LJ Interests
"Should you explicitly request to play, I will choose 7 of your LJ profile interests for you to expound upon (in your own journal)."
Amelia Rules! (warning, page has sound) is a comic turned graphic novel collection. The story follows Amelia McBride, 4th grader, as she deals with her parents' divorce, moving, falling in with the local nerds who share a superhero fixation, and the misadventures that ensue.
Artistically (both graphically and in dialogue), it's somewhat reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts. Also, when the adult characters have flashbacks they're done explicitly in the styles of other famous comic artists.
It's a delightful read, and fairly easilly obtainable - Gownley (the artist) keeps switching publishers though, and the new one is going to reprint all existing collections before getting to the new material. Sadly, this means that (in my understanding) no new material will be out until fall of 2010.
Thieves and Kings is also a comic turned graphic novel collection. It a fantasy story with a somewhat convoluted plot, but it roughly follows the adventures of Rubel, the princess's thief (which is more of a D&D style rogue or bard than an explicit pickpocket), Heath Whitwig, apprentice sorcoress, and their allies as they battle an evil conspiracy trying to take over the kingdom.
It's well worth a read, if you can find it - it's a very small press publication out of Canada, so good luck.
rtss - that is, RTSs, or Real-Time Strategy games. I think I can safely say that StarCraft is more than a little responsible for my not ever making the dean's list while in college.
That said, I've kind of fallen out of playing them recently - they take generally take considerable time to play effectively, and I still have a backlog of GameCube games that I haven't really touched yet - to say nothing of the DS, GBA, and Wii. And that keep buying games for those systems faster than I can play through them.
THAT said, I'm eagerly awaiting StarCraft II.
Mage: the Ascension, the lamentably out-of-print pen & paper RPG of modern magic. It was the first RPG I owned, and it's still my favorite. The Mage game I ran is easilly the best game that I've run.
It's not an EASY game if you really want to grok it or follow the metaplot - being, by its nature, rife with secret societies, hidden agendas, and esoteric philosophies and even the desingners couldn't agree on the rules. However, I found it to be a rewarding game once I put in the work, with the result being effective in several genres and scales of adventure. It was a game that was at least willing to meet me half-way in what the game was on paper and what I wanted it to be.
The same I don't think can be said of its successor, Mage: The Awakening, though I keep meaning to revisit it and see if there have been any supplements that might fix the problems of the core book.
Lego: The classic construction toy. There was a time, back in '86 or so, that my collection could fit in a butter tub. Now? Not so much.
I was big into Castle, Pirates, and Space throughout my childhood - using the pieces for school projects and even gaming components (RPG minis and soforth). Now that I'm an adult and have actual spending money, I've bought into Lego Batman and Lego Avatar (as well as some of the more classic stuff), and I adore the Lego video games by Traveller's Tales.
I've curtailed by buying recently - both Batman and Avatar have been effectively discontinued, which is just as well, since I don't have any more shelf space on which to display them.
Personal development is a sort-of catch-all term for what I could fairly call "engineering-based self-help," the idea that most problems involved in adult life - health, money, career advancement, personal organization, networking/relationships, learning new skills - can be effectively managed using coordinated planning and action.
There are several blogs I read somewhat frequently on the above topics, though while I've been able to do some planning, I keep falling through on the coordinated action part. But I do keep reading them, so maybe something will rub off.
Theology, that is, the study of God, but also the study of human nature. The first semester of my freshman year of college, we were assigned classes, and I was somehow sorted to be in a class called Forms of Religious Experience, taught by an excellent professor. I sort of fell in with the topic then, and, long story short, second major (well, in religious studies, but theology per se, but I figured that it was a more searchable word).
Amelia Rules! (warning, page has sound) is a comic turned graphic novel collection. The story follows Amelia McBride, 4th grader, as she deals with her parents' divorce, moving, falling in with the local nerds who share a superhero fixation, and the misadventures that ensue.
Artistically (both graphically and in dialogue), it's somewhat reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts. Also, when the adult characters have flashbacks they're done explicitly in the styles of other famous comic artists.
It's a delightful read, and fairly easilly obtainable - Gownley (the artist) keeps switching publishers though, and the new one is going to reprint all existing collections before getting to the new material. Sadly, this means that (in my understanding) no new material will be out until fall of 2010.
Thieves and Kings is also a comic turned graphic novel collection. It a fantasy story with a somewhat convoluted plot, but it roughly follows the adventures of Rubel, the princess's thief (which is more of a D&D style rogue or bard than an explicit pickpocket), Heath Whitwig, apprentice sorcoress, and their allies as they battle an evil conspiracy trying to take over the kingdom.
It's well worth a read, if you can find it - it's a very small press publication out of Canada, so good luck.
rtss - that is, RTSs, or Real-Time Strategy games. I think I can safely say that StarCraft is more than a little responsible for my not ever making the dean's list while in college.
That said, I've kind of fallen out of playing them recently - they take generally take considerable time to play effectively, and I still have a backlog of GameCube games that I haven't really touched yet - to say nothing of the DS, GBA, and Wii. And that keep buying games for those systems faster than I can play through them.
THAT said, I'm eagerly awaiting StarCraft II.
Mage: the Ascension, the lamentably out-of-print pen & paper RPG of modern magic. It was the first RPG I owned, and it's still my favorite. The Mage game I ran is easilly the best game that I've run.
It's not an EASY game if you really want to grok it or follow the metaplot - being, by its nature, rife with secret societies, hidden agendas, and esoteric philosophies and even the desingners couldn't agree on the rules. However, I found it to be a rewarding game once I put in the work, with the result being effective in several genres and scales of adventure. It was a game that was at least willing to meet me half-way in what the game was on paper and what I wanted it to be.
The same I don't think can be said of its successor, Mage: The Awakening, though I keep meaning to revisit it and see if there have been any supplements that might fix the problems of the core book.
Lego: The classic construction toy. There was a time, back in '86 or so, that my collection could fit in a butter tub. Now? Not so much.
I was big into Castle, Pirates, and Space throughout my childhood - using the pieces for school projects and even gaming components (RPG minis and soforth). Now that I'm an adult and have actual spending money, I've bought into Lego Batman and Lego Avatar (as well as some of the more classic stuff), and I adore the Lego video games by Traveller's Tales.
I've curtailed by buying recently - both Batman and Avatar have been effectively discontinued, which is just as well, since I don't have any more shelf space on which to display them.
Personal development is a sort-of catch-all term for what I could fairly call "engineering-based self-help," the idea that most problems involved in adult life - health, money, career advancement, personal organization, networking/relationships, learning new skills - can be effectively managed using coordinated planning and action.
There are several blogs I read somewhat frequently on the above topics, though while I've been able to do some planning, I keep falling through on the coordinated action part. But I do keep reading them, so maybe something will rub off.
Theology, that is, the study of God, but also the study of human nature. The first semester of my freshman year of college, we were assigned classes, and I was somehow sorted to be in a class called Forms of Religious Experience, taught by an excellent professor. I sort of fell in with the topic then, and, long story short, second major (well, in religious studies, but theology per se, but I figured that it was a more searchable word).