Will's Wild, Wooly, Working Wiki - Unfinished projects and muddled thoughts by Will McDuff.

//The falling white snow//\n//Reminds me of my blanket.//\n//Soft, smothering blackness.//\n-- William ~McDuff\n\nSigh. Bit down today. Miserable weather, I'm tired (my own fault, I suppose, for not going to bed early enough). I think I need some time off. Stay at home, relax, clean my apartment top to bottom, get things done...\n\nNo earthquakes of late, though. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, as I always feel like we're due a big one when we don't get the small ones.\n\n[[Hordek'karr|./hardekgirn.html]] is progressing, slowly, though I need to seperate that into a player's version and a DM's version shortly (If you're going to playtest, don't click the link yet...). Just haven't gotten around to it. (Cue a small circular piece of paper with the words 'TO IT' written on it from my father.)\n\nOh, today's the new registration day for the [[Kanken||http://www.kanken.or.jp/jidoukanken/jidou.html]]. Once more into the breach, I suppose. Who's with me? (Dave and Ben have said they're gonna try...)

I finally managed to watch the video footage that I took in Canada, and including quite a few shots of myself...\n\nJeez, I am __such__ a goof, aren't I? :)\n\n//ETA: No hot water this morning at home. I miss the warmth of Canada already...//\n//~ETA2: However, I did get a nice hot bath when I got home at least. Yay!//

Getting back into the routine, but not really for long. Next week will be different for me.\n\nOn Saturday, I'm going to be a karaoke judge at a local festival. Which I think is their way to keep me from singing on stage. Not that I would. Then Tuesday is my interview for teaching high school next year, and Thursday and Friday are the ~Mid-Year Conference. I asked for Wednesday off, to avoid a trip up and back; it's easier and safer to stay in Sendai. Maybe I'll go and knock off some more of my train stations on Wednesday.\n\nShould be interesting, anyway.

Hmm. 3.8 earthquake Thursday morning. Centered basically at the base of my penninsula.\n\nI'm good folks, just relaxing and being quiet; I have to; April is an expensive month... Happy Easter!

Interesting day...\n\nTo begin with, 12 people in a class of 27 were home with the flu, so everyone in the class was sent home. Then, they're fixing the internet, and shut us down for a bit. Then a pipe breaks in an upstairs bathroom, sending a fountain of water about eight feet high rising from the ground at the toilet...\n\nSo, how's __your__ day going?

Boo. Bronchitis.\n\nYay. A Series Of Unfortunate Events.\n\nYay. Day off.\n\nYay. Sendai.\n\nYay. Cool friends about.\n\nYay. Decent interview.\n\nYay. Drugs to deal with bronchitis.\n\nOn the whole, positive, methinks. That is all.

Fear the w00t, baby.\n\nThus proving again that I can write, I won a contest at [[Fear The Boot|http://feartheboot.libsyn.com]] for writing up an interesting yet ordinary RPG character. I gets me a $30 gift certificate for a t-shirt. Listen to Episode 21 to here my win, and Episode 18 to here my getting close. (Well, only if you're into ~RPGs, I suppose.) And yes, I promise to post here more often in the near future.\n\nAnd to keep with the tradition, 5.3 at 2:07 am this morning. Yay, shakin'. Farther away for a change.

Two earthquakes in northeast Miyagi yesterday; not big ones, but pretty close. One I didn't really recognize as an earthquake for a while, since I was in the shower at the time. Kinda weird.\n\nSpring break is coming up for the kids, so we're winding down...almost holiday season. Hey, anyone want to come visit me for Golden Week, first week in May? I'll have it off.

You know how something little can change things around for you? For me, it was cleaning my kitchen. (Well, and the coming of spring.)\n\nI've been down for a good month and a bit, but yesterday was a day off. I slept in, relaxed, and then, that evening with my computer playing a podcast, I tackled the den of toxicity and disgustingness that was my kitchen. And...well, it's clean in there. Well, cleaner; I still have a box full of plastic and metal bottles to wipe out, and I need to do the floor, but it's still a huge heck of a lot better.\n\nI rewarded myself with Hamburger Helper (yeah, I know, for me, that was a reward) and even did the dishes right after. I swear, my brain just cleared up. One of the problems I was having with Hordek'karr fell into place, I woke up bright and early this morning and got into the shower and to work early for a change. I've got a great lunch and it's a '//nihon-de bare//' day today, which means 'Japanese fine' literally, and 'not a cloud in the sky' figuratively.\n\nI guess that ol' windstorm that blew through took a bit of darkness with it.

Yay, the delayed payday is here. I can get ready to send it all to Canada for the Liber-no, Conservat-no, ~ND-,no Conserva-\n\nEh, we'll find out tomorrow, local time.\n\nI got my AC Adapter for my new Game Boy Micro in the mail yesterday. Joy! And yes, I realize how sad it is that I enjoy Pokémon ~LeafGreen as much as I do. However, to distract you from that...\n\n[[...and dog ears. Watch 'em dance!|http://fs5.deviantart.com/f/2004/344/a/5/InuYashaMovie.swf]]

*sighs* I'm writing this on a Toshiba laptop running Windows XP. (You ever look at the 'smiley' made from the XP? That's about what I think of it, yes.)\n\nAdmittedly, I'm grateful to David for loaning me his laptop in my time of need, getting Windows up and running and moderately secure is a headache. Really, I don't know why you folks insist on Windows.\n\nActually, check that, I do.\n\nI think the reason that people stick to Windows are because there are more games (and other programs) on Windows, because they're used to Windows, and don't want to learn the Mac interface, and because their friends use Windows. Which is basically the reverse of the reason I prefer the Mac, except replace 'more games and other programs' with 'less spyware/virii and easier to get working'.\n\nAh well...

Conservative Minority. Pretty much what I figured. However, Conservatives + NDP + Other = Liberals + Bloq Quebecois. Interesting in that respect, I think, though be something odd to see the Conservatives working with the NDP...\n\n[[Hordek'Karr|./hardekgirn.html]] will be getting a bit of an overhaul. The ~PCs don't have enough motivation, so I'm planning to give them more. Specifically, I'm giving them their first magic items (yay!) ...if they can get them from the goblins that stole 'em, raiding the caravan that they were coming in on. :)\n\nMwha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

[[http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch|http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch]]\n\nThis seems about right, which kinda clarifies things for me. I really don't care for people and being social that much, and prefer small groups with lots of down time...\n\nHuh.\n\nInteresting for me, anyway.

Sigh, another morning without hot water, 'cause the pipes are exposed. I washed my hair anyway, which was...bracing.\n\nI really am anxious to spring to get here, if for no other reason that the bloody kerosene is expensive this year. I suppose the good news is next year I'll be south; yes, I've been approved for the transfer to high school, and confirmed for year three. I won't know until May where, though. However, south, west, and closer to Sendai are all in the bag, as there's no schools that are north, east, or farther away.\n\nAnd if I'm whining about the cold too much for you mother, I seem to remember someone else complaining about the cold a bit last year when she visited... :P\n\nP.S. This is what I call a successful evening. Went to supervisor; no planning needed for evening class this week; it's the last one. Went to Kesennuma, managed to get to my dry cleaners with minutes to spare. Ordered pizza, put clothes in, picked up pizza, moved clothes, ate pizza, folded, watched fun little Japanese game show while waiting for clothes to dry, finished folding. Went to Joyful, played DDR. Passed all fours I tried easily, passed several fives (!) and made decent process on my six of choice. Came home, no traffic, made great time. Come in door, try hot water. Hot water! Shower! Heater! Slightly warm jammies!\n\nMmm. Happy William noises. Good day. Classes went moderately well too, and got useful work done. Also got another location written up in [[Hordek'karr|./hardekgirn.html]] and got the main puzzle figured out, if not fine tuned. Very good day.\n\nAlso, 4.4 Richter earthquake this morning, moderately nearby. 2 on the Japanese scale in Karakuwa. Small, but lasted a while. Figured it was a bigger one farther off, actually.

Pretty quiet, though I'm planning to do the Sendai thing this weekend; might go down on the Friday night instead of Saturday morning. Considering going down and being all incognito and stuff at that, for some reason. Though I've always enjoyed being by myself wandering around the big city.\n\nAnother earthquake tonight (I'm thinking I'll blog these, just to keep accurate record for a while). Level 1 Japanese, 4.8 richter, and way off the point of Oshika. Surprised I felt that all the way up here; must have been shallow.

Well folks, this looks like a revision, don't it? The good news is that with this, I'm updating again. The bad news? Well, I'm going to archive the rest of my journal as I switch to this one. So a break, from...jeez, almost a year ago to now.\n\nAnyway, I'm back in Japan, with admittedly a little bit of regret; it was nice being home with the family for Christmas (the assorted fighting made it feel all the more like home, I think :D) I remember reading all the articles around here about how home didn't live up to expectations for some. For me, the food was great, having the family and Joanne was great, getting to see everyone at the New Year's party was great...it was one of the few holiday seasons in memory where I didn't feel particularly mopey or down.\n\nAnyway, I'm back, and slowly unpacking, and playing some of the new games, and not terribly looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.\n\n<<slider chkSlider NewPS2 "More on my new Playstation 2 games" "More on Playstation gaming">>\n\nOh, and for the tech-minded amoung you, this [[TiddlyWiki|http://www.tiddlywiki.com]] I'm using is pretty neat tech...

Well, let's see here. The first thing mention is determining which direction you're going to do things from, top-down or bottom-up. In my case, I think both is an accurate description; Hordek'karr will be a site in this world, but it's fairly generic, and limits things in particular ways, which I'll get into later. However, mostly, this should be a top down design.\n\nThere's a couple concepts that I like that I'd like to set as underlying. I like the ideas of:\n\n# Gods can die.\n# Gods do die, though every instance of such is a cataclysmic event.\n# Gods are far enough above normal people that only the greatest heros or villians might think of it; Level 40 or there abouts. This includes ~PCs, if they ever get that high.\n# Gods are tied to kingdoms. In order to gain in power, gods must expand their influence with more land and more people.\n# Dead gods can be replaced, new gods can form from civil war, or portfolios can be absorbed from a complete conquering of another god.\n\nThis is interesting to me, where gods are superior in their own lands; I think powers should still work in other lands, else magic users might well become unplayable, but perhaps a small bonus in the correct lands would be fair (if I can bump the non-magic using classes as well) and also act as a stabilizing force on borders that might be always at war otherwise.\n\nSo, a number of gods, each surpreme in their own territories, and war encouraged. [[Monte Cook's work|http://www.montecook.com]] will all be useful here, and with the possibility of the death and birth of gods, it should encourage the epic feel I want.

[<img[Butterfly banner|./Images/x_stitch_thumb.gif]]\n\nA hobby of mine, I enjoy the lack of skill it requires and the beautiful results you can get if you have the patience for it.\n\nSo far, I've only completed one, however.\n\n[[A larger version of the thumbnail|./Images/x-stitch.jpg]]\n\nI have another I'm working on, a small samurai I'm working on...I'll have to post images of it soon.

Deadsville is the winner of the 2005 [[IntroComp|http://www.xyzzynews.com/introcomp/]] competition for Interactive Fiction game starts. Not that everyone loved my game, but of the seven available, I think this least number of people hated it. I did write a hack zombie horror/comedy here that included the command ''EAT BRAINS'', but it was fairly well implemented.\n\nI have until July 23, 2006 to finish the game to receive $100 US. Which hopefully will spur me onwards.\n\nThe post–~IntroComp version of the game is available for download [[here|../Deadsville/Deadszille.z5]] and also has an associated [['map'|../Deadsville/deadsvillemap.pdf]], which is just me trying to be amusing. As is the game, for that matter.\n\n

[[2 October 2006]] [[16 April 2006]] [[28 March 2006]] [[22 March 2006]] [[20 March 2006]]

*//"God's not all that interested in me. He's too busy watching sparrows fall."//\n>-- The girl on the roof, from The Losers, David Eddings.\n*//"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."//\n>-- from The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde\n*//"English is a beautiful language, full of misunderstandings."//\n>-- Robert, from The Comfort of Strangers, Ian ~McEwan\n*//"'A grey man,' she said. 'Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?'\n'What if I am? It seems to me most men are grey.'"//\n>-- Lady Melisandre of Asshai and Ser Davos Seaworth, The Onion Knight, from A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin\n*//"Say you and I are sitting in a train station and in comes a nun. You and I are gentlemen-like guys and one of us stands up to offer her a seat. Unbeknown to us, she's a prostitute and a pickpocket. What moved us to rise up? An image."//\n>-- Manuel, Cowboy Tailor to the stars, from "How the West was Worn", Japan Times article, Tuesday January 11, 2005.

[img[Weight Loss Progress|./Images/wl1.png]]\n\nAlright, let's try to get serious about this. I am rather obviously over weight, and I need to eat better, work out more, and deal with this.\n\nI've set my target at 180 lbs (81.5 kg), 30.5 lbs lower than my current. So how to do it?\n\nI need to reform my eating habits, which means a sensible breakfast, less sweets, and a sensible supper. Which means I need to cook and do dishes and the like too. Which is probably going to be very difficult.\n\nAlso, exercise. More than my weekly bounce on the DDR machine, at that. So my goal for that is to start biking to school three days a week once the snow's off the ground; Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, which are my days I don't have to go to Koharagi. Koharagi's about 10 km away; I don't think that's reasonable to expect of myself.\n\nAnyway, I've started; let's see if I can pay attention and lose some pounds!

FavouriteQuotes\nMyProjects\n[[RSS Feed|./index.xml]]\n[[Will's Radio Station|http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh4157417]]\n\n[[My Old Blog|./iblog/oldblog.html]]\n\n//Other People's Blogs//\n[[Chris Bauer|http://www.livejournal.com/users/shdragon/]]\n[[Sissie Chang|http://sissie.hindsightproject.com/blog/]]\n[[Eric Jones|http://ejones.froods.ca/journal/index.shtml]]\n[[Ed Sum|http://www.livejournal.com/users/edo_kun/]]\n\n[[TiddlyWiki|http://www.tiddlywiki.com]].\n© [[osmosoft|http://www.osmosoft.com]] 2006\n\nContent\n© [[Will McDuff|mailto:wmcduff@mac.com]] 2006\n

[img[Weight Loss Progress|./Images/wl2.png]]\n\nHuh. Haven't really done anything I was planning to do, and still lost a few pounds. Weird. Still, I need to start that biking, darn it!

At the current moment, I have the following projects that I am trying (though I will probably fail for many of them) to complete:\n\n*[[Deadsville]] - My Interactive Fiction game (or text adventure). Finish by 07/23/06 for US $100.\n*CrossStitching - Samurai stitch\n*[[Hardek'Girn|./hardekgirn.html]] - A Dungeons & Dragons adventure I'm trying to write. Ideally, I could submit to [[the D&D Design Test|http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20050930b]], or Dungeon, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.\n*WorldDesign - Can I create a unique setting? Or at least something not terribly derivative.\n*[[EkiGari|http://www.43things.com/things/view/331241]] - My mad attempt to visit and photograph competently every train station in Miyagi prefecture.\n*WeightLoss - Trying to get back down to a 'fighting weight'...

When I went to Canada I picked up four new games, here are my views in a nutshell on them:\n\nTiger Woods PGA Tour 2006: I like the Character builder, I find the career mode entrance a bit unclear, and I'm a three-button push golfer from way back, so I'll have to get used to that.\n\nNHL 06: Woot! It's back baby. I love the feel of it, it's fast, responsive, and fun to play. Nice work on this. Only complaint? Some of the create-a-character beard look like a facial disease of some sort. :)\n\nSSX On Tour: Well...it's interesting. I'm honestly not sure. It feels like SSX, there's much less problem about getting reset for going the wrong way. Seems decent so far, but I do miss the strong characters. I think they went the wrong way, really, they should be playing up the characters and rivalries, not making them just names that pop up now and then. They're extras; tacked on. Ah well, needs more play.\n\nKingdom Hearts: Well, I liked it when I played before. Square + Disney is a nice combonation. Have to get back into it.

Unfinished projects and muddled thoughts by Will ~McDuff.

Will's Wild, Wooly, Working Wiki

http://homepage.mac.com/wmcduff/

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[img[Weight Loss Progress|./Images/wl2.png]]\n\n<<slider chkSlider Feb0606 "Entry #1: February 6, 2006" "Entry #1: February 6, 2006">>\n<<slider chkSlider Mar2206 "Entry #2: March 22, 2006" "Entry #2: March 22, 2006">>

Just like everyone who plays around with D&D and writing, I'd love to design a world. To start, I'm going to follow the path of Rich Burlew, the Giant in the Playground, when [[he was designing his world|http://www.giantitp.com/form.html]]. Maybe I can make something worthwhile.\n\n1. CoreConcept - The basics.