You guys catching this Keith Olbermann stuff? Oughta be.
Author: Bryant
Spirit of the Century (which is cool, buy it if you like pulp gaming) has an interesting character generation system that reminds me a tad of Lexicon. Hm, Wikipedia has failed yet again; there’s no page for Lexicon. That one, I might actually fix. Anyway.
Spirit’s character generation is a group activity that ensures pre-play connections between characters. I think it can be played out in blog entries. Let’s try it.
Comment here with:
A concept. Pulpy concept. It’s the 30s.
A name. Pulpy name. You know.
Then write up your character’s youth, from birth to age 14. (You were born in 1900, by the by.) Talk about your character’s family’s circumstances, the size of your character’s family, how well he or she gets along with his or her family. Where is your character from? What region? How was he or she educated? What were your character’s friends like?
Also, write down two Aspects which are tied into the events of the character’s childhood or the character’s upbringing. What’s an Aspect? It’s a tag that helps explain who a character is; it’s stuff you wanna see in the game. “Aspects can be relationships, beliefs, catchphrases, descriptors, items, or pretty much anything else that paints a picture of the character.” Quick Witted, “You’ll Never Catch Me Alive,” Raised by Wolves, Champion of the Golden Temple, etc., etc., etc.
The MacArthur Fellows always cheer me up, as much for the people I don’t recognize as for those I do. It must be such a neat surprise to be named.
And look! David Macaulay. I love his books. Josiah McElheny! I don’t know you but you’re not Dale Chihuly. Terence Tao, way to be smart. Luis von Ahn, thanks for inventing CAPTCHA. I love that people invent stuff that seems obvious afterwards. And John Zorn, yeah, there’s a lot right about that.
You know why Wikipedia kind of sucks sometimes? We’ve had a whole year to write about the 2005 recipients, but only 6 out of 25 of them have bios. S’up with that, Internet?
Hey, are you hiring sysadmins in the Boston area? Do you have a NOC position for someone with a few years of experience in desktop support and NOC work (first-tier monitoring and response) or a position for a solid mid-level Windows sysadmin with a ton of hardware, EMC, Veritas, and Windows work under his belt?
Let me know; I might know people who would fit your needs.
Not that it’s likely we’ll forget. That string of pictures has, for the last five years, meant the most to me.
Sorkin D20.
Classes: Leader, Advisor, Star, Writer, and Technician.
Toby Ziegler is a dual class Advisor/Writer. Sam Seaborn was a Writer, but in season 4 he decided to multi-class to Leader. The control room guys in Sports Night and Studio 60 are Technicians. Nancy McNally (the National Security Advisor) is dual class Technician/Advisor.
Danny Tripp is a director, which I think means he’s a dual class Advisor/Writer, emphasis on the Advisor. Hard to say, though.
Opinions: do vampires (specifically, Vampire: the Requiem vampires) leave fingerprints?
Also, what are the odds of rolling 25 ten-sided dice and not getting anything above a 7?
If you look around a little on the Internet, you can find copies of the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Aaron Sorkin’s new one hour TV drama. It’s about a weekly sketch comedy show unsurprisingly like Saturday Night Live, with the expected Sorkin-load of interpersonal drama and principles and so on. No Joshua Malina yet, although I expect him to show up in the second season as the remarkably bright yet socially slightly inept wunderkind. (It’s a fair prediction. Come on.)
Anyway, me and S. watched the pilot the other night. Try and avoid the download that claims to be for an iPod; the sound is not quite synced perfectly with the video. Y’know, it’s Sorkin — there are principled monologues and two of the cast members used to be in a relationship with each other but now have to work together. I don’t think, one show in, you can really know if he’s breaking new ground, but the same old ground is still pretty good.
In particular I like that Sarah Paulson plays a devout fundamentalist Christian who happens to be one of the big three cast members on the show within the show. Sorkin likes discussing religion, and President Bartlet’s Catholicism was always taken seriously. If he can keep that up here, I’ll be intrigued.
The cast has the chance to grow on me. Matthew Perry was really good; Bradley Whitford was pretty good. Timothy Busfield has a regular role as the guy who runs the control room, and he easily distinguishes it from his West Wing role — Whitford had more trouble doing that, which may wind up being a minus. Steven Weber was good as the network chairman, but he’s playing the role a little too young. I kept forgetting he’s supposed to be as important as he is. Amanda Peet has the potential to be the weak link in the cast. Maybe she’ll surprise me.
But yeah, it’s Sorkin, it’s fun. I’ll watch it.
I’ve talked about Lost badassery, but I’ve never created a comprehensive list of film badasses. That’s why I’m not Vern. Here it is.
Seoul’s defeated me. Ten San Franciscos, a dozen Bostons, the third largest urban sprawl in the world. I’m in the megacity, and it has no reason to bother speaking my language.
Coming in from the airport, driving at sixty miles per hour, it wasn’t more than half an hour before the apartment buildings began. Buildings? High-rises: concrete masses rising fifteen or twenty stories into the sky, with three story high logos painted on one side. Samsung, Hyundai, others I don’t recognize. We pass high-rise after high-rise in rows along the highway, stacked close together and stretching far back from the road. It’s another twenty minutes before we get off the highway and enter the district where my hotel is. The apartment buildings continue the entire way.
New cities delight me. I want to smell the streets and eat the food and touch the landscape. Seoul hasn’t blunted that, but I fear that my senses would slip off the skin of the city without so much as a glimpse of its heart. I’m jetlagged and overwhelmed.
The hotel sits at a junction of roads. There’s a bridge crossing the Han River, and a ten lane surface street spearing into the middle of one fashionable shopping district, and another ten lane surface street paralleling the river. There may or may not be wider streets in Seoul, but there are many as wide. Surface streets, not highways.
Behind the facades of the main streets, there are tangles of tiny byways, barely big enough for two cars to pass. There aren’t blocks; there are turns and curves and angles intersecting unexpectedly, with business signs hanging overhead. Cars park where possible.
Is this Seoul? I have no way of knowing. It’s the tiny piece I’ve seen in a few days of transit from hotel to office to other office to restaurant and back again.
And I’m jetlagged, and I have no time for anything but business and sleep. I want a month with no responsibilities to wander around Seoul. I want more time to research.
I’m leaving tomorrow, and I haven’t got the faintest idea where I’d begin again.