Thalen

I’ve Got the Funk

September 4, 2015September 4, 2015 by Thalen

I appear to be in a bit of a gaming funk lately. I'm not burned out on games necessarily, but nothing really seems appealing enough to be worth the effort to actually start up and play. Last night I logged into Magic Duels long enough to finish up a couple of daily quests, but after that I quit out and just stared at my Steam library for awhile. I considered trying out Diablo 3 since that's where everyone else seems to be right now, but it sounds like I need the expansion to access a lot of the new features and that thing's still $40. I can't really justify that for something I'll probably play for a couple weeks and then let lay fallow.

No, not that Funk. But thank you Old Gregg.

If nothing else I need to play more Tron 2.0 since, you know, it was my choice for the month. I have played a decent way in at this point and it matches up reasonably well with my memories. The fact that the default crouch key ('C) appears to also be set up to take Steam screenshots is driving me slowly mad though. Steam's settings don't show it as being mapped to that, and remapping the crouch key in game just made the space bar start taking screenshots. I don't even know at this point. I may just have to use the external launcher that the unofficial patch includes. But I want to be able to take screenshots, and I'm pretty sure there's no built-in screenshot function in Tron 2.0. Gah. (Edit: I have been informed in the comments that 'F8' will take screenshots in .bmp format. Problem solved!)

Fabulous hopping action!

Mostly I've been reading. I've been reading through old D&D supplements for my Monday feature, and I finished reading The Martian, which I'm looking forward to telling you all about tomorrow. I suppose there are worse ways to be spending my time. In any case, if this nominally gaming blog seems light on game related posts lately, now you know why. I'm sure it'll pass in its own time.

The Value of Pessimism

September 3, 2015 by Thalen

I'm an optimist by nature. In the words of Miles, I like to like things. You're unlikely to see me being negative about things very often on this blog simply because I'd much rather spend my time finding things to be positive about. This isn't to say that I love everything uncritically, I just tend to keep criticism to myself.

With notable exceptions

Sometimes though, you have to be the pessimist. I'm running into this at my day job currently; a project is having some rough patches and I'm finding myself needing to be a critical voice in the face of an optimism that I fear might have us go live with something that doesn't do the job. It may be my fears are unfounded (I certainly hope so), but you have to take the worst case into account along with the best.

I don't enjoy being a downer, but sometimes everyone else is chasing rainbows and I'm the only one left to say 'but what if?' What's the backup plan? How do we recover if this fails? It's something I've had to learn myself over the years after having to scramble when something blew up in my face. Maybe I'm developing wisdom as I age.

Pfft, yeah right.

Convention Time

September 2, 2015 by Thalen

While half of the Aggrochat crew were off at PAX this past weekend, I also attended a convention right near home. Saturday was the annual River City Comic Expo, and this year a friend and I decided to check it out. I hadn't been to a con since MidSouthCon in 2007 and just like then it was the guests that convinced me to go.

It was a relatively small convention; one big combination dealer's room / gaming area and a couple smaller rooms for panels. Plenty of dealers to check out, and I ended up spending about $15 on singles from one guy's quarter boxes. I picked up quite a few older New Mutants issues, issues 2-7 of Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby's Destroyer Duck, and most of the initial color run of Zot!, along with various and sundry other things. I was especially happy to find so many Zot! issues since the only collection of the color issues is long out of print, and Scott McCloud doesn't seem to have any desire to reprint them again.

Those first 10 issues were amazing pulpy fun

There were lots of cosplayers in attendance which in part drove home just how out of touch with modern anime I am. People dressed as comic book characters I could identify no problem, even the ones using TV or video game versions of costumes. There were plenty of people whose costumes clearly came from anime, though, and I think I recognized maybe a quarter of them. I am no longer in touch with the kids today. Woe is me.

The real draw, though, was the guests. The first I found and talked to was Bob McLeod who is probably best known for creating the New Mutants with Chris Claremont. He's also done art for any number of books for Marvel and DC both. I ended up getting a signed print from him of a lovely piece of the original New Mutants fighting Sentinels as well as a booklet of con sketches that he was selling.

Just beautiful

The other guest that I could not wait to meet was Gail Simone. She and her husband were both there, and were absolutely wonderful to chat with. I took the opportunity to let her know how much I enjoyed her work and that she's one of the creators whose presence in superhero comics keeps me optimistic about the medium. Her work on Birds of Prey and Secret Six is just stellar. From her I got an autographed hardcover copy of the Conan / Red Sonja miniseries she wrote for Dark Horse.

In all, an enjoyable few hours spent among my people. I'm looking forward to seeing who next year's guests will be; maybe I'll end up making this a regular thing.

Blaugust No More

September 1, 2015 by Thalen

The day has come, the month has ended, Blaugust has run its course. This was my second year participating, and on the whole I think it went very well. Last year I often found myself desperately trying to come up with a blog post at the very end of the day; this year I only posted in the late evening once, and most days I had my post written the previous night and scheduled to go live in the morning for prime 'I should be working but I'm looking at blogs' viewing.

Of course, it could always be worse

Coming up with a couple of ongoing weekly features has been a huge help this time around. Knowing that my topics for Saturday and Monday are already set and being able to work on them ahead of time (not that I'm very good at doing that) makes an incredible amount of difference. Not only that, it means I've got a regular set of content that I need to add to and which may serve as interesting back-reading for any new readers I pick up.

Readership was definitely up over the month (though given my lack of posts in previous months that's not necessarily saying much). Having folks comment on posts here and there made an amazing difference too; it's always nice knowing your writing is being read. As much as I'm ultimately writing for myself, I wouldn't do it in a public manner if I didn't want to share.

Ultimately, where last year at this time I was feeling burned out on blogging, this year I'm feeling energized about the whole process. I've still got ideas coming, and I've got cool books and D&D adventures to write about for years. I might end up backing down to a lighter schedule, but for right now I'm sticking with every day. Here's to another month of blogging!