I finished this painting last night. It's my 8th oil painting, and my first that isn't of a place or person that exists; I didn't paint from reference. As with every painting, I am not completely satisfied, but happy with what I've learned, and excited about the next. This one took a strange course. It started like this: and I got bored with it, and did this: which eventually turned into what it is now. Back to SF over the weekend for a conference. I taught my 5yo daughter how to correctly use the term: Pshaa! A few days ago, we were having a 'yes!' 'no!' battle when I switched yes up to 'pshaa!'. Last night at the dinner table she used it perfectly. So proud.
You're doing great. Now the kid has harsh and mellow in her vocabulary and has seen them tossed together in a colorful phrase. Half the reason my kid is reading chapter books to herself is because we've read too and with her, the other half is that we use lots of crazy language. I try to use as much varied and creative language with Haz as I can. Vulgar, silly, serious change the grammatical rules, change all of one vowel sound to another and talk that way for 30 minutes until we are cracking each other up trying to make harder goofier sentences. It's so fun when you notice them purposely using new language. It's even better when you notice them using it naturally. I was talking to her about our friend who is training to become an acupuncturist, what that is, what it's supposed to do how you do it with needles. At the end of the conversation Hazel says, "That Sonija is one sharp lady!" Nice joke kid, keep it up.
Thanks. I did a little bit with acrylics in high school. Acrylic is awful. I then painted mostly geometric things with house paint a few years after that. After more than a decade, I got back into it with oils. I don't want to paint with anything else. I am self-taught when it comes to painting. I took a number of art classes in high school and college, but that was almost all drawing. I do study how other painters I admire do things, and I do that at museums. Not a lot, but from time to time. My advice would be: paint the light. Create the dark, then paint the light on top. Don't paint objects, but the light which defines them. That's the world as we see it. The objects only exist in our heads.
I've been interning for a chess stream for about 2 weeks now, and I haven't had this much fun in so long. Over the weekend we had 4 time US chess champion Yasser Seirawn staying over, and he got on stream multiple times. The easiest way to describe him is that he is the Bob Ross of chess in commentary and personality. Is easily one of the most jovial people I've ever met- there's also a 4 page article about him from the Los Angeles Times that begins with "He is hale, hip and handsome." On Saturday, with did a fundraiser stream for one his chess mentors growing up. There was tons of support from the wider chess community, and we broke through our donation goal in an afternoon. On Sunday night, he said out of the blue that if we reached 1000 subscribers (get 440 new paid subscriptions) before he left on a flight the next day, he would commit to streaming for the channel for a year. It was impromptu decided that we would do a 24 hour livestream to try to reach the goal. We worked through in shifts, I stayed awake for 20 hours of it to do background technical work / moral support- but was it really necessary? We ended up reaching the subscriber goal within 4 hours. We also hit the front page of Twitch and hit a record 4200 concurrent viewers at once- absolutely nuts for a stream that averages 500 viewers on good days. What a weekend, and what a great guy. Holy shit. Here's a clip of sleepless me hanging my queen and causing Yasser a lot of pain. ======= I met up with elizabeth last Wednesday for a Land of Talk concert! It was a great night. I've never been to a speakeasy before, but I met up with her at one with a couple of her friends (Note- I've never met a vlogger before, but it turns out that two vloggers in the same room is a perpetual energy machine). I loved the secret club vibe to it, and they served some of the best drinks I've ever tasted. I'm inspired to get into cocktails. I didn't actually take any photos with Elizabeth, but I did get this great picture of the band I've been obsessed with all year: 
I gotchu fam! (low light speakeasies are are not the best for selfies) I gotta admit Steve's pretty intense, he's one of the most energetic people I know. And the fact that he shares my love of messing with Hind kinda made us spiral out of control. I swear I can be laid back too! Had a good time at the concert too, you got good taste in music :)
Awesome! Great show? I really like her new album.Land of Talk concert!
Really great show! there were hugs in the entire audience and someone broke down crying in the front row on their knees (fuck it, I teared up like 4 times during the show). They played the entire Life After Youth album in order, and came back for It's Okay for the encore.
I wrote a kickass memo for work. It's kickass because it says badass, cunt-punt-y things like and and This is like draft 4.5. It's pretty close to final. I'm handing it in by EOD, EOW at the latest. I've crossed all my T's and dotted my i's and printed out my most updated copy for a physical review of last needed fixes. I filled out my back-up test results sheet which is driving the memo and I even added quiet little italicized, right-aligned "See Sample #XX" under the paragraphs where I call out specific findings/types of findings. I'm pretty proud of it. Drafts 1 and 2 lacked some vigor. I also feel like I realized things, Important Things that Needed to Be Said, over the course of my attempting, and editing, and think-think-thinking over, and revisiting this memo again. It's nerdy and yeah, mostly no one appreciates it, but I feel the work I'm doing is important, salient, impactful, and insightful. And that's really what you need to make work work, now, innit? As an internal control established to reduce risk, the process is so ineffective that management's limited resources might as well be focused elsewhere entirely.
the regulatory implications here cannot be overstated.
A focus on associate metrics over quality has probably contributed to the observed phenomenon.
uuhhhh if r/relationships is seriously gonna ban me for using the word bitch, i'm going to nuke my tidder account because everything will be stupid then. fwiw, btw, apparently /ships automoderates "bitch" as a gendered slur but not "bastard" hubski 4 lyfe bitch
At a very fancy dinner, everyone ordered cocktails. I enjoy simple drinks, like a Jameson, neat. I ordered a sidecar, because it sounded like something Frank Sinatra or James Bond would order. I received a tall sugar-rimmed cocktail glass with a bright orange drink and a pear slice balance delicately on the rim. I began a deep and contentious internal crisis for the rest of the evening, as to how I felt about this dainty pear drink, why I felt how I did, and how I could be fooled by such a sly waiter and so treacherous a cocktail menu. This crucible left me angry, confused, and buzzed. I look back on this experience with reverence towards the Pear Sidecar, and wisdom for similar adversaries which are sure to present themselves in my future.
Word to the wise: any cocktail that is popular is going to be bastardized by "mixologists" who somehow think they're entitled to a career for sloshing two or three fluids together. I was on a show once where the "secret" to their new cocktail was three drops of saline. See, it releases the flavor compounds... Thus we end up with this mess: Martini - used to be gin, vermouth and bitters. Is now "vodka and whatever the fuck we feel like adding." Cosmopolitan - used to be vodka and cranberry juice. Post sex-and-the-city is now whatever the fuck juice mixed with whatever the fuck white liquor they feel like. Margarita - used to be tequila, triple sec and lime. Is now a tequila slushy made with whatever the fuck they feel like. Daquiri - used to be rum, lime juice and maraschino. Is now a tequila slushy made with rum. Dollars to donuts you will never even meet a bartender that knows what maraschino is. There are cocktails you can order that are going to be exactly what you expect because they have never been inside a tedious HBO dramedy and because they're made with strong flavors that are hard to mask, which makes them more difficult to market to drunk sorority girls. They also likely will baffle the fuck out of your average "mixologist". Start with a Manhattan. This is bourbon and sweet vermouth. They will have bourbon, they will have sweet vermouth, so while they might ask you what goes into one (I have been asked "what's in a Manhattan?" by servers at Michelin Star restaurants) they will be able to make it. If they know what a Manhattan is, they probably know what an Old Fashioned is (bourbon, bitters and a sugar cube). they probably don't have sugar cubes. Because the only thing they're good for is Manhattans. This is why Mojitos ceased to be mojitos. It's a bitch keeping the mint leaves around. If they have a whiskey list they will probably be able to make you a Rusty Nail. This is scotch and Drambuie. Drambuie is another single-purpose ingredient; it's useful pretty much for Rusty Nails and nothing else. If you really want to shoot the moon, you can go for a Sazerac. This is rye, a sugar cube and absinthe. It will probably cost you a lot because only hipsters drink absinthe. For future reference, you likely won't go wrong with a scotch and soda. Specify a blend. Johnny Walker, for example. Also, if you want to annoy people drink Bushmill's instead of Jamison because it's "protestant whiskey."
I feel like Old Fashioneds have been a more and more common occurrence on drink menus lately. In the hipster universe I live in, "classic" cocktails are really making a comeback. But most often you're either at a cocktail bar where you're better off trying one of their house mixes (that's gonna set you back 18$ if your friends drag you to a trendy speakeasy) , or you're at a non cocktail place where you gotta play it safe with a gin tonic or a tom collins if feeling adventurous...
Every other time I order a Rusty Nail, the bartender either has to ask me what it is or wonders if they even have Drambuie. I've already spotted it, because goddamn what's more annoying than people ordering a drink that the bartender can't make? They then reach way back behind some goddamn nut liquor to pull it out. You can see the dust trailing off the bottle as it crosses to the pour station to fill me up. I don't love it as a drink but I like one once in a while. I always put the bitters on the sugar cube for an old fashioned. drop a quarter of an orange wheel and cherry in with half the ice you'd put in a regular bucket and muddle the shit out of it. Shake and pour the whole thing in the bucket. Rinse the shaker with a sprits of soda and dump it into the bucket. It's my favorite old fashioned, no garnish.
We have reached an era where you're better off knocking the "mixologist" off his equilibrium than you are trusting him. Case in point - you're no longer tending bar, I'm no longer working in bars, and nobody aspires to be a "bartender" anymore. It's "mixology" now.
Not too surprising. As you didn't know anybody, then the majority of the conversations would've been filled with small talk. The nature of small talk is that it's conventional. It's people exchanging lines that have been socially agreed as polite and amicable. There's no surprise that it would get tiresome after 40 minutes. I mean, that's barely enough time to scratch the surface of one person, let alone a whole party of people. That's why everyone tends to drink at parties, because it helps them to care less about such things.It was mostly boring. After a surprisingly short time, every conversation I got into felt so hackneyed that it was possible for me to predict the dialogue flow without even thinking.
So, here's the thing about conversation that rezzeJ and kleinbl00 kind of touched on, but kind of didn't. Contrary to what some people seem to believe sometimes, every last person you meet has the potential to be absolutely fascinating to you. First and foremost, when you talk to people and you want to get to know them, start talking to them as if you already assumed that they're gonna blow you away. This brings about your inquisitive side and suddenly turns you from a passive listener waiting for your turn to speak into an active listener. Here's a super simplified version. Devac: Do you have any hobbies? rd95: I like fishing. D: That's cool. I'm into role playing games. You waited to hear my response, not because you were interested in what I had to say, but because it's the polite thing to do. Then you gave your polite, expected response and now we're back where we started, struggling to find something to talk about. You learned something about me, but you didn't learn about me. With active listening, it's a whole new ball game. D: Do you have any hobbies? r: I like fishing. D: Oh? What do you like most about it. r: Honestly? I'm not a very good fisherman and I don't catch anything very often and when I do, I do catch and release. I really like getting into the outdoors though, experience nature and the quiet a bit. There's a lot of beauty there. D: I know what you mean. Are you a pretty big nature buff? r: Totally. I've been that way ever since I was a kid. My parents used to take me hiking, exploring creeks, teaching me about animals. It's something that never left me. With just a few more questions and an earnest desire to learn about me, you now know that I don't care about fishing for fishing's sake, I love nature, I love beauty, and I gave an example about how my parents taking an active, hands on role in my childhood helped me develop into who I am. Now you have more avenues to ask questions to know more about me and what was at first a conscious attempt to find me interesting becomes a subconscious, honest fascination. Here's the real kicker. People love to talk about themselves, not because they're selfish and self centered, but it's because that's the one topic they know best of all. And when you give them the opportunity, asking them question after question with true interest, they actually like you more. You come across as polite, sincere, open, and friendly. That forty minutes spent talking to a person? It'll go by like lightning and there's a good chance, by the time things are said and done, you'll have a phone number, an e-mail, or at the very least, an interesting conversation. I'm not pulling your leg here. This has worked for me every since college man. I fucking love talking to people and I'll talk to anyone about anything they're comfortable talking about and I always look forward to an opportunity to get someone new. Edit: Added a point.
True story, and it's a good thing too because I am so introverted it's kinda painful to look at, so it is good to have him around to do all the talking.I fucking love talking to people and I'll talk to anyone about anything they're comfortable talking about and I always look forward to an opportunity to get someone new.
YES. ALL OF THIS. This is how I interact with people in person. I ask them questions, and listen to their answers. People are always blown away that I know X, Y, and Z about a person, or I know someone who is expert at N, or who has been to B. I mean... I talk to them. I ask them questions, and they tell me about themselves. So why wouldn't I know all this stuff about them? People also like being listened to. So I tend to be liked by those I talk to. That's nice, too.
Every time you open your mouth about games it's a flood of forgotten memories. Holy shit dude. Cyberpunk 2020. That's some straight-up Walter Jon Williams shit right there. As far as the parties: As I recall, you're a Feynman fan. Feynman loved parties because he refused to acknowledge the awkwardness which means he was never awkward. Eccentric? Surely. Brilliant? Without a doubt. But I think we can agree that Feynman was on a different level than most people at the parties he went to and not only did he go to them regularly, he thrived there. An observation? You're deeply passionate about the things that interest you. However, you assume that it's impossible for the people around you to be passionate about those things as well. You're young; you've been surrounded by children most of your life and children are cruel because they can be. They explore the limits and effects of cruelty on each other in order to calibrate. Adults are calibrated. And they can smell fear. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a giant nerd. Carl Sagan was a giant nerd. What they have in common is a passion for engaging other people where their nerdiness lies. Your task, the next time you go to a party (you will go to a party) is to figure out a way to explain your weather simulations to average ordinary people in such a way that they understand how cool it is. Your problem right now is that you know down to your very bones that it's only cool to you and that makes your position defiant and insular. The nerd that plays with action figures by himself is a loner. The nerd that influences others into playing with action figures through his charisma and enthusiasm is a leader. We all predict the dialogue flow without thinking. That's the point - we're not thinking, we're having fun. We all find the drama and social structures transparent. They are the framework within which we explore each other to find the stuff we don't know. It's supposed to be effortless. Then you can expend your efforts on important stuff, like getting laid.It's a choice between Cyberpunk 2020 and Earthdawn.
I really, really hope you also know about Cyberpunk 2077? CD Projekt Red (the guys behind The Witcher series, and probably the best game developers alive now) have not released anything besides that 4 year old trailer and that it's going to be an RPG, but they are most definitely still working on it. I am SO hyped for this game. edit: Oh and this tidbit of info.
Trailers are easy. gameplay is hard. Watching that was like observing the Stations of the Cross: First we stand at the Shrine of Zhora. Then we bow before the Ghost in the Shell Geisha. We nod in passing to Molly from Neuromancer. Then we prostrate ourselves before Judge Dredd. It's what ultimately doomed cyberpunk - the early works were about the uneasy assimilation of technology by the fringe and what it would do to society. It became about the fashion; Outland is every bit the Western High Noon was, despite the fact that it's set on one of Saturn's moons. There already is a cyberpunk video game. It's called Mirror's Edge. And just like the early cyberpunk, it was necessary to adapt to different mechanics in order to make the gameplay interesting. It's what ultimately doomed the Matrix series to the dustbin of history; they plumbed all the tropes of cyberpunk but wrapped them around a garden-variety messiah narrative in order to make it accessible to the general public but that easily-accessible messiah narrative is boring and the cyberpunk tropes are no longer fresh. Roy Batty is a toddler now.
If the witcher series is any indication 2077 is going to be largely about the morality of the various shitty decisions you have to make in a world where cybernetics create inequity. I really like the development company, CDPR, and think they could do great things for the cyberpunk genre. Mechanically, I liked Mirror's Edge - it used interesting mechanics that weren't all fighting. But as far as it's merit as a sci-fi story, I don't think it had much. I played ME1 in college a lot and couldn't even paint the story back in broad strokes today (time trials were fun though.) But based on their past works, I think CDPR will avoid the pitfall. The witcher games were all about non-black and white moral decisions. It wasn't, "do you want to hug or punch this baby?" it was more, "do you want to save these children from getting eaten, or save that village from a wrathful spirit?" I feel like they get story.
I fully agree and for all we know it could be a total dud. But if any developer can pull it off it's CD Projekt Red. The whole reason The Witcher 3 is so great is because it perfectly blends an open world RPG and interesting combat with great storylines. And The Witcher's world, characters, stories and themes are faithfully adapted from a fantasy book series and expanded upon. If TW3 is anything to go by, this will be to Mirror's Edge what Mirror's Edge is to Superhot.
Don't be afraid of changing the subject of a conversation when it doesn't interest you! You can use small talk to ease in and out if it's not a natural transition.
Been thinking about a few things recently I've been experiencing what I can only describe as a fight against complacency. Complacency with the way the world is, the way the country is, the way I am. Complacency might not be the right word so I want to sketch out the scenario: For as long as I've been politically conscious I have told myself that I need to devote my time and energy to some society-building endeavour. Whether you frame it as a social justice problem or a sustainability problem, it appears to me that the world is fucked (reality check - is this just student angst?) and that there's a lot to make noise about. But it's hard - ever more I feel the crushing weight of the world's problems are not something I can carry indefinitely. It's certainly not good from a mental health perspective. Do I pick some particular small thing and focus on it? Not sure. At the least I know that it's all too easy to show the veneer of caring - it's very simple to point out injustice but more difficult to really hear it as a clarion call. So that's the one side of the coin: whilst unsure about how to traverse it, I feel some sense of duty here (Calvinist tendencies...) to the rest of humanity, because we only really have humanity in a shared way. On the other hand, it seems that a good number of people don't share that view, enough so to make me incredibly despondent (cf. Trump retweets) - in essence whether it's worth it to try and bring everyone into communion when I would consider a lot of them to be assholes. This thread kind of touches on that in some way. I don't want to get into the question of "how do you deal with the people you don't agree with" here though. Suffice to say that this force pushes me more into the individualistic direction of avoiding the difficult issues and just trying to live my best life. In many ways I think I have seen others wrestling with a similar feeling, maybe also described as "guilt". On face value these might not seem like a dichotomy, and probably in a rational sense they aren't. But for me, I think I need to have some kind of "philosophical" backing for the overarching decisions that I make in my life - what direction to pursue. Coming back to the complacency, I feel that I have to choose whether to head in the ascetic, humanist direction or what could very well be a great white picket fence first world life that is complicit but never directly so. My "bias" obviously shows but the point is that complacency only pushes you in one direction, and so the choice is how to respond to it. This is all the more relevant of late as I have been presented with a wonderful opportunity to start my PhD next year with EU funding and a range of bells and whistles that make it a really great proposition. Trouble is that this would be a pretty huge commitment to a life (or at least the next few years) that could be dramatically improved upon from the white picket fence perspective if I cut my project off and just hand it in as a Masters. I actually started writing this comment a few weeks ago so in this particular case I think I have made up my mind. There were a number of things adding to the calculus though. What I do know is that I haven't dissolved the contradiction in my mind yet, and so it will inevitably crop up again once I'm faced with the next big decision. Has anybody here forded a similar kind of dilemma before? I'd really love to hear how you dealt with it... ___ Some bonus anecdotes: One of the areas on Table Mountain is called Echo Valley. I've only been there a few times but it has to be one of the most hauntingly beautiful places. I don't have a photo but turns out there is actualy Street View up there... https://goo.gl/maps/WQ8aftRW77k Keep going and along the way down and you are greeted with this: Reason I mention it is because it is somewhere where the "Pale Blue Dot" field is particularly strong - nothing else in the world really seems to be terribly important against that backdrop. There's a Xhosa phrase: sixole kanjani? When will we find peace? So I know there are times and places where people can find it transiently, and maybe you can build your life around those. But is it really worth it when not it's not "us" but "me" finding it... Cheers De Waal
Last day at my internship today! Man, it was only six months but it doesn't feel like six at all. On the one hand I think I'll miss the nice people, on the other hand I'm a bit glad not to go back to that Office Space again. I'm doing great, but my parents are in a rut. They've been trying to sell their house for the last few months but got hit mercilessly by Murphy's Law. The seller decided to withdraw at the last minute, leaving my parents with a lot of fees to pay and nothing to show for it. Now it's on the market again, back to square one. Not much I can do to help...
What an amazing view. Bro, I bet I can stack a bunch of skyscrapers to make one big one. Hold my beer.
You're closer to the truth than you think. It's a Rem Koolhaas, hopefully his last modernist outburst. Can't complain though, the view from the 40th more than makes up for it. :)
I did not get on stage at the Moth. They had ten spots and thirteen entrants. But I got to hear a really bad joke told on the Moth stage. Instead of a true story some douche bag told a joke about fucking a girl in a wheelchair. There may have almost been a fight after the show because that was wildly inappropriate for a couple reasons
Ugh, that's such bad luck. I'm sorry to hear. The one Moth Storyslam that happened in Anchorage was really good, and I got lucky because there were 20 entrants for 10 slots. I really hate the lottery format, but they probably do that so people don't leave after telling their story.
Good luck! I love listening to Moth stories. It was actually my secret gettaway time at Burning man, when I needed to chill out by myself. Found the open mic and would just chill there drinking beer and listening for hours during the burning heat of the day. I wish I could hear yours :)
At home sick today. These damn preschoolers are diiiisgusting. Anyway, more time for knitting and games. Knitting Matching Hat/A mitten I learned cabling recently, made the hat from this pattern. Not sure whether I'm going to make another mitten to match this one, started on another pair. This was the first mitten I've made, it's got some structural problems (and, uh, the pattern is actually on the inside of the mitten because I made it upside down). Honeycomb mittens EDIT: Mitten 1 finished. Dala, just realized I never responded to your knitting - it looks awesome! Some really beautiful colors, and the lace is great.
I really like that hat! (I'm primarily a hat knitter, and cables on hats make me so happy.) Took me a long time to build up the courage to try cabling, but like much of my knitting adventures I realized that I was psyching myself up for something that isn't really all that scary at all. For both projects, what yarn did you use?
Thanks! Yeah, I too had a realization that most of knitting wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I used a cheap aran weight yarn from Joann's fabrics for the white mitten, and a nice local alpaca wool for the hat - I have the specific name spmewhere if you want it.
Thanks! The lace started out really frustrating until I figured out that I was trying to do my yarn over backwards for some reason. I'm pretty excited to see what it will look like once it's blocked out, even though I probably won't finish it anytime soon. I'm loving that honeycomb mitten, I keep seeing things made with the honeycomb pattern and I love the look. I hope to be confident enough to tackle it soon. I've heard there's a way to do a pair of things on circular needles in knitting. I don't know how that works as the only things I have ever made as pairs were crocheted.
The Album is done! But I'm not going to show you... yet. I'll upload something for the NaSoAlMo group later today or tomorrow, but I'm going to break a few rules for the challenge and release an extended/more polished version in about a week. That one I'll promote. Of course, this means it's the perfect time for the RAM on my desktop to start crapping out. I'm pretty sure it's warrantied and I can do an RMA, but that means I'd be out a usable computer for X amount of time while I await the replacement RAM. I may have to either scavenge RAM from another computer if it's compatible, or relent to an upgrade to 16GB and drop a chunk of change I wasn't planning for before the holidays.
I've been editing my Portugal mini-series! Also been procrastinating on a lot of thing I need to do in favour of hanging out with friends. Almost feels like I forgot how to be productive? Gonna try to not let it spiral into a loop of netflix watching with is what usually happens when I decide to stay home to do some work I don't feel like doing. Edit: got an e-mail from the company I photographed for in the summer, offering a 2 month contract, all expenses paid driving around suppliers collecting data for 10 000$. On one hand, I just got back and really don't want to leave. On the other, that's a loooot of money. And it's not really like I have anything productive to do instead, I just want to hang out with my friends for a while...
It's been a while since I've pubski'd or contributed at all. Lurking is my life. Work is garbage. Keifer knows - the entire company is behind big time, and peak season has just begun. If you haven't made your orders for Christmas already, you should get on that ASAP. Also, you should pray to whatever deity you prefer that things make it intact. There are ~17 days left before things will definitely be late for December 25th. The hours are awesome and the money is fantastic but the physical abuse is already taking its toll. 11 years in the industry have numbed me to most of the mind games from local upper management, so I guess that's a plus? I've been playing a lot of Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 in my off time. Mostly 3 recently. I put so many hours into it back when it first released, and I am reminded now how good it was. The environment is so engaging compared to New Vegas, in my opinion. There have been some situations I can feel my heart rate rising, and I find myself actually a little afraid as to what will happen. The game has aged so well and I'm so glad to be able to enjoy it all over again. I've been half-assed knitting a hat for a coworker. It'll get done eventually, but when I get done with the work shitstorm, I don't feel like doing much anymore besides binge watching things or just idly dicking around on the internet. I might get it done by Christmas. I do thrive on the pressure of deadlines, so that might just be it.
The first time I came across Super Mutants and that office building full of ghouls are the two best memories I have of that game. I think overall, FO:NV was the better game, but 3 had its moments. :)The environment is so engaging compared to New Vegas, in my opinion. There have been some situations I can feel my heart rate rising, and I find myself actually a little afraid as to what will happen.
100% agree. New Vegas overall with its choices and factions makes a superior gameplay experience. However, the Mojave vs the Capital Wasteland is so surprisingly different. I enjoy exploring more in FO3; it feels more satisfying somehow. The Capital Wasteland really felt like just that - a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Terrible things happened there and it showed everywhere. The Mojave felt like it was (obviously) a desert to begin with, and the real devastation was mainly concentrated on Vegas proper. In FO3 there's a feeling of isolation, which changed a lot with NV and the various factions, in my opinion.
I loved both as well, the atmosphere and the fun of exploring of 3 was great but the color palette kinda gave me headaches. New Vegas is one of my go-to games when I need to blow off steam. I have a save file where I basically attempt to kill everything that moves for really shitty days. The DLC is some of my favorite, can you guess which one I loved best?
Found a bunch of old journals the other day. Read through most of them, others I just threw out after a few pages. The ones I threw out were mostly out of frustration with that version of myself, or maybe the environment I was in at the time. There was some beautiful stuff in there (I don't know if that sounds presumptuous), but I'm just surprised I could write like that in some of the earlier journals. I also noticed I mostly wrote about negative things, but I don't think I was necessarily more negative than I am now. My guess is I mostly used these journals to work through the negative things in my life, rather than air them out in my everyday life. Even with the skew towards negative entries I could still outline my ups and downs pretty accurately. Very interesting read.
It's definitely an experience to keep a journal. I found my writing to be a lot more truthful. It's definitely a place you can be brutally honest and still consider it healthy because no one is going to read it besides you. In some of my entries I'm a whiny little shit, but I can't be angry with myself because I would have preferred that whining to go on in the pages of a book no one will read rather than in my everyday life.
Planning out some even bigger and better adventures for next year, reconciling the fact that I saw JAWBREAKER last night (WOWOWOWOWOW). Most of the music I enjoy live nowadays are either older bands, or bands I know next to nothing about. The surprise is a nice feeling. But it's firmly fall into winter. Where I seem to be most volatile (just kidding, that's year round!) because of thinking about the past year and upcoming year. There have been a lot of successes, and a lot of failures, this year. That said, I'd consider this a good year. I think next year will be even better.
Washington Bulger list? PCT?Planning out some even bigger and better adventures for next year
Going away to my favorite city first thing in the morning. Packing light, because I want to spend whatever few days I have there walking and imbibing the atmosphere and the views. Rosa's been on the backburner for a while, not because I've lost interest, but because freeing it from the NaNoWriMo framing allowed me to explore the endless possibilities the setting and the characters provide — and it's overwhelming to try and figure out at once. It's unfair how many awesome things I have to put aside for the story to remain coherent — but also liberating, in that once I'm settled with something, going down the road is going to be much easier. Soon is my birthday, and I've decided to take inventory of my life. "Ten Favourite Songs" is one seemingly superficial aspect that I want to write down. For me, the list is important. I heard once that the music we listen to defines us, in that it shows us what we're looking for and what we want to be. I wonder what is there to find in the tunes that frequent my playlist.
I'm finally okay with it being winter now because I got to go ice climbing again this year and now I kind of want to learn how to snowboard. I've heard about this happening from people who have lived here for years. Every season they say it's their last but they stay for part of the next season and remember all the things they loved about it so instead they'll leave at the end of winter but ohhhhh boy summer is just great. Anyways, this is Moonlight Falls in Kananaskis Country and also my first time rappelling. About half way between me and what looks like the top there is a little ice ledge on my left. That was 60m's up at the first pitch, we had originally planned to keep on going but it started raining and the rest of it looked like crap. This would have been my first multi pitch and also my third day of ice climbing ever which given that I don't rock climb is apparently pretty impressive. I wish I brought my phone up so I could have taken a picture of that ledge. It barely fit two people but the view was amazing. The lead climber was standing on the edge belaying and thanks to the light rain he had a thick layer of ice covering his entire jacket. This might have also been thanks to me taking around an hour to get up. By the time the third guy came up both of our axes were covered in ice as well I'm not sure exactly when this was taken but I know it was one of my many "can I bend this way" moments when looking at where I had to put my feet next. At the start of the climb you can talk to the person on the ground and they'll convince you to just go for it but around the middle you can't get much of a conversation going through shouting. I had another one of these moments near the top where I told the lead climber that I just didn't think I could get my leg up that high. His response was something like "ohhhh well go for it, I've got you" and that was all that needed to be said. I did get my leg up although my hip felt like shit for a second. It was interesting experience for me physically and mentally. I climbed the entire way even though my arms wanted to quit before the half way mark. I did this last year for a day and rarely made it to the top of easier/shorter climbs, even though I was actually stronger back than. It had a lot more to do with pushing myself mentally and that's what made it feel so good to finish. I had great climbing partners who helped me out when they were in less than shouting distance but that little part where I had to convince myself to basically do the splits and keep going was new for me. I didn't stand to loose anything by trying because I was on belay and could have tried to figure out a different route. This was definitely a mental block I had to push through and it felt really fucking good to push through it. My body alternatively does not feel that good a few days later and I really should have gone to the gym more (read: even once) before this climb.
Nature Documentaries This video has a good example of something that crops up in nature documentaries time and time again. It’s a quick short about fish hunting birds but here’s the statement that annoys me. Ugh! There’s nothing amazing about it! It’s unique behavior, yeah, but it’s not like it’s something an animal is incapable of. Fucking first of all, animals develop new behaviors out of the blue all the time and that’s a testament to the flexibility of animals’ brains to adapt to changing conditions, stimuli, whatever. We’re talking new food sources, new potential threats, whatever. Second of all, it’s not like the damn fish is sitting under the surface with a chalk board and an abacus doing advanced math. It’s all about physical awareness, coordination, and trial and error/practice. Shit, we humans do the exact same kind of stuff all the fucking time, whether we’re talking about baseball player catching a fly ball or a chef catching a jar of cooking ingredients falling off the shelf. It’s awesome and inspiring to see new and unique behaviors in animals, but seriously, sometimes I think the way documentaries talk about them actually make them sound less amazing because they don't give animals the credit they're due. Theology Texted my dad what I thought was a pretty straightforward question last night. He said he’s gonna need to take time to formulate an answer and will e-mail me a response. Which makes me wonder if I asked a question that is actually hard to answer and needs a lot of time or if it’s easy to answer but there’s a lot of depth that can go into the response. Either way, I’m looking forward to the e-mail now. . . . a fish here that amazingly has a brain capable of calculating the airspeed, altitude, and trajectory of a bird.
Once we're done with our current story arc, I'm going to take over as DM. I want their first session to be at a carnival, so they can get used to playing with me, that will end with a big fight. The only thing I'm really having trouble with is figuring out how to give prizes at the carnival. Maybe I'm planning too far ahead, but I don't know how to give out armor or weapons without overpowering the whole party.
Every benefit needs to have a cost attached to it to maintain balance. A good example would be a semi-sentient magic shield that gains defense bonuses if you tell it about all the badass monsters you've beaten, but if you lie to it, or it thinks you're a big baby it drops it's stats back to 0 and you have to start over. Gives the player lots of power, and you, the DM, lots of wiggle room. 'Sure, you can lie to the shield and say that you've totally beaten a chimera before, but if you fail your charisma roll, you lose all your bonuses.'I don't know how to give out armor or weapons without overpowering the whole party.