Goodbye week.

Friday is upon us!  Run!  Run for the hills!

No, don't do that, it's cold out there.  Stay inside where it's warm.  Anyway.  The week is coming to a close and it's quite exciting.  I have a gig tonight, no obligations tomorrow and a party to go to on Sunday.  All in all it sounds like a pretty good weekend.

Although the holiday juggle is fast approaching I'm a little relieved right now to have a little less on my plate.  November got to be a bit of a cluster with all the things I ended up getting involved in.  A musical, out of town work trip, two gaming groups, quadcopter planning, Thanksgiving, Warhammer tournament and most importantly spending time with the wife.  It was a busy month indeed.

I just can't help but get myself bogged down with tons of hobbies.  I just love doing so many different things.  It would be weird if I only did one or two things but it would probably be good to do so for awhile.  Right now it seems like everything is only quarter finished.

I started working on a book last year and this time I was doing it right.  I got a planning book and started doing all kinds of outlining.  It's a fun book completely outlined but I still haven't set aside the time to actually write it.  Instead I started writing a different book for some reason that is a few chapters in and going fairly well...except that I haven't touched it in almost two months.

I really like writing but on the other hand I really like playing music and after joining a band last spring it has has really opened up my opportunities to play.  It's only one gig, maybe two a month so it's not the biggest time hog.  I worry however about getting offered too many side projects.  The musical was a fun side-project but it was quite draining.  Doing the musical of course led to talk of other projects.  It's a strange phenomenon that happens when new musicians get together.  You start sharing your similar interests which of course leads to how fun it would be to do a certain project.  So there's a couple new ideas in the works that will be fun but time consuming.

This doesn't sound all that bad except that all this playing time has taken me away from the music I was writing on my own.  I was making some good progress on some new songs and having fun writing some soundtrack music.  Much like the book I haven't touched it in ages and I keep wondering when I'll get back to it.

Then there is the gaming.  Gaming is an exciting creative outlet for me because it combines so many of my interests into one activity.  I can design a world but I don't have to write the book because the players drive the plot.  Additionally I get to invent equipment and weapons for the game to tickle my inventive side.  Then there is the fun of creating game materials for the players which is just silly fun.  Writing entire letters with old-style dip pen on parchment paper is really fun for some reason.  Plus I'm seriously considering penning an entire source book by hand with dip pen.  Silly...yes.

Those are just the major things I enjoy doing which makes for quite the busy week indeed.  Throw in that I have a house that needs renovations, full time job, snow to shovel and a wife that would like to see me once in awhile and it gets to be a little crazy.  I'm not complaining, maybe a little, but not really.  I'm just taking a step back and realizing that maybe I should cut out a few projects for awhile and get something done for a change.

Legend

Hopes for a Friday:

Frazzled nerves and tired bodies will flock downtown in search of sweet release.  Liquor will relax sore muscles and beer will melt away stress.  Music will spill out into the cold night air and attract the masses searching for a warm retreat.  Numb toes will be warmed by dancing and cheers will rise as the music stirs life back into the crowd.

Jackets, scarves and hats will be piled to the side as the temperature climbs along with everyone's spirits.  Laughing and revelry will replace groans and sighs.  For one evening everyone will forget that there are many months of winter to come and simply enjoy themselves.  The crisp air on the walk home will feel invigorating instead of oppressive after a long night of defiance against old man winter.

At the end of the night, after many obliged calls for encores, we will lay down our instruments with satisfaction.  Our job was done with the world warmed a bit through music.  Smiling faces, breathless dancers and lifted spirits will be our creations.  We have fought the good fight against the darkness, the cold and the effects they have on the spirit.

Snow Days

I wish there were city wide snow days.  That would be amazing.  Stories!

You wake at six-thirty in the morning to your alarm and crawl out of bed to peek out your bedroom window.  Outside the world is engulfed in snow, a good foot on the ground with more continuing to fall with no signs of stopping.  Checking the weather app on your phone you see that it is expected to continue for most of the day and total accumulation expected at many, many inches.  

Currently this means you will be having a truly bad day as you will most likely have to shovel out of the driveway just to get the vehicle out and even then the plows won't be getting to the side streets near your house until the late afternoon leaving the roads quite treacherous.  With no time to spare you hustle to get your shoveling clothes on and blurry eyed you make a path just large enough to get the car out so you can get to work.  With your usual morning time spent you frantically head back inside and change clothes and try to make yourself presentable in the few minutes left to you.  Back outside your heart sinks as the snow is falling so fast it is barely recognizable that you just shoveled.  Nearly late already you clean off the car and say a little prayer that you'll make it out of the driveway.  Gritting your teeth you hit the accelerator, the tires spin, snow flies and you somehow end up in the road facing in approximately the right direction.  The white knuckle drive seems to take hours while your wiper blades do nothing to keep your windshield clear.  Your headlights cannot pierce the white curtain and for most of the drive you wonder if you're even on a road.  Somehow you get to work, which of course is a no-mans land because everyone else called in stuck and the customers have all elected to avoid leaving their houses because of the high chance of death.  Eight hours pass and all that goes through your mind is how bad things are going to be on the drive home.  You have plenty of time to think of course because the store has barely made enough in sales to pay the employees and keep the place heated.  At one point you sneeze and you can hear the echo from the far back wall.  Someone three departments away says 'Bless you' and you can hear it clearly.  With your shift over the great adventure begins anew.  Your car is buried, literally, as the parking lot was plowed three times during the day and it seems as if they piled all of the snow on top of it.  The determination to get home drives you onward and you free the vehicle then slide your way home sideways.  Once you return the driveway is impassable as the plows have made a snow bank across it that looks like it could stop a tank.  With the last shreds of energy left in your body you engineer an opening and get your car off the road where it was only nearly hit four times by traffic on the ever narrowing roads.  Sure there are the sidewalks to shovel and the driveway will be impassable in the morning but you simply don't have the energy.  

OR

After seeing the mess outside you notice that you received a text from the city emergency notification system.  The town has been put on snow alert and all citizens are advised to stay in their homes for their safety.  Travel is restricted to emergency travel only and all non-essential services and stores are shutdown for the day.  You smile, walk downstairs and make yourself an omelette with ham, cheese and tomatoes.  After a few cups of coffee and an episode of Doctor Who you strap your boots on and leisurely shovel the drive and the walk.  Afterwards you enjoy a hot cocoa and take a hot bath to thaw your toes then settle in for an afternoon of bad movies and a craft project.

I like option two. 

Death of Fun

The holidays are upon us and that means sales on video games.  In years past I have gobbled up the cheap games like holiday dinner items but this year something odd happened.  After browsing through the deals I realized that none of the games looked interesting to me and more than that I didn't even recognize many of them.  Were they just not popular games and the really good deals were yet to come?  Am I out of touch with the games that are out there these days?  Option two seems more likely.  

It's alright I think, not knowing about new video games, since I'm getting older.  I don't have the time to play as many these days so it's natural I suppose.  The sad part of this story however is what happened when I actually did buy a game.  

The X-Com reboot was on sale so I purchased it but then something terrible happened.  I didn't care to play it at all.  No  interest at all to load it up and try it out.  It's installed, ready to go but even with an entire Sunday afternoon free I didn't even bother.  The thought of diving into a new game brought me no joy whatsoever.  What happened?

Things have changed quite a bit over the last few years for me and I realize now that video games don't hold the same excitement for me anymore.  After buying a house that I want to work on, joining a band and having more social hobbies now there isn't much room for video games.  It makes sense but the realization was a bit of a shock.  

After thinking about it for a while I realize now that it's all about what I gain at the end of the time invested in a hobby.  The band gives me the fun of playing music and some extra cash too.  Fixing the house gives me a sense of accomplishment as well as adding value on my investment.  Writing and designing games works my brain and provides entertainment for my friends.  Designing and building a quadcopter gives me a quadcopter in the end.  All of these things give me something in the end whereas playing a video game gives me much less in comparison.  Sure there is some fun and sometimes it's nice just to relax with a video game but when the game ends I don't have much to show for it. 

It comes down to getting the most of the time and energy I expend.  Less and less video games provide enough return on the investment compared to other things in my life.  I won't stop playing them, I'm not crazy, however it will be more likely I'm going to invest in an activity that produces something.  It's a strange realization and shift in my life but one for the best.  Maybe it means I'm finally growing up?  No...I still like ninjas too much for that.  

Wednesday

Oh God....not again.

The holiday are upon us and more than the tragedy that is the Black Friday shopping mess the thing that I hate the most is the family and friend juggling.  It's not that I hate any of my friends or family, quite the opposite, I love seeing them all.  The problem is getting to see them all in some sort of organized fashion that doesn't make me go mad.

If life was like a fancy car commercial, it would be as simple as a single quiet evening with the friends one day where we drink by a fire and laugh about being rich; followed by a picturesque family meal the next where we all meet in the driveway and admire each others newly leased luxury cars.  Boom, two days and done.  Life however is not a commercial and I drive a sensible vehicle simply designed but not made by Germans.

In real life it's never that simple.  Are all my friends going to be in town on the same days and all have the same night free?  No.  Are they all going to want to sit by the fire drinking wine?  No.  Hell, I don't want to sit by the fire drinking wine.  Wine gives me a headache.  I'm getting too old for the huge meeting of everyone at the bar like we used to.  It's too loud and chaotic to have any real conversation with anyone.  Plus for my non-drinking friends it's just rude to them.  Then there's the problem that they're all juggling multiple family visits as well and with only a few days in town time get's thin.  So you end up seeing who you can when you can and miss a few visits.  The reality is that's just what happens when you start getting older.

The next problem is juggling the families.  Being married with two sets of family in town and with siblings living in somewhat close driving distance it adds to the visitation options.  The sad thing is that there's never going to be enough time to visit everyone.  Then you're picking and choosing who to see and that's a little sad.

Then there's the worst problem that makes all the other problems possible.  Work.  Time off for the holidays gets less and less each year.  If the world was like a Norman Rockwell painting we'd all put the closed signs in the window for a few days and have all the time in the world to enjoy our holidays.  These days, most Americans are at the mercy of their corporate overlords that want to squeeze every holiday dollar possible.  Stores stay open as late as possible for the 'last minute' shoppers and then open back up as early as possible for super-sales to get rid of the crap that didn't sell.  So the amount of time off to spend with friends continues to shrink.

I like the holidays, it makes the onset of winter easier and gives you excuses to have a little more fun than usual.  It would be nice however if there was just a little more time to enjoy them.  Quiet time with those important to you is being replaced by shopping sprees or working those shopping sprees.  Everyone's losing out, shopper and worker alike.  I hate having to ration time like it's water and I'm stuck in the desert.  Maybe I'll start a 'secret' holiday in May, when the weather's nicer and it's easier to get time off.  No big meals requiring grocery store trips, no presents and no stress.  Relaxmas.  I like it.

Aliens!

I watched an interesting little movie this weekend that debunked the claims made by the History channel's show, Ancient Aliens.  I recommend it.  It's called Ancient Aliens Debunked and you can find it on YouTube.

One thing about the Ancient Aliens theory that really bugs me is the insistence that it was impossible to build things like pyramids with the knowledge mankind had at the time.  It really does a disservice to human ingenuity and creativity when they make those kinds of claims.  They even become silly when you find out archaeologists have found tools and even instruction guides for some of the 'alien' built structures.  These impossible tasks that the Ancient Aliens claim are continually proven to be much simpler than originally thought.

I just watched a documentary about how the statues at Easter Island were moved.  The ancient story told by people in the area says they 'walked' into place.  Ancient aliens people claim that means they were levitated into place but a documentary I just saw showed a much simpler explanation.  They figured out that by attaching ropes to the sides and back of the head, the stone statues could be rocked back and forth or 'walked' quite easily.  It wasn't that they just made this technique up either, it was developed based on the positions of statues that fell during transport.  All the statues going uphill were on their backs and all the statues going downhill were on their faces.  Plus they found that all the statues that didn't make it to the final areas had handy-dandy rope notches on their heads right where it would be most advantageous to have them for the 'walking' technique.  It matched the original story, it explained why all the statues fell the way they did and why they were cut the way they did.  It was also found to be a very quick way to move the giant stone statues as well.

This is why I hate the Ancient Aliens theory.  It's fun to talk about, sure, I'm not going to say it isn't.  It's always fun to wonder:  What if?  However if you say there is no possible way a person didn't come up with some clever way to do it then you're just showing you're not that clever yourself.  Plus it shows a complete lack of understanding on how things worked in ancient times.  If a living god told you to build something you'd probably figure out a way to do it.  Do you really want to make a living god angry?  I wouldn't.

The pyramids are a great example of the dedication a people can have to accomplishing an enormous task.  Unlike the common misconception that the pyramids were built with slave labor, there is evidence that shows they were actually built by the common people. (http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/pyramids-tombs-giza-egypt.htm) Farmers and workers had a few months off each year during the break in the growing season and instead of enjoying the time off they went to build the God Pharaohs resting place.  It's tough to imagine volunteering to do months of back-breaking labor for some rich dude but it wasn't back then.  That rich dude was talking to the gods for you so your farms would produce enough food to feed your family.  Why wouldn't you do everything you could for that guy?  Plus when you were on the job site they had free beer!  Free beer!  I've done jobs for free beer.

In the end I think it's more fun to think of how amazing it is that people in ancient times came up with ways to build these incredible structures.  The inventions and techniques they came up with to move stones and shape them are awesome.  Who came up with the idea to use a copper tube and sand to cut round holes in stone?  That's brilliant!  Saying aliens did it is a horrible thing to say and I think it can be harmful.  We should be promoting that there have been brilliant, inventive people throughout history and in primitive times there was that spark of creativity that makes us unique.  Why would we want to claim that the seemingly impossible was only done with alien help when we can rightfully claim that it was the work of our ancestors?


 
I

Tanks!

Recently I've become obsessed with the World of Tanks beta on Xbox 360.  I couldn't nail down why it was so fun until I started comparing it to other games I've been playing online recently.  It was then that I started to see the genius that Wargaming.net has poured into this game.

Online gaming has been around for some time but it's really exploded in the last five years.  Five years is a short time to gather data on a social movement for study.  You can look at server traffic and number of games sold to see what constitutes a good game but that data is flawed.  Just because lots of people are playing a certain online game doesn't mean that it's a good online game.  What you have to study is how people are playing these online games.

The powerhouse in online gaming for consoles is first person shooters.  If you've ever played one you know that the way people play them is far from the way that you'd expect them to.  There is little to no teamwork with many players going 'lone wolf' in order to amass the greatest number of kills during the match.  These games further the desire to be the star of the show by awarding points to the players that can be used to further tailor themselves into killing machines.  First person shooters do include awards for playing the support roles but these are less gratifying than being the top killer in most cases.

What you end up with is individuals fighting for personal glory and points.  The more kills the more bragging rights the players walks away with.  It's a single player game where the difficulty and fun is increased by playing against humans rather than predictable AI opponents.  It might be a successful online game when you look at sales but it's not a good online game when you look at the way people are playing it.  

This problem is furthered when you add vehicles to a game.  The Battlefield franchise puts a wide variety of vehicles into their games which are supposed augment the troops on the ground.  The level of teamwork required to use helicopters, tanks, jets and boots on the ground is astounding.  It's rarely done well and most of the time is done poorly.  A common scene in this game is players standing around the area where the vehicles appear then fighting over who gets to drive.  Their goal isn't to actually win the game but rather to play with the toys.  This is frustrating to players who actually want to win.

World of Tanks does some things that solves many of these problems.  First of all everyone gets a tank.  In fact you are a tank.  Even better is that there are many types of tanks to choose from.  Fast tanks, heavy tanks, tank destroyers and long range artillery.  The best thing about these tank options is that they are all  useful and fun to play.  There is no super unit that can dominate the field on it's own and everyone must work together to win.  It's well balanced.

This balance is furthered by a remarkable matchmaking system.  Tanks are rated and teams are made of only similarly rated equipment.  In addition, it does it's best to make sure each team has the same number of tanks types on each team.  Rarely have I ever joined a game where the teams were not identical.  It's extremely well done.

Perhaps the best thing they've built into this game is the option to quite without penalty.  It's the smartest thing that I've ever seen in a game.  In all the games once you are dead you are dead.  Your tank stays on the battlefield until the game ends but you don't have to stay and watch.  The game lets you retreat back to the menu, select another tank from your garage and join another battle.

By doing this the designers have done a few smart things.  First off, it keeps people rushing back to the matchmaking queue, reducing wait times for a new match.  Secondly, it forces the player to experiment with different types of tanks, making them appreciate all the roles on the battlefield.  In most first person shooter games you can always play as the class you at anytime.  There is no function built in to make people expand their horizons and keep teams balanced.  You always have a large number of snipers and rocket launcher wielding soldiers and are always short on medics.

With all the amazing things this game does the best part about it is that it's fun.  No matter what tank you use or what game you join you always feel like you have a chance.  (Unless your teammates are really bad.)  Plus when two lines of tanks meet on the field it's intense.  There are explosions, noise and smoke everywhere.  It's fun.

World of Tanks is a good online game because people have fun and work together.  People use the voice chat function to actually coordinate attacks rather than insult each other.  It must be successful too because they are coming out with two sister games soon.  A version in beta where you fly WWII airplanes and sometime in the future a sea combat game.  If their setup similar to World of Tanks they should be fun.

That's my rant about World of Tanks.  Play it.