Of Dogs and Designs

My dog ate my December website design.

Okay, I don't have a dog.  Nor, at this point, a December website design.  But it's coming, honest!

Warning:  Gamer geekery coming.  Your eyes can light up or glaze over now, depending on your proclivity or aversion for all things Warcrafty.

I've had some wonderful company the past few days.  And a new update to World of Warcraft. These things relate to each other like a finely honed knife and a rogue hidden in the shadows.  <-- see what I did there?  Ha ha!

I've had the pleasure of knowing Eric since I was a green-behind-the-ears hunter and Gruul's Lair was uncharted territory for my guild.  His unfailing good humour was one of the highlight of joint raids with The Oasis Contingent.  (The Oasis Contingent has a history closely tied to the long-running webcomic Sluggy Freelance and I'll introduce you to the Sluggy gang at some point, probably soonish.) Of course, I didn't know him as Eric.  In game, we usually call each other by character name .. which makes for interesting times when people have multiple characters.  It's funny, but you learn to fluidly shift from one name to the next without event thinking about it.  Or, sometimes, like my pal Nick, you just call him Nick, no matter the 'toon he is currently playing.

So I've known Eric over five years now and we've become fast friends, occasionally levelling characters together and just generally making each other's day a bit more fun.  We know how to laugh and mock each other out of bad moods; always a pretty good characteristic of friendship.

I've known Frazer for the last couple of years since he and Eric are good friends.  Frazer has a tendency of disappearing from the scene occasionally, but one day he'll wander back in and pick up like he never left.  He's a delight on my guild forums, where he is known as The Grand  Vizier and Eric as the Comically Inept Henchman.  They run rampantly through my posts like a child with brightly colored crayons and bewitchingly white walls.  Except, like Calvin and Hobbes, they tend to find a way to create a crayon bazooka which they use both rampantly and randomly.

The video below is a find of Frazer's, but it could have easily been Eric who is fascinated by all Lego Mechanical creations - among other things.

So anyway, they were both out in Vancouver for the Grey Cup game and to ogle cheerleaders by the squadful, if the stories I heard are true.  Eric travelled from Quebec to the West Coast and Frazer from Edmonton for the game, so it was inconceivable that they not take a short ferry ride over to Nanaimo to come see me.

I've been preparing for the visit and ignoring the siren lure of my computer.  It wasn't easy, especially since a long anticipated game patch arrived while they were here.  We were all good kids though, and stayed away from Warcraft until after the visit.

I had a great time and feasted them suitably, even going to far as to make that most manly of all breakfasts ... a bacon log.  Frazer got a picture of it I'll have to share with you as soon as he sends it.

Eric helped me out with some computer stuff and I'll have some new goodies to show you soon.  Which brings full circle to the monthly website redesign.  And how I need to do that, like now ...

A kindred spirit

Those of you who know me also know that I have weight issues.  When you see me infrequently, you can be greeted by almost any sort of body type .. thin, heavy or any of the stages in between.  I'm a regular Oprah in that manner, but without the expensive wardrobe.  Or the personal chef.  Damn, I need me a good personal chef.

I'm going to blame the genes that my mother passed to me along with the ones for curly hair and facial structure. (I'm not sure who gave me the short arms, but I'd really like to have a word with them about that.) Mom, however, had the luxury of being 5' 10" so her weight probably sat a bit more well distributed on the larger frame.  Be that as it may, I'm currently in a 'heavy' phase and am plagued by all the insecurities that go along with it.  I also know that I could easily turn this into a litany, but that's tedious and if you've been around any dieter or pre-dieter, you've heard them before, ad nauseam.

I tell you this only as a way of introducing you to an author new to me.  On the footer of this page, you'll see that I'm reading Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente.  The book was recommended to me by my fake French Montreal friend Eric and since we have a great deal in common, I thought I'd give the book a whirl.

I admit it's tough sledding for me.  The first few chapters have left me more than a bit confused with their shifting perspectives, yet I'm determined to get through because I trust Eric.  I'm starting to see the unifying thread that will drop all of the various stories into focus.  I think.  Time and more chapters will tell, but at least the thread that runs through the book is starting to pull at me as well.

I was somewhere on the 'net the other day and ran into a link to her website, which I followed because I wanted to see more about this author that Eric had recommended.  I was surprised .. often, author's sites are run impersonally by their publication companies or have been designed by a firm that allows little to no interaction with the author.  When authors do post, they are often very closed and private or simply regurgitate the information you can find on the back flap of any of their books; all of which discourages getting to know them.

The site is well designed and if you follow my pages, you'll know that I'm attracted by the steampunk genre.  Her site design spoke to that bit of geekery in me.

Catherynne M. Valente ... Cat ... is eloquent and blogs about day-to-day things in an open manner that manages to convey who she is, as a person and at the same time, excites me to read more of her works.  She paints the everyday on her page in strokes of interesting phrases.  She posted her views on dieting that forever linked us through the BS of dealing with all the crap that goes along with weight issues and the hyperlink I'm sharing with you now.

I hope you enjoy her blog as much as I do.

Here's the link for A Frivolous Post About A Girl, Her Thesaurus and Her Diet
Here's the main site link:  Catherynne M. Valente  or you can simply click on her site header above.

Eric, I owe you one introduction to an author you'll love but have never read.  Since your library is larger than mine, I'm not sure how I'll accomplish that.  The fun will be in trying.  :D 

Leaving the station

I currently have about 15 browser tabs open, as well as a graphics program.  That's because my entertainment is right here in front of me .. usually in words of some sort, sometimes in games, often in pictures or video.  Those little tabs are like train tracks departing my desktop station ... and they've taken me places today I've never dreamed. 

Here's what my day has been like:

I started out opening my mail to find that I had correspondence from Andrew Wheeler, the blogger behind Antik Musings, in response to an email I'd written him.  I won't go into the details of the mails, as most can be surmised by reading the column that my mail inspired, What Makes a Good Review.  From his page and linkbacks in comments, I discovered other sites that have since been bookmarked; so many bookmarks that I just took about five minutes to reorganize and categorize them.  (Can't be having bookmarks get out of hand and underfoot, but never there when you need them.)

In searching through the sites, I came upon this one from T.N. Tobias where authors discuss the need for likability in characters.  I brazenly huffed, in my review of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books, that books were supposed to "give me characters I can care about, despise or be intrigued with."  The TN Tobias post and subsequent viewpoints in commentary often concerned a more literary view of what the character does in order to make the story come alive, not necessarily so much for its own sake.  So now I wonder if I have a naive view of what it takes to make a good story.  Am I still pre-programmed to the happy ending and redeemable characters?  I think I need to know more before I blithely abandon my feelings about characters and what I expect from authors.  So my search to educate myself took me to farther pit stops on the internet, one that has been enlightening and delightful, if not always strictly on topic.  A note here .. I'm pretty sure that I'd make a horrible research assistant .. shiny things distract me.

So without further pre-amble, in no specified order, are things that caught my attention today.

Works of art created on Styrofoam cups. Cheeming Boey is the cartoonist.

The site of Jan Chipchase, whose office is literally the world.  "Today's Office" can be seen at Future Perfect.  When you click on the link on Mr. Chipchase's name, you'll find an interesting article on the Warren Ellis site that propelled me toward Future Perfect.

 

The Worlds Without End site where I played with the wallpapers behind their logo.  Shiny thing ...  'nuff said.

The King of Elfland's Second Cousin, which might actually teach me more about writing ...

An article about surprise scupltures appearing in different Scotland literary locales.  Please read the article .. its amazing.

The sculptor (wordsmith might be a more correct turn of phrase) is still unknown, but is speculated to be Su Blackwell.

2008-the-snow-queen-video from Su Blackwell on Vimeo.

indah-video from Su Blackwell on Vimeo.

Not sure of the song, but the imagery is amazing.

Websites of Wonder

As I mentioned, I've been reading more lately and this includes websites and web comics, on top of image searches for various things that lead me from one site to another .. a seemingly endless trail.  Its a good way to explore the world.

In the absence of anything interesting to tell you about in the goings on in my life, I'll share with you some of the sites that have fascinated me.

This site, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent., is interesting for its name alone.  However, the icing here is that author, one Andrew Wheeler, has spent a couple of decades in the book biz, including some time at Science Fiction Book Club, which is why I recognize his name.  I followed a link about the author Steven Brust, who is one of my favorites.  You can download his Firefly novel from the link on his name.

This next link, for Jeff Vandermeer's Ecstatic Days, came about as a result of a comment I read about not needing to like characters in order to enjoy a book.  Like a spiralbound notebook used for too many things, the site seems to be much in need of some dog-eared page marking.  A task I don't mind taking on.

 

Lastly, the link to Tor Books which, while as yet uninvestigated, promises to hold hours and hours of entertainment.

Enjoy!