Hedgemistress's BYOND Hope

ahem cough

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:28:25 GMT

I am not dead yet
I can dance and I can sing
I am not dead yet
I can do the Highland Fling

I am not dead yet
No need to go to bed
No need to call the doctor
Cause I'm not yet dead.

I've spent the last several months getting my writing up to the point where it can support me, hence the lack of progress on Hedgerow Hall. Obviously, working a full-time job and then writing for the equivalent of a full-time job doesn't leave a lot of time for messing around with computer games. Now I've ditched the job and got my writing routine down to where it only takes eight hours a day, so I've got time for BYOND once more

In the mean time, they went and released BYOND 4, which means I've got a lot of new stuff to learn with the new interface system... so it'll be a while before Hedgerow Hall shows up live. There'll probably be a new version of Manifesto! or something similar, though, as I learn my way around the skin builder.

If you didn't like Spider-man 3...

Fri, 04 May 2007 15:46:06 GMT

...what exactly were you expecting to see?

I'm assuming the people who watched it have seen the other two movies.

Because a blog full of geeks is cheaper than a research department.

Thu, 03 May 2007 11:54:39 GMT

Any budding Latin scholars care to help me construct a motto which would translate into English as "Progress Through Stability?"

Offering a one year BYOND membership on the key of your choice to the first person who responds with a phrase I deem useable.

Hot Fuzz

Wed, 02 May 2007 17:28:01 GMT

Say what you will about the Brits (go ahead, it's fun), but they know how to do sophisticated satire of a sort that's hard to find in America these days... and hard to appreciate, if the American reviews of Hot Fuzz are any indication. This movie is breathtakingly good.

[EDIT]

Looks like the bad reviews I read were flukes... the general consensus is very positive on both sides of the Atlantic.

I'm changing my mind about fan-creations (fan fic, fan games, etc.)

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:27:20 GMT

People who are close acquaintances of mine for a long time have sometimes noticed that opinions I once felt very strongly about and express in a vehement fashion can wind up changing, often with little external warning.

This comes from one of the cornerstones of my philosophy: all opinions are inherently suspect, if not outright worthless, and should be attacked savagely to expose their flaws (though, as I've said before, I'm trying to cut down on the amount of time I spend doing this.)

Usually, when I express this belief to somebody, they respond with, "Oh, so only your opinions are worth anything. What makes you so special?"... completely overlooking the fact that I claimed no exception for myself.

My idea of a good argument is one where everybody (again, not excepting myself) goes away with their opinions at least slightly modified, because this suggests that everybody learned something.

</BIG LONG PREAMBLE>

The upshot of this is that I'm coming to the conclusion that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with fan[whatevers]. I just got done reading this. It's mostly a legal defense of fan fiction, but I honestly don't give a flying fornication about legality. Something is either right or wrong, regardless of the law... the law should ideally be defined by morality, but morality is not defined by laws.

However, the article makes a very persuasive argument by way of having a big long rambling preamble that goes on for miles and miles before ever coming to any thing which resembles any kind of a point (is there anything better?). It doesn't invoke so many legal principles in this portion, but instead focuses on what human impulses cause fan fiction, and what benefits flow from it.

I read it, and found myself agreeing.

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that 99% of fan fiction is pure and utter crap... but that's more a function of zero barrier to entry. If nobody ever had the idea of writing fan fiction, but everybody who did wrote original fiction (orgfic? Hee hee. I like that term) instead, the same percentage of that would be just as crappy.

So, I'm not going to take up writing fan fiction any time soon. I'm also not going to release my own characters to the public domain or stop (gently) discouraging readers who suggest that they might take a stab at writing them.

Massive control issues aside, there's a big difference between my humble efforts and those of a major multinational corporation: there's no doubt in anybody's mind which is the "real, official" version when a major multinational corporation is involved. As long as I'm just Some Person self-publishing on the internet, it'd be hrd to distinguish my official work from any fan fic that did crop up.

And that's also not to say I agree with everything put forth within the article I linked to. I believe an author can be in the position of possessing the One True Interpretation of his or her work. The fact that everybody who encounters said work will perceive it differently doesn't negate the author's vision, any more than the fact that twenty people will hear the same sound differently negates the ultimate truth of that sound.

The "real version" of my characters exist within my head, and some of them get pretty vocal and/or violent when they find themselves being misinterpreted... but... that's a different subject entirely.

Pound sterling? More like pounded, less-than-sterling!

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:09:45 GMT

Hey, England? You know how your money's worth twice as much as ours?

Well, not any more... suckers! Or should I say, "suckres"?

U S A! U S A!

Some geometry questions, for the geometrically wiser.

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:48:07 GMT

So, I'm trying to work out the finer points of a science fantasy universe. A big part of it is going to revolve around rod-like, um, rods of a particular material. I need to know what monetary value to set for a given mass of this material to appropriately represent its scarceness/value... which is going to be tied into the volume of an important common artifact made from it. I don't have the final dimensions of the artifact, because I need to know how to figure out the volume of my "ballpark" version of it... because this thing's going to effectively set the value of everything else... so I need to know that my ballpark is somewhat reasonable for everything else I'm thinking of.

If the above is too specific, I can vague it up a bit.

Anyway:

The object I think I'm thinking of is a hexagonal prism. Specifically, I'm envisioning something like a rod (as I said), except not rounded... when viewed from the top or bottom, it looks like a regular hexagon. So, question one... is that, in fact, a hexagonal prism?

Question two, if A is the length of each the hexagon's sides and B is the length of the prism's sides, what's the volume of the prism? Obviously I'm looking for a formula here, though if somebody wants to show me the formula AND solve it for A = 1 and B = 1, and then I can multiply that by whatever the final length of the rods'll be, that'd be helpful.

Human decency.

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:56:01 GMT

A thought to consider: the people who made the V-Tech shooter's life a living hell in high school aren't guilty of killing anybody. He was (literally) a sick man, and even in his sickness, he himself made the decisions that lead to his own fateful actions.

The people who made his life a living hell, however, are still guilty of having made someone's life a living hell.

Why do we that to each other?

That's not meant to be a scathing indictment of anybody. I'm not pretending to stand in judgement over anybody. I'm certainly not claiming to be innocent in this particular regard. If I have learned nothing from my creepy obsession with Joss Whedon, it's that everybody in high school had somebody they picked on, somebody who was in some way lower than them. Whatever sh-t got heaped upon you, you turned right around and dumped it right on somebody else.

When you're under eighteen, that's the circle of life.

Maybe you didn't realize you were doing it. Maybe you had what you consider to be a good reason. Maybe you picked on somebody, but only somebody you thought had it coming. Maybe you're just one of those people who smiled at everybody and never had what you considered to be an unkind word to say about anybody, and you never realized you were doing something that made somebody around you miserable.

After all, you treated everybody the way you wanted to be treated, and well, that's the golden rule, isn't it?

Nice having a rule of behavior that doesn't require you to look outside your owh head...

Again, that's not supposed to be an indictment of you.

Whoever you are.

Anyway, this is all a very long preamble, but I've said it often: I'm not a very concise person. "Brevity being the sole of wit," and all that.

A lot of people reading the above will probably assume I had a lousy time in high school and that I was one of the unpopular kids. Hmm. Well, was I? I don't really know. Because life is more complicated than a 44 minute TV drama, and my school was too small to really support cliques. I mean, the same guys had to be in the drama club and speech team as were on the football team... or else there wouldn't have been enough people to fill any of them. In some ways, I was liked and respected and included... and in other ways I wasn't.

What rudimentary cliques there were, I didn't play within the rules of... I was well-liked by the teachers and generally well-behaved in class (except when it came to something I genuinely disagreed with), but when I hung out with anybody, it was the biggest troublemakers and rebels.

So, high school was an awesome time for me, full of exciting experiences and opportunities... and at the same time, it wasn't. That's life. I think it's our insistence on seeing things one way or another that blinds us. When I was in high school, a classmate doing a survey for an incredibly banal class project asked me the standard "glass half full/half empty" question. I tried to tell her it's both, and was told that wasn't a valid viewpoint. Not just that it was outside the parameters of the survey, but that the viewpoint itself had no value.

"Wishy-washy" was the word that was used. The psychology teacher (who was also, go figure, the guidance counselor), used the same word when I refused to join the rest of that class in agreeing to a blanket statement condemning all recreational drug use equally. "Wishy-washy."

But that's off-topic. The subject of this post is people treating each other horribly. It's something that happens far too often in this world. What can I do about that? Not a hell of a lot, actually... but there is one thing I can do.

I can stop doing it myself.

"Be the change you want to see in the world," said Gandhi. There were people who treated me like dirt in high school. There were people who, in turn, I treated like dirt. I regret that. For all that, I didn't hate my time in high school completely... but looking back on it, I know that's where a lot of my anger comes from, and I think it's time for me to start getting past that.

I recently made a post saying I was going to stop spending so much time engaged in arguments... I didn't specify this at the time, but I meant in particular the overly personal ones. I haven't done a perfect job of following through. I've tried, though, and I think I've made some improvement... and I'm going to try harder.

I changed my forum icon from a picture of a homicidal supervillainess to a simple black and white headshot. It's a little thing, but maybe it'll help.

I have a folder (an actual literal, paper one) full of some of my English composition homework from my junior and senior years. The quality of some of it is, of course, slightly embarrassing... but what strikes me more reading it is that I was such an optimistic and tolerant person back then. My senior year in particular I would peg as being the worst year of my life, for a variety of reasons... but there's one particular paper I wrote, where the assignment was to enumerate our beliefs... and when I look at it, I think, "My goth... how have I fallen so far?"

Teenaged me wouldn't be ashamed to be seen standing next to adult me, but she would be disappointed.

I write this after a week or so of emotional turmoil, soul-searching, ruminating, and more missed sleep than usual... so if it seems a little extra-tasty-rambly, that's probably why. I know there's parts I'm leaving out, and I know there's parts of this I could cut out and I wuold lose nothing, but I'm going to leave it as it is and just post this unedited.

Anyway, that's all... except for a general observation. If we did nothing else but treated each other decently, the world would be a better place. I don't mean love everybody, give everyone you meet the money out of your wallet and the shirt off your back... just be decent.

Not even excellent.

Just decent.

That's doesn't seem like it's asking so much.

DRIVE!

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:14:59 GMT

Are you watching this show?

Why the hell not?

It's on an hour before Heroes, so there's no excuse not to.

:P

It's not terribly original in its premise, but it's also not too derivative of any one thing, and it's got an outstanding cast, including Nathan Fillion, with lots of opportunities for him to do his patented "Angry Mal" face, and other great characters. The second episode (counting the two hour premiere as one) features a great "I don't like people touching my bunnies" moment (my readers will know what I mean) from the character of Wendy Patrakas.

It's got plenty of twists and turns, but it's not a total mind-f&^# show where they just make up crap to spring on you so that in retrospect they'll seem clever... for instance, every episode seems to feature a riddle-clue that is actually possible to figure out before they reveal it onscreen.

You won't lose anything if you check it out... but Fox has a history of cancelling good shows that don't instantly connect with an audience, so if you don't check it out now, you might lose the chance in the future.

The Right to Bear Arms

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:22:09 GMT

Call me kooky, but I find psychopaths with semiautomatic or even automatic weapons to be a greater threat to my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness than even this government is... I would feel perfectly secure if, in the event of jackbooted stormtroopers, only those sons of libety who had planned in advance were able to take up arms against oppression if it meant we had better controls in place.

The VA-Tech shooter was not supposed to be able to buy guns, because he had been previously committed to a mental institution as a threat to himself and others. However, because he did not choose to reveal this on the form, he was allowed to take a gun home with him.

I suppose if he had been stymied in his attempt to buy a gun through legal means, he could have got ahold of one or contrived a different means of killing people... but each additional barrier to be overcome means less times you'll turn on the news and see something like this.