Since turning in my thesis and moving, I have had a chance to relax a little and catch up on some of my other interests. The kitties and I are settling in with the roommates and dog at "yoga house." I have been running into many old friends from college and high school on facebook. I'm looking forward to watching movies and reading novels all summer. Yoga House now has high-speed internet so I can download all the podcasts I want! The first one on my list is The Guild. If you have ever played online games
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Twitter-esk Update
Here's what I have accomplished so far today-
1. I wrote up some more of the "results" section of my thesis. The thesis seems to be looking up. Earlier in the week I felt I didn't have anything interesting to say and my committee was going to be bored to death, now I have found a least a few interesting insights. Yay!
2. I spent a ton of time investigating WordPress. I'm starting to get the hang of it and there are a ton of plug-ins that allow you do a sorts of fun stuff. This makes me feel productive, because my job on campus is considering using WordPress to manage their website.
3. Went shopping for the pets and some groceries. Beorn and I also got some smoothies. Yum.
4. Now I'm cooking some dal and rice while drinking a glass of Zin and playing Lord of the Rings Online. In a little while I'm going to heat up some nan from Trader Joe's to go with the dal and rice.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Real life sucks...fantasy is much more fun
Beorn has been playing Lord of the Rings Online again. A while back we quit WOW and got into LOR, and then we had serious real life issues and gave up gaming for a while. I'm still way too busy to really game, but tonight I'm taking a break.
Getting use to gaming after a break is frustrating. If I haven't gamed in a while I get disoriented and can't keep up with other players. Usually everyone is level 50 anyway, so whatever area we are traveling through is very familiar to them. Also, I have forgotten all the commands, so I'm not very good at anything.
Tonight we went on a raid with our "kinship." Raids are confusing if there isn't a clear leader. It's difficult to keep up and keep track of everyone, especially since our internet connection is somewhat slow. Everyone expects you to know what quest we are doing or who to attack or not attack. Since our connection is slow I fell into a ditch/ravine which was filled with giant spiders. Not good. Everyone tried to jump in an save me, but it was too late. Ah well, c'est la vie.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
 | Apparently this is my week to let out my inner geek. As seen on the Paper Chase: You scored as Ranger, The forest are home to fierce and cunning creatures, such as the bloodthirsty Owl bears and malicious Displacer Beasts. But more cunning and powerful than these monsters is the ranger, a skilled hunter and stalker. He knows the woods as if they were his home(as indeed they are), and he knows his prey in deadly detail.
Which D&D Class Are You? created with QuizFarm.com |
Monday, May 14, 2007
Ok, so we aren't really that poor...
Maybe we just make poor financial decisions. Soon we will be moving to a smaller apartment since currently we pay more than half our monthly salaries on rent. At the moment we have a two bedroom and use the second bedroom as an office, but I think we could get by in a one bedroom. I'm not sure we could get any work done in a studio, although we shared a tiny house for a while. Both our desks and computers were in our little 12x14 room and we folded up our bed each morning in order to make space for walking around.
We rarely eat out or got to the movies anymore and have only one car since we can get to school by bike or public transit, but we do have some luxuries, for one we have pets. As my recent public television viewing has taught me until recently only the very wealthy could afford to keep animals that didn't work. We also spend more money than we should on groceries and alcohol. We are working on consistently packing lunches and not spending on coffee or soda on campus.
Our main luxury though is our computers, our high-speed internet, and our online gaming. We have given up Netflix and other movie rentals, but haven't given up gaming. Online gaming gives us as much entertainment as we want (and sometimes more than we really want) for around $20 a month. I usually only play a few hours a week, but I still think it's worth the expense.
A few months ago we gave up on World of Warcraft. Since we only play a little bit a week we can't keep up with a guild that wants it's members to regularly participate with endgame raiding. Raiding feels more like work than play to me anyway.
After playing Civ 4 for a few months we started beta testing Lord of the Rings Online. To me all online games have the same ups and downs, but there are some things I like about LRO. For one thing it's nice to play a game that isn't known inside and out by several million people. I can't just go lookup all the quests on Allakhazam. The main thing I like about it though is the scenery, the graphics are just beautiful. The clouds float across the sky, the flowers wave in the breeze, and the water sparkles and shimmers.
What luxuries do you want to keep when money is tight?
Friday, April 13, 2007
Cat Blogging
Drinking: a brazen hussy ala Dr Brazen Hussy
Watching: (sadly, there's nothing on) National Treasure
Playing: The Lord of the Rings Online (we gave up on WOW a few months back, which explains the lack of gaming related posts. Now LORO is in beta, giving us a chance to take up gaming again.)
Cats: super cute
The Princess
BOC (big orange cat)
Type your summary here
Type rest of the post here
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
D&D is evil (the comic)
Beorn pointed me to this comic. I kept on reading, expecting a punchline. It never came. I thought this negative stereotype of role-playing died out in the 80's. I'm more used to the stereotype that all gamers are teenage boys with no social skills, but the main characters in this strip are both young women.
(I'm not going to the trouble of reposting the pictures, although they are hilarious.) Here are the things I learned from "Dark Dungeons":
Remember, if your character dies, your friends won't allow you to roll up a new character, so your life is over.
Playing D&D is intense occult training!
Priestesses of Diana are into bondage.
Spellcasting results in financial windfalls, that's why witches are all millionaires.
Publish
Next time I get stressed out I'm going to let Breena take care of things.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Has the Edutainment Trend Gone Too Far?
I’m not sure if I should be frightened or impressed. Here is a list of websites offering various types of simulations of real life or “educational” games, some of them are quite bizarre:
News Gaming
“Simulation meets political cartoons. We are a team of independent game developers who believe video games are not simply an amusement. Games and simulations can also make us think about what is going on in this world. Periodically, we will use games and simulations to analyze, debate, comment and editorialize major international news.Come and join us. Play with fire.”
www.newsgaming.com/
The Serious Games Initiative
http://www.seriousgames.org/
Unicef Games
(You get to airlift supplies to Guatemala.)
http://www.unicefgames.org/
The Rainforest Foundation
“Help us stop the carve-up of the Congo rainforest!”
http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org/s-Games
(It didn’t work on my computer.)
Kids, Play With Your Food
"The Fantastic Food Challenge, a package of four computer games, is designed to teach people who get nutrition aid such as federal food stamps how to make better use of their food.”
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,64593,00.html
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Wandering the Web
I tend to wander around on the web quite a bit. It’s amazing what you can find if you look a little more deeply into some faculty web pages: http://wrrc.ucdavis.edu/barbie/index.html
I would also like to hang out with this guy: http://www.deepfun.com/ There isn't enough emphasis in our culture on the importance of just having fun; not the kind of mind numbing fun you have when you waste a whole day playing video games, but truly exciting and stimulating fun, the kind that makes you feel really alive. From that website I managed to meander over to this class website, "Experiments in Interactivity," http://www.kinojabber.com/534/index.html I wish I could take that class.
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