. (Hi Josh! Why don't you go link this to some one God-dammit?)

Anywho, I'll start with video news. Our more clever viewers may have noticed we don't really have any and no one is watching the ones we do. I'm fairly certain this is because we have literally no focus as a group. We don't produce work on a regular basis and what we do make tends to vary wildly in content. This isn't exactly the best way to draw in a multitude of viewers. Even my hope that I'd continue to make videos died when I realized I really had nothing worth showing, or at least what I did have to show fell prey to the same flaws we have as an over all group. With this in mind I suppose we can say videos are on a hold, and given none have been made for about three weeks this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. I still have ideas for the future, but there doesn't look to be much point in pretending we can create an audience as we stand right now. 

The best future plan I have is to start up a series around Star War The Old Republic when it comes out, just some basic coverage about what the game is and tutorials about how it's played. I anticipate being one of the first people to get his hands on the game in the open beta so I hope most of what I post will actually be new news, and since it's an MMO this is a series with potential to go on for quite some time. Many a youtuber has gotten his start following game news about a new big hit. We'll see how that goes when the time comes.

Now for a dramatic topic shift; it's magic time. I didn't exactly unlock the secrets to life and death but I did find a few new interesting tid-bits when working out last night. To give some context, I'm in Kung Fu and one of the handy tricks they have to build leg strength is to adopt a sort of half squat and hold the position for as long as you can. If you haven't ever trained in it before this can be surprisingly difficult and painful, with most people out of shape having problems holding it for more than a minute or two their first few times. Of course since this is holding a static position it means your legs start to burn horribly until they give out, and the point is to keep doing it to strengthen the thigh muscles which are incredibly important in many martial arts. What I discovered was the ability to move pain, and seemingly draw energy from the stress of the situation into creating a magnified version of my previous tests.

To clarify, I was practicing the Horse Stance (as the half-squat is called) on and off a couple weeks back and found distracting myself while doing it is a convenient way to up the amount of time I can hold it. I was using this trick to rebuild the time I could hold it quicker, as I renewed my training two days ago. Mind over matter and whatnot; if you're too distracted to give yourself an excuse to give up, you won't. For reference, I don't do this exercise more than once a day. In an odd moment of pain induced insanity twelve or so minutes into it I thought "hey! Why not make psiballs! That'll be fun!", and promptly did so. The results were startling. 

When previously trying to intentionally increase the warmth of the psiballs I was making I had managed a heat level of perhaps warm laundry, for an easy analogy. However it took considerable concentration to do so each of the few times I managed such. In that particular exercise I managed a level two or three times the magnitude of even the best previous attempts. What's more, I could feel the heat build in both my chest and head, then flow down the shoulders and to the hands each time I poured more will into the experiment. I was intentionally visualizing pulling the 'energy' from my tired and aching legs when I did this and noted a significant drop in the pain and stress I was feeling in them. I continued my exercise until 16 minutes on the dot, a personal best, which I only stopped at because I was sweating horribly and thought I should probably work on something else before I broke myself.

In the wake of this experience I find myself with a number of bizarre conclusions to mull over. I've possibly attained a level of self delusion so significant I can utilize it to consciously push myself to new extremes in a physical sense. I've potentially found a way to use a combination nerve endings and unintentional control over how my body regulates blood to enhance my ability to resist pain and move excess heat, going on Trevor's theory that this is all manipulation of blood vessels. I also might be psychic and capable of using energy to make myself stronger. For some reason I have doubts about the last one, but in a realization of my utter lack of knowledge about biology I can't even begin to confirm or deny the other theories. At best it seems very peculiar that I can regulate heat inside of my body with that much speed, so the blood vessel idea seems out of place. It's worth noting the process of moving heat into the 'psiball' was one that lasted under a two seconds, as best as I can recall. The situation was, as you'd imagine, somewhat stressful.

I intend to make another attempt at it tonight, though I'm not entirely certain about what I can do differently to test any of these theories. I simply don't know enough to make any real conclusions here. Nonetheless, I'll post my findings.

Some Thoughts on Magic

Sufficient to say I haven't managed to succeed in any of my attempts to perform the various psychic feats that would confirm it as real a phenomenon. I've had limited success in my practices on a personal scale, but the potential for muddying these results with delusions is too high to extrapolate anything of use from them. I can easily see how many of the practices could have massive mental benefits as they almost all concern themselves with attaining a peaceful mind first, and pursuing the manipulation of energy second. However I wasn't setting out to prove that meditation could have calming effects or that training could improve focus - we already know these things, there's no real mystery involved. 

Though I think it's worthwhile to note the significance of the changes involving your state of mind that working on these practices will have. You're not going to turn into a monk in a day or anything, but for a man like myself thats never really bothered with matters of the 'spirit', the calm and relaxation you can get are difficult to describe, and quite potent. Once I was aware of a few of the easier beginner steps to handling 'energy' I could achieve a level of detached peace that I wouldn't otherwise get without taking a hour out of my day to read, or indulge in some other hobby. Furthermore, working at the starter steps of meditation managed to get me into relaxed states I wouldn't know how to replicate in any other manner. The closest experience I have comes from the odd occasion I've woken up at night, not sure of what roused me. The time when everything's dark and quiet and none of the worries or troubles of the day intrude. The only times during the day I've come across a similar sensation involved long walks through the forest, over an hour in length. To achieve the same results in ten minutes in my living room was... surprising, to say the least.

Further exploration of psychic manipulation may prove difficult. The next step is undoubtably finding a way to verify that my current developments are energy based rather than a personal delusion or random firing of nerves, but to do so I will need some one in a similar stage. I don't want to go into any of the online communities due to the risk of running across trolls or individuals who may very well be knee-deep in personal fantasies. However my options aren't precisely varied, and to give up now would be to reach an unsatisfactory conclusion, even for myself. I never intended to prove anything on a world scale, but if I don't even make the attempt to verify the existence of psychic exchange I'll just want to readdress the notion in the future.

A final concern I've come across is the connection to religion that a number of communities I've come across have. I hate to phrase it this way, but I feel that incorporating any sort of religion into these practices only heightens the chance for hallucination to be taken as legitimate energy movement. Belief in the unprovable seems like a very poor basis to examine magic or frankly anything. It opens the door to abandoning the scientific method before the experiments even begin, and provides a catalog of excuses to ignore when your attempts are honestly failing. However these are just issues with how I would interact with these communities, the real concern is the sheer number of them. Due to the method problems it means that even if one community happen to have stumbled across an actual way to interact with magic (for want of a better term) it would be impossible to distinguish it from the numerous others who failed.

This study is becoming much more difficult than I original anticipated. None the less, I must press on if only to exhaust my own desire for the truth of the matter.

Dark Hearsay Results

Well that was interesting.

I have to admit, it actually didn't go off as poorly as I thought it would. Our usual antics played out as incredible amounts of suspicion, caution, and mostly incompetence. I think it's the last that kept us out of trouble. Jason may have taken pity on us for being possibly the worst investigators imaginable. Only Trevor, Josh, and I were playing as characters this time because the others didn't show and we just wanted to kick things off, and the tiny party only added to the investigation's oddness.

See, Josh was more or less continuously put on the spot whenever real-thinking work was demanded of us, and he's never played anything like this before. This was because Trevor maintained his habit of booting up a second game whole we were playing and thus took whatever time he would have had to think up intelligent moves and spent it shooting demons on his laptop, so he mostly only passed the ball to an exasperated Josh when some one needed to ask questions. I on the other hand will somewhat shamefully admit I was diving between playing a dumb (or maybe apathetic) muscle character and finally putting what I learned in Police Foundations to use, the latter meaning I either spouted out loads of useful but slow and boring tactics to find the truth or made my character have a weird erratic spurt of usefulness that didn't blend in at all.

Still, that aside we got a bunch of laughs out of the game and actually progressed quite a bit into the first campaign without anyone even getting hurt. A freak coincidence in the dice rolls lead us right to the door of bad guys and some fairly miraculous dice rolls after that meant we've handled a couple confrontations way better than we should have.

It's going to be fun when we up the number of people involved. I'll keep passing on what we do.

Dark Hearsay, a Tale of Diabolical Rumours

We're back into pen & paper RPGs it seems, this time we've got our grim-face on. I'm not certain if it'll be enough for the dark bleaky blackness of the 40K universe though, since as far I know none of us have been scowling since birth. We'll damn well try our best regardless.

The first game is due to start 'soon'. Well, tonight-level of soon even, which is a good thing if it wasn't for the fact that ever time I say that I feel a strong urge to start my next five sentences with 'if' or 'unless', and 'but'. Look on the bright side though; I'm not the one running it! Jason, an old friend from way-back-when-time has apparently done this game running thingamy-wossit before and is willing to take the reigns. It's awfully nice of him to step up, though I'm having doubts about how long our group will survive.

I never did a post about my vain and depressing attempts to GM a Wold of Darkness game eons ago, but sufficient to say our group probably should have died a half dozen times. It was kept floating along by my attempts to frantically bullshit our way out of lethal situations. See, I didn't want anyone to die for the first little while because we hadn't tried pen & paper games before and I wanted it to have a good showing. Regrettably this may have left us relatively unprepared for a GM with no such compunctions.

Ah well.

I'll cover how it goes (if, unless, but, etc.) next time.

Becoming a Psychic Magical Ki Wizard Part Three

I'm going to take another swing at the psiball test today, largely focused on replicating my previous results. Should I succeed at generating reliable warmth when forming the construct I will move on to trying pressure. I'd like to achieve some degree of success with that, as it would be incredibly easy to verify with a second person. 

The next stage I've found is moving the construct around your environment after it's gained a certain level of solidity. Theoretically this could be used to manipulate things, such as pushing or moving things, but for beginners it's recommended to focus on getting other living creatures to notice it. I don't just say other people here since it actually lists house hold animals as some of the easiest things to start with. Should the density experiment fail this will be the next major indicator that this isn't just personal delusion, and I'll be making an attempt in for the next experiment.

TEST NOTES

- firstly I believe it's easy to confirm that practice allows the user to call up similar sensations a great deal easier. I have been able to replicate the warmth in a matter of moments, and repeatedly. This, of course, can't distinguish between random nerve firings and genuine psychic energy however.
- having difficulty creating density even on a personal level. 
- the tiredness arrives first in the legs, which I'm using as the primary conduit between my self and my source. While this makes sense from a psychic perspective, I'm forced to wonder what the scientific explanation is. I know certain nerves can tire over time, such as hearing getting dulled from over exposure to loud sound levels, but why would it be effecting the muscle? Potentially it's because of proximity to nerves for those muscles, but I'm not sure if that explanation even makes biological sense. Furthermore why don't muscles in your skull (jaw, tongue) have the same effect when the ears are over exposed?
-my process thus far has consisted of pulling energy in through my legs as I breath in, then channeling it into my hands as I breath out. I have altered the technique to opt for a more continuous flow and it created warmth a great deal hotter than previously experienced.
- Concentration is proving easier with this new process, but the tingling sensation appears to be smaller, if present at all.

Next time I'll attempt to trigger a reaction from the environment using both techniques.

Arguments

Sometimes I wonder if here's ever even any point to arguing or debating. This is speaking as a man who finds more than a bit of entertainment in putting his mind and wits against some one else. It's true, I actually enjoy trying to bring a point across and prove it undeniably correct, and in terms of being somewhat fun I suppose you could find a purpose to debate. However, it's rarely ever the intended one. It's no secret that few other people find such things interesting, and that the majority of arguments are waged honestly prove your correct, not to garner any enjoyment from the process.

It's that goal which I believe might be fruitless. See, the things we argue about in life are rarely so simple as to have one absolutely right answer, usually it's a matter of opinion or perspective. When you take such things into consideration it's no surprise that the second thing most people know about arguments is it's virtually impossible to win one. Oh, you might think you're right at the end of the day, but it's a truly rare occasion that you feel you swayed the other individual - at least in matters where things were heated. If things weren't heated in the least I feel there must have been a distinct lack of conviction, and that convincing someone who is uncertain of their original opinion isn't really the same.

What's worse is our ability to ignore facts we don't personally like. That coupled with a distressing tendency to cling relentlessly to points based on unprovable ideas and circling between multiple fallacious arguments means that if a man wants to be stubborn enough, he needn't ever changed his mind regardless of what the situation is.

The real kicker and reason I'm bringing this up is that we KNOW all of this, Even if we don't think about it often it certainly isn't surprising news to anyone. At the same time we're all going to get in arguments in the future and conveniently forget about this when we do. Why? If not for the enjoyment of a heated discussion, why on ear would we waste our breath when we know perfectly well that it won't do a damn thing?

SCA In Osgood

Well, medieval fair in Osgood at any rate. To-may-to, to-mah-to. We finally finished editing up the video and put it on our YouTube channel. Like normal you can find all that stuff off to the right. It has all the highlights of our little trip and came in at 6-ish minutes, not too shabby. Regrettably my initial plan of showing up at SCA events all summer has been somewhat dashed by the lack of nearby ones happening soon. Ontario is a fairly active province for these events, but you have to remember Ontario is bigger than some European countries. The driving necessary to reach all of them is more than a bit out of our meager means. None the less, we will continue to make these videos whenever we come across an event, just don't expect anything like regularity.

In terms if the video itself there's the habitual post-production angst over what we could've done better, but I think we learned some important things in this as well. I personally rather enjoyed our music montage and will be keeping that in mind for future videos. It's been a bad habit of ours to just collect video without really planning how it's going to be presented after the fact, and that's an other thing I'll hope to work on in the future. Particularly we need to work on transitions, and plan to improve them while filming. On the whole though I'm quite happy; not so much with the quality of the work as what we can take away from it.

As wonderful filler videos in the future I want to take another look at both Shogun 2 and Torchlight, while lining up a bunch of other indie games from a new charity bundle pack for new play throughs or first impressions. Hopefully we can keep producing things at a decent rate, maybe the channel will actually get a few views.

Becoming a Psychic Magical Ki Wizard Part Two

I'm attempting one of the most basic form of psi-manipulation today, the formation of a 'psiball'. The name isn't particularly endearing, but when you're working with the lowest form imaginable I suppose it's only normal that the names shouldn't have seven syllables yet. Psiballs are constructs, and as the name implies they must be built. It can be a sphere, a cube, anything you wish. The sphere is recommended for the first attempt due to it's simplicity. The process is just gathering up energy and then pushing it into the shape you desire. Apparently with enough focus they can be almost tangible, and there's numerous reports of people creating visible versions with a great deal of luck and practice. I found nothing to confirm these reports, regrettably.

I'm starting the process by first attempting to gather up energy using the most common technique I found. It recommends using imagination to control where the energy goes. Concentration and visualization are apparently all that's needed to both collect energy and then make a psiball. You have to visualize both yourself and a source for the energy. The sun, moon or earth are all common candidates, but I don't believe there's any limitation on what you can pick. I have elected to use the earth due to proximity. You begin with visualizing pulling energy from your source into yourself. Using various breathing techniques were said to be helpful, but unnecessary. 

TEST NOTES

- The feeling associated with supposed intake of energy is difficult to describe, but is similar to a tingle of sorts. A close example would be the pins and needles experiences when a limb falls to sleep. It appears to be possible to invoke this feeling at will, and it's easier when visualizing energy. The feeling seems to be universal amongst practitioners, though people often report unique sensations accompanying it.
- Pulling in energy is easy, but the focus necessary to continue to pull in energy, maintain what you have, and move it to form a psiball is proving more difficult than I would have assumed.
- Multiple successive attempts invokes a weariness and increased difficulty. It may be the source of several minor aches and pains as well.
- Forming the psiball creates odd sensation in hands. Warmth, pressure, and involuntary muscle contractions in the fingers are all present. Will try with open hand technique, see if the results replicate.
- Even failed attempts encourage enormous relaxation. Similarity to basic meditation is undoubtedly the cause.
- The distinction between invoking sensation in the hands and body and genuine imagination is proving to be a problem. When attempting to force energy into a ball the habit of just imagining one forming better is going to muddle the experiment.
- *** After particularly intense (yet brief) test, I passed my hand through the space where the psiball was meant to be. I had heard the air mid seem denser if one was succeeding, and indeed it did feel so. Attempting to replicate results, though even if it works I can rule out personal delusion. He density difference is minute is present at all.
- Attempts with wider has spacing have maintained heat presence, even when the fingers are touching. Heat it only on the inside of hand.
- Unable to replicate density reliably. Warm is always present, very easy to notice. Involuntary muscle movement ceased with switch to a more open hand when gathering energy.

The information gathered from this experiment hasn't disproven the theory that psi-energy is just the voluntary firing of nerves, but it does stretch it. It's peculiar that both the tingle-esque sensation should be universal, and that warmth should be so easy to create at will. Further tests will move into the domain of solidifying the psiball. It must be tangible to the creator if it's going to have any effect on the environment.

Becoming a Psychic Magical Ki Wizard Part One

I've always have a fascination with the various occult organizations in the world, and I assume it's rooted in my enjoyment of fantasy and science fiction. It's been a long standing promise I've made to myself to finally look into some of that stuff. I realize that's a bit vague as to precisely what I'd cover, but it was intentionally so because I don't have a preference; merely a great deal of curiosity. The goal was to take a look at everything I could get my hands on and treat it utterly serious. I'm not about to lay out any expectations for success, so much as a willingness to see what's truly present.

I'd like to say I had some dramatic event that cued this search for knowledge, but no, to be honest I started looking really late one night when bored after trying to find cool things to do with my friends. Never fear, mundane-man is here. Anyways, I decided to give man-kinds greatest invention a go and I didn't find it wanting. Google turned up a number of communities that were more than eager to spill the secrets of the universe to me, but I was a bit put off from how empty and dead most all of these sites were. The Internet has it share of abandoned forums, but I thought there'd be more activity than that paltry response.

I did find one still alive, and while it seems past its prime it neatly beats out the competition by virtue of having any life at all. It's called the Veritas Society, because it sounds more impressive than Magic Friends and purports to be an "Online Energy Community", which is apparently a term. Who knew? Anyways, my less than invigorating start didn't completely crush my sense of duty, so I put on my game face (search 'angry marines' in google) and set out giving things the best showing I could.

For the next while I'll be trying to learn (to start) how to unlock my mind as a psion. That's fancy-talk for psychic. There's a number of people quite interested in helping me along, and I'm going to abuse the blog here to record my findings. It should make for a mildly interesting read if nothing else.

Heat wave

I think this may be one of the few times when the weather has been too nice for us to get things done.

Well, alright, I suppose that depends on your definition of nice; it's about a bajillion degrees outside right now. To Canadians warmer weather usually means better because the alternative involves a great deal of nice, snow, and crashing into stop signs. It's just a bit painful when that previous so sought after warmth turns around and tries to melt you. I've had the Canadian people as a whole compared to snowmen before, and this regard I have to say they've got it spot on.

The plans called for some sort of war-type-thing, I'm not a hundred percent certain on what weapons it'd be waged with, but the thought was to get everyone out into the wilderness with nothing but mutual harm in mind. 40 degree and higher weather puts a stop to this stuff just as easily as thunderstorms do. Honestly it's making just getting around incredibly painful whenever I don't have access to wheels.

Anyways, plans for a war are still on the table, and I'd like to do a super-hammy battle video if the others feel up to it, I just can't say when it's due by any means. The weather has been very inconvenient for what seems like the last four months, merely changing tactics when it grows bored of drowning us. 

Actually sparking of videos I need to look into other ways we can record on the PS3, with titles like Catherine soon to arrive I'd love to do a let's play with them. Here's still a bit of time before it arrives though, so I'll see what I can whip up.

Books! Books!! BOOKS!!!

I'm knee deep in A Dance with Dragons and as much as I'd like to post about it here, I don't think I could possibly keep from derailing into talking about a Song of Ice and Fire in general if I did. Since I don't have ten hours to write, I don't think I have enough time to do that right now, but I'll get to it eventually. So I thought I'd just ramble about books.

I like to think of myself as a reader. I have a bookshelf overflowing with a number of my favorite authors. I can and have devoured novels in a single day. I've read before I go to sleep so often that I now practically can't get to bed at all without thirty minutes of a good book. But I have been in a bit of a dry spell recently - not in reading itself, but finding new material to eat through. I do enjoy myself a good series but the time always arrives when I've gone through a dozen books of some new author and end up asking myself 'now what?'. 

It can take a bit of searching before I grab a brand new author off the shelves. It's not so much a terrible lack of money (though that contributes) so much as dedicating myself to a new imagined world. I've grown somewhat critical and cynical when it comes to reading. I'm overjoyed when I find an author that meets both my tastes in books and standards in quality. Oh, this isn't to say I won't ever read anything but the best of the best, no, I just tend to only explore new stuff when theres nothing left to pick through from source I've grown to trust. Also it tends to help if some one lends you the first book of a new author. The difference between some one handing you a book and feeling motivated enough to pick it up off the store shelf is noteworthy. Thus I find myself re-reading old favorites. Not a chore by any means, but after a couple months of that I start to get hungry for something new.

So it's with no small amount of happiness that I look toward the coming months. It seems there's a new book from my favorite authors coming out in each of them, each and very one continuing a long beloved series I've been following. We have, as I mentioned before, A Dance with Dragons out just now, and Ghost Story coming from Jim Butcher later in July. After that we have a new book from Pratchett contributing to his Guards story line, and then an additional Dan Abnett book in October to follow things up. For a summer that I feel is lacking in movie releases it's incredibly relieving to see a number of long awaited novels making a good showing.


Now if you'll excuse me I think I've typed my obligatory pile of senseless words today and I'm going to get back to G.R.R.M.'s latest work.

South Tower Armouring Guild

I've mentioned a number of times that I'm trying to build a set of armor for the SCA. This isn't exactly an easy task, given the price range can wander up into the hundreds if not break a thousand even for the starter stuff. A huge chunk of the price actually comes from shipping, since genuine blacksmiths are precisely as difficult to come across as you might imagine. Furthermore shipping fees are usually base on weight and size, which tends to be a problem when you're talking about big metal plates meant to keep your guts on the inside.

So you can imagine my joy when I discovered a local armoring guild that could lend us a hand. Some of theirs prices were higher than I might have otherwise found, but the quality of work reflected that cost and honestly it was likely to end up cheaper once I deducted the shipping fees I was going to step around. All in all I thought it was a pretty good deal to get a better helmet for less just by picking it up myself, so I called up the guild master and asked for an appointment. He told us he was good for that very day and to come out whenever we could.

Josh and I sauntered out to see what we could. We weren't entirely clear on how we'd go about ordering up a helmet (the first thing we wanted), since he had mentioned that 'one size fits all', at least in terms of the metal, so all we'd have to worry about is the padding unless our heads were horribly abnormal. With that in mind we weren't certain if he'd have a few on hand we could just buy rather than ordering anything at all, so we found ourselves a bit confused but with pockets full of money as we drove off to small town the guild was stationed in.

To say things didn't go as I expected them doesn't give enough credit to what happened. It's fair to say things didn't even fall within the spectrum of what I thought could happen. There weren't any helmets waiting for us to buy, and there wasn't any ordering. Our worries that we'd actually need measurements of our heads were as unfounded as our fears the price would be more than we were led to believe. Mr. Fedun, the lead armorer, didn't even want to sell us anything. I had spoken to Mr. Fedun before and I was aware he knew the merchant business through and through, and when confronted by two young men with several hundred dollars in their pockets and no idea of what they were getting into I'm not certain how he surpressed the urge to take our money and send us on our way. Maybe I'm just a horrible person, because I don't think it ever even occurred to him.

He took us into his shop and showed us around in what I initially thought was just him proving that he does the work personally or at least on site by one of his own people. The tour quickly evolved though; he admitted he could just make our helmet himself and it'd be ours inside a week, but he didn't want to do that. No, he wanted us to make it ourselves. I think its important to make an aside here and point out that the collective metalworking experience Josh and I have amounts to something equalling that of a chipmunk. Possibly a dead one.

Sufficient to say it took him several minutes to make us properly understand what he was suggesting, let alone get me to wrap my head around the thought that the idea could have any outcome other than us accidentally burning down his workshop. He stuck to it though, for you see it turns out every Saturday he opens his shop to a number of people who make armor; for themselves or others. He wanted us to show up and join them. They teach one another, helping each other learn the various ways things are made and how to use each machine. We wouldn't have our armor anywhere near as soon, but it'd come from our own hands and we'd know how to maintain it. 

After that came the full tour of his property, including such little things as a mead hall he's building and a trebuchet that can launch pumpkins. He apparently hosts tiny fairs every now and then. He teaches swordplay at Ottawa's Algonquin College and holds a black belt in a martial art. At that point I think I would've believed him had he told us he was a part time wizard.

It should come as no surprise that we took him up on his offer, I suppose, but I'm still shocked we even got it. 

Torchlight!

First and foremost; we just made a torchlight first impressions video. Go check it out on the YouTube channel. I think we're actually getting a better hang of is sort've thing. Next time we'll need to remember to do the research before hand though. As new games come out I hope to keep trying this sort of thing. We may need to cobble together mini-series to do some of the other games we run across though, there's just too much to talk about sometimes. Two or three parters should be more than enough though, specially if we time them at 15mins a piece.

Torch gut in particular was a bit of a rushed experience, but I think we got the gist of what we wanted to talk about across well enough. We were aided by the fact that tTorchlight is thankful not all that complex of a game, though this doesn't necessarily count against it. It's currently going for $15 on steam, and was seen as low as $3 during the summer sale. The game is quite obviously intended to be a bit smaller in scale and priced accordingly. Thus we're not looking for fully fleshed out multiplayer or an incredibly long game here; we're just hunting for basic mechanics and feel. In at regard Torchlight proves itself admirably.

The combat of the game is solid and has a good feel to it. Spells and abilities have a satisfying impact to them and the graphic style makes for an interesting visual element as well. It's art style is cartoony but keeps the requirements for processing speed low and has a flavor that almost shouts steam punk, just without the actual steam components. Think of the leather padding and goggles you would normally associates with steam punk and put them in a more classical fantasy setting. I can say the look is too terribly unique, but I will admit I've never heard of a game where I could have a goggle wearing dual pistol wielding wizard before, and I quite like it. Alternating between shooting people and blasting them with delightfully explosive spells is a fun dynamic I'd recommend checking out.

I haven't gotten far into the story, so it'll be a bit longer before I can give a proper review on that element, but thus far the game has been presenting it's lore in a strong and competent manner. I've been told this game is the basis for a potential MMO based in the same setting and if that's true this is proving to be a good start. 

Really to sum it all up I'd have to say that while there isn't that much in torchlight, all of it is very well done and a great first component to a growing series that's well priced for what you get. It's thriving modding community promises a great deal more to come without you having to pay a dime, and the gameplay will undoubtably only improve with the added co-op elements they want to have in future installations or the MMO itself. Check it out.

Good News Everyone!

The SCA fair was fantastic. My expectations were met or exceeded on every front. Granted, they had been lowered somewhat by the meek showing the chesterville event got, but the Osgood medieval festival was an undoubtably successful. There must have been a couple hundred people present, and while they weren't all dressed up like a full SCA fair, a surprising amount were anyways. I found myself more than a little sad I had decided I wouldn't need my shield and sword that day, they would have fit right in.

In terms of building the armor set there's even more good news. We managed to run into the owner of the south tower armoring guild and had a chat with him. I'd have included it in our video, but we were regrettably too caught up in the conversation to remember to bring out the camera. He's willing to sell us a helmet far better than I thought we'd find for under $200, no shipping fees required. Given it's the biggest hurdle we've had for compiling an armor set due to the necessity of quality I couldn't be more happy that we found a local group to help us out.

Finally the video itself will be going up in short order. I want it done by Tuesday, but we'll have to see how that goes. It's also the day we intend to go pay the South Tower guys a visit, so we may be busy or distracted. We pulled in a bunch of good footage though, so it's inevitably going to show up soon. I'm dedicated to making the videos come more regular now, and damned if I'll fail so quickly. Keep an eye out.

SCA Jousting and more videos

Hurrah! It appears decent weather awaits our second foray into the world of SCA. The showers due for Saturday came early and have left nothing but sun scheduled. We're all going out to the event, bar Trevor if his house collapses on him, and I'm quite eager to see what's in store for us. I'll make sure to bring the video camera with me this time, and inevitably the contents will show up on our channel at some point.

Speaking of which, I intend to upload the second part of our shogun 2 first impressions series tonight to tide things over until we get the SCA video edited or we get around to tackling the next Difficult to find Minerals. It's due to be on Republic Commando, a star wars game that received critical acclaim, but never got a sequel. Since Lucas Arts exists solely to dredge as much money out of everything as they can, I suspect this is due to a lack of sales - suspicions reinforced by them never releasing sales figures. It's a marvelous game, and I feel one of the best Star Wars ones to date. The real difficulty will come in planning what I say about it so I don't derail into a prolonged rage filled rant against the rest of Star Wars.

Anyways, the point is stuff is due to arrive on the you tube channel, and if it actually gets there I'll be thrilled.

The Frequency of Content

The act of creating itself is a magnificent thing. It can be profoundly satisfying and a source of endless pride. The pursuit of simply making things we could definitively call our own was one of the goals of this place when I first opened it up to the others. I've spoken a great many times about the ideas I believed to be lurking within the minds of my friends, just waiting for a chance to shine. It isn't empty flattery; no one reads this blog, there would be no point. I genuinely believe it, but I must admit we've failed in proving it.

It's common, shockingly common to find YouTubers who manage to throw up a video or three a week. No, I don't mean the massive channels that run weekly shows that've replaced their day jobs, I mean the small time people, with barely any subscribers. The videos aren't good, but viewing enough of them invariably shows the individual improving in their technique as time goes on. The influence it had on my previous declaration that we'd make tons of videos regardless of quality should be clear; sucking was almost the goal, assuming you remembered that we would continue on in the face of sucking. It appears our usual apathy is making us forget that.

I intend to fix this, alone if need be. I'm intended to start a vlog series on YouTube to compliment this blog, it'll pertain solely to what's up and coming instead of my personal life, but it'll still work as a convenient video whenever I find myself strapped for immediately-doable-ideas. Along with it I intend to run an enormous amount of Let's Play videos. I'm going to try and rope people into these as much as possible but even if I can't find people I'm going to try and make them myself. I tried to apply my blogging approach to my group of friends and it hasn't succeeded, so now we'll see if I can do it on my own. 

It's my latest vain hope that if I continue to make videos it'll inspire them to contribute, and it may very well succeed in that. I'm just going to have to ignore the likelihood of it 'succeeding' just like the blog.

Canada Day

Well God Damn. I didn't manage to make a post on the Them Canadian Guys Blog on Canada Day.

 I might actually get kicked out of the country for this.

I'd like to say I failed in the post-making because I was busy doing a thousand awesome activities with the rest of the guys, but everyone actually ended up doing separate things. Thus I have to regrettably inform you that not only do I have no July 1st post, but I have nothing to show for it. I am truly, terribly ashamed.


In other news, I made a new you-tube video! Hurrah, right?

Yay?

Well I'm excited, so there.

It's about Minecraft, which absolutely none of my friends will be surprised to hear. I, like a rather large chunk of the internet, play that game for unhealthy amounts of time. So I've decided to take that time and try to produce something for you all with it; namely a Let's Play series - or a suppose a highlight reel of a Let's Play series. My friends and I tend to spend as much time burning our shit down as we do making stuff, so I'm intending to cut out the middle creating part and just showing updates as the town we're building slowly expands.

The updates on contingent on us doing or making something I think is funny or interesting enough to show, so the schedule for this series will be even more unpredictable then our already wildly fluctuating ones for the blog and other videos.

Still, if I get into the habit of using fraps on various games I suspect it'll expand the number of videos we do enormously. We'll finally actually have continuous content in a form other than inane blog posts; and that's always something to be happy about. Check the side bar to see the first episode!

Arnold, Road to World President

Well I finally got my first look through some of the in-development maps and models of Arnold Road to World President. At the same time we began collecting footage for the documentary, and while we're not anywhere near where I wanted to be having something recorded is better than nothing.

As far as the game goes I'm a bit undecided. Of course, no one really expects this to be a good game; it's a first time attempt made by a bunch of untrained amateurs trying to figure out the very basics of starter tools, but I did expect to see things move along a bit faster than this. Not in terms of quality, but perhaps at least quantity. Admittedly I know almost nothing about game design at this point, but it appears that things are already slowing down a bit, which is making me worry about our habitual lethargy whenever we attempt projects. 

Trevor, who I'll dub lead designer by virtue of bringing the idea of the game to the other two involved, assured me everything was trundling along on schedule for their released date, but I'm not certain I have his faith the matter. No models have been made passed the initial one day creation of the basic enemy, and it's unskinned. While the maps seems to be slowly progressing what little I can recall of my own map making it seems like something that could've been done in a couple afternoons, not two weeks, and looked similar to what was described a week ago by Trevor. I will admit complete ignorance when it comes to coding things, so maybe the bulk of the progression has been in that regard, but i don't know why the others would stop to wait for it instead of, say, making more models.

Perhaps if I convert what Josh has recorded in voice acting and sent them off to Trevor it would jump start things again. I may be calling this too soon, either way I'll post updates as time goes on.

Duke Nukem Forever, First Impression

Hold on – we’re getting this out of the way right at the beginning; Duke Nukem is an extremely divisive game, huge parts of which will either be enjoyable or cringe inducing based on your outlook going into the game. The most important thing I can say about the game is that reviews will be almost meaningless to you. If you find the idea of the game hilarious you’ll probably enjoy it, if you think it’s childish do not spend your money on it, it’ll be a waste. There is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing in the game-play or story that will change your inevitably already pre-made opinion of this game. It’s all about the jokes and the style, everything else is as bland as bland can be so as to not get in the way of either.

I find myself comparing it more and more to Shadows of the Damned, a comparison in which it’s fairing rather poorly. It’s not that Shadows annihilates Duke in any real element, just that it does absolutely everything Duke does slightly better. I mean that qualifier literally there – slightly – Duke isn’t losing out big time in any major categories, it could just stand to improve in virtually all of them. It has funny moments and good one liners, just there’s too few of both and that means the one liners end up repeating a great deal. It’s gun play is solid in that it isn’t glitchy or floaty, but it’s very bland except for a few cool guns that the game seems to jealously guard. The scripted moments can be funny, but I found myself waiting for them during the somewhat boring gameplay segments. I think that’s a repercussion of the boring guns issue; the gameplay itself isn’t really engaging enough on it’s own. There needs to be a gimmick for each fight, or a scene setting it up, otherwise it just drags.

It’s worth pointing out here that it never drags for too long. All of these issues are what I’d class as minor ones. I get bored for a couple minutes, maybe a one liner is repeated two or three times too many, I find myself hoping there’ll be a shrink ray or anything other than a ripper and shotgun around the next corner. None of this would really lower the game in my opinion too much should they be alone, and even combined they make no suitable explanation for the 2/10 ratings it received from some people. No, it just lands it firmly in the sixes at best.

What it does give me hope for is the next one in the series, which I believe they’re going to make enough money to create. Without all of the baggage of the last dev team to carry maybe they can take a new direction with the weapons or jokes. Something fresh, which is definitely lacking in Forever.

Summer Siege

(and other SCA events)

Murphy stands defied as lady luck takes the cup. Things may not have gone perfectly, but we did managed to get everyone out to the siege and even stayed mostly dry. Give the number of things that could've gone wrong I'm actually quite amazed. The event itself wasn't as populated as I had hoped, but I suspect that might be because of the looming threat of dire weather and tiny hurricane that struck Ottawa the very night before. Thunderstorms are capable of giving even the most crazy SCA fan pause when their festival takes place in the middle of a field and they're wearing metal.

Regrettably I completely forgot to bring the video camera, so we have absolutely nothing to show for our day. However, bringing a video camera to an event with virtually no shelter when it's due to rain might've been a bit stupid in the first place, so I'm not that upset. It helps to add that there's another SCA festival taking place a paltry two weeks from now, and we're all gearing up to go. This one is the Osgood Medieval Festival, and from what I can gather it looks to be quite a bit larger than the last one. If nothing else there's due to be jousting there, which was a bit beyond the group we saw in chesterville.

What's more there's going to be several armouring guilds present - and this time I'm certain; they're advertising on the events main page. Even if they don't have helmets for sale it might still get us in contact with some one who can be commissioned to make one. If we get lucky we could be on our way to making a working armor set. I'm already back in the mentality to budget it courtesy of the shields we managed to buy at the chesterville fair. I'd post a picture, but I bought mine blank. I want to put my family crest on there and it needs a good couple layers of varnish first. Once it's all prettied up I'll toss it in a post.

Also, should the weather not hate us next time I'll hopefully remember to bring the video camera along. What can I say, I'm not at my best early in the morning. If there's more of these events throughout the summer I might even make a quasi-series out of it. Well have to see how that goes.

Murphys Law Round Two

Them Canadian Guys vs That Canadian Weather

This is a pre-emptive call. As the massive cloud banks loom and the count down until tomorrow begins I feel confident in making it though. The only thing that can save us now is an unwholesome amount of luck. On the other hand we've seen a decent amount of luck thus far; I didn't think we'd have near as many people ready to go as we got. It's just a matter of time to see whether luck will win out against these rather low odds.

To give a bit of context we're hoping to go to something called the Summer Siege tomorrow, it's an SCA event that centers around the siege in question, but has the whole mixed bag of SCA activities available as well. Naturally the event is due to happen outside in a gigantic field, and given the requirements of dozens of people fighting in a siege setting the weather needs to agree in order for things to happen as planned. Mud you see, they don't want to reduce the entire green field to a pile of it. Stick fifty fighting boots on the ground after a harsh rain and that's the result you'll have in short order.

On the off chance the event does go through I'll be dragging the camera along to try and get a few good shots of the affair. We might even get a video up by the end of the night. My secondary objective is nicking SCA clothing or a helmet approved for combat there. I doubt the latter will be present, if for no other reason than you need precise measurements to make those, but if I can get in contact with the people who do the making then it'll still be a success. I'm quite willing to hire a smith independently, and would love the ability to dodge all those shipping fees.

On a last note I'd like to mention we're still planning to do the documentary, and will likely get some of the footage done this week. Maybe Tuesday if everyone gets their act together in time. I'd give an update on the game itself but I need to go get an update myself. From what i have heard they've made good progress thus far. I should be able to elaborate in the next post. 

Murphys Law

I started today all ready to tackle the making of our documentary, hoping in my naivety that we'd giet quite a bit done today. Ideas for establishing shots, interviews, time lapses were all abounds. Everyone was due to be ready and while we were planning a tight schedule I remained confident we could keep it. After all, it was only last night that we sat down and made it for today. In what I've come to realize was gross arrogance I thought there was very little room for error.

This morning was an exercise in humility. I can see quite clearly now that it was a well deserving one, but at the time of teaching I thought it was quite unfair. It seems the world has scooped up fourty-eight hours, neat as you please, and tossed them out of the nearest window. It has thoroughly dashed our plans to make a decent headstart on our next video project. Between promises to siblings, works shifts for key people, and prior obligations the first day was scratched out completely. Tuesday doesn't look much better with the whole afternoon lost to appointments and the entire evening taken with that old Kung Fu thing.

The whole situation has a bit of a stinger on it as well; both of these days were meant to be back ups. The original shoot was due to be taken on Sunday, but we didn't have any better luck getting the required people together then either. A further catch is the complete lack of free time I have later in the week, postponing the entire affair until the next weekend.

To say I find it irritating would be a terrible understatement, but it's not that I'm annoyed at people. In fact it's more than I don't have a person to be annoyed at that bugs me. Here we find an odd combination of luck and already tricky timetables; an effective but depressingly intangible excuse for the utter collapse of our plans.

Ah well, I guess I'll take a swing at the next 'murphy' I see.

An Extension of the Previous Gripe

In my off time today I found myself looking through Carletons courses, the English bachelor of arts in particular. What I discovered isn't of any real shock to me; I know I would enjoy the course as much as the one I'm currently enrolled in and have no real enthusiasm when faced with that fact. I did come to the realization I may not be entirely qualified for it however, which puts me in something of a new albeit equally wretched state.

The blame can be laid solely on my shoulders, though to be more specific I should say my shoulders back in high school. I was never a really engaged student and was rather sure that I was going into either policing or fire fighting at the time, so I felt no need to kee myself in the harder 'university level' courses. See, my school system split it's high school courses into college and university levels, the latter almost always more difficult - though they like to phrase it as more of a difference between applicable and theoretical knowledge. Since in my youth I didn't forsee any sort of university entering my life, I opted to slack off. Appropriately enough enough fooling no one when I said it was to 'raise my grades'.

Hell, if I wanted to improve my grades I would have simply began to give a shit.

What this means is I find myself lacking the required four university level credits, one of which unsurprisingly is English. I'm not certain if my college courses make up for this hole in my learning cycle. The only one that seems pertinent to enrolling looks to be the English course, which I received in a mildly augmented form via Police Foundations. They called it 'communications', perhaps in some vain hope that it wouldn't be skipped as frequently, and said it would relate to policing instead of just being a regular old English class. This proclamation lost a bit of it's effect when my entire class noticed that every other program was signed up with an identical course, regardless fo relation to policing. To say the least of it; yes, it was effectively just a grade twelve English course, but I don't know if the distinction in their own definitions disqualifies me.

I suspect that should communications qualify as the English course the rest won't be an issue. A college diploma should suffice to replace the already generalized secondary requirements. No, the wretchedness of it all stems from time lost. I haven't come very far in life but this issue already highlights the difficulty in going back and restarting where you want to go. I have no doubt that should I not qualify I could spend a single summer taking all four required courses online and smash them out with no difficulty, but this is the very first stages. I don't envy the notion of giving up three or four years of my life to university in the pursuit of the wrong career.

I've still not made any decisions about what intend to do, rooting myself in the middle of the dilemma. I'm just gathering in information to make the inevitable decision a better one. On that note I intend to go into Carleton in a couple days to work through the details of my registration process, once there I'm going to ask a few secondary questions about the English bachelor. I could worse things than make sure that my decision is made with a firm understanding of what I'm getting into, but it's beggining to feel rushed. I feel like I'm running out of time. I don't think I'll ever reach the point where I won't be able to turn things around, but that my indecisiveness could cost me a very great deal.

Writing as a Career

Somewhat shamefully I find myself drawn back to the old thought of trying to make the various and often inane things I write into career. No, I dont mean this blog. I'm not so egoistical yet as to believe that the idle thoughts running through my head could ever serve as a feasible source of income. I understand that such has happened in some capacity on the Internet before, but hoping to find yourself standing in that exalted crowd is a bit like waiting for your winning lottery ticket, only a bit worse. After all, once you win the lottery your journey is effectively over. The interest of the Internet is a much more fickle thing than money will ever be.

No, I mean writing in a broader sense, and one that certainly moves past that of creating stories. It's not that I feel that writing stories is in any way beneath me, quite the contrary, no it's just becoming a published author can be well on near as daunting a task as entering the profitable Internet crowd. What I've been focusing on is journalism, professional critics, or maybe finding a column somewhere that doesn't immediately reject what I type. I don't have grandous aspirations here, I wouldn't be dissastisfied should I enter a modest career. I simply find myself enjoying writing. The process of finding words to properly describe my feeling and thoughts is becoming a form of entertainment to me, and the potential to make a job out of it is enticing.

These decisions - and there is a decision to be made here - cannot be undertaken lightly. I find myself in a unique position in my life; enrolled in university and on the verge of exploding out in to my adult years and embracing all that such entails. It also means what I do now will likely shape my life for decades to come. I'm currently on course to pursue a life in policing in one form or another. As I've said before, policing does intrigue me as well. There's a very simple reason I found myself in my current courses; I placed myself there. I was not forced by any means, and suspect I could find a fulfilling life if I take that path. With time however my opinion of what might be best continues to err on the side of writing in some fashion. There trick is figuring out whether it's a passing fancy or a truth that shouldn't be ignored any longer.

I find myself haunted by a story of my mothers past in which she came across a similar dilemma. Years ago she found herself freed from a marriage gone wrong, capable and willing to move herself about the world and faced with the choice about where her life would go. On one hand lay the path of uprooting herself and her children and moving down to Toronto to pursue a career in the zoo of all places; for you see if was always a dream of hers to work with animals. She has an uncanny ability to empathize with them, and a heart that loves them more than any other I've had the joy of knowing. It required a sizable readjustment to her life. She would lose her friends and have to take her kids hours away from their father. With a decision I believe my mother came to regret more than she would have ever thought possible at the time - she relented, and chose to stay in Ottawa.

I understand the reasons why she choose to stay and live here, but it doesn't change the way it's remembered. It was a chance for her to do what she wanted and I can't help but feel the regret every time it's brought up, a cloud of wistful "what if"'s encircle the thought. It's lead to my poor attempts to revive some faint possibility that she might be able to do what she truly wishes now - much later in her life. Time itself has become an enemy, it makes the decision so much more difficult when you've become entrenched in your current lifestyle. The money that we all want doesnt give the freedom we thought it would, it just restricts us in subtler, different ways. To find herself in a job that she would really love and really want to go in every day she'd need to change so very many things in her life, and risk even more. I could encourage her to take the chance and see what comes of it every time we talk and I still wouldn't be able to overcome the burden responsibility has put on her shoulders.

I would like to think that I could go to university for criminology and policing and see what that life has in store, certain that I could see what writing has in comprarasion at any moment - but I know that isn't the case. Life is too complicated, it's a frail and distant hope that I might avoid the entanglements that'll make choosing my own future impossible. I don't want to look back on this time in my life and regret what I see, and that means I need to walk down the right path now.

Passion

I recently found myself in an argument of quite some length. Furthermore I was having it with two of my closest friends - but let me be clear; this wasn't a bad thing. It's not even a particularly uncommon occurrence. I may have mentioned this a couple of times before; we argue for fun. Occasionally there's an goal had by one or more of the people involved, but mostly it's just a casual distraction for an evening. If I were sincerely trying to waylay the negative connotations this behavior inevitably brings about I would probably be more careful to call it discussion. Yes, spirited discussion. However I feel the severity and strength with which we press our points means our little 'fits' cannot be accurately labeled anything other than an argument. The main difference is we seem to brush these off with no real offense or worry. It's commonplace to us and hasn't ever hurt the friendship we have, proving at least some level of lie to the old thought that you can't ever discuss politics or religion with friends should you want them to remain so.

I will admit here that I do give that expression some credit in regards to virtually everyone else I've met, but perhaps we are a somewhat rare combination.

The argument in question brought up the idea of passion. It actually touched upon it in a number of ways that would take a great deal of time to explain here, but the one I wish to focus on is whether it is a positive force or a negative one. I'm once again massively simplifying things here, but thats a necessity when dealing with our forays into debate. We wander you see, quite vigorously - if that can be applied here.

Nonetheless the question, or the bit I wish to focus on, briefly touched upon how passion can influence your behavior. It's certainly known that people who are extremely passionate about their work can create great pieces of art, but is that all that such passion does? Does it solely fill you with the motivation needed to push you to greater and more magnificent lengths, or is there a darker element involved as well? Obsession, that is. The difference between the two seems minute and mostly concerning the tone you want to have when describing a person. The fact there are two words at hand here doesn't necessarily dictate that they must be separate things after all; the intention of the speaker is sufficient to create new words. Hell, with English you barely need an excuse to make new words, let alone a unique definition.

However if passion and obsession are indeed one and the same it brings us to the question of whether this is a good thing to have. How does one harness the good traits associated with passion without putting themselves at risk to losing themselves in obsession? If they're the same it would seem to indicate you can't. So is it worth it? This is a question that must be asked on a purely personal level. Naturally we can see the benefit of passion to a society as a whole, so this is a matter of whether you should guard yourself again such levels of care and investing so much of yourself in things.

The thing here is we must realize this isn't a choice that can be clearly made right before you fall into the fiery depths of obsession. It's quite likely you won't actually see it coming. You might have an epiphany, but as a rule I wouldnt recommend relying upon random happenstance as your failsafe. This means it must be a measured decision beforehand about how one will operate. A decision between pouring as much of yourself as you can into everything you do in life or keeping a level of distance, a barrier to shield yourself from the effects of obsession. And it's when faced with this choice that I find myself for once, thankfully, not divided.

I would dive into every aspect of life I experience with my whole being. I would pour my heart and soul into everything I make and do, never stopping until I have satisfied my own hopes and dreams. In his regard we came to a conclusion. Should one undertake such a mentality they would leave themselves vulnerable to loss, depression, and obsession. But if that's the risk needed to take life as I have, I whole heartily agree to do so.

Hurrah! Progress!

So pretty much everything I talked about hoping to get done in yesterday’s post we did mere hours after I posted it. This is a good thing, even if it does make me look like a bit of an idiot. It means we have a video up and running for the first in a new series, and both Josh, Trevor and even my dubious self will be looking around for games to add to it. It’s title ‘Difficult to Find Minerals’, because puns are their own excuse. In case it wasn’t too blatantly obvious, it’s about finding hidden gems in the gaming industry. It’s actually encouraged me to possibly try videos of my own concerning the various games I run across – even the more popular ones. I know making another “hey looks at my shit in minecraft” video won’t shock anyone, but it might be fun to edit it and show off what I’ve gotten up to with my friends.

You have to keep in mind that the goal is making content and learning how to have it suck less in the future. Sitting around waiting to find the perfectly awesome thing to make a video out of is what limits us and means we end up not only posting virtually nothing, but tend to lack the skills to do a good job when the real things come along. Such as, say, a documentary video concerning the making of Arnold Schwarzenegger: Road to World President, a game that Trevor’s making along with a couple of our other friends.

I’d explain what the game is all about, but it’s not only still in the process of being designed, but that’s what the documentary is going to be about. See, I want to take a genuine stab at making a professional looking documentary here which means it’s going to involve plenty of work and lots of dedication to complete. I hope the continuing development of the game along side it will encourage us to keep pace. I expect this to be a multi-part series on our you-tube channel, but we’ll have to see how it all turns out.

All I know is after yesterdays meeting I’m feeling a lot more confident about our capacity to create stuff without completely succumbing to our usual pitfall; apathy. I don’t want things to run at a frantic pace – I know we’d never keep it up – but some sort of consistent content output would set a great precedence for us. Anyways, I suppose it’ll be clear in the next couple weeks whether we’re going to achieve that or not, so keep your fingers crossed.