January 18, 2012 at 12:00 am · Filed under Personal, Thoughts
As an independent bookseller whose livelihood depends on fighting for users’ continually harder-to-get attention, I can’t exactly afford to shut this site down for a day in protest, but I want to make it clear that I think SOPA is a terrible, terrible thing that needs to be stopped. Read up on it and get involved however you can, even if all you can do is spread the word. Freedom of speech is, in my opinion, America’s best feature–something we can be proud of even on our darkest days–and we would do ourselves a grave disservice if we let our leaders curtail or limit it for any reason.
January 12, 2012 at 11:41 pm · Filed under Announcements
I’ve already announced this on Facebook and elsewhere, but it bears repeating here, obviously: all three School Kids SG volumes are now available on Kindle! Check out the store for ordering information–this is a great way to read my books for less money and with greater convenience (apparently, you can get Kindle on your iPhone/iPad? That seems worth mentioning.) Buy them, read them, tell me what you think!
January 11, 2012 at 11:33 pm · Filed under Reviews, Thoughts
I’m sorry, but this game kind of sucks.
I wanted to like it–I really, really did. The Penny Arcade guys seemed to like it (though they didn’t write any follow-up notes when they finished it, if they finished it), and it got good reviews pretty much across the board. For a while, I thought I was crazy–what was I missing? How could so many people say that this game returns Sonic to his roots when it has more in common with Sonic Unleashed than Sonic and Knuckles? How can they say that Sonic’s “annoying” friends are downplayed in this game when they are, in fact, constantly present, and the few levels in which they are playable seem to be uniformly awful? How can anyone claim Generations is the best new Sonic game in years when it attempts to redo a stage from the worst Sonic game of all time (Sonic 2k6) and leaves me liking the original version better?
Keep reading….
January 3, 2012 at 2:53 pm · Filed under Personal, Thoughts
Hopefully. I was trying to get back in the habit of updating more or less every week for a while there, but I’ve been down and out since mid-December after an unfortunate bout of appendicitis. Are there fortunate bouts of appendicitis? I doubt it.
I can’t tell if it’s comforting or depressing that the site still managed to amass 1,024 spam comments (all caught in the moderation queue) while I was recovering. I know I’m not as prolific as any given high-schooler on Tumblr, but I’d still appreciate some real feedback now and then…assuming I could even find it if it existed, in this sea of watch ads.
November 15, 2011 at 10:31 pm · Filed under Personal, Thoughts
I paid my second visit to Occupy Wall Street this past Sunday–some friends of mine were playing music there. It had been just about a month since my first visit, and the park was a much denser tent city than it had been before as the protesters hunkered down for the winter. The impromptu concert I attended didn’t draw much attention, but there was some polite clapping and a rotating cast of cell-phone photographers.
I tried to stay out of the way as OWS participants and coordinators flitted around, some cleaning up accumulated garbage and bringing it out to the curb, others passing out flyers or offering trinkets. Something about the unspoken energy there reminded me of my alma mater, which is perhaps the only place I’ve ever felt completely at home. That’s how Occupy Wall Street struck me–as a community, one I felt I could fit into, at least as a visitor–and I think that’s exactly the kind of atmosphere the park’s 24/7 residents were trying to create.
This morning, I woke up to images of an empty Zuccotti Park being power-washed by cleaning crews, shown as part of continuous live coverage by NY1. The police had descended and destroyed the encampment minutes after I’d gone to bed. Without its vibrancy, its voices, its tents, the park was barely recognizable to me.
Keep reading….
November 7, 2011 at 8:57 pm · Filed under Reviews, Thoughts
I got the game today, and thought I’d share an early list of pros and cons. I’m three zones in; I haven’t fought the first boss yet.
Pros
- The nostalgia factor is exactly as high as you’d expect it to be, yet the “classic Sonic” stages don’t feel like remakes or rehashes (a big improvement over Sonic 4).
- All the music is great. The classic songs are perfectly preserved, the newer remixes hit just the right notes (I can’t wait until I start getting the reverse, i.e. Genesis-style remixes of later-era songs!), and the stage select music is fascinating. It blends slowed-down versions of the different zone songs depending on your proximity to the zone gates, sort of like the hub world in Banjo-Kazooie.
- I haven’t yet seen any of those awful button-matching minigames in the modern Sonic stages, and they seem to have made the Starposts impossible to miss in both modes, regardless of what height you’re at when you pass them. It’s about damn time.
- So far, the selection of stages represents an excellent cross-section from the various Sonic eras. It’s nice to see Sega apparently knowing what makes its games good, for once. (That said, I would totally welcome a redone Sonic 2k6 stage at some point, if only because this is probably their only chance to make amends for that game.)
Keep reading….
October 29, 2011 at 9:01 pm · Filed under Misc, Thoughts
For about a year now, I’ve been looking at New York Times real estate listings for their photography. I mean, I’m quite happy in my current apartment (much happier now that they finally turned the heat on in the midst of this freak snowstorm), but it’s interesting to see how other people live. Besides, who knows where I’ll eventually settle?
Anyway, just in time for Halloween, here’s a house that appears to have a screaming fireplace (courtesy of Sotheby’s):
October 24, 2011 at 9:32 pm · Filed under Announcements
Blerg. Well, it doesn’t look like Lulu is going to reverse course on their new “Author Spotlight” page format anytime soon, so I’ve created yet another version of the store to be hosted on this website. This one will likely wind up being temporary, too, but it’s easier to browse than the last one. I really miss when this sort of thing was done for me…the less time I need to spend on operations, the more I get to spend on actual writing and book design.
September 18, 2011 at 8:20 pm · Filed under Announcements, Misc, Thoughts
NOTE: This version of the store has already been superceded by another. Use the link on the sidebar instead.
So Lulu, the service I use to print and otherwise sell the School Kids SG books, has changed my “storefront” over to a new format. Personally, I hate it–I have much less control over the page layout and how the items I want to sell are displayed. I threw together a temporary store of my own here on this site until I can figure out a longer-term solution. Please check it out if you have a minute–I put up previews of all three SKSG books to stroke your interest.
September 7, 2011 at 12:00 pm · Filed under On SKSG, Thoughts
As you may remember from last year, September 7th is Woodvale Day–the holiday people in the School Kids SG universe celebrate as the founding of Woodvale. In honor of Woodvale Day 2011, here’s some world-building for you all, namely an update to the Towns of the Prattcorn Valley list. Enjoy!
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