Post-Halloween grab bag
I've been trying to think of a way to gracefully segue into more regular posting, but I'm going to fall back on announcements and links. But thank you to everyone who sent me notes about the fires -- again, greatly appreciated. My family was fortunate to escape without heavy property loss -- some broken windows from the wind, an inch of ash and black sand in the garage, that kind of thing -- but nothing catastrophic.
A couple of odd/interesting links from the aftermath... A Canadian WW2 firefighting plane that came south to fight the fires -- kind of cool; and a man that was arrested for impersonating a firefighter, with, in his possession, a somewhat disturbing depth of equipment, including a firefighter badge, personalized license plate, department patch, and hoses -- one of which he was using on a fire when he was caught.
I'm not exactly sure why or how, but I have HBO. Because of this, I've seen all of Idiocracy, half of Eragon (no desire to see the rest, ever), and the latter third of Frank & Jesse, a 1994 Tombstone followup starring Bill Paxton (and William Atherton, who will forever be Jerry Hathaway to me). It wasn't bad, though felt a lot more forced than Tombstone -- it felt like it fell flat of the myth, which could do well with some Deadwood-style treatment. But what's interesting is that apparently Paxton was first choice for the leading role in the Da Vinci Code movie. From the beginning I didn't think that was possibly a book that could translate well to film, but as much as I like Tom Hanks, I do think Paxton would have been much more convincing in that role.
The Espresso Book Machine seems to be gaining ground and is now installed in the New York Public Library. It's currently being used to rapidly print previously rare books. In the future, when the technology smooths and reduces its footprint, it might be a good solution for that bizarre tendency of brick and mortar stores to stock books 3-5 of a five book series. On the other hand, it also generates the rather dystopian image of bookstore-in-a-Coke-machine.
In terms of announcements, perhaps most importantly, Not One of Us #38 is out and available now through Genre Mall. lesser_celery has a list of the table of contents, including my odd "The Substitute", certainly the strangest poem I've written, and I'm thrilled to be in the magazine. It's a very carefully crafted and lovely publication and I join some terrific company in its authors.
My latest column is up on the Escapist having to do with an -- as far as I'd say -- undiscussed element in the perpetuation of overwork. Certainly a much longer argument could be developed, but these are short columns and the next one for this month will dig into the best advice I've gotten and can get from experts in the field on avoiding the mind-altering crunch state. Simon Carless over at Game Set Watch (I'm still not sure what that blog title is about, exactly, but it's a good blog), and a few other bloggers, trackbacked my column from last month, where I talked to a random sampling of parents, as many as I could get ahold of and as far away from the games industry as possible, and was astonished to find how generally positive they were toward video games. I'll be talking more about this, and the intersection of games and parenting, at the Montreal International Games Summit at the end of this month.
And since I don't believe I linked them before, last month I also had a feature article up on the history of the IGDA, and before that, a piece I greatly enjoyed writing called "Holding Out for a Heroine", on the state of female heroism in video games. That one also racked up some trackbacks, including in this interesting roundup in The Brainy Gamer.
As oddfellows already know, The Homeless Moon has gone live, and this, in addition to a couple of other blog-related projects I've gotten involved with recently, is part of what I've been working on these past couple of weeks and thus draining a lot of my actual LJ posting energy -- but the structures are all in place, and I'm back on a steady course to stick around for awhile. Some of you may not yet have seen specifically, but we got Jay to start blogging, and I count this as one of my major victories for the year. ;)
That should do it for now. Posts on the other stuff I've been up to are forthcoming. It's been some great stuff, but I need to give my hand a rest -- scraped it while moving a desk that I bought this afternoon. All hail Craig's List, benefactor of my posture and the neverending effort to organize chaos.
A couple of odd/interesting links from the aftermath... A Canadian WW2 firefighting plane that came south to fight the fires -- kind of cool; and a man that was arrested for impersonating a firefighter, with, in his possession, a somewhat disturbing depth of equipment, including a firefighter badge, personalized license plate, department patch, and hoses -- one of which he was using on a fire when he was caught.
I'm not exactly sure why or how, but I have HBO. Because of this, I've seen all of Idiocracy, half of Eragon (no desire to see the rest, ever), and the latter third of Frank & Jesse, a 1994 Tombstone followup starring Bill Paxton (and William Atherton, who will forever be Jerry Hathaway to me). It wasn't bad, though felt a lot more forced than Tombstone -- it felt like it fell flat of the myth, which could do well with some Deadwood-style treatment. But what's interesting is that apparently Paxton was first choice for the leading role in the Da Vinci Code movie. From the beginning I didn't think that was possibly a book that could translate well to film, but as much as I like Tom Hanks, I do think Paxton would have been much more convincing in that role.
The Espresso Book Machine seems to be gaining ground and is now installed in the New York Public Library. It's currently being used to rapidly print previously rare books. In the future, when the technology smooths and reduces its footprint, it might be a good solution for that bizarre tendency of brick and mortar stores to stock books 3-5 of a five book series. On the other hand, it also generates the rather dystopian image of bookstore-in-a-Coke-machine.
In terms of announcements, perhaps most importantly, Not One of Us #38 is out and available now through Genre Mall. lesser_celery has a list of the table of contents, including my odd "The Substitute", certainly the strangest poem I've written, and I'm thrilled to be in the magazine. It's a very carefully crafted and lovely publication and I join some terrific company in its authors.
My latest column is up on the Escapist having to do with an -- as far as I'd say -- undiscussed element in the perpetuation of overwork. Certainly a much longer argument could be developed, but these are short columns and the next one for this month will dig into the best advice I've gotten and can get from experts in the field on avoiding the mind-altering crunch state. Simon Carless over at Game Set Watch (I'm still not sure what that blog title is about, exactly, but it's a good blog), and a few other bloggers, trackbacked my column from last month, where I talked to a random sampling of parents, as many as I could get ahold of and as far away from the games industry as possible, and was astonished to find how generally positive they were toward video games. I'll be talking more about this, and the intersection of games and parenting, at the Montreal International Games Summit at the end of this month.
And since I don't believe I linked them before, last month I also had a feature article up on the history of the IGDA, and before that, a piece I greatly enjoyed writing called "Holding Out for a Heroine", on the state of female heroism in video games. That one also racked up some trackbacks, including in this interesting roundup in The Brainy Gamer.
As oddfellows already know, The Homeless Moon has gone live, and this, in addition to a couple of other blog-related projects I've gotten involved with recently, is part of what I've been working on these past couple of weeks and thus draining a lot of my actual LJ posting energy -- but the structures are all in place, and I'm back on a steady course to stick around for awhile. Some of you may not yet have seen specifically, but we got Jay to start blogging, and I count this as one of my major victories for the year. ;)
That should do it for now. Posts on the other stuff I've been up to are forthcoming. It's been some great stuff, but I need to give my hand a rest -- scraped it while moving a desk that I bought this afternoon. All hail Craig's List, benefactor of my posture and the neverending effort to organize chaos.