Tag Archives: 4e

Yeah yeah

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Posted by Tim on August 21, 2008 – 4:57 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

It’s been a little while and I forgot to make with the words. I really don’t have much to say. I’ve been trying to keep myself busy by picking up PHP again. I’m also just trying to sharpen my photoshop and design skillz. I’m about to start building a wordpress theme for the entire site. A unifying theory if you will, maybe I’ll try to incorporate that idea into the theme.

Lets see, I started my turn as DM with our D&D group. First game could have gone better but I’m getting used to keeping track of all kinds of stuff during combat agai, and I’m playing the healer so I have to keep up. But it is a bit of a pain to stop, focus on my character, then go back to running the combat.

We’re planning on doing some vocal tests this weekend to see if I can hack it as some kind of singer. I think I still need to work on it, but I could say that about a lot of things. I have no idea what is in store for me for this and I have to say that even though it’s only going to be Carl and I working on this, I’m a bit intimidated.

Long drive

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Posted by Tim on July 30, 2008 – 4:02 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

I had an interview today, for a quality control position. It’s a new position at this company, so if I do well it could be that I write the protocols and stuff for quality checking sites.

But that’s in the future. If I get the job I guess what I do is get a big list of work, sites that need to be updated, things that are no longer functioning and need to be fixed. Regular crap that goes on with running a site, except I’m examining a couple hundred or so. I don’t know if I’ll actually be building any, that might also come later. Seems to be a ground floor type of position, which I’m very cool with. I’m sick of not having steady work and more importantly steady pay. Oh and medical and dental if I pass a 3 month trial period.

My one gripe with the job is that it’s about 30 miles away, up the 5 in Encinitas. So it’s about a 30 minute drive in good conditions, probably more like 45 minutes to an hour during rush hour. Bleh. The hours seem somewhat flexible, a number of employees come in around 8:30 so it might be alright for me. I don’t do so well getting up early, definitely a night owl. All in all, I do hope they call back, I think I could do well here.

So our current D&D storyline is wrapping up probably next session, I got talked into running the next one. I’m kind of looking forward to it, but with some trepidation. I still don’t think I know the system as well as I’d like to and the current story is a purchased module so it’s got most of the rules for encounters and other stuff in it already. I also need to borrow a monster manual so I can set up encounters.

Aside from all that though, I’ve never really thought of myself as a good DM. I tend to railroad players into areas because I know whats going on there. I never did improved stuff very well. But the system so far seems easier to deal with. In 3.x D&D there was the CR system for encounters. I think it was designed by a mathematician and required a few years study at Harvard to fully understand. On more than a few occasions I screwed up monster levels and just killed the party outright. That wasn’t so fun. Although for one story I did work it into a cool event that everyone kept asking me to run again.

Maybe I’ll just buy the next module, I don’t know that I want to do that though because so far the story is almost non-existent. You can always see the weak stories because there is usually very little attempt to role-play on the player’s part. I’d like to kind of kick start that again.

Origin at the Jumping Turtle tomorrow night. They are supposed to be really awesome live.

Okay, enough from me for now.

I am the night

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Posted by Tim on July 23, 2008 – 4:42 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

Watched the new Batman movie last night. I thought it was a really good movie. I’m glad they didn’t call it Batman: The Dark Knight though because the movie revolves around so many characters it would be a disservice to them. Overall I think Christian Bale was better in Batman Begins, but I think that had a lot to do with him not being the sole focus of the film. Gary Oldeman is of course gold as is Aaron Eckhart.

Heath Ledger. It’s been talked to death but now I have to beat this dead horse. I would really be surprised if he didn’t get the Oscar for Supporting Actor. I almost think he should be nominated for Best Actor. The movie wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is without that portrayal of the Joker. Anytime he is on screen you could feel the theater tense up. A lot of the things the Joker does seems to be just to see what people will do, how far they will go, and what they are willing to sacrifice. Which of course makes him truly terrifying because no one wants to be put in the position of becoming a monster. The best scene that highlights this is near the end of the film, on two boats. I won’t say anything more because I don’t want to spoil it for the Google bots that crawl around indexing my site.

Something else that I’ve been thinking about with these films is the difference between Jack Nicholson’s Joker and Heath Ledger’s. Jack Nicholson’s was almost a direct extension of the campy 60′s version of Batman with Adam West. Albeit through the dark lens of Tim Burton. It really is almost exactly the same except with more death. You’ve got crazy schemes to kill or capture the Batman and attempts to make money. Ledger’s Joker is just a dark reflection of the hero, which is interesting because Batman is already so dark. But the only way to do it is to just go over the edge and abandon everything. Batman won’t kill and wants to bring order, this Joker doesn’t care about life and only breeds chaos.

So yeah, good movie. Go see it. Preferably in IMAX.

Other big news. Oh, we have this get together in San Diego every year. You might have heard of it, I think it’s called Comic Con? Is that right? Yeah, google is telling me I’m right. Haha, funny jokes. Anyways, Comic Con is this weekend. I think I’m going to go, I haven’t been in a few years. Last time I went I somehow got into a picture of the Cartoon Network booth and was up on the Adult Swim site for a few months. My brief flirtation with internet fame. My going hinges on free passes though. Yeah, I’m a mooch. But if I have a friend that can’t use it because he’s working then it’s wasted unless someone picks up the torch. I usually miss all the celebrities. One of my friends got to stand behind Quentin Tarantino as he was pitching a fit about not being able to get a cold Coke. He also got yelled at by Patton Oswalt, Oswalt was just messing around with him though. I was there for that and just about pissed myself laughing.

Speaking of Patton Oswalt. The Comedians of Comedy are doing their last show tomorrow night. If you haven’t seen the Comedians of Comedy you should go find it. It’s Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford, and Zack Galifianakis. It’s a lot of offbeat and dark humor, and it’s really dirty. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a ticket. Instead I think I might go up to the Jumping Turtle for some heavy metal.

I think we lost a member of our D&D group. Kind of unfortunate, but I think he’ll be happier this way. He doesn’t like our rigid rules of checking email on Mondays to find out what’s going on and we usually game at his place. He’s also playing our Warlord, the one bastion of healing. Going to make the end of this campaign difficult, and we’re so close to the end. Probably just a few rooms until we hit the Big Boss. Maybe I’ll just switch to Cleric and take over healing. We’ve got another Fighter so I don’t think it’ll be that big of a deal. He’s not really built for the task though.

I mentioned a while back that one of my pals and I were starting a band. Well that’s looking more and more likely. The drummer he knows is moving in like 2 blocks away from his place so we will be pretty close to each other. Well I’m not that close, but I just need to take care of the vocals when they are done noodling around. I’m looking forward to seeing if I can do it. The most singing I’ve ever done is in a karaoke booth, and Dio always ruins my voice. I came up with what I think will be an interesting art project for it, also makes things easier on me so I don’t have to worry as much about writing lyrics.

Honestly I don’t know what to sing about. I have some ideas but writing then singing them scares the hell out of me. I don’t even know if I could do it on stage, I’m already pretty reclusive. Not that I think we’re going to play live, I would have to be really confident about my voice. If it ever does come to that though I think I’m just going to get a monks robe with a big hood, hopefully so I can’t really see the audience. Also I guess I could take off my glasses. The worst part though is that I can’t drink any alcohol and then do the vocals I do, it just dries out my throat if I’m not careful. So no liquid courage for me.

I think I finally figured out the display I want for the Web section of my site. I’ll talk about that more in a few days, after I’ve gone through some stuff and hopefully implemented it. It’s really neat, and almost looks like something you would do in Flash. But I hate Flash and so would never willingly subject myself to making anything Flash related in my spare time.

Goodbye for now.

Quiet

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Posted by Tim on July 18, 2008 – 12:16 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

All things quiet here. The job hunt continues and apparently I’m an idiot. I don’t know why I never thought of it beforehand but Craigslist had quite a few people looking for designers. I’m kind of angry at myself for missing that, but it did net me 4 or 5 leads so I can’t be too angry. Hopefully someone calls back, as this is getting kind of ridiculous.

I pretty much finished my site. There are still a few things I want to do, like make some buttons on my web design page. I think I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and implement a larger body graphic on that page anyways. I don’t think it’s working out as well as I thought it would. I’ve given it some time and it still feels wrong having it all broken up like that. I’ll get right on that.

D&D is still going well and I continue to enjoy the hell out of 4e. It really makes things fast. My fighter got himself a slick new sword, so when we leveled I had to switch out my hammer focus feat for heavy blades. More straight damage and more attack, I think it works out better for my pusher-bot. I can’t really move the field around if I’m not hitting enemies.

I mentioned before that me and a few others were working on writing a campaign setting. I set up a Wiki style site for it here. I can’t really put it up and talk about it too much. The main writer is scared of our secrets being stolen. I don’t even think anyone would stumble on it anyways, but whatever. It’s not much to look at right now. It’s just supposed to be simple so that we can get our design document in order. I can’t wait until we get to the later stages of the production, I’m looking forward to writing some short fantasy fiction. I’ve already started one story, I’ll post that as soon as it becomes more than a couple pages.

I’m desperately trying to think of something on the topic of music to write about, my friends are telling me that I just need to start a blog about Metal. I’ve thought about it, not a lot though. I just don’t really have access to the contacts it would take to display anything really cool. But I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

A lot of big shows coming up. Huge shows that will kick so much ass, it’s not even a question about seeing them when they come to San Diego. Unfortunately none of them are coming here. It’s depressing sometimes being a metalhead in San Diego. We do get some good bands that roll through, but once a band reaches a certain threshold they don’t come down here. I don’t know if it’s a venue problem or an audience problem. From the last few shows I’ve been at it doesn’t look at all like there would be a problem getting people in the seats. However, it just occurred to me that it might be because of the prices. TicketBastard is renowned for being over priced, they use a “Parking Fee” to jack up the prices (look for it on your receipt). Some might think, “Well they provide a service by helping pay for the parking services”. And if they did that it would be cool. But they don’t. Every place I’ve been to that uses ticketmaster doesn’t have their own lot. Some of them don’t have a lot anywhere nearby. So I’m paying ticketbastard to park on the street 2 blocks away? That is complete bullshit. I don’t know how that’s at all legal. It seems like that’s a promise of a service that they never fulfill and that they never intended to.

Anyways, big concerts that are going to be nearby:

  • Blackest of the Black (Danzig, Dimmu Borgir, Skeletonwitch, some others)

    • I haven’t seen Danzig, but I have seen Dimmu and Skeletonwitch. Both put on really great shows.

  • Opeth, High on Fire, Baroness

    • I’ve never gotten to see any of these bands live. I really want to see Opeth, I’ve listened to them for years but never gotten around to a show. High on Fire I would really like to see, and Baroness is something I’ve just started listening to. One of the guys in Baroness is a really good graphic artist and does cover art for a lot of other bands. Stunning work.

  • Clutch, The Sword, and Graveyard

    • I keep missing Clutch, something always comes up. I really want to see this show, I hear a lot of talk about The Sword and I’ve liked what I’ve heard. Graveyard is an unknown, but they have a cool name.

I think that’s all the good stuff that I’m trying to get out to see. Luckily most of those shows are in the fall so I have some time.

Wow, I didn’t think this post would get so long. I’m gonna wrap it up (B).

Still Here

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Posted by Tim on July 8, 2008 – 10:28 pm
Filed under Blogroll, General Stuff

Oops, two weeks. Time flies. I think I was a little unwilling to communicate after the whole wedding thing. He got his new orders in, but apparently he had to fight pretty hard to get somewhere other then Greece. I guess you can’t take spouses there. So now it’s Italy. Good for them I suppose, I hope that she can find something to keep herself going every day. I don’t see her as the domesticated home maker, but she will be surrounded by plenty of art and history so hopefully that will keep her inspired.

Got rid of a huge chunk of my gaming books today. Must have been 30 books or so. $55 store credit. Hmm, I know I didn’t want to keep them around anymore (they take up a lot of space) but for some reason I thought it might be more than that. I’m probably trying to attach an emotional value to them as well. I don’t really regret trading them in (picked up the 4E DMG and some minitures, woo!) but yeah, nostalgia is a bitch.

Our 4E game is going well, I picked up a magic shield last week and a magic sword this week. Rolling in the lewt, I believe I am nearing “Phat” levels. I might give the shield to our Warlord just to distribute things a bit more evenly. The sword is pretty neat though, so you’d have to pry it from my cold dead fingers. Or y’know, get me a shinier one. D&D should really just be called Death & Shinies.

No awesome fights yet, I’m sure one is coming up though. Last week we fought some kind of Jelly and a Blue Slime. Those were some hard fights, but they were fun. The first fight against the Jelly we were down two players, they were running late and attending a funeral, respectively. So it was a pretty big change missing the area damage from our Wizard and the straight damage a Ranger can deal. We got through it though, and without any character incapacitation I might add

A couple of us are working on our own game, a new setting. Well kind of new. We first played this setting about 8 years ago using the D10 system from White Wolf. I had a website up that was where we were supposed to be discussing things, but there was some huge database error with Drupal and I just made the decision to delete it. It wasn’t really being used anyways. So I’m going to put another one up soon using WordPress. So look for that one to show up at some point, we want to try to market the setting and build a community around it. We’ll see though, if it even goes anywhere it’ll probably just be a drop in the bucket.

Speaking of new sites, I’m about to launch a new site, sdbarhopper.com. The plan is to rate bars around San Diego. I didn’t see one specifically for San Diego and it’s something I think I could be good at. Plus that’s an awesome domain I managed to pick up, memorable. I was going to launch it last weekend but things got too hectic, so I’m pushing it back to next week. I also lost a bit of confidence in it when I told a couple friends about it and got the “Uh huh, that’s great.” response. The polite, I-hope-you-don’t-turn-this-into-an-epic-fail-but-you-probably-will response. Some times I really do hate these people. Regardless, I will move forward. I plan to rate Toronado San Diego first, since we’re both new. Except it’s had some more time to decorate. Quick thought about it, it’s fucking loud. After Toronado, a regular bar, maybe MacGregor’s. I need to make stickers and other crap to put up to drive some traffic. But that’s in the future.

Holy shit, look how far I got without talking about music. I’ve been almost entirely captivated by two bands the past couple of weeks, Goatsnake and The Hidden Hand. Both of them are kind bluesy throw backs, but with that Stoner Metal tinge to them. Goatsnake especially. One of the guitarists in it is from SUNN 0))), so it’s really really fucking heavy. I liked the Blues beforehand, but damn, I don’t think it’s ever sounded like this.

Cult of Luna released their new album today. I need to get it at some point, I don’t have the cash right now though. It would be really nice if that damn stimulus check I was promised would show up. The thing that pisses me off the most about that is that it should have been deposited about, oh, 3 months ago I think. Anyways the new album sounds like an interesting concept, they found some journal from a mental patient in the place the were rehearsing. Could be overwrought, could be awesome. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt since they kick quite a bit of ass.

I just noticed I swear a lot when I talk about music. Chalk it up to passion.

Site almost done, I finally figured out how I want to actually display my work. Hopefully that will get done tomorrow. I don’t see it taking that long, I do so hate talking about my work though. I don’t know why, maybe because I don’t think I’m very complicated and think it should be fairly obvious what I was doing.

Damn, I am long winded. Probably why I only try to do a few posts a week