Hobby log (needs snappier title)
to follow-up on the last post
Mogo: I took 2nd place in the SPDC on Thursday! I was playing a RBg Burn Blightning variant. Fun, down-to-the-wire matches abounded. You can find a decklist & more details on the PDC site.
A/V: Watched the Royal Tenebaums on Saturday for the first time. Fantastic cast of Wes Anderson’s trademark larger-than-life losers. Loved all the little touches. It’s probably become my second-fave Anderson flick, after The Darjeeling Limited.
Text: Still reading A Feast for Crows.
Audio: Listened to a few of podcasts & NPR shows this week, per usual, though not as many as most weeks– it’s been rainy, so I only worked half-days in the greenhouse. Narrative Control was interesting this week, and got me thinking about indie RPGs again, specifically Dogs in the Vineyard. Mike Birbiglia’s story on This American Life was great too, though I’d heard it before.
Next week: Herb plantin’. Postcard writin’. Maybe even Nodeslam recordin’…
Well…
The trouble here is that I never know where this log fits into my day. Let’s see if I can get in the habit.
A/V: I took a break from Oblivion a couple weeks ago to have a look at Fallout 3. First impressions: FO3 is a game I want to play, but not right now. It seems more like a winter game, while Oblivion is definitely a summer game.
I also borrowed Bioshock from Alan on Tuesday and have been playing that this week– I like to cozy up in the dark around 10pm-1am, after my housemates have gone to bed, plug in my headphones to our stereo receiver and crank up the sound. Definitely the good way to enjoy (and get mercilessly creeped-out) by a survival-horror game.
I’ve just finished the first level and survived my first tussle with Big Daddy– afterward, you have to choose whether to “harvest” his Little Sister for ADAM, or rescue her. I’ve decided I going to rescue them. 1) I like playing heroes, generally; and 2) that Russian splicer (her name escapes me… Anatolia?) said she’d make it “worth my while”. I’m interested to see what that’s about.
Mogo: I played in two tourneys earlier this week. AltPDC on Monday, & XPDC on Wednesday. I went 2-2 in each, which I’m… okay with, I guess. My goal in Mogo lately has been to try and get my record back up to 50%, and breaking-even in a tourney at least keeps me from drifting further off the mark.
Excited for SPDC tonight. I’ve got a green-splash Blightning deck that tore it up in a few practice games w/ Hunter. I think it’ll be fun.
Text: I’m about 200 pages in to A Feast for Crows, the fourth volume of George Martin’s fantasy epic. Love the characters, especially the odd new viewpoint characters like Hotah the bodyguard and Damphair the prophet. Still unclear as to where the overall plot is going, which is why I probably set it down around this point last time I picked it up… (where the heck is Daenerys, for instance? etc)
Well, first hurdle: I’m going to be out of town from tomorrow through Sunday, so in order to keep up a daily posting schedule I’ll have to post 5 entries today. No sweat.
First up, books. I want to go on the record here: Aaron Allston writes a damn good space-fantasy yarn.
As a Star Wars fan from way back, I’ve easily read about 30 Star Wars novels, but I’ll freely admit that a lot of them have such horrible writing and characterization that they offended even my junior high school sensibilities. There *are* a couple of well written novel series that I recommend even to non-hardcore SW fans: Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command) and the nine X-wing novels by Mike Stackpole & Aaron Allston. And now add this one: Legacy of the Force: Betrayal.
Betrayal is set about 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi (and about 10 years after the New Jedi Order novels, which I completely avoided due to their massive suckitude). Allston does a great job of wiping the slate clean and starting fresh while still respecting the continuity of earlier (suckier) books.
It’s all and all a great jumping-on point for new readers. I’m on page 250 or so, and unless the story flies off a cliff in the last third I’ll likely be reading the rest of the series.
