Blackmoor Vituperative

Not too long ago, I made the observation that anarchists and mad bombers aren’t new, that spies and subversives are not new. We have laws that deal with these offenses, and we should be using them, rather than looking for opportunities to deprive people (even criminals and terrorists, gasp, shudder!) of their civil rights, or even of their citizenship.

Well, greed and stupidity are not new, either, and there is no finer example of greed and stupidity than the endless battle of the media robber barons (the MPAA, the RIAA, and the rest of the Digital Rights Mafia) against the people who create and enjoy media (you and me, for example). With that long-winded preface out of the way, here are five examples of “file sharing” hysteria which predate the Internet.

UFO abduction lamps from Make: Onlne.

Today is my sweetie’s birthday. As a present, I converted the videotape of our wedding to DVD (something I have been meaning to do for, oh, five or six years, at least). Since it is Mother’s Day this Sunday, I made copies for our mothers, as well.

Okay, so once that was done, I had to make the graphics for the DVD and for the case liner. I have to: I am like that. I browsed the typical “wedding” images, looking for suitable images, but I had some trouble. Our wedding was pretty traditional, but the color scheme wasn’t. The bride’s wedding dress was teal and black, and the bouquet was dark red roses with babies’ breath, wrapped in black crinkly fabric. The wedding cake was black chocolate with teal cream cheese icing between the layers; the icing outside was black with white piping.

Suffice to say, the typical white flowery wedding images did not really fit.

Then I saw an image of a black rose, and I had an inspiration. My sweetheart and I were huge fans of a game called Vampire, which was published the year we were married (1991). It is the only role-playing game my sweetie has ever really liked. The game is out of print, and we haven’t played it in well over a decade, but it was a great source of joy for us in the early years of our marriage, and it still holds a special place in our hearts.

Happy birthday, sweetheart. And thanks, Mark Rein-Hagen and the rest of the White Wolf folks, wherever you are.

P.S. I just realized that I should have called this blog entry “Blood and roses”. Ah, well. It’s far from the worst mistake I have made recently.

HP and Slashgear are having a contest for some computer equipment. So I figured, what the heck, and created this video for the contest.

It irks me that the sound sync is off. It’s 2010, and on a brand new laptop, I can’t even record a silly little video and have the sound in sync?

I can’t watch a subtitled movie while eating sushi. I can’t eat sushi without looking at it.

I am (or was) watching The Ghost Of Mae Nak, a Thai horror movie. I haven’t seen many Thai movies. This one is not terrible, but I really do not like the sound of the Thai language. To my American ears, they sound like Martians. “Ack ack ack ack ack. Ack ack ack. Ack ack!” It does not help that the two main characters are named Nak and Mak. I am not kidding.

Well over a decade ago, I started working on a rules-light game system. It was called Heroin (it seemed a good idea at the time). After a few years and a number of revisions, I changed the name to Jazz, and decided to break up the project into “modules”: a small core set of rules, and even smaller sets of optional rules for supporting specific settings and genres.

The project has changed a lot over the years. The current version bears no resemblance at all to Heroin, that original idea. I am still not entirely happy with how character generation is described, but overall, I am pretty happy with the basic rules.

What I am not happy with is the lack of progress I have made on the genre modules. Which brings me to my point. Recently, I set up a wiki, with the hope that this would make it easier for me and others to collaborate on the game system. I have entered all of my current work on Jazz, and it’s ready for the rest of the game system to finally be fleshed out.

I would like help with Jazz. If you have an idea for making the core rules clearer, great. If you have ideas for one or more of the genre modules, even better. If you have an idea that I have not even considered, well that would be just fantastic.

Jazz is licensed under a Creative Commons license, and you will receive full credit for what you contribute.

Drop me an email if this interests you, and I will set up an account for you on the Jazz wiki.

I have a lead on a 2-year contract gig at $__ dollars per hour (a bit more than I typically get). Yes, it’s another contract gig, which I desperately want to get away from, but it’s slated to run for at least two years, so that’s not too shabby.

I can feel a mountain rain
That’ll wash away
And shine again
Empty my pockets
That were weighing me down
Sift through my soul
To see what’s lost and found
Gonna walk away from trouble
With my head held high
Then look closely you’ll see
Luck in my eyes

I can hear a howling wind
That sweeps away
The pain that’s been
Take all my sorrow
And i’ll cast away
The worries tomorrow
That i had today
Gonna walk away from trouble
With my head held high
Then look closely you’ll see
Luck in my eyes

K.D. Lang is awesome.

I am wrapping up my current web project, Perfect Pets. It’s not the most complex or difficult project I have ever worked on, but I think it may be the prettiest. I like this kind of project: Perfect Pets is a small, family owned store, and in my own modest way, I am helping them stay relevant in an era of heartless corporate monoliths and brutal international competition. I wish I could work on projects like this one more often.

Apparently I was not clear in my previous blog post, so I am explaining it. It’s a pretty funny story. Or perhaps an educational one. Yes: a cautionary tale! Do not let this happen to you! 🙂

The background package to which I referred was supposed to be given to Henrico County for the Animal Protection job. The programming job offer was from a different company, to do web development. That job offer was rescinded because I told them I had a very small chance at the Animal Protection job. However, at the time I told them that, I had already been excluded from the Animal Protection job, because I had turned in the background paperwork late (although I did not know it yet).

They (the company that had offered and then rescinded the programming job) countered with a “temp” job offer, which I took as an insult (to put it mildly). I asked for my typical rate for that kind of work, knowing that they would not be willing to pay it. So they declined that, as well, as I knew they would.

The long story short is that I was offered a great job at a great company, and because of at least three stupid mistakes I made, I lost out on that.

I have since tried to contact them, to see if the situation can be salvaged. They haven’t responded, and I do not expect them to. They are probably sorry they ever heard of me, and I do not blame them.

But life goes on. The horizon is broad, the future beckons, and all things are possible!

A few moments ago, I learned that I made a mistake when writing down the deadline to submit my personal background packet to Henrico County. The deadline was April 24. I had already been disqualified when I was offered that great programing job on April 26.

The gods laugh at me, and I can’t help but laugh with them. Life goes on: other great opportunities will present themselves. I hope I am wise enough to recognize them when they do.

“The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them, and then make our plans with confidence.” — Henry Ford

Speaking of laughing, check this out. We watched Planet Of The Apes and Saturday Night Fever at the Goochland Drive In on Saturday. It was great. I never realized that I had never seen the first thirty minutes of Planet Of The Apes. It is a pretty dark movie.