Just Me and the Captain
Nov. 20th, 2009
09:05 pm - It's like a wedding....
All these comparisons that weddings are like Quest games makes me think the reverse must also be true. Except most weddings have a rehearsal. Quest games don't have rehearsals. It'd be nice if we did. I bet most Quest games would run a lot smoother the second time through. Though, of course, that would defeat the point. It's supposed to be spontaneous and confusing and unexpected.
I'm feeling oddly calm at the moment, though not really at peace. I feel like I've packed for a trip, but forgot something, though I'm not sure what it is. I don't really have anything to do right now, but I feel like I should be doing something. So, I'm at my computer writing this waiting for someone to inevitably cancel because they have the flu (already had 3 of those, but I expected this, so it's covered). I realize that it's actually been 5 years since I've personally run a Quest game, and this is the first one I'm really solo as a GM even though I acted as a driving force on the others and have had a lot of help with this one.
I realized too late that I organized things incorrectly. If I were to do it over, I'd have asked someone to co-GM who is good at throwing parties and told them, "Throw me a really cool party with a masquerade theme." That would have let me play around with characters and plot and leave the party details to someone else. I've never been good at directly organizing parties, but I think this one is coming together, even if it is a fictitious one. But that's the key: I don't want to pretend to be a masquerade; I want to be at a masquerade and then have this other interesting stuff happen.
Creative ventures make me moody: at some points I think a project is totally awesome and other times I think the same exact thing is complete crap. In truth, it's probably somewhere in between. I do tend to distrust what I write while happily taking someone else's words in the same situation as gospel. I know the food will be good as well as the music and the masks because I delegated those things to other people whom I trust. Hopefully these aspects and the great setting will make people forget the shortcomings I'm responsible for.
I think it's safe to say that this is the last game I'm GMing alone. Should I do this again I'll take on a partner to keep me sane if nothing else. See folks tomorrow!
Oct. 29th, 2009
02:10 pm - The Big Broadcast
My roommate, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
derspatchel, is the brains behind The Big Broadcast, coming soon to a theater near you (assuming you live near Davis Square). If you haven't met him, he's one of the funniest, most creative writers I know (and not a bad actor either) and what little I've gathered is that it's going to be a great performance at the Somerville Theater this weekend. Basically, I just wanted to plug his show (he didn't even ask me to, that's how great it is!) and encourage everyone who reads this and lives nearby to attend. I'm heading out right now to buy tickets for the Saturday matinee if anyone wants to join me.
Oct. 27th, 2009
11:55 am - When Galaxies Collide
I have to admit, I've been a little slow in hopping on the being a fan of Felicia Day bandwagon. I had nothing against her...just wondering what the fuss was about. Well, I've finally been converted. But I've always been a sucker for pretty girls talking about astronomy.
Behold the video that instilled in me solid respect for her. I had a professor who was one of the pioneers in researching galactic cannibalism (as she called it), so I know a little bit about the science. Ms. Day knows what she's talking about (though I believe stellar collisions occur more frequently than she does, but the jury is out on that) so it's actually educational as well as entertaining. But more importantly, I now understand why Felicia Day is awesome.
Sep. 24th, 2009
03:05 pm - Funny pages trivia
Did you know there's a Blondie novel? As in that fixture in the comics page of the newspaper that's been around since forever? This is news even to the wikipedia entry! Well, there is a record of a 1947 novel there, but I found an even older one from 1943. That I own, apparently. Or, at least, will now be living in my mother's basement. Until I sell it.
Sep. 15th, 2009
11:12 am - Mystery of the Day
Does anyone know why Google's logo is shaped like a crop circle today?
Sep. 9th, 2009
01:33 pm - Well, that's wierd
As derspatchel just noticed, our front steps are demolished. They were fine at 10:30 PM last night. And I don't recall hearing anything that might have been someone chopping up our stairs. I honestly can't tell if it's part of the landlord's plan to re-do the steps or vandalism. Both don't make much sense, since the steps were just renovated a couple months ago (and I would expect some sort of notice), but it seems incredibly thorough for random vandals.
12:05 pm - Some things you never outgrow
In my school district growing up, the first day of school was always the Wednesday after Labor Day (which is why I thought it a little weird that Obama spoke to students yesterday since I wouldn't have seen it were I in grade school). My subconscious decided to remind me of this fact by giving me anxiety dreams about pop quizzes taken on the first day on things we supposedly studied during the summer. And, for the life of me, I just couldn't remember what the equation for time travel was.
Stupid Brain.
Aug. 26th, 2009
09:52 am - Observations of the last 5 days in Haiku form
The YMCA
is much more fun than prison.
I guess you knew that.
Aug. 24th, 2009
11:34 am - The Magicians
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself browsing Salon, as I am wont to do, and came across a review for The Magicians, which caught my eye. I was intrigued enough, that I decided to see if the author was doing any readings in the area as part of a promotional tour. By coincidence, he would be at the Borders in Downtown Crossing the next day. Having nothing going on at 1:00 PM, I decided to head down there and see if my interest held.
Let this be a lesson to any authors out there: there's a pretty good chance I'll buy your book if you personally urge me to. Lev Grossman and I chatted for a few minutes after he gave his spiel, and I eventually became convinced that a purchase would be a good investment. And, I'm happy to say, that I was not disappointed.
Some people are more sensitive to spoilers than others, so while I'm not trying to spoil anything, I will hide the rest of this review behind a ( cut )
Aug. 13th, 2009
11:22 am - Despite my intense dislike of driving...
...this weekend is one of the few weekends in my life that I really wish I had a car.
Aug. 11th, 2009
10:41 am - My new definition of a planet
So, the International Astronomical Union is meeting in Rio de Janiero at the moment. You may remember this body of esteemed scholars for demoting Pluto when they last met three years ago in Prague. It's interesting to note that now that they aren't tackling any controversial issues, there's practically no news coming out of the conference that the mainstream media has taken up.
I guess the Second Realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame just isn't all that exciting to most folks. And the group of scientists that compose the IAU seem quite content to let things be without igniting another furor.
Which, I think is a shame, actually, because I feel there is some unfinished business regarding Pluto the IAU should deal with. At the time, I was pleased with the decision. But whether it's a sign of maturity or a sign of senility, my thoughts have evolved since then. The thing was, in order to demote Pluto, the IAU had to actually make up a definition of a planet, which, oddly enough, no one had bothered to do before (well, no one who could command the authority to have everyone else actually respect the definition). According to the IAU, a planet:
1. is in orbit around the Sun,
2. has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and
3. has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit.
And this is where the IAU began to lose me. Because this really is a terrible definition, which I figured was just thrown together at the last minute and would be re-worked when the IAU next met (i.e. now). It has all the attributes of a camel, i.e. a horse put together by committee.
The first part manages to exclude all the extra-solar planets out there we've been discovering over the past decade. The second part has an ambiguity problem which doesn't help classifying fringe cases. And the third part is the one that specifically demoted Pluto (it was actually written in as a footnote). To conduct a thought experiment for moment, if we were to somehow yank Earth out of its orbit and put it in Pluto's orbit, the Earth would be demoted too. That said, if Earth were put in orbit around Jupiter, it wouldn't be considered a planet either, but just the largest of many moons.
While compromise may be well and good in political situations, hedging when it comes to definitions just muddles things. Either the definition should be expanded or reduced. A few years ago, I was in the radical reduction camp, and would have been happy to have only four planets in the solar system (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). But I didn't have a good idea of what to call the terrestrial planets, so now I'm in the radical expansion camp. Thus my definition (and no one listens to me) is any object that is not a star, but larger than 100 kilometers in diameter is a planet.
It's a first draft and may take some polishing, but I think it's better than the IAU's current definition. Thus everything in the solar system would be considered a planet, except for comets, centaurs, and all but the larger asteroids. As a consequence, Pluto would be re-instated, but the moon would be promoted. This might be a little weird, but ages ago, astrology once considered the moon a planet so maybe it's not that strange after all (of course, it also considered the sun a planet, but let's not go there). This would suddenly increase the number of planets by several hundred if not a few thousand. But I'm okay with this.
The way I see it, big round celestial bodies can essentially be grouped as either stars or planets. Stars already have a detailed class system (e.g. the sun is G2V); why not simply create a whole bunch of sub-classes for planets? Jupiter would be in one, Earth in another, the Moon in a third, and Pluto in a fourth. The only problem I see is that we simply don't know enough about planetary science yet. That's fine, but at least we'll have the beginnings of a framework. We can simply add new classes as we make new discoveries.
Aug. 7th, 2009
01:28 pm - Titan
In case you're wondering what may have inspired today's xkcd today, it might be this press release from the IAU triennial meeting in Rio.
Aug. 4th, 2009
11:19 am - How to Produce a Reality TV Show
Nah, I don't know anything about producing Reality TV. Alright, I suppose I know more than a random person you might ask on the street, but if I was asked to actually do it, I'm not sure where I'd even begin.
But Joke and Biagio do. No, they aren't famous, but their credits do appear on such shows as Foody Call, Age of Love, Scream Queens, and, oh yeah, they were the co-executive producers of Beauty and the Geek, which means they essentially ran everything. Oh sure, Ashton Kutcher and J.D. Roth are the big names, but they don't really concern themselves that much with the details. They leave that to their underlings, who happened to be Joke and Biagio.
I bring this up because they actually started a blog about their experiences. If anyone reading this actually wants to produce reality television, then it's invaluable. Otherwise, I think it's simply an interesting read on the behind-the-scenes of how TV gets made.
Jul. 30th, 2009
10:50 pm - Merry Belated Christmas
My mother just got her Christmas present from her uncle...from 1945! It's probably a bit late to send a thank-you note.
Jul. 24th, 2009
06:24 pm - Wow, that was fast
My grandparents' house has only been on the market for a week and it already has two offers. Either the housing market is improving or we priced it too low. So if anyone wants to buy a house in Dumont, NJ, now is the time to act. On the downside, it may mean going back to New Jersey to do some last minute tidying up.
In other news, America's favorite geek, joshua_green, is visiting me this weekend. Yay!
Jul. 23rd, 2009
12:58 pm - A Treasure Trove of Books
You know how you keep old textbooks around, even though you don't really look at them anymore (well, those of you don't sell them back immediately). It'd be a shame to throw them away, but they kind of take up a lot of space, so they get pushed to less conspicuous places until they're out of sight and then pretty much entirely out of mind. The thing is, they don't actually go away; they just lie there until waiting to be re-discovered, if not by you, then by someone else.
Well, I am that someone else. My mother is attempting to sell her parents' house (as they died in the past couple of years), and so I spent a fair amount of time helping her clean out the house of various and sundry objects. All of it was dusty, much of it was boring, a few disturbing (e.g. a vibrator in my grandmother's closet), but then came the bibliophile's dream find. Someone stored their textbooks (actually, based upon the inscription in most of the books it was a Dr. Pratt, either the father or grandfather of the previous owner of the house) up in the attic and everyone who lived there since then figured they'd get around to looking at them someday. Well, "someday" was 2 weeks ago. Keep in mind, my grandparents had lived there for 54 years already. According to my mother, the previous owner never bothered to vacate the house and just left everything (which didn't even originally belong to him) where it was. In other words, these were old books. Really old books. Think older. Older. No, not that old, I don't think they had textbooks back then.
Allow me to give you some examples: a book on automobile repair that tried to persuade the reader that the car was not a fad, but was here to stay. It gave tips on the mechanics of an automobile's engine, though it failed to talk about the revolutionary Model T, because it wasn't invented yet! A book on astronomy obviously caught my attention, and I thought to myself, the planetary chart is ironically up to date because Pluto hadn't been discovered yet, so there are only 8 planets. Actually, according to the book, there are 86 planets, because every asteroid was considered a different planet when the book was published. Its chapter on time had nothing on Einstein's theories, because he was only a patent clerk whom nobody had heard of. The textbook on American history indicates that the most recent presidency was the Grant administration. Reconstruction wasn't history, it was news! And these were some of the recent books!
So the initial plan changed from throwing away the useless ones and keep the valuable ones to keep them all, because they all look valuable. Somehow, I've inherited a collection of potentially rare books, which aside from a lot of dust, aren't in terrible condition. One of the obviously valuable books was what you might call an over-sized coffee table book with various engravings. Doing all of 3 minutes of search on the web, I came across a single page from the book on eBay worth $76 alone! I have no idea what the price of the whole book might be.
Anyway, the process of looking through French Bibles, turn of the last century medical references, and other nineteenth century curiosities took longer than I expected as I was compelled to at least peruse each item in addition to dusting it and piling it in a box. But now I'm left with the question of what to do with them.
Jul. 14th, 2009
10:23 pm - Happy Bastille Day
I don't have much commentary on the French Revolution, but I haven't posted in awhile so I thought I'd just say I'm currently stuck in New Jersey for a little longer than I expected. It was supposed to be only a weekend trip to attend an Indian wedding (yes, it took place this past Saturday which it means it was, in fact, on 7/11), but it's turned into a longer trip cleaning out my grandparents' house. On the plus side, I discovered some old books. I mean really old books. With a little luck I'll post more on that later.
Jul. 1st, 2009
08:45 am - Happy Canada Day!
I like Canada, but somehow it's difficult to get excited over Canada Day. Granted that mostly has a lot to do with the fact that I'm not Canadian, but I have to wonder, just a little, if they chose July 1st in an attempt to upstage the U.S. a little bit. Of course, this is the best time for fireworks; who wants to see pyrotechnics in the snow?
But, objectively speaking, Canada Day simply doesn't have the same romantic qualities as the American Independence Day. Heck, Canada didn't even become independent on the first Canada Day in 1867. That wasn't to happen until 1931. Instead, it's just a celebration of the birth of the Dominion of Canada as a unified entity. And, notably, a couple provinces didn't even want to be part of it at first, like Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.
But, my real problem is that it just lacks the drama of American Independence. Instead of dressing up as Indians and throwing tea in a bay, the Canadian founding fathers met for tea and afterward, had an all-night ball. There was no, "Screw You, King George" but, actual support from Victoria and Parliament that a unified Canada would be easier to administrate than the disparate British North American colonies. The defiance came from those wanted to maintain the status quo. There was no bloodshed to speak of; just the ordinary conflict one can find while watching your favorite committee debate on C-Span.
On the other hand, I suppose there's something to be admired in the peaceful manner in which Canada was born. It was all very modern with official photographs and documentation. John MacDonald and George-Etienne Cartier deserve respect for having vision, seeking compromise from delegates and steering the whole process. It just doesn't have the same ring to it as putting their lives and sacred honor on the line.
Jun. 12th, 2009
02:19 pm - Bing
So I have to say I've found the commercials for Bing, Microsoft's new search engine, kind of intriguing. The first time I saw the commercial I was just very confused until the end, but each subsequent time I've been able to parse more and more of what they're saying so I like it in that there's enough information to be revealed in repeat viewings...and boy do they ever repeat the commercial a lot.
So, taking my cue off of Slate, I decided to test it. Frankly, I'm not sure how much more search engines can evolve, though I'm sure there's some room for improvement. Google seems to do the job I want just fine 99% of the time. And if I can't find it via Google, it's probably not there to begin with, and that's not the search engine's fault. But I wanted to test them with my own parameters, those things which I consider important. First, I tried "Quest LARP." On Google, Quest is the second entry while on Bing it's the third. Close race, but the winner of this round goes to Google. Second I tried, "Who is the Greatest President?" Wikipedia actually has a pretty fine analysis on this topic and as such was number 1 in Google's search, but still only #2 on Bing. Finally, I tried my name. Much to my delight, I've taken back first place from the father of Mary-Kate and Ashley on Google. However, Bing had me at the bottom of the 5th search page. And for this travesty, Bing is now considered dead to me.
Jun. 3rd, 2009
11:43 am - Social media venn diagram
So for those of you who are confused what the difference is between the different social networking sites (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, etc.), someone has put together a very simple diagram explaining it all. You can even get in on a t-shirt!
Navigate: (Previous 20 Entries)