Geekdom Archives - Page 8 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Lego Episode

August 18, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy people out in digital land… I Belghast am doing my best to try and be noble and bloggified this morning… but seeming to fail miserably. If you have not figured out by now… this top paragraph is really just me psyching myself up to write. Think of it as the wind-up to a pitch, and while I do divulge important bits of information from time to time… mostly it is just my way of easing into writing about “things”. This morning I am still drinking a cup of coffee, so who knows what adventures my mind will go on throughout the course of the day.

Lego Friends

So a few weeks back my niece wanted Legos for her birthday. This was one of my happiest moments as an uncle, and I spoiled her fairly rotten. I may or may not have bought like $80 in Legos for her… because by god I am going to support the notion of my niece being into “building things”. I have to say I was extremely disappointed in what I was able to find however. It seems like all of the Lego City products have essentially nothing but male minifigures. On a completely seperate row… were the Lego Friends toys… and scattered in among those were an assortment of “real” Lego sets with female characters. So I ended up getting her a pink bucket with a girl minifig, a blue bucket with a boy minifig… and this princess horse grooming set because the minifig in that one looked a lot like her.

I was woefully sadden later to find out that she used some of her own money to buy a bunch of the Lego Friends sets. Feminist Frequency released a video on the Lego Friends and for the most part I agreed… that they were an un-needed aberration in Legoland. I had no clue why they existed in the first place. I could not understand why they did not just release a series of Lego city sets with female heroines. But yesterday I think I finally grok exactly what the Lego Friends do that the minifigures do not.

We spent most of our day yesterday either preparing for or spending time with family. We had a surprise get together for my wife’s fathers birthday, and this was the first time I had seen my niece in awhile. During my wife’s insane Lego find she found 3 sets for my niece. One Lego friends set, and two normal lego sets but with gender neutral themes and including girl minifigs. Thing is… when we gave them to her… she was excited about all the sets for different reasons… but she was especially excited about the Lego Friends set… because it she did not already have “Andrea”. I never once thought about the fact that the Lego friends might have names.

So I started listening to how she talked about Lego friends… and it finally made sense. She cares about the different characters and their personalities much the same way as a little girl assigns attributes to each of the members of the Barbie universe. The catch is that instead of teaching copious consumption… in that you need to buy Barbie all these things… like a dream house and a car… it is letting her BUILD things for her new imaginary friends. She talked about that she is building a house for all her lego friends… which is going completely off the map since none of the sets we have gotten for her so far was anything resembling a house. Essentially from my standpoint Lego Friends are “working as intended”.

She is having all sorts of imaginative play… but she is building various aspects of the universe inhabited by these five named minifigures. So I no longer feel like a horrible person for buying into this “Friends” franchise. She is building and creating and imaging all sorts of new experience for her “dolls” and it seems like it is the best of both the Lego and Barbie experience. She is having aspirational play imaging herself as a vet or a doctor or a home builder… but doing so in a way that she is actually making the things happen by building them… rather than waiting on another trip to the store to acquire another item. Here is hoping that she continues to build and create… and we will do our best to keep supplying a fresh set of bricks to incorporate into her little world.

Heroica

Part of the whole going to see family thing, involves going to a small town about an hour from Tulsa. With it being back to school time, my wife wanted to stop and see if they had any different school supplies… or more importantly ones on clearance at the small town Wal-mart. While we did not really find much in the way of school supplies they had a bunch of Lego stuff on clearance. I have seen the various Lego board games for awhile, but never actually picked them up. I have heard they were an awesome source for relatively rare pieces, but they were always way too expensive for me to just pick up on a lark to part out. I found these two Heroica sets for less than twenty bucks combined so I figured it was well worth that.

It got me to thinking… wouldn’t it be cool to run a D&D or similar pen and paper campaign using the Lego board games as a mapping system? I saw a picture from G+ the other day of a dad teaching his kids D&D using minifigures to represent their characters. It seems like father of the year material there, but wouldn’t it be cool if you also built the dungeon they were exploring out of Lego? Granted it would involve kitbashing a TON of these sets to find enough pieces to be able to do it… but it seems like a noble undertaking. Sadly I don’t really have enough friends nearby to really support a D&D campaign. When we do pen and paper we tend to do it as a google hangout… and I think the tactile experience of Lego everything… would be lost horribly over a camera.

Nipple Chests

When I finally got back home from our family outing excursions… I sat down on the couch just absolutely drained. I initially fired up Rift, but I just was not feeling up to grinding my harvest skills any further. Granted I know I could have played something else… but I am somewhat obsessed with getting my Cleric to a level at which he can do Storm Legion content. I logged into Mumble and everyone there was playing Final Fantasy XIV… so I figured… what the hell… might as well join them. The game is growing on me, I will admit… but I am just not sure to what extent. There are still so many things that bother me about the game in general.

If my character looks awesome… I feel awesome while playing it. This is why I am such a huge proponent of cosmetic gear systems. If I can set my appearance and always look amazing… I will feel happy while playing that character. Final Fantasy XIV has way too much of the bullshit you see in the above picture. Wearing a “nipple chest” and powder blue assless chaps does not make me feel heroic in ANY way. I just feel like a walking punchline to a horrible joke. This shit might fly in Japan… but I just feel like a moron walking around like this. Sadly earlier my character looked amazing… I had a really slick looking set of gear… that fit the way my character plays… but since FFXIV has no cosmetic system to speak off… I am stuck looking like an abomination if I want to wear the most effective gear.

There is definitely something charming about the gameplay however. It feels like a much better version of World of Warcraft. The world looks nicer, the character models themselves are awesome… and the way combat chains off other abilities is a huge step forward from the WoW model. The world seems fairly intricate as well, with lots of little things to explore and find. I am still experience the whole things named nonsensically aspect… like what the hell is a Guildleve or a Levemete in the first place? It feels like when Americans try and make ethnic sounding names that end up just being gibberish. The whole game could do with a better cultural pass to change the names of things into something that makes sense. As a result I can never remember what anything is called and just end up making names up for them.

I figure I will play the rest of the weekend and see where I feel about the game at the end of it. It is more enjoyable than TERA or Dragons Prophet for example… so were this a free to play game it would be a no-brainer as to whether or not I would be occasionally playing it. But the whole subscription thing is still a sticking point for me. I keep hoping that it will miraculously get better. One of the things I want to try out is the jobs system. I need to get up to around 15 to fully unlock the airship system be able to travel to the towns that have the guilds I want to pick up. I think I am more than likely going to switch to pugilist or lancer first after getting Maurader to 15.

Wrapping Up

Well I managed to ramble on about meaningless stuff for another hour. I hope you all have a great weekend. I am guessing I will be splitting my Sunday between FFXIV and Rift. I might even go upstairs and build some more Lego sets since that seems to be on my brain. I still feel like I am potentially coming down with something… and as of this morning my wife seems similarly effected. Here is hoping it just ends up as allergies and nothing more serious.

Folklore Roulette

August 11, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning my loyal readers… or at least I think I have some loyal readers. Over the last week or so I have done a quite a few thematic posts spurred on by the announcement of EQ Next. Today is going to be a bit of a throwback to my “what Bel did” posts. Yesterday was a busy day but also a pretty relaxing one. We got out early and ran a bunch of errands including a haircut for me. I was getting rather shaggy… I was to the point where I could theoretically ponytail it up… just a horrible one.

Lego Maniac

When we finally got home and settled in I engaged in something I had been planning for awhile. When we set up the game loft, the intent was to also make it a place for me to build with my Legos that I have been amassing. So as a result there is a fold out table underneath the loveseat and finally yesterday I gave this concept a trial run, Over the last several months I had accumulated a large number of sets that I had yet to build, and this was only compounded by the awesome haul that my wife found last week. It had become a running joke that I collected Legos but never actually built them… so I intended to rectify that.

My grand scheme is to eventually come up with a storage system so that I can sort out the Lego bits into component types. But I have not settled on the best and most efficient means to do that. However in the meantime I would like to build every set I have at least once as it was intended. The entertainment center upstairs has been rather barren so it will serve as my showcase for built sets. The above picture shows a wide assortment of things I put together yesterday.

In the picture is a Captain America set, a Ninjago one, The Gandalf arrives set from Lord of the Rings, a couple of Star Wars sets including an Ewok Attack one… and two different Harry Potter sets. I barely scratched the surface of the unbuilt sets I have accumulated over the last little bit. Essentially anytime I find a set on sale for a price I am willing to pay I snap it up. Building anything with Legos makes me immensely happy. It is like returning to a simpler time. I can remember building by myself or with my cousins and creating grand machinations, and I guess to some extent I am capturing a small piece of that. Not sure if I will return to builder mode today or not, but I had a blast doing it yesterday.

Folklore Roulette

So as I built away with the Legos I decided to fire up Netflix on my PS3 and watch something. Hemlock Grove has been sitting in my recommendations for some time, so I figured what the heck. I like werewolves, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse was hands down my favorite of the World of Darkness games… so I would at least give it a shot. After watching nine episodes I can say that I really like the show… but I am not really sure why. It kinda has a twin peaks meets world of darkness feel to it. The biggest thing I realized immediately is just how under-billed calling it a “Werewolf” show is. There is a lot going on in thee town of Hemlock Grove.

Essentially you are presented an odd hodgepodge of Slavic folklore traditions mixed with some Reanimator style science-horror. You have psychic vampires, demons, possible alien hybrids, Romani seers, some crazy demonic wolf terrorizing the town… and of course a noble werewolf trying to reluctantly protect all of it. The demon wolf very much feels like a Black Spiral Dancer from White Wolf, at least the description we have been given of what a “Vargwolf” is.

I want to maybe finish out the series today, because seriously there is a lot of crazy shit going on in this little town… and I feel that sooner or later it is all going to come to a catastrophic end. If you have ever been a fan of the World of Darkness series of games, I would highly suggest checking it out. The acting is very good and at some times there are parts that remind me a little bit of American Horror Story season one. It of course has the requisite HBO style gratuitous tits and ass thing going on… so be warned if you have little or sensitive eyes in the room. I am not really sure when this became a requirement for “edgy” television but I wish it would work its way out.

Festival of Unity

One of the coolest things about playing Everquest 2 on Antonia Bayle has always been the massive player run events. Today is kicking one of the largest yearly events called the “Festival of Unity”. It starts this afternoon at 3pm EDT at the Qeynos Claymore in Antonica. You can check out the full information about the festival here on their homepage. Also Stargrace did a nice write-up about the festival over on MMOQuests. I am not sure yet if I will be attending it, but even if I do not I think it is an extremely cool concept. Antonia Bayle has by far the coolest community I have ever experienced on a Role Playing server, and I am always happy to get the word out when an event is going on.

Wrapping Up

Today’s post feels a little bit shorter than normal, but I am out of meaningful things to say. Hopefully you have a great rest of the weekend. My wife has gotten roped into assisting a friend with her wedding planning, so more or less I will be holding down the fort alone today. Going to have to start up laundry and the sort soon. Speaking of fortifications… thankful that so far I seem to have thwarted our escape artist ferret. She is sleeping peacefully in the playpen and has not found a way to climb out since yesterday. Here is hoping that the ramparts hold.

Shaking the Toner

August 7, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy hopefully rested people. Last night was another toss and turn fest… because it seems as though our ceiling fan has broken, or at least is on its last leg. As a result I slept on top of the covers all last night, some of it relatively unsuccessfully. Here is hoping that I got enough sleep to prevent me from absolutely shutting down over the course of the day. Tonight is guild night so hopefully I have the steam to lead us on a wild adventure.

Guest Contributors

Some time ago a good friend of mine started posting the occasional article on my blog under the name of Ariad. However we did a pretty lousy job of messaging that the posts were coming from him and not me. As a result I feel there was some confusion as he and I do not always see eye to eye. We were talking yesterday and he is the Spock to my Captain Kirk. As a result I have created the banners above to denote when a guest contributor is making a post.

Additionally another friend had shown interest in making the occasional post. When I told him the Spock explanation above… he said that he was more like Khan. In the same way his opinions will also not 100% align with what I am saying, but I feel a breadth of different opinions is a good thing. I’ve known Sevok since the early days of Everquest 1 and have managed to keep up with him off and on through the various games I have played. I look forward to seeing the posts they come up with, I know Sev is currently working on a spin on my “A Tank Is” post from the other day about his favorite role… the pet class.

The Grand Experiment

It has been 103 days since I started what I dubbed the “Grand Experiment” and began posting something every single morning regardless if I want to or not. I have no real idea if the results have been a net positive, but I have been true to my cause and even when I was in a hotel room on vacation… I continued blogging each morning. Yesterday a friend of mine Talyn of the Pumping Irony blog asked me a little bit about my morning routine.

Essentially he stated something I have heard from myself many times before. That ultimately he felt like he just did not have that much time to post a blog post and as a result there are lapses between postings. This pretty much explains all of the lags in my posting pattern since I started the blog back in April of 2009. I would get into a pattern where I felt like I just did not have time to post, or that it came down to a choice between playing a game or posting. Every time the blog lost out to me just logging in and playing something instead.

The Routine

When I started down this path I figured I had a bit of time each morning as I drank my coffee and attempted to wake up. Previously I had been gaming a little bit to wake up, so I decided I would give that up and devote it to blogging. Since Talyn was curious about the timeframe it took me every morning I thought I would go through my average morning, in case anyone else out there was curious as well. My alarm goes off a 5:30 am and I get up and out of bed, making my way to the kitchen to fill the Keurig and turn it on. I stumble back down the hall and jump in the shower.

While I am in the shower I try to begin thinking about what I am going to post that morning and continue doing so as I get dressed. At roughly 6:00 am I go back to the kitchen… this time less of a stumble… to make a cup of coffee for myself and one for my wife as well. After delivering the cup of coffee to the bedside table I am usually upstairs and sitting at my keyboard by 6:10-6:15. Now begins the hard part. Some mornings I know exactly what I am going to write about… others I don’t have a clue in the world.

Shaking the Toner

If it is a writers block morning I try and flip through my RSS feed to see if anything arrived since I last read it that might start some thoughts percolating in my head. The opening paragraph is ultimately the same in most of my blog posts… this is less for you guys and more for me. This is my equivalent to the wind up before a pitch. Starting words coming out onto the page often times unjams the printer in my brain and causes the topics to come spilling out. Additionally the closing bit… is my way of turning off the faucet and allowing myself to transition from thinking about the blog to thinking about the work day ahead of me.

After lots of writing hackery and many trips to google image search and or launching a given game to collect screenshots… by about 6:30-6:45 I am wrapping up my post. I give it a once over, add any links I feel I might need, add categories to the post… and finally hit publish. I religiously use Microsoft Live Writer for my posts as it allows me to see visually how my post will look before I ever place it on the site. Additionally it does a lot of niceties like managing the image uploads, has in client cropping and resizing and lets me do my alignment trickery.

Finally once the post has been made I advertise it on both Twitter and Google+. Sure there are plugins that do this, and I could configure one and just make it happen automagically. However I like to tailor my post each morning towards the content platform I am advertising it on. This takes another 10-15 minutes depending on how many names I need to reference in the posts. I go downstairs, tell my wife that I love her and am heading out the door. At this point it is between 7:00 and 7:15… so after I jaunt over to QuikTrip for breakfast I get into the office between 7:30 and 7:45. From the moment I wake up to the moment I leave the house is roughly an hour and a half.

Constraints Help

Talyn’s initial comment was “Holy crap you’re fast!”, but in truth… it is the time constraint that helps me be speedy in the morning. When I do my weekend posts, they can take an hour and a half to two hours of just writing time. The difference is.. on the weekends I have all the time in the world, so I do not feel rushed to get in and get things done. However on the weekday mornings I know I have a finite amount of time that I can devote to each step. While I have an extremely flexible report time, I personally refuse to abuse this too much. I still end up as one of the first people into the office. Ultimately our core hours that we MUST be there are 9-3, and as salaried employees we can carve out our 40 on either side of that fixed point. I tend to work 7:30 to 4:30 most days, so I can blur that line a little bit and still be fine but I try never to absolutely violate it.

My Wife is Amazing

Yesterday while I was at work, my wife was out with some friends hitting a bunch of “junk stores” for lack of a better term. This was one of her last days of freedom before the start of the new school year and got roped into this adventure by another teacher friend. I was ramping up for a meeting and a got a text saying “are there any Lego sets you are looking for?”. My addiction to Lego has not really surfaced much on the blog yet, but I have always loved them. Of late I have been picking up sets whenever I found them cheapish. Apparently at one of the places they stopped they had a large number of sets that were marked down, and then had 20% discount applied on top of that.

An example… the Lego TIE Fighter is roughly $45 in the store, and they had it priced for $35… and then after the 20% discount the final price ended up a steal at $28. After many texts back and forth with pictures of different sets, I expected her to maybe come home with a TIE Fighter and something else… but instead she came home with this massive haul of sets. She spent roughly $100 and got all of the sets pictured above… 3 sets for my niece and nephew that are from the “easy to build” line… and a second Lord of the Rings Gandalf Arrives set for a friend.

It is not that my wife bought me Legos… it is that she saw them and immediately thought that I would want them. Granted this is a two way streets… I cannot count the number of times I have picked up some random item for her classroom that I happened to stumble upon while shopping without her. I just thought it was amazingly awesome that while out with friends, doing something completely out of the ordinary that she thought about me. I guess this is why we have been a successful pair for over 15 years. While I did not marry a gamer, I married an awesome nerd that “understands” my geek nature.

Wrapping Up

I need to get this wrapped up so I can get on the road. I hope this satiated any curiosities about my process that folks might have had. Additionally look for the first of the new round of guest posts to be happening in the next few days. These will be in addition to my morning posts. I don’t want to get out of the habit of writing each morning. For those in House Stalwart, be thinking about what you want to accomplish tonight. I am completely game for splitting into dungeon groups if we have a viable comp, running hunt rifts… or just doing random rifts and such to work on the guild quest. I hope you all have a great day today, and that you accomplish whatever you need to.