Kitkowskiland!

November 10-12, High Point NC ( http://www.justusproductions.com/Mace.aspx ). I’m basically aiming at the folks that are reading this LJ here, especially the far out-of-towners like Rob/Fred/Adam/etc, but looking for local folks as well.

Here’s the thing: This week I’m making the hotel reservations. One room, two beds, I get a bed, don’t mind sharing but if you snore you’re on the floor. :-)  (I use Breathe-Rite strips, etc, so no snoring on my part).

Last year I drove to the con. That was… a little more painful than I expected.  This year I’m getting a room for Friday and Saturday. As many people are welcome as want to stay. As far as I know, Jason M is rooming with me on Saturday. That’s all I know sofar. Who else is coming, and hasn’t gotten a room yet?

Thanks!

-Andy

What’s new… Still working on translating Tenra Bansho Zero, and things are starting to reach a critical mass: In seven days I should have most of the translations that I contracted out.  After that, it will probably take me one month to put together the rules sections and the other untranslated bits, and prepare to fill in the gaps with explanations and the like.

Last week I picked up the PS2 game “OKAMI”, and at eight hours in it’s blowing my mind.  It’s a perfect evolution of ZELDA: An action game with a story that focuses mostly on puzzles and less on fighting (though there is quite a bit).  It’s made by Clover studios, who did the Viewtiful Joe series and other interesting concept games (GOD HAND, etc). Basically, in this game you’re the reincarnation of the Goddess Amaterasu in the form of a wolf, and with a small insect companion you travel Japan bringing back life to the countryside. I think the thing that I like most about the game is that you get all of your “leveling up” power from healing the world. You restore sick trees, you give food to bunnies and pigs, you transform entire landscapes from cursed fields to lush pastures.  It’s really an awesome feeling to see how the world changes in response to the good things you did.

THere’s lots of little Zelda-like powerups and the like, in that you will see a magical-looking rock or tree or something early on, and think, “Oh, I bet later on I’ll get some trick that I can use to manipulate that thing”… then sure enough, sooner or later you get some item (in Zelda, you get various pieces of equipment: Hook shot, time ocarina, boomerang, etc; In Okami you get magical brush-strokes which you use Nintendo DS style (writing on the screen) to do various magical effects like blow winds or make the sun come out). Just like Zelda, I’m hooked on this thing and it’s really hard to stop playing- Once you get the “Water sprout” power, for instance, you’ll want to go back to all those water sprouts you remember and try to activate them, etc.

Back to Tenra for a second: On Saturday I ran another session of the game, and again it went well: Some things happened that made me think about reworking bits of the Harmony Coin/Aiki Chit distribution mechanic, but looking back into the text, it reminded me what the game is supposed to be about, and why it works the way it is.  Still though, there’s always room for optional rules.

More later on my personal life stuff, but for now I wanted to drop word on this PS2 game: It in fact is awesome, and if you’re waffling on whether to buy it or not, I highly suggest picking it up.

Shinobido Imashime, probably the best Ninja-themed console game ever, is not going to have a North America release.  It came out in Europe, and that’s the closest it’ll get apparently. Poo.

Tenchu… uh… 5? Is on its way out. but it doesn’t look like anything new really. I loved some of the series (1 and 3 especially) so I’ll pick it up eventually, but still.

On the other hand, GOD HAND is going to have a US release.

I don’t know much about this game, but I know what I like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC2MvIC4j6E&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozh9wmGMJeY&mode=related&search=

I ran it in English for the first time ever today. It was a mess of fun, and surprised me in unexpected ways. I’ll have more info on it later from the Tenra Development Blog.

I just noticed this in my Netflix queue regarding Disk One:

“The Twelve Kingdoms: Vol. 1: Shoku :: NR :: Anime & Animation :: Available - NOW”

Finally.

On the other hand, I kinda wanted to have my “Visual Handbook for the Series” (especially the third arc part, where for about 1 episode it becomes VERY confusing politically) completed soon and online, but oh well. I’ll finish that up later.

For everyone else:

WIKIPEDIA LINK

Another Info Site

Another assault of random Andy awesomeness.

The weekend work has dug its claws into me, and I abide. Coffee is consumed. Sleep schedules are thrown. Insomnia looms. There is an exit in sight: The end of October my duties to my team and Allah will be fulfilled, and I will return to Mon-Fri, 8-5.

The Table!  A phone call was made from Furnitureland South to me, and it will delivered… er crap, no I forget. I want to say Sunday the 24th? We will be ready. The table is Lord Humungous, and our house will be Refinery Town.
This last weekend was a flurry of DIY excitement, learning, and horror. The downstairs bathroom is now done; a two day project that turned into three weeks because the previous owners slapped wallpaper right onto the drywall without primer.  After rebuilding the walls with joint compound, sanding, priming, and painting, it’s all almost completely back to normal. Orie bought a new mirror that I’ll install Thursday or Friday night.

Yesterday (remember, Sun-Tue is my weekend these days) I got House Season One Disk Two in the mail, and watched the whole thing while at the same time reading SF books that Beth’s husband Dan lent me. And yet I still had enough time to completely and carefully repaint the entirety of the dining room. And completely tear down and rebuild two toilets (I had to replace all the inside components to prevent leaking, and replace all rubber components) even though I had never done it before.

It was a crazy few DIY days, but man, I feel a little liberated. I’m not a weenie who needs to call plumbing for a little leak or whatever, as I assumed I would be.  Still, as the amount of work, research, and skills required to do a fix increases, my “headache factor” starts to set in. In such cases it’s probably better on my mind and spirit to call a professional and be done with it. Ex: We will probably be having someone “not us” strip the wallpaper in the upstairs bathrooms and kitchen if they can’t be easily removed. We’ll see.

Exercise is mediocre in the start-stop environment of the 4 Day 10 Hour shift. I basically keep myself to 20 minute workouts when I can on work days (sometimes 40 minute ones), but on my free days I never seem to make the time to do a 40 minute or one hour. I prioritize other stuff, figuring I’ll get to it later, and by the time Later comes it’s 11:30 or 12:00. One thing I realized about the 8-5 is that my habits become regular, including exercise.

That’s about it for now. More later.

1) The dining room table has been upgraded to “will ship/arrive week of September 10th”. Yay.

2) I’m really starting to use a Getting Things Done-like system. I will have a question or two for hard core users. Turns out, the book is REALLY BLAND compared to other books like the Covey personal productivity books. It reads very much like a tech manual. I need heartful vignettes, dammit! So I haven’t eaten through the entire book yet, and will soon be hitting some very poignant concerns (about basically using my Writing Pad in conjunction with a Calendar so that I can plan events, without having to buy a palm pilot). I’ll ask for help once I get further through the book, though.

3) I worked out 2 20-minute intense sessions back to back today. Then I drank about 3 glasses of lukewarm water (better than cold). I use to exercise ALL THE TIME (Tae Kwan Do and Kung Fu), but never knew that drinking a lot of water after exercising was a bad thing. Wow. Now I know. Uh, I won’t go into gory bathroom details.

4) Work is work. No reduction in enjoyment, no huge increases in joy. I’m still very happy, though it did get quite busy today (the first day of my four-day week). As I think I mentioned earlier, for the continued stable survival of our elite “We only work support issues for our Top Accounts” team, we should only be getting 5-7 case assignments (from calls or emails) per day (2 of those will be Easy, the rest will be a Monster).  Today I got 13. Again. Only three of those were Easy.
5) My Story Games site is pretty successful. It’s my gaming Bat Cave. I was kinda disappointed in the amount of CSS Styles for the forum software (Vanilla), so I went to the Lussumo forums and started a “Vanilla Forum Software Styles Contest“. If you’re familiar with the forums and are good with CSS, give it a shot!

6) I’m currently making Ninjas for Tenra Bansho. This project has been kinda stressful, but lately it’s becoming more and more fun. I think it’s because I feel like it’s coming together more.

7) Gotta go to sleep. Last night I only got about 3 hours (dunno why, some kind of trippy insomnia, plus the shifting x10 work day sleep schedule), I have no idea how I made it through the day. Tonight I have to get at least a solid eight. Ack, too late for that now. make it seven!

8) I saw that on Amazon, after years of hunting, some dealers appeared selling Used copies of the Best Book on Tape in the Universe: ROBOT CITY Part 1 (by “Isaac Asimov”, but actually written by someone else). It’s a book on tape from like 1988 (89?) that’s read like a professional radio drama. The story itself is “ok”, but the voice actors and effects made it something incredibly awesome. Basically as soon as it arrives, with a help of a friend I’m turning it into an MP3. It would be a complete and total coincidence if it happened to then appear on the internet for my friends.

Posted to the dread-rpg Yahoogroup today:

I’m really sorry about not posting more often.  I wound up getting a job as a video game writer/designer shortly after the publication of Dread, and other than a few PDF supplements, I didn’t make much time for the game.

-Rafael

Very cool news.  As y’all might know, Dread: The First Book of Pandemonium, while it had its rules flaws and the like, was pretty much one of the coolest, most rock-solid (in terms of creepiness and direction) horror games ever produced.

It was also a huge influence on my own The Ghost Killers, which is pretty much “The feel of Dread with different rules and a different backstory”. I was nervous for a second there actually hearing of Dread’s rebirth (because the impetus for me to start writing it was “Dread is Dead and that style of play needs to come back”, but Dread is slick enough, and TGK’s focus is different enough, that there’s no stepping on toes.
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