lazylog

Jabber is back from the dead! And google made it cool as hell!

Captain's log, star date 7/28/2005 12:04 pm Biei, Hokkaido, Japan. Travel Day! We cut back from Furano to Sapporo via a very particular sequence of busses and trains. This is one of the longer such spells, weighing in around 4 or 5 hours in total, and so we looked at what would be fun to squeeze in a half-day. Why, bicycles, of course! First, a train down to Biei (the station itself proud to be counted among the best 100 train stations in Japan. Though asthetic and very clean, I did not see anything particularly glorious about it.) We decided to rent a pair of cycles and head down to Bibaushi, and on the way stop by the museum (exhibit hall, really) of an excellent Japanese natural photographer. The museum was free (though they make a killing off selling the prints) and of stunning quality. Souvenoir in hand, we turn our noses toward Bibaushi, which should only have been about 2 km away (we had already rode about 8 or 9.) At every fork we followed our map, and at every turn felt ourselves on the right path. And yet it was still a bit longer than we thought. Still, it was quite a shock when lazily coasting by was the very train station we had arrived at in the morning! We do not get lost...

SO, I'm going to japan! For two weeks! Like, right frickin now! Or at 2:35. That's when the plane takes off, anyway. I'm sneaking out of work around noon to make it all work smoothly. I'll be blasting around Hokkaido, the northern sub-island around the main one. It's where the indigenous japanese live, and it's something of the country's nature spot. We shall do many things involving words like 'swimsuit', 'mountain', 'paragliding' and 'climbing'. The second week, we return to the central island for crazy festival action. For any who don't know, I'm going with Laura, who planned most of it, leaving me free to think about how cool she is for planning most of it. Anywho, I've got my passport, id & cash in my magic neck thingie, a tiny suitcase (carry-on size, in fact) full of 3 days of clothes, swimsuit, sunscreen & other goodies. Including another, smaller bag, currently compressed, for hauling loot back with. As a computer scientist/programmer/whatever I am, this recusion is amusing to me ("Guahaha, Fractal Luggage!") I'm not particularly looking forward to the flight, but I think I'll be able to sleep on it. If not, I've got Jon's copy of Dandelion Wine (thanks Jon for letting me 'borrow' that. To be clear, here 'borrow' means 'steal without your knowledge.')
Anywho, I'll be out for two weeks. You all should have a giant party while I'm gone. A really big one. Like, visible from space.
P.S. Anyone ever find out where Joe & Em went on their honeymoon?
P.P.S. I am hatching a secret master plan. It is so secret and master that I can't even tell you, vast internet, about it. Guahaha.

So, I stumbled upon a site about women in classic mythology, written up with fun descriptions.  There's a glossary in the back for odd terms, where I came across this beauty:

steatopygous

to have a really big butt, and often breasts and hips too. directly translated as "fat butt."

God bless the Intertron.

This fellow is quite important, and the internet will be very sad if he goes away.

More data here.

http://geeksunite.net/

Hello Earth; I haven't fallen off of you.

Work is work, and who wants to talk about that? So let it be that it proceeds with appreciable smoothness. Now to more important things: gaming.

A vice of mine lately is to talk magic with ckhrysze, brant & don at work, while slow, slow bea workshop brings it's 5 minute dev cycle to climax with an ide crash.  For this I am rapidly getting re-educated in not only modern rules, but what type 2 tournament looks like now.  In fact, brant keeps a repository of decks we can all upload to and browse, but since it is down (he has a terminal case of hackerhood, and so outages happen) here's one right in LJ.

"Sway of the Stars"

    // Lands
11    Island
11    Mountain

    // Creatures
1    Kumano, Master Yamabushi
3    Thought Courier
2    Triskelion

    // Spells
4    Gifts Ungiven
4    Spellweaver Helix
4    Rewind
4    Mana Leak
3    Yamabushi's Storm
3    Yamabushi's Flame
4    Fabricate
3    Sway of the Stars
4    Feral Lightning

    // Sideboard
4    Twincast
1    Uyo, Silent Prophet
3    Sowing Salt
3    Kumano's Pupils
2    Wall of Air
2    Mephidross Vampire

See if you can work it out ;-). The jist is using the helix with feral lightning and sway.

Other than that, a few top secret projects are underway.  One involves silly string.  Another uses a white wolf setting currently in development.  But for now, it's off to bed.
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So... This band name just pops unbidden into my head:

"Dr. Johnny Mansfield and the Electric Freakout."

I just thought I needed to share that. Now back to workies.

We have partied!  Despite opposing forces of schedule and nature itself, there has been grilling, arcading, bowling, caking and carding.  Many peoples, including aelfscine, ckhrysze, inspectorzutto, floydpepper and asthehawkflies were in attendence.  The haul was both functional and delicious;  I received swank headphones and tasty hot sauces, addictive card game as well as shot glasses!  Prior, I merely had tiny measuring cups, which ended up being intimidating triple shots.

So, Steve Jackson has perfected the arts of turning tasty candies into party card games.  For example, consider the specimen "Ninja Burger".  You are a ninja!  You seek honor!  (read as "honah".)  You must deliver tasty burgers unseen, but beware; jealous fellow employee ninjas lay traps to steal your honor.  Climb, sneak, driver, lore, slash and lie your way to beefy victory!  I was only able to play a few games before a cataclysm involving orange juice occured, but it is quite catchy.  Also a telling documentary on the lives in a dwindling niche: the service-industry ninja.

Then there is munchkin.  ckhrysze brought it along, and it is sinfully back-stabby.  I will refrain from telling you about it, for it is that addictive, and I would spare you kind folks.

Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday 'cause I rock,
Happy Birthday to me.

I just blew the weekend playing guildwars & magic with , Don & Rob.  It was amazing;  the sager is the perfect game box.

But now I am 24.  Let's think about all the things that come in 24:

1. There are 24 hours in a day.
   
2. There are 24 disciples, if they all had evil clones.
3. There are about 24 shots of vodka and schnapps at my apartment with my name on 'em.

This message brought to you by the number 24, and the letter 'Booze'.  (Just kidding about the shots.  Sorta.)

So my friend ckhrysze and I remembered we really enjoy kicking each other's @5535 in magic.  But woe are we:  we can no longer meet by walking out one dorm room and into another.  If only technology had an answer...  <really tacky fanfare>Tadaa!</really tacky fanfare> Magic Workstation to the rescue!  Built by half-sentient troglodyte proto-coders, it brings out the funnest aspects of the online magic experience by placing them on a backdrop of possibly the worst UI design choices ever made.  Don't get me wrong, though; she's got it where it counts.  The actual game play mechanism, and to some degree the card base browser, are reasonably streamlined and stable.  Venture but a little outside these established functions, however...

An example must be made.  The deck construction mechanism has two rival interfaces;  one named Classic or Library mode, and one that works.  In Classic mode, the card database (that is, all magic cards it knows about) are shown in a big table up top.  Sounds great.  The deck/library/other collection in question is supposedly shown below it, with an adjustable horizontal divider.  Certainly, this appears to be the case...  an empty table is down there, bearing such telling column names as "Card name" and "Qty".  It very much seems to be a deck editor.  The first instant when you try to add a card to the deck, however, is precisely when this wistful illusion ends.  My first time I tried to add a card (and everyone's first time is special), I doubled clicked it's above entry.  I was rewarded with a little popup containing a rendering of the card, containing it's text, cost and so on.  So be it;  I suppose that could have been what I wanted given just the clue of a double click.  Never mind that the same exact picture is display right f*ck1ng there, 3 inches to the left.  So be it.  Let's play drag & drop.  Grab the little bastard (he happened to be a mountain) and move him down; surely this must work.  Where work == highlighting all rows from him on down.  Fine.  right-click the selection;  get a little menu..  find the one that says "add to deck".  No such.  In my final flailings, I scan the toolbars and menus.  Nothing.  The closest thing is a search box near the top.  It's the kind with the little drop down menu, if you click the attached button with the down arrow on it.  Except it doesn't do that;  IT'S WHAT ADDS THE F*CKING CARDS.  By sneaking that function in like that, not only has the author admirably hidden the most basic function of a deck editor, he has also seen fit to break a UI convention laid down since the dawn of frickin' time.

As I mentioned, there's a different mode, which makes complete sense.  Cards on the left, deck on the right.  Toolbar between them, with an arrow pointing left, and another to the right.  They do what you think they would.  Now, why isn't this one the default interface?

On the whole, I like the program, because the game play itself is better than that in apprentice, and it's free (unlike magic online.)  But if I ever meet that code monkey in a dark alley, I may have to remind him that you can't spell 'manslaughter' without laughter.