Redwolf's Journal (continued)

So, I close out 2012 reading with Lesser Evils , the sequel to Brimstone Angels . That leaves me with, I believe, two hard-copy books to go through yet and shifting my focus over to digital versions going forward. So, on to thoughts of the book... Simply put: loved it. It still feels a little odd to be reading a license-based book like this, but it's not so jarring to me now. As a D&D story, it makes me sort of jealous. I wish I could get together such an unlikely collection of characters working together (mostly) through such a tale. Alas, my jaded gamer mind sees numerous places where, lacking a script, experienced (ie. paranoid from experience) PCs would never have the same experiences. Pulling character heart-strings with fears and making doubles of party members is infinitely harder to make work in a game. But much of what really makes these books sing for me is the interaction between the characters. The tiefling twins are late-teen girls growing up. They love one a

Haven't done too much in GW2 lately. Ran the holiday dungeon a few times and picked up some gifts that mostly just take up precious, precious space. I've slacked off in daily-doing because the karma gear just isn't attractive/available enough. Plus, I've been trying to put more attention into MUCK presence, and that's hard to balance. Weekend meetups are sort-of there (in the sense that I can see one or two people regularly Sunday evening), but there's no organized activity to it. In WoW I made some heavy use of the raid finder recently, finally finishing out the first part of the Black Prince plotline. Yay, I have a pretty +500 strength sha gem that... I don't have a weapon to socket it into yet. Grr. Both tank sword and DPS axe drop from the Sha of Fear. I actually really like that fight, but having to go through the whole four-boss instance for each attempt is a bit much. Actually, I don't really dislike any of the fights in the Terrace (though L

So, while I may make another (high chaos) run through Dishonored at some point, I've started in on my second holiday game: XCom Enemy Unknown . I did not really see much of the original XCom, but I do like tactical games. I really wish someone would make another MechCommander game. But this is one of the recent "best," so I figured I'd give it a try. So far, I'm liking it. My first playthrough, though... as one forum poster described, it's a little "like choreographing a dance in the dark." Even with the tutorial engaged, the game hand-holds you through a couple ground missions and some early research/base-building, but there's no detail of direction. I appreciate that I have the choice of what to develop next. I can deal with the limited resources (and there are a lot - space for base expansions, various salvaged components, number of engineers, amount of money, and time taken for projects). What bugs me is that I'm going into everything p

So, Saturday I went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey . It was long, which I knew going in. It was generally fun and has nice tie-ins to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It felt a bit lighter than LotR most of the time - there wasn't the oppressive threat of Sauron and imminent war hanging over everything (just dark tidings of what's to come). It's been a long time since I've read the book, but I'm pretty sure they added a few plot threads (such as the "Pale Orc" nemesis of Thorin's) and fluffed up others a lot (lots of exposition/backstory in the beginning and Rhadagast's omens from Green/Mirkwood). Even so, the movie ended just shy of Mirkwood - with Fifteen Birds in Five Fir Trees playing in my head yet - leaving me to wonder how inflated things will have to be to make two more full movies out of the remainder. I might also mention that the dwarves seemed more human-proportioned than I recall of Gimli in LotR and Gandalf does more obvious

Let's see... some other reading comments to catch up on. I may have to go back and count, but it feels like I've gone through a lot more books this year than I have in... quite a while. I have read several of the Kitty Norvile series since the last batch : Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand, Kitty Raises Hell, Kitty's House of Horrors, Kitty Goes to War, Kitty's Big Trouble, Kitty Steals the Show and Kitty's Greatest Hits . Whew, that's a mouthful. I like the development of the story for the most part, as Kitty gets married, handles her pack, makes some friends, loses some friends, and aligns herself against a vampire-run consortium playing their "Long Game" that largely seems to be about controlling the world. Through it all, she keeps up her radio show, making her a very public voice for everything as the world deals with werewolves and vampires being known and acknowledged. Steals the Show ends on a particularly interesting note that shakes up her

I'd seen iPads around the office, and done some work with them before. They seem like perfectly useful devices for a niche that last almost no appeal to me. They aren't heavy, but they are bulky enough that I feel I may as well take a laptop if I'm going to try to get something done - at least laptops have full keyboards, which I'm very partial to. Overall impression: Not for me. A few weeks ago, my new manager showed me his Windows Surface. It was neat, but didn't especially win me over. I was looking at the Windows 8 variant on there and... well, I can't fathom why Microsoft is pushing such a touchscreen-oriented interface toward the PC market as well. Overall impression: Sort of meh. Then he introduced me to his Nexus 7. What struck me immediately was the size - between a smart phone and other tablets I've seen. It's a bit large for anything but a cargo or jacket pocket, but easy enough to carry, and remarkably close to the size of a novel. "

Just a few weeks away, and I've bought... uhh... one present? One and a half? Such a hassle trying to find something, clawing about for something event remotely individualized. I've had moments of inspiration before, but that's once every few years, usually. And it certainly doesn't help when someone has an Amazon list, but insists on buying things off it and listing things that are out of stock and/or not released. :p And family is away this year, which means I'll be celebrating (I use the term loosely) Christmas by myself. I'm not greatly depressed by this, just acknowledging that the day itself won't be much more than a day off work for me.