ldygabilan:

I've come to share this:



via iseebi!

KBAI

bitwise:
Arlo Guthrie: Songwriting is like being unemployed: it's mostly just sitting around. It's like fishing. Every once in a while a good song comes by and if you have a pen, you can grab it. I know I've let a few good ones go by, and other people got em. Bob Dylan. So when people ask me about songwriting, all I tell them is: be ready when they come by, and don't be downstream of Bob Dylan.

cygnoirnet:

http://cygnoir.net/2009/07/12/say-goodbye/

She unfolded the piece of paper and read.

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your laugh is like a flock of finches taking flight. Everyone I know thinks you are kind and clever. I was going to kiss you at the end of our date but we’d just met and I didn’t want you to think that I was rushing it.”

With a widening smile, she paused to savor the ripple of bubbles in her stomach, then read on.

“You are so perfect for me in every way, but this part doesn’t last. This is the gloaming, that golden light in which everyone looks like movie stars. Soon you’ll be annoyed by my smirk, my lack of guile. Or you won’t, you’ll love me and we’ll live together for decades before you realize I was never the one you wanted, or that I made you sacrifice your dearest dreams so that mine could thrive.”

The paper was taut between her clenched hands, her throat thick.

“I couldn’t bear it. I can’t bear it. Maybe I should be stronger, or maybe I am just strong enough. This is hello and thank-you for a perfect first date, and goodbye so it never has to be anything less.”

._.-.

The prompt was from Nathan, “the worst possible way to say goodbye.”

[Want to help me bust through my writer's block this month? Read about this exercise!]

xkcd_rss:

http://xkcd.com/609/

ldygabilan:

"I don't want your number, I just want to dance with my shirt off"

scsi:

Originally published at /var/log/vadept.log. Please leave any comments there.

I haven’t really said much here about D&D 4th edition or what my feelings were about it.  I really wanted to get my hand on a book, and actually play a game before I blasted on how much it sucks like most of the other D&D players on the internet.  So have just gotten back from my first game, here is my $0.02.

• Character Creation
  • Coming from 2nd edition with zany math, and having that simplified to the 3.5ed rules, making a 4th ed character was quite a shock.  I got the feeling that I was making a computer-game character with “Here are your 2 choices for a Warlord”.  The skills have been cut down so far that you can’t have a rouge that is good as forgery, disguise, and spying; It’s all been lumped together into “thievery”.  You can’t have a character that cant spot anything in front of his face but find a needle in a haystack if he/she is putting his mind to it.  Major skills are all lumped together into these broad reaching categories that really kills it for me.
  • The powers.  You have your at-will powers, your daily powers, your encounter powers, and utility powers.  In fact, WotC makes these cute little cards you can /buy/ so you can have all of your powers right at your fingertips.  Thats right, your choices now short of movement and basic attack have resorted down to little cards.  Let me peg you into little holes now.  Oh, did I mention that no matter what character class you are, everyone follows the exact same progression as to how many at-will, daily, encounter and utility powers you get? Wizards get cantrips, and certain classes get a few speciality powers, but the majority of everything is flat across the board and level dependant.
  • 1/2 your level bullshit.  Most all saves and AC have a positive modifier of 1/2 your level.  Thats right, the wizard, rogue, and cleric all get the same bonus based upon 1/2 of their level.  Long gone are the days of the Cleric actually having a better Reflex save when they are flat footed (and denied their Dex bonus of -3 from full plate) than when they see it coming.  Everyone gets treated equally.
• Saving throws
  • I dislike this so much that it gets its own section
  • In the 3.5 days, you would get a collection of modifiers to your Fort/Reflex/Will saves.  They come from your ability scores, feats, armor, etc.  When someone casted a spell on you; you would roll a d20, add your modifiers, and if the resulting number was higher than the DC of the power being used on you then it had little to no effect.
  • In the 4.0 days, you have a number that is like 10 + 1/2 your level + ability modifier.  The attacker now rolls and determines if he/she succeeds.  Saving throws in 4th ed are like attack rolls in 3.5.  You have a set number that you cant change, you cant roll a 20 to resist, you cant have that uber-god roll a 1 and fail.
  • The whole 1/2 level flat-across-the-board really bugs me.  Before the bonuses to your saving throw was 100% dependant on your class, not just what level you are.  A level 20 rogue should not have the same bonuses to his will or fort save that a level 20 cleric does, and a level 20 wizard should have a reflex save even close to what a rogue has.  4th ed obviously thinks differently.
• Healing Surges
  • Mechanically I have no idea where they got the idea where characters can just spontaneously heal when the conditions are right.  Every character has these ‘healing surges’ where they recover 1/4 of their hitpoints when conditions are met.  Clerics don’t really have any “Healing Powers” anymore per se, they just allow people to use up their healing surges.  Paladins use their healing surges to heal others with ‘lay on hands’, warlords can command people to use their healing surges.  So really why do we have clerics when every other class out there seems to have a power that allows characters to spend /their/ own healing surges on themselves?   Don’t really care for that.  How can a fighter just spontaneously heal after a Warlord gives him a pep-talk?  Why do healing potions just allow you to use a healing surge instead of actually healing you.  If you drink a healing potion and you have used up your healing surges between rests, then you just wasted a potion!  Its a hackish way of getting around the age old problem of not being able to heal unless you had a Cleric, Paladin, or a Bard in your party (uh, boo hoo? Make someone play a Cleric!  You wouldn’t march into melee with a rogue and a wizard would you?)
• Its so easy any idiot can play!
  • This is what I have a big issue with.  Back in the 2nd ed and 3/3.5 days, playing D&D wasn’t the “cool” thing to do.  You were nerds, you got made fun of when you broke out your source book and leveled up your character between classes.  Now all of a sudden since WoW became famous everyone wants to play D&D.  We have our little nerd club, and because you got a level 80 computer game character you want to be a part of it? I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way.   I’m one of those “walked up hill both ways, while calculating THAC0, and wondering why a save vs wand was different than a staff/stave.”
  • WotC made 4th ed so dumbed down that any idiot can play.  Just look on the internet how many people refuse to buy the 4th ed books, look at how many people are angry just like I am at how they have fed the rules lead-paint until they drool.
  • Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition obviously has a few extra chromosomes in its genome.
• No OGL
  • One of the huge awesome things about 3.5 was the Open Gaming License.  This Open Sourcing of the core d20 rules allowed other people who make rule books that were 100% compatible with D&D (or new games that used the exact same rules).  There were a TON of 3.5 books that were published by 3rd parties that were perfectly compatible with D&D 3.5 (The Book of Erotic Fantasy was a big seller. Yes, someone wrote rules to incorporate all the wierd sexual fetishes in your D&D campaign).  All the book needed was to just have the OGL printed somewhere in the book, and not use any proprietory D&D stuff (like inital character generation, so you had to buy the D&D main book, understandable)
  • 4th ed has no OGL.  It has some free/low-cost licensing but who knows if WotC is going to renig on that.  Its not open source one big, and Paizo refuses to publish anything under the 4th ed ruleset just for that reason.

Now what I do like about D&D 4th ed, is that the books seem to be colorful. and nicely laid out.  Uh, it allows me to hang out with my friends (some of which who do like D&D 4th ed).  Some of the new classes are kinda neat.

Dax said it best.  The system is solid, and would be a winner if they wouldn’t have put the D&D name on it.

genders:

Argh. Two weeks ago my eyeglasses were loose, so I had them adjusted (both pair, regular and sun). A day or two after the adjustment, both pair started digging painful grooves in the bridge and on the sides of my nose. I've had these glasses for over two years, so I know it was something in the adjustment that did it.

I have had them readjusted *every day* this week, and they are still doing it. Now my nose is so irritated that although I have had the glasses off for several hours even my old pair, which I wear around the house, are uncomfortable. I just took two Advil.

The optician wants me to wear them all weekend so he can see the result of today's adjustment, but I can't put them on again until this stops hurting. I hope it is "healed" after a night's sleep.

I am afraid I will have to get new glasses (at $600 a pop in my prescription) and I am afraid to let them make new pairs. I'd like to have them made in New York, but I can't stay there long enough--mine have to go out to a lab--to get them completed.

This sucks. I never thought much about glasses except that I am blind without them. They are normally like a part of my face. Now they're the enemy, and I can't do without them.

Shit.

xkcd_rss:

http://xkcd.com/608/

cygnoirnet:

http://cygnoir.net/2009/07/08/timid-animal/

http://cygnoir.net/?p=2712

I apologize for the lack of posts this week. On Monday I had a king-sized headache, and on Tuesday I took photographs instead.

Back to our regularly-scheduled busting of writer’s block! This prose poem is courtesy of my spam folder.

“Too busy to go back to school?” she huffed, dangling the highball glass between thumb and ring-finger. Ice cubes clacked. “I should have seen it coming.” And with that I remembered why I hated her, that slick brow over flat eyes. She went to wakes but never funerals, something about the smell of turned earth, of coffins. I was a replica watch on her wrist, telling time while never knowing how late it was. “You can trick the nature and make a monster of your timid animal.” I fantasized about the heft of the paperweight on her desk. She’ll never be disappointed again.

[Want to help me bust through my writer's block this month? Read about this exercise!]

ldygabilan:

Ok I love this shit, OK? Listen to it. @MegaJoshX you would love it too.

ldygabilan:

Much better song by the same chick.

ldygabilan:

I only like when the French girl starts singing, everything else I hate. But I did an awesome combo to this at a convention this weekend.

gleemie:
via gordonzola



Are there tv shows that are doing insightful commentary like this these days? I need something worth hulu-ing.

xkcd_rss:

http://xkcd.com/607/

ldygabilan:

"Speak to me only with your eyes"

genders:

Has anyone looked into this?

ldygabilan:

"Purify the colors, purify my mind. And spread the ashes of the colors over this heart of mine"

cygnoirnet:

http://cygnoir.net/2009/07/05/domestic-life/

http://cygnoir.net/?p=2707

“Hello? O, hi, Cheryl. No, I’m not busy, just working on the kids’ bedroom at the moment. You know, the same old thing, cat walked through and wrecked the whole left edge. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with what I’m given, Cheryl. I just don’t know. You know Stan, always promising we’ll move out to the back yard, but when he says it half his eyes aren’t even looking at me, you know what I mean? I’m beginning to think we’re stranded here in this miserable place with no windows and an overachieving cat. Cheryl? Cheryl, let me call you back. I think the Person is home, so I need to pick up the kids from the faucet and hide behind the TV. I’ll call you later, honey. Okay, bye-bye.”

“An afternoon in the life of a spider” was the prompt I used. Thanks, Rebecca.

[Want to help me bust through my writer's block this month? Read about this exercise!]

xkcd_rss:

http://xkcd.com/606/

cygnoirnet:

http://cygnoir.net/2009/07/04/being-three/

http://cygnoir.net/?p=2692

Something I am learning from this exercise: the prompts often launch me in a completely different direction. I wonder what that’s about.

I am reading a book called “How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving” by David Richo, and this passage struck me today:

Childhood forces influence present choices, for the past is on a continuum with the present. Early business that is still unfinished does not have to be a sign of immaturity; rather, it can signal continuity. Recurrence of childhood themes in adult relationships gives our life depth in that we are not superficially passing over life events but inhabiting them fully as they evolve. Our past becomes a problem only when it leads to a compulsion to repeat our losses or smuggles unconscious determinants into our decisions. Our work, then, is not to abolish our connection to the past but to take it into account without being at its mercy. The question is how much the past interferes with our chances at healthy relating and living in accord with our deepest needs, values, and wishes.

Where to begin … yeesh. First of all, I can’t write entries like this with Jonathan Coulton playing, no matter how much I like his music. Now that it’s off: in past relationships, I was often told that my past was a problem, something to “get over” — or, rather, something I couldn’t get over, and thus was a deal-breaker — so much so that I attempted to disconnect myself from it, to forget it in order to overcome it. As a result, my memory of my childhood is spotty at best. When I discover an artifact from it, I am often moved to tears not because I reminisce but because I cannot reminisce. Whole years of my younger life are gone now; in an effort to be “normal” I have created twice as much work for myself.

While cleaning my desk today, I found this photograph of my family. I think I am three years old in this photo, but I truly have no recollection of it or of being three, of having two parents in the same place. We all have separate homes now. And today I realized that I am still trying to make sense of that.

[Want to help me bust through my writer's block this month? Read about this exercise!]