Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.

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Thursday, December 17th, 2009
ravenworks	11:07p	Man do I hate company parties. (On the other hand, man do I love not having to come all the way back to the West Island after one. The subway is my chariot, dropping me off right at my door...) (Seek.)
ravenworks	10:32a	note to self God damnit, why did I give up on Infiniwall? That thing was bitchin... (16 sought. | Seek.)
ericsjournal	12:01a	The Trial of Neyrr Jesond, Part 1 of 3 In the final days before the great war between the gods, at the cusp of the foretold time when the Witch King would rise, political maneuverings in the Elven Court saw to it that Neyrr Jesond of Shelezar was brought to the Elven City to stand trial for crimes against the Elven nation and all sentient life. The charges were trumped; the evidence was faked; the witnesses and lawyers had both been bought, and the judge, though aware of these facts, would be forced to find in accordance with the will of the majority of the Court. Rather than fight or flee, Neyrr still chose to face his charges in court. The following document is one of only two existing copies of the transcript of this trial, both incomplete, all other copies of the transcript having been "misplaced" or destroyed during the riot which interrupted his trial on the second day. In the wake of the riot, Neyrr Jesond himself had vanished from the courtroom, as had all of the prosecution's evidence, the court transcripts, and the wallets of several prominent members of the prosecuting team. The words "Gun'Mora rules!" were later found carved into the underside of the prosecuting attorney's desk, though scoring in the wood suggested that it was carved several days after the trial itself ended. Pre-trial opening statement: I would like to thank this noble court for giving me the opportunity to appear before you and defend my case. Many of the lesser races would have simply judged me guilty in absentia and sent forces to attack me; the fact that I stand here today with the chance to speak on my own behalf is typical of the superior Elven courts, where justice is universal and fairness is guaranteed. On this note, before we go further, I should like to pause to give His Excellency the Grand High Chancellor a moment to recuse himself from these proceedings, as he has suffered personal loses related to this trial and can surely himself see how his judgment might be affected. Elven law, of course, has always deemed it improper for a relative of a victim to stand in judgment of an accused person. I stand before you accused of high treason against the Elven nation. I plead, of course, not guilty. The honourable prosecution will attempt to prove four things beyond reasonable doubt. First, that I was present at the Forbidden Portals of Betrayal. Second, that while there, I aided and abetted an enemy of the Elven nation. Third, that in doing so I damaged the Elven nation. Finally, they will strive to prove that I am not Neyrr Jesond, but actually Gun'Mora, god of plague. I salute the bravery of the noble prosecutor, since he has taken on a nigh impossible task of proving all four of these accusations. The defense shall demonstrate that the evidence offered by the prosecution is circumstantial at best and unreliable at worst; no single one of these accusations can be proven beyond reasonable doubt. I remind you, my lords and ladies in the audience and Your Majesty the White Queen who sits in judgment, that the death penalty, and indeed a verdict of guilty for such a severe accusation as high treason, can only be applied if the accused is found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. In this case, there is no end to the doubt with which you will all be left once the honourable prosecution has finished presenting its case. In the names of Corellon Larethian and Vandria Gilmadrith, let us all see that justice, not vengeance, is done here today. The Prosecution: Witnesses: 1) Imp 2) Grand High Sky Marshall of the Griffin Riders 3) Grand high Elven dignitary who runs a historic library/museum, specialist on dark elves 4) Swordsmaster of horath 5) Elialac 6) Vir and Lilandril Cross-examination of Elialac: N: You were in Shelezar at the same time that the Black Arrow cult was terrorizing the city, correct? W: I was. N: At any time, did you have reason to believe that I was allied with the Black Arrows? W: Hell, no. N: Did they ever try to kill me, that you are aware of? W: Several times. N: Was this before or after I imprisoned Gun'Mora within my mind? W: Both, I think. N: You may recall that, one night several months after we joined together, we were gathered in a camp of the Desert Nomads, and I was successfully assassinated, requiring Medhat, the nomad king and a cleric of Pelor, to resurrect me. Do you remember that night? W: I wish I didn't. N: Do you recall the weapon used to kill me? W: It was a black arrow coated in black lotus poison. N: Does that weapon sound at all like one that the Black Arrows might sometimes use? W: It's practically their signature weapon, yes. N: Thank you. No further questions. Cross-examination of Vir and Lilandril: N: Please describe your relationship with the Elven cult known as the Black Arrows. W: (Lilandril curses vehemently for several seconds) N: As part of the Dune Runners, one of your main duties included hunting the Black Arrows? W: Yes. N: Why was this? W: They were a clear threat the Shelezar. They committed terrorist acts and killed with impunity. N: What was my relationship to them, when I came to Shelezar? W: You fought them too. N: Did I ever risk my life or became gravely injured as a result? W: Several times, yes. N: You may recall, for a period of several months, while we were opposing the Black Arrows together, I was actively trying to summon help from outside of Shelezar by sending running messengers. Do you know who I was trying to contact? W: You said that you were trying to find and recruit priests of Shesh to come to the city as healers, but also asking the Elven City for more troops. N: Do you recall what happened to my messengers? W: They were killed by the Black Arrows. Most died painfully. N: Did the Elven City ever send any help? W: No, bastards. N: Even though fighting the Black Arrows is supposedly one of the Elven City's main priorities? W: Like we said, bastards. N: How would you characterize my relationship with the Elven nation? W: Well... even though both the Elven City elves and the Black arrows have tried to kill you several times, you've continued to act in the Elven City's best interests. N: Has the Elven City ever expressed any warm feelings towards me, that you know of, before today? W: Dear gods, no. The opposite. N: Does it seem odd to you, then, that today, the Elves consider me a part of the Elven nation? W: Sure does. If you ask me, some #$@&er is saying you're an elf just so that they can punish you like one. N: Let me ask you something else. Was I present when you were appointed divine Champions in the upcoming godswar? W: Yes. N: At that time, did any of the gods say anything about me in particular? W: Several gods commented that you would be essential in helping our side, the “save the world” side, to win. N: In your opinion, speaking as his Champion, what do you think Corellon Larethian would think if the Elven nation found me guilty today and executed me? W: Uh... we can't really say how He would react, but a bunch of gods seemed very sure that it would be a big win for “destroy the world” side of the war. N: Allow me to paraphrase you. You seem to be saying that my continued life and freedom protects the Elves, and my death or imprisonment increases the odds that the Forces of Darkness will destroy the Elven City and everything it stands for. Is that about right? W: Pretty much, yeah. N: Thank you. No further questions. (Seek.)
ravenworks	8:13a	Man... I am still so worn-out lately. I hope this is just me adjusting to the season change or something.. it's not awful (certainly not as bad as a couple of years ago) but it's enough that odd jobs are starting to pile up.. bleh. Unrelatedly... do you like those crazy little pixel cities? Do you like drum sequencers? Do you have an iPhone or iPod Touch? KABLAM! Beat It! You basically just have to sequence out the beat that it plays for you during the intro (and whenever you click the 'replay' button at the bottom. It scores you on how long it takes you to finish, so the less you have to rely on the replay the better..) It looks like there's a different scene for each block of levels (I only finished the first block), and within there the scene gets more and more populated after every level. Pretty cute! Nothing fancy gameplay-wise, but I don't think it needs to be... Current Music: The Beatles - One After 909 (2 sought. | Seek.)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
ravenworks	12:31p	The World Ends With You for less than $10! Until midnight! http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&ref_=amb_link_85833871_3&docId=1000208101 I got a huge kick out of this game! If you don't expect too much from your plots (thank you, Nomura), and get a big kick out of customizing, loot, and leveling things up, I heartily recommend it... the battles actually reminded me a bit of Secret Of Mana in the way they're about managing space, and the variety of ways you can configure how you deal with that space... it gets off to a bit of a slow start, but once the ball is rolling you get the ability to control how much risk you want to put yourself in for better loot, which basically means there's no such thing as over-leveling anymore, and 'grinding' almost always has fresh loot, which makes it pretty hard to put down... Anyway! It's under $10 until midnight or they run out of stock! So get going :D (17 sought. | Seek.)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
ravenworks	11:46a	So, wait, when you describe something as "measly" -- as in "one measly slice of pie is all that was left" -- are you implying that it has measles? How did it go from meaning 'disease-ridden' to 'small'? (Does measles stunt your growth?) Also: I maintain that "C-H-I-P-M-U-N-K" is one of the worst lyrics in theme song history. There is nothing lyrical about that sequence of letters; it sounds like something someone would exclaim as they fall down stairs. Couldn't they at least come up with something that would rhyme with "Theodore"? (12 sought. | Seek.)
Monday, December 14th, 2009
ericsjournal	12:01a	The Tiny Baguettes of Winter Everything is different during the winter: the trees stand without leaves; the ground crakles and scrunches underfoot; stopping distances are increased; every shopping mall in the world plays the same twelve songs on perpetual loop. What many people forget, as they get caught up in all of these huge changes in their daily lives, are the little details which change in simpler, more subtle ways: reindeers glow with faint radioactivity; coniferous forests are depleted. All of these pale in comparison to one tremendous change which most people somehow fail to notice: the baguettes get shorter. I had never noticed this phenomenon myself until this year. Montreal had it first two significant snowfalls of the winter this past week, where "significant snowfall" is defined as one which leaves at least six centimeters of snow on the ground and doesn't melt away by morning. In the midst of the second and less severe of these, I found myself at a grocery store near my parents' home, on the way there to visit them. My mother had requested that, on my way home, I pick up a french bread for dinner, which was a reasonable enough request even though it required me to step through the doors of a shopping mall after December 5th, which I normally go to great lengths to avoid doing. I marched straight through the mall, head held high, doing my very best to exude an aura of "not prey" and steadily gazing straight ahead to ensure that I made no accidental eye contact with the rabid, irrational, bloodthirsty hordes that are desperate holiday shoppers. I reached the relative peace and safety of the grocery store and cut my way through to the bakery, which is at the point of the shop more or less precisely opposite the main entrance. There, at the back, in the corner, were the racks of fresh-baked bread, and among them, the baguettes. Here, my plans hit a snag; there was an immense pile of fresh whole wheat baguettes, and one sole white flour baguette which had somehow been missed by the shopping reavers. This wasn't a catastrophe, as my mother and father both prefer the whole wheat baguettes anyway, but I found it very curious that only this one white flour one would be left. I took a closer look at it, and observed something strange: this one was a good four inches shorter than the whole wheat ones, even though it was exactly the same price. Well, here was a mystery which I couldn't possibly let go of before I had solved it. As I saw it, there were three realistic possible explanations for the facts I had at my disposal. First, it was possible that this poor, neglected baguette had simply been baked shorter than its fellows and, being a poorer value, had gone unsold, where all of the normal-sized white flour baguettes had been taken to good and loving homes, albeit good and loving homes which would go on to tear them to shreds and eat the ragged chunks. Second, it was possible that perhaps the white flower baguettes had all been baked slightly shorter than the whole wheat baguettes, and that I had simply arrived at the precise time at which there was only one loaf left... *someone* has to buy the last one, after all. Thirdly, it was possible that this little while loaf of bread had been deliberately baked shorter so that it would be ideally adapted to cold-weather survival. Think about it! Here I was, with the snow falling outside. If I were to take a normal sized baguette and try to bring it home, I would have to scrunch up the top of the bag to keep the snow from falling onto the bread, but with a full-sized length, there wouldn't be enough bag to protect the bread fully. On the other hand, with a slightly shorter length of bread, the bag-to-bread ratio would be more favourable and the bread could more easily be carried out of the store without getting covered in snow. It was ingenious! Just as some organisms are ideally adapted to cold-weather survival, this bread had somehow adapted to better ensure the snows. You have to salute that sort of thing. While saluting, of course, I still bought one of the whole wheat baguettes, which in addition to being the healthier choice also provided more food per cent spent. Ingenuity and evolutionary adaptation are no match for good value and careful shopping. My bread was protected from the snows on the way home by having a cute little hat put on top of it, to keep the snows out. Bread which learns to wear cold-weather clothing while outside is probably even better-adapted to the winter than bread which tries to wrap itself up in paper. Now that I think about it, of course, I have to wonder if an adaptation which improves a baguette's chances of being eaten despite a winter snowstorm is really evolutionarily advantageous. Most animals try to adapt ways to avoid getting eaten, after all, so by all rights, the most well-adapted baguettes would be those who became that much harder and less appealing to eat. In this way, the baguette which is made four inches shorter and so doesn't get purchased is better equipped to survive that its longer fellows or whole wheat conspecifics. On the other hand, this might just be an example of the unguided, imperfect mechanisms which guide evolution; the bread adapts to better endure cold wet snows but in other respects survival is impaired, like a genetic line which adapts a resistance to malaria only to find that it causes sickle cell anemia. Poor, misguided, foolish french bread... so close to taking a huge evolutionary step forward, only to be thwarted, once again, by its own edibleness. Even as I write this, somewhere, a baguette is working on a way to develop six-inches armour plate, razor-sharp spikes, and a butter-resistant polymer coating. It's only a matter of time now... (Seek.)
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
ravenworks	10:46p	So I got bored, and played with a beard trimmer. :D Here is the state of my moustache before trimming: ( FURTHER PICTORIAL ) I doubt I will actually shave up-close all that often! Which will certainly dampen the effect somewhat? Anyway, for some reason I think I look a lot better than the last time I tried this, whether I've grown into it or I've just grown into liking the look, I dunno... I really wanted to say that I was inspired to try the look after (finally) seeing the Season 3 premiere of Venture Bros., based on The Monarch's college and early henching days, but in retrospect it seems like he didn't have any facial hair at all until he settled on his famous look, and something about his profile just gave the illusion of a beard. Anyway point is I'm now the swankiest sonofabitch in town so y'all watch out. I'll stab you with my eyebrows or something. (Seriously, we'll see if the amish look sticks or if laziness will drag me back to the twin nostril ferrets.) MAN I AM SO TIRED (19 sought. | Seek.)
ravenworks	1:20a	Damn... I think seeing The Monarch's flashbacks on Venture Bros is making me want to ditch the moustache but keep the beard. :P It's like I finally get how aquiline features can look awesome on their own. We'll see if this persists till morning. XD (Written in bed on my iPhone... Damn, there's no way to use one of these things with your head sideways; I chased the keyboard halfway around the screen before I realised the accelerometer wasn't going to let me win. XD And you were right phoenixgaia, you get used to a virtual keyboard surprisingly quickly...) (2 sought. | Seek.)
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
ravenworks	2:37p	Best use of the DSi's camera yet FIGHT WITH PHOTOS: PHOTO FIGHTER X The best part of this game is that it is $2. I mean it's clearly not a very good game, but I could see a company thinking the gimmick was worth $8 or something; two bucks is the perfect price for something like this that would be irresistibly fun to fool around in for a couple of days without hemming and hawing over the purchase. :P Now we just have to hope that Nintendo doesn't decide that making people pretend to fight each other isn't too much for america. :p (14 sought. | Seek.)
nyghtinggail	12:22p	Week Fourteen of Nursing School We had our first snow day this week! Kevin also caught a flu, and I ordered Button's Christmas presents. I was also in Clinical all week. I did a bandage change for a wound that was eroding way down into the tendon. The resident was really kind, it was very sad to see them in so much pain. In skills I'm going to end up taking a zero on our levels test. I'm rather depressed about it, since it was pretty much a 100 as long as you did them. But for that reason I'm sure she's weighting it less; I hope. I have a few things to do to get ready for Christmas, mostly I'm just looking forward to the time off. I can't believe I'm more than a 1/4 of the way through this program. I'm still unsure about what is going to happen in June; I can not imagine spending another year in this place. That said, Kevin and I are putting down a carpet tonight. (Seek.)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
ravenworks	7:32p	Woo! So after outright deciding to call in sick this morning -- but not having yet gotten around to -- I actually start to feel better, and instead text work to mention I'll just be arriving late... despite this, everything proceeds without a hitch, and I actually finish this big project on time -- eerily on time, finishing the last feature right around 6. :P Murphy and his law seem to be on vacation, because the thing's going out monday and here I am friday with it all finished and dusted. Time to RELAX. :) (Also, I'll have a cool link to share when monday rolls around. ;p) Might have the high school guys (including one who's back in town!) over to watch Theodore Rex this weekend (thank you tamakun!).. it should prove completely awful. :D (2 sought. | Seek.)
ericsjournal	12:01a	On Automatic Today was my last day of a special month working on a service specializing in cognitive behavioural therapy, a particular branch of psychiatry. Although this is a fairly basic, bread-and-butter rotation for the residents, it's a very unusual one for medical students; in fact, the rotation doesn't get advertised and it doesn't even exist unless a student specifically inquires about it from the doctor who runs it. I was able to get into it because I Know People, and people without that three point merit probably wouldn't have the same chance. As with everything else, it's good to be. Which brings me to an interesting thought: for someone who loves being himself so much, I have some remarkably self-defeating thoughts. The core basis of CBT is what we call "automatic thoughts," meaning the thoughts that pop into people's heads without being deliberatly thought. These thoughts are usually reactive to some situation, and might be positive, negative, or neutral. It's assumed that the vast majority of automatic thoughts are neutral, but that in some people, these automatic thoughts can become excessively negative, and so the first thought these people get in response to situations can be based on self-loathing. If these people get a poor grade on an exam, the automatic thought might be "I'll never succeed at anything." If they're snubbed in a social situation, the thought might be "no one will ever love or care about me." Understandably, people who have such inconvenient cognitions tend to be more sad or anxious. It's unknown whether certain people are more predisposed to have self-defeating thoughts, and so might be at more risk of becoming depressed, or if they become depressed and therefore their thoughts start becoming more negative, but it *is* known that if you can get people to recognise and change their automatic thoughts, then with some time and with some hard work, many people will become less depressed or less anxious. There's rather a lot more to it than just this, but at the most basic, that's one way that psychiatrists can try to fight various mental disorders. I personally think it's a very interesting one, because it's forcing the person to take a good, solid look at Who They Are and how they perceive themselves. It's a hell of a thing to ask someone to face and a lot of patients can't handle it and drop out of the therapy. I've spent a fair bit of time this month trying to look at my own automatic thoughts. That's not very unusual; I've been reading about CBT theory since I started undergrad almost eight years ago and I've been pretty good at seeing my automatic thoughts since before I entered medical school. This month, though I made an effort to pay a little more attention to it. I was actually kind of struck by just how negative my own thoughts can sometimes be. Here's two examples that I personally found the most head-bonkin'. Situation 1: A friend I haven't seen in a while tells me that he's going to be coming back to town for a visit, and asks me if I'd like to join him and his girlfriend on a day trip to Quebec City, about a 2-4 hour drive away. Automatic Thought: Obviously, he's only inviting me because I drive. He knows better than to subject himself to several hours of my inescapable company. Compensatory "Good Thought": Actually, it makes perfect sense. If he wants to set up a road trip, naturally the first people he has to arrange it with are the drivers. Sure, it's slightly manipulative, but it's a perfectly logical and necessary manipulation. Besides, he's still contacting you *first* out of all the drivers he needs, which says something about who he wants to spend time with. Situation 2: I'm sitting with my supervisor for the month about midway through the first week of the rotation. We're talking about my schedule, which "officially" only has about four hours of activities per week. My supervisor informs me that usually, because medical students have so much free time during this rotation, they write a paper over the course of the month on any CBT-related topic they can imagine. Papers should be written as if they were for submission to an academic journal, meaning something in the area of three thousand words long. Automatic Thought: Wow, three thousand words... and academic quality, meaning carefully researched and with a some sort of conclusion that hasn't been stated a thousand times before in every review article on the topic. Even with three months, that's something most students would have trouble with, let alone three weeks. This is going to be a long, unpleasant task. Compensatory "Good Thought": Wait a second... what the frell am I thinking? I'm Eric Lis, plaugdammit! I crank out three thousand words in an afternoon when I'm not even trying! Hell, I've gotten paid to do exactly the work she's describing in half the time. This isn't a big task... this is my supervisor handing me free bonus marks and a guaranteed letter of reference. Those automatic thoughts are actually pretty typical of the ones that I think I get much of the time. My first instinct to most situations, be they work or social, tends to be to assume that something will be difficult, unpleasant, or manipulative and under-handed. If the reaction someone has to a school assignment is "this is too hard!" before they even start, you can see how that sets the person up to have a much harder time doing the job once they try. It's a thought that causes sadness and anxiety, maybe even anger, but because most people, in theory, are unaware of their automatic thoughts, they go straight from getting the assignment to feeling depressed about it. What I have above, though, is what we call a "dysfunctional thought record" or an "automatic thought record." This is something we often tell patients to do. They take a piece of paper, and when they feel that they have a sudden surge of negative emotion, they're asked to write down the situation and the thought they have, so that they can learn to identify their thoughts. As they become better at it, they're then taught to deliberately think a compensatory good thought, which should help them to reaquire their sense of reality and perspective and should help them control their negative feelings. Yes, I had "bad" and perhaps self-defeating thoughts at those moments, but I also immediately had the good thoughts to try to "correct" my own thinking. This is one reason why, even though my automatic thoughts might not be very healthy, my brain can still be reasonably good shape, emotionally. I'm like Windows: full of bugs and prone to malfunction, but self-correcting most of the time. It also suggests that my social anxiety and pathological distrust of the people around me is potentially curable, but that sounds like work. Oh, and for those who are wondering, it ended up taking me just under six hours, much of which was spent looking up articles and deciding what music to listen to while I wrote it. I handed in my unedited first draft, which garnered top grades. My supervisor suggested that I send it for publication in a respected journal and that I present the paper in front of the whole outpatient department in mid january, which is pretty well unheard of for a medical student to do. Maybe my thoughts aren't as perfect as they could be, but it really is damn good to be me most of the time. (Seek.)
ravenworks	7:38a	Gwuh.. This new project is really cool, but when you've got a deadline bearing down on you, and you know it's all you'll be handling all day every day at work, it never quite feels like you leave work, so much as you just 'suspend' it for a few hours so you can go home and sleep. XP Doesn't help that I have been drifting in and out of fighting off whatever thing I got from the doctor's office, making me so exhausted... anyway, it's not so so bad, the thing's nearly finished thank gods. I am just so ready to nap like some kind of goddamn monster truck designed for napping. (Here's hoping I can actually finish this today and not have to work on the weekend!) This is far from the worst crunch I've had to do, but this weird exhaustion on top of it is making it pretty ughworthy.. (2 sought. | Seek.)
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
ravenworks	11:28a	Totally unimportant and possibly naive question So how come in two dimensions, you can describe rotation with one value, but in three dimensions, you need three? (Or four, if you don't consider it fully described without a quaternion?) (19 sought. | Seek.)
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
ravenworks	2:54p	back at the condo So thankfully, my bosses agreed that I'm more use to them if I don't burn myself out today.. came home to crash, going to finish plugging away on the eCard tonight. It's weird, my only symptoms are mild intestinal weirdness, mild chills, and pretty much total exhaustion... hopefully this means I caught something at the doctor's office (the irony gets me every time) but that my body intercepted it before it could do any real harm, and just has my energy tied up getting rid of it. Before I crash -- tamakun, it was you who sent me these Jonathan Coulton MP3s, right? I think I've got some CDs to buy... I was familiar with his sense of humor, but i didn't realise he could write such beautiful songs. naaaaaaptimeys (2 sought. | Seek.)
ericsjournal	12:01a	Paper Caines The other day, I finished reading Caine Black Knife, the third book in a series by Matthew Woodring Stover. People who read this have seen me mention his name in the past, mostly whenever "authors I'm very fond of" or "books I'm trying to find" comes up. I'd been waiting for this book to come out for... well, "years" might be a bit of an exageration, in so far as it tends to imply "many" years, but not by much, since we're talking at least two of three years. The middle book in the trilogy -- the first of the three books that I read -- is one of my all time favourite novels; it's a brilliant synthesis of science fiction and fantasy, presents a beautifully constructed dystopic future, has some of the finest action scenes I've ever read, and above all, features characters who sound meaningfully different from each other when they speak and act. The first book of the three was less entertaining than the first but was still tremendous fun. Having read the first two, I was understandably excited when I heard that a thid was coming out -- doubly so since the third book was going to be just one of several promised additions to the series. The longer I waited for the book, the higher my hopes got, and this started to worry me. We all know that nothing makes a bad movie worse than going into it thinking it's going to be great. The higher your expectations of a story, of any event really, the further you have to fall, and there's no such thing as "terminal velocity" when you're talking about disappointed. On the day that I bought Caine Black Knife and the day that I opened it up to start reading it, I felt a pang of pure and absolute terror, because I was going into it with very high hopes and no guarantee that it would meet them. As it happens, it did. The book is easily one of the two or three best books I read this whole year, which is saying a lot, because at the time of this writing I'm on my forty-second novel of the year and Stover is up in competition against Dan Abnett, Ian Fleming, Mike Carey, Robert Heinlein, and Neil "I can make you frightened of buttons in under three minutes" Gaiman himself. I read at least six really great books this year and this one is near the top of the list. The middle book in the series which I mention above, Blade of Tyshalle, is one I've been trying to find for years at a sensible price. It was under-printed and is today something of a collector's item, and rarely sells below thirty to fifty dollars online. No used book shop I've ever walked into has ever heard of it. It's recently been re-released, but only in eBook format, and this is a book that deserves to be owned in real paper. I'll find it one day... In the meantime, it's just one more Quest to help keep my life interesting. The series has a lot of different sources of appeal. In the mass-market, I'm sure one of its main appeals in the fantastic action sequences and extremely well-wrought violence. The books have ample blood-spraying combat and graphic torture scenes which I'm assured are quite shaking if you're affected by that sort of thing; not being easily disgusted by blood or violence, I can say only that I find they're phenomenally well-written and make spectacular use of language to bring the scenes to life. The part of the books which people I speak to have loved most is the synthesis of fantasy and sci-fi. As opposed to steampunk, which squishes the two genres together and more often than not simply comes up with something comical, these books don't combine the two, or even contrast them, as much as examine how each influences the other when they have very minimal contact. For me, though, the part which I find most incredible is simply the way that the main character works. The bulk of the books is spent inside the character's head -- not merely in the first person perspective, but often in the present tense. It's extremely difficult to write a book that works in the present tense, and it's usually jarring and unpleasant for the reader, but Stover is actually able to keep the story flowing and help the reader feel present. I admit quite openly that the sort of feeling which Stover is able to achieve is exactly the sort of feeling I tried to replicate (perhaps even plagiarize) with my KP 42 stories; those stories may have been fun for my friends to read, but they don't do anything near the job of getting the reader into the character's head that Stover accomplishes. The title character is perfectly in-character, if that makes sense; when he speaks or acts, it feels as though he's doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing, as opposed to so many books where I'm often left with the feeling that the characters are doing what the author wants them to do rather than what they want to do. What puzzles me more than anything else is that, to hear Stover himself tell it, his books actually don't do very well. In his own blog, back in May of this year, he posted an extremely interesting analysis of how bookstores decide how many copies of a book to order and how this affects whether an author can afford to write for a living. By his own admission, his books haven't sold well enough to rise very high on the lists that the Powers That Be keep of such things. One result of this, for example, is that it currently looks like Caine Black Knife may never be released in regular paperback format, simply because it hasn't sold well enough. That might be true; the copy of the book that I bought (an oversize paperback edition) was sitting in a big pile of unsold copies and had been marked down to four dollars (Canadian) from sixteen. People like me are part of the problem; I wasn't going to buy the oversize edition because I wanted to wait for the cheaper and more easily portable pocketbook edition, but as a result, the oversize version hasn't sold well enough. I can imagine the implications which this has for the author continuing the series; my understanding is that he's contracted to write the next book (which I now expect will absolutely rock, based on past performance) but I fear that he might not be able to sell any subsequent book in the series. If the series were cut short, I'd consider that a genuine tragedy, but apparently there aren't enough people out there who agree with me. On the plus side, even if the author's own original series should falter, because he's known for his action scenes, he's getting contracted to write tie-in novels for violent series, such as the videogame God of War. I've never played the game and have zero interest in it, but I'll certainly read his novelization. It likely won't be as absorbing as the Caine books, but at least I'll be supporting one of my favourite authors. Note to self: must find a way to use the Aerican Empire to get people to buy books by authors I want to keep writing... (3 sought. | Seek.)
ravenworks	7:30a	Oh god, crunch week is the wrong time to start developing the chills. Such is the danger of visiting the doctor's office, even for a checkup, I guess... though the place was practically empty. Hopefully this is nothing :P If not I guess I'll try and take it easy, then put on a burst this weekend or something.. (1 sought. | Seek.)
Monday, December 7th, 2009
ravenworks	11:59a	Perfect Dark XBLA remake screens... Why is it that people think it's okay to just throw stylistic coherency by the wayside when you're uprezzing something? I can't be the only one who thinks the 'old' shots look a hell of a lot better than the flat, neon 'new' stuff.. (particularly in that first shot...) Perfect Dark managed to be a slick-looking game, in an era when not a lot of people had quite gotten the hang of doing that in real-time 3D! The new stuff looks more like what I remember most other N64 games looking like, really. Like they made the textures one by one in a vacuum and never looked at them side by side.. (7 sought. | Seek.)
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
ravenworks	11:03a	So, had a little condo-related stroke of genius last night -- covered my light-leaking bedroom window's crappy blinds with a few black garbage bags, taped to the wall... that place was a goddamn sensory deprivation tank, last night. :) I have never had the pleasure of falling asleep with my eyes open before. (I'm sure they shut once I was actually asleep, but I mean during the lead-up to sleeping...) Slept in like a champ this morning. In fact, I think I'm going to have to tear it down before tomorrow, if I still want to get up on time.. This made it nice and clear that I'm going to need some better blinds, though; something heavy enough to lay flat against the wall, somehow. And something that's covered on top... (Does the thing I'm describing exist? Or am I going to have to sew magnets into whatever blinds I buy, and mount matching magnets on the wall around the window?) So I spent my bosses' "gift certificate" on an iPhone yesterday! Mostly underwhelmed. There are some cool apps (the fact that the ocarina has a 'radio' that lets you hear other random ocarina users around the world is so cool!), but stuff like not being able to define contact groups on the phone itself (only on the computer it's synced to), and not being able to multitask (between an IM program and a web browser, say) would be a pretty significant letdown if I were still using this thing on a regular basis on the bus... but, for something that only cost me the opportunity to buy something else of equal value (err, it sounds silly when I put it like that) it's a pretty neat gadget. ;) And things could potentially get VERY cool once I start developing for this thing... (I can develop Unity-engine games from home in Unity Free, then compile them on our mac with the Unity Pro iPhone version at work, with a bit of tweaking to suit the new interface of course...) Anyway, the biggest kick in the pants is simply that I didn't hold out long enough for a 64-GB iPhone to come into existence (something that is terrifyingly close to potentially happening), my music collection alone is 33 GB, and the largest iPhone available is 32-GB, let alone leaving space for apps and videos. I do feel like kind of a moron, but I had already made up my mind to get a 64-GB iPod Touch, when my boss pointed out all the cool 'senses' that an iPhone has that the iPod Touch doesn't (microphone, camera, GPS, compass), and I decided, "well I can use my current iPod for music, and use my iPhone for web stuff". I hadn't thought of the THIRD option of just waiting a few more months and seeing if a 64-GB iPhone surfaces... but anyway, if that happens, I can sell my current one (maybe jailbreak or unlock it first to make it more attractive to buyers?) and hopefully still get a respectable amount of my money blown on this one back... and in the meantime, I can listen to my music all day, without worrying about draining my phone's battery! (I'm not looking forward to the first time that this thing goes faulty on me, and I have to pay the transferral fee to send my account back to my old HTC phone so I can actually make phonecalls while I'm having it repaired..) Anyway! App recommendations? :P (10 sought. | Seek.)
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
ericsjournal	12:01a	Where The Roads Are Paved With Sheep Editor's Note: The following is based on a wonderful game of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen played earlier today. If you don't know this game, I strongly encourage you to change that, but in short: each player takes on the roll of an 18th century European noble and is given a story seed by the player sitting next to them. The player then has five minutes to make up (and tell well) a story which addresses all points from the story seed, in a style base on that of the great classic Baron Munchausen stories. The story style requires a multiple of improbable or impossible events, suitably heroic or superhuman actions on the part of the teller, and a moderate amount of making fun of at least two other European nationalities (usually the French or the Belgians for some reason). Other players may interrupt a limited number of times, inserting complications to make the story harder to tell. I, playing the role of Baron Eric of Marky, an English noble of scholarly mein and wide knowledge, if somewhat dubious accuracy, was asked to tell the story of how I found a herd of talking sheep and was invited to become a part of their nobility. The story is reconstructed here with some small changes on account of the fact that I don't remember the exact words I was using as I told it. It is with some pride that I relate that I was voted the most entertaining of the four people who told stories. I was traveling through Europe some years ago, and was in a strange and blighted land known as "Ireland." Ireland was a most odd country... filled with sprawling meadows and rolling hills, and as a result of their very strong scotch (or as they referred to it, whiskey), the land was filled as well with men sprawling in meadows and rolling down hills. The whole of the land was rather green and grassy and generally unpleasant, but it did have its own sort of odd charms. I was traveling the land in search of something which you may have heard of, which is a ring of immense standing stones known as the stone hinge or some such, but was having a terrible time locating it because I could not get useful information from any of the locals. The locals, you see, had the great misfortune of being Irish, as opposed to British or German or something else more respectable, and although most of them spoke some small amount of a proper King's English, the majority spoke some sort of strange, gutteral quasy language which they called "Gaelic." Gaelic is a very harsh language, as you no doubt know, and a dangerous language as well, since people who speak it risk that the force of their speech will actually tear their trachea out of their throat and cough it up out of their mouth. In any case, I was having a most dreadful time finding the famous hinge, and so found myself ambling about the green, hilly countryside with my porter... whose name escapes me at the moment. As it happened, as I was walking down one particular road, I began to notice that the road was getting softer and softer. As I kept proceeding along the road, I discovered as well that in places a whitish cloudy substance could be seen through the dirt tracks. I kept walking, and from time to time the "step-step" sound of my march would be broken up by the occasional "bah!" sound. I bade my porter to kneel down in the dirt and brush away some of it, and lo and behold, the irt road had apparenyl been layed upon a foundation of sheep! Why, the road itself had been veritably paved with sheep. Sheep as far as the eye could see! (A player interrupts, sliding foreward a coin, indicating that he's going to make a "wager" and complicate the story.) But my dear Baron, is it not true that this was during the great Irish Sheep Shortage of 17mumblemumblemumble? Whence came all these sheep? Ah, my good fellow, you are, of course, quite correct. This was indeed during the Great Sheep Shortage, and these roads, in fact, were the very cause of it. Less than one year prior, the Irish royalty, seeing that there was an overabundance of sheep in their pastures but a shortage of clay in their hills and wood in their forests, declared that henceforth their roads ould be built with sheep. This proposal had been met with cheer by the people, and miles and miles of roads had thus been replaced with sheep. The massive over-consumption of sheep, predictably, had depleted their sheep supplies, and so there was now a terrific shortage. Still, this would pale in comparisson to the events some years later, when the royalty ruled that all buildings must be made from potato. In any event, I followed the bah-ing road and came upon a beautiful green pasture... one filled entirely with sheep quietly grazing, with no human or shepherd in sight. I approached the sheep before me and was startled to note that they seemed to be watching me warily. Now, I admit that i have had minimal contact with sheep, as the rearing of my many flocks are done by the servants in my employ, but I spent some time studying the shepherding sciences at Oxford and I know that sheep usually do not bother to watch a nearby human and certainly never watch them warily. I approached the flock, and one particularly large sheep trotted out to meet me. In a high pitched voice, it asked me what I wanted. My lords and ladies, I cannot say if I was more shocked by the fact that I had been addressed by this talking sheep or by the fact that it had spoken proper English and not more Gaelic. Well, once I had assured the sheep that I was not Irish nor a road-builder, he became far less suspicious and we grew to talking amicably. It seems that many sheep in Ireland can speak -- perhaps one in every thirty, moreso in wealthy flocks who can afford proper tutors -- and the speaking sheep had gathered their fellows to flee the Irish builders. They had come out to this quiet meadow in the hopes that no man would find them here, and thus save them from being forced to take on the role previously filled by the proverbial "good intentions." Well, I could sympathise with these poor sheep. I offered them that if they chose to return with me to England, I would see them safely out of Ireland, and they cheerfully agreed. In gratitude, the sheep to whom I had been speaking -- who, it turned out, was one of their princes -- bestowed upon me a noble title high up in their hierarchy. There is no precise translation for the title which they gave me, but in the British system of nobility, it comes out as something below a prince's advisor but above a viscount, and was reffered to as a skomorokh. Getting all of these sheep out of Ireland was quite difficult, of course, as the Irish would not lightly let me leave with their building supplies, and I was forced to fall back upon my dazzling swordsmanship and slay several hundred of their best soldiers on our way to the coast. Then, for various complicated reasons, I was forced to return to England via France, where I was forced to fall back on my dazzling swordsmanship and slay several hundred French soldiers. They didn't want to claim the sheep, but they were French, so it was necessary. (A player interrupts, sliding foreward a coin.) But Baron, you say you were leading so many sheep... however did you fit so many sheep onto a single boat, which could surely have held no more than five men? Indeed, the boat was small. The answer to this question is a story unto itself, but the short version is that it involved a great deal of mint jelly. The story thus ends. The storyteller takes a swig of his brink amindst cries of "a fine tale!" and "huzzah!" and "harumph!" Telling this tale, of course, has reminded the good Baron of a story said to have happened to the noble gentleman sitting to his left, so turn to him and asks... (Seek.)
ravenworks	2:47p	I haaaaaaaate screen protectors.... I gave this one a chance, but there were little screwy awful things underneath, and then I tried cleaning it and it got worse... So my only concern is keeping it lint-free when it's in my pocket... Can anyone recommend a nice thick-plastic cover, or something that flaps shut over the screen so you can stow it away? Instead of one of these awful awful plastic cling thingies? (4 sought. | Seek.)
nyghtinggail	9:49a	HOLY CRAP! Button is sitting herself up, all perfect and everything!! (3 sought. | Seek.)
ravenworks	9:48a	aaaaaauwgh, why do I keep staying up so late on weekends. XD This is the one way my self-control keeps failing me now that nobody's telling me what to do. I'm eating well, I'm paying my bills, I'm watching my money, I'm staying up till 3 AM playing Dead Rising... oh well. XD Just another habit to break myself of! (7 sought. | Seek.)
Friday, December 4th, 2009
nyghtinggail	8:35p	Week Thirteen of Nursing School I could've used another 5 days of vacation. I've been mostly asleep since the beginning of the week. Today was was my day to bring breakfast got up lateish, made honey corn muffins that fell into little pieces and just decided I would bring breakfast on Monday. We were given our midterm grades in Skills; 97. I could really use a long back massage, and I'm dreading clinicals next week. On the plus side, we are learning about the heart, and post opt care which is interesting stuff. A man I took care of at Mercy is apparently getting really creepy about wanting me to come back. It's sad, I do miss him. But they are worried that it's not good for him to get attached to students. Mrs. Riddell also said the likelihood of me being able to postpone a semester and come back was not good and that if I can stay in I should. On the otherside, I'm really dying to move out. This weekend I start my poster boards of potential cities; each city will be listed with it's pros and cons what I can expect to make there, what I the housing is like, school available, pictures of the city/parks/transportation, activies, music scenes, coffeeshops, friend I have there. Living expense factors. All of it. And we will begin figuring out where we want to go come June/July. Cites currently being considered: Portland, Seattle, Austin/Houston, Pittsburgh, NYC, Boston, Knoxville, and Chicago if you advocate on of the following, do feel free to share. :) (12 sought. | Seek.)

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