Blog Features

The Exiled Fleet

by

Good Morning Friends! Well, that was a bit of a whirlwind journey. Over the years I have always told myself that I am a slow reader and that I can’t consume books anywhere near as fast as my wife does. She will sit down on a good weekend day when we have nothing going on and might read three books in a single day. I started The Exiled Fleet, the second book in The Divide series on Sunday evening and wrapped it up last night before falling asleep. Granted two of those nights I stayed up until midnight reading, but still, four days for a book is a pretty good clip for me. I am beginning to think the whole “I read slowly” is another mental block much like the “I can’t do math” one that I struggled with for most of my life. This probably seems funny to a lot of people considering some of the nonsense spreadsheets that I occasionally break out when I do a deep dive into evaluating something. It is weird the baggage you carry around with you for decades, that ultimately turns out to be complete bullshit.

I don’t really want to turn this blog into a “book review” blog, but also as always, I have shared my life’s journey with you in whatever direction it takes. I’ve been using Bookwyrm lately to track my reading and this is my first five-star book on that app. The Last Watch was a good read, but it had quite a few rough edges. With The Exiled Fleet, J.S. Dewes takes the raw material of the first book and its characters and refines it into a much more enjoyable narrative experience. It is a novel less about the actions that are happening but about the challenges and growth that the cast of likable characters go through along the way. It excels at creating small tense vignettes that are set against the backdrop of a much larger intergalactic conflict. It feels for a long time like the characters are rolling a boulder up a hill, only to have it come crashing back down upon them… the stories that are woven in the moments of motion however are deeply compelling.

The reason why I burned through this book with such purpose, is that a few days into reading it… I was notified that my hold on Jim Butcher’s Battle Ground had come available from the library I am using to access the Libby App. I went to sleep last night happy in the knowledge that I could borrow that book with a clear mind and looked forward to consuming it. Then this morning… even more conflict arrived as I was pinged by the Libby App that much much longer waiting hold on Nona the Ninth, the next book in the Locked Tomb series had also come open. The queue for Battle Ground was relatively short, and there is an option in the Libby App to effectively let someone cut in line without losing your “first priority” spot in line. The queue of folks waiting on Nona the Ninth is still massive, and as a result, it felt the better call to accept the new option and wait for Battle Ground knowing that in theory, I should get it again before too much longer.

So I have my path set now, and I am looking forward to crawling into the book when I finish with work this evening. Since I am venturing forth once again into the realm of Audiobooks, that means I can play games while listening along to the story. So more likely than not I am going to be diving back into either Path of Exile or Last Epoch, which are mechanically interesting games but don’t require much in the way of narrative processing power. I could probably play Guild Wars 2 as well, but what I really want to do in that game is focus on more story… which conflicts with my ability to engage with an Audiobook. I’ve said it before, I don’t seem to have the ability to process two different sources of speech/text at the same time. If I am reading text, my brain stops listening to the incoming words from the audio.

In other news… I ripped the bandaid off. I had been planning on migrating this weekend to Gamepad.club, but after a conversation with a friend, it seemed silly that I was spending so much time hem hawing around. Why did I move? There really is no valid practical reason. One server is as good as any other server when it comes to bulk communication with your friends. However, I like the idea of being on a server that is run by someone I have a personal relationship with. Gaz is good people and we’ve known each other for ages at this point so I am happy to support his venture. It also keeps me from actually wanting to do the thing where I just run my own server. The local is pretty small, but it is extremely well federated at this point so hashtags work beautifully there thanks to him effectively being connected up with over 4000 other instances over a network of relays.

The other reason I had put things off a bit is I was honestly worried about what the long term ramifications for the instance would be if I was on it. I had fears that a very vindictive admin on a very specific gaming instance might take action to use my existence there to defederate from them. However I can no longer live my life tiptoeing around them, and just sorta have to do my own thing and hope things work out in the end. I still feel like it is only a matter of time before the current crop of moderators on that instance also find themselves excommunicated as it did for me, and my friend who stuck around after my shunning and had the exact same thing happen to them. Gaz assured me it was fine and that they would deal with the consequences of whatever happened so that finally gave me the push I needed to just do it.

Now I am looking forward to a weekend of gaming and audiobooks, and that sounds like as good of a thing as could possibly happen right now. I realize we have a few days until the weekend, but do you have any big plans? Drop me a note below.

A Very ARPG Year

by

Good Morning Friends! I spent a bit of time yesterday setting up my bookwyrm profile and loading the books that I have already read this year into it. So far I dig it. Unlike Good Reads it does appear to be an entirely manual process. This morning for example I updated my progress in The Exiled Fleet and it just required me to plug in a page number that I was sitting on. As a result, I am probably not really going to be updating progress that often and simply adding a book when I start reading it and then marking it as read, and writing some general comments about my experience. The other aspect of the tool that I want to explore a bit more is using it as a cache of books that I want to read. Libby does not exactly have the best discovery engine, so my goal is to use the “To Read” section as a sort of memory-jogging mechanism when I find I am looking for something new to consume.

What I had feared might happen… has happened. I am around 60% through The Exiled Fleet and my hold for the last Dresden novel has come open. Essentially as I understand it I have three days from the time of receiving the notice to claim it or else the book goes to the next person in line and I keep my “next in line” spot. My hope is that I can push through the novel I am currently reading in the next few days so that I can go ahead and claim my spot and go back to the gaming/audiobook nonsense that I enjoy so greatly. This is the part of the library system that I do not love… is the inherent pressure of trying to churn through something in a specific amount of time. As a result last night I spend most of the evening reading rather than gaming, which was its own sort of charming. My wife is admittedly a bit flabbergasted by this sudden transformation because reading all night is her jam, not necessarily mine.

That is not to say I am doing zero gaming. I am starting to poke my head back into Guild Wars 2 a bit, because I’ve been craving that sort of gameplay. I seem to be very much in this ARPG/Action MMO mindset right now and after coming from Path of Exile, I have to admit Lord of the Rings Online was a little slow for my tastes right now. I am easing back into Guild Wars 2 by spending some time doing the world boss train. I think ultimately however I will pick up and start working on the main/expansion stories with my Ranger. I am not sure what shifted mentally but I just started enjoying running around with my Ranger a bit more than I did my Necromancer.

I’ve also been playing a bit more Last Epoch and currently am really enjoying the Acolyte class which will eventually become a Necromancer. After decades of avoiding casters like the plague… which admittedly is probably a defunct saying given that we had a plague and no one avoided it… I actually find that I enjoy casters quite a bit these days. Most of the classes that I have played in Path of Exile ultimately end up being some sort of a caster given that melee is just not great there. While I enjoyed my Paladin character in Last Epoch, I think I am enjoying being a Necromancer a bit more. With the upcoming Multiplayer release, I figured it was time for me to finally get a character to the game’s endgame. I don’t think Last Epoch will be anywhere near as rich as Path of Exile but I am hoping it will be a better “with friends” experience.

I do not exactly feel great playing Blizzard games right now. I know that there have been significant changes inside of the company, but so long as Kotick still profits from it… I feel more than a little dirty spending time on those games. That said… I will be pausing my prohibition for a bit and diving into Diablo III Season 28 soon. It looks fucking amazing and this may be the last new season we get for a while, given that Diablo IV will be launching before we see another season. I figure a lot of the live team currently supporting Diablo III will end up getting transitioned. Mostly I am really interested in the Altar of rites which is a system where you sacrifice various things and get permanent account-wide buffs. Some of these give you significant amounts of power and others are just quality of life like the ability for your pets to pick up and salvage white, blue, and yellow items. I am deeply interested in this season, and in theory… once it has run its course I will have either Multiplayer in Last Epoch or another Path of Exile league to focus on.

Basically, it feels like this is going to be a very ARPG year for me. I knew at some point I would be playing Jedi Survivor but with it being bumped back by another month yesterday that gives me a bit more wiggle room to fully dive into this nonsense.

The Last Watch

by

Over Christmas Break my wife discovered the Libby App, and as I wrote earlier this month it prompted us to get a library card for the first time in over a decade. I’ve always loved libraries, but they never really fit neatly into my adult life. Books are friends and bookstores are among the most friendly places I can think of to be in life. However I do not read anywhere near as often as I might like, and while I am well-read from a classical standpoint, I’ve done a pretty shit job of working books into my routines. Without really meaning it seems like “reading more” has become my New Year’s resolution. Since Christmas, I have consumed five books so far, and seem to show no signs of slowing. At this point, I’ve worked on catching up to the Dresden Files series and have finished off Skin Game, and Peace Talks, and am waiting on my hold to come open for Battle Grounds. After having it recommended so many times I have finished Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth and similarly wait for Nona the Ninth the latest book in that series to become available through my library hold.

This would be the primary issue with relying upon the public library system for your book consumption, that there will be periods of time when you are waiting around for the next book to become available. I’ve greatly enjoyed this little tradition that I have started and did not want to lose momentum, so this lead me to go fishing for the next book. Something you have to understand about my tendencies as a reader is that I generally find a book series that I enjoy… and then consume everything by that author. So my instinct is to focus fire a single series and see it until its conclusion, but as I said the hold queue doesn’t exactly make that viable. As a result, I started sifting around in the Libby App for books that were currently available and stumbled onto a recommendation engine of sorts (that admittedly I have never found again). It suggested that If I liked Harry Dresden and Harrowhark Nonagesemus then maybe I would like The Last Watch by J.S. Dewes.

I am not entirely certain WHY the recommendation engine picked this specific book, but I am glad that it did because I’ve enjoyed it and now the sequel that I started a few days ago. Effectively this book is deeply drift-compatible with Halo, ODST, and maybe bits and pieces of the Mass Effect universe specifically from the military aspect and maybe a little Enders Game. Effectively it is a military tale of a fish out of water who was forced into service to effectively dispose of him quietly. In this universe, humanity has fought a sort of forever war against an elder insectoid race called the Viators. It turns out humanity was extremely good at adapting their technology and using it against them. While at the time of the novel the last of the Viators are thought to be extinct… admittedly through a human-led xenocide.

Sentinel, Sentinel at the black,
Do not blink or turn your back,
You must stand ready to stem the tide,
Lest Viators come to cross the Divide.

Nursery Rhyme

On the edge of the known universe lies a gravitational anomaly known as “The Divide”. In this setting, the universe stopped expanding and settled onto fixed borders with this uncrossable boundary laying at the far edges. Urban legend states that the Viator feel arrived from the other side of it, and as a result, there lies situated in deep starless black space a fleet of abandoned battleships, each crewed by a branch of the service called the Sentinels. Effectively the Sentinels are like The Night’s Watch from Game of Thrones and are made up largely of folks who were drummed out of normal service for one reason or another. They are stranded at this post, on ancient space hulk relics that have had their FTL and Impulse drives disabled to effectively keep anyone from escaping.

The novel itself centers around two primary characters, and each chapter alternates perspectives between them as it weaves the story around the shifts in voice. First up is Cavlon Mercer, a literal corporate prince in line to take over the family business, but one that has embarrassed his grandfather to the point of being “disappeared”. Having no military experience, he is shuffled out of the core worlds and out onto this remote posting, where he has to figure out how to be a soldier in rapid succession. Then you have Adequin Rake an Excubitor and commanding officer of the SCL Argus, the vessel stranded as a floating fortress on the edge of The Divide. She was a war hero, a member of the Titans… something similar to the Spartans from Halo, and one who made a few decisions that she was being punished for by being marooned in this command.

I don’t really want to dive too deeply into the core story arc, because I found it interesting to see it unfold in front of me. The novel does not go in a direction you think it might but also carves out its own path that I found deeply compelling. It is admittedly a bit of a slow start because Cavlon is very unlikeable in that first chapter, and continues to largely be unlikeable for quite some time. By about chapter five or six, however, I was completely hooked and needed to know how things were going to shake out in the end. if anything I have said so far piqued your interest, then you might check this one out. Right now “The Divide” series is an unfinished story arc with two books currently available and a third on its way. There is a novel coming out in march that is disconnected from The Divide series called Rubicon which also sounds interesting.

Unfortunately, the Library system does not have the audiobook for the next part of this series, so I opted to read it the old-fashioned way. This is where my previous pattern of consumption breaks down a bit because I had been listening to Audiobooks while I played games as a comfy dual activity engaging different parts of my brain with each. Now that I am falling back to the text, however, I traditionally only read from the bed which means after a few nights I am on the ninth chapter. I read relatively slowly at least compared to my wife, so I’ve always felt pressure to be able to consume a book in the amount of time allowed by a library loan. I am equally hooked on this second book as I was on the first, so I might actually start choosing to read over playing a game in the evenings in order to speed up the consumption process. I would use GoodReads to track my progress, but since my wife is way more prolific than I am… and we use the same Amazon account… it is largely littered with her books.

Any unknown amount of time ago (okay not unknown, my profile says 8 months ago)… I set up a Bookwyrm profile so I am likely going to be using that for tracking my book consumption. For those who might be unaware, one of the many projects on the Fediverse that is not Mastodon is a Bookwyrm which serves as a federated alternative to something like Good Reads. You can follow Bookwyrm profiles just like you could any other federated account with an @username@instancename type structure. I am not sure if it will be a purely manual process or if there is a way to maybe have my Libby App update it. Whatever the case it is a thing I plan on sorting out today. I have no real long-term goals other than the chew through the backlog of things people have suggested to me over the years but I never quite got around to consuming.

Forever Shifting Focus

by

Good Morning Friends! Sometimes in my life, I fall into a virtuous pattern in life that makes me immensely happy. I am still deeply engaged in Path of Exile, but it is more than just that. Since coming back from the holiday break I have been spending my evenings futzing around in Delve while listening to an Audiobook. So many of the games that I play are mechanically enjoyable but not necessarily narratively engaging. So it has long been my habit to be doing two things at the same time. Often this is listening to a YouTube video, specifically a long-form pseudo-documentary but more recently it has been consuming books. I talked awhile back about the Libby App, and granting me easy access to digital books and in my specific case a trove of audiobooks.

Since starting this new trend I’ve consumed three books and am nearing the end of the fourth. So much of me wants to say “read” because that is normally how you talk about a book. I don’t have a great vernacular for audiobooks because “listening” to a book seems not quite right for the process. Essentially my focus is entirely on the book that is playing out in a wonderful radio play style audio drama, and the game itself is just something I am also doing with my time. Not listed above is Skin Game also in the Harry Dresden series, which I had purchased when it came out and had laying around. I never got around to catching up and am doing so now. I’ve got holds in place for the next Dresden novel Battleground as well as one for Nona the Ninth the next book in the Locked Tomb series. I am uncertain which one of those will land first but whatever the case I think I am enjoying this process I am engaged in.

I was talking about this last night over on Mastodon/Fediverse and my friend Victor chimed in that he did not understand how I could do this. I don’t necessarily understand either to be truthful. I’ve never really been able to do just one thing at a time. If I am watching television I am also playing a game on my laptop. If I am reading, I am also listening to music or something of the sort. Part of why I hate going to the theater is that I feel like I need to be doing something else while watching the Movie. It is like I need to be doing one thing that has my focus, and another thing that is consuming all of my fidgety energies. Even if it is just running around in circles, that second activity is almost always going to be a game. As a result the games that I play the most, tend to be the games that are most mechanically focused and less focused on narrative and story. Sure I will go on a kick of playing a bunch of narrative games in a row, but my more common happy place is to be playing a game that I have shifted to muscle memory while doing something else with my greater focus.

My happy place of late has been Delve, which is a game mode within Path of Exile where you go diving down tunnels looking for treasure as you move from node to node on an underground map. Last night I found this amazing cluster of cities including three boss nodes, two of which I completed before running out of sulfite. Instead of shifting over to my mapping/bossing character, I opted to start working on a Toxic Rain Raider which is intended to be the eventual replacement for the Trickster variant that I started a while back. In both cases though, these are things that I know extremely well and understand the patterns that I need to follow, and as such, I can shift my attention to something else like the book I was “reading”. This is unfortunately just how my brain processes data best. Growing up I used to doodle incessantly to the chagrin of my teachers… who did not understand that doodling was actually allowing me to consume the content more completely.

For me, if I am “only” listening or “only” watching… I tend to zone out and lose track of what I am doing. I get bored because I am not as engaged as I want to be. There are some activities that I can’t do at the same time. For example, if I am writing I can’t listen to anything with words… because my “word center” is having its attention split between actively writing and trying to understand the words. As a result for times when I need to focus on something that is text-based… I have a stock of orchestral soundtracks to listen to. Admittedly all of this as a side note, is why I greatly prefer “dubbed” Anime because I can’t read television at the same time I am playing a video game. I am not sure if anyone else is regularly doing two or three things at the same time, but it is the thing that works for me.