Enter the Dragon Game Market

 As I have mentioned quite a few times on this blog, I like games.  As I have also mentioned, albeit not that recently, I have tried my hand at designing and creating some as well.  This desire has been most evident in my twenty or so year quest to create a role-playing game where one is in the role of a dragon that has somehow been forced into a human body.  I even posted an "elevator pitch" version of my plan a few years ago.  Now, as the post mentions, this game would be in the same universe as other games with the same basic structures and gameplay found in those games.  Well, guess what.  Some of the same people involved in those game lines have developed a game for one of their other universes with a similar conceit as mine would have.  Now, this is in a totally different type of game universe, so the basic premise and plot lines are not the same.  However, they might have things in common.  The game was just presented for Kickstarter last week.  It, and another game in the same line, were funded in just over an hour.  I went to look at the site a little late, and by the time I had finished reading about the project, it was funded and the stretch goals were being assigned.  As of this writing, they are somewhere over 300% funded with over fifteen stretch goals achieved.  As of yet, I have not funded the project, as I am leery of it.  One of the perks of funding this campaign is getting to read and suggest edits for the manuscript.  I am afraid of just how close to my ideas theirs are.  I listened to two different podcasts just to get a leg up on the background for this game.  Yes.  I actually listened to my first podcasts just to see what was going on.  Personally, I was hoping for a transcript, as I can read much faster than I can listen.  One podcast had the option of being played at an increased speed, while the other didn't.  I was halfway through it before I realized that my podcast app had a function to speed function built in.  Anyway, I already knew that the project was moving forward for a few months now.  It had been featured on the company's project list for awhile.  I wasn't interested in the line, but now I think I need to fund the project just to see how close their ideas are to mine.  Now, I'm not saying anyone could have somehow borrowed an idea here or there, but I am afraid just the same.  It has been a longtime dream to work in this field, but I could never figure out a way in.  This dream game of mine looked like it had a shot, but the odds drop if this game is too similar, even if I came up with some of the ideas first.  I will probably fund this, at a level just high enough that I get the preview so I can compare ideas.  I'm just scared about what is out there.

The Sieve

 One thing may people do at the start of a new year is to get rid of much of the clutter that has accumulated over the previous months.  I actually try to do that multiple times a year, to varying degrees of success.  One problem this year is that I don't have as much to go through.  For instance, I would go through the older book catalogs my distributors would send out, note what books I was still interested in that weren't ordered, and then get rid of them.  However, that can't happen the same way any more.  One company stopped sending catalogs months before they left the retail market.  I had been printing them off, but I didn't have access to printers for much of last year.  I had been downloading the digital copy instead, so there is nothing physical to get rid of.  Something similar goes for the other distributor.  They stopped sending the store catalogs for much of last year, until we reached a minimum sells threshold.  We started getting the catalogs back, but delivery has been spotty at times.  Many of their catalogs were downloaded too.  This means I don't really have the space problems yet to get rid of many of the older ones, from either place.  I also go through my old issues of magazines.  This isn't happening as much either.  I wasn't able to get many of my favorites last year, as most aren't available locally, or they may have been cancelled. Still, a was able to get a few.  I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly.  In fact, I have been for almost thirty years.  I used to go through them every four to six months, usually when I started to run out of space for them.  Since they started to go from "weekly" to once a month, I haven't been needing to go through them as often.  Instead of scanning them one last time to see if they were right about what would be popular and/or good, I just barely give them a passing glance.  In my last go through a few weeks ago, I went through over a dozen issues, barely noting what was on the cover or the articles.  I still have two year's worth of issues, with plenty of space for them for maybe another year before I will have to worry about sorting them again.  Another magazine that I got was Muscle & Fitness.  I had been reading it since the late 1990s, when I first decided to start exercising.  I had been looking at other titles, but I settled on M & F as my favorite, especially when many others stopped publishing.  At its height, the mag had over three hundred pages per issue.  Of course, at least a quarter of that was ads, maybe a third, but there was still a lot of great information in there.  The mag quit publishing a physical last year, going all digital.  I have looked in on it a few times since then, but I don't like the format.  Practically from the start, I would save exercise descriptions and workouts for my own personal library.  I didn't get every issue over the years, due to unavailability or money, but I still have at least something from most issues since June 2003. I use a process I call "the sieve" when going through them.  First, I would tear out all the ads and features that were no longer of interest, usually interviews or women's workouts.  This would leave just the exercises and information I needed.  During the early years, I would discard those exercises involving machines or other equipment I couldn't get at home, because I was to self-conscious about joining a gym.  I was also trying to save money.  I have since started to keep these exercises, just in case I do join a gym.  As the descriptions started to pile up, I would see if any had a newer version.  I would usually keep the newer one, and mark the other one a ready to be gotten rid of, once the rest of the page was done as well.  If there were any major differences, I would right them out next to the version I would keep.  By doing this, many of the oldest issues are down to a few pages, many no longer attached to the spine of what once was the magazine.  Sometimes, I would keep an article until I was sure I could remember the information.  This could take a few years until I get rid of it.  For the last few years of its publication, M & F would shrink down to about one hundred twenty pages, even after it combined with a sister publication Flex when it was cancelled.  The magazine had a habit of reusing old articles for new issues.  Sometimes, it was only a photo or illustration.  At other times, it was an entire exercise description, photo and words.  Sometimes only a few months after it was first seen!  They were even known to run entire workouts or other articles, verbatim.  Only long-time readers could notice, seeing a selection of recipes or discussions of exercises being reran without a single change.  Both happened during the last months of the magazine.  I'm in the middle of going through the mags for the final time.  Once I remove the last of the duplicated parts, I will start the final indexing.  I would list the exercises on a legal pad to make sure I knew what I had and when I got it.  The first index was started in the middle of my collection.  Since it wasn't completely in chronological order, I started a second index to replace it.  This time, I made sure it was in the order I got the mags.  The index is divided by body part.  However, I made few mistakes.  I didn't leave enough room for each part, so I wound up adding extra pages at the end, making it harder to find the exact location of some exercises.  Worse, while I made notes of when an exercise was updated, I never removed the original post from my list.  This would become confusing when I didn't go over an entire year at once.  There would be multiple listing for an exercise per year.  I corrected that by putting motes about multiple appearances, even after I got rid of duplicates, but it still makes for a difficult read.  When I finish the last sieve, I will compile a new index, this time with the appropriate changes:  extra pages for each part, cross-references to accessory parts and alternate names, dividing my "Other" category into "Total Body" and "Combinations" for a better flow.  I still get one last health magazine, Men's Health, but I am not sure for how much longer.  Many of the early features from when I started reading it have been removed.  The number of pages are down to one hundred twelve per issue, also down to ten or so a year.  I barely scan many of the articles any more, as I no longer feel that I am in their target audience.  Sure, I never really get it because of the exercise options, but it now has the monopoly on what is on the newsstand.  At least I still have my collection.  Now if I only I joined a gym to actually use them all.

You Are What (and Where) You Read

 I don't follow too many groups on social media, such as Facebook.  One reason is that I don't want to be forced to answer questions and give other information that might prevent my acceptance.  Another reason is that I can't check the group out first to see if I really want to join it.  The group's settings are set to private, therefore preventing me from finding out more about them.  Then there are the post suggestions that already flood my feed.  How the analytics determine some of these suggestions are beyond belief.  I scroll pass most of them, since they are definitely not what I like, most of the time.  I usually just lurk about on some of the public groups that share some of my interests, maybe a few times a week or so.  Just last week, I was checking out a fan group for the author Jim Butcher.  He is primarily known for his modern fantasy series, "The Dresden Files" about a modern day wizard working out of Chicago.  He has written other series, but this one is probably his most popular.  The group frequently goes onto tangents, barely tied to the novels.  One fan shared a prompt, possibly originally from somewhere else, that asked about the last book someone read, or were currently reading.  Specifically, where one would be if they were teleported to the place where the book took place, with the implied second question about what would be happening to the reader.  Well, most of the group responded by saying they were in Dresden's Chicago, mostly from reading or re-reading Butcher's latest novel.  A few were in older books in the series, while others mentioned some of Butcher's other works.  Not surprisingly, many referred to other works of fantasy, science-fiction, and horror.  I could recognize a few, but there were some that even puzzled me.  I don't read every genre book out there, or even have a passing knowledge of them all, but I thought I knew more of them than that.  Some were reading other things.  One post mentioned a historical novel set in Virginia, or maybe West Virginia, during or near the Civil War.  It could have been history.  One was riding the Bible.  Exodus I think.  Others were reading non-fiction, making for some awkward moments.  One was reading a cookbook, so they were in a kitchen or dining room setting.  Unfortunately for another, they were reading a truck repair manual, placing themselves within the motor.  Ouch.  Someone was reading one of those bathroom humor books, placing them in a bathroom.  Perhaps literally. I for one would never bring reading material into a bathroom, but I digress.  One final person was reading a book on witchcraft, apparently as a how-to text or such.  No locations mentioned, so they were just reading a book where they normally read.  I have been fortunate lately, to be able to have a bunch of new books come out that I wanted to read, as well as finding a few other titles that I missed out over the last few months.  This means I would have had a wide selection to chose from if I would have answered the prompt.  First, there was Fool Me Twice by Jeffrey Deaver, the latest in his master-thief Riley Wolfe series.  I would have been transported to locations as widespread as St. Petersburg, Vatican City, and a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean that was the lair of a multinational arms dealer.   Let's skip the last one.  Next, I read The Fowl Twins:  Deny All Charges by Eoin Colfer.  Yes it is for children, but I like the author and this follow-up series to the original Artemis Fowl.  This books takes place around the Fowl family compound and a convention center in Dublin, Ireland.  The final scene takes place on a yacht anchored in the north Atlantic, where the titular twins are having a meeting with two fairy officers, and the twin in the summer leisure suit has the upper hand.  However, the epilogue takes place in a bathtub filled with electric eels.  Don't worry.  They are a therapeutic treatment for the recently cloned and consciousness transferred villain centenarian.  Okay, next.  The book that I had actually finished reading before I saw the prompt was The Dark Archive by Genevieve Cogman.  It is the latest in her "Invisible Library" series, where Librarians use a magical Language to retrieve books and artworks from thousands of alternate history world to protect them from the chaotic Fae and regimental dragons.  Most of the book takes place in a sort of Victorian Era London where the supernatural is somewhat rampant, with the final battle taking place on a more technological Barcelona.  The final scenes were in the actual inter dimensional library, where the books are kept.  Each one with slight differences from what is considered to be the base normal one.  Each window in the incredibly large building has views onto different landscapes and even times of day.  However, time doesn't really pass while inside.  One of the group's posters may have been reading this book, or another in the series.  This is the best selection of my current books to be stuck in, so far.  Soon after I saw the post, I starting reading The Ghost Dance Judgement by R. S. Belcher, the latest in his weird-Western "Golgotha" series.  The Kentucky author recently changed publishers, which might be why I missed knowing about this book when it came out earlier last year.  The book is set in 1872 Golgotha, Nevada, with a frame set in modern times.  The desert town is facing two separate disasters- an Indian attack featuring ghost warriors and a small group of cultist trying to raise an otherworldly beast that is trapped nearby, neither of which would make the destination one I would like to be at. I still have one last book catch up on, a series of short stories set the world of Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" magical police detective novels.  At least this book shouldn't take too long to read.  Now, where would you be if you were in the last book you read?

I'm So Stupid, 2021 Edition

So, today's title comes from a Madonna song.  I was listened to a bunch of her CDs this weekend, and this title stuck out for me as a good one for today's post.  As many of my readers might remember, I have two other blogs besides this one.  First, there is The T. H. Weingarten Miscellany.  It is dedicated to some of my literary works, including the first rough draft of a novel, okay novella.  I really haven't posted much in it since I finished that work though.  My other blog is the one for my book store,  THW's Booknotes Blog. I set it up when I first started the website for my store, BookNotes.  I was posting weekly for a few years.  However, as business slowed down, a changed the frequently to every other week.  Then, it was once a month.  It has basically ended, as I haven't intentionally posted anything in it for over a year.  Note the adverb "intentionally."  Earlier last year, when I had to check out a tiny problem with compatibility with the site, I had accidentally switched the primary blog, this one, with the store's blog.  I caught it later, but it was tough to correct.  I had to copy and paste the blogs to the correct site before deleting them from my store's blog.  I didn't want my personal information to be part of my store's site.  Well, there was another problem last month, and the switch happened again.  For three weeks, I had accidentally posted this blog's posts on my store's instead.  When I caught the change last week, I immediately deleted the wrong posts of my store's site.  Unfortunately, I forgot to copy the posts on this blog first.  By the time I realized what I had done, it was too late.  The posts were lost.  I thought I was only deleting the posts from the website, but they were also deleted from the blog as well.  Anyway, I have been trying to reconstruct the missing posts this past week.  All three were topical in nature, so I had to repost them as quickly as possible.  The first two were very hard to replace, as too much time had passed since I wrote the originals.  Both ended up being barely half the original lengths.  The third post was more recent, and I had the need to update it anyway.  It still irks me that I made such a stupid mistake.  If anyone had cached those posts, I would have liked to get the original versions back, but I know that that is a very long shot.  At least I still have something for those three weeks.

When the Party Game Is Over

 Notice:  A version of this post was originally available on one of my other blogs, back on December 30, 2020.  I accidentally posted it there instead of here, and I then subsequently deleted it before I realized just how much a mistake I made.  However, I had intended on updating that post anyway, so here is the new version.

Last week, Songpop 2 was taken down from Facebook due to the phasing out of the Adobe Flash software that the game ran on.  While the game exists on other platforms, my access to it is now gone.  In the last few days running up to its leaving, I tried to get as much playing time from it as possible.  I had already done many of the things I wanted to do, but I wanted to get as much done before saying goodbye.  I had already blown my last chance at getting the only in-game achievement I hadn't gotten, playing fifty matches against the same opponent in one week.  Too many of my former opponents had already left, possibly having updated their browsers to ones that already discontinued Flash.  I tried to challenge one of my Facebook friends to a match just before the notice of the game's ending was made.  They never accepted the match.  Soon after, all my Facebook friends vanished from my list of possible opponents.  Never figured out why it happened, but that was another goal that I couldn't reach.  One goal I could reach was mastering all of the categories that I chose for myself, as opposed to free ones that I got through the game.  I was picking those categories exclusively whenever they were randomly selected.  I almost didn't get to to that though, until I realized that there was a practice mode.  For the cost of just one game coin, I could challenge the computer and get the same amount of experience that I would get from an actual match.  This might explain how some of my opponents could wind up almost mastering a new category on the day of its release.  I also used some of my coins to finally upgrade my game badges.  Why hold anything back?  I would be leaving the game soon, so why not enjoy it as much as I could.  I tried to put up messages for my opponents to see I would be leaving, but I never could find the feature.  I used it a few times, but it may have gotten disabled along the way.  I had one last thing I wanted to do.  I was going to use up as much of my coins and power-ups as possible, so I could leave the game as empty-handed as I could.  I chose to play the party mode, where I would be challenging four other players to guess ten songs in a row, as opposed to one opponent and five songs.  This would use up the final game feature, tickets, as well.  For much of that Thursday afternoon as I could spare, I was playing two different party mode categories.  One game would end in the early afternoon and the other that evening.  I could barely hold my own in the former, but I was acing the latter.  At the time I stopped playing that afternoon, I had some work to do that day after all, I was in the top five, with a good chance of finishing in the top three.  I would have gotten great rewards, even if I wouldn't be seeing them for long.  I was going to finish that night, after dinner. As soon as I could, I went back online to finish my last session of playing.  However, as soon as I clicked the icon to start the game, a message came up saying that the game had already left Facebook!  I still had over four hours to go!  I guess when the game said they would be leaving Facebook on the thirty-first, they meant their time, not necessarily mine.  I had long suspected the game company was based in Europe, what with categories of chart topping songs, ones I never heard of.  The game probably left Facebook an hour or so after I logged off.  I admit, I started to cry a bit when I realized I messed up.  It wasn't fair.  Now, I will never know how I faired in that last competition.  I never got to say farewell to my long standing opponents.  Not even the one I suspected was just a computer.  I was going to delete the games anyway, but still.  I could take the game leaving, but I wanted to do it on my terms.  Until I can get a mobile device, I'm SOL for ever going back.  I can recover my account through Facebook if that ever happens, if it doesn't take too long before I can do so.  I doubt it though.  It still hurts, every time I log on and see the icon.  I will miss it.

Star Light, Star Bright, First Planets I Don't See Tonight

 First, a confession.  A version of this post first appeared on the wrong blog on December 23, 2020.  It was supposed to appear here, but I placed it somewhere else.  I subsequently deleted it before I realized I needed to transfer it here.  Therefore, I am forced to rewrite it here, in a shortened version.  I am writing this about the recent astronomical event being called the "Christmas star."  In reality, it is just the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn.  This is the first time the event has been seen from Earth in a fairly long time, although it occurs somewhat regularly, about every twenty years of so.  While different and a fairly beautiful sight, it doesn't much mean anything.  At least astronomically.  Now, on a astrological standpoint, it can mean more.  People born with such an occurrence are said to be able to more easily fulfill their wishes, among other traits.  Another reason why the occurrence has been called the "Christmas star" is that many suggest such an event was the star mentioned in the Bible.  However, that event may also involved a third planet, Mars.  Since I have had interests in both astronomy and astrology since I was young, a had at least a passing interest in this event.  Unfortunately, I missed out on seeing this live.  It was too cloudy to look out at the proper time. Not to mention that the surrounding hills blocked some of the best views I could have gotten.. At least I saw the footage on television as well as online from other people.

The Sounds of Christmas

 First, a confession.  This is a shortened version of another post.  I accidentally posted it on another one of my blogs, back on December 16, 2020.  When I realized that I had placed this post, and others, I deleted them, but I did so before transferring the posts to this blog.  The posts were lost, so I am replacing them.  This one was about Christmas music.  When I was young, I would deliberately change myth favorite Christmas song every year.  By the time I was in college, I pretty much settled on a few favorites.  My top one is usually "The Carol of the Bells."  One of the main reasons why I like it is that it is one of the few traditional Christmas songs that can readily be updated to a rock song.  The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's version, mixed with "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, is well known for up tempo rock beat.  The official title is "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24."  Strange title, but it was originally created during the Clinton administration and the Balkan wars.  More recently, I have favored "Christmas Waltz."  It was originally recorded, and made for, Frank Sinatra.  I had heard other versions of this song before I heard his version, not to mention finding out it was written for him.  When I first heard his version, I hated it.  I couldn't say why, until I found out that Sinatra couldn't read music.  Later listenings of the song proved it right.  He was trying to sing the song with a standard 4/4 time instead of the 3/4 time waltzes are traditionally composed in.  Basically, he words don't always line up with the notes.  Really frustrating to me, since I have a very good ear.  Sometimes, I have been able to play a song just from hearing it.  The same goes with singing.  For some songs, I can instinctively transpose the song into my vocal range.  At other times, I wind up singing in the vocalist's range instead, which can hurt voice.  The problem is that my normal speaking voice is a somewhat high tenor, more like a low alto at times.  Unfortunately, my singing voice is more of a high bass at times.  This gives me a great range, but it can cause me some throat straining if I don't pay attention to what I'm doing.  When I really have gotten a song, I adapt it to my range easily, usually with songs with a woman vocalist lead.  However, if I try to sing along with a high tenor male singer, I have straining, unless I try to sing at lower tone.  It is not easy, not at all.