Itchy Feet

Here, care of [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com].

LJ has returned the homepage to normal. No more celebrity wank!

From the delightfully wacky @AnnLarimer's Twitter feed:

* Phone scam: robowoman from 'interest adjustment department' for 'your credit card' wants credit info, implies govt backing. Hang up.

* The robowoman is called Janey, BTW. I sense a pseudonym. That's not a common robo-American name.

* And before you give me shit for stereotyping robots, I'll have you know that two robots work in my building and we get along fine.

* I just don't like it when robolity gets shoved in my face. I don't care who lubes you in your own workshed.

* Um...sorry if any of your kids read that.

* And the thing is, I'm sure the robots feel the same. They've got to be much more comfortable with their own kind over in Little Aibo.

* Though sometimes their obvious clannishness is off-putting.

* But if you go to Little Aibo on Saturday mornings, you can get really quaint stuff at bargain prices! And it's so colorful!

* Is it racist to say I don't like robot music at all? I mean, it's really not music, is it? IMHO anyway. Just how I feel.

* I'm sure one day robots will learn to fit in as real Americans. And speak English. I hate that my tax money pays for Binary documents.

* No offense.

I know I pimp [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] a lot, and I know he's not always everyone's cup of tea. But seriously, read today's story. It's just wonderful and heartwarming and lovely.

Something from [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], posted today:

Someone just wrote to me with the following question:

The problem I encounter every single time I try to write something is that I have a brilliant idea, but I have absolutely no clue as to how to make a proper story out of it. Bits and pieces will come to mind, but finding the whole story is typically a feat… do you know of a way to overcome this issue?

And this was my very quick response, which it occurs to me might be worth sharing, as one avenue (of many) that can be taken to solve this:

Identify a character in your idea.

1) What does that character WANT?

2) What does that character need to do to GET what they want?

3) What are they prepared to DO to get what they want?

Superman wants to save the world, will go through a quest to save the world, and will, if need be, sacrifice himself to save the world. (Crap example, but you see where I’m going.)

Hannibal Lector wants to be free to live in the way he wants, needs to arrange people and incidents in such a way that he can escape his current circumstances, and will kill and eat anybody he feels like in order to be free. (The difference between a "hero" and a "villain" is often the ruthlessness and extremity they’re prepared to go to in order to achieve what they want.)

(Also, the villain is rarely the villain in their own mind. Norman Osborn from THUNDERBOLTS/SIEGE is a good example of a villain who is plainly the hero of his own story. Another good example is one of my favourite villains, the deluded, vicious Janetty from Steven Grant & Vince Giarrano’s BADLANDS)

It’s a really simple way to discover a rough one-two-three structure that you can start to build on. You build on it by asking yourself what you can do to make 2) as difficult as possible for the characters.

Hope that helps someone.


It really, really does. Reposted in the hopes it helps others as well. :)

This time from Felicia Day (@feliciaday) and Wil Weaton (@wilw)

feliciaday Dark Horse asked me: Top 3 ppl for my apocalypse shelter. My answer: @donttrythis, @marthastewart and Jet Li. http://bit.ly/bng1at

wilw @feliciaday Dude. I can totally hear you, and I'm standing right here. [::wipes single tear::]

feliciaday @wilw Oh crap. Ok, will re-evaluate Apocalypse shelter. I will renovate to accommodate one more if I have to!

feliciaday @wilw Ok, re-evaluated. I will dump @marthastewart for you, but you must be able to grow heirloom tomatoes and make a mean marinara sauce.

wilw @feliciaday Not only can I make a mean marinara sauce, I can grow multiple tomatoes, and DM every edition of D&D from 1st to 4th!

feliciaday @wilw heck if we are doing D&D in the shelter we should keep Martha and make her roll a Barbarian. Just because. #bestapocalypseever

wilw @feliciaday Well, okay ... but only if she promises that she won't metagame.

For those who might be upset or uncomfortable with the idea of seeing him online, Matt is using his gmail addy again. If this will upset you, I recommend taking him off your Contacts list if you haven't done so.

This is not a lynch mob or any kind of movement to ostracise him. But he has done a number of things which have deeply hurt people and if you're one of them, the warning is probably a good idea.

Comments off because I'm not interested in starting the debate again. If you can't handle seeing Matt online, take him off your Contacts. If you have no beef with him, then don't. Simple as that. Email me if you must.

This is already posted in [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s LJ, but I wanted to repeat it. Ten years ago tonight, [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] registered #subcafe on the IRC channel DALnet. He's finally letting it go tonight. So, old school comic ficcers, indulge in a bit of nostalgia and drop by for a bit.

Even if, like me, you have to download a chat client. ;)

For Mac users, Snak.com is a freeware program that works quite well.

Channel: irc://irc.dal.net/subcafe
Room: #subcafe

Apologies to those who read my LJ who are not involved in any of this, but I thought it was fair to make this post as accessible as possible, given secrecy and rumour-mongering have created a lot of the RP drama recently. For those not involved, these aren't the droids you're looking for, move along. ;)

For those who are involved, I have received permission from Sarah, otherwise known as [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], to post the following excerpt from a conversation we've been having following her departure from XP. I do so in the interest of having the facts, instead of the half-truths and exaggerations that I've personally heard, and in the interest of trying to clear the air a bit.

If you have any questions about this, I will direct you to Sarah, since she is one of the modteam from Stronghold and a co-founder.

I emailed Sarah, since we've always been friends, and asked about the infamous "List of the Blackbanned" of Stronghold, given that I've heard from a number of sources that there is one and varying degrees of who is on it. This was her response:

As for the list... I really don't want people to think that we have a googledoc tucked away somewhere named 'people we hate' or somesuch with a list of banned players. As far as I know, there is no actual, maintained list of banned players, and if there is, I've never seen it. Fairly early on in the game (right after the mass XP exodus,) there was a discussion of players we'd like to invite into the game which also included mentions of people that SH players would prefer not to have invited because they had an issue of some sort with them. I hate to say that both you and Dex were included in the group of folks that they would prefer not to invite, but looking back at the discussion Nichole and IJ aren't mentioned at all. I would really like to stress that this isn't a universal 'everybody hates them' list. Not everyone in the game has problems with people who were discussed (I mean, hell, I like pretty much everybody,) but we're currently working under a model where invites are issued only when the entire group is okay with the potential player. One or two people who have problems with the proposed player are enough to nix an invite.

I'm going to screen comments, mostly since I'm on vacation and I don't want to have a flame war erupt in my LJ, especially since I haven't had the chance to go get booze yet. ;) If you want to know more about Stronghold, its invitation process, or the metaphorical list, Sarah would like to stress that she's happy to respond to questions and that she's not scary or threatening at all. ;) If you don't have her addy, leave a comment and I'll send it to you.

Similarly, if you have questions about XP, feel free to ping me, or any other of the XP mods, being Jen, Nichole and Dex.

To end... I'm in Quebec! It's pretty! They have snow!

So, [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] linked to Wired's 100 Quotes Every Geek Should Know. If you go through them and the comments, you'll notice some glaring ommisions (and some really lame inclusions, imo). So, geek-folks, what are your favourite geek-type quotes?

Mine are (with a concerted effort to make sure they weren't all Firefly quotes):

"Fire bad, tree pretty." - Buffy, "Graduation", B:TVS

"We have done the impossible and that makes us mighty." - Mal, "Serenity", Firefly (and Joss on the clip at the start of Serenity DVD)

"My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die." - Inigo, The Princess Bride

"RESISTANCE IS USELESS!!!" - Vogon guard, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

"Sir, I think you have a problem with your brain being missing." - Zoe, "The Train Job Firefly (and pretty much anything Zoe says, ever)

"Beer good. Foamy." - Buffy, "Beer Bad" - B:TVS

"Mrs. Krobopple (sp?), I glued my head to my shoulder." - Ralph Wiggum, The Simpsons

"It doesn't matter which lizard you vote for, the Lizard will always get in." - Douglas Adams again.

"Everybody. Is dead. Dave." - Holly, Red Dwarf

[singsong] "I'm gonna eat you little chicky..." "Oops, too slow, Chicken Marengo, you've gotta be faster than that to beat this cat!" - Cat, Red Dwarf

"I've been fished to death!" - Cat, Red Dwarf

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." - Adam, Mythbusters

"The world is a mess and I just need to... rule it." - Dr Horrible, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

And the whole Jackal sequence with CJ in West Wing. There would be more WW quotes, only my brain isn't giving me any. :P

And I'll stop there for now so I leave room for other people. ;)