Experiments in Woolgathering

Quitting coffee sucks.

I’ve done it before – coffee isn’t great for my guts or, at least in the long term, my energy level. Eventually, at some point, I’ll go through a stretch where I am just so busy, I need some coffee (black tea’s not enough) to make it through the days.

Quitting coffee means breaking both the psychological want and waiting out the horrible headaches that the physical lack of caffiene gives me for a couple weeks.

I’m not sure which is worse. Probably the headaches. The tend to set off my tinnitus. Acetamenophin barely takes the edge off of them. A cup of black tea does better, and isn’t nearly as hard on my guts, but it a bit of a step backward. So.. argh.

Aside from a small cup of coffee today I haven’t had any in about a week and a half, so that’s pretty good. Once the friggin’ headaches stop I can stop drinking black tea too, or at least mostly stop.

Then I just need to drag my ass back to the dojo, which I’ve not been to in far too long. Coworker Lonnie and I have made a pack to go Tuesday (which is the first of the month, so it made sense from a dues standpoint).

New version of WordPress, new style theme, new commenting hoop.

Somehow I missed WP 1.4, but 1.5 went gold a few days ago, and, being one who likes to stay current, I upgraded.

The difference that proved the most problematical was the move from styles to themes. In theory, I should be able to get the Mars Spirit style converted to a WP 1-5-style theme. I tried the quick way of doing that and it 70% worked, so I’ll have to beat on that later.

In the meanwhile, you get the GreenTrack theme – which is pretty nice after a small amount of tweaking.

I also installed the AuthImage plugin, which will let folks comment without being registered and logged in by asking for them to enter an obfuscated word given on an image – obfuscated to defeat OCR attempts. (And I’m just amazed that spammers are so desparate that they build OCR into their bots.)

Installing AuthImage proved to be a pain in the ass (at least for my setup), mostly because of the verifcation word image creation, which was somewhat broken on a couple of levels.

Anyhow, enjoy the cool greenitude while it lasts!

Lately I’ve been thinking I would like to get into writing again. Not that I have ever written a lot, but I’ve done some here and there. Maybe what I really want to get into it more seriously.

So, anyhow, I’ve been looking over my copy of De Profundis which is not really an RPG in the proper sense. Essentially, the players take the roles of letter writers in a Lovecraftian setting. You are not seeking out things as one does in most RPGs, you are experiencing them, describing them.

Nominally the you have the choice to write letters set in the present day, wherein you write as yourself more or less, or in the 1920s, where you as a character who at least could be one of Lovecraft’s, if not one in actuality.

The author also strongly suggests you avoid e-mail and write hand-written letters. Of course my first thought here is that I can barely write clearly enough for me to read it, let alone someone else; and, truth be told, writing by hand is definitely different than typing something up on a computer where you can easily edit and rearrange. It forces you to think ahead, at least if you want to write something coherent. Because the game obviously revolves around writing, I understand why he recommends this – the difference between writing about horror and terror and conveying the experince of it are two different things.

So, obviously, I’d like to play this – else, why blather on about it here? I’m inclined to write the letters here in my blog, but follow the spirit of the author’s recommendation: no going back and editing, rearranging, etc. The second option is to do the same, but set up a new blog and invite a few others to play as well. Lastly, there’s finding someone to whom I’d send actual write hand written letters.

My dilemmas with how to play De Profundis aside, this is a game I would recommend. Obviously it’s something different and innovative, as well as demanding. The book is well written (as one might expect) – despite the author not being a native English speaker.

Unfortunately, the book is out of print, so it is hard to find, but not impossible. So, if you get a change, get it. It’s small 32 pages and cheap, around $7.

Lots of people bitch about Christian fundamentalists or Muslim fundamentalists, but really, most fundamentalists of all stripes are a pretty lame lot.

The irony of most fundamentalist movements is that they are rarely about the fundamentals, they’re about control over others, and imposing their views and beliefs on non-believers (and this is not limited to religion of course).

Anyhow, this deplorable behavior aside, frequently fundamentalists have some rather strange ideas compared to the mainstream.

For example, take people who object to the teaching of evolution in science classes. The Pope has stated that the teaching of evolution is not damaging to religion. Now, differences between Catholicism and various Protestant sects aside, I’m going to state that the Pope is way more qualified to speak on what is damaging to religion than most other people. What the Pope realizes here is that, regardless of how the present state of the universe came to be (God, aliens, spiritually sterile Big Big+evolution) the 150 year history and refinement of evolutionary science has demonstrated countless times that experientially, this is how the world works. And thus, because God seemingly intended it this way/the Aliens designed it/it just worked out this way we are required to work with in this framework if we really want to advance human understanding, and do things like cure cancer, or AIDS, or the common cold.

Now, I don’t want to pick on just one group of fundamentalists (Christian ones are primarily responsible for the assault on science in the science classroom). Therefore I present excepts from The Ayatollah’s Book Of Etiquette (come to us by way of Bookslut).

Just remember ladies, if your period starts while you’re praying, you have to start over. The Ayatollah says so.

Before I get to the actual duck metaphor discussion I have to give some backstory.

Columbus Comprehensive Health Center (no link, site has been taken down by us) was the brain child of a friend of ours, Melinda. The basic idea was a much more holistic approach, which included not only traditional western medicine, but practicioners of a host of other modes of treatment: reiki, image therapy, massage, life coaching, ayurveda, homeopathy, psychology, and a few others. Your first appointment with there was an interview in which you basically dumped all your physical and mental issues, the profile was then given to all the practioners to comment on and offer up how they would treat the patient (and obviously not all modes addressed all the patient’s issues). So, you got several opinions and ideas for the issues you brought up. Clearly not your typical doctor’s office visit.

I set The Flanders Panel aside to read the Burning Wheel fantasy RPG books, so I’d have a clue when we made characters for the new game. By necessity, this is as much, if not more, a review of the system itself as a review of the book stylistically.

This is a non-book review because I haven’t read this book. Skimmed parts, read several reviews of, but that’s it. That said, what Crichton did here was, if you ask me, unethical, and frankly, with this book I’ve pretty much had it with his ‘science bad’ schtick.