This is where old rants go to die, and where you can read their corpses.
...as it were.
Well, Jen's surprise party was cool. It was, in fact, a double surprise: Jen was surprised that we were all there, and we were surprised that she walked straight past the room we were in. Possibly a bit more communication of the plan needed, but it worked out for the best. Or if not, it was at least damn funny.
And now you...argh. Damnit, Jen, now your blog format has me confused as to which pronoun I should be using. Anyway, she can now begin to try to understand the tangled mess that is the plot of Final Fantasy 7. With A Long Hard Road under her belt, she might even get it on the first play-through.
(And then she can read Final Fantasy: Legacy. Hee. My master plan slowly unfolds.)
Onto other stuff. Have made more progress on the untitled first chapter of the tentatively-titled new series. Have made progress on the diary. Am actually doing stuff, which is rather surprising considering the last year. Maybe the iron tablets are having a placebo effect.
Still haven't done anything about the campaign, though. Or the blink tag.
Re-organisation. What a lovely word.
First and foremost, this site now uses style sheets. Why, you ask? Because it can. And because future pages, if there are any, will be easier to add now.
Zandar's movelist is no longer on the main page, since it never really deserved the honour anyway; it was just a holdover from a time when this site had even less content than it does currently. (Scary, huh.)
On the other hand, Grace's diary may be up at some point in the really, really near future!
...OK, I'm lying. But at least putting it up on the main page will make me feel guilty when I look at it, so incentive has risen. Hmm...maybe I should put something about a Champions campaign up...
Whatever happens, though, the blink tag remains. And I dare say that that as-yet-untitled first chapter of an as-yet-untitled series will be up first. After all, I actually have some of it ready.
In current events, I entered the Tekken Tournament yesterday and took out the silver medal, partly due to a lucky finals berth. I was in pretty poor form for much of the round-robin section, but I hit my peak in the finals. Unfortunately, Tom edged me out 4-3 in the finals, but I got to finish him off twice with a True Ogre move that looked like it hurt a lot, so I'm fairly satisfied.
...and I won't mention anything else, despite the temptation.
(Temptation be damned, here's a late addendum. Firstly, I am now playing through Bahamut Lagoon, one the Square titles that didn't make its way across the Indian Ocean. Or even the Atlantic. More importantly, though: about a week after I discovered its existence, and with no intention of doing so, I have found Heart of the Alien, the sequel to Out of This World, over at Home of the Underdogs. All it needs is a Sega CD emulator. Expect to see it on Cobbler soon, probably with me playing it.)
(Other addendum: If you don't know why I emphasised those names...well, go and get them yourself.)
Well, now it really never rains but it pours. Sort of.
I finally got around to reading the ends of Heart Heart High and Final Fantasy: Legacy over at Improfanfic. They were cool, especially FFL. I've noticed a tendency over there for the stories to start out small-scale and quickly become epic (see Magical Girl Hunters and H! Classic for examples of varying quality). HHH is one of the few stories to stay focused on the characters and not attempt to liven it up with extradimensional madness, and it stayed true to its conception to the very end. FFL, of course, was epic from the start; the main problem with that type of story is keeping cohesion. FFL kept together pretty well, apparently due in large part to a well-maintained summary. Kudos to all the authors of both fanfics.
I've also been keeping my phone line busy downloading most of Twoflower's works. Since he created Improfanfic and was recommended by Mark Sachs, someone else you've probably never heard of but who writes cool stuff, I was expecting good things. Luckily, I was right. Unreal Estate rocks. A lot of the rest is fanfiction, which I tend to avoid if I haven't seen the original, but Sailor Nothing looks promising. And, of course, Penultima is cool, if slightly hack-and-slash - but how can you dislike an NWN module that has an 8-Bit Theater reference as one of the first lines?
Now I'm just waiting for Self-Extraction to finish. So close, and yet so far...especially as I'm not reading the parts of the final chapter as they come out. Nope, I'm waiting to the very end.
Anyway, enough about cool fiction that you probably wouldn't like anyway. I was talking about originality last time, so I thought I might as well reveal where the..."inspiration"...for this format came from.
Of course, I didn't really set out with the firm intention of plagiarising. I just thought, "Wouldn't it be cool...or at least somewhat different...to do a page set as a text adventure?" Then midway through, I remembered Quasispace. And the Text Only section of Project Apollo. And lo, I said, "Ah, the hell with it. No-one else will have seen those anyway." And it was good. Or at least mediocre.
Some of you who follow, though, may wonder why I so emphasised the line preceding this rant, the one with the dreaded blink tag. To this, I say: Sore wa himitsu desu. That's the way I deal with OCRs; I add another one.
...and I certainly don't explain afterwards. Bye for now.
Whee. Hectic.
Well, after a couple of rollercoaster days, I've decided to drop a couple of units. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that I've decided to not drop a couple of units, because I was originally planning to withdraw totally. On the other hand, that would have given me an exclusion, so I'll just have to pass two units instead. Since they're both open-book, it shouldn't be too hard.
The Winter Sleepout - sorry, Charity Sleepover - was fun. Lots of TTT, Soul Calibur and VF4. And I got to see some interesting anime...like Metal Gear Sakura. Ah, silly references.
Since I promised that these rants wouldn't be about current events (not that the Sleepover is exactly current), I'd better include some random philosophising here.
(Jump to 12/9. Philosophising delayed.) Ever noticed that a lot of plots seem to be similar? ...yes, all right, that isn't earth-shattering news. Bear with me. What I'm saying is that every time I read a book, I think to myself, "Huh. That bit was very reminiscent of the scene from that other book I read recently. You know, the one with the thing." Anyway, the point is that there are very few original ideas being generated these days. I'm sure you've heard of the article about there being only about 15 basic plots in adventure fiction; it's true enough, of course, provided the categories are large enough. But the quality of a story, even an adventure story, is not in the aim; it's in the journey, the exploration of the protaganist's thoughts and interactions with others. (Of course, it's also an excuse to stick in hilarious OCRs.) It's the little things that matter most, the means rather than the ends.
Now, this preceding paragraph, or something very much like it (and possibly less wandering), has been written before. As has that sentence. And so on, ad infinitum.
Add to this the fact that I define by context; and by this, I mean that I pick up the meanings of words by their usage rather than by looking them up in a dictionary. This is probably why I'm very bad at actually giving definitions of words that I understand, as well as why I'm often so surprised at hearing words that I know in Tom's vocabulary. It also means that I tend to feel that I'm always using other people's words, even when reasoning to myself. I'm thus never quite sure whether I'm expressing my true feelings or just a convenient approximation.
Hopefully you can see why I'm fairly obsessed with originality. And definitions.
In later news (and don't forget, we're a week ahead now), I finally installed PuTTY. And WinAmp. Now I can actually listen to the Star Control 2 soundtrack, even if I can't actually play it yet. Stupid corrupted files.
Also, I've discovered that the blinking cursor above can be used to emulate a VT100! Simply highlight it and return to the glory days of monochrome dumbterms. Of course, if you're an UCC member, that isn't really more than a few hours.
I think this is enough for one entry. It's quite enjoyable writing to no audience, if somewhat pointless; for one thing, no-one actually has to read the bad formatting.
Current Mood: Reading too many livejournals
Current Music: Star Control 2 soundtrack, if you hadn't guessed already
Well, it never rains but it pours.
...if I'd updated sooner, that would have actually made sense, but I included it anyway because it's probably one of the most misunderstood sayings ever. Along with "the exception that proves the rule".
Both these sayings have become incomprehensible because of language changes. "It never rains, but it pours" just doesn't work, but "it never rains but that it pours" is perfectly valid. Assuming you like being archaic.
Similarly, "the exception that proves the rule" makes perfect sense as long as you know that "prove" can mean "test". Moreso in ancient times.
All this just goes to show how much of a difference definitions can make. Most arguments stem from definitions: how do you define "alive"? "person"? "sound"? And an awful lot of misunderstandings - possibly nearly all of them - owe crossed definitions their very existence. I've heard that "How do you define love?" is the worst possible thing to ever say. (In certain situations, anyway.) Unfortunately, I think it may be the most important answer to get.
Still, we muddle along as best we can. I think I'd better end this for now, even though I haven't mentioned the whole point of this post. Maybe I will next time...or will I? Stay--
*whack*
...oh, fine.
(Addendum: Maybe next time I'll actually post my comments the same day they're written, too. Or...uh, never mind.)
(Other addendum: Forgot to mention blink tag in rant about new layout. Consider it mentioned in a way that expresses my disinterest in your dislike. And if you don't mind blinking stuff...why not? It's annoying as hell, after all.)
pH34R my new layout. Or if you're too young to remember the good old days, go look at Spirits of Hope. No, it won't actually teach you much about text adventures...but it's cool. And speaking of cool links, check out Elsewhere, especially the roleplaying logs (Last Escape/Night of Dark Intent/Stop Me) and Mystery Octagon Theatre.
(Note to self: find out how to ftp onto UCC's machines from outside WAIX, so as to have more incentive to update.)
I've been feeling sporadically depressed lately, in a muted sort of way. Possibly it's something to do with my brother leaving for Sydney, but I can't see a direct connection. You'd think my mind would have better accountability policies than this.
Oh, by the way, that reminds me of a warning I've been meaning to give: don't take what I say too seriously. Even if I'm not lying deliberately, my views change from one day to the next. When I write here, I may be giving opinions or mere possibilities, and I may not know which any more than you do.
Disjointed, no? Every paragraph a different tone. Maybe I'll have a more sustained rant next time...or will I? Stay tuned to find out...
Well, I decided the site needed a name. The one above isn't it, but it'll do as a placeholder.
I promised coherence last time, since the evening between two exams isn't the greatest time to write deathless prose. I think I can manage to string sentences together now, but the problem still remains: what to write about first?
Well now, there's a topic.
I've held conversations with myself for as long as I can remember, trying to figure out why I do the things I do. As a result, I've got a rather large list of conclusions that I've arrived at. Unfortunately, one of them is that I don't have enough external input to determine which are normal and which are variant (or possibly deviant). That's one reason I've decided to put my thoughts forward.
Of course, I'm not going to put them too far forward. That's why I've put them on a webpage that probably only has hits from one address so far.
...wow, this format is even less suited to the length of my rants than I thought. I guess I should sign off for the moment.
Well, my site is now up and running, even if it is rather sparse. And the formatting could be better, too. And...eh, never mind.
Anyway, this is where I'll be putting various thoughts, probably only indirectly concerned with recent events. And they'll be more coherent when I have more time, honest.
Speaking of which, that's my cue.
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