[entre chien et loup]

Around this time last year, I'd just bought my Asus Eee PC 701 4G, and replaced my broken Nintendo DS with a brand new DS Lite. Of late, I've got hold of various add-ons and equipment to add to the functionality of those, along with rekindling some of my other 'geeky' interests: comics, anime, and roleplaying.

( First, the tech... )

That ties in nicely with the roleplaying, as both series are often touted as inspiration for and/or examples of Exalted-level combat. While I'm still very interested in that game, and continue to acquire books for it, I've recently got (back?) into the new World of Darkness. I had the core rules, and (naturally) Werewolf: The Forsaken since the release of the latter, but until recently I had not really looked at the line at all. A few weeks ago I picked up another of the main 3 games, Mage: The Awakening; and on Wednesday, I was able to get hold of Vampire: The Requiem -- completing my collection of the core three games -- and Changeling: The Lost.

As of last week, we'd begun to play a Vampire game run by Miquel; it is thanks to his efforts and those of kolat_ray that I've got back into roleplaying, and I can't thank them enough. The game we're playing is set in ancient Rome, and so far has proved to be quite interesting; it's really held my attention despite me not being familiar with new Vampire, or overly fond of vampires or Roman settings in general. (I also got interested in Orpheus, as Miquel owns the main book; although that and at least one of the supplements is fairly readily available, all six books may prove difficult to find.)

I tried to find some places to get cheap roleplaying books from, and I was surprised to find Amazon had some good deals. I've ordered Promethean: The Created and Hunter: The Vigil to complete the set of new World of Darkness main books, along with 3 supplements for Werewolf and two for general World of Darkness use.

I'm vaguely considering going to the comic/gaming shops in the near future, possibly today, as I've not been in a very long time; it'll be interesting to see what they have.

(How am I affording this? Well, it was my birthday last week, and I am eternally grateful for generous relatives. Also? They let me have a credit card.)

Nitai, ISKCON monk, giving a teaching from the Bhagavad-Gita

There are many Indian religious systems that involve strong devotion to the guru, and there are many adherents who totally dedicate their lives to spiritual practice. They are impressive. Mindful of the impermanence of this life, they put great effort into religious devotion. But only Buddhism sees the very apprehension of self to be faulty, and instead puts forth a view of selflessness.

     -- His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Becoming Enlightened

( The Wednesday before last proved to be an interesting day. )

I know a kid who thinks he's hip hop cause he buys it
I know a kid who thinks he's hip hop cause he never buys shit
Underground or mainstream
Some are bound to change schemes.

     -- Sage Francis, Underground For Dummies

So I'm listening to Sub.FM a lot lately -- I first saw it mentioned on Warren Ellis' twitter -- seeing as dubstep and its related spinoffs seem to be the in thing of late, and for once I actually like the genre. (There's also the more obviously-titled Dubstep.FM, but I'm not so keen on that one; DubTerrain is pretty neat though.) The quality of the stream's not brilliant, but in a conversation elsewhere there was some talk of audio enhancers. Normally I'm skeptical of these, but mikosquirrel pointed me in the direction of the DFX Audio Enhancer, which (on certain types of music at least) works really well; with dubstep, you can crank the bass to obscene, bone-shuddering levels, as it should be.

( In which I ramble a bit about music and other cultural stuff. )

Finally a couple of arty type things that I rather like: Multicolr Search Lab lets you pick up to 10 colours and use them to navigate a selection from "10 million of the most 'interesting' Creative Commons images on Flickr". It's a nice idea. Also, New Math is all kinds of awesome; reminds me a bit of one of my favourite artists, Jenny Holzer.

So, I've been following up with some of the tech things I've mentioned in past entries.

( Yes, this is a little geeky. )

Thanks to salith, I should be getting a pretty decently-specced PC custom-built and ready within the next two or three weeks; we decided on the parts a few days ago, and I gave him a cheque yesterday. It cost substantially less than I was expecting it to, having looked at prebuilt machines of comparable specification, and it should be pretty expandable as time goes on. The only thing we were unable to find on the site used was the live bay thing for the Audigy, but I could feasibly take it out of this machine. I'm planning to keep this one around as a spare, as it still works OK and everything; it's just not very powerful. Alternatively, I may get a KVM switch so I can run both machines as necessary, but I'll work this all out when I actually have the new PC.

Talking of PC stuff, I found a couple of useful sites for desktop backgrounds/wallpapers. I've had the most use from DesktopNexus, though 4scrape has some pretty neat stuff too.

As there's been some malware going around on Twitter lately, LongURL Mobile Expander is a pretty handy add-on that lets you see the full address for shortened URLs, in case of any doubt. I recall reading somewhere that people are substantially more likely to click links in a Twitter feed than in an email, despite such things not necessarily being any safer.

Werewolves are lame.

Well, at least that was my logic.

I hate the damn things. I figure they're these hokey old holdovers from another age where we actually used to find such cartoony monsters scary. They've seeped into popular culture now. You'll be more likely to find them in romantic comedies and kid's cartoons. They've been neutered, so to speak. And let's face it, they were always the poor second cousin to the vampire.

So I was asked to adapt a screenplay into sequential art, dealing with werewolves, no doubt to help sell it as a movie... and I declined. I just didn't want to go there. Visually I'm just not into them, and couldn't see myself gettng enthused at all. All I could think of was Teen Wolf.

Then I got a letter from the Colorado department of corrections or some such, explaining to my publisher that another of my books [...] had been banned from their fine institutions [...]

But I got thinking. Prison, eh? I'd been watching a lot of prison documentaries at the time anyway and wow, there are some messed up people in some messed up places... and something clicked.

After that, this thing sort of wrote itself to a degree. I sincerely hope you like it and want to desperately thank you for picking this here graphic novel up in the first place.

Whatever you do, just don't drop the soap.

     -- Ben Templesmith, preface to Welcome to Hoxford

( Needless to say... )

Finally, to inject a touch of humour, the last line of dialogue in this trailer for the godawful-looking Lesbian Vampire Killers ("Like an episode of 'Goosebumps' but with two swearing cretins") is... interesting... at least. And probably the only interesting thing about the film.

[edit: Thanks to Mr. Templesmith for linking here on his Twitter, and hi to anyone who came here via there... most unexpected.]

So, based on various people's comments, the view on Twitter seems fairly sharply polarised, with some people quite vehemently against it. (Personally, I like it a lot.) As this post is not so much about Twitter but more things from there, I think I'm safe to proceed with only a reference to nidonocu's rather eloquently-put post, "Twitter, or how I learned to stop worrying and love 140 characters". For what it's worth, although I still have the service set up to ship tweets to LJ, I've now set it so only tweets with a certain tag will appear, and even then (assuming it works) they'll be under a cut. And surely, if scrolling past a cut tag is that much of an issue, then it's not just my entries you'll have trouble with.

( Anyway, without further ado... )

So, I've been playing with a few new toys recently, both software and hardware.

( First up, and my favourite thing in ages... )

Finally, it's worth mentioning that I'm looking into expressing creativity in writing; two books I got recently, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones (which treats writing as Zen practice), and The Ode Less Travelled, a book on writing poetry by the ever-lovely Stephen Fry, have made me think about giving it a try.

The Dalai Lama [...] states that one may practice the dharma by following the teachings and practices of non-Buddhist traditions such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or Hinduism. [...] In this sentiment he hearkens back to the historical Buddha, Śākyamuni. [...] As he was about to die, the Buddha was questioned by some of his students, who were concerned that after the master's death people might begin propounding doctrines that had not been spoken by the Buddha himself and that these people might tell others that their doctrines were the actual words of the Buddha. In reply, the Buddha told them, "Whatever is well-spoken is the word of the Buddha." In other words, if a particular teaching results in greater peace, compassion, and happiness, and if it leads to a lessening of negative emotions, then it can safely be adopted and practiced as dharma, no matter who originally propounded it.

     -- John Powers, Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism

God creates our bodies, God bestows our nature. Inside and outside are both from God; how dare we derange them? We are within God, God is in our hearts; if we see the universe and emulate its purity, this is not different from the Great Way. If we have even a little selfish intent, we experience penalties that are not trivial.
The physical body is God-given nature; if you act in accord with God-given nature, you will spontaneously be free of the burden of human desires. Daily tasks are norms; act in obedience to the laws of God and there will be no mistaken excesses.

     -- The Cultivation of Realization, trans. Thomas Cleary (in Taoist Meditation)

[T]he Hare Krishna mantra is not sectarian. Because we are chanting these three names -- Hare, Krishna and Rāma -- someone may think, "These are Hindu names. Why should we chant these Hindu names?" There are some sectarian people who may think like that. But Lord Caitanya says, "It doesn't matter. If you have some other bona fide name of God, you can chant that. But chant God's name." That is the instruction of this Krishna consciousness movement. So do not think that this movement is trying to convert you from Christian to Hindu. Remain a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim. It doesn't matter. But if you really want to perfect your life, then try to develop your dormant love for God. That is the perfection of life.
[...]
You may profess any religion, but to test whether your religion is perfect or whether you are perfect, you have to see whether you have developed your love for God. Now we are distributing our love among so many things. But when all this love is concentrated simply on God, that is the perfection of love.

     -- A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, talk given at Northeastern University, Boston, Summer 1969 (as reproduced in The Journey of Self-Discovery)

( So I've been thinking. )

Addendum: aerowolf posted a response to my entry (which you may or may not be able to seehe has now made public) instead of a comment. He made many good points, but also made me realise I hadn't been completely clear in a couple of places.

( This probably merits another lj-cut. )

Well, I haven't written here in a while. First thing to note is that I'm going away to my mum's for Xmas/New Year tomorrow, and so for that period I'll be online substantially less often; on the other hand, I'll be spending time with my family (including Neil's mum and my grandparents), and I should hopefully also get to see massivesustain and shirosirius.

( With that out of the way... )

Finally, I'd been considering getting a new music game after Xmas, but with GH: World Tour, Rock Band and RB2 all having different instruments with them, I wasn't sure whether I'd end up having to buy several peripherals if I wanted to play more than one game. Fortunately, someone (can't remember who, sorry!) linked me to Joystiq's Instrument Compatibility Matrix. Having tried at least 3 different guitar controllers on the 360, I think the best choice would be to get GH: World Tour with the guitar, and pick up both Rock Band titles on their own. [edit: I think I'll just get RB2, as apparently -- thanks Toroka -- if you want the songs from the original Rock Band, it costs 400 XBL points and 1.7gb of space to copy them for use in RB2. Any downloaded songs for either game work with RB2, though, so it's not like I'd be losing out on very much -- plus RB2 has more songs on the disc and better options anyway.]

That's about all the news I have, really. Though a lot of my focus lately has been on games, I've still been keeping up with reading Buddhist books (I got some last week, and I'm still trying to sort everything out with Wisdom so I can get the lost shipment replaced and delivered to my mum's) and various other interests. The only other thing I need to do today is pick up a repeat prescription from the doc's, to ensure I have enough meds to cover me for however long I'm away.

I've been promising to post an updated version of this recipe at some point; it's evolved a bit since I first posted it over three years ago, and I've changed the ingredients to ones that are more readily available. I was also reminded about it when Warren Ellis posted his experiments in food a little while ago.

( Enough preamble, on with the recipe. )

So, I was browsing GameSpot looking for something completely different, and I came across the review for Legendary on the 360. By all accounts it's a pretty terrible game, but in the section on the good and bad points, there was something ( I'd been telling people for years. )

I feel oddly validated. Also, I will make a real post with actual content soon.

• 10:11 Been awake for an hour orso which feels crazy early for a Saturday. Vaguely hoping books will arrive but suspect they were lost in the post #
• 10:20 Also? Looks like loudtwitter's autoposts to my LJ are working again, suddenly. Thanks, @loudtweeter #
• 10:27 Retweeting @loudtweeter: mouser.livejournal.com/379686.html is a useful guide to getting your tweets shipped to your LJ #
• 11:33 Post arrived and no books again; if they're still a no show on Monday, I'll email for replacements. Hopefully that'll all be okay #
• 15:33 Mercs 2 may be buggy but it's a lot of fun. Plus, naming all the Achievements after metal tracks is a cute touch #
• 19:39 Coil is good brooding music. Not feeling so great this evening; maybe if I eat I'll feel better, but I'm apathetic at best #
• 22:55 Talked to my folks and made dinner; feel a lot better. Also perfected my spaghetti recipe, will blog at some point #
• 23:15 Dying my hair purple for a change, messy business as always. Watching Buffy while it works, then shower time #
• 01:45 Hair enpurkled, but could do with another cut. Am also all clean and shiny. Bed soon, then roleplaying tomorrow with the usual suspects #
• 02:04 Slight mistweet.Twitter grade is 69 (hur hur) / 100: see twitter.grader.com/electricdog . Went down after I nuked some spammers. #

• 00:04 Conclusions: Uni project unfinished, wish I'd seen Kyu, phone tweets aren't all going through -- but RP was awesome and now I <3 Exalted #
• 00:05 Also? I need to unfollow some people on Twitter. Y'know, mostly the ones I don't know who added me randomly #
• 11:50 @hendryx Just pure txt, my phone doesn't really run apps. It's fine most of the time, just occasionally I lose a tweet or two #
• 11:59 Waiting for post again & trying to finish uni project. Only 200 words to write but I'm drawing a blank. I just want to get it out of the way #
• 12:38 Getting somewhere with uni work. Post just arrived, no books again; emailing them now. Scored a couple of old adventure games off a friend. #
• 12:55 This CD ('Insight' by Deeper In Zen) was only £3 but it's great. I <3 psytrance... need to get to Zogg again sometime soon #
• 13:23 Uni project submitted, though the written part was 90% bullshit. Hopefully I'll get an OK mark -- time now for lunch, Buffy, and videogames #
• 20:06 Infinite Undiscovery starts out bad, but after a while actually gets reasonably good. Still glad I didn't spend a lot of money on it though #
• 22:52 According to Wisdom Books, I should have had my order by now; I'm to email them for replacements if it's still no show after the weekend #

It's my first public post in a little over a week -- twitter nonwithstanding, and autoposting that still isn't working -- and I wanted to talk about the weekend just gone, which was particularly good, especially the Sunday.

( Saturday wasn't bad either, but not much happened. )

In the next few days, I need to work on the final project for my photography course; I've selected the 10 images I want to use, but I still have three questions to answer at ~200 words each, and it needs to be in before next Monday. I've also some work to do on my arts course before Monday evening, but that's less pressing. Ideally before I go out tomorrow, the books from Wisdom will be delivered, and I'll have time to burn a DVD for lord_kook, as he's going to do some mixing and possibly other work on my album CityZen when he has time.

• 10:28 Slept well, sunny morning, nothing that needs doing for a couple of days. Plus I'm mostly over being ill so I can enjoy it. Hooray #
• 11:24 Toasted cheese sandwiches and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think this is a good start to the day's activities #
• 13:14 Tomb Raider Underworld is, by turns, completely breathtaking and utterly frustrating. Same formula as ever, then #
• 16:45 Retweet from @StephenFry: watching www.everytweet.com/ is oddly relaxing. With that and @twittervision, one could waste a lot of time #
• 18:55 Had time to play it at last, and Gears of War 2 is amazing - so much so that it elevates the original in retrospect #
• 20:39 Just beat Dead Space and got 180 gamerscore in the last half hour of play. Trading it in tomorrow and will review soon #
• 21:19 Just had a phone tutorial for my arts course, got 20 pages to do for that and 10 images/600 words for photo course, all due in two weeks #
• 22:25 Weird synchronicity: @warrenellis wants human bacon, @wilw wants vegetarian bacon that doesn't suck. Maybe they should team up #
• 23:44 Updating userpics on LJ &c. with images of XBL avatar and a quick gradient fill - works surprisingly well #
• 23:57 Setting up torrents and going to bed. Or at least to play games for a bit first. Goodnight, internet #

The last couple of days have been quite busy, but I think on the whole good. I've been spending time with friends, and going out more than I usually do, though perhaps I could have done more. I feel really grateful to the people I spent time with, too, and with a bit of luck I'll see them again soon.

( The details )

In general it's been quite a contrast between feeling grateful and enjoying time with friends, and feeling very tired/unwell. I'm still not at my best today, but I need to do as much of my uni work as I can manage; I have to do the first half of chapter 2 in the textbook, which is on contemporary Western poetry. I'm behind with the photography course as well, but that's just stuff I have to read online -- I don't think we have the instructions for the final project (worth 90% of the mark, the test I mentioned previously was worth the other 10%) yet, and that's not due in until early December anyway. Hopefully I can manage it; I feel quite stressed about it, though I'm sure it's not going to be the end of the world if I'm a little bit behind -- I've just not found the time since my last tutorial when I've been both feeling okay and not otherwise occupied.

So, it's been a while since I last wrote, and I've got a few things to put up here. Unfortunately I've been feeling pretty down for the most part, though things have been better the last couple of days. Anyway, the first thing to mention is some good news: I scored 80% on the test on my photography course, which was a higher mark than I expected. I'm also doing quite well on the arts course, and had a tutorial by phone on Wednesday of last week; this was very helpful, and although it may be tricky to find time to do the work I need to do before the next tutorial on Monday, I'm more confident about the course as a whole. We also discussed the possibility of aiming for a diploma or a degree, and I think the former is certainly attainable; I need to either look online for a qualification to aim for or call up to get the Arts and Humanities Prospectus.

( There's some more good things to say as well. )

Finally, there's still the idea of going to Manchester at the weekend with gothicwhitewolf; however, for various reasons I won't go into (though not least among them, being behind with uni work) I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to be able to go. The plan is for him to come here tomorrow evening and we'll stay in Sheffield overnight, and then go to Manchester earlyish on the Saturday, staying the night and returning on Sunday. I'm perfectly happy to spend time with him tomorrow, but it's the Saturday that I have some problems with. I'll talk it out and see if some solution can be reached, but I may end up just coming back home; he was going to go anyway, and stay the night, so it shouldn't be a great loss if I don't make it.

This evening the plan has suddenly transpired is to go see kitsunefury for a while. We're meeting in town and going back to his place -- I've not been before -- for however long. I really need to get back here tonight rather than staying over as I've quite a few things to do. For now I should get something to eat and take a shower, then maybe make a start on uni work.

So, this has been a pretty awesome weekend. I've got a lot done, and I'm feeling generally in a positive frame of mind. Hopefully things will continue in this vein; for now at least, I figured I'd make a record of what's been going on.

( I guess it starts with Friday night. )

Overall, it's been a very good weekend. Although at the moment I'm far from depressed, my stepdad sent me a link to a very good article by Clare Allan, on the Guardian site: One of the very worst features of depression is the impossibility of communicating the reality you are in to anyone outside it.

I've taken out a paid membership for 3 months for my DeviantArt account, as well as having put a couple more pictures up there. Hopefully it'll be worthwhile; it's good karma if nothing else. Along similar lines, I wanted to give a regular small donation to Soma FM as I listen so often, but there's a bit of trouble with PayPal at the moment (it's set up with my mum's card, and we can't remember the password) so I've not been able to do that as of yet. I did a little more work on the computer though -- freed up a load of space by deleting crap I never use, and installed all the old Fallout games to have another play through.

Also, I've been meaning to update my profile, since they changed the layout, but I haven't found time for that yet. I'll make a note when it's changed; for now I should get something to eat and go to sleep.

[continued from here]

The second theme of my time away (as well as the creativity mentioned in my last post) was the media I acquired while I was there. I explored two main interests of mine, which carried throughout the different things.

( Two main themes )

Finally, but by no means least, I managed to pick up Fallout 3 at a very reasonable price while I was away, and I've been playing it a fair bit. "Oblivion with guns" has been a comparison that's been made, as it's by the same developer and shares some superficial similarities, but if anything it's "Morrowind with guns" -- those who have played both extensively will know the difference.

In fairness, both comparisons do a disservice to a game that stands up to its heritage but also has its own identity and style. It's a lot more of an intense experience than many other role-playing games, and I've not been able to play it for very long in one sitting because of that. And, with the 50's-meets-scifi stylings, it knocks BioShock into a cocked hat, which I thought was overhyped and overrated in the first place.

So, now I'm back home from nearly 3 weeks with my folks, I figured I'd spend some time writing about what happened, seeing as I didn't manage to find the time to write while I was there.

( I'm going to split it into two posts to avoid WALL OF TEXT. )

The last thing I want to mention on the creative front, and something that kind of leads into the next post I want to make, is that I got Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg; it looks at writing as a form of Zen practice, and I'm hoping it'll give me some ideas to not only write better in general, but also perhaps to start doing some more creative writing as well -- I've always rather envied people who manage NaNoWriMo and suchlike.

I think the best thing, really, that's come of all this is a sense of hope and greater confidence in myself. I'm a bit behind with uni work -- on the photography course at least -- but I should be able to catch up, and the tutor for the arts course I'm doing called me the other night to introduce herself and give some advice. We also arranged for a tutorial by phone next Wednesday, by which point I need to have read the first chapter of the textbook. Should be manageable, and with a bit of luck I'll successfully complete both courses this time.

Oh, and I changed my journal layout and posted the answers to that lyrics meme.