matrixrefugee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matrixrefugee) wrote2005-11-28 08:49 pm
matrixrefugee) wrote2005-11-28 08:49 pm
Entry tags:
Playing catch-up, also known as Here Be a Long Entry
You might want to make yourself a cup of tea for this... I'll be cutting this into bite-sized pieces, each behind its own LJ-cut.
--I haven't given up on trying to e-publish some of my stuff: I've actually considered bundling "Motion to Deactivate" and "First Time's the Charm" into one book, but I have to come up with a snazzy title for the two-books-in-one package. I discovered the hard way that Lulu.com is rather pernickety about document formats (No small wonder), so I found I'd have to download OpenOffice, which is a free, easy to use word processor (and a few other programs; it's like the poor man's MS Office 2000). So I tried downloading that, only to find out that it'll take four hours plus to download over my dial-up conncection. I know, I've talked about waiting for MxO downloads taking forever: the thing with that is I'm downloading a bunch of a bunch of small files, so if I stop the download, I'm able to pick up again later on and keep going. OpenOffice is one big file, so there's no stopping and starting without going right back to the very beginning again. But I figured out a work-around: I'll download it at the library, on the much faster computer and burn it onto a CD-R, then install it on my machine.
And NaNoWriMo... hoo... I really tried with that one, but between the cold and working crazy hours last week, I hadn't had any time to get back to it. And there's no way in hell that I'm going to get 30,000 words written between now and midnight Wednesday night, unless I sacrifice eating and sleeping and everything else, which would be no good for me, either, considering that I've been emotionally frazzled the past few days. But I haven't given up on this novel: I've been re-reading parts of it, and I think the folks at GAFF, and a few other people will find it amusing and familiar, while I think people who are new to the hobby of fanfiction will be by turns amused, appalled and enlightened by what fans create out of devotion to their favorite (fake) fandom. I'll post some excerpts in the coming weeks, so keep an eye open for that.
--As of last Wednesday, my dad started putting up the Christmas lights in the yard: he's doing almost like a Christmas crescendo, putting up one item at a time, starting with some light-up wire birch trees covered with white lights, moving on to some candy canes hung in the trees outside my window, and the icicle lights on the eaves of the house. Last night, he set up a wire birch with colored lights, and I think he's about to put it out in the yard right now.
I did some Christmas shopping today: took the bus from Lowell to Burlington and poked around the Mall. I can't say what I got for everyone else, but for myself, I bought the strategy guide for "The Matrix: The Path of Neo". Whoa... I'm stunned at how much the new material the Brothers Wachowski, aka the Marketing Brothers to certain dear friends of mine, is similar to stuff I was seeing for the trilogy, back when it was still in production. I still haven't gotten my hands on the Windows version of "Enter the Matrix", now I'm itching to play this one! ::Laughs at self::
I'll give the headspace dwellers an entry of their own, later, but suffice it to say, they were in good voice today, while I was shopping.
--Besides GAFF, I've been hanging around the MxO player forums lately. There's been a debate over whether or not to petition the game devs to have snow fall in the Mega-City for the month of December/have a Christmas-holiday live event. I'm hoping that Sieges levels up enough (she's Level 9 and climbing) and gets herself enough reputation with her organization to attend an organization party. She's crushing on her chief mission contact and she wants to snag/snog him under the mistletoe. Take a guess who the lucky fellow is... I hope she doesn't tick him off, since that could cause some effects neither of us might like.
There's also been an interesting discussion on the gangs of Exile hoodlums that wander around the Mega-City. Until now, most of them were fairly lifeless bundles of bits (except for the ones that would take pot shots at Sieges if she happened to run past them), but now after the recent game patch, they've started showing more personality. Here's what I had to say about it:
It seems like every time I run a mission, the building I'm supposed to meet my contact(s)/pick up mission items always seem to be surrounded by a swarm of hoodlums. Last night I walked into a bunch of Lvl 7 Crossbones who were hanging around the building I was supposed to enter. They even tried to chase me into the building, but I managed to get into the elevator and close the door before they could start shooting at me/beating me up. When I came back from completing the mission, the two hoodlums were still in the building, only one of them was now dead (someone else must have been missioning in the same building and killed him), and the other was hiding around a turn in the hallway, waiting for me.
The night before, I was emerging from the subway in Moriah Projects, when I walked into a bunch of Crossbones hanging around the subway entrance. I started shooting at one before he could start shooting at me (they do that to me), and he ran up a staircase. I chased him up the stairs, only to find that he was pulling a judas goat on me: he'd lured me into a bigger bunch of his mates, who started shooting at me.
The same night, I saw jumpy Choppers (they were jumping up and down, while some of their buddies were cheering them; and the jumpy ones were Choppers Jumpers, no less: one of the devs has a crazy sense of humor...), fidgety Demon Army guys (considering how wierd those guys look, it was a very strange sight), and Bells who were prancing around like models on a runway. I have a vendetta against the Bells for killing the Exiles I was supposed to escort for one of the Exile seduction missions, so I started shooting at one of them. And she just kept prancing around! She didn't even try to fight back. I was tempted to just withdraw, but she was such an easy mark: it was like fishing in a barrel.
And nth to the Evade bugs [ie. The target evades your attack]: I had an easy mark on a lone Blackwoods Mushfak who was standing in the middle of a street, and the guy kept evading me, no matter how much I shot at him (Yes, I have a vendetta against the Blackwoods for killing me horribly when I was running a mission). I finally gave up in disgust.
Nth to the hoodlums acting more like they have some semblence of intelligence: there were a group of shy Furies lurking near a hardline I was trying to jack out of, and then there was the lone, drunk 5 Points Partier walking around in the middle of a street (guess she must had a few too many at that party...).
And speaking of jumping and down, when I jacked in last night (before I had the software glitch from hell and was forced to shut down the program; I don't think I'll be playing again till I get over that jolt), I spotted a group of three or four guys from the same faction jumping up very high, like they were doing some kind of "See how high I can Hyper-Jump" contest. I looked up to find they were actually playing a bizarre form of leap-frog, jumping over a buddy of theirs who for some very strange reason was sitting in mid-air, about seven feet off the pavement. Here's a screen shot of it, albeit not an action shot; wish I knew how to do video capture, it would be funnier that way:
The guy sitting in midair is the one with the white hightlighted name. The gal in the purple dress with her back to the camera is obviously Sieges. The guy with the blue name sitting right below Sitting-in-Midair Guy is Slitwrist, Sieges's missioning buddy, a street smart but likable coder, who made her that dress she's wearing.
Yes, I'm having too much fun with this game...
More to come in the next entry...
--I haven't given up on trying to e-publish some of my stuff: I've actually considered bundling "Motion to Deactivate" and "First Time's the Charm" into one book, but I have to come up with a snazzy title for the two-books-in-one package. I discovered the hard way that Lulu.com is rather pernickety about document formats (No small wonder), so I found I'd have to download OpenOffice, which is a free, easy to use word processor (and a few other programs; it's like the poor man's MS Office 2000). So I tried downloading that, only to find out that it'll take four hours plus to download over my dial-up conncection. I know, I've talked about waiting for MxO downloads taking forever: the thing with that is I'm downloading a bunch of a bunch of small files, so if I stop the download, I'm able to pick up again later on and keep going. OpenOffice is one big file, so there's no stopping and starting without going right back to the very beginning again. But I figured out a work-around: I'll download it at the library, on the much faster computer and burn it onto a CD-R, then install it on my machine.
And NaNoWriMo... hoo... I really tried with that one, but between the cold and working crazy hours last week, I hadn't had any time to get back to it. And there's no way in hell that I'm going to get 30,000 words written between now and midnight Wednesday night, unless I sacrifice eating and sleeping and everything else, which would be no good for me, either, considering that I've been emotionally frazzled the past few days. But I haven't given up on this novel: I've been re-reading parts of it, and I think the folks at GAFF, and a few other people will find it amusing and familiar, while I think people who are new to the hobby of fanfiction will be by turns amused, appalled and enlightened by what fans create out of devotion to their favorite (fake) fandom. I'll post some excerpts in the coming weeks, so keep an eye open for that.
--As of last Wednesday, my dad started putting up the Christmas lights in the yard: he's doing almost like a Christmas crescendo, putting up one item at a time, starting with some light-up wire birch trees covered with white lights, moving on to some candy canes hung in the trees outside my window, and the icicle lights on the eaves of the house. Last night, he set up a wire birch with colored lights, and I think he's about to put it out in the yard right now.
I did some Christmas shopping today: took the bus from Lowell to Burlington and poked around the Mall. I can't say what I got for everyone else, but for myself, I bought the strategy guide for "The Matrix: The Path of Neo". Whoa... I'm stunned at how much the new material the Brothers Wachowski, aka the Marketing Brothers to certain dear friends of mine, is similar to stuff I was seeing for the trilogy, back when it was still in production. I still haven't gotten my hands on the Windows version of "Enter the Matrix", now I'm itching to play this one! ::Laughs at self::
I'll give the headspace dwellers an entry of their own, later, but suffice it to say, they were in good voice today, while I was shopping.
--Besides GAFF, I've been hanging around the MxO player forums lately. There's been a debate over whether or not to petition the game devs to have snow fall in the Mega-City for the month of December/have a Christmas-holiday live event. I'm hoping that Sieges levels up enough (she's Level 9 and climbing) and gets herself enough reputation with her organization to attend an organization party. She's crushing on her chief mission contact and she wants to snag/snog him under the mistletoe. Take a guess who the lucky fellow is... I hope she doesn't tick him off, since that could cause some effects neither of us might like.
There's also been an interesting discussion on the gangs of Exile hoodlums that wander around the Mega-City. Until now, most of them were fairly lifeless bundles of bits (except for the ones that would take pot shots at Sieges if she happened to run past them), but now after the recent game patch, they've started showing more personality. Here's what I had to say about it:
It seems like every time I run a mission, the building I'm supposed to meet my contact(s)/pick up mission items always seem to be surrounded by a swarm of hoodlums. Last night I walked into a bunch of Lvl 7 Crossbones who were hanging around the building I was supposed to enter. They even tried to chase me into the building, but I managed to get into the elevator and close the door before they could start shooting at me/beating me up. When I came back from completing the mission, the two hoodlums were still in the building, only one of them was now dead (someone else must have been missioning in the same building and killed him), and the other was hiding around a turn in the hallway, waiting for me.
The night before, I was emerging from the subway in Moriah Projects, when I walked into a bunch of Crossbones hanging around the subway entrance. I started shooting at one before he could start shooting at me (they do that to me), and he ran up a staircase. I chased him up the stairs, only to find that he was pulling a judas goat on me: he'd lured me into a bigger bunch of his mates, who started shooting at me.
The same night, I saw jumpy Choppers (they were jumping up and down, while some of their buddies were cheering them; and the jumpy ones were Choppers Jumpers, no less: one of the devs has a crazy sense of humor...), fidgety Demon Army guys (considering how wierd those guys look, it was a very strange sight), and Bells who were prancing around like models on a runway. I have a vendetta against the Bells for killing the Exiles I was supposed to escort for one of the Exile seduction missions, so I started shooting at one of them. And she just kept prancing around! She didn't even try to fight back. I was tempted to just withdraw, but she was such an easy mark: it was like fishing in a barrel.
And nth to the Evade bugs [ie. The target evades your attack]: I had an easy mark on a lone Blackwoods Mushfak who was standing in the middle of a street, and the guy kept evading me, no matter how much I shot at him (Yes, I have a vendetta against the Blackwoods for killing me horribly when I was running a mission). I finally gave up in disgust.
Nth to the hoodlums acting more like they have some semblence of intelligence: there were a group of shy Furies lurking near a hardline I was trying to jack out of, and then there was the lone, drunk 5 Points Partier walking around in the middle of a street (guess she must had a few too many at that party...).
And speaking of jumping and down, when I jacked in last night (before I had the software glitch from hell and was forced to shut down the program; I don't think I'll be playing again till I get over that jolt), I spotted a group of three or four guys from the same faction jumping up very high, like they were doing some kind of "See how high I can Hyper-Jump" contest. I looked up to find they were actually playing a bizarre form of leap-frog, jumping over a buddy of theirs who for some very strange reason was sitting in mid-air, about seven feet off the pavement. Here's a screen shot of it, albeit not an action shot; wish I knew how to do video capture, it would be funnier that way:
The guy sitting in midair is the one with the white hightlighted name. The gal in the purple dress with her back to the camera is obviously Sieges. The guy with the blue name sitting right below Sitting-in-Midair Guy is Slitwrist, Sieges's missioning buddy, a street smart but likable coder, who made her that dress she's wearing.
Yes, I'm having too much fun with this game...
More to come in the next entry...
no subject
Ergh.
no subject