Cabin fever has officially struck the B A Start household, and we’re getting dangerously close to Jack-London-type conditions. There is, it turns out, only so much TV two people can watch, only so many pages of difficult books a woman can stomach, even a limit on the number of hours I can burn playing video games.
I spent the bulk of Saturday doing Mr. Fix-it stuff. That’s how bad it’s getting in here. So, do me a favor and pour some libations to the sun gods before this turns ugly.
I keep forgetting to tell you that Mark has started a blog. Der.
Step foot in a corporation and you will run the risk of getting pulled in to a standing meeting. This is not a meeting in which people neither sit nor recline, but rather a regularly-scheduled meeting which occurs whether it is necessary or not. My schedule is speckled with many. I offer this info as back-story to the following.
Date: Two Wednesdays ago.
Alex’s clothing: blue shirt, blue blazer, blue-and-orange striped tie, tan slacks.
Comment: You look like you went to Yale.
Date: Last Wednesday.
Alex’s clothing: red tie, white shirt, yellow sweater, tan slacks.
Comment: This week Alex wore his red tie so we would know he went to Harvard.
While these comments were certainly meant as compliments, I would like to set the record straight. I did not go to an ivy league college. I did not go to prep school, or even regular old private school. Neither did my parents. I don’t have a trust fund, and have never ‘summered’ anywhere. I’m just not that guy.
I do get it a lot, though. I think it’s a combination of the non-Lucy-Arnaz accent, my coming to this land from the exotic East, the British last name, the English major, and the whole good-fences-good-neighbors thing. To the casual observer, I certainly could be that guy, but come on. I get my ties at Target, for sake o’ pete.
Can’t remember if I told you this or not (it’s one of the side-effects of never paying attention to the constant stream of little gifts one’s sensory inputs offers one), but I tried to get a job as a pro blogger recently. This post caught my attention, and I gave it a shot. “So, let me get this straight. I link to news stories from other sites and you give me money?”
I made the first cut, but it’s been a few weeks since the second deadline, so it should be safe to say I’m not the guy.
The experience does beg a veritable horn-o’-plenty of questions, though. Are there other similar jobs out there? Is the time worth the supplemental income? Would it give me any writer cred?
Would it be fun?
As with all things writery, I’d love to try it. Okay, maybe not all things writery. I don’t think I could bring myself to go to anything called a “blank jam” where blank is a style, genre, or type of writing. I draw the line at jams. Other than that, though.
I’m going to be gradually reworking ye olde blogge format over the next few days.
Why not live life by experience points?
From their dice-and-paper roots to the modern user-generated worlds, role-playing games have always had to deal with the question of how a character develops. This is normally handled through experience points (XP). Kill a were-turtle, get 5 XP. Accrue 500 XP and you gain a level. Et cetera.
While certainly an attempt to recreate in some way a person’s actual skill advancement in real life, it would seem that XP would work in the actual world similarly to the way it does in the digital. For example. Let’s take a skill you want to develop, say running. Set a series of levels in front of you, and choose XP amounts for given tasks:
Go for a 1 mile run, get 1 XP. Go for a 3 mile run, get 4 XP. Run in a charity event, 15 XP. Finish within 1 minute of the leader in a competitive run, 200 XP. Run a marathon, 10,000 XP.
Level 1: 30 XP. Level 2: 500 XP. Level 3: 3500 XP. Level 4: 5000 XP. Etc.
So, you could get to high levels just by running a mile at a time, but getting there would take forever. Doing bigger things yields bigger numbers, and thus faster level-ups.
Here’s a wrinkle: in games, a higher level means better stats. A level 2 character is stronger than a level 1, and that means an easier time killing beasties. Aside from the fact that you would actually improve, how would this work in real life? I say you’d have to have your friends involved, and the bragging rights would do it. Either that or have specific level tasks, e.g. you can’t get to level 4 until you run the Turkey Trot, no matter how many XP you’ve got.
This could work for all kinds of things.
Unfortunately, it could also work for negative things. Smoke a pack, 100XP. Perhaps this could be factored in. You want to stop doing something? Take the XP away from something you’re working towards. So, say the F-word, take 5XP from your Runner class count. That’s 5 miles you just lost. F indeed.
If you’re willing to spend hours of your life pretending to be a druid and running around killing lizards until you can get that robe you want, why not take that rewards system and move it to real life? I’ll DM.
Why not live life by experience points?
From their dice-and-paper roots to the modern user-generated worlds, role-playing games have always had to deal with the question of how a character develops. This is normally handled through experience points (XP). Kill a were-turtle, get 5 XP. Accrue 500 XP and you gain a level. Et cetera.
While certainly an attempt to recreate in some way a person’s actual skill advancement in real life, it would seem that XP would work in the actual world similarly to the way it does in the digital. For example. Let’s take a skill you want to develop, say running. Set a series of levels in front of you, and choose XP amounts for given tasks:
Go for a 1 mile run, get 1 XP. Go for a 3 mile run, get 4 XP. Run in a charity event, 15 XP. Finish within 1 minute of the leader in a competitive run, 200 XP. Run a marathon, 10,000 XP.
Level 1: 30 XP. Level 2: 500 XP. Level 3: 3500 XP. Level 4: 5000 XP. Etc.
So, you could get to high levels just by running a mile at a time, but getting there would take forever. Doing bigger things yields bigger numbers, and thus faster level-ups.
Here’s a wrinkle: in games, a higher level means better stats. A level 2 character is stronger than a level 1, and that means an easier time killing beasties. Aside from the fact that you would actually improve, how would this work in real life? I say you’d have to have your friends involved, and the bragging rights would do it. Either that or have specific level tasks, e.g. you can’t get to level 4 until you run the Turkey Trot, no matter how many XP you’ve got.
This could work for all kinds of things.
Unfortunately, it could also work for negative things. Smoke a pack, 100XP. Perhaps this could be factored in. You want to stop doing something? Take the XP away from something you’re working towards. So, say the F-word, take 5XP from your Runner class count. That’s 5 miles you just lost. F indeed.
If you’re willing to spend hours of your life pretending to be a druid and running around killing lizards until you can get that robe you want, why not take that rewards system and move it to real life? I’ll DM.
I read the first few pages of William Gibson’s Neuromancer today. I am always astounded when I come across an old book that predicted the present well. As soon as computers started talking to each other, a few books pushed the experience as far as it will go. Snow Crash (1992) did it, focusing on the social aspects of the ‘metaverse’. Ender’s Game (1985) did it, calling it ‘the nets’. Two children take on identity-less roles and debate politics in public forums, eventually becoming the faceless voices of their age.
Neuromancer was published in 1984. For comparison, AOL for DOS came out in 1991. Netscape Navigator, 1994.
The term ‘cyberspace’ was coined here. It’s the start of the cyberpunk genre, and from what I can tell also the start of modern life. Perhaps not the best book to be reading while adding to and revising my own scifi opus, what with the inherent comparison between this giant of the genre and my paltry puppet-show, but hey.
Um…
DAVID BECKHAM IS COMING TO AMERICA.
To play SOCCER.
PROFESSIONALLY.
In other news, David Beckham is coming to America. To play soccer. Professionally.