Flashy boxes and other productivity impediments
It's the slow season at my job, which means for the past few weeks I've only been working two to four days a week. The only real downside to this, other than the reduced income, is normally I don't know what days I have off until the day before, which means I can't effectively use the time to make extended trips elsewhere.
Of course with all this time off, that means I've been intensely productive, right? A creative fellow like me would jump at this opportunity to get any number of projects done, after all. At the very least I should be able to update my various blogs just a little more often like I continuously say I should. So any reasonable person would think that this rare update would be jam packed with the things I've been doing with my massive amounts of time off.
I feel so bad for all the reasonable people.
I haven't been doing very productive stuff. One of the reasons for this is because of the flashy-box. Rhi is better acquainted with my particular fetish with the flashy-box than anyone else, as she has to deal with it nearly all the time. I'm sort of an easily led tool, I can be mesmerized by anything containing a certain amount of sparkliness (aside from vampires, that is). It doesn't matter if I actively hate the thing producing the sparkles, it doesn't matter if the object causes involuntary dry-heaves. So long as it continues sparkling, I'll sit there and watch it, vacant eyed and slack jawed.
If the sparkling thing is a video game of some sort, the effect is even more intense. I'll start to actually bob and weave my head in time to whatever I'm doing in the game, as if I have magical cranium attachments to enhance my still at whatever I'm playing. It doesn't work, obviously, and I remain a thoroughly mediocre gamer. But that doesn't stop me from being perpetually entranced by the flashy lights.
There's a certain game, Diablo 2 (and its subsequent expansion pack: Lord of Destruction), which had addicted me and a large number of other people over a decade ago, long before WoW came out. This was back in the days of the original Starcraft and Warcraft 2, back when two-dimensional isometric layouts was still an acceptable form of presentation. Well, ten years is a lifetime and a half as far as games are concerned, and despite its popularity, the age is showing and most people have moved on to more three dimensional pastures.
I, on the other hand, am easily amused, and continue to play it, after a fashion. You see, a little while ago I became aware of a certain user-created mod to Diablo 2 known as Median Diablo. In short, it almost completely re-vamps the game, rebuilding and tweaking nearly all aspects from the ground up, injecting a hefty dose of LSD and turning both the playing speed and difficulty up to eleven.
In other words, it makes the game about fifty times more sparkly. Observe:
The original Diablo 2. Fun, simple, tailor made to get people addicted through its grinding and uncertain/delayed reward system (they've actually tested this stuff on rats, games like WoW and similar are pretty much scientifically designed to sink fish hooks into the most primitive dependent portions of mammalian brains). It did its job and sold well, to the point that years later people still will occasionally dust it off and play it again.
Now compare it to the Median Diablo mod:
HOLY SHIT FLYING COLOURS ALL OVER THE SCREEN EXPLODING SPARKLES FAST RUNNING CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO COMPREHEND WHAT'S GOING ON ONLY THAT IT HAS TO BE INCREDIBLY AWESOME BECAUSE IT'S SO COLOURFUL!!!11!
And this is one of the reasons I haven't been as productive as I could be.
That isn't to say I've been entirely unproductive. Lately a good deal of time has been spent gathering together plans and storylines to actually run a worthwhile game with the room-mates over the course of what is likely to be the last semester we can actually do this. There have also been pictures made, and a couple articles of clothing created. All in all, not as bad as I likely make it out to be.
First off, the clothing:
The pantskirt. It fits, it doesn't fall apart, it looks halfway decent, and May-kitty was nice enough to deposit a mouse-toy in the upper left there.
This was originally meant to be a sorta gothy Milk-chan style shirt for Rhi, but it ran into a couple problems. First off, it was just a little too tight for her, then I ran out of fabric before the trim was completed. So in the end I had to settle for it being a long-sleeved hoodie for me.
Next, clay models:
Companion Cube, my first project attempted in a long time.
Now a few others, in which I realize I completely suck at painting faces:
And a few progress photos of that last one:
There, now you all know my secrets to amazing success.
Of course with all this time off, that means I've been intensely productive, right? A creative fellow like me would jump at this opportunity to get any number of projects done, after all. At the very least I should be able to update my various blogs just a little more often like I continuously say I should. So any reasonable person would think that this rare update would be jam packed with the things I've been doing with my massive amounts of time off.
I feel so bad for all the reasonable people.
I haven't been doing very productive stuff. One of the reasons for this is because of the flashy-box. Rhi is better acquainted with my particular fetish with the flashy-box than anyone else, as she has to deal with it nearly all the time. I'm sort of an easily led tool, I can be mesmerized by anything containing a certain amount of sparkliness (aside from vampires, that is). It doesn't matter if I actively hate the thing producing the sparkles, it doesn't matter if the object causes involuntary dry-heaves. So long as it continues sparkling, I'll sit there and watch it, vacant eyed and slack jawed.
If the sparkling thing is a video game of some sort, the effect is even more intense. I'll start to actually bob and weave my head in time to whatever I'm doing in the game, as if I have magical cranium attachments to enhance my still at whatever I'm playing. It doesn't work, obviously, and I remain a thoroughly mediocre gamer. But that doesn't stop me from being perpetually entranced by the flashy lights.
There's a certain game, Diablo 2 (and its subsequent expansion pack: Lord of Destruction), which had addicted me and a large number of other people over a decade ago, long before WoW came out. This was back in the days of the original Starcraft and Warcraft 2, back when two-dimensional isometric layouts was still an acceptable form of presentation. Well, ten years is a lifetime and a half as far as games are concerned, and despite its popularity, the age is showing and most people have moved on to more three dimensional pastures.
I, on the other hand, am easily amused, and continue to play it, after a fashion. You see, a little while ago I became aware of a certain user-created mod to Diablo 2 known as Median Diablo. In short, it almost completely re-vamps the game, rebuilding and tweaking nearly all aspects from the ground up, injecting a hefty dose of LSD and turning both the playing speed and difficulty up to eleven.
In other words, it makes the game about fifty times more sparkly. Observe:
The original Diablo 2. Fun, simple, tailor made to get people addicted through its grinding and uncertain/delayed reward system (they've actually tested this stuff on rats, games like WoW and similar are pretty much scientifically designed to sink fish hooks into the most primitive dependent portions of mammalian brains). It did its job and sold well, to the point that years later people still will occasionally dust it off and play it again.
Now compare it to the Median Diablo mod:
HOLY SHIT FLYING COLOURS ALL OVER THE SCREEN EXPLODING SPARKLES FAST RUNNING CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO COMPREHEND WHAT'S GOING ON ONLY THAT IT HAS TO BE INCREDIBLY AWESOME BECAUSE IT'S SO COLOURFUL!!!11!
And this is one of the reasons I haven't been as productive as I could be.
That isn't to say I've been entirely unproductive. Lately a good deal of time has been spent gathering together plans and storylines to actually run a worthwhile game with the room-mates over the course of what is likely to be the last semester we can actually do this. There have also been pictures made, and a couple articles of clothing created. All in all, not as bad as I likely make it out to be.
First off, the clothing:
The pantskirt. It fits, it doesn't fall apart, it looks halfway decent, and May-kitty was nice enough to deposit a mouse-toy in the upper left there.
This was originally meant to be a sorta gothy Milk-chan style shirt for Rhi, but it ran into a couple problems. First off, it was just a little too tight for her, then I ran out of fabric before the trim was completed. So in the end I had to settle for it being a long-sleeved hoodie for me.
Next, clay models:
Companion Cube, my first project attempted in a long time.
Now a few others, in which I realize I completely suck at painting faces:
And a few progress photos of that last one:
There, now you all know my secrets to amazing success.