Sierra Kilo

My buddy and I started a conversation at lunch before we had to split.  It started with him saying that Frisco is under a level 3 water conservation thing.  I said that McKinney is under the same thing.  He said that car washes are not restricted by these conservation restrictions because that is their livelyhood, yet we can’t wash our cars in our driveways. He mentioned that it would be cool to have a personal drain in your gutter that collected your unused water and recycled it.  After all, you are paying for it, right?

From there, I mentioned that I wanted to hook up some kind of alternative/supplimental energy system for the house.  There are some houses in California that have solar panels on the roof that store energy and eventually feed the grid resulting in energy credits.  I mentioned that I thought it was stupid that developers tear down trees to build buildings, then plant one or two cheap trees for asthetic purposes only.  Neither one of us are hemp-wearing tree huggers, but it was funny talking about it.

I mentioned that there are miles of rooftops that are going unused.  If building owners would put solar panels on their roofs, we would drastically cut our dependence on fossil fuels by lowering the load on power plants.  I mentioned an Apple store that grew succulent plants on the roof.  That helps filter impurities from the air.  I had a thought the other day about putting a storm cellar in my back yard.  I could keep my lawn and gain usable space.  He mentioned a guy back in New Hampshire that had a house that was underground.  He had to mow his roof.  That would be so cool.  The ground is a natural insulator, so you would save on energy.

He said that if businesses took the initiative and installed solar panels/converters on their roofs, the price of the equipment would drop and soon, we would be breathing cleaner air, paying less to drive our cars, and ultimately living better lives.  Of course, you get into the whole conspiracy theory where the oil conglomerates are keeping this from happening.  Seriously, though, if the oil guys would just invest in the solar panel guys, they’d make the same amount over time and may even live longer enjoying their fruits.  What about the Arab oil people?  How would they get paid?  Well, you know all of that unused desert, where the sun beats down and it’s really hot?  Light = energy.  Heat = energy.  Just freakin’ collect that with solar panels and you’re good.

Anyway.  I’m not complaining because my electric bills have been good to me lately, but the planet has changed dramatically in the last 100 years because technology has boomed.  That’s a good thing, but the planet is starting to suffer and there are ways that we could limit our drain on it.

Time to go find my hemp shirt and hug a tree.  Peace, man.

First, we watched two movies this weekend…at the theater…for under $9 each…for BOTH MOVIES!  That’s not counting concessions, of course.  Yes, that’s right.  We saw Over The Hedge on Saturday night (for something like $6 each) and XMen 3 on Monday afternoon (for like $2.50).  The Cinemark down the street is not stadium seating, but it’s clean and has first-run movies.  That is something that the movie industry needs to learn from.  While I like the DLP stadiums with badass sound, I like paying $3-per-ticket even more.  Seriously, you need to entice me away from my 50-inch DLP screen, comfortable seating, cheap(er) snacks, and readily-accessible content somehow.  Low prices are definately one way.
Second, I’m intrigued by the Pirates of the Spanish Main game.  You buy card packs that include a ship or two, some rules, and an island card.  You snap the pieces of the ship out of the card and put together a little model ship.  Then, you play this simple little game.  I might get a couple of packs to test out someday.  What would be even more fun is making the game persistent and adding a couple of RPG elements so that every player can keep up with their pirate booty and how piratey they are.

Third, I removed the gabbly plugin because it kept causing rendering problems.  Stupid half-baked web software.  It’s still a cool concept.  You can type http://www.gabbly.com/ and you will go to the website and have a little chat window to chat with other gabbly users.  Digg, Slashdot, and Google usually have some people in there.

Fourth, I’ve been getting very handyman-ish lately.  I want to build things.  Currently, I want to put an entertainment center/bookshelf into the wall under the stairs and wire everything up clean.  I also want to hang shelves in the laundry room and garage.  I also want to build steps for the patio, make a flower garden on the corner of the patio, and make a little vegetable/herb garden on the side of the house (I’ve got 4 jalapenos and 1 bananna pepper going now).  I gotta get my car so that I can start doing stuff like that instead of saving

Damion Schubert (Shadowbane and Zen Of Design) just announced that he was hired as Lead Combat Designer at Bioware Austin.  That group is on its way to becoming a juggernaut in the industry.

I have never played Shadowbane, but I’ve read a few of Damion’s posts on MUD-Dev and have heard praise about the PvP system.  He’s got great ideas and will make a great addition to that team (as I said in a previous post).

Do us Texans proud in Austin, Damion.

I changed the theme to a dark one.  It doesn’t look too bad and isn’t too hard to read.

Let me know what you think of the Gabbly chat.  It’s pretty cool.  Basically like a chat room for my site.

As you can see, I changed the theme again.  This time, though, I stuck a “widget” on the right ->

That widget is called “Gabbly” and it allows chatting on my website.  So, anyone who is viewing my website will be listed in the box and you can chat with everybody.  I thought it was pretty neat.

I need to find some different themes, though, because this default one sucks.  They have to be compatible with widgets so I may get stuck with this one.  We’ll see.

I just watched a gameplay video of Richard “Lord British” Garriot’s new game Tabula Rasa.  It looks like a fun shooter.  Not necessarily a RPG, but a shooter.  There are a little too many flashy, neon effects for me, but the character models, animations, and environments look nice.  Looks a bit like Anarchy Online, except maybe a bit more real-time combat.  Interesting, nonetheless.

I’ve been contemplating writing something.  Yes, I know, it’s my curse.  I get so tired of people asking “Are you the famous writer?”  Well, if I actually wrote something, I could say “Yes, actually.  Have you read my work?” instead of “Yeah, I wish.  If I were, would I be shopping at the Dollar Store?”

So what would I write?  Well, I’d start with a short story.  Evidently, the Hugo Award classifies a short story as less than 7500 words.  I could swing a sci-fi/fantasy short story.  Don’t ask me how you get a story even considered for nomination for the Hugo, but wouldn’t that be cool?  Heck, even getting my short story published could be cool.

I’ve got several ideas.  I think the thing to do is to just start writing something.  Start out with something quick, focus on finishing it rather than fleshing out the whole universe.  If I could get 7500 words down, that would be at least a small accomplishment.

I’d love to be able to start with “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.”  That is such a hard-hitting first sentence.  Too bad it’s been done.  How should I begin?  I’m thinking I’ll start in the middle of some action.  It’s a short story, so what’s better than starting at the best part?

First, after reading the forums on my host’s website, I disabled, then re-enabled PHP and the CGI error magically disappeared.  We’ll see if it pops up again.

I finished the Dark Tower book 6 (Song of Susannah) yesterday.  It was the worst in the series (so far).  The first 3.8 books were very good, dealing with the adventure to get to the Dark Tower.  The end of the 4th book and most of the 5th book were very random, introducing characters from King’s other novels.  He should have just stuck with the original “ka-tet”.  I’m going to take a short break, listen to music while walking the dog, then I’ll wrap it up with the last novel.  Hopefully it puts that train back on track.

I’ve been stuck on these ideas of a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk MMORPG.  Mad Max meets The Matrix.  Something in the same vein as The Postman (I really like that movie).  A setting where there are pockets of highly technological people (cybernetics, hovercars, etc), but the majority of the world is either a wasteland (desert, ruins, etc) or has been reclaimed by nature (forests, jungles, etc).  The keyword for the game would be “gritty”.
Character advancement would not be done through experience points.  Each character starts the game with every skill.  Based on the archetype the player selects, the character will start the game slightly better in certain skills.  The archetype is only used for character creation, though.  Once the character is in the game, his actions determine which skills he gets better at.  If the player does nothing but run around the wastelands punching mutants, he will eventually develop more upper body strength and become better at hand-to-hand combat.  If the player spends all of his time growing and harvesting crops, he will eventually be able to grow a better crop and harvest it faster.  If the player spends all of his time haggling for prices at the market, he will eventually be able to drive hard bargains.

The real kicker to my idea is that there are no hit points and a weapon’s damage is not variable.  If your character gets shot by a 9mm pistol, the effect will be determined by hit location, the armor type at that location, and how physically hardy the character is (which is determined by how the character has lived).  In most MMORPGs, if you get hit in the head, you take damage to your hit points just as if you were hit in the foot.  If you are level 60, the hit in the head you took at level 1 doesn’t hurt nearly as bad anymore.  In my game, if you get hit in the head, odds are that you won’t be living long, regardless of how long you’ve played or how many enemies you’ve killed.  I’m contemplating calling it a MMORPS (role-playing shooter) because I think that the combat system will be real-time, or “twitch-based”.  The true accuracy of your shots, however, will be based on your skill with the type of weapon you are using (with a slight bonus if you’ve been using that specific weapon for a while).

I would also take the scavenging aspect from the Fallout RPG series.  I always thought that it was a fun element to have to scrounge for ammunition.  9mm shells could be worth more than the weapon that fired them.  What use is a laser gun if you don’t have any batteries?  I also thought it would be cool to find an old saucepan in some ruined building and be able to put it on your head as a helmet or to find some old scraps of steel and bind them together like platemail.
Balancing the high technology areas with the low technology areas would be a challenge, but I’m sure there’s a solution.  Anyway, that’s enough spouting for today.

I had a post for yesterday, but it got ate up by the CGI error that has been plaguing the site.  I think it’s the host, but I’m not sure.  In any case, there’s actually some news today.

Apple released their MacBooks this morning.  The 13.3-inch widescreen display is “glossy”, which I don’t quite understand.  They say it gives better color saturation and deeper blacks.  I think it would be prone to horrible glare.  It’s got the same processors as the Pro models did (they bumped the Pros up a notch again).  Basically, it’s just a smaller, lighter model in either white or black instead of aluminum.  The price is nicer, too ($2,300 for white, +200 for black).

The Pros got a slight processor bump, brighter screen, and now have the option of the glossy screen or the normal matte finish.  I’d go with the matte, personally, but I’d probably have to see it in person.  The price is still a kick in the pants, though ($3,500).

On the gaming side, analysts are saying that the Nintendo Wii may sell at $200, which is better than the $250 of last week.  I hope they don’t go with a “package” scheme like the 360 did.  That was just too confusing and rediculously expensive.  Also, there’s rumblings that it will come with 2 controllers.  When I read that, I was like “Um, of course”, but started thinking about it:  2nd generation consoles only came with one controller.  What the heck is up with that?  Games are more fun with multiple people, and Nintendo’s new direction is toward getting everybody playing games, so why WOULDN’T they come with 2 controllers?

In other news, I finally got my Glen Phillips CD.  I think the other one got lost in the mail or something.  Anyway, it’s autographed, but not personalized like my Blue October drumhead ;)  The CD is not as good as the previous two, but not bad.  There’s a jazzy cover of Huey Lewis’ “I want a new drug” that is pretty cool.  There’s a new version of Marigolds which is a great vocal song.  The chords on that song are just great.

So that’s all for now.  Let’s see if this one posts…….

Ok, Wii is a crap name for Nintendo’s new console.  It’s been panned all over the web.  Despite that, the new console is looking like it will hold its own.  The “revolutionary” controller design is growing on everybody, especially with the functionality being described.  You’ll be able to use the controller like a baseball bat, tennis racket, sword, shotgun (in Duck Hunt 2!), etc.  The downloadable retro games is really going to be the largest selling point here.

The XBox 360’s Live Arcade is sounding good, too.  Contra, Sonic The Hedgehog, etc. are coming to the Arcade.  This will take some of the share away from Nintendo’s feature, but price may be a deciding factor.  I probably wouldn’t mind spending $5 for classic Contra, but $3 is a better deal.  Package 5 games for $20 or something.  If the Nintendo has a built-in NES/Super NES/N64 emulator, they’ll be able to rip the ROM images and download it to the Wii easily.  The XBox Arcade requires some code gymnastics for older games, I’m sure, which makes it more difficult to release than a simple ROM transfer.
The PS3 is dying.  That’s unfortunate, but they promised too much and seem to be too concerned with their whole Blu Ray campaign instead of making a good gaming console.  I’m not too concerned, though, because the PS games just aren’t my favorite anymore.  Oh well.  I still want the 24 game, though.