• Material chained.

    The other day, I cited material possessions as the chains that bind us to our ruts, or at least me to mine. My biggest chain would be my board game collection. It has grown large and menacing over the last few years; were it to pounce on someone, that person would surely be crushed under the weight.

    There is also a smaller collection of books, and some DVDs. The majority of the books have been replaced with ebooks. There area few of sentimental value or that would be a pain to read digitally, but for the most part, they’re not something that would need to travel with me. Same goes for the DVDs. Netflix would cover most of my movie needs.

    Beyond that, a few knickknacks are scattered around, but I’m not sure if any of them hold any real attachment.

    A few pieces of art, I suppose I’d miss those.

    My pile of monkeys and other fuzzy friends. Leaving them would be a bit strange.

    Then there’s the tech, though plenty of it is irrelevant. I’d be happy with a Chromebook for most of my projects.

    A decent gaming PC, it’s an expensive replacement, but doable in time. Especially given how little I actually play games these days.

    I suppose it would make sense to keep a console, but none of them really inspire me to bring them along.

    The 3ds gets packed, I suppose. Its light, has a few games, and doesn’t take up much space.

    The final pieces of tech are the monitors. Expensive, but not really portable. Pretty easy to replace, I suppose.

    Clothing, some costumes, but really not much there that matters. Mostly just t-shirts that I liked. Like my KoL Bonestar shirts.

    Yeah, reflecting on it, the board games are the big obstacle. Though I suspect I could find a good home for them, if I wanted to go traveling.

  • negentropic agent

    For the longest time, I’ve had difficulty in defining what my beliefs in a format that I was able to convey to others. All language is layered with context and nuance, and I found that when I tried to adapt or adopt philosophical terms or concepts as a method of creating a short hand or context for my personal beliefs, I would inadvertently attach some baggage that I hadn’t intended or anticipated. For the while I referred to my belief system as the phrase sentimental nihilism, as it seemed to share some common elements with the nihilistic philosophy, though taken in an unconventional direction, hence the sentimental. While these two terms conveyed the basic concept, they also brought in a certain distrust from people who had had negative experiences with individuals who used their nihilism to excuse character flaws or life choices. There was also a certain misunderstanding of how the term sentimental was being used. I had been using it to refer to the concept sentimental value, something that was often unclear. Tonight, while insomnia prevented my sleeping, I pondered various alternative phrases and one came to mind. I am actively resisting entropic principles. Perhaps I am just resistant to entropy, but that doesn’t quite feel right. It doesn’t encompass the beliefs. The entropic principle is that over time, things age and decay, unless they are maintained. Some would call this opposition to entropy the negentropic agent. Perhaps I am a negentropist.

    Originally written about a year ago, just prior to the creation of this blog, and never imported into it, strangely, unlike other older posts. 

  • triadecimconseco

    triadecimconseco

    To cut into 13 pieces.

    But badly translated and mashed together, implying that the person doesn’t really understand what they’re doing, since they’ve combined greek prefixes with latin phrases. Implying that they have an incomplete and perhaps flawed understanding of the mysticism that they’re trying to invoke.

  • Current status

    Stunning bout of depression/apathy has hit me hard over the weekend.
    I’m suffering from a serious lack of motivation. Partially this is related to my realisation that the rut I’m in is much deeper and harder to get out of than I’d previously understood. It is partially because some aspects of it have been established over the last decade and a half.

    What can be done?
    Untangle the material chains and drag myself out slowly.
    Start burning the chains randomly and hope I survive the fire.

    The two extremes, essentially.

    Neither path appeals currently.

  • The new thing… Vigilante Justice

    The new thing… Vigilante Justice

    So, my sources tell me that a masked vigilante is out there, in the city. Well, that’s nothing new. This one, is perhaps a bit different though. He’s driving an electric car, wearing a wrestling mask, and carrying a sawzall. He’s been seen parking in front of houses that are watering their lawns excessively, in clear violation of the water restrictions. He’ll walk up to the house, turn the tap fully off, and then with his sawzall, he’ll cut the head off the faucet. Then he’ll apply a sticker to the side of the house, before getting back in the car and driving away. The sticker is printed with a copy of the current water restrictions and an oddly deformed smiley face at the bottom.

    Strangely, the rumours about this man differ greatly. Some describe him as 5’5″, blond hair poking out from the mask, chain smoking, while others have described him as 6’6″, a big bear of a man, who drinks from the hose before he shuts it off. One person even stated that she was sure that the vigilante was in fact a woman.

    In any case, my lawn has gone brown and grey, and will stay that way.

  • Characters

    I’m thinking I should put together a page that lists the various characters who appear in this list, separating those who exist from those who don’t and providing as much or as little real world context for them as they feel comfortable with.

    This was motivated by aRedBaroness joining the board games and DerBlob having a handle that I am having a hard time associating with him.

    So, if you want to volunteer your context, let me know.

    Dimestore is our shadowrun GM, a regular board gamer, a scholar and a gentleman.

    John Duggan, when he appears in the blog, is a fictional interpretation of a real person, who I never spend much time with. Less of a scholar, but no less a gentleman than Dimestore, he has serious obligations that tend to interfere with board gaming.

    Reive Doig has been a figure in the Vancouver kink scene for a few decades now. He’s something of a pioneer, with a passion for community building and education. He is part of the team behind Noir and Erotic Vancouver, which I help with. He tends to have too much on his plate at any given time.

    aRedbaroness and I have known each other for years, since I dated one of her friends. While that ended with a bit of a flat note, the friendship has remained. We’ve recently started to collaborate on some projects, as we both have a strong focus on the written word.

    mogdoll, the henchmuffin, is a great minion.

    I’m sure there are more and more details will be added, but this was what came out of my head on the ride to work.

  • Shadowrun returning

    So, it sounds like we’ve for enough players to actually have a Sunday shadowrun start up again. aRedbaroness has an elf adept she’s working on, specialising in some variant of killing hands. DerBlob has a Dr.Nick style streetdoc he’s building. I’m probably doing a face mage again, probably face secondary. Hopefully this time it won’t be a slippery slope into blood magic depravity.

    We played a round of five tribes, and apparently I didn’t explain the game very well, because people were realising midgame some of the rules. But everyone had fun, so that’s not to bad.
    After that, DerBlob and I played a round of Imperial Settlers finally. I now understand why people like that game. The drafting mechanics, the tableau building, the choice to convert a card directly into resources, and the empire building. Over a period of 5 turns, making a game session less than an hour. Definitely one I’ll want to play again, now that we have the hang out it.

    Didn’t get a chance to play Spyfall or Dead of Winter, though Spyfall is now prepped for next time. Well, partially. We’ve decided to upgrade it with manilla envelopes for all the mission sets.

  • Social Media Pattern Extraction.

    This morning, twitter once again suggested I follow a person who I dislike. While I haven’t seen any direct evidence that this individual is abusive and violates boundaries, I’ve seen plenty of secondary evidence, including accounts from individuals. It bothers me that because this individual has friends in common with me on twitter, or has some sort of social media profile similar to my own, twitter thinks I should connect with them.

    Then I started pondering something that was said the other day on a podcast, regarding Klout Score. IIRC, it was the Giant Beastcast, talking about hotel room upgrades based on Klout score, after a conversation about Uber drivers and their ratings systems. I sent them a tweet, suggesting that they read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow.  I know I’ve mentioned in my past writings about this book, and about the Whuffie system, a social currency that we seem to be drifting ever closer to. I wondered if there was a social media pattern to abusers that could be detected.

    In the past I’ve stated that looking at someone’s fetlife friend’s list can provide you with some potential insight into their social position, intentions and perhaps even their character. I’ve stated that I tend to distrust people who have friends that fall entirely into one category, especially if the cruder among us would describe that category as “prey”. If I were better at extracting and processing data, or programming, I’d attempt to see if there was a pattern recognition system that could be developed, to provide some sort of background alarm for this sort of thing. Sadly, the only person I know who was working on this sort of thing has a tendency to alienating people and making their work unpalatable to others.  (LS – DAUR)

    In other news, I have started playing Ingress again. The weather is nice, so I’ll be other there walking about more.

  • Wandering homeward

    Left work more than half an hour late, after a long call with a customer who couldn’t accept that his issue was not really something we could support. DNS issues, and he can’t log into his router to change the DNS. And he’s managed to wipe the settings from his ata (analog telephone adaptor), which can easily be set up, if you can receive email, which he also can’t, though he denies this. The computer and phone didn’t ding, so he hasn’t received any email. Even though both are connecting through his router, which currently isn’t functional. Hmmm, possible connection? Eventually, he gave up.
    And then I left. Wandered homeward. Well, vaguely. I decided to go elsewhere first, to get my mail.
    4 kms, to there. Then another few kms, depending on my route. Eventually home.

  • tech woes

    I haven’t been writing much lately, partially because I had a major technological failure the other day and managed to have both my Nexus 5 and my 14″ chromebook cease functioning.

    My ancient macbook doesn’t really have the battery to be of much use as a writing tool, if it isn’t plugged in someplace. My desktop is an option, but the chair in front of it doesn’t seem conductive to great writing.

    The backup cellphone, currently can’t log into wordpress, as it lacks NFC, so my security protocols won’t let it on. I could bypass that, but I haven’t really felt it was worth the effort.

    I keep thinking about replacing my chromebook, but I can’t decide on a particular flavor, and I keep hearing that the new specs in the fall will be worth waiting for. Though with a chromebook, the specs aren’t overly relevant.

    I liked the 14″, but it was a bit big, even if it was lightweight. I could go with a 11″, but will the keyboard be wide enough? My hands are rather large.

    My specs are pretty simple. Lightweight, comfortable keyboard, long battery life. Screen quality doesn’t matter much, processor isn’t a big deal; overall, cheaper tends to be better.