Archive for the ‘All Entries’ Category
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“The King’s Last Laugh”
I’m starting to DM (“Dungeon Master” for those of you who don’t have blogs with names like “Geek Perspective”) a campaign for a group of people over in New York. They all get together, and then I appear on their laptop with the magic of modern technology.
They all seem really excited, which in turn makes me really excited. After we met for the first time last Friday to go over the basic rules and start building character sheets, I knew I wanted to really give them the deluxe storytelling experience.
If anybody wants to follow along, you can check out the campaign premise (PDF) and read up on the character King Remwald (also PDF, read this one second). Also, you might get a kick out of an old post I wrote about the different types of D&D players.
If you are a player in this campaign, then don’t worry, you don’t need to make fancy PDFs when you write your character’s backstory or anything like that. If you feel inspired, then go for it, but just have fun and leave the work to me.
If you aren’t a player in this campaign, then feel free to leave comments, but know that we’ll ignore you if you try to do any backseat driving, and I’ll delete those comments when I see them. No, you don’t get to be “a voice in their character’s head.” I’m posting this stuff because I realized players from my previous campaigns as well as friends of the current players might be interested, not because I want the internet to swoop in and do the thinking for my players. So please don’t spoil anything by posting your theories, non-mechanics advice, puzzle solution ideas, etc. If I feel like we have a problem, then I just won’t post campaign materials publicly. We’ll see how this goes.
Good luck, players!
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Winter Break: Mission Objectives
I’m done with another semester at AAU, and holy smokes does it feel good. I flew home yesterday right after my last class. Every few hours, “I’m done” pops into my head and I smile.
So here’s a selfish list of random things I want to do, preferably with wonderful friends just like you.
This is very important.- Grill some steaks and/or have a Star Wars marathon.
- Go ice skating in the temporary rink at the Hotel del Coronado.
- Have a lazy picnic on a sailboat some afternoon, preferably with a piña colada and a bucket of chicken wings in addition to whatever else we decide to bring. (Don’t judge me, Mason. I still want more wings.)
- Watch every remaining episode of Kitchen Nightmares.
- See Sherlock Holmes.
- See Avatar.
- See Princess and the Frog.
- Go to Knott’s Berry Farm.
- Find a new coat.
- Go to a Charger’s game.
- Convince my dad to make his unbelievable rack of lamb one night.
- Get down to Clayton’s for chocolate chip pancakes, and maybe some corned beef hash too.
- Eat a bowl of Applejacks, just because it’s been like ten years since I’ve had a bowl and I was reminded of them recently.
- Make cookies— from scratch for once. With lots of chocolate. And spices.
- Spend a sunny day finding out how many cherry pits fit in my mouth.
Bonus: Shave my beard so I can see what I look like without one for the first time in years.
Also, I’ll post up the final versions of all the stuff I made for my design classes plus the video presentation I made for my art history class. But that can wait. Stuff from my narrative storytelling class is already up anyway.
Update: I uploaded the work to my Deviant Art. They wouldn’t take my video files though, so you can watch them here. Watch out, they play kinda fast. It feels that way especially because of chaotic camera movements, but hey, not bad for having used that particular program for only two weeks, right? I’m happy with all of them.
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“A Poet on a Couch”
I just finished the final* draft of my short story “A Poet on a Couch” for Ms. Elizabeth Hille’s class, English Composition: Narrative Storytelling. There’s a decent chance that I’ll be reading it tomorrow for the class, and if that goes really well, then maybe I’ll submit it to some competitions. And if you read it and enjoy it, then leave a comment to let me know!
Thank you to Ms. Hille and all of my classmates for all the useful feedback from the very first draft onward.
Also, special thanks to Stephanie Breijo, Elijah Colpitts, Krystal Kranz, Toby Mayer, Mason Prenevost, Chris Ramm, and Sabrina Wenske for top-notch editing and proofreading.
*Update: Heh, oops. I misunderstood. We read our stories, but we actually we have another week, so I’ll probably make some more changes after all. I’ll upload the actual final here on the 15th.
Update 2: As promised, I’ve uploaded the new version. Made more changes than I thought I would. The link points to it now.
Again, if you read it, please leave a comment (or at least vote in the unrelated poll).
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Sans Serif Font Comparison
I switched to Fontcase a few weeks ago, and I’ve been very happy with it. I feel like it’s more of a pleasure to use than the other font management programs I’ve used. It just feels like more love was put into the design of the interface itself.
I’ve begun the long process of adding things like ratings and tags to all my fonts. While doing so last night, I rounded up 30 sans serif typefaces that I think are pretty good. Being able to print out a sample page for a typeface is pretty standard for font management programs, so I went ahead and made a PDF for those 30 fonts from their sample pages.
Enjoy.
Just look at those fonts. Aren’t they beautiful? They’re my favorite 30 sans serifs right now, but I keep changing my mind. They’re in alphabetical order since I keep flip-flopping about how I’d rank them against each other. Five that would definitely be around the top though are Interstate, Din, Puritan 2.0, Droid Sans, and Trade Gothic.
I uploaded the file for anybody who likes typography, but for people who also need professional font management programs, I think it’s also a good example of how Fontcase just has a more polished, attractive way of presenting everything. The sample pages are meant to be printed out, but I still think they’re beautiful on the screen. And obviously there’s a boatload of other ways to look at fonts.
Anybody who says typography isn’t super interesting is full of baloney.
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Upcoming Classes
I just got back from registering for my next classes at AAU, and here they are.
Winter Intercession
January 11 to 29- Art History Through the 19th Century – Monday through Friday, Online
I’m taking a class during the intercession to get more credits out of the way, and it’s going to be tough because it’s compressing a 15-week class into 3 weeks. To put it another way, that’s a 1-week module of art history per day, so I’m going to hate my life for a while but it should be over pretty quickly. And since it’s online, I can still come home at least.
Spring Semester
February 1 to May 22- General Psychology – Tuesday, 12:00-2:50 pm
- Digital Design 1 – Tuesday, 3:30-6:20 pm
- English Composition: Creative Persuasion – Wednesday, 12:00-2:50 pm
- Digital Photography – Thursday, 12:00-2:50 pm
I’m at the point now where I’m starting to take electives, so I think my spring semester is going to be really enjoyable. I don’t think the workload will be super heavy like the semester I naively took Fundamentals of Graphic Design at the same time as Materials, Tools, and Comping Techniques. I might even join the swim team too.
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