Some of you may recall that a while ago I had talked about looking into a new method of setting up my website, largely to make things easier in terms of updating, not just with my beloved incoherent ramblings, but also so I could start sharing more of my creative -- and making it easier for people to find certain pieces.

This past weekend I finally decided to take the plunge, and proceeded to work on getting Wordpress up and running on my site. To be brutally honest, I'm still not entirely sure what the heck is going on behind the curtain, but at the moment, all seems to be well, so I'm not going to fret at this point in time.

The new blog is located here: http://www.strangeunlimited.com/blog/

I have to admit that I'm feeling pretty good about the move to Wordpress. It took me a little while to work out some bugs and track down some issues I was having, but in the end, I managed to get it set up, installed a theme (and tweaked it slightly; namely the background image), located and installed a number of plugins to allow me to share various types of media easily, and also managed to do some work offline in terms of getting my media properly prepped for the new format.

The old website will still be around for a while, I think, just because there are aspects to it I enjoy, but eventually I'll probably be paring it down and managing most of my content through Wordpress.

One of the big advantages to the new format is that now I can stream my music/videos/etc. directly from my site. It's not a dedicated streaming server, but since I doubt I'll ever have to deal with YouTube-like numbers, I seriously doubt it'll be an issue. And honestly, I also much prefer to be hosting my own content; just a cleaner approach, really.

I fully expect the blog to be going through a constant series of adjustments and tweaks for the rest of the year as I get more used to what I can and can't do, and also what I need and want from the site. Also in the early days, I'll likely be posting a lot, as I'll be uploading my various videos, animations, photos, music, drawings, etc. to the site. I think I'm also planning on starting up my reviews there, as well, just because it's the "new" thing right now.

In any case, watch the blog for a lot of content coming up. Those who have been through my site before, you'll see pretty much all that stuff go up, but there's going to be a lot of new things, as well, mainly because it's so flippin' easier to update through the blog than through the main site.

Tags: tech

Ran a solo test of Madness this morning with the latest rule change that I came up with after my talk with Nick, and it went fairly well. Took a couple of hours for a 4-player game, but I'm thinking that it would be faster (and tighter) with 4 actually people playing, as I would tend to forget minor details that, as a single player, I would not. As always, certain refinements need to be made, such as some more tinkering with the balance of certain cards in light of the new rules, and I certainly need to keep making adjustments to the UI (even though it is not digital, it is still a User Interface).

As always, I won't know for sure until I run it through a few playtests, but I'm letting myself get hopeful that this might just be (a lot of qualifiers in there...) the core rule twist the game needed to maintain the fun, yet avoid the danger of a prolonged stalemate.

The big change is that now Fortifications not only double as a Crazy Idea Node of your choice (for purposes of victory conditions, only), but they also cost 5 bases -- not actions -- to purchase. The shift to using bases as a currency is key: a base is worth more than the Action spent to obtain it, as it also means that you are opening up nodes to others for expansion, as well as cutting short certain connection lines and pathways. It seems to hit the right balance of risk and reward, and additionally, the move keeps the maps from getting completely choked up and maintains a bit of flow so that the trench warfare pitfall doesn't show up. Even though it took 2 hours for the game to be won, the playtest showed that the game never got bogged down, and also that it's still balanced well enough that any player has a shot to win.

So, now the hard part -- gathering up enough people to run a playtest.

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

I'm on the very last mission for "Mercenaries," but I hate the game so much that I had to put it on the shelf, and probably won't return to it for some time. To me, the strength of the game is the ability to, on a mission, scope the area out, plan your attack, and choose your method of attack.

Unfortunately, the game all to often rips that away from you in the missions. Far too many are time-based, which destroys any chance to actually enjoy the sandbox aspect because you have to rush to make it to the site, blast through everything, and then hit your objective. Other missions and just deliberately set up so that there is, in fact, only one way to really give yourself a fair shot at completing it.

The last mission, while I understand is supposed to be hard, is just infuriating. They drop you on an island in the middle of a firefight, so any hope of sneaking around to scope the area is gone, and then you are hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. Oh, sure, you can call in airstrikes and the like, but first you have to get rid of the anti-air vehicles and helicopters. I am also completely sick of the RPG guys that appear out of nowhere, have unlimited ammo, and using homking rockets that can follow you around cover -- even though when you pick up the same weapon, the rockets only go straight, and you only have 4 shots.

After I was killed for the 6th time in the same spot, before I had even gotten to the meat of the mission, I decided that I had better things to do with my time. I probably will attempt to finish it at some point, just because that's what I like to do, but I also won't fret over it.

It just amazes me the number of horrid game design decisions that made it into the game. And the sad thing is that they are so bad, they totally destroyed any enjoyment I was getting from the game otherwise.

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

A friend of mine sent me "Ico" recently, and it has been the perfect balm to the irritating rash that was "Mercenaries." I've always enjoyed the puzzle-style adventures, and "Ico" does a beautiful job of showing how you can create a very compelling narrative with little dialogue. Likewise, it's doing a wonderful job of setting up the relationship between the two kids, through both game design (keep her close at all times, as you never know when those shades are going to attack) and visual storytelling. Perfect example of the latter: when Ico falls from a height that is a bit too high, he will cry out in pain; the princess will always come running over to him out of concern. She can't heal or anything, but it's just the perfect display of compassion, esp. considering that the two kids don't speak the same language (it seems). And, of course, the whole vibration control for when Ico is pulling her along by the hand -- this game is a case study in visual storytelling, and one of the best examples of how video games can be a powerful medium for narrative without the need for wordy cutscenes or endless character exposition.

I'll probably finish it this upcoming weekend, largely because it's pulled me in pretty well.

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

Thanks to some help from the always reliable Mr. 188, I was able to get confirmation that my UT3 level does, in fact, work on other people's machines now. I can still work on a couple of minor issues (why the heck isn't the texture mapping to the lift?), but overall, I think I'm going to move that down the priority pole, and instead start working on a new map. I have an idea for a Warfare map, and it'll require me to get more in-depth with creating custom meshes in Maya, as well as give me a chance to play more with the vertical movement element of UT3 that I love (and think is under-utilized).

For those interested, you can download it here:
http://www.filefront.com/14737823/DM_EngineRoom_Beta_02.zip/

Tags: games

Earlier today I was feeling a bit on the down side -- looks like I will need to break open my metaphorical piggy bank unless things change drastically come the end of the week. And the continued stalled progress on my various projects (some because of me, others not) certainly didn't give me the lift that the balloon boy did to editorial cartoonists.

But then, not only did the weather warm up to the high 60s, but the sun broke through the clouds.

And I happened across Owl City's "Fireflies."

And suddenly, all is right with the world. :)

[UPDATE: And I just found a missing left sock! Ye gads, how often does that happen?]

Current Music: "Fireflies" by Owl City

Yes, the Browns lost again to the Steelers, but I don't think that's really much of a surprise. What is a surprise is that I feel pretty upbeat about the football this weekend, and want to thank those who made it possible.

Hence, Thank You...

...Josh Cribbs. That interception was a bummer, but you continue to play at a high level despite the unhappiness with your contract. Cleveland loves you, and regardless of the business end, everyone knows that Mangini does as well.

...Tennessee Titans. Your blowout defeat will be the talk of the week, especially since you still have not won a game, and had the best record in the AFC last season. This meltdown is historic, and despite the talent on the roster, you played worse than the Browns. Seriously, do you have any idea how rare it is that a Browns fan can say, "Well, at least we didn't play as bad as the Titans."

...Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Still winless as well, you have done a nice job of showing that maybe, just maybe, Mangini and company were smart in trading away K2. As I recall, everyone thought that the Browns were fools to trade away that talent, and that Tampa Bay would be a real contender as a result. Instead, the Browns are one game better than the Bucs. Isn't this something that happens after the 6th seal is opened?

...Buffalo Bills. I was so happy to hear that you won, largely because upsetting the Jets is good for Browns fans on 2 levels:
--Since the Braylon Edwards trade, the Browns are 1-1, while the Jets are 0-2. Edwards has not won a game this season, and given his sour attitude while in Cleveland, I am rather tickled pink. The term "giddy" may be applied.
--Maybe all the talk about how utterly foolish the Browns were not to draft Sanchez will die down for a week or two. To be fair, the way he's playing now is how I would have expected him to play if the Browns had drafted him -- the Browns just don't have the offensive talent to give him a chance to succeed. Scary thought: could Sanchez's QB rating actually be worse this week than DA's?

(Have you noticed the theme here? That a Browns fan is happy when the team/players are not ranked last in the stats? This what a decade of false starts will do to you.)

...Steven Hauschka. Your missed field goal gave the Vikings the victory, and the Ravens have now lost three straight. My hope is that the more bad luck you take in, the less is around in the division for the Browns. No offense.

...the Texans. I don't have anything against the Bengals, and am actually glad that they are winning for a change, but it's good to know that this weekend, only 1 team from the AFC North won. And hey, that team beat the Browns, so it's not like they can really brag.

Tags: browns

Thursday was, quite frankly, exceptionally dull. I got out of bed very late, didn't get dressed until much later, and pretty much did absolutely zero in terms of anything productive. It was partly just being tired, but I think more so that I slipped and got stuck in that nasty rut of procrastination.

But Friday, "The door swings both ways." Sure, I got up late again, but this really doesn't count as a surprise. I am a night owl, and unless I have severe motivation in the mornings (have to get to work on time, need to catch a plane, bed is on fire, etc.). More importantly, is that once I was up, I was actually to get a lot done in two primary areas.

1) Job Hunt. I sent in another resume, but this wasn't the big news. The big news was that I also had a burst of activity in terms of following up on some local jobs. I managed to start another dialogue with one company, got some good insight on another, and am planning to meet with Nick about a third (as well as other stuff). Naturally, the true measure of all this lies in the ability to actually finally land a job; nevertheless, I felt much better afterwards, because at least I was getting some work done in terms of "priming the pump." So, woo!

2) My UT3 Level. This is somewhat tied to the above, as the whole point is to make a couple of levels in order to show potential employers that designing "hardcore," FPS, and 3D game levels is something I can do just spiffy-keen. I had wrapped up most of the texturing, at least the first pass, and decided to put it up. As always, the actual time to prep it for distribution is longer than you would want, but I finally got it zipped up and placed up online. Much to my happy surprise, this time I was able to get someone from the forums to look at it pretty quickly. As I feared, the map crashed, but he was kind enough to post the log details, and another forum user pointed out what the issue was and how to fix it. This put me miles ahead of the last time I tried this (largely, I think, because I had textures down). After a bit of work, I managed to correct the problem and place the updated version online. Well, I think I did -- since the nature of the bug means that I can't test on my own machine, I have to have others test it to see if it runs on theirs. Still, at least this time I am more hopeful that it'll work. And if it does, than I can include it in my game design site and resume from here on out. Double-plus woot!

Today (Saturday) I shall be off to play some football, but upon my return we'll see if we get any comments about the map -- particularly if it's just something like "Hey, it worked!"

So yeah, that was some funky good news today.

Tags: games, unemployment

Okay, someone explain this to me, because it's way beyond the capability of my enfeebled simian brain to comprehend:

I recently got confirmation of a Facebook friend request of one of my fellow rec sports league players, so I popped over to her (referred to as "Girl A" from here on out) profile, as I always like reading the various wall postings that others leave on profiles; I consider it the Facebook equivalent of people watching in Central Park.

Well, I noticed that another one of my fellow rec sports league players ("Girl B"), had posted the following about a week ago:

"'I'm not so ubergeek that I can build my own computer from scratch, but I have the required amount of geekitude to know what specs my system needs, and to tell you why you need a 64-bit OS if you have 4 gigs of RAM or more. I also firmly believe that all keyboards should come equipped with a "WTF?" button for ease-of-use.'

Direct quote."

That direct quote, my friends, was from _my_ Facebook profile.

Now, I thought it was a nifty little paragraph, and as anyone who knows me can testify, I make no apologies for my geek side. But still, this caught me completely by surprise.

Why the hell would Girl B feel the need to quote that paragraph from my profile?

Normally, people only pull out a direct quote when looking to back up their side of an argument. And while it's possible that Girl B was using it as proof of the importance of needing a 64-bit system when you have more than 4 gigs of RAM, I strongly suspect that this was an argument about me.

But that's what has me totally perplexed. What would have caused this desire in Girl B to actually quote from my profile? Was she trying to show that I was not a jock, as it appeared with my football and basketball activity, but merely a geek trying to masquerade as one? Was Girl A suggesting that I would be a good date for Girl B, and Girl B wanted to show that I was too geeky for her? Or maybe it was that Girl B was trying to tell Girl A that I might be able to help her with computer problems?

I'm probably thinking about this too much, but the fact that it seems that anyone would be debating about me outside of a HR department (or Rescue Ranger forum, really) is something that I just can't wrap my mind around.

Well, whatever the case, I just hope that Girl A and Girl B liked writing style of the paragraph. I still say it was a nifty one, by golly!

So, for Browns fans, the irony of this past weekend was not that Braylon Edwards had a great game with no drops for the Jets on Monday Night -- any Browns fan knows that this is par for the course. Nor is the irony that the Browns receivers combined for about 9 drops after traded Edwards.

No, the irony is that despite Edwards' great game, the Jets still lost. And despite the whopping 2 completions that the Browns passing game had, the Browns still won.

That is the irony. And if the Jets go downhill from this point forward while Browns manage to continue to build momentum, it'll likely be the biggest irony of the season.

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

You know, as much as I would like to give up, throw in the towel, stop trying, and just wallow in self-pity, it's just not in my nature. Either I'm far more resilient than I give myself credit for, or I have too short of an attention-span to focus on being a downer. My bet is it's a mix of both.

And the doughnuts from The Donut Pub definitely help. Damn, but they are good stuff!

Tags: browns

Last night I had two dreams that were not nightmares, per se, but had sudden disturbing moments that had me wake up suddenly.

The first was while I was in this dream that was pretty G-rated. Everything had sort of a 1970s Disney movie feel to it, and I was on like a Fisher Price locomotive (a toy one that you sat on and made go with your feet) with a friend, and we were moving through this house with all these highly ornamental pieces of furniture. We were off to rescue our friends from something that was really pretty benign, when suddenly a large, boxish grandfather clock started chiming, and a dark shadow moved out from it, slowly. It took a form of a gray humanoid with a dark cape, and there was this sudden fear that if we didn't get out of the house by the time that it reached the end of the hallway, it was going to kill us both. And, and I remember that even in the dream, this would be a "final kill," meaning that we wouldn't come back to life through a magic spell or anything. So we ran, and it started chasing, and that's when I woke up.

Later, when I got back to sleep, I was swimming around the inside of a large submarine which had one section filled with water (not sure why) talking to a friend over a bluetooth headset about an upcoming issue of W.T.F.B. that was going to be delayed, and he explaining that it was cool, as he was trying to get some art done for it and it gave him more time. He asked me a question about a fanfic I had wrote, and I thought about it, then answered. But when I finished, all I heard on the other line was some static. I was up near an air pocket, taking a deep breath, when suddenly red lights and sirens went off, and the whole submarine started tumbling down. I realized that sub was actually sinking, and that I was not going to be able to swim out and to the surface before I drowned; and hence, I woke up again.

So I'm not sure what's going on. Why this sudden horrible endings to otherwise whimsical dreams? What is causing not one, but two of them in the same night, when I haven't had anything like this happen in ages? Is it because of the constant failure with my job applications, the string of dating disappointments, or just the fact that I had McDonald's on the train home last night for the first time in, well, ages?

Whatever the case, my real life is difficult enough as it is; I'd at least like some happy endings to my dreams, thank you very much.

Tags: dreams

I have been confused about when Dunkirk needs to be inspected. The sticker on the windshield says "9 11" but because of the way the fonts are, I was never sure if that was supposed to be "September 11" or "November 9." I had asked some people here in NJ, and I was never able to get a satisfactory answer.

Well, today, I was researching it again, and ran across this line, "Vehicles must be inspected every 2 years, except for new vehicles, which have 4 years before the first inspection" (that is not a verbatim quote, of course, but the overall gist). So then it suddenly -- finally -- struck me: I had Dunkirk registered in 2007; it was a new car; so it shouldn't need to be inspected until 2011... say, wait a minute! That sticker is actually reading "September, 2011!"

Still, I've been wrong about these things before; but I'm pretty sure this means I don't have to fret over the cost of an inspection any time soon.

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

So the Browns have traded Edwards to the Jets. I admit I'm a bit surprised at how fast it took place after his "altercation" late Sunday night, but at least the Browns were able to get something for him, as it was highly unlikely he would have been around after this year.

Still, this is one of those cases where you have to wonder how it will play out. Now, the Browns have no established WRs on their roster. Well, there is the guy who was part of the trade, but since he's just coming in, it'll be some time before he's fully up to speed.

Also, and this sounds bad, but I hope that Braylon continues to have a down year. This is nothing personal against Braylon, but rather that for once I would like to see that it really was issues with the player, and not the Browns. Of course, last I checked, the Bucs haven't been doing all that well, and people said that the addition of K2, from the Browns, would have made the offense all the better.

The Browns play the Bills, another team that is having its struggles, on Sunday. Considering the Browns' offense has only shown life this past game, it seems like that game just got harder. Because even if Edwards had issues with drops, at least he was the sole player on the offense that the defense had to respect. Now, well, every Browns fan is leery that this could be a repeat of the Broncos game: expectations for a win, but then the Browns are just blown out.

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

I may be headed into the city tonight, but it's unclear. There was supposed to be some football practice around 6, but nobody has confirmed the time and place, and currently, only two people (myself included) have said they plan on being there. I have until 4:30, at which point I would need leave to catch the train in, so hopefully I at least find out if anyone else is showing up or not. I've already decided, though, that if I don't hear anything else by 4, I might as well let the other guy know that I'm not coming in.

Another possibility is that if I did come in, if I might be able to visit some people, but the last minute nature of it makes it iffy, and I'm not big on spending about 2-3 hours of travel time just for an iffy prospect. Besides, I'll be in the city tomorrow for basketball.

Tags: browns, sports

I've seen the term "self-employed." Can I claim that I'm "self-unemployed?"

[ S H I E L D B R E A K ! ! ! ]

I'm getting worried about this job possibility when a local game company. Last night I had a dream where they offered me a contract with a yearly salary of $1.4 million. Later in the dream, I was being chased through the building while people tried to shoot me. I was not afraid of dying, though -- more like I understood this was just their method of negotiation. In any case, I'm not sure what this dream may be foreshadowing, and hence I am developing a concern.

Tags: dreams