August 2005

Fatboy Slim is my Oxymoron of Choice

This leads to this. Both have been around for quite some time, but I recently REdiscovered the video and now I can't get that crazy song out of my head.

Current Playlist

In an effort to examine the less explored reaches of my hard drive, I set up an iTunes playlist containing only songs that have a playcount less than 50 and threw it into the "Party Shuffle." This is what I saw.

1. Build It Up,Tear It Down / Fatboy Slim 5:05
2. The "Proximity To God Index" / Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie 1:13
3. The Tide / Newsboys 5:00
4. WooHoo / Newsboys 3:15
5. I'm Alright / Jars Of Clay 3:40
6. Praying to different Gods / Ikarus 4:52
7. Step Up To The Microphone / Newsboys 3:43
8. Imaginary / Evanescence 4:17
9. Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal / They Migh...3:48
10.Deep End / Newsboys 4:05
11.Nightgown Of The Sullen Moon / They Might Be Giants 1:59
12.Link / Collective Soul 3:04
13.The Last Place / McKrells 5:12
14.Soul Surfing / Fatboy Slim 4:56
15.The World's Address (Joshua Fried Remix) / They Might Be ...5:42
16.Staring At the Sun / Simple Kid 4:02
17.All I Really Want / Alanis Morissette 4:44
18.This Way / Jewel 4:17
19.Death March / John Holowach 6:08
20.Never Be / Carman 3:55
21.She's Actual Size / They Might Be Giants 2:05
22.The A**hole Song / Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie 1:45
23.The Gauntlet / Dropkick Murphys 2:57
24.If Tomorrow Never Comes / Garth Brooks 3:40
25.Tomorrow / Avril Lavigne 3:48
26.How You Remind Me / Nickelback 3:43

Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score

Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score
Category	Your Score	Average
Hacklust	74.53% Enjoys the occasional head-lopping	53.5%
Sensitive Roleplaying	75.95% Will talk after everyone important's been killed	54.5%
GM Experience	72.46% Ran a module once or twice	69.4%
Systems Knowledge	94.77% Played in a couple of campaigns	90.3%
Livin' La Vida Dorka	66.67% Goes nuts on the weekends	63.2%
You are 77.85% pure Average Score: 68.8%
Take The Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Test and see how you match up!

Another Waste of Time

Chaeval recently hopped onto the WOW bandwagon, and that got me thinking about trying my own hand at a MMORPG. Of course I'm cheap, so instead of shelling out the cash for WOW I decided to look in on the free alternatives.

I've settled (for now, at least) on Oberin, a Mac only game that uses a lot of the concepts you'd expect to see in an RPG. This includes leveling up, developing skills, adventuring solo or in parties, using skills to make and sell your own equipment, and so on. The graphics are low quality, but that means that even people running Mac OS 8.5 can join in on the fun. Besides, it's FREE.

I have to say that the best part about this game is the trust that exists among the players. I've died a few times in the game and not once did anyone loot my corpse. In fact, the other players were more than happy to help out a newbie such as myself.

I just started playing last night so I'm still at the "trying desperately to level up so I don't die instantly against a giant ant" stage, but if you happen to see a character named Blake Emrys online feel free to say hi.

OOOoooooh

As if I actually had any free time to waste with online multiplayer games, this site lists a bunch of free ones!

Full of myself?

One of the things that iTunes does is log how many times you've played each song. It's not it's best feature, nor it's worst, it's just there. Last week out of curiosity I clicked the button that sorted all the mp3s I've got by their play counts, and I found out that number one is Lullaby with a grand total of 450 times played. I'm embarrassed to say I made this song myself while fiddling with Apple's GarageBand.

Now this of course doesn't include songs on my mp3 player or on CDs I burned to use in the car, but it did make me wonder if perhaps I'm a little too self centered. Then I realized: It's in the playlist I listen to when I'm trying to fall asleep, along with most of the songs played more than 200 times.

So I hope this means I'm not self centered - only that I'm lazy ^_^;

OOC Conversation

Paul: synchonized zombie attacks
Paul: makes sense if there is someone controling them
Blake: true
Paul: c'mon - how many things "shamble"
Blake: they could be drug-addled bums
Blake: or they could all be wearing orthopedic shoes
Paul: true
Paul: or they could be drug addled zombified former football jock bums
Blake: or a collection of squirrels in people costumes
Paul: wearing othropedic shoes
Blake: :D

You know you've picked the right RPG when...

You find statistics for weilding cars, dumpsters, and even busses as projectile weapons. (Big Eyes, Small Mouth d20 page 98)

Poking and Prodding

Today is a "Doctor Day." We have two Dr's Appointments in the morning (one for Kelli, one for me) and a dental appointment in the afternoon that is all for me. :P

Kelli's visit is just for a routine check-up, but the reason for my own check-up has to do with the sebaceous cysts on my head and the stomach pain I've been having for months. The first diagnosis for the latter was heartburn and I was told to take antacids which did absolutely nothing for me. This trip will probably get me a prescription antacid and maybe an ultrasound to see how the stomach looks (that's what the doc said would be the next step when last we met), but we'll see.

The sebaceous cysts are a little more gross. I've got three of them under my hairline, and one of them's getting bumpier so I'd like to get them removed. My dad's gone through the same thing more than once over the years, so I know what to expect.

An amusing side note: in the middle ages nobody knew what these cysts really were, so they were left untreated. The things grow slowly, but if left unchecked they eventually burst through the skin and look like horns. This was taken as a sign of possession by demons and the unfortunate individuals often met unfortunate ends.

In Advance of the Suck

The situation:
I've had a DeviantArt account for over a year now, and so far I've liked it enough to upgrade to a paid account and even spring for the ability to sell prints.

But all is not well in the land of random artworks.

You see, one of the cofounders recently got the boot. Several other staff members have also left recently, but Jark was so well liked that a sizable portion of the DeviantArt community is now up in arms about it.

There are a lot of rumors, but so far I've gathered the following things:

• Jark did not want to leave.
• The reason for his departure has not been released "for legal reasons."
• There was one user comment deleted by a staff member and one forum thread deleted by the person who started the thread. The staff member was "working independently," but now there is a lot of fear mongering about accounts being banned and journals being deleted.
• There is a lot of support for Jark, with users turning their icons yellow to match Jark's icon, removing their art, and making artworks that support him.

Things have sucked before.
Some of you may be too young to remember some of this, but back in the '90s Hotmail was a really nice web based email client with living people in charge of tech support. Then Microsoft bought them out and within 3 months the tech support was replaced with a F.A.Q. that didn't answer any of my questions. They may have made some improvements since then, I don't know and I don't want to know.

Geocities used to be the best free web hosting service out there, including ftp and pop3 support. Then Yahoo bought them, and it was all downhill from there. They're among the best free services again, but only because much of the competition has also gone downhill.

DeviantArt has not changed hands. To my knowledge they have not even changed business plans. However, they have gotten rid of one of one of the main guiding forces for the company and are unwilling to say why. This has gotten a large portion of the user base quite angry and, since their user base is also their bread and butter, and to me that seems like they're cutting off their own foot.

The Retaliation:
So what can people do about it? Not much, really. Companies wait out bad PR all the time with little overall damage to their pocketbooks - our collective memories are more short term than long term. The Jark fiasco will blow over, the petitions will collect many, many signatures yet achieve nothing, Individuals will leave to come back in a month or two, or if they don't then they'll be replaced by new members who never knew about Jark in the first place.

Alternative services:
Now there are of course other sites that serve the same purpose as DeviantArt. I myself have (free) accounts with both Ourmedia.org (Which uses Archive.org to store all your files. I moved my animations over to there already.) and Flickr, and I think both of them are excellent services that are building a sense of community - especially Flickr, in spite of it's recent purchase by Yahoo. My sister also uses Photobucket.com and is quite happy with it. All of these allow you to use them for remote hosting, so you can post pictures there and have them show up in your LiveJournal or wherever.

Of course DeviantArt also has a very nice prints service. How do you replace that? Simple: CafePress.com. They have a much wider selection of products, and although their prices are a bit higher you don't need to pay anything to open up an account.

So am I going to leave DeviantArt?
Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't be the first or the last to do so, and I doubt it would make a difference to them one way or another.

But it would make a difference to me. I prefer to use services I can respect. (I'm willing to pay for them as well, if I see the paid version is much better than the free one.) And right now I'm trying to decide if I should respect DeviantArt or just switch to something else.