Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in kshandr's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
11:20 am	Been offline ill Just a quick note to blanket copy everyone on various friends lists that I've been quite a lot ill and off work for the last week. I'm back at the keyboard for the first time in quite a few days apart from very brief forays. I'm about to check mails but I think there'll be a serious backlog. If I've been ignoring you it's not because I don't care. Midway (www.midwaylrp.com) on the 13th is unaffected, though there'll be some scrambling to get it all in envelopes on time :D This message cross-posted to Facebook and LJ - sorry if you see it twice (but I don't trust Facebook to pick it up off LJ and repost in a timely fashion!)  (Comment on this)
Friday, April 15th, 2011
9:35 am	Continuity Head**** Something to remember about how *I* enjoy stories. The stories I enjoy most in episodic shows are always the ones that riff on continuity, bringing back elements from the stories that have gone before in the same series. So perhaps I bring back a bad guy from two seasons ago, who's met up with the romantic interest from last season, and together they've discovered an accepted plot point that the series has always have and are using it in an interesting and new way. I imagine they're not really the best stories for newcomers to a particular genre, but to me, they give me the link back to the rest of the story - episodic TV becomes soap opera, and what is a single episode of a show seems "broader" because of its greater involvement with the plot as a whole. Good examples are "Epilogue" from the DC Comics Animated Universe, crossing over Justice League, Batman & Batman Beyond (I've written at length about my love for this storyline elsewhere on LJ.) Any of the Doctor Who "X Doctors" stories (The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, The Two Doctors) are great for crossing over timelines and remembering old stories that went before. The Big Finish Doctor Who audio I'm listening to right now ("A Death In The Family") is doing exactly the same thing - pulling out plot points from six or seven other audios and mashing them into an absolutely storming story. Of course, my brain is working on how I can incorporate this sort of storytelling element into my own work, though the jury's out on whether or not this is something you can only do when you've got a large canon of work that you can riff on. (Comment on this)
Friday, February 11th, 2011
9:09 am	Further to a discussion on Twitter... We've been discussing the number of songs in Rock Band vs. the number of songs in Guitar Hero. I have no wish to get into an advocacy war, 'cos the music I like is different to the music you like (for whatever values of "you" and "I".) The Guitar Hero series doesn't have a keyboard and the Rock Band series now does - the two games are apples and oranges. Gerry reckons there's more songs in Guitar Hero, and I think that unless he's qualifying somehow (more songs on disc? More songs importable from other games? More songs when you include DS titles? Something else?) he's unequivocably wrong. So here's a list of how many songs are in each game. I don't know what you can take from one version of the game to another in Guitar Hero... As far as I know you can import most of the songs from World Tour, Smash Hits, Metallica, GH5 and Band Hero into Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. I figured it was best to just add up all the songs from all of the "main line" of Guitar Hero games. Guitar Hero - 47 (on disc)    Guitar Hero II - 64 (on disc) 24 (DLC) Guitar Hero III - 73 (on disc) 68 (DLC)   Guitar Hero World Tour - 86 (on disc) 158 (DLC) Guitar Hero 5 - 85 (on disc)    Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock - 93 (on disc) 65 (DLC) Guitar Hero Smash Hits - 48 (on disc) Band Hero - 65 (on disc) Guitar Hero: Metallica - 49 (on disc) Totals 610 (on disc) 315 (DLC) Grand Total 925 So now let's consider Rock Band. We ignore Beatles, 'cos you can't export those songs to "main line" Rock Band. Likewise I'm ignoring Lego Rock Band. AFAIK all of those tracks are included in DLC. Not sure about AC/DC or Green Day, so I ignored them, but that's irrelevant because... Rock Band 45 (on disc) 13 (bonus tracks) 9 (Euro edition only) Rock Band 2 84 (on disc)    Rock Band 3 83 (on disc) Downloadable Content 1220 Totals: 1454   So perhaps there's another 500 songs in Guitar Hero that I'm missing. Comments welcome. Note: Both games have "create your own tune" editors and I'm ignoring the content from those. Perhaps that's where I'm missing something?  (Comment on this)
Monday, November 1st, 2010
8:57 am	New Addiction! Like nobody knew that this was going to happen... Lego Universe is really rather awesome. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
11:44 pm	Gaelcon... Friday night fail. I was writing (and painting, and sawing) my LARP. Saturday - chats and meeting up with folk, followed by surprise! Catherine booked a hotel room for the night. Gave what I suspect was the worst video interview ever (re: JumpTech.) JumpTech went okay, spoiled by a panic attack when I realised I'd forgotten screws. Brian to the rescue but the replacement screws were too large to work. We gaffa-taped the escape pod prop which mostly worked. Siskey was awesome as NPC. Fell down afterward and realised that, on top of the usual sleep deprivation I hadn't eaten anything over than a creme egg and a breakfast bar (and some dodgy Krayce cookery. I think the reason the Krayce are how they are is down to sugar highs.) Remedied that eventually. Fell seriously asleep.  Sunday - Did Midway interview for Gaelcon Radio thing. Laughed and laughed and laughed playing zombie dice. Was less impressed by Cthulhu dice. High points of the laughter were being beaten by a five-year-old at the game, temporarily confusing Mickey Rourke with Mickey Rooney (with his chiselled good looks and broad shoulders), and trying to explain to Mary that I have an elephant up my jumper. Saw Sharon O'Neill, who is as awesome as the last few times I met her. Did the dancing stormtrooper thing far too many times. Got a GM t-shirt that was the right size - yay for Boomer! Monday - Schmoozed my ass off (re: Midway.) Had an interesting comparative accent chat with Wilson. Put my horrifically bad Welsh accent to use in "Shadows Over Pontypandy" (aka Cthulhu meets Fireman Sam (not literally.)) Co-won same with Dav Waldron. Regrets : Not playing more scheduled games, not playing "Cogs and Dogs" (though I just don't *get* Discworld, so I probably wouldn't *get* GURPS Discworld.) Breezed a truly lovely guy (Eoin Foran was arriving as I was panicking over lack of screws so I said something incoherent and ran away.) Might have upset someone, but I'll work that out over email. Certain amount of politics, which I didn't need, though thankfully the overspill isn't as bad as I feared it might be. Didn't buy a copy of Zombie Dice. Warm Fuzzies: I think that was the biggest JumpTech yet - to be confirmed when I start to depack. The prop, though gaffa-taped, worked. Siskey and Nisbet were awesome. Had a *lovely* chat with Mairead from the Pokemon forum on boards.ie. I won (well... co-won) a scenario for the first time in years and years! Did the whole con high on laughter and adrenaline - not a beer in sight. Roll on next year. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 17th, 2010
12:07 pm	Can you collect all 150? Busted. There's now another 155 of the little buggers, bringing us to 649 Pokemon. Aaaaawesome :)  (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010
2:06 pm	Midway LARP - Event II Hey all - a quick reminder that the second "Midway" event will run on Friday the 24th. Our first game ran to a healthy number of people and we hope to be increasing on that number this time around. We're making improvements in the game as we go along, both in terms of rules and in terms of logistics. We've organised a minibus to ferry people out to Ballyboughal from the city center this time around, and we're constantly revising and updating our rules. You can visit us on the web at https://sites.google.com/site/midwaylrp or visit our forum at http://www.irishgaming.com/forum - if you're looking to ask a question, create a character or book a space on the bus, contact me directly at kshandr (at) gmail (dot) com. Lastly, we're looking for NPCs for this scenario. If you're thinking of coming along but aren't sure what you'dm like to play then drop me a line and we'll have a chat. Both I and co-GM-Gogz would love to see you there! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 10th, 2010
5:39 pm	Tycho's Mom on D&D Not a huge fan of Tycho from Penny Arcade... never really got his style of writing. But I read this today and it spoke to me a bit... "My mother has never entirely understood roleplaying. I don't intend to belabor the point, but when I was a young man it was the position of our church that Dungeons & Dragons held within it the clustered seeds of apostasy. She was so bewildered by what she had seen during Of Dice and Men that she made it a point to attend our D&D Live panel, where her son and his friends played this mysterious game on stage. The devil did show up, true, and we did go to hell, just as the clergy had suggested we might. Except in the actual version of events, as has happened so many times, we stood against the King of Lies at the very gates of his damned realm and emerged triumphant. My mother came up to me after the panel was over, saying, "I'm sorry, Jerry. I'm sorry." She wiped the corner of her left eye with her thumb. "They told me it was something else."" When I was in school, aged maybe fourteen or fifteen we tried to set up a D&D club and were refused by the school's chaplain. I'm not sure that even today we would be allowed, were I to be that age again, and at school again. And it's a crime. I think part of this thing that I do as time moves forward needs to involve bringing some kind of publicity to gaming in this country and involving younger people, though I'm not sure yet how to do it. I don't think there's any kind of gamer kid outreach thing going on right now - unless anyone wants to put me wrong?  What do you think? (6 Comments |Comment on this)
10:27 am	iPhone Gaming #1 On purchasing my new iPhone I installed the geocaching app. It's pay-for, but I've had so much fun geocaching over the last few years it seems churlish not to give something cash-wise back to the people that host the site and stuff. I arrived at work far too early this morning and thought I'd try it. The app tells me every cache I've got and not got that are close-by. I find that there's a cache I haven't got a kilometer or so away. So then I drive there and get a very TV-tracking-device road map with a blinking light for me. I park, and I'm close now. I swap the app to compass-mode, which gives me an arrow and a distance and walk the remaining 250m to the cache, then log the find immediately through the app. Amazing stuff. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
9:15 am	Right then - Let's be serious about our Pokemon I'm using Elliot as an excuse to go to the Pokemon Video Game World Championships in Birmingham at the end of the month (and... truth be told I wouldn't go if it wasn't for him, so maybe I'm taking him and it's not an excuse.) Tickets booked, rules and sign-up sheets printed! Top on his agenda? Seeing what's what and battling folk. (though last night he said that he'd probably get kicked out in the first round but it's the competing that counts.) Top of my agenda? Shiny Eevee (Eevee's a pokemon, and you see pokemon one in every sort of couple of thousand you encounter. So catching one's a fairly rare occurrence. Being given one more so.) Here's the thing. To get shiny Eevee you apparently need to compete, and I don't see the point in competing without actually making an effort, so... it's time to get serious about battling Pokemon with other adults. I've got a couple of weeks to prepare, the Internet, and the power of Nick's obsession (tm.) I can do anything! To the Internets! Current Mood: obsessive (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
4:15 pm	Sometimes you have to go a long way down the rabbit hole... We were talking about Lee Majors in the office and he was a long time ago, so I commented that Elliot knows who the six-million-dollar man is. "How's that?" says office colleague A. Well... I've a cactus that got broken and bent and I've had to sort of stitch it back together with bamboo sticks and cable-ties in the kitchen. And he's called Steve Austin, because... well all of the plants in the house have names, and there's Boris and Sarah in the living room and Natasha in the computer room upstairs. And Elliot wanted to know what I'd named my cactus after a wrestler, because... well there's a wrestler called Stone Cold Steve Austin and he's an older wrestler, but popular enough that Elliot knows who he is, so I had to explain the difference between Steve Austin the wrestler and Steve Austin the six-million-dollar man. And Steve Austin the cactus. My poor colleagues... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 12th, 2010
9:52 am	WEEKEND OF ADVENTURE! So it's the first weekend that me and Elliot have been in the same place at the same time since Wrestlemania, so we watched some of that on Friday night. Imagine our surprise, then, when we discovered that Shamus was in Smyths signing autographs when we went in there looking for lego on Saturday morning! The ackshual Shamus! In the flesh! Sunday we went on a big hike (complete with picnic and pokewalkers!) to see where the path onward from the top of Tibradden goes. Seems it goes to a t-junction on the Dublin Mountains Way, where if we go right we end up on the road that goes through Glencullen - that's the route we took. I guess that left takes us up to the top of Fairycastle. That's a route for another day. Lovely hike, though, in the blazing sun. I've definitely got a bit of sunburn today on my forehead and nose. On the way home, we passed the stable down the hill from the Hellfire Club forest, where there was a horse on his back in the grass, probably scratching his back, wriggling with his legs in the air. I commented to Elliot that it's funny to see a horse upside down with his back on the ground and his legs in the air. Elliot said, and this is a direct quote: "That's *nothing* Dad. Once I saw a cow giving another cow a piggyback!" Bite lip. BITE LIP! Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
2:25 pm	Yeah, Pokemon... On the one hand, how sad is it that I need to go for a walk every day to keep up with Elliot on the Pokewalker (and hence on Pokemon HeartGold itself)? I've just come in from the snow where I went for a brisk walk in order to train Onix and build up credits I can redeem for the chance of catching more Pokemon or finding items (two Ponytas today - yay!) On the other hand, how cool is it that I'm in competition with my son over a videogame that makes us *walk* to do well!? Current Mood: impressed (Comment on this)
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
4:28 pm	Another point for the Manifesto... I've being saying quite a lot elsewhere about the idea of live-action games, and how if Doctor Who could manage it on an shoestring budget fifty years ago, then we should be able to manage the same thing on a meagre budget now with fifty years worth of advances in computing, makeup and materials design etc. The only thing standing in our way is the balls and the desire to put that budget into our games (go look at "Frontier In Space" and tell me we couldn't manage the makeup, model FX, script and chromakey effects *right now* in a LARP. Your average LARP writer could do the sets and the costume by involving friends, although I concede that these are likely to be the expensive bits.) I just read an article on Kotaku about the "Bioware (they make Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Warhammer Online, folks) Vision Statement." I'm going to add a quote from that into my personal LARP-writing Manifesto in some way shape or form: Emotional engagement, he said, is what great role-playing games can create between the games and their players. "These experiences just pull you in... The features of classic RPGs help do that, they facilitate that. The journey of an explorer gives you the sense of awe and mystery as you enter new places. You feel like you're the first person to see it. "The tension of combat and feeling like you're going to get your ass handed to by some gigantic creature or some kind of space monster or something like that. Or a villain in a contemporary setting... "[There can also be a] sense of pride in your progression of a character. "There are lots of emotions you can have interacting with other characters in a game: hatred, love, loyally, friendship, remorse, sadness, grief — all kinds of different interesting emotions. As long as you're engaging people in that level, we think that's a more compelling experience." Words to live by. Current Mood: learning (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 19th, 2010
9:26 am	Sykes the Nightmare Man I had a nightmare last night... Oh man but I love having nightmares. I know it was a nightmare because I woke up afraid to have any part of my body outside of the duvet, even though I was over-warm as a result. Didn't want to go back to sleep. So I ended up waking myself up and focussing on remembering all of the dream so I could keep it for later. Nightmares represent a kind of suspense-thriller that your head created when you weren't looking, and there's *always* something you can keep and re-use elsewhere. The time before last that I had a nightmare was quite similar. That one involved a bad guy/central character called... I can't remember if it was "Mister Snitch" or "Mister Stitch" but he terrified me in the dream - a clownish character, very very old wearing a top hat and tails but no shirt. Last night I dreamt of something or someone called "Sykes." Sykes hates the light and is driven to a mad rage to destroy the sources of light that he sees, and in my dream I rode my bike past bushes where he was sleeping rough, shining my bike light on him and waking him up. He's bearded, but wears a mask over his face that I can't quite visualise now in the light of day. He wears a long trenchcoat and is tall - almost Rasputin-like with the beard and the height. What I remember the most are staring unblinking eyes behind the mask - the sort of staring eyes that never, ever blink, and perhaps that's why he hates the light so much. After I shone my bike light on him he chased me, running fast enough that I had trouble getting away. He passed a child as he chased, and leaned down to literally take a bite from the kid - leaning down, closing his teeth around a shoulder and ripping. I remember a spray of almost unrealistic blood as the flesh tore. The dream went on and had a significant amount of plot and coherence - I find nightmares hold together better as stories than dreams - but the last detail I wanted to share was that the dark is what he wants, and ultimately I ended up trapped in the dark with some friends, unclear as to who the real bad guy was because one of us had ended up being a traitor to the rest. As we tried to work it all out, we heard a voice like rusty chains - unused and unpracticed. "SYKES. IS. HERE." And then I woke up. Man, I love nightmares. Current Mood: excited (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
9:06 am	All a-gossip Plenty of curtains twitching this morning. I heard the neighbour's dog going ballistic so glanced out the window to see half the contents of Tallaght garda station disembarking out of three unmarked cars and two squad cars, one of which was blocking my drive. Obviously therefore unable to leave for work (heh heh) I sat and watched as a bloke got hauled out of the house, and about half an hour later they took a bunch of stuff out after what looked like a definite search of the premises. Will definitely be listening to the news tonight! Current Mood: intrigued (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 15th, 2010
9:20 am	JumpTech: Damocles - apres-game thoughts As many of you will know (some directly), episode 6 of my ongoing sci-fi LARP game "JumpTech" ran at Leprecon yesterday. Big big thanks to Oisin, Fergal and Siskey for their flexibility in allowing me to snarf the room with the projector rather than the LARP room I was scheduled for! Apres-game I was pretty happy with everything, but since then I've started to be a little more critical. I have decided to leave myself a message in "Fortunately, unfortunately" format in order to put this thinking across :) Fortunately, I had everything finished on time, despite work eating all of my free time, ever. Unfortunately, I had everything finished at 1.30am on the Sunday morning, meaning I didn't make the con on Saturday, which is something I simply *must* stop doing - it's lazy, it's badly-organised, and it stops me from enjoying other peoples' games. Fortunately, being timetabled on Sunday morning didn't affect me too badly. And I got a number of new players, a few of which really enjoyed themselves. Unfortunately, the timetabling *did* affect me. The game ran to 13 people, which is half the number it ran to at Warpcon and Gaelcon. Such is life, and it did allow everyone to get a reasonable amount of "spotlight" time, which I was quite happy with. On the other hand, there were a number of people who commented that they'd have played if it had been an afternoon slot (and those people I call weak <wink>) Fortunately, my big enormous prop was complete, sturdy, and coped with a bunch of gamers climbing into it rather well. The electrics worked, the basic concept (that folk go into an alien mind-transferral device and come out of it with memories) worked well. And I got a couple of priceless facial expressions when I pulled the prop out of its hiding place (you know who you are!) I couldn't have asked for more on that front. No photos at this point - I might take some "after the fact" photos at the weekend for posterity (and 'cos Elliot will want to see the finished product.) Unfortunately I now have a big-assed box with a light bulb that I'll need to store or dispose of. Fortunately, the idea of using the projector for as much stuff as possible worked really well. I used it for stock exchange information, space-combat/positioning information, dissemination of audio/video content to the players and for a natty "splash screen" as people arrived. There was a lovely sequence with folk standing up front watching me move virtual spaceship counters around the screen while they barked orders. Unfortunately, that exact same sequence was basically an "out-loud" conversation between the GM and the players, and that just isn't scalable. The space-combat element of JumpTech needs to evolve further before I'm happy with it, I think. Also, I can't guarantee a projector everywhere I run the game. So either this is just a Leprecon thing, or I need to buy a projector. And maybe a screen as well. On a related note, "GM screen/player screen" set up I've been using allowed me, at one point to show one small group of players a video sequence on the small laptop screen while the big projector screen was showing the topographic map of local space. It's the small things :) Fortunately I got to use the red alert sound again. Unfortunately, I really need a new red alert sound. Fortunately, I got to introduce a new faction into the game. Unfortunately, there's now a lot of "mystery" factions in the game, and a lot of questions. I'm in danger of becoming "Lost" if I don't start answering some of those questions pretty soon. Also, with six Families, four governments, two mystery alien races (sort of), and a growing number of "on-screen" star systems (enough that I'm going to have to start naming the new ones now) there's a heap of back story in there and it's starting to become a significant learning curve for new players just starting. Fortunately I've now got a number of months before the next scenario, which means I get to take a break and plan the next few episodes. Unfortunately, I really enjoy running JumpTech, and sometimes it seems like the story moves at a snail's pace even without spending a couple of months planning the next few episodes! Fortunately that number of months is going to allow me to focus on some of the other "online" aspects of the game. Unfortunately that means there's a bunch of work ahead. But hey - work is good, isn't it? Isn't it? Current Mood: happy (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
1:43 pm	UCI Cinema Tallaght - Gone! Aw man now I'm unimpressed. That's my local! http://www.movies.ie/news/UCI_Tallaght_cinema_to_close Current Mood: unimpressed (Comment on this)
Monday, March 8th, 2010
9:11 am	Enter the FailBox... Nice weekend. Sunny as the bejaysus, so it was nice to go out to Powerscourt Waterfall and have a picnic. Elliot's Credit Union Schools Quiz thing was on Friday, which was pretty awesome to watch, even if it was in Thurles. In the under-11s event there was a three-way tie for first place, which meant that there was a tiebreaker, and then the tie-breaker was flawed (they put one team in it that shouldn't have been in it, and left one team out) so they had to run the tie-breaker again. *That* tie-breaker was a tie, so they did it again. So all in all there were four tie-breakers for the increasingly tired kids to go through. Elliot's team was knocked out at the very last tie-breaker, but he took it really well. Personally I think I've been spoiled by decades of gamer pub quizzes... I kept looking for a giant snakes and ladders board, and then I had ideas about how I'd have used the overhead projector to improve the event. In other news I started the JumpTech-thing-I-can't-talk-about here at the weekend. Which was good, and did what I wanted, but involved a disaster which put me in a bad mood for the rest of Saturday. I'm also behind on what I wanted to do there - quelle surprise. We shall see what we shall see... Current Mood: pleased (Comment on this)
Friday, March 5th, 2010
9:27 am	Set adrift on memory bliss It started when I was listening to some Madchester album I found on work's network. That was nice and I was remembering sunny afternoons in Laser Quest and the most awesome bacon sandwiches in the world from that greasy spoon beside Oxford Road Station. Then I went out for a pint and mexican food with Joe and Niall, and it was 1994 all over again and we were reminiscing about living in a house with no heating in December, and how we didn't cook anything except in the toaster, the kettle or the deep fat fryer. And yesterday theozzardofwiz linked me to an UglyMUG facebook group and there are names from my dim, distant and drunken past listed there. As clear as crystal I remember a MudMeet in London now, and sleeping in some friend-I'd-never-met's flat, jealous as hell of his leather coat. I wonder if I'll look back on these years of a steady job and quiet life with the same fondness that I remember my years of crazy socialising and bouts of randomness? Current Mood: nostalgic (1 Comment |Comment on this)