More thoughts about books: How expectation affects reading (2011/06/22)
I have recently been re-reading the Ethshar books, by Lawrence Watt-Evans. I was first introduced to these many many years ago, when someone lent me a copy of The Misenchanted Sword, telling me it was a “very funny” book. I read it, enjoyed it, and kept an eye out for more books by the same author.
[read more...]I am... not surprised. (2011/06/22)
So, a bit of background. A while back, I found a series of books… somewhere. I don’t even remember. It’s a trilogy of books, the first being Starrigger, by John DeChancie. (The other two are Paradox Alley and Red Limit Freeway.)
[read more...]Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. (2011/06/09)
This socket is rated for at most a 60W lightbulb. But wait! What about compact fluorescent lightbulbs, where 60W would be some kind of major flood light, and 26W or so gets you more light than a 100W incandescent?
[read more...]Setting idea, free to good home (2011/05/31)
So, sometimes in fantasy settings, we find the occasional charlatan. Crazy thought; what if everyone were faking it? Okay, now, make it a high fantasy setting. Mighty wizards, priests who impose the will of gods, vampires, werewolves, stuff like that.
[read more...]Who does Lady Gaga sound like? (2011/05/28)
Everybody.
[read more...]You can play WoW in any MMO. (2011/05/07)
There’s an old saying among programmers: You can write FORTRAN in any language. What this means is that, while many languages allow you to write much clearer and more expressive code than is typically produced in FORTRAN, none of them force code to be better. Even the ones that claim they do. It just can’t happen. You can’t make a bad writer good.
[read more...]A month or so in: Why I still love RIFT (and Trion) (2011/04/18)
So, this weekend, RIFT had a “world event”. A huge in-game event that affected the entire in-game world. Lots of stuff happened. And… Some of it went pretty badly. The event design called for people to participate in a specific short time window, as a result of which thousands of players couldn’t log in, because the servers were full. Lots of complaints.
[read more...]Coolest dice EVER. (2011/03/20)
Okay, this is gonna be a thing that will sound incoherent to gamers, but:
[read more...]RIFT beta: A more in-depth review (2011/02/07)
Since a lot of people I know play MMOs or other games, I figure there may be some general interest. RIFT is in beta right now. Well, that’s a marketing gimmick. It’s really essentially in a sort of showing-off/demo mode which is more like an initial release than like a traditional “beta”, but the point is it’s not officially for sale yet, but people can play it.
[read more...]Initial impressions of RIFT (2011/01/29)
I play MMOs sometimes. I’ve been playing City of Heroes lately, and it’s lovely, but I sometimes want Internet Dragons. But, since Activision turned Blizzard evil, World of Warcraft hasn’t really been a viable option for me.
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