Blots, reviews going back to their old format, (BN) Nook, and the hankering to RPG

(15:57:15 CDT)

Blots, reviews going back to their old format, (BN) Nook, and the hankering to RPG

If you check the main page (the index.html, as HTML's legacy named it) of this blog you'll probably have noticed a mixture of more traditional entries, like this one, and some short entries that sometimes are called "blots". Something I am experimenting with and trying out new formats for. I have an idea for a "final" format that I will be trying in a day or two, likely tomorrow, and so any feedback you have on them would be appreciated. If you only follow this via Twitter or RSS or such, then you've not seen them. What they are are shorter posts entirely contained rather than links to a longer post. They are images, links to news articles, soundbites, videos, and such. Their intention is to share more information than something like Twitter feed can, including graphical information and formatted text that allows me to add commentary to various bits, without requiring myself to generate a full blog entry every time I find a neat link. They are roughly the shape and size of something you see on a Tumblr feed, and currently I am trying to blend them into this journal as seamlessly as possible. Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

The name comes from a typo I made once, when I referred to this as Dickens of a Blot and figured that it works as an appropriately retained malapropism. As I finish introducing them, they will start showing up on the RSS feed, and there is a chance that I will use their format to act as links to the longer posts. In other words, the main page will be a listing of blots with links to blog posts including a paragraph or two of text and then a link, much like they do now, but the formatting would be uniform. If THAT happens, then the RSS feed will likely split into two. There will be a blot feed (a return of wyrmis.rss or something) and then the blog feed that will have the fully formatted post. I'll flip a coin and let you know how that goes.

In a related area, reviews will keep trickling out of me at the speed of molasses but will start returning to their old form on the main page. Rather than be a single line that is a single link, they will be more full. The "new format" was meant to stop me from posting a big old bushel of crap at once, but since I'm not turning out more than a review a day, it is pointless to play that game.

That about wraps up site news. Now on to my current two temptations. I'm probably getting a Barnes & Noble nook (Nook, for those of us who like capitalizing our words, dana boyd notwithstanding). It is their e-Reader device, equivalent in most ways to the Sony eReader and the Amazon Kindle. The reason I am getting one is because it does two things that an Amazon Kindle does not: ePubs and eReader/Fictionwise PDB files. That won't mean a lot to a lot of you, but it does to me. I prefer the Fictionwise business model, but have always hated that buying things from them means I have to at least lug my laptop to read if not reserve reading just for my desktop. I like being able to read in bed, to take reading to work or out for a walk. The Kindle fulfills that, but requires conversions and such. Having my somewhat large ePub collection (a format I support also for its openness) and PDB collections made usable once more would delight me. In fact, as the ebook wars sort of heat up and the vendor model gets shoved down our throats more and more, the chance that I buy ebooks directly from "vendors" like Apple's iBookstore, or Amazon's Kindle store, or Barnes & Noble's ebook store drops very close to nil. The greatest works ever written are all in the public domain and many of my favorite authors are cool with giving things away for free. Even if they weren't, I'm typing this in a room with 3000 books surrounding me, I'll be fine. I prefer Fictionwise, Baen, and Horror-Mall's way of doing it, anyhow.

The other temptation is, potentially, most assuredly, less costly and it is try and get some sort of RPG set up. I have an idea for a 15-seconds-in-the-future RPG, set in Liverpool, featuring college-aged American ex-pat hacker kids. GURPS Lite. Combining some elements of horror. Imagine, basically, a game world where hacking brushes right up against old horror tropes (zombies, vampires, Lovecraftian trapezoids, and so forth) in odd and different than expected ways. Rogue non-euclidean programs breaking out of our space-time into eldritch horrors, virtual reality living off of brain waves, doppelganger styled identity theft. All the heroes would be low-score characters. Purposely made as-human-as-human (for instance, say the average point character is 200, these would be 150). No big heroics, lots of role-play.

Also, floating around is a want to do a Dead Reign campaign as presented—PPE eating zombies and all with no neutrally aligned characters—or a Torchwood game forged from FUDGE and set in Huntsville. In any case, I am thinking of trying out a session or two with relative non-gamers.

Ok, time to play some Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance for an hour or so until Sarah shows up, and then figure out what we are doing tonight. May end doing something sporty, but I damn near honked my knee last go around and so I need to figure out some way to brace the thing.

Si Vales

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