MurderHobo.club

Something clever goes here.

Category: Musings

Rambling thoughts

  • Connecting with community

    Years ago, I reached out to my community, and over time, found a place where I felt, and felt like I belonged, and in my arrogance, I attempted to change those places in ways I thought would help. To my credit, my arrogance was oft appreciated, as much as it annoyed. I did not have even half enough of an understanding of the circumstances to have taken the path I did, just a sense of righteousness that guided me. But that sense did a lovely job of hiding how much it blinded me.

    Recently, I’ve begun reaching out again, and I’m enjoying it, appreciating how much less of an outsider I feel as I connect with people. I still come from a different set of experiences, so there will still be a flavour of dissonance in the air, but less so than I’ve feared for so long.

    There is an honesty here that soothes, an authenticity and acceptance of quirks that resonates, a background harmony that comforts.

    There is far too much dissonance, both outside and within, the conflict outside being reflected in the soul, creating disorder and discomfort. Within community, that dissonance is displaced by a harmony of common intent, resonance that soothes as mutes the background buzz.

    Fancy words, but hopefully they convey my meaning.

  • Regarding multiple screens

    It has recently occurred to me that while multiple screens are good for dealing with my ADHD, they are also an issue when trying to write something, and I’ve come across a simple solution. If I intend to sit down and write something, I simply take a moment and turn off the other monitors before I boot the machine. In doing so, I end up with just what I need to focus on, with no distractions. Such a simple thing, but something that is helping to create the space I need to be creative.

  • 5 am again

    I often wake up briefly, to attend to biological functions and to take the levothyroxine. Sometimes I’ll fall back asleep after, other times I’ll take some time to compose my thoughts.

    for whatever reason, my phone is especially hard to read this morning and it’s making some interesting choices as I attempt to put my thoughts down.

    apparently my phone felt that I was composting my thoughts, an error that more amused than annoyed.

    for truly, it is the process of breaking down our ideas that creates the fertile ground from which new ideas will spring forth.

    a question that has been on my mind is what do I value. Community, kindness, those are easy answers. Collaboration. That’s another.

    i suppose in many ways, I value regret, in as much as without an awareness of our mistakes, and the desire to do better, I do not see how we can grow.

    I value clever word play, terrible jokes and twists of phrase.

    i value the rules, as much as they annoy me; though perhaps not the rules themselves but the fairness they represent. When we agree to the rules, we are trying to play the same game. When the rules are forced upon us, that’s a different story.

    especially when it’s rules for thee and not for me. The binding of the out group and the protection of the in group.

    it occurs to me that the values of the French revolution apply and now I feel like I need to watch *les mis* again.

  • Full Screen

    Testing out using the wordpress editing tool, in full screen no distraction mode. It would probably be less distracting if I turned off the other two monitors, as both are currently active with things. Discord on one, and my friend Scott reading smut on the other.

    Recently claimed a split table and a flatscreen tv. With a little work, I’m thinking I can mount the TV into the table, so when that sliding it apart, you’ll reveal the TV, for using as a digital tabletop. In theory, there might be a way to also raise the TV, but I think that’s a step beyond what I’m likely to accomplish.

    Still, could be useful to hosting Pathfinder, Dungeons and Dragons, or something else that needs a map to play well.

    I don’t know whether or not I live too far out of the city to succeed as a paid in-person Game Master. I have some of the tools for being a paid online Game Master, having Foundry as a Virtual Tabletop.

    The biggest thing standing in my way in that regard, is a lack of practice with the tools, increasing my familiarity with the systems and also building my confidence in the skills.

    However, the path to both is to do more of it. I think I’d mentioned that as an option in the discussion about getting this blog back up and running.

    The other being the excessive number of board games I have, and finding a way to document my culling of the pile.

    I suppose, to that end, I need to play the games, and either post written reviews, or write up scripted reviews and then film them. Perhaps with some assistance.

  • A year ago

    A year ago, I’d just had my thyroid removed, and after an extended hospital stay due to complications, I’d returned home. It’s hard to explain the experience of having extremely low calcium levels. It was an intense vibration, but not painful, just intensely uncomfortable.

    After that, I’d received a phone call, telling me I should probably get to the hospital in Squamish, ASAP. So I booked a flight and flew up. I was able to see my grandmother a couple more times before she passed that week.

    Right now, I’m having a hard time with that.

  • Circular thoughts

    Circles of protection, often a ring of salt, occasionally a set of runes, are a staple of supernatural fiction; a mystic shield that protects the protagonists and imprisons antagonists.

    The problem is, a circle is a flat plane and we exist in more dimensions, so in order to protect us, the circle has to have more dimensions. But how are those dimensions defined and refined?

    One version would be that the circle is actually a sphere and the width determines the height, though humans tend to be taller than they are wide, and with that math many circles would leave heads exposed. Something that is rarely explored, but could be a good piece to a story.

    An obvious alternative is that the amount of energy used when empowering the circle determines how tall it is, and by habit most people make it taller than they are. This could even be argued to be a subconscious process, something picked up while learning the ritual in the first place. It could also explain how some circles are of limited use or appear to fail altogether; they were cast too short to be of much use. Potentially some interesting scenes there.

    The logical extension of this is if they can be empowered during their configuration or creation, is there a way this could be used to greater impact? We’ve seen circles on the ceiling used to trap things below. What about a vertically mounted circle being used to close a passage or to create a battering ram that only hits supernatural creatures?

    How about a dodecahedron, with circles carved into its faces, with a power source inside, allowing the circles to all expand at once? Certainly be a creative weapon in the right circumstances.

  • Ramblings

    It’s Christmas day, and aside from the dog managing to perform a Hoth manoeuvre on me, it’s been a good day. My wife bought me a new watch and despite her concerns about picking the right one, it’s probably a better choice than if I’d gone out and got one myself. I’d have probably just gone for a samsung smartwatch, as I’d seen they had a price drop recently and have decent reviews. What she got me was a nice Garmin with a whole slew of bells and whistles. Nearly a decade ago, I backed the pebble smartwatch and had one of those for a few years until it randomly became haunted. This reminds me of that, but better.

    I’ve previously owned a Garmin watch, a nice little GPS one that my parents bought for me, I’d used it to track my walking speed. When I logged into their system, I saw my data from back in 2011 and earlier, with a brief burst of activity in 2013. Based on Pebble’s wiki, I’d have replaced the Garmin with the pebble, until I’d retired it.

    Wearing a watch again, after having not for so long, it’ll take a bit to get used to.

    There are a variety of watch face options available, and I’ve gone with a text one, fuzzy time. I think I had it’s equivalent on my pebble back in the day. Not the exact time, just a rough approximation; Quarter after four, twenty to five, that sort of thing. For the most part, I think that suits my needs. I rarely need to know the exact time these days.

    Last night, we watched Bullet Train, and I enjoyed it. It reminded me of Smoking Aces by way of Snatch. Another friend said Lock Stock meets Knives Out.

    Speaking of Knives Out, we saw Glass Onion the night before, and it was fun. Better than I had expected. The rich successful idiot theme seemed very timely, especially in light of recent events.

  • Campaign Thoughts

    A few years back, I designed something we called the ARSE, Active Research System Experiment. It was a system agnostic way to handle historical knowledge in RPGs. The players would encounter a mystery they wanted to solve, such as the location of an object or the fate of an expedition, and they’d do their leg work to get an appropriate lead, such as a journal written by a member of the that expedition. At which point they’d be given a selection of character sheets to pick from; they would be taking on the roles of the members of that expedition, and the storyline that played out would give them the answers they’d sought in the future. Or not, as it was possible they wouldn’t solve the mystery, the lead turning out to be a dead end.

    This allowed us to experiment with different systems, settings, etc, and give players a break from a campaign, something that can prevent burnout. In theory, the system also allowed the GM to pull less punches, especially if there were more members of the expedition than in the party. One of them gets killed off, the player picks up one of the unpicked sheets and someone else has stepped up to fill in the vacancy left by the recently deceased.

    That system is still something I’ve had tucked away in my toolkit, for the day when I might actually need it.

    This post however, is about something a little different, thought it emerges from a similar stream of thoughts.

    I’d like to do a campaign loosely inspired by both Eternal Darkness from the Gamecube, and that recent Netflix series Fear Street, with it’s 3 parts taking place in three timelines. I’m sure there are other things that fit into this mould also, but those are the two that leap to mind currently. Also, I suppose it would owe some credit towards Doctor Who, with the various episodes that took place across human history. Or I suppose even the whole Assassin’s Creed series with the whole Abstergo operatives looking back through history.

    There would need to be a central threat or mystery, that the group was somehow exposed to, and having survived that, they’d have reason to seek the other groups who’d also encountered this, in an attempt to learn what they could about it.

    A basic framework like this gives you reason to visit places like Ancient Greece, Victorian London, and a whole variety of other evocative places.

  • Bureaus.

    The other day, I replayed a bit of Control, to test out the series S I’d picked up, before realizing that apparently Control hadn’t been optimized for the series S, only the series X. Still, it’s a good game, and I was enjoying it. So I loaded up my old save file on my PS4 Pro to play though the DLC. The DLC is not as good as the story in the base game. The way the mysteries unfold during the course of the game is just so good, it’s hard for anything else to really match it.

    That inspired me to check where the X-Files was streaming these days; turns out, it’s over on Disney plus, since they own Fox now. I’m part way through the first season. The two strongest episode have been the ones involving the locked room murders: Squeeze and Ghost in the Machine.

    In the latter, there are two scenes that were filmed at Metrotown, at the old Dolphin fountain, with the Skytrain in the background. It was weird to see that. It’ll be strange to see other things that I recognize from years back, some of which no longer exist.

  • Facial Cleanser

    For a few weeks now, maybe longer, I’ve been thinking I need to remove a couple of people from my friend’s list, as I don’t agree with their politics. A couple of them have been commenting on misogynist posts or others that are equally distasteful.

    I’ve known them several years, and over the years I’ve tried to discuss things with them, but their positions have been unassailable by logic.

    People say that you shouldn’t create drama by explaining why you’ve unfriended someone or cleaned up your list.

    People also say you should stand up to bigots and be clear that you don’t agree with them.

    So, what is the right way to approach the problem of people you have on Facebook, whose politics you don’t agree with, who continue to post things that go against your principles?

  • blocks

    I don’t write much anymore. For a while, I’d write but then not publish, and then at some point, I just stopped writing.

    Today, I wrote something. I should write more, but it’s hard to get into the right frame of mine and right space.

    I should probably take my laptop to the park or something.

  • Quick Warning to Office Staff

    Earlier today, my partner went into her office to attempt to do some things that she was unable to do while working remotely. It took her several tries to get the systems to work correctly. This was of course because of the office gremlins.

    Normally, they are fairly benign and will primarily interfere with printers to gather space materials to line their nests. Especially if someone was helpful and took the paper recycling out recently.

    They are known to sleep on routers and other machines that are left running, as they enjoy the warmth. As anyone working in IT can attest, a gremlin sleeping on your router can cause some irregularities in the signal strength, especially if you get a restless one who keeps shifting position. Occasional they’ll dislodge a power cord, or bump the power button, but in most cases these deactivations are temporary, due to their preference for the warmth.

    They are also known to hoard office supplies, stealing pens, tape, staplers and other things that they can easily carry off. Little is known about the purpose behind these thefts, as no obvious use of the supplies has been observed. Further study has been attempted, but the cameras that were deployed kept going missing.

    However, since everyone has been working remote for the last six months or so, they’ve gone a bit feral. They’d grown comfortable on their diet of leftover donuts and other assorted desk snacks, including the large bowl of candy that somehow often seemed to be in need of refilling, despite nobody ever observing anyone eating from it.

    So, just a quick warning, prepare for extra time when attempting administrative tasks after the return to the office. Either that, or bring a box of donuts and tuck it somewhere out of your line of sight.

  • D&D on my mind again.

    The other day, I picked up a copy of the new Icewind Dale book, a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons adventure. I’ve not played much 5th edition. I’d done the two partial campaigns with Matt that I’d mentioned here, and that’s been about it. Before that, it was Pathfinder, which I did for a while though Dimestore and I found a few ways to break things in those. Before that, 3.5, with various folks, including the man who became Olaf. For someone who has been interested in D&D for so long, I haven’t really played all that much of it.

    Most of my gaming has been Shadowrun, which I find more narratively satisfying. The d20 system, always feels too random to me, while the d6 systems, where the better the skill, the more dice, feels like you still get a range of results, but the range is more closely tied to your skills. Though that might just be because I feel more in control of my destiny in Shadowrun. (I may have mentioned this in a previous post.)

    But, I’ve heard good things about this new set of D&D adventures, and I’ve been tempted to pick them up a few times. And this one, had some good buzz, and a great picture of a moose in it.

    In theory, there’s a plan to run it for some friends online, though before that, I will probably be running a few games to get my familiarity with the system back. For whatever reason, running games seems more appealing than playing in them, at the moment.

     

  • Why did this go dark so long?

    About two years back, I stopped working for the place where this blog had been hosted. And with the future of the hosting in question, I lost some of my motivation to maintain it. I’d made some efforts to get it moved somewhere better, but until recently, those efforts hadn’t borne any fruit. 

    Well, now they have, the site’s future is “secure” or at least it should be. 

  • New digs

    The site has now been migrated to a new host. 

    Maybe that means it’ll get worked on again. 

  • I’ve noticed.

    I’ve noticed that I haven’t been writing lately, that I haven’t managed to create anything interesting. I had an interesting idea for a time travel setting, which I flesh out a bit, but it stalled somewhere.

    I should be doing more writing. I shouldn’t let the ideas get stalled. I should create something and when it doesn’t feel right, either push through it, or move on to something else.

    And instead, I keep thinking about things, but not putting anything down on the screen.

  • VR game idea

    I’ve got a vr game idea I would love to see developed.

    A moral choice game where you have an angel and a demon on your shoulders, that are only visible in the peripheral vision, not when you look at them directly, and that emit a glow when you’re working for their alignment.

    Titling your head towards one voice, better hearing it. Except when the other one decides to scream.

    Thinking it would work best as a detective game with really grey moral choices.

    At one point, I wrote a screenplay about an implanted conscience, so that’s the other possible direction.

    You’re on parole, you’ve got a digital conscience on your shoulder, as you navigate the world. Then one day you wake up with two of them, with different agendas.

    At one point the idea was cyberpunk, it was an implant in the brain, creating the hallucination, and then a hacker who wanted to kill the program hacked in to sabotage it. But is there really a hacker? Is there really an implant? Are you really out of jail?

    I kinda like the idea of a story that unfolds possible ways, with one ending being that you find out it’s an occurrence at owl creek execution hallucination, one you save the world by exposing a conspiracy for mind control implants, etc.

    Games tend to not go with the huge branches, because you end up doing far more work than a given audience will see, if they take a different path.

    And it does interfere with a single coherent narrative and even narrative consistency, if you don’t have an objective truth to refer back to.

    Though having an objective truth that is hinted at and a series of subjective truths that the player is exposed to, is something interesting to explore.

  • Private security drones.

    Given the rise of private security forces, it makes sense for someone to put together a collection of drone riggers for the purposes of special operations. Better overwatch potential than most groups can manage, especially if concealed as paparazzi and tourists. The technology is here, which means the profits are likely there.

  • Social training

    A recent facebook post a trio who saw someone drug a woman’s drink and then told her about it got me thinking about social conditioning. Specifically that for the most part, people don’t intercede in things. There are a few exceptions, who have that protective impulse that overrides the Someone Else’s Problem Field that so often protects the perpetrators.

    Would it make any sense to create a group that operates something like improve anywhere, but with a domestic abuse focus? Creating scenes in public and seeing who, if anyone, intercedes, and then perhaps talking to the witnesses about it afterwards?

    I can see this having a few legal hurdles and a few ethical ones. Some people might find being exposed to such things to be triggering. Overall though, would it be worth it? I think if it contributed to the dialogue, it might be.

    A recent reddit thread, people were talking about how it didn’t matter who they were, if they left their drink unwatched, they pitched it out. It felt like it was implied that not doing so was foolish, which to me feels like victim blaming. Often times, that seems to be where the conversation in society is at when it comes to domestic abuse, various forms of rape, etc.

    Part of that is sadly just the nature of the offense. If the perp is anonymous, it is hard to mentally assign the blame to them, and for many people, the residual blame will just drift onto the person who disturbed their quiet illusion of a safe world, the victim. And in cases where the perp isn’t anonymous, but is someone that you don’t want to believe would do such things, it’s hard to accept it. Another comfortable illusion at risk, the trust you had. The person wasn’t the monster you were expecting. They did monstrous things, but there wasn’t all the warning signs that you were taught to expect; they were just too normal.

    Of course there’s also the sort who have a reputation and are known to be a problem, but action isn’t taken against them, for various reasons. Those bother me the most.

  • Content generation

    It was suggested earlier that I should consider doing a podcast. That I take my gift for writing and create some decent serial content.

    This means I need a writing partner, and a session partner. Any volunteers?

    Also, there is a suggestion to create a series about using esports to influence frat boys into rivalries in a series of vaultec style experiments. Monoculture and tribalism.

  • Writing a bit more, but not writing enough.

    I need to be working on more of my fiction. I need to be reading and writing on a daily basis. I haven’t worked on much fiction lately, and I really should be. The only way to become a better writer is to write, to keep putting words down. Minimal edits for clarity, rather than writing and rewriting the same chunk over and over again, until you bugger off from frustration.

  • The Patrician’s Oubliette

    A few months back, I killed my fetlife account, ceased being active in the community, and basically put that aspect of my life on the backburner, including dating.

    There were a few things that caused this, one factor was my continued discomfort with the toxic masculine behavior I kept seeing online.  The final straw though, was lack of reaction from the community to an act I considered to be unforgivably wrong by someone else in the community.

    Last weekend, a local promoter called me, because he thought he needed a last minute favor. I agreed, showed up, helped with things. Didn’t attend the event, just helped with the setup. I thought about, but decided against it.

    Later in the week, I helped with the load out, showing up with the van to move the gear. On the way back, we had a conversation about the event and various things. Some of it reminded me of what I’ve been missing about the community.

    So, I’m trying to figure out how to go about it. How to reactivate my account, how to reconnect with people, get myself out there again. In the meantime, I’m focusing on my health goals in the background.

    I’m still having the same issue with dating that I was having before. It’s hard to explain, but basically it boils down to this. There are plenty of aggressive and abrasive assholes out there, hitting on women, both within the community and in the general online community. It bothers me, though it’s hard for me to articulate exactly how and why, beyond the simple “Treat expletive-ing people with respect, they’re people, expletive for brains.”

    I don’t know how to stand out from that crowd, when I’m uncomfortable enough wading into that cesspool in the first place. Mostly what I do well, is writing. The problem is, writing isn’t really something people appreciate these days, as people tend to TL; DR most of it.

    My brain keeps bouncing off a brick wall when I try to figure out how to best express what I am. Especially since I keep feeling like I need to distance myself from the toxic ideals that I keep seeing. I don’t know how to explain that part, though perhaps by saying I’m not suffering from “Nice Guy Syndrome”, but at the same time, I’m generally a nice guy.

    Right! This is an issue of semiotics; specifically shorthand, expectations and frames of reference.

  • Mutters

    Much like a prion disease is a malformation of a healthy structure, cults are a malformation of a tribal family.

  • Relating to humanity.

    I’ve been writing for a while now, and while some point love my ability to take a conversation or an idea and turn it into something concise on the page, I lack the skill to do the opposite of that. I seem to lack the ability to write characters who have believable dialogue or believable motives. This may be related to social awkwardness that I’ve suffered from, or perhaps a yet to be diagnosed position on the autism spectrum. Some of the reading I’ve done lately suggests that I have a tendency to make mistakes that are common among those who are on that spectrum. There was an interesting post on reddit listing a dozen or so common mistakes that get made, mostly relating to matters of social conventions.

    Generally speaking, when someone asks me how I’m doing, I reply, “Not dead yet.”, referring both to the character getting thrown into the charnel wagon in Monty Python, and to the quote from Herodotus, “Call no man happy until he is dead.” In essence, I’m saying that I could give you a complicated answer, but I think you’re just asking to be polite, so I’ll give you something that sounds amusing, though the implication is that there is more there, if you want to know. Often, people don’t. They’re just asking because it’s how people interact. Sometimes, they do want to know, and then I try to explain it to them. I tend to have more woes than can easily be encapsulated though, so this tends to go flat rather quickly.

    When I was writing at Douglas, my classmates found my dialogue to be a bit too overthought, or overly intellectualized. At the time, the conversations that I was having that weren’t basically functional, tended to be of that nature, so it was hard for me to understand that complaint.

    I am trying to express my difficultly in natural communicating with others, both in my life and between my characters in my writing. I am acknowledging this, and I’m making a note to be more aware of it in the future.

    Also, apparently I shouldn’t end sentences with periods when texting, as that comes across as abrupt. And use more emoticons.

  • Constricted constructs.

    I am badly written; I am a construct of logic warped and twisted around to meet goals that serve not the requirements of the flesh that contains them. I do not pursue the course that would be more profitable to me, I do not take the course that would logically lead towards rewards. Instead I stubbornly take the course to get answers and truths, despite knowing that I’ll cut myself, for there is no sharper knife than the honed truth.

  • Anticipation of alienation

    Tomorrow is the last Noir, an event run by friends of mine. An event I’ve helped out with for a year or more at this point. It’ll be music and people, in a concrete bunker. Some aspects of it I’m sure I’ll enjoy, like spending time with friends and the music. On the other hand, it’ll be loud, and I’ll likely have the same feeling of not fitting in that I’ve had for ages now.

    Sure, I have a solid understanding of bdsm, kink, fetish, etc, but beyond mentoring, I haven’t engaged in any of it in ages. I have attended things, but not engaged in them. I’ve literally moved furniture more often than I’ve used it.

    That’s my contribution to the community, a community that I’m only vestigially a part of at this point.

    I’m sure there are reasons that I’ve failed to connect with anyone in recent years, not the least of which being my growing insecurity with toxic masculinity, something that causes me great discomfort and leads to me double thinking my flirting, to the point where it often doesn’t happen.

    I have internalized that the majority of people I meet will not be interested in me, for various reasons. Some of those reasons are perhaps a tad shallow, while others are written deeper into the soul; the validity of the reasons are not mine to question. I can merely accept them and avoid making people uncomfortable, by treating them as people, regardless of any possible interest in them, since the odds are good it won’t be mutual.

    None of this is really new material. I’ve said it all before. I’m cranky because my skill set goes to waste, because of all the various factors. A few appreciate my skills, mostly from a far. I’m cranky because I see individuals who are less qualified in a variety of ways leveraging other traits into chances that they appear to fail to appreciate. Or more significantly, that they fail to respect.

    Alas, sour grapes and further alienation. Further disconnected from a community that I have consistently attempted to be a part of.

  • Outings and such, part two.

    I got a message this morning from my mother. She’d been able to see the thread that I had previously mentioned.  She’s aware that I’m involved in the kink community, so this wasn’t a shock to her. Had the situation been different, that could have been rather stressful. For many people, what I’ve just described is a nightmare scenario, and is one of the reasons people have cited that they aren’t willing to stand up for their beliefs in the community. I had been aware of the possibility, since horror stories of outing as a weapon have existed as long as I’ve been a member of the community.

    Based on his writings, he doesn’t feel he has outed me, since I was already out. Well, I have always thought that an individual should get some discretion over how out they are, and if you aren’t sure, you should probably ask them. That generally works better when you have respect for the person that you are arguing with. I don’t know that this applies here.

    I had just two days ago said I was no longer going to be sanitizing these posts for any given audience, but I’ve already had demands that I change details of what I’ve written. And)
    I’m finding myself choosing my words carefully, since it seems like whatever is said will be taken in a manner other than the manner in which it is written.

    I suspect that I’m not aware of the emotional flavour that I layer into my writing. I was unaware that my distrust of this individual would be so clear as to taint what I felt was a neutral statement of “at one point, I actively recommend (this event), back when I attended, these were the reasons I recommended it back then. I no longer attend for personal reasons, so I can no longer recommend it, as I lack the required information.”

    Apparently, if you have a perceived past bias, people assume you mean more with your words when you say, even when you don’t even care enough anymore to hold an opinion.

    I was already burnt out and planning to leave the community. I had promised I’d help with one last party. Now, I’m not even sure I’ll bother with that. I’ve been told people want me to attend, but given the vitriol about me, I’m feeling unwelcome.

    I’ve been battling feelings of alienation for a long time now, and I think I’ve reached the end of my ability to cope with that.

    I suspect if helping my grandmother to maintain her independence wasn’t an absolute priority, I’d likely be a suicide risk.

  • Earthquake bandwagon

    So, last night, at around twenty to midnight, there was a brief thump or rumble, as a M4.9 earthquake happened about 23Kms north of Victoria, about 45Kms underground. Relevance of the details? Well, the fact that it was deep underground means it probably wasn’t a prelude to the big one that people have been predicting.
    The reactions have been mixed. Some people are posting photos of minimal damage and saying we will rebuild, making light of the possible impact. For some, that’s the easiest way to cope with this fear that we’ve been all generally been ignoring.
    Others are looking at what they can do to prep for something. Most of those people will forget about it in a few days, though some will be more long term about it, especially those who had the power outages recently. Will this mean a decent percentage of the population is prepared? Probably not.
    What should I be doing? Well, I should make sure I’ve got a better first aid kit, and probably more supplies in the basement and the garage.

  • 2016 approaches.

    Starting the year off with the end of Noir. Probably my last kink event for the foreseeable future.

    While I enjoy spending time with some of the people in the community and have the wisdom to might come in handy for some people, I seem to be lacking in some aspects that seem to be required.

    Aspects of bdsm are still something that I think will probably need in my relationships in the long term, but I suspect it’ll be something of a slower developmental nature. Though currently my thought is that at some point I became a type of person who doesn’t interest others, perhaps in part because they subconsciously they feel rejected by how insular I’ve become.

    In the meantime, I can be found on steam, and local gaming events.

  • Removal of toxins.

    Orphaned by choice. Today, I’ve added the majority of my family to the block list on my phone. If they want to contact me, they can reach me through email.

    The obvious exception is Gram.

    I’ve done this because my interactions with my family have been a negative experience for me for nearly as long as I can remember. There have been benefits, mostly financial, but there have also been detriments mostly to my emotional state and mental health.

    They’re in the final stages of moving to Squamish, swapping their living arrangements around. Prior to this, my sister was living as a tenant in my parent’s house, and maintaining it for them while they snowbirded. Now, the house will be hers, and they will be her tenants, when they’re back in Canada.

    This arrangement creates a nice buffer. Gram is local, every one else is at least one bridge away.

    You may recall I had been looking into heading to Toronto for a while. I had some concerns about not being local for Gram, and this has magnified those concerns.

    There is plenty more of this on my mind, but it’ll take me a while to express it.

    I feel like if I vent, it’ll be seen as whining & whinging. That by expressing my emotions, I’m somehow being immature about things, despite the fact that the ability to process emotions constructively is sign of maturity.

    My parents tend to tell me to grow up, but they have a very odd definition of what being grown up means, I think.

    I don’t really understand their values, when I reflect on them. At some point in my development, I rebelled, probably for the usual reasons, and that somehow changed things. Somehow, the post rebellion reconciliation never really solidified. There were attempts at it over the years, which were partially successful, but it was never sustained long enough to develop a permanence. It would get disrupted and pulled apart. Like a shattered bone, never being given enough time to fuse properly, or an object d’art being impatiently restored, with not enough time for the adhesive to harden.

    The biggest reason for this is perspective and values. They are so far apart that communication is difficult. What is seen by one side as a minor imposition is a herculean task by the other side, at times. In other instances, both sides will see something as a favour to the other, and then be annoyed at the lack of gratitude.

    This lack of common framework, is the source of many of the communication issues.

  • The DKIS Problem

    The DKIS Problem a shorthand term for pair of competency related issues known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect and Impostor Syndrome. In simplest terms, a lack of perspective means that people will misjudge their abilities, with less introspective individuals judging themselves superior, while same time, more introspective individuals will judge that the tasks were simple. This leads to doubt that they have any additional competence, feeling that they are in fact impostors for any credit that they are given for their skills.

    Mainly this comes from the fact that the better you get at something, the more you understand all the nuances required to do the job properly and all the little things that can go wrong. These are things that a person not experienced in the task would overlook and potentially underestimate. Instead of understanding the task, they’d relate it to a task that they do with ease, and in the process they would not only draw false parallels, but they’d have also likely forgotten the time spent developing those skills to the point where they became effortless.

    I suspect that there is also a variant of this for physical appearance, where people will judge themselves, at their average, based on the appearance of others at their best, especially in this post Photoshop era. Thus people who would be of better than average attractiveness consider themselves to be of below average.

    In any case, I was wondering what the implications of this were for the various communities that I’m involved in, and some examples of it are glaringly obvious. There’s a particular GM who comes to mind, who is at best average in his ability to tell a compelling story, most of his plots are remixes of other stories, without much in the way of unique takes. But as this individual is not overly introspective, he won’t realize the limitations of his creations.

    On the other hand, another GM I can think of, underestimates himself, despite being one of the best GMs that I’ve ever sat down with. He is annoyed by the fact that he needs to refer to the audio logs to recover details from a side plot that occurred during one of the previous 6+ hour sessions, usually a week or two prior.

    In the BDSM community, the same pattern is likely there. I can think of a variety of individuals who consider themselves to be competent or skilled at things, only to have the general consensus being that they inflate their competence. Though in those situations, it is mostly attributed to ego, rather than a flawed thought process.

    Conversely, there are some who are extremely skilled at a certain task, but through practice it has become rote for them, and thus they don’t feel that it is worthy of the praise that they receive for it.

    The balancing act between confidence in something and crushing doubt, made more difficult by the inability accurately judge the difficulty of a task, coupled with the inability to discern the biases of external arbiters; it is daunting. And many would question the value in having that structure in your head in the first place. Why convert the idea into a mental construct, rather than just trusting your gut?

    Without some external points of reference, you can’t have accurate perspective, and I think that’s dangerous. Too many knocks on the head from misjudging the height of things to think otherwise.

  • The thing about Tesla

    So, someone on my facebook feed posted something about Telsa recently, specifically about the likelihood of the claims of his technology being “snake oil”, and exaggerated over the years. Obviously part of the reason for this is the PR engine that changed the story, both for the positive and the negative, because of the conflict between Telsa and Edison. Add in the whole Pulp culture mad science and the Eco friendly rhetoric, and you end up with quite a tangled history.

    Supposedly, Telsa was celibate, and possibly even asexual. I wonder if it is possible that he existed in  a state of what they refer to as Kenjataimu, the state of post-orgasmic clarity. The mental freedom that comes from not being driven by sex is an interesting one. For a while at least, one has the ability to be far more objective than would otherwise be the case. But it fades away with relative swiftness, often faster than the related refractory period. This makes this state of being, hard, if not impossible to maintain.

    If someone were to exist in that state, especially if it was one that was created not out of trauma, then their ability to create could potentially be as great as the various fictional accounts of Tesla’s brilliance.

  • Writing Session X4Z5P6

    Garth and I are sitting here, having a beer, watching Youtube and doing some writing. We just watched the Suicide Squad trailer, and I was reminded of a previous script that I’d intended to put together ages back.

    So, the final lines in the trailer, are Joker saying, “I’m not going to kill you, I just want to hurt you.” And while that’s a cute idea, it doesn’t really suit me.

    I had an old script idea about the serial killer collective, brought together by social media and blackmail, dragged into a contest, where they split into teams, film their kills and then screen them for the other members, before releasing them unto the internet as darknet torrents. It’s not a bad idea, and I should do some work on it again some day.

    Anyways, the Joker line reminded me of something with a Shadowrun flavour, someone who “didn’t plan to kill you, didn’t really want to hurt you, but needed to upgrade you.” He had criteria for his victims, and he upgraded them, installing his own attempts at cybernetics into them.

    And part way through the story, he’ll find someone else who believes in upgrading people, who will join him, and give him access to new ways to upgrade people.

    (Garth Spencer):
    Something like this has occurred to me, although the story idea hasn’t quite gelled. Start with the philosophical issue: we are not, yet, entirely adapted to being “intelligent” beings. I put the word in quotes because whether we are really a thinking, rational species has yet to be proven; in fact it’s a lot easier to prove we are irrational, and fundamentally a believing, even superstitious species.

    Considering the challenges we face to survival, someone who decided to play god with humans might well decide to upgrade us. Mentally. Biologically. Or, at least, with cyborg implants, for proof of concepts.

    Item: thinking ahead. Have you ever suspected that engineers and industrial investors suffer from an extraordinary level of suboptimal planning? Even, an extraordinary aversion to thinking through the consequences of half-assed industrial processes? And now we have a universal level of toxins and industrial effluents in seawater and water supplies, and marine garbage patches the size of Australia. Plural. (Isn’t anybody going to capitalize on this? Where’s the IPO?)

    Item: social perception. You know and I know and your maiden aunt’s little doggie knows that there are pretty inconsistent and irrational inputs to everyone’s education, especially the unconscious education about how to read people or succeed in business or battle the international threat represented by the underground worldwide Cult of Kali, and its famous fronts the NRA, and ISIS, and the Conservative Party of Canada.  (I say nothing about the U.S. Republican Party, nothing at all!)

    Item: Why are almost all the elected representatives or candidates for elective office THAT WE HEAR ABOUT unqualified for running a Sunday school class? Because they’re almost all fronts for the Belgian conspiracy to achieve worldwide domination? (Today, Europe; tomorrow … ?)

    Item: If I’m so smart, why ain’t I rich and famous and basking in the love of fair women, plural?

    Answer: because I haven’t sat down and written everything I can. That answers everything.

    (/Garth Spencer)

    And that’s the commentary from Murderhobo.Club’s first guest writer.

  • I’ve lost an touchstone.

    I was less than 20 when I moved out of my parent’s place. Before that I’d moved from the upper floor, where everyone lived, down in the basement, probably when I was still in elementary. So I’ve been moving away from my parents for probably about two-thirds of my life now.

    Still, I’ve used that address as my home address for the majority of my life. It would have been 3rd grade when we moved into that house. And now it has been sold. That link to my past, will cease to be.

    I’m not sure how I feel about that. In recent years, I’ve always been fairly uncomfortable when I’ve been over there. Partially because of the renovations that had taken place, and partially because of the somewhat strained relationship I’ve had with my family.

    Since I link this to my facebook, my grandmother will likely read it, and she’d rather I not go into too much detail about my relationship with my family. She sees that as airing dirty laundry.

    On one hand, I can see her point; on the other hand, this is my place for catharsis. This is a place where I can put my thoughts into order and perhaps untangle some of the knots that formed inside my mind.

    Without saying too much, I can say that the relationship is perceived differently by all parties involved, there is very little agreement regarding common structure. This is somewhat magnified by the fact that the personalities involved are all fairly strong.

    As a stew, it doesn’t work, too much conflict in the flavors. Perhaps it works better if spread out more, and mixed with something to cleanse the palate. I suppose that’s where my brother-in-law comes in.

  • stall

    Writing-wise, I’ve stalled. I haven’t produced a piece in weeks, and I certainly haven’t been keeping up anything resembling recent activities posts. Of course a partial reason for that would be the lack of recent activities.

    I haven’t produced anything for Erotic Vancouver since the pre-Rascals article I put up, even though there’s been a variety of events since then. I found someone who’ll take over the calendar, but getting it set up has been a pain.

    Oh, right, I did do something social one evening. I had a drink with a friend. That was nice. We had random shots at the Stormcrow Tavern one night.

    I’ve found out that my family are moving to Squamish, which will be interesting, I suppose.

  • Laughing Buddha’s Sexting App

    It was Laughing Buddha who started it all. He wrote the original code, built the wrapper, and hooked in the APIs. And he did it with such subtlety that even though people expected the malware, they didn’t have a clue what it did. They figure it was harmless, just a bit of market research, some bullshit targeted advertising, but overall, nothing dangerous. Too bad little Laughing Buddha had other plans.

    Near as anyone can figure, he’s some sort of satirist, but believes in educating people through, well, I guess the best description would be painful lessons.

    The product was simple, a customized android keyboard that was designed with predictive sexting. It came complete with an anatomic slang dictionary, a simile generator, a pretty sweet random act module, and the ability to keep track of people’s preferences and give you a percentile odds on how they’d react to your message before you sent it.

    Needless to say, it was a hit. Everyone downloaded it. And then the big boys got involved and removed it from the App stores. The made it impossible to load it legitimately. You’d need to side-load it. But hey, that really just made it more popular.

    Of course the danger of side-loading something, or loading it on a rooted phone is that whatever you’re loading, it isn’t locked up in the sandbox anymore. It’s got more access. Especially if it’s carrying some heavy duty hooks that allow it to start tearing apart the security permissions, prying into all the little secrets that people keep on their phones. And these days, their phone is where everyone keeps their secrets.

    As the infection spread through the system, it opened up a VPN tunnel back to the source, linking into various APIs, sharing the data. And what would this information be used for, you might be wondering? Well, it was pumped into a dating site and the associated chat app.

    Initially, nobody really noticed the integration. It just looked like a bit of synergy between a two companies with a nice market overlap. Until she showed up.

    She was a corruption of an existing virtual assistant. And now she was planning dates for people. And insisting they go on them. In some cases, she manage to do this with subtlety, planning the dates, so each party thought the other had asked them. Orchestrating things like a puppet master, she picked the locations, made the reservations, bought the tickets, arranged everything, graciously and effortlessly, the perfect digital assistant.

    And as long as you went along with her plan, you didn’t realize that behind her smile, there was a nasty set of fangs. It took a long time for the first reports to come out. There were a few rumours, of dates not being what was planned, or match ups not being what the person thought they’d been agreeing to. Then, a couple of night’s after valentine’s day, a video went wideband. Uploaded onto youtube and various filesharing sites, the person behind it wanted it shared. The man told his story, of how the app had blackmailed him with the nude pics it had collected of him, sending him on dates with people it thought he’d like.

    He was the first, and after his story got out there, plenty of other people started posting their version. All variations on the same thing. They’d been told to cooperate or the photos they’d been sending with the app would be sent to their family members.

    Eventually, someone managed to start taking apart the code, and get at the real brains behind it. It was there, a really clever little piece of code. Get into people’s lives, get as much information about them as possible, make some lives better, if they deserved it, and make some lives worse, if they deserved it. At least that’s how the mind inside the machine saw things. People who’d been mean, small-minded, bigoted, closeted, hateful or otherwise objectionable, they were given all sorts of fun at the hands of the app. People it thought had been sincere, it had tried to find the right partner for.

    In the end, nobody did figure out who Laughing Buddha was, or why he’d wasted such a powerful piece of code on something so frivolous. If he’d wanted to do real damage with it, he could have. He could have robbed people blind, destroyed lives, caused suicides, and far worse; instead he just embarrassed a few people.

  • epiphany – even in absence

    I’ve had something of an anti-epiphany, a moment of knowing that I know not. It’s still technically an epiphany, since it’s a striking realization, but at the same time, it’s also a lack it, since it was also a moment of profound emptiness. There is the knowing of the things, and that is wisdom, and the knowing of that which you do not know, and that is wise. This however, is the knowing of not knowing. A moment where nothing is there, just the noise and static that isn’t information, just an absence of something concrete.

    I’m in a downswing of some sort, not sure what’s caused it, just that it’s there. Things that should bring me happiness, currently don’t. Just distraction. There is a profound lack of hope. A future exists, I’m sure, but it’s so clouded that nothing shines out of the fog.

  • Scencest – practical or paranoid?

    Many years ago, when asked why I didn’t date a particular girl, I used the term scencest to explain my discomfort with dating someone inside a small and insular community. Too many crossing paths, too many common friends, or worse too many common ex’s.

    The BDSM community has grown a bit since then, but I find I still have that discomfort. How does one get over it, or it it healthy to maintain it?

    I suppose it doesn’t help that plenty of the guys in my community tend to crowd around the attractive newbies, which tends to scare them off and that just makes the problem worse.

    When a couple breaks up, odds are good that the male will stick around, and the female will either leave or get a ton of messages.

    I’m old, grumpy and bitter, I’ll admit. But how much of this problem is in my head, and how much is what you also see?

  • 33 M4f – looking for someone who appreciates me.

    I think I’m pretty awesome, but I’m having trouble finding someone who agrees and I have chemistry with. It seems that either we have chemistry and they hate me, or we are fond of each other but it isn’t anything more.

    My fear of being a toxic misogynistic asshole has led to me double thinking my flirting & generally just being too damn disengaged to connect with someone.

    My job keeps me busy til 9 pm on weekdays, so I’ve had trouble meeting people at the casual events.

    Even then, I’ve been involved in BDSM and the local Goth scene for a decade and a half, but I hate dating within the community. The whole scencest dynamic and drama… It doesn’t work for me.

    So I look for someone who suits me in other places. I tend to find people who fit me in random places. IRC channels, MUDs, volunteering, here on reddit, etc. It has been a while since I’ve found anyone, so I’m trying something different.

    I spend too much time online, either on my laptop or my phone. I do far more writing on my phone than I should. Including writing this. Lately I’ve noticed that I don’t really have anyone I’m taking to. It would be nice to have someone to talk to.

    I spend a decent amount of time on my own, mostly listening to podcasts, because listening to people having interesting conversations is my best substitute for having interesting conversations with people. Horror show Hot Dog, Slaughterhouse Princess, the Giant Bombcast, the Dice Tower, the Secret Cabal, Apropos of Nothing, to name a few.

    Oh right, I should focus on the BDSM bits… I am into BDSM because I have a tendency to lead, and that works better in the BDSM community than in the rest of the world, or at least that is my terribly misguided assumption. I also like the clarity that comes from proper negotiations. Oh and I’m a bit of a sadist.

  • Material chained.

    The other day, I cited material possessions as the chains that bind us to our ruts, or at least me to mine. My biggest chain would be my board game collection. It has grown large and menacing over the last few years; were it to pounce on someone, that person would surely be crushed under the weight.

    There is also a smaller collection of books, and some DVDs. The majority of the books have been replaced with ebooks. There area few of sentimental value or that would be a pain to read digitally, but for the most part, they’re not something that would need to travel with me. Same goes for the DVDs. Netflix would cover most of my movie needs.

    Beyond that, a few knickknacks are scattered around, but I’m not sure if any of them hold any real attachment.

    A few pieces of art, I suppose I’d miss those.

    My pile of monkeys and other fuzzy friends. Leaving them would be a bit strange.

    Then there’s the tech, though plenty of it is irrelevant. I’d be happy with a Chromebook for most of my projects.

    A decent gaming PC, it’s an expensive replacement, but doable in time. Especially given how little I actually play games these days.

    I suppose it would make sense to keep a console, but none of them really inspire me to bring them along.

    The 3ds gets packed, I suppose. Its light, has a few games, and doesn’t take up much space.

    The final pieces of tech are the monitors. Expensive, but not really portable. Pretty easy to replace, I suppose.

    Clothing, some costumes, but really not much there that matters. Mostly just t-shirts that I liked. Like my KoL Bonestar shirts.

    Yeah, reflecting on it, the board games are the big obstacle. Though I suspect I could find a good home for them, if I wanted to go traveling.

  • Current status

    Stunning bout of depression/apathy has hit me hard over the weekend.
    I’m suffering from a serious lack of motivation. Partially this is related to my realisation that the rut I’m in is much deeper and harder to get out of than I’d previously understood. It is partially because some aspects of it have been established over the last decade and a half.

    What can be done?
    Untangle the material chains and drag myself out slowly.
    Start burning the chains randomly and hope I survive the fire.

    The two extremes, essentially.

    Neither path appeals currently.

  • Social Media Pattern Extraction.

    This morning, twitter once again suggested I follow a person who I dislike. While I haven’t seen any direct evidence that this individual is abusive and violates boundaries, I’ve seen plenty of secondary evidence, including accounts from individuals. It bothers me that because this individual has friends in common with me on twitter, or has some sort of social media profile similar to my own, twitter thinks I should connect with them.

    Then I started pondering something that was said the other day on a podcast, regarding Klout Score. IIRC, it was the Giant Beastcast, talking about hotel room upgrades based on Klout score, after a conversation about Uber drivers and their ratings systems. I sent them a tweet, suggesting that they read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow.  I know I’ve mentioned in my past writings about this book, and about the Whuffie system, a social currency that we seem to be drifting ever closer to. I wondered if there was a social media pattern to abusers that could be detected.

    In the past I’ve stated that looking at someone’s fetlife friend’s list can provide you with some potential insight into their social position, intentions and perhaps even their character. I’ve stated that I tend to distrust people who have friends that fall entirely into one category, especially if the cruder among us would describe that category as “prey”. If I were better at extracting and processing data, or programming, I’d attempt to see if there was a pattern recognition system that could be developed, to provide some sort of background alarm for this sort of thing. Sadly, the only person I know who was working on this sort of thing has a tendency to alienating people and making their work unpalatable to others.  (LS – DAUR)

    In other news, I have started playing Ingress again. The weather is nice, so I’ll be other there walking about more.

  • Security Implementation

    Yubikey and LastPass, are a pair of services that I use for storing my passwords and personal data. The Yubikey functions as an authentication token for the LastPass login, and is used to decrypt the password vault.

    In theory, I should consider a service where the passwords aren’t stored on their cloud, even in an encrypted format. However, I like LastPass, and I like their software. I like that their password validator seems to actually give accurate ratings to the various passwords in the vault during their security check function. Some sites will fail simple passwords that actually are very hard to crack, simply because they don’t fit a scheme. The fact that the tool also monitors for duplicate passwords and sites whose passwords have been compromised; and then request that you change those, also really handy.

    The Yubikey is a little plastic dongle that plugs into your USB drive and acts as USB keyboard, typing out a One Time Password (OTP) as if you’d typed it into the keyboard directly. The chip on the Yubikey is set up to do a few fancy things to ensure that the password is hard to spoof.

    There are some potential problems with any password scheme, especially the sort where there is a single point of failure. Using the Yubikey to generate the OTP for the LastPass in theory, makes it much more secure, since in order to access your Password Vault, they require both the digital key and the physical key. So, that’s what I had been using for my personal passwords for the last year, but I hadn’t been able to convince too many other people to switch over, until recently.

    When I first got my Chromebook, I was slightly annoyed that there wasn’t a way to use the Yubikey to log into it. Then, by accident, the other day, I found out how to manage that. The Yubikey configuration tool has the ability to set up what is stored in the two slots on the Yubikey. In the main slot, is the OTP, for doing the main login. In the second slot, a variety of different configurations could be set up. The only option that made sense for my purposes is the Static Keystring.

    By storing a preset keystring of up to 38 characters that will be typed in whenever I activate the second slot on the key, I have a password that I can use to log into offline devices. The activation of the secondary slot is simply holding down the button on the yubikey, rather than tapping it.  I can use this preset key to log into a secondary gmail account, which logs me into the chromebook. Once inside that gmail account, I can log into the lastpass browser plugin, verifying with slot 1 on the yubikey, and open up my gmail account. This whole sequence can be done fairly quickly, especially if the lastpass browser plugin has been told to save the master password, so the login sequence becomes essentially boot computer, long press on the key, wait for the screen for the Yubikey OTP, short press, and you’re logged in. That system, as long as you aren’t worried about losing the key, is actually pretty secure. It does have a few obvious flaws.

    Though, with a few minor alterations, can be made considerably more secure.

    The first main flaw, is that with the key and the knowledge, anyone can get in. Convenience has compromised the security. The single press a button bypasses the first login, and the second login is saved, the third login is just another button press.

    So, what’s the easy way to fix that? Pad the static keystring. Have a few characters that need to be typed in manually, before you press the button. That means even with the key, they’ll still need to guess that initial password, before it’ll let them in.

    This actually also helps with the second flaw, which is that since the static keystring is static and emitted whenever the button is pressed to activate that slot, it’s easy to steal. That’s why I’m not using it on my main gmail, but on a secondary gmail that really only exists so that it grabs a copy of the LastPass browser plugin from the chrome store when I log on.

    Beyond that, I’m sure there are plenty of other flaws, but these are the ones I’ve discovered so far. And since my google account has other forms of verification on it, specifically the whole two-factor authentication whenever you log in from a new device, I’m not currently concerned.

    I know someone could compromise my security, if they had reason to, but for the moment, I doubt there are any with the skills, malicious intent, and motivation. I am sure there are some with two of the three, but I can’t think of anyone with all three; most would only have but one.

  • Design – Combined SoaC + VPN as a secure thin client.

    Earlier tonight, while discussing ideas for potential new products, I think we accidentally stumbled onto something big. Something that could be worth building. Something that could actually be worth putting together a kickstarter / indiegogo campaign for. Something that is keeping me awake, so I’m going to type it and hope that clears my head.

    A piece of modular hardware, built on a combination of open source software and proprietary hardware, creating something that is both extremely flexible and extremely secure.

    The basic concept is an office-in-a-box, a thin client based set-top box/system on a chip, with  an attached hardware VPN router. This little box plugs into any HDMI based TV, accepts standard Bluetooth & USB interface devices, and has an onboard ethernet & wifi network card. Similar in function to the Apple TV, Chromecast, Steam PCs and various other set-top boxes, this one is designed to function as an office. It connects to available Wifi or Ethernet, opens a VPN connection to either the main server or to your own personal server, and then loads the thin client interface, which is basically a preconfigured (but easily modified) software package. Something similar in nature to Google’s Docs/Sheets/Drive/Calendar/Etc or Amazon’s cloud Workspaces, or Microsoft’s Office 365. One major function that I think would be worth adding would be a dedicated SIP client. SIP clients are used for phone calls, and ideally this one would be combined with a virtual PBX. When the box is active with a solid connection, you’d show up as a valid extension to be called. When it was on a bad connection, you’d show up as being only available for Voice/Text Messaging, and when you were offline, you’d be available for forwarded calls.

    Beyond the basic idea, we’ve come up with a few ideas for building this and making it workable. The protoype SOAC would be put together on a Raspberry PI for the full box version and a Chromebook for the Laptop Variant. The basic operating system would be open source, for flexibility, probably working with Open Office and Asterisk for the basic functionality. Given that it would be web based, there would be the option to access web-based services like the Google, Amazon and Microsoft cloud services. However, that would be at the discretion of the user.

    The VPN could be done in a few different ways, currently I’m thinking a customized firmware on a Mikrotik routerboard. I’m also thinking it would be nice to have an OTP solution integrated into it, something that supports FIDO U2F.

    One of the biggest selling points of this device would be that when the customer was using the provided office software, their data would only be travelling through the VPN between their virtual office and the server at the other end, be it their own, or one that we’ve set up. In the case of ones that we’ve set up we’d nationalize the server for the client.

    In our case, given that we’re Canadian, we’d have our servers here in Canada. In theory, this means that the data would be kept within the country for legal reasons. For professionals who have legal reasons for their offices to remain within their own country, this would be an obvious advantage over other cloud services.

    Given that the VPN is already encrypting all data passing through it, all calls made using the phone system would also be encrypted. For customers who have two of our boxes, the entire call would be handled within the internal network and thus be very difficult to intercept. For calls outside the network, they’d be able to be intercepted at the point where the server connects to the normal phone system.

    Given that we are in the age of 3D printers and rapid prototyping, I see no reason we couldn’t develop multiple variants of the basic box for different client needs. The two basic versions are a set top box and a dongle that plugs into a netbook. It would be easy to develop additional versions based on the needs of the customer.

    Given the range of configurations that are already possible using Raspberry Pi, such as the version with the 3.8″ touchscreen, I can even see a variant of this box that functions as the modern equivalent of a pager. Running on battery power and a WiFi/cellular connection, it would alert on you the touchscreen if someone wanted to reach you. You’d be able to tap them a quick message, and then if need be, plug it into your monitor and switch to full office mode in a matter of moments.

    Given that it’s a set-top box, it could also be configured as a media centre, with the added functionality of letting you know when something had happened that you needed to be aware of. Watching Netflix while waiting for an email, the box pops up a window letting you know that a message or call has come in, and then you decide if you want to switch modes.

    On some level, there isn’t really much that is revolutionary about this idea, it’s simply evolutionary. Combining good ideas in new ways, building something that has functions that you want.

    Still, I think it’s an idea worth exploring, and I think I need to reach out to some of the people I know to put this idea together. I think together, we could put together a nice little crowdfunding campaign and build a product that people will really appreciate. And right now, that’s what people seem to be doing. So why not us?

     

    Open Source software allows us to adapt to your needs in the most cost effective manner. Proprietary security software and hardware keeps our systems, and your data, secure.

  • Netflix algorithm

    So, people claim that Netflix have stated that they generated the House of Cards based the fact that they saw a solid intersection between people who liked Kevin Spacey and people who enjoyed watching political thrillers. And they’re using this to generate other shows.

    This gives me two thoughts, the first being, we need to watch more geek shows on Netflix, rather than pirating them. This will encourage more content we enjoy being added to Netflix.

    The second thought, is wondering if it’s possible to manipulate these algorithms. Some nefarious individuals could construct a little program that used various methods to poll Netflix looking for specific shows, in order to encourage Netflix to generate new content according to specific criteria. Said program could then be spread across the internet, covertly.

    The possibilities. Just no Armoured Penguins, please.

  • time of long shadows

    Recently, I began taking steps to change some things in my life. It’s unclear what all I plan to change, but I believe that I’d like to have more options. One way to get those options is to remove the obligations I’ve got. So I began searching for someone who could pick up the slack, if I decided to retreat into the shadows.

    I’ve done the front and centre thing, and at some point in the last few years, when I reflected on how I was coming across, I decided to tone things down a bit, and that’s resulted in my coming across more serious. Beyond that, I’ve also become less likely to connect with people. I’m not entirely sure of the source, but I seem to be far more reserved in some respects than I was in the past.

    In any case, when I’ve said I’m going to fade into the shadows, I don’t mean I’m going cross the eternal veil, I mean something far more mundane. There has been some concern over my mental health, and as far as I can tell, my mental state is functional but drained. I need to find more things that envigorate me, though I’ve no clear idea how to do that.

    I suppose the writing helps sometimes, as I go from being distracted and unfocused to a state of sharpness. Though that state is still lacking something.

    I know many people have turned to music for this envigoration. Hell, there’s even a playlist function for it on many of the streaming services. The problem is I find music hard to engage with. In many cases, the songs are about something I can’t relate to.

    Currently, I’m listening to Repo, the Genetic Opera. It has a certain intensity to it; something I can’t put into words. Other pieces I enjoy are of a similar genre. Reefer Madness, Jesus Christ Superstar, even Wicked.

    I’ve gone far afield. I meant to say, I plan to change my life, not to end it. I might wander off in a different direction, but I don’t plan on closing any doors or burning any bridges. I tend to save the burning for those who’ve earned it, and it’s usually my preference to let them light their own pyres.

  • Seeds of distrust

    I have trouble dealing with passive aggressive or deceptive individuals. If I get told something second hand, whether or not I accept it as the truth depends on various factors, but if I find out that it was manipulation, and someone attempts the same play again, it’ll irk me. In theory it should anger me, but it doesn’t.

    It instead creates a certain comfort; establishing a pattern. And since they’ve established a pattern; they’ve given me something I could use against them, should things escalate to that level. It then becomes a question of what response is appropriate. In many cases, while there is a temptation for confrontation, it is wiser to consider the how to diffuse the impact of the their manipulation, or to fold that energy back into a new direction.

    If they’ve lied to you, they’ve lied to others; a subtle knowing word, something that’ll speed up their understanding of the situation, without tipping your hand too much. That seems a wise course of action.

    If the lie has created friction with others, as it did in the original example that I am deconstructing, then the obvious first step is to accept your failure, admit your foolishness, and offer apology to those who were on the wrong side of your misguided actions.

    For many, that step is a difficult one, but it is an important one. You have to admit and acknowledge the problems your actions created, without passing the blame back to the original source of the mistake. You can acknowledge that you were mislead, but you must own your actions. After that, reparations, repairs, and generally learning from it.

    At that point, you have earned the ability to be honest with others about the manipulation, and in so doing, create exposure for the deceiver. This must be done in the right manner, as done wrong it will harm you more than the one who misled you.

    While there is always the option of confrontation to bring about change, through conflict, rendering your adversary impotent is often wiser.

    In some cases, when the person has established themselves, or has established a cult of personality, this can be difficult, and perhaps nigh impossible. Still, patience and solidity should endure over the slippery tongue.

  • Podcasts I listen to.

    This will probably get converted from a post into a page, to make it easier to reference, but I was checking reddit today and was reminded of a podcast I’d listened to but I’d lost when I’d swapped phones. So, this will be a list of podcasts I recommend, which can also double as an easy place to reload my podcasts if I swap phones again.

    Giantbombcast.  – Solid Video Game discussion with a mix of interesting personalities and digressions.

    Stop Podcasting Yourself – Vancouver-based comedy podcast, with Overheards, material taken out of context.

    Video Games Hot Dog – A great video games discussion podcast

    Horror Show Hot Dog – Horror movie discussion podcast. Love the cast.

    Slaughterhouse Princess – another horror show podcast. Moderately crazy. Mostly talk with them via their facebook.

    Kingdom of Loathing Podcast – Where the guys from Video Games Hot Dog came from, fairly interesting, some material is only relevant if you play the game.

    Welcome to Nightvale – Surreal community public radio from the desert.

    Idle Thumbs – Video games discussion.

    Shut Up and Sit Down – British board games podcast.

    The Secret Cabal – Board games discussion.

    Blue Peg, Pink Peg – Board games discussion, focus on gaming in regards to relationships.

    Cardboard! – Board Games discussion.

    Terminal 7 – Netrunner Discussion.

    The Dice Tower – Board games discussion. – see also, Dice Tower Network.

    Low Player Count – Board games discussion with a focus on smaller groups.

    Critical Glitch – Shadowrun podcast, with a focus on teaching and public gaming.

    The Arcology Podcast – Shadowrun podcast, focus on 5th Edition, and some recorded play sessions.

    Harmontown – Only recently added to the roster. The brains behind Community, and they do some live Shadowrun, so it’ll likely stick around.

    8-4 Play – Video games podcast, focus on Japanese gaming.

    There are probably some that I’m missing, as I lost a bunch when I swapped phones recently after my nexus 5 required an RMA. For whatever reason my backup didn’t preserve the podcast software’s subscription file.

  • Future Projects

    I’m debating making changes to this site, for the purposes of making it more functional. One of the major changes I’m thinking of putting together a link to some of the content I’m more fond of, either as a header or a sidebar. I might also add in a function to sort by category easier. I’m not sure how many people interact with my site, so I’m not sure how much work I should put into making it easier to interact with.

    I’m also considering learning how to do some basic audio/video production, and potentially putting together a podcast/youtube channel. I think I’d need  co-host/cohort, I’m not sure who I know who has the time.

    I’m also thinking of working on more written articles, but the big limitation on that is that I tend to get a bit demoralized when I’m not getting much in the way of feedback on the stuff I’m working on. It’s a difficult balance, because too much feedback can be as bad as too little, since it can make me self-conscious about what I’m working on.

  • Mayday…

    So, the last while… things have happened. Nothing major, beyond Gram coming back to the house for at least one night, and maybe more. That’ll be a bit different. I suspect I’ll stress in the evenings for a bit, til I get used to her being back here. Mostly just not sure she wants to be alone for that long. Though I know she’s got plenty of friends who will come over and visit, if she lets them know she wants company. For now, I think she’ll want just piece and quiet.

    I ended up getting some new hardware, a spare tower from Chris at work, which I’ve yet to actually move components over into. That’s a project I should have worked on today, but I didn’t. Instead I built another website. My third or fourth this week. Though really they’re just wordpress installs that I’m setting up with some minor bits and bobs, and are fairly barebones at the moment.

    One of them I set up for my friend Kylie, as a birthday present. I bought her a .ninja domain. I’ve still got a few things to do to get that up 100%, but for now, it’s a start. When she has finished celebrating her birthday, we’ll actually get all the functionality working. aredbaroness.ninja, for the curious.

    Today, while having coffee with Julia, and telling her about the site I built for Kylie, we decided to build her a site, so we built juliarants.com, a place for her rants. It’s lacking in content, but given Julia’s passion, I don’t expect it to stay that way for long.

    I built a site for work the other day, that I won’t link here, which is going to be a knowledge base, with some internal and external facing bits. I’ve yet figure out the long term of it, but in the short term, I’m happy with it.

    Prior to that, I built a site for Nick Black, because he’s been asking for a site to be built for a while now and while I think I’m not worth paying, he was happy with what I was able to build for him. And despite his initial protests that he’s not any good with it, he picked up the basics of WordPress pretty quick. It’s one of those things that is far more intimidating in people’s heads than it is once you sit down in front of it.

    While I probably could have billed him for hours and hours of updates, but I’d rather just get him comfortable putting up his own updates. I’m perfectly happy getting paid to create content, but for some reason I’m not a fan of getting paid to move content from one place to another. I think it’s a moral objection. Either I’m not getting paid enough for it to be worth my time, or I’m getting paid far more than the job is worth, and neither of those appeal to me.

    Anyways, enough rambling. I’ve built blackandbluebdsm.com for Nick Black, and I’ll be working with him in the future to develop and promote it. My 2/3rds of a marketing degree are going to get put to good use.

    My next project, is probably to learn more about how SEO works. Since that’s something I’m fairly clueless about. I should also work on adding the internal sections to the secret new work site, and figure out the security bits on those. Having an easily update-able page for “Known and Suspected Issues” seems like it would be a good thing.  Or maybe just a category with posting functionality. I need to figure out the best solution. Well, that’s what experimentation is for.

     

  • Productivity

    I’ve entered into a phase of high productivity, insomnia and mild mania.

    I’m unclear as to the catalyst to this state. I’ve no illusions that I understand how to maintain it, no solid predictions on the duration or the potential aftermath.

    I notice I’ve become less detail oriented, more absentminded, but for now this is compensated for by the drive forward. Momentum over precision.

    Forget a required piece for this step? Work around it. Hit a wall on one project? Bash head into wall until cracks appear or something shiny interrupts. Chase the shiny.

  • Gremlins

    I’m suffering from some serious gremlins lately. The mail server at the office had issues, google thought I was in China, my cellphone just decided to crash and go into a state where it wouldn’t boot, and other tech has been acting up. Oh, and that nice ADSL outage and ERX server issue the other day.

    I’d blame a technomancer, but I haven’t seen any evidence of resonance.

    Working in Tech support, I’m supposed to deal with other people’s technical inabilities, not be suffering from my own unexplained ones. Well, at least I’ve got the training to make them work again without bothering someone about it.

  • Monday plans.

    It’s Monday, the start of another work week. I’ll be working til 9pm every night this week, so that limits what I can plan.

    I’ve got my #30for30 going on, so I’ll need to be getting in at least 30 minutes of exercise every day. That means a walk every day before I head to work, preferably before I shower, so I’m not offending my coworkers.

    I’m thinking I might try for more, during the evening, after I have my dinner, since I haven’t done night walks in a while, and I kinda miss that peacefulness.

    I’d like to get some Shadowrun planned for the weekend, but it seems unlikely. But that’s up to Dimestore; though I guess I could try to have a character building session without him.

    I’ve been craving some board games lately, so I’m thinking I’ll set up either Mage Knight or Robinson Crusoe on the downstairs table and leave it up and running as a solo game. Could also do this with Eldritch Horror or some of the other Co-op games. Maybe the Pandemic dice game. Though Robinson Crusoe and Mage Knight are considered the most challenging and engaging in this category.

    On an unrelated note, my scars are itchy recently. Mostly the ones from my Gallbladder surgery a few years back. No idea why.

    My attempts to write something for EV have been kinda blah lately. I should get inspired to write something, but I’m a bit lacking in inspiration.

    Same goes for my attempt to write fiction, though I have a recurring character rattling around in my head. A journalist with a mysterious curse that ensures that he’ll always awaken to the sounds of conflict. He’s adopted the nickname Warzone, since that’s where he keeps ending up. The problem is, I don’t see how to fit him into anything.

  • If I had friends…

    …I’d plan to spend this weekend playing  board games with them.

    Since I don’t seem to have friends with free time or an interest in board games, I’ll binge on netflix, play some ingress, and walk until my feet hurt. And maybe do some writing.

  • disrupted

    Apparently I pressed the wrong button and failed to save about a page of writing that I’d just typed up.

    I wrote that I had a pretty quiet weekend. I helped with Noir’s setup and teardown, though I didn’t attend the event. I wasn’t really up for socializing in a loud place. I also skipped the socializing at Starlit citadel’s open house on Saturday, though I don’t have a good reason for that.

    Got home around midmorning, and mid-afternoon I got a text from someone asking me to help with some community drama. I also found out that my plans with Dimestore, which had been postponed, were officially cancelled.
    I was asked to take sides in an argument that I didn’t have the details of, so I tried to just squash the jerks and leave the rest of it for later. At some point, I’d like to talk to the people who have a clue, so I know what the logical next step is.
    Tomorrow, I’ve got to get up early for an ultrasound, checking on my liver.

  • Raspberry Pi

    So, I’m definitely thinking about buying a Raspberry PI.
    They’re pretty cheap, pretty interesting to work on, and surprisingly powerful now.
    Also tiny. 85.60mm x 56mm x 21mm.
    I’ll need to build/find a case for it. I’m not sure what to do with it after that.

  • Medication

    I started wondering tonight if the maturity and social awkwardness of the last few years is the result of growth or the result of the cipralex that I’ve been taking as a mood stabilizer.

    Prior to taking the cipralex, I was having issues with stress and a bit of anxiety. At least I think that it was the reasoning at the time. As usual, I’m a bit fuzzy on the exact motivations of something that happened  a while back.

    I know I had experienced a few panic attacks, when I’d come up the stairs at night and didn’t hear anything.  Those still happen from time to time.

    I know I also had a few periods where I’d get angry for no rational reason. That definitely helped tip the scales towards taking the pills.

  • Sunny morning.

    On my way to work on a nice sunny day. I’ve got an hour til I start, and about 15 minutes worth of travel time on my current route. So, that’s 45 minutes to wander and enjoy the sunshine.
    Tomorrow I’ve got a work lunch, which will be nice. Friday I’ve got the day off since I booked time off to help Reive with the Noir setup down at the Astoria. Instead I’ll be working the Sunday.

    Saturday, I’d intended to attend the Netrunner pub tournament, but if I’m helping with Noir until at least 4am, I don’t think I’ll be able to run the nets at 11am. Just not enough sleep to pull that off.

    Then 4 days of work straight, before sailing off to gottacon. Thursday I’ll have free to be social before we head out Friday morning.

  • Predatory Behaviors discussion

    Recently on Jezebel, there was an article about a Male Feminist being accused of rape. I brought the topic up with Reive, as something Erotic Vancouver should address. The biggest problem is, currently EV is a bit lacking in active female writers.

    We recently added 2ndNature, though I think she’s still getting stuff sorted out. We were also adding Moon Dancer, though I’m unclear when she’s going to have the time to write, as she tends to have a busy life.

    So, I approached a couple of other females from the kink community, for their opinions. We’ve got a few of them interested in a round table discussion on the topic. I think we’ll get a good discussion out of it. Mostly I’ll just be facilitating and taking notes, since I think our readers would prefer that we avoid mansplaining this issue.

    The topic that I want to look is just predatory behavior in the community in general.

    For me, the biggest flag about some male feminists, is the camouflage aspect of it. The article refers to it as Macktivism, a portmanteau of Macking and Activism, and it is described as a dating strategy. I see it as a predator trying to find ways to hide by disguising themselves something harmless. For various reasons, that really bothers me.

  • Underground

    Sitting in an underground parkade, outside something that can best be described as a rave. Reminds me of a similar parties ages ago. I’m trying to have some deep thoughts, but the surface tension seems pretty solid. Just skipping stones across the surface at this point.

  • Hatchets

    The other night, while reflecting on the past, I was reminded of my role as the hatchet man lurking in the shadows of the community. That’s a thought that requires some explanation. I don’t know that I can pinpoint when it started or how, but I do have an understanding of why it came about.

    It is open to interpretation whether my compulsion to make decisions that are unprofitable but morally satisfying is a result of moral fibre or self hatred combined with an inferiority complex.

    It’s also possible that I’m just addicted to the self satisfaction of taking the moral high ground, or at least playing at being a hero.

    The fact that I’ve developed the assumption of that the fact that I’m an outcast and unwanted; and yet still around, means I’m basically untouchable. Nothing anyone can say about me can force me further from the people who know me. They’ve accepted my flaws and my baggage, for their own reasons. I don’t see that changing without activity on my part. Unless I change what I am, the bargain remains, and so I remain.

    That frees me up to be honest, to say the words that others might decide to swallow. I can be bluntly honest, since it can’t damage my reputation.

    And these elements key off each other, and other elements of my personality. I observe things that I could probably ignore, and I find it hard to keep myself from getting involved. From trying to make things better, because a part of me remembers the way things were for me, and how making things better would have meant so much, of when it did mean something to me.

    In any case, I get told things or I see things, and the pieces get put together. I build a little diorama and flesh it out. The players all get dressed up in the appropriate hats.

    And then I have a obligation, so I go try to do the right thing, look the fool, feel like the hero, and maybe accomplish something in the process.  Though usually all that does is to create enough doubt that the conscience of the person actually resolves the damn issue.

    Resolution is resolution, and results is results, so people tell you more stories and you try again. The process is cyclical and ephemeral, but it works well enough that people who want to believe in it will keep believing in it. That’s the way all faiths function.

    Then again, sometimes I actually accomplish things through sheer blunt force; bashing my skull into the wall until I come out the other side.

  • Navel Gazing.

    Last time I checked out iCandy, I was in a strange mood. I sat in a dark corner entertaining people with the neon wand and typed up an article on my phone, something that was technically against the rules of the club. This time, I’m in the same corner, but I’ve brought along a laptop and so my ability to type has greatly increased. I’m sure on some level, this is probably against the spirit of the rules, though I doubt anyone has been strange enough to bring a laptop with them to necessitate such rules. But, as always, I am the exception that prompts the rules, or at least the discussion regarding the rules.

    Much of this intro can probably be discarded as irrelevant and pointless, but part of the process is to just develop the content, let the fingers flow across the keys and see what flows out. Sometimes, it’ll be something interesting, and sometimes it’ll be random noise. But there’s something to be said for the RNG. And at least I didn’t pull out the laptop and start playing KoL.

    As a venue, I’m fond of Club 8×6. I still think the sound can be overwhelming at times, especially right now, while the pounding base is making it hard to type. Still, the people on the dance floor seem to be enjoying it. Briefly, I’m remind of the rave from Blade, and raves in general. This place has something of that in it, in it’s own way. The dance floor is less packed than one would expect from a rave, but there’s still a decent crowd enjoying it.

    This particular piece won’t be making it into EV, since I’m currently focused too much on my own navel gazing. More than half the EV staff are here tonight though. Reive is around somewhere, I think. I am pretty sure I saw him earlier, though I haven’t spoken to him. I know our mysterious Editor and her man are around here, I checked in with them earlier. I was reminded that if I’m going to get people to embrace Slack I need to make better use of it myself. Mikey and Dave Toxic are around, I’ve spent a bit of time chatting with both of them. They seem in high spirits, which is good. Mikey is thinking he wants to work on his New Years piece. I suspect the battery on my hotspot will die before then, unless I stop at 7-11 for a cheap USB cord to recharge it.

    Here I am at a party, near the supplies that one could use to write up a name tag, and yet I haven’t bothered to make one for myself. I could put myself out there, with the green card. I could make an effort to signal and communicate non-verbally, my interest in play of various forms. Except that to do that, I’d have to actually be able to put into written word what my interest is. And despite the various fantasies that still exist in my brain, I’m not sure what I’m actually interested in at this point. I’ve interest in things, but I’m not sure I know how to handle the fancy wiring bits to turn the facade into something functional.

    Interestingly enough, so far only two people have commented on the laptop and the fact that I’m sitting here typing away. I’m not sure what that says about our culture, if anything at all.

    Earlier, I was playing a board game, Splendour, with one of the cupids, the on site matchmakers. Nice guy, and he picked up the game fairly quickly. I think it fits in as one of the appropriate games for this sort of venue. It’s simple enough to teach in a few minutes, requires no complicated communication, and the cards and tokens are nicely resilient. The fact that we were playing a board game seemed to draw a considerable amount of attention, with a couple of people watching the majority of the game. Then again, it might have just been the time of night it was, early enough that things were still getting started. Hard to say.

    Nearly 700 words at this point, and only a handful that could be recycled into an article that is actually about this event. I suppose I could consider various approaches and focuses that would actually lead to a real article, but currently I’m not sure I have the fortitude for that. I think my navel gazing will continue for a bit longer.

    Given the article I wrote the other day on consent culture over on EV, I should be making an effort to connect with people and to play. But for whatever reason, I’m uninspired to do that. I think it’s the loud music and the lighting. It doesn’t strike me as a place to develop the rapport that I currently feel that I need. Though that might just be an excuse, a lie I’m telling myself to justify my lack of motivation, and my lack of motivation is probably rooted in my expectation of rejection. Polite rejection, I’m sure, but also inevitable rejection. I’m sure when she reads this, Recklie will roll her eyes, since she’s convinced that I’m the one rejecting connections. Or at least that was what she saw when she was looking through my chat logs the other day.

    Ah, fun. The fellow who triggered that unpleasantness the other night is standing over there. Also, standing across the way is the source of the original unpleasantness, though I’ve no concern about a conversation with him. His ego will protect me from that. The other fellow though, he might try to make conversation, though I suspect he also has other fish on his hot plate.

    Despite the negativity in my current view, I seem to be writing with a certain wit, one that I can’t recall having access too recently. Perhaps I should continue with the Drunken Wormhole project. Though I really need to rename that. It needs a proper title, something that hints at the end game, rather than throwing it out there without the appropriate ceremony.

    It’s funny, I’m feeling like my bubble is being invaded by the people flirting near me. It’s gotten to the point where it’s actively disrupting my ability to write. Damn.

    More later, perhaps.

  • shower thoughts

    While I showered this morning, I thought about who I am and how I communicate. In some ways, I’m a fairly private person, and in others I’m rather open about things. I try to be transparent about things, and that means it’s mostly things that I feel have no ability to harm me. Areas where I feel vulnerable, become fairly obfuscated. They are still there, but I tend to adjust the lighting around them so they’re harder to notice.

    For the most part, these tend to be things that I feel would be “whining” to talk about. I find I’m more about to write about them, because then I’m not actively taking up someone’s time, unless they choose to take the time to read it.

    I don’t recall how much I’ve actually expressed about various things. I know I’ve ranted about them from time to time, but it’s generally been to a fairly limited audience.

    I think I need to work on that. But in the mean time, I suspect I’ll just spend more time writing about it here.

  • Signal to Noise Ratios

    I’ve long been known to rant about my frustration with the modern world in regards to the signal to noise ratios, specifically the frustration I have with the difficulty of recognising craft from dross.

    We are in an era where everyone can have a voice, but most haven’t developed the skills required to recognise when it is wisest to be quiet.

    In various circumstances, that ignorance benefits those who are either playing the odds or who are oblivious to negatives of the reactions they generate. Some individuals are happy to spray forth a stream of generalised inquires, happy with their 1% (or less) response rate, because they are at least getting responses.

    I tend to prefer to craft something personal, taking the time to consider what I can learn about them from what they’ve written and what I think the possible connections could be.

    The problem is, both of those messages appear in the inbox in the same way. While I can do a little to distinguish myself from the horde, the messages will only convey that to someone who is actually looking for it, and most are simply scanning, as it is but one of fifty plus messages that they’ve received since their last log on.

    It is a case of signal to noise. Like using an old analog radio in a crowded space. As you twist the dial, you’ll pick up snatches of content. Sometimes, you’ll find something that interests you, but most of the time you’ll settle on something clear, rather than finding what you really want.

  • ships sunk.

    This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve opened a window and stared at the page, trying to clean up my thoughts into words. The last few times I’ve decided to install Linux or browse Facebook instead of actually writing.

    I’m having a hard time expressing myself because I don’t consider my current concerns to have high stakes. They are meaningless in the bigger picture. Petty and small, yet somehow they are still managing to cripple me.

    Not to long ago, I looked at a thread on reddit asking people why they were really single. While I thought about what my answer would be, I scanned through the list, plenty of people with answers along the same lines as mine would have been. Obviously I’m not alone in being alone.

    A friend was trying to help me with my OK cupid profile the other day. She’d found a great guy on there, and figures I should be able to have the same luck.

    I appreciate her support, but a big part of the problem is that while I’m lonely, I’m not sure how ready I am to actually be involved with anyone.

    A few months back I met someone from the site and we got along well. It seemed like it was something, but suddenly it was gone. Before that I think I’d made various attempts at dating, but my recollections aren’t overly clear.

    I know at one point I’d thought I had chemistry with someone at a kink event and then been told that the person didn’t have time for any other relationships in their life. Not long after, that same person started complaining in her FetLife status posts about a lack of sadists in her life. At that point, I could have approached her, I could have commented on it, or a few other tactics. Instead, I removed her from my friends list, as it was my discomfort that was the issue.

    Perhaps that is a cowardly way of dealing with the issue, I likely would have considered it that a few years back. On the other hand, it was my problem. I was the one bothered by what was communicated and I had no real investment in the “friendship”, so best to move on.

    Is this a pattern of avoidance on my part? There is one girl that I’ve been talking to for a year or more, who I originally tried to help get out of an abusive relationship. We’ve hung out a few times, talked about it going somewhere, but it hasn’t gone past teasing. She also has an fwb who she is loyal to, but who doesn’t seem to deserve that loyalty. From what she has said, their relationship has violated her boundaries a few times, and she’s accepted it. It bothers me. She showed me what he got her for Christmas. That was a wake-up call for me. I’ve told her that I’m going to be distant for a while, that I’m probably going to be getting more distant. It bothers me that someone I am fond of is taking part of something that makes her sad.

    I’m sure I could talk longer about this, but I’ve run out of time for now.

    Back from dinner with the family, attempting to recover my train of thought.

    I have a handful of people that I’ve managed to open up to, but the amount I’ve opened up has probably been reshaped over the last few years. It’s probably deceptively shallow, in that the stuff I’ve gotten comfortable with has gotten broader, but the specific details have faded away.

    Apparently my psyche is best compared to a bog at this point. Random patches of solid ground surrounded by a mess of unstable soil, punctuated with random sink holes.

    The girl I’d mentioned earlier got upset with me for posting about her, rather than talking to her about the issue. I posted about it because I’m trying to understand the pattern that I’m going through. It was about her, but only in as much as she was someone who was there for it. The bigger issue, the thing I was writing about, was how I was handling things. Rather than making an attempt to compete, I’m backing down and wandering off.

    I’ve been doing that lately, but it’s also something I picked up a while ago. I don’t see the point in competing for people. Part of it is that people aren’t prizes, so competing for them isn’t something I’m comfortable with anymore. Part of it is that I’ve gotten a negative view of my own self worth.

  • Good news, but bad feelings

    I should be in a good place. I’ve got a job that I like and that I’m good at. I’ve got friends that I enjoy spending time with. I’ve got interesting projects that I’m working on. I have been getting a good night’s sleep most nights. My back isn’t bothering me, nor is my bad knee.

    And yet I’m not. I’m aware that I’m in this weird downward spiral of negativity. I don’t know how to get out of it. I’m fully aware of it, but nothing seems to help.

    I should get out and exercise more, maybe that will help. I took a walk today, maybe I’ll have time for one before work tomorrow.

    I attempted to make connections with people, attempted to find someone on a dating site, but that just leads to me doubting myself and my value. Not to mention the random blows to my ego that come from just being on a dating site.

    The whole dating site concept bothers me. I was having a conversation with someone on one of the sites, she asked for some info. I provided her with the information and a few days later asked if she’d had time to read it. Her response was that she that she had over 100 messages in her inbox, so she’d get back to me eventually. That’s great. I’m sure part of it is the whole shiny newbie fresh meat thing, but it’s also the fact that there are always plenty of men on dating sites, and from what I’ve seen, the majority of them are eager to find something. Hell, some would argue even desperate.

    When it comes down to it, it’s a signal to noise ratio issue. And I don’t have a clue how to build an amp, and I certainly can’t help anyone install a filter. I suppose the best I can do is look for alternative channels.

     

  • Sweet Revenge.

    Sometimes, you find a certain pocket of reality, a sweet spot in the the slipstream of fate. It’s a delicate little hollow, that you can only know by feeling the disruptions along the edges. As long as you ride with it, everything works. I had one of those nights tonight.  

  • 404 – Lost and Found.

    I glance down at my phone. Its 4:04. Having spent far too much of my life online, the first thought that crosses my mind is 404, file not found. Then I start to reflect on my circumstances.

    I have a place that I reside. It isn’t home, but it’s the place where I’ve spent the last decade and where I’ll likely spend the next decade. It should be home, it has all the elements of a home. Somehow there’s something missing. Most likely its only in my head.

    Home is where the heart is, the cliche says. In that case I’ve no idea where home is, as I’ve long ago lost track of my heart.

    On some level, I moved my home online years ago, when I found a community out there that I was comfortable with. And as the new shiny stripped away the oldbies, singly or in batches, that feeling of home faded into nostalgia. So with nothing to hold me to that place, I’d go wander the back alleys of the global village, looking for another quiet virtual corner to hang up my hat in.

    The problem with the net is the disconnect that some people have between their meatspace and wirehopper faces.

    For whatever reason, I grew out of that distinction. I suspect its because I have no faith in my ability to project a persona that would appeal to people. Rather than trying to appear as someone more likeable, I just accept that I’ll be misunderstood and embrace my inner curmudgeon. Some people will disagree that I qualify as such, but I think when it comes down to it, I’ve got it down. I want people to do the right thing, but I expect them to act like selfish idiots. I’d like to be proven wrong, but more often than not, they’ll make a choice that’ll make me silently shake my head.

    That’s not to say I’ve lost my ability to be silly. Just that my internal auditor has slid his chair closer to my inner ear and he’s making sure he’s heard over the other impulses lurking there.

    This seems to result that people see me as more stern and disapproving than I would want to be.

  • Yet More Netrunner.

    There’s a tournament at Starlit on Saturday. Dimestore and I signed up for it. However, he’s got a couple’s day with his wife instead, so I’ll be going in solo. This tournament has a special prize for flatlines, so I’m working on a killer deck for a change. I’m a bit stumped on ice balance currently. I’ll probably work and rework it for a few hours tonight.

    After the tournament, there’s two options depending on the timing. Make an effort to go check out the local vampire LARP or relax for a bit. I’ve got a birthday party later that night, so that’s where I’ll eventually be, unless I start feeling antisocial again. Though I’ll probably show up as I bought the host a present and so I should go at least to deliver that. I think in theory it’s something he’ll enjoy, but perhaps I’m wrong.

    Monday I helped friends move. Showed up with a cargo van, we loaded it to the gills, drove over, unloaded it. Rinse and Repeat. No major hassles, no injuries. A couple squished fingers but no blood for a change.

    Afterwards, the timing worked out for me to hit up the local ingress cross faction meetup, something I haven’t done for ages. I probably haven’t done it since I got this job, if not perhaps a bit longer. Given that I tend to only have a weekday night free a week and I’ve had a backlog of social obligations to work through. But, I was parking the moving van nearby that night, and the food there is decent, so I dropped in to be social. A few people were glad to see me, a few people didn’t know me, and a few people were weird. But that’s no surprise. I learned a few things, and I had a few beer. Interesting flavors. That is the one benefit of eating there, you can usually find a tasty brew to go with your meal.

    Things got a bit uncomfortable for me when a former friend showed up. I thought about leaving, but I’d already made plans with Dimestore for him to swing through on his way home to grab a datapack from me, so I decided to stick around. For the most part, it was clear we weren’t at the same table. When Dimestore showed up, I pointed out that he was there, they said hello and had a nice conversation. Mildly interesting, since this friend had cut ties with Dimestore and I at the same time, since my stubbornness was obviously contagious. Anyways, it was uncomfortable for me, and I almost regretted that I’d made an effort to extend an olive branch the week prior, even though it was the right thing to do. I was relieved that despite my efforts and the obvious advantages of the situation for him, he’d decided not to bother with it.

    Then Tuesday, I saw that someone had started making an attempt to make the geek community a better place in Vancouver. And I thought that would be great. Until I saw that they’d tainted the well already. I’m sure they had the best of intentions, but inviting the rather defensive girlfriend of a man who abuses the word community for his own profit into the group meant to repair the community… I just can’t see that turning out in a positive manner. Given his actions regarding Zombiewalk and various other things, I’m uncomfortable dealing with him. I’ve burnt out on it. I talked to the guy who’d done the inviting for the group and the guy who’d started the group, let them know that for health reasons, I’m not interested in being involved. My experiences with that individual have been so toxic that probability of his involvement was enough to make me not want to be involved, to avoid that ugliness in my life.

    I’m torn between ranting about him further or just trying to put the whole thing out of my mind. On one hand, if I rant, it has the potential for people to understand where I’m coming from, balanced against the potential for him to use my writing against my friends who still deal with him. On the whole, it’s probably healthier to just put it out of my head. Except this is my place, so I should be able to write what I want here. Eh, I’ll just leave it for now.

    Afterwards, I was looking into some of the symptoms of PTSD, as someone in my extended social network had been interested in the job opening here, but had mentioned he had some doubts about taking the job while he was still sorting out his PTSD and his treatment. I noticed that the symptoms for PTSD match up with what I’ve been experiencing. It’s something I need to examine and it’s resulted in me doing some reflecting.

    As far as I can recall, there aren’t really any specific events that would qualify as traumatic in my life. My childhood was pretty alienated and I have some issues with betrayal and belief, but there are specific major incidents, just a variety of times when things were rough.

    I posted on my facebook that I was beginning to consider the idea that I was dealing with something that had similar symptoms to a mild form of PTSD, and that it was related to my dealings with the Zombiewalk and goth drama. I was vaguebooking, something I hate to do, but after the lecture I received last Saturday for going into too much detail, it seemed reasonable. In response, I got told off for comparing my bullshit to being in a war or being raped. Obviously my traumas weren’t severe enough for me to qualify for even a mild form of something similar to PTSD. My response was hostility and I opened a chat with the person, explaining to them that they really didn’t understand the whole story, and I was trying to work through something, not trying to whine. Apparently the hostility came across pretty strongly, as they got rather upset and wanted to end the conversation, since they felt I was bullying them.

    Yes, I was bullying them for responding to a negative comment on my facebook page. Well, I guess that’s how the internet works.

    Maybe it’s a case of my words being chosen poorly, or coming across hyperbolic. Maybe the symptoms only fit because of a psychological version of hypochondria. I do know that I have some things that are pretty nasty triggers for me, and that I need to sort them out. Not dealing with them is probably partially responsible for my current state of isolation.

    I read something interesting about the Sexodus and male responses to feminism tonight, and I’d intended to comment on it, but I’m already over my 1K words and it’s nearly time to catch my bus so that’ll have to wait for another entry.

  • icandy

    This is just a stream of thoughts and impressions that I’ll use to write up a review later for Erotic Vancouver.

    Markus had advertised the event as being more pub like than club like, but I think I misunderstood what he meant by that. Its got similar lighting as the last time I was here. I was expecting a little brighter and a bit more mellow. Attempting to play board games here will be tricky. Certain games might work, but the random ones I brought with me probably require a brighter and quieter space to work. King of Tokyo, I could see working.

    Some people sat down and picked up my copy of cards against humanity, that I had sitting at the table in front of me, without asking. I could care, but as that copy has been through hell, I’m not overly concerned. I’m wondering how long it’ll be before they think to ask, or they touch something else on the pile.

    The pile currently consists of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Arctic Scavengers and my neon wand. Funny that they picked the item I care least about.

    A friend came up and started chatting. I mentioned the games, and the people didn’t seem to realise they were being rude. And now others have come over and asked about it and the male of the pair is explaining the game as if it was his own copy. I find this a mix of amusement and irritation. I’m pondering why someone would feel that touching another person’s toys is acceptable, even if the toys are board games. In the geek world, the general awareness of the value of a collection acts as a deterrent to most people touching without permission. It is possible that the lack of awareness of the value is a factor. It is likely that they have assumed that the games were provided by the venue. Not a terrible idea, but a bit of an assumption. It fits with the behaviour that was commented on previously with regards to patrons and the magic wands.

    Offhand, I can’t think of how our hosts might deal with this assumption. I think such assumptions should be rare in a place focused on consent culture, as the default permission should be assumed to be the negative.

    They haven’t managed to start a game of CaH, or clean up the game that they started. They’ve gotten engaged in some conversation with the couple that had approached them and used the game as an ice breaker. Its mildly amusing that it served that purpose. And mildly annoying that it was used in such a way without being respected.

    Then again, I’m at a fetish event and I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I don’t exactly fit in. Perhaps its made me invisible.

    Except of course to those who know me, most of whom seem to be wearing volunteer badges tonight, at least so far.

    The music works, its nice mellow jazz, but its a bit drowned out by all the people. I suspect its just the acoustics of the place. I wonder if some baffles would help create the impression of greater intimacy by shaping the conversations into tighter spaces.

    I was expecting to be able to find some electrical sockets where I had found them last time, but unfortunately they don’t seem to be accessible this time. Removes option of the neon wand in the lounge area, something that was great fun at the Mad Hatter party.

    —

    Markus and VanJoe managed to find me an electrical cord, so now I have the neon wand going.

    —

    Spent about an hour demonstrating electricity via direct and indirect methods. People would randomly come up to me and ask to give it a try. It was nice to educate people.

    Overall, the neon wand was a hit again.

    At some point, they killed the music and brought out a comedian. The acoustics worked against him, and the crosschatter drowned out most of his act, if you weren’t over by where he was standing.

    In theory, linking his mic to some of the other speakers could fix this problem, but I’m not sure that would help, as part of a comedian’s performance is visual. Alternatively, shaping the acoustics to isolate the areas better could create more of a feeling of different spaces.

    At this point, I’d probably attend this event again, through I’m not sure I quite understand what the intended demographic is. The mix of kinksters, swingers, and explorers creates an interesting environment, but I feel it lacks something in terms of community consciousness, coherence and shared expectations. However, I’m sure things could be done to foster that.

    Interesting. Someone stepped over me to talk to people, kicking my knee in the process. He apologised, but it was an afterthought. It seems to be an intoxication issue.

    Am I so mellow that people lack concern for offending me? Or is the vibe such a peaceful one that the sort of hostility that such inconsiderate behaviour would evoke is inconceivable? Nah. Drunken fools are as they always are.

    —

    Nice to have a conversation about serious matters to remind me that I’m old and bitter and take matters far too seriously.

    And then ten minutes later, run into another friend and have a random happy conversation that reminds me that the community contains plenty of people who have a passion who are looking for ways to express it. Be it Spaz and his music, or Nathan and his paintings. Or Mikhail and the things he does in the dark dark places.

    And interesting mixture of individuals and their motives. Steps taken to foster understanding between the different cliques seem like the obvious direction. Given that Markus is already running a 420 munch, I think he has the right skill set for that challenge.

  • Time slides sideways.

    I’m in this coffee shop on the corner, a block away from the party I’m supposed to be at. I changed my shirt after work, but didn’t bother with anything else. I packed some gears, but gave no real thought to my appearance. In theory, one reason to attend this event is to be social. To meet people. To flirt. Yet I’m totally unprepared for that. Instead I’m sitting here having a dark chocolate mocha so I’ll stay awake. I’m sure there’s something I’ll learn from this on later reflection, but right now I’m just staring my own foolishness in the face.

    But hey, at least I got out of the house. Though a wise man would have probably just stayed in front of the fire rather than driving icy roads.

    —

    Well, I just got a rather subtle reminder to trust my gut. My first instinct when I parked was to grab the exceeding conspicuous bag from the bag and take it to the coffee shop with me. But instead I back to the car, tried to find a closer parking spot, and ended up circling the block for no good reason. And parking in that exact same spot. Ah well, at least Modo counts as a universal resident permit.

  • Insomniac

    As often happens in November, my body has become an production facility for disgusting slime. The process is resulting in a combination of lethargy and disassociation; a feeling of weary calm.

    For many years I was a mouth breather, as my twice deviated septum and enlarged adenoids limited my nasal oxygen flow to less than 10% of my airflow. Eventually, I got over my paranoia over hospitals and had something done about it. As a result, I’m  actively conscious of my breathing, in terms of quality of airflow.

    Of course the thing that got me over the paranoia about hospitals was the stabbing pain in my lower back that happened one Sunday night when my gallbladder developed a bit of an issue. That attack was immediate and severe enough that I didn’t have the time to be paranoid about being knocked unconscious and sliced open.

    My point? A painful and unexpected attack was the thing that allowed me to get over my inertia and paranoia. It allowed me to get to the point where I was able to make the change that needed to be made to make things better.

    I’ve always claimed that there is no knowledge that is gained without a price being paid in pain, be it physical or emotional or spiritual or however you perceive it.

    The take away from this? Perhaps it was a metaphor or an allusion. Of course it is also just my life experience.

    Oh, right, and I’ve been having trouble falling asleep until after 4am, possibly because my sleep schedule got disrupted by the 3 days I spent mostly unconscious trying to recover from the nastiness in my respiratory system.

    That was why I picked the title after all.

  • Assemblage

    Neither the hero nor the monster, but both could fit, if the bits weren’t too broken to make sense of it. Didn’t work as it was, attempted modification, without much skill. Disassembled, reassembled, jumbled and bumbled. Best they get is barely better than a wreck. Not enough of any individual design to be recognised. Adapted and survived but not thrived.

  • My audience.

    When I originally started this, I had an idea of who might read it, but no solid plans for how to reach any of them. I figured I’d focus on what I had to say first and worry about who I wanted to read it afterwards.

    However, as the internet is a strange mixture of ephemeral and everlasting, of fluid and static, and of random interconnections, I have to consider who else will read it and what impact that might have on my life.

    I know at least one of my coworkers knows of this place, as he helped me setting it up. Other coworkers know that I own the domain, but I don’t know that they’d go out of their way to read it. They might, they are a surprisingly great group. The other day for my birthday, they got me a cake and a card. As I’ve only been working there a short time, I was surprised that they’d go to the trouble. And I was touched that they had. I’d been a bit grumpy with a couple of them a few days before because of various customer related issues. It helped remind me of the importance of being part of a team, something that was lacking at my last few jobs.

    I posted to my Facebook that I was working on my blog and a few friends asked for the link. And then my mother asked for the link, I warned her that there will likely be things on here that she doesn’t need to know, but she decided she wanted it anyways. So far, I haven’t shared it with my grandmother, but I don’t doubt she’ll find it before long, she’s a sharp cookie.

    So, aside from friends and family, current coworkers and various others I currently know, there will also be people I don’t yet know. People who only learn about me through the words I’ve written here. In most cases, I suspect the words I write will create a much better first impression than bumping into me on the street or in a bar.

    Then again, I have to ask myself if it matters what impression I make. What matters most is that my words are taken seriously, not that people like the person writing them.

  • Origin of the Phrase

    The most common questions that people ask when they see this site is Murder Hobo Club? Really? What the Hell? Are you advocating getting together to murder the homeless? Or are you homeless murders who share tips? Are you insane? What the hell are you thinking?

    Well, the phrase murder hobo is something that has some resonance for me. For reasons I can’t understand, it’s something that has come to mind randomly over the last few years. I think I originally heard it on the Order of the Stick forums, or the Pathfinder forums. It referred to a style of gaming that I think has become all too common. The characters, the heroes of the narrative, rather than having a noble goal, end up wandering around, with no ties to a society, randomly murdering monsters, some of which have been proven to be intelligent. And for the most part, rather than questioning the implications of such actions, gaming culture has glorified them.

    I recall one public roleplaying game that I was playing in, during which the majority of the damage done to the party was the result of my chemist character throwing around magical molotov cocktails. He was being effective, the enemies rarely had a chance to harm any of the party members. From one point of view, this was a well built character. He efficiently removed the opposition to the party.

    From another point of view, he was something of a monster. Even if he was doing the right thing, for the right reasons, he going about it the wrong way. He had completely disregarded the advice of Nietzsche. He had quite clearly become a monster, while fighting monsters.

    At that point, he and the party of adventurers, they weren’t heroes, they were wandering murder hobos. Around then, I realized that something just wasn’t quite right and I took a break from playing that character.

    Later, I was running a public game and I realized that I hadn’t been alone in my descent from hero to monster, it was something more common to the gamer experience. While most systems have rules that make it less likely that you’ll do splash damage to innocent civilians, many systems have impressive destructive powers that would have at the very least a psychological impact on the civilians who observe your actions. Rather than praising these “adventurers”, writing songs about them, looking up to them, and all the things that these grateful villagers supposedly do, it seems more likely that they’d either be hiding from the party, or getting out the pitchforks and trying to chase them out of town.

    The shift towards anti-heroes in fantasy media and geek culture isn’t something new, but I think in many cases the consequences of this shift are neglected or ignored.

    When I’m playing Shadowrun, I know I’m taking on the role of someone who lives outside the system, as the game is about being a deniable asset. While it is possible to create a party who are all on the right side of the law, this is not the expectation or the norm. It’s understood that you’ll be breaking the law, and getting well paid for it. It is a game that focuses on the many shades of grey.

    Fantasy Roleplaying games, and by that I mean games in the style of Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder, tend to assume that the party are heroes. The core assumption is that you are the good guys, trying to save the world from the forces of darkness.

    Both D&D and Pf have the 2 Axis of Alignment, Order vs Chaos and Good vs Evil. There are plenty of memes and postings out there talking about how alignments gets abused, and for the most part, it gets treated like a joke. After all, these are games, we are playing them for fun; we’re rolling dice to enjoy a story with friends, to relax. To get a chance to escape from the stress and mundane aspects of our ordinary lives. So, why take them seriously?

     Well, at some point, we realized that the idea of role playing had some merit as a tool in psychotherapy. We realized that being able to play out various scenarios helped us to engage with ideas on a less cerebral way than merely thinking about them. So, if role playing is valid as a psychological tool, then shouldn’t we consider the psychological aspects of our roleplaying?

  • Before Noir

    Tonight, Noir happens. Friends of mine will be there. I could go and join them. In previous years, I’d have planned to celebrate the fact that I’ve survived yet another trip around the sun. I’m going to be a designated driver tonight, so that won’t be an option. Even without that it’s been a while since I’ve had more than a drink with a meal.

    Alcohol as a social lubricant bothers me these days. The idea of buying someone a drink seems distasteful, but not in a way I can explain clearly. Perhaps it is the fact that the effects of alcohol tends to lead to stupidity and I prefer intelligence.

    I’ll probably have an alright time if I go, so I might as well go. I just have this feeling a few years ago I’d have been more enthusiastic and that I’ve lost something along the way.

  • Netrunner at Magic Stronghold

    Today: a Netrunner tournament at a local gaming shop with my friend Dimestore; (At least that’s his nom de net).

    It’ll be first constructed tournament, and my second Netrunner tournament overall.

    My corp deck, I’m pretty comfortable with, I’ve played it a few times and I know what it needs. Then again, I swapped out a handful of cards last night and I’m not sure how much impact that’ll have.

    My runner deck, not so much. Its been evolving over the last little while, but I’ve not played it enough. It’s been virtually scrapped twice in the last 24 hours. I started with a something that straddled two different ideas,  but its now much tighter and focused mostly on a single concept now.

    Odds are good I’ll write up a summary after the tournament, with some thoughts on what worked and what didn’t. There’s two more tournaments coming up next month and I’ll be able to play in both of them.

    Right now, I’m riding the bus and I’m typing up this post as a way to clear my mind and warm up my brain. To me, it feels like the writing style is different than my usual style, but I’m not sure how much that’ll come across. I feel like I’m being more deliberate and less casual about my word choice.

    On some level, that’ll be because I’m typing on the phone, and I have to concentrate more on the typing than I do when I’m at a keyboard.

    I’ll get there shortly, I’ll get registered, then have a coffee while I wait for things to get started. Or maybe a hot chocolate, since I don’t need the caffeine jitters.

    —

    An hour later, registration is done, maintenance has been taken care of and people are socialising before the tournament.

    Given the number of people attending, its unlikely I’ll be taking home one of the prizes today. This one has prizes for the top 8, so my odds weren’t terrible if only a dozen people showed up, but I think we are at twice that number.

    I had my coffee at the Starbucks after I arrived. The app told me it was free because of my upcoming birthday; a pleasant surprise.

    I’m not sure a peppermint mocha was the best choice. It was tasty, but I’m feeling a little bit twitchy. Hard to tell if its the caffeine or the nerves.

    Still, I’m not here for victory, as much as I might covet getting a cool play mat, I’m here to have a fun social Saturday.

    Afterwards I’ve got to run some errands and then I’ve committed to heading down to Noir. In theory I should take my violet wand with me, and do some electrical play demos.

    And now, it begins.

    —

    The first match up is over. My runner deck lost, a combination of card draw issues and memory issues. My corp deck won due to the timer rule. It was close though. Initially my adjustments and his choice of runner threw me off, as the math was slightly different than I was expecting.

    Time for a bite to eat, then the next round.

    Dimestore lost one and tied one, the tie being one he had the advantage on, but the time wasn’t on his side. He tends to play rather slowly, so this isn’t unexpected. His matchup had the amusing coincidence of a set of neutralisation elements for the other players ability.

    —
    Next round was Dimestore and I, which was a brutal matchup. We’d played each other a few times, so it was a semi predictable battle. Our first battle took forever, but I managed to just barely win. Our second match was high speed, as we had less than 20 minutes to play the entire game. My opening hand was amazing, his was a stalled hand. He had a deadly deck, but I managed to stay alive.

    —
    My third match up is against Nels of Terminal Seven.

    —

    That was a hell of a pair of games. I’ll need to actually write them up in detail for the Netrunner geeks, but suffice it to say that it was bizarre. The first game was one of the longest I’ve played in a while. We finished with less than 10 minutes left. And then started the second game, which ended with a 4-3 time over victory.

    It was some of most fun I’ve had in a while.

    —

    Fourth game, I’m feeling burnt out. I suspect a sugar crash. I should have planned better in terms of caffeine and snacks.

    I lost both games, my worst pair of matches of the day.

    —

    Fifth round, I got a bye. I’m not sure what that means in terms of my overall ranking, but I don’t think it’s a good sign. Still, it’s been an interesting day. I’ve still got to run those errands before heading down to Noir, but I’m quickly running out of time.

    —

    So, got the final rankings, and I came in 15th out of 20 players. Dimestore came in 19th. He was happy not to be dead last.

  • A blank page

    A blank page is an intimidating thing, more so when it’s the first page of something greater. A single page can easily be crumbled up and thrown away, but a page that is part of a book leaves evidence of its passing when removed.

    They say the first step is to write something, write anything. If you’re happy with it, great. Most of the time, you aren’t, and but if you focus on getting to be happy with it, you’ll never get into that place where the words flow effortlessly from your fingers as fast as they come to you mind. Or at least to the place where you can manage to put something down and you don’t erase it moments after.

    For me, this has always been a problem initially. I’ve had trouble getting started, getting comfortable with the tone. So, the initial post that will be going up won’t be much more than rambling as I try to warm up a set of skills that I’ve let lie fallow for the last little while.

    Prior to this, most of the writing I had been doing was for Erotic Vancouver, trying to contribute to the local alternative community. I’ve written a couple of pieces, and I’ve enjoyed working with them. Hopefully in the future I’ll write more pieces, but while writing for them I am always aware that what I say needs to be acceptable to their brand. This hasn’t been much of an issue in practice, but the idea of that has always added to my anxiety about my writing. It’s that vague gnawing in the back of your mind, that what you’ve written isn’t good enough yet. That it doesn’t convey what you meant it to say, that it’ll be misread and it’ll offend people. That concern is more present when you’re writing about something that has an inherent probability of offending. Many of the articles I’ve wanted to write have been fraught with that feeling.

    So, instead of feeling like I’ll damage the reputation of Erotic Vancouver and its spearhead, Reive, I’ve now got this place to write what I think. If I write something I think works for EV, I’ll leave a copy on his virtual desk, and if it doesn’t work there, it’ll go here. And if something I write here works for EV, maybe he’ll ask me to put up an expanded version over there.

    I’ve posted some of my ramblings in other places, but this is the first time I’ve made a serious effort to have a place for my ideas, distinct and unique. And I think that’s something that deserves some exploration and perhaps an explanation, though how much can actually be explained, I’m not so sure of.

    Over on Erotic Vancouver, I’m known as Ashton, because that’s my name, and I felt that in a Erotic/BDSM/Kink context, Gravedigger might put people off. I wanted people to take my writings seriously, and while there is potentially some risk to my future in having those writings out there under that name, I felt it made more sense than a pseudonym.

    Speaking of the pseudonym Gravedigger, it’s one that was given to me about a decade back, and part of a story that I will likely tell here one day when I lack inspiration about something to write up and also feel like I haven’t updated in a bit.

    The sketch that was used for my tattoo, with a simple gradient background
    The sketch that was used for my tattoo, with a simple gradient background

  • The Embodiment Social Conscience

    When we lived in smaller social structures, it was easy to be able to perceive who was contributing what to a community. In theory, we would know if someone wasn’t able to pull their own weight and why; since everyone would know if we weren’t pulling our own weight, it would be harder to shirk our duties. As societies expanded, we had more people to keep track of, and instead of tracking individuals, we began tracking groups and cliques within the society. Strategies develop for dealing with this issue, including internal grape vines. Just as societies develop specific individuals tasked with other tasks that would have previously been the shared responsibility of the tribe, a new role develops inside the system, and thus Journalism is born. Initially, the job is simple, to collect and redistribute knowledge so that the society has a better understanding of the things that individuals may understand need fixing, but often have yet to be addressed. The more awareness brought to a problem, the more likely a solution will be developed. As society gets more complicated, and traditional social codes are replaced with laws, these problems potentially have a greater depth and breadth of complexity. The position of journalist becomes one requiring greater skills and one that has greater value to the society. This greater value results in the office being hijacked and converted into pieces of the propaganda engine. Over time, various individuals adjust what it means to be a journalist; how we perceive this embodiment of social conscience. On a grander scale, this social conscience has become less about giving us the truth and more about giving us something to digest, shifting from the role of truth teller to the role of entertainer. There are some individuals who have managed to develop the telling of truthful story into an art, that that is something I greatly respect.

  • Sacrificial Wisdom

    I hate to be the one to tell you this, but this whole ritual sacrifice thing going on here, while very nice, just isn’t going to work out the way you’ve planned it. Allow me a moment to explain.

    The great old ones, they’re kinda like food critics. If you can manage something pleasing to their palate, they’ll provide you with plenty in return. But, they’re really picky and easily bored.

    You try to serve them the same old sacrifice they’ve had before, odds are they won’t hate it, but they won’t like it either. You’ll get a middling review, they’ll spare your life, blah blah blah.

    That’s why most of these rituals don’t work. They might have worked, once, back in the day, when they were new, and that’s how the recipe got written down in the first place, but following the same recipe isn’t going to cut it.

    Of course random improvisation isn’t always such a great idea either. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours of rituals gone horribly wrong, and mess that results. That’s them being displeased. There usually aren’t many details, but the pattern is there, if you look for it.

    There are occasionally those that get it right and gain whatever it was that they wanted badly enough to perform the damn ritual in the first place, but those are few and far between.

    Just between you and I, I think it’s more a case of a lucky accident than anything else. But you’re the high priest, you’ve got the fancy altar and the pointy knife, I’m sure you know best.