Future Tech I Am Anticipating

A search engine that can, for example, find a film based on a description of this nature: "The one with that blond guy, from that sitcom a few years back who always made a face like this. There was a subplot about dragons in there, too. I can't really remember."

One Whole Month

So, I started this blog one month ago today. Or, yesterday, I think? So anyway, happy one month anni-blogger... Blogger-versar... Burger-Corsair.
Yeah.

Like Father and Son

So, I don't know how many of you have heard of the RPG Eclipse Phase. It's a sci-fi setting, sort of a transhuman, post-post-cyberpunk. I like it a lot, the system included, but the setting is very dense. There's a lot of need to know info, and a hell of a lot to explore. But, this results in some incredibly interesting character concepts, given the sheer volume of opportunities the game presents. I plan to GM it soon, and had two players make characters.

One is a mentally ill adult who is technically around five years old, raised at an accelerated rate for post-apocalyptic re-population purposes that went horribly wrong, resulting in homicidal tendencies, an amazing ability to lie, and "psychic" powers (this bit is explained better in the book, I swear). He works mainly as a freelance criminal after the project that led to his birth went under due to failures and lack of support, and was thereafter released.

The other is an older man, originally from Egypt before Earth went cataclysmic and became unlivable. A computer scientist and psychologist who specializes in virtual reality settings for psychosurgical purposes, he worked for the cognitive sciences corporation that created the project that led to the first character's creation. Depressed with the failures of the project, he attempted to atone by aiding the man. Preferring to exist as data rather than physically, he keeps the psychic company by inhabiting the network connection hardware wired into the psychic's brain, in place of a standard AI assistant, common for most individuals.

Wacky times are ahead.

Yep, Mining Asteroids

While I'm a bit late to the party, the news is pretty exciting all the same. I was certainly hoping as much, but it's nice to actually know for sure. Guess we're nearly in the future now.
And, uh, well, this is an update, so there.

>Miss Update

Hm, missed a day, and while I suppose it was inevitable that it'd happen sometime, it's still a bit saddening. Ah well, my first post covered this, I guess.

Anyway, it seems my constant yet sporadic love affair with text adventures has caught up with me again. It's mostly through this site that I've been playing them. I greatly recommend Anchorhead, very Lovecraft inspired horror, and Metamorphoses, a very mysterious and fantastic game.

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day, everybody. I plan to celebrate by being on the Earth.
And maybe also try to keep track of what day it is and when holidays occur, as I can only rely on Google's home page logo art changes so much.

Odd Fact

It seems all traditional Japanese lullabies are about how completely terrible crying children are, and how rad festivals are. Sounds about right.

Cover to Cover

Imagine an incredibly long book, with tons and tons of main characters. The book itself starts as an illustrated children's book, following the lives of several of those main characters as children the same age as the reader, and several adult minor characters. Throughout the book, most of the characters interact with each other, but still live their own lives.
As the narrative goes on, the illustrations drop off and the writing style grows more complex, till it reaches your standard "young adult" fiction level, in which the characters are now in their early teens, and the nature of their lives changes accordingly. Each character has their own perspectives, upbringings, and view of each other character, and these mature and develop with the story.
Later, it transitions slowly to standard fiction, to deal with each of the characters' adult years, though I'm not sure how much longer it would go on from here.
I suppose it would work better practically, but not thematically, if it were a series of books. Quite a long one, with the idea being that a kid would read the series, maybe a book or two a year, for a lot of their life, with the end goal of it being to nurture a love of reading, a sense of empathy, and all that. All in all, the idea seems a little beyond me in scope. Kind of like the work of Henry Darger, but hopefully less crazy.

A Poignant Comment on Human Nature

"If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girlfriend."

-1,930+ year old graffiti in the atrium of the house of Pinarius, in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii

Modern day graffiti:

"Secundus likes to screw boys."

-1,930+ year old graffiti outside the Eumachia building, in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii

Modern day graffiti:

宇宙 キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!!

Fascinating news story, folks. Looks like that predicted trend of privately owned corporations/wealthy citizens picking up national slack with regard to space exploration may finally be coming true. But I mostly have to give props to this logo:

The news story itself already sounds like the prologue to a cyberpunk novel, and it looks a lot like Planetary Resources' logo team must have thought so too. Pretty snazzy.

How I Get My Ideas

I'm of the belief that anyone can have a good and original idea, just that inspiration has to strike them. But, inspiration is an often unreliable thing, so what to do when you need to come up with something but don't have the time to wait to be struck?
Well, here's what I do.

Method 1: Try to record ideas as they come to me, even if they're pretty lame. A little fleshing out can do wonders.
Method 2: Wrack my brain and stare off into space until I've got something.
Method 3: Ask others for help, bouncing horrid, half-thought ideas back in forth until something comes to me and I very rudely cut them off and go to work on it.

I, uh, hope that was enlightening.

A Female Deer

Hopefully this'll be the last one of these random girl portraits for a while.

THIS IS A REAL ANIMAL! (A Strange Dream)

So there's this massive, cyberpunk-esque metropolis, right? With all the neon, floating cars, and dense clouds of smoke and all that. But just outside it, past all the clouds, is this sunny, enchanted looking forest. And there are, in fact, unicorns and pixies and the like frolicking around, as well as caves where goblins and dragons lurk. But, this isn't Shadowrun! All those fantastic creatures are just genetically engineered, and very docile. The forest itself is a tourist spot, where you pay to do some glorified LARPing. You can play a druid, or a knight, or what have you.
My dream starts in a tavern in this enchanted wood type area, though I am not myself. I'm someone else, an older blond dude with short cropped hair and dark stubble playing a knight, who is getting pretty drunk and breaking a lot of the park rules. There's a big fight, and then I get thrown out. There's some odd section about Spider-Man here (this whole part of the dream was quite vague), but then I'm in the city, and I'm actually me. I'm in a small apartment, reminiscent of a capsule/honeycomb hotel with my brother and a friend of his. We're watching a small television set, set into the wall up high, like in a waiting room. A show that we are anticipating (somehow similar to Ghost in the Shell), is going to come on shortly. We're pretty excited, but evidently we all do something quite wrong, or had something we did found out, and are thus punished. A couple of police androids show up and give us the standard punishment, which is to say they stick these weird things in our noses. It had a hard plastic base, and two rubber extensions with what looked like fiber optics with rapidly flashing lights inside attached to a thin wire, which entered the nose. Kind of like this:

Kind of looks a lot like a sex-toy, come to think of it.

The devices "locked in", and became impossible to remove without injury, but would "unlock" at a specific time, later in the day. Just in time for the show, fortunately. It took a little getting used to, but with a little practice, I got to be able to breathe as normal. I stepped out of the hotel/apartment and out onto the streets at around dusk, and decided to go to a local bar that I was evidently familiar with. I forgot about the device in my nose's other purpose, and it began to rapidly flash and beep, as I was in a restricted zone for my privilege level, and I was escorted out. It was also implied that the device was a tracker, as well.
After this, a nonsensical scene transition occurs, and I don't seem to have the device in my nose anymore, and most of the "plot" from before is dropped, but I'm still me, and still in the city. Except now I have a car, a red with white finish, retro '50s looking open roofed sports car that hovers a foot or so off the ground. I'm driving, with my girlfriend in the passenger seat, and we've got the radio up, and are laughing and having a good time, but it's getting pretty late. We decide to pull into a motel, which is sort of a squat sized building that we drive up to and a canopy off the building closes over the open roof of the car, giving us enough room to stand up and still have a ceiling. A small room exists from the car to the building of the wall, which has a bathroom and closet. My girlfriend and I fold the seats down, and are about to go to sleep, when I suddenly need to go to the bathroom, so I slip out and head that way.
After I'm done with my business, I look over to notice there's a door set into the wall, and I wonder where it leads. I step through and see a kitchen that seems to be connected only to my room, but seems much, much too large for just my uses, more like a large restaurant's kitchen. As I walk farther in, I notice another doorway and step into that one. I ascend a curving flight of stairs, and on my way, pass an old friend of mine who is descending, but we don't say anything to each other. I get to the top, on a balcony inside what looks like the foyer of a typical mansion, with more stairs leading up. Here I notice large thick metal beams set against the wall, leading up to something I can't see from my angle. I ascend again, two more floors, and it turns out they're the legs for a three story tall Casio electric keyboard. This seems nonsensical, but my attention is diverted as I notice another door, which I step through.
I'm now in a large poolside "outdoor" resort (it quickly becomes apparent to me that it's actually indoors, and through a clever combination of inflatable scenery, backdrops and holograms, only seems to be outdoors). Though, oddly, much of my family seems to be here, even members I haven't seen in years. I look past the pool to a winding "country road", where many of my family members are arriving in classic cars with wheels, all claiming that they drove hours to get here from this place or that, despite all arriving at once from the same road. They also have some pretty creepy, artificial smiles as they say this. My parents finally show up, in a baby blue classic Volkswagen Beetle (which they have never owned, I might add) though there appears to be an older man and woman in the backseat that I don't recognize. My parents get out and quickly explain that they represent voices in my father's head? The man, a balding Semitic looking fellow, is supposedly the more annoying voice of the two, and my father and I berate and threaten him until he leaves in fear out a back door which before looked only like blue sky. After a while of hanging around, my dad and I decide that this is all horrible, and decide to leave out that same door.
We step out into an alleyway, and it looks to be a cloudy mid-day, somehow. We begin to walk and talk, and as we do, I glance and see where the old voice man is hiding, though my father doesn't seem to notice. He has a look of fear on his face, and I shoot him an evil "if you step out of that spot we are going to tear you apart" sort of grin his way, and continue walking. Suddenly my phone rings, and it's another friend of mine, and we start some idle chit-chat. However, I stop paying attention to focus on what my dad's saying, about how all the food in this city is gross, chemically processed junk, which I agree with. We make some vague plans to hunt one of the creatures in the forest for food, probably a unicorn. I then realize how I was ignoring my friend, and put the phone back to my ear, when I notice he's singing. Singing really well, actually, though about my brother's friend's dog, and how much he loves him. "I love you, Buddy I love you", he sings, and I feel slightly uncomfortable, even though by "Buddy", I know he means the dog. I compliment him on his singing and attempt to pretend I was paying attention, when my father and I finally get out of the alley and on the street itself. Lots of tall skyscrapers painted a variety of shades of red and violet. An animated billboard catches my eye. It shows a video of what looks to be a man-like koala, holding a very large (about the size of my hand) brownish grasshopper type bug. The koala consumes the things in three quick, brutal, and horrifying bites with his frighteningly human teeth, and text flashes on the screen, declaring "THIS IS A REAL ANIMAL!". It then flashes to drawings of anthropomorphic animals, each one getting more human as it goes along, and each one having even ruder and cruder insults pasted over it, in comparison to the koala thing.
Then I wake up, and my mind is blown, because I've never remembered this much of a dream, and certainly not in such stunning detail.

April Arts

Another random drawing of a girl, as I am uninspired. 

A Story Idea That Has Likely Already Been Done, and May Not be That Interesting

So there's this fellow named Jack. Young and curious, and the son of a very open-minded and permissive Christian/Jewish couple, Jack finds himself very interested in the nature of faith, of god(s) and of religion in general. He begins to study as many of them as he can, and each one he encounters lets him gaze upon whole vistas of truth and enlightenment that he never knew were there. He comes to a conclusion that few others do, that there is more than just a shred of truth to every faith, but that all of them are completely true. He throws himself into book after book, to learn as much as he can and be as faithful as possible.
But, as Jack does so, he begins to notice some things. The first is that he's not a genius with an eidetic memory, and he tends to forget much of what he learned as he moves on to new areas. The second is that many, many contradictions appear when trying to believe in everything. Contradictions both on the surface, and hidden deep within, but not just inter-faith contradictions, but intra-faith ones as well.
So, Jack disregarded all the contradictions, as pitfalls on the way to being truly enlightened, and that only through true study and understanding would those dark spots be properly illuminated to him. The "true study" was of course the bigger problem; Jack just couldn't keep all of it in one head. And so he had an idea. He typed up a table on his computer, listing every known god or other worshiped entity/concept, and assigned a number to each one. Some numbers had subcategories, denoting different sects. He then planned to take a random number generator, find a random god, serve it and study its teachings as best as he can, and do it all again the next day. Over and over again until he reached this "true enlightenment".
And so our tale begins. Fate was kind to Jack today, now not so young. He eased himself up off the floor, scattering empty bottles of wine to and fro. Jack had served Bacchus the day before, and was lucky to have the relatively vague faith of Technopaganism to serve today. He remembered, a few months back, trying to meditate and focus on the Tao the day after the worship of a particularly demanding Shinto goddess of mirth and revelry. It had not gone well.

What's in Them?

Names I've come up with that wound up already being used elsewhere:
Kermit McDermott - Used in the song "Do That There (Young Einstein Hoo-Hoo Mix)", by Lyrics Born on the album "Same Shit, Different Day" (which is about as good as it sounds).
Danny Callahan - The title of a Conor Oberst song, on his solo album, "Conor Oberst" and I will try to resist making a joke about him stealing Danny from me.

The first one I can live without, but... I liked Danny. Ah well.

Star Nosed Lovers

Feeling uninspired, so here's an older picture of mine.

My Hobby

Taking Captchas and turning them into fantasy character names.

Arc joiroce - Actually, that one's fine as is. Some sort of charismatic wizard.
Sookevan face - Skeivan Fasay, Masai style warrior
Esideore That - Esideor, some Elven lady.
Latche labyall - Fine as is. Young street thief.

And an old favorite that I still want to use as a bandit name, Woolly Tchavate.

Midnight Muttering

Like many people, when I lay down to sleep at night, I tend to get lost in thought for a good while. And like many people, I tend to stay lost in thought while nearly asleep, producing some rather nonsensical musings.

The other night, I kept on repeating one such phrase, as evidently it held great significance for sleepy me. I kept repeating the phrase even after I gradually began to become fully conscious, and it seemed so bizarre to me that I just had to write it down.

"Couldn't count the Fox; Couldn't count the Decimal."

Now, what gets me is the capitalization of the second "couldn't", and fox and decimal, as well as the semicolon use. Though that's not to say that the statement itself is very sensible either.

By the Light of the Moon

So, I had an idea. Lycacanthropes are altered by the light of the moon, right? But why not the sun? The moon's light is just a reflection of it.
So I got to thinking. Lycanthropes transmit their affliction through bites and cuts, so let's just assume it's viral or bacterial. Now, certain lifeforms are very dependent on sunlight, or light in general. White light can be divided into the visible spectrum of colors via a prism. So, perhaps the moon's not a ball of relatively inert rock, but actually has a surface covered with crystal formations and the like. When sunlight hits these crystals, they act as a prism, and the newly divided light is reflected back to the Earth's surface where it hits the skin of an individual carrying the virus/bacteria/whatever, agitating it and causing the carrier to transform somehow, perhaps only partially transforming when there's less moonlight out, hence the full moon thing.
I was thinking the virus/bacteria/whatever (hereafter referred to as the v/b/w) maybe does something with the DNA or some such, and when transmitted, those features inherent to the original creature are then passed on to the next creature. I guess the cycle would probably stop there.
I'll admit that it's not very well thought out, and would be more believable as some nanomachine thing (which is saying something, plausibility wise) than a virus or what have you.

Year of the Dragon

Yeah, that "more or less where I'm still at" bit I pulled the other day in that art progress post felt like a cop out to me too. So here's a sketch of Nephyrem for 2012 I did. Enjoy.

Lookin' smug.

Feels Super, Man

I'm a big fan of the big blue boy scout, though perhaps not as much or in quite the same way as that last post may have implied. So, I'm glad I set that record (very) straight.

But in any case, Superman's a big inspiration of mine, as incredibly trite and cliche as that may sound. I'd like to pretend I've liked him since I was a boy, but that just isn't so. I never cared for him as a child (I much preferred Batman), and as a teen, I honestly hated him (I still much preferred Batman). He seemed a cliche, representing and fighting for dated concepts, completely over powered and something of a Mary Sue. But then I grew up a little, stopped being so bitter, and actually read some of his comics. Namely Birthright, All Star, Red Son, For the Man Who Has Everything, and so on. I found it to be incredibly powerful stuff.

Here was this larger than life figure, who had the power of a demi-god (or a full-blown god, depending on the writers), and all he wanted to do was to help, more than anything. And he didn't always succeed, but he never let that stop him. And he didn't always know what to do, but he didn't let that stop him either. And he also never asked for anything in return. Hell, on occasion, he'd earn the ire, or even the hatred of the people he saved, but he'd keep at it nonetheless. And this figure has endured 70+ years of popularity, burned into the public consciousness, and all for a very good reason. While alien, he embodies the best elements of humanity, but is not without our struggles and pitfalls.

And how could that not be inspiring? There's so much more, but it's difficult to properly convey. But it was inspiring, and frankly, it made me want to help, too. It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but a big part of why I'm planning to go into the career I want to go into is because of Superman, because I want to lend a hand every day as he does.

Were I at Comic Con

You know those comic fans who take things way too seriously, and get incredibly analytical? And you know the ones who ask really bizarre and embarrassing questions about pointless things in these fantasy worlds? In public, at a convention? I want to be one of those.
I want to approach the DC Comics panel at a convention, and ask just such an uncomfortable question, but in a very long winded way, the punch of which comes at the very end.


"So, unless it was a common, traditional practice on the planet Krypton(which I'd personally find highly unlikely, given the overall pointlessness of the procedure even by modern Earth standards, and the advanced scientific understanding of Krypton), or the Kents happened to do the deed just before Earth's yellow sun altered his physiology to the point that the procedure would be impossible, it's fair to assume that Superman is uncircumcised, right? Like, in all likelihood?"


Or something like that. 

The March of Progress

Hey, that wasn't an intentional omission. While I would say that I am more skilled in some dimensions, I fall horribly short to your own skills in many other areas.

But anyway! Today I'm going to show a little of my artistic progression, all via pictures of that lovable rascal, Nephyrem.

This particular image is from around... 2008, I think. It's hard to remember, and the image data isn't accurate since I moved computers. Anyway, the poor perspective and pretty boy look were pretty dominating factors at this time.

This one is from 2009, I believe, and shows my attempt to add a few more realistic elements to my art style, but it still hasn't escaped the pretty boy zone completely.

This image, from 2010, shows a return to a more stylistic, simple and clean (is the way that you're making me feel, tonight) style, but kind of a regression in many other ways.

This particular portrait appeared in 2011, and shows a newfound interest in the semi-realistic style, and does a lot to reconcile past issues. While not perfect by any means, it's more or less where I'm still at.

I hope you've enjoyed this walk down my memory lane.

Sailing the Five Seas

As tempted as I am to continue the little referential cycle I've got going with that pretty cool fellow on that other blog (and as flattered as I am by his comments and drawing of a Mission Spider, and as much as I've always found his creativity inspiring [in a totally manly kind of way]), I think it's best not to over do the meta-blogging too much.

Today's post will be a little project of mine that I've been idly working on for awhile now, and a very nerdy one at that. It's a conversion of the setting of the Elder Scrolls series of role playing games for use with Chaosium's Basic Role Playing system, or BRP.
It's not very fleshed out as of yet, but it's enough for my own purposes. Here it is.
My own purposes are, GMing the thing for my friends on occasion, a very nautical globetrotting sort of game. I scribbled up their characters in MS Paint not too long ago.

Click for the full, and legible view, please.

Across Lines and Barriers

As the subject implies, this is one of those posts. My pal Eric P referenced me the other day, and I feel I ought to do the same. While I don't necessarily agree with my amigo EP's view on friendship (I think some people have friends regardless of whether or not they feel cooler than them sometimes), I do agree in some ways, as I think my tomodachi Extended Play is a pretty cool guy.
But anyway, the other lines to cross, those of language! In pun form, of course. I was busy playing an untranslated Japanese fighting game today, and each match is called a "mission", and when you fail, the narrator will say "ミッション 失敗 だ/ 'Misshon Shippai da", which means, unsurprisingly, mission failed. However, "shippai da", especially when said dropping the long "i" in "shi" as the narrator does, sounds an awful lot like spider.
Let's just say those damn mission spiders hounded me to no end today, ruining my chances at success.

No, Not the Band

I enjoy living in a dry, sandy place for as many reasons as I dislike it. But, no need to be negative today. It was incredibly, tree-falling/shed-flippingly windy just the other day, and this powerful wind swept all marks upon the sand away. Looking out on the sand, to find only your own set of footprints marring the uniformity of the landscape around you is positively sublime. Calls to forth images of the moon landing, and of man's unique little place in things.

...Or, well, at least it does for me.