The Long Road

Archives: May 2005

Friday, May 20, 2005

discuss The Fionavar Tapestry - Book 1: The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay. After having read a whopping 2 books by the man, GGK is probably one of my favorite authors and the only fantasy writer I've read, except for the Hobbit. The Summer Tree was Arshwana's introduction to him. What follows is an extensive discussion we had over email of the book.

There are some spoilers here and there, though I generally tried to avoid giving anything away. In any case, such discussions are best appreciated by those who've read the book(s).

Bold statements are from me, unbold are from her. [more]

Posted by Rayne @ 12:53 AM EST [Link] [8 comments]

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Emulators, they are software that run games from old consoles on your computer. There’s a pretty big emulator community on the net that trades “backup copies” of Nintendo, SEGA, Atari, Neo Geo, Arcade (etc..) games through P2P software and various other means. The emulator scene is a little funky since it deals with mostly “abandon ware” which is, from what I recall, a very grey area in terms of legalities.

Playing emulated games on a PC isn’t all that great though, console games, to me, feel like they should be played on a big TV with a bunch of friends watching and/or joining in. PC gaming is a much more isolating experience since everyone needs to be in front of their own computers. And there’s the fact that no PC gamepad can even come close to any console ones.

Imagine, then, how amazing it would be to be able to hook up console controllers to a PC hooked up to a TV and on that PC you have every emulator for every console you can find and for all those emulators you have copies of every game possible. Even better, imagine there was a console that was basically a PC so that you didn’t have to waste all your money on a PC to play old games on. You would be buying 1 console that could play over 14 000 of all your fondest childhood games as well as all those arcade games you wanted to master when you were 15 but didn’t have the quarters to. Now THAT’S an investment.

Posted by Rayne @ 03:56 AM EST [Link] [9 comments]

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Stars which shine the brightest
are the quickest to fade
their light, a million miles away
hold countless mysteries
of tales that will never be told

Posted by Rayne @ 04:13 AM EST [Link] [No Comments]

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Sounds obvious, but productivity is to make something, to create, to build. To write a blog entry, or draw a picture, or draft a letter. It is not reading crap on the internet about xbox360, not chatting to friends over msn, not watching TV, and not even reading a book. Although, reading a non-fiction book, something textbook-y that teaches you something so that you will be better able to create is good.

I find that there’s always an internal struggle with me. My natural state is to absorb media – no matter what kind – yet I always find myself wishing I were creating something instead. And when I decide to sit down and create, I start off strong but slowly and surely drift back to absorption mode – it sucks.

There's also a different level of mental engagement between producing and consuming. When consuming, I totally feel like my brain is off, I am just passively absorbing stuff, skipping any difficult parts just to get to what's next. There's no thought necessary unless I will myself to think about things during or after consumption. Producing, on the other hand, is totally different. I always have to think of how to word a sentence better or how to draw that leg a bit more realistically.

The economist in me is seeing this as a consumer-producer problem. I want to be a producer, but can’t get off my consumer ass. I guess I'm just lazy.

Posted by Rayne @ 01:37 AM EST [Link] [12 comments]

Thursday, May 12, 2005

So I was watching Elektra (super generic, avoid), and turns out that Elektra and her sidekick have OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). It wasn’t really a big part of the story, just something for the two of them to bond over and to have this weird montage of E setting up her daily routine. Then they began talking about how they used to count things obsessively (windows, footsteps, etc) and that triggered a memory for me.

Back in grade 3 and/or 4, I used to do this thing where I’d start counting the number of syllables in random statements people made. I’d start counting on the pinky finger and re-iterate through the statement until the last syllable was counted on my thumb. This went on for a while until one day I thought about it and realized that most statements would have to be counted 5 times, those statements which had a number of syllables divisible by 5 had to be only counted once. This revelation was huge, it made me realize how much time I wasted just counting bloody syllables; a statement with 9 syllables would require a total count of 45! Eventually, I don’t know how long it took exactly, I was able to will myself to not do it anymore, but every once in a while I have this strange urge to count syllables.

I’ve realized for a while now that I have a lot of characteristics that are associated with OCD but as evidenced by Elektra and her sidekick, it makes me prime material to become a legendary Martial Arts Master!

Posted by Rayne @ 03:22 AM EST [Link] [3 comments]

Friday, May 6, 2005

I had planned on planning something to celebrate May 5th, 2005 at 5:05 but then I started playing Panzer Dragoon Orta and, by god, it is such an amazing game. Totally worth my brother buying an Xbox for!

I guess I can wait till June 6th of next year.

Posted by Rayne @ 01:24 AM EST [Link] [5 comments]

Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Around the time of the Terri Schiavo ordeal in the U.S., I happened to watch both Million Dollar Baby and Garden State - two movies that, by oddest chance, had suicidal quadriplegics and inadvertently created a sort of “theme night”. Quadriplegia has got to be one of the most psychologically traumatizing states one can be in. I hate helplessness, abhor it, it gives me this funny feeling at the back of my knees that makes me want to sprint for 10 minute or scratch heavily. Being a quadriplegic would be total and utter helplessness; you have to rely on others 100% for everything in life. The worse is that you’d remember what life was like with mobility – all the memories of the stuff you could do but can never hope to again taunting you till the day you die.

I think that suicides in cases like this are completely personal decisions. But Schiavo’s case was a bit more complicated, I am decidedly undecided on most of the issues brought up but I do think that there has to be a better way to let someone die than to let them starve to death by removing the feeding tube. They basically avoid the “assisted suicide” bit by not actively killing her but I argue that withholding nutrition is even more immoral and led to a death that was too prolonged and unnecessarily painful

Posted by Rayne @ 01:33 PM EST [Link] [4 comments]

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