Me Playing Games

In an attempt to update from Wordpress 2.6 to 2.7, I managed to delete everythign from Me Playing Games.com. I use LJcrossposter and I was able to retrieve most of the entries.  Unfortunately, any images that I uploaded are not displaying and I will need to re-link them. There are a lot, almost every entry had one. Also, I am saddened that I lost my StatPress data. *sigh* But StatPress Reloaded, a newer version of LJ crossposter and Twitter Tools are the first plugins to be added.  Hopefully I did not complete lose my reader-base in week I was down.  Perhaps it will encourage me to update when I should instead of months later.  I also realize that lack of updating is what will most likely lose my reader base, not the site being down for a week.

Originally published at Me Playing Games. Please leave any comments there.

As much as I want to start the next book in the series, I feel I should document my comments and feelings on the first one, lest the second book should change any opinions.  From reading the summary on the back, one expects this to be very 1984-esque.  This seems to be a very common and popular theme in the past ten years.  Look at the Matrix, the rebirth of Aeon Flux, V for Vendetta, Equilibrium and -sure- these are all movies, directors choose now, early 2000s to promote and produce them. I’ve also heard rumors of The Giver possible becoming a movie.  The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld follows along in a similar vein.  Only here, the protagonist is a significantly younger than Neo and much less confident than Jonas.

The main character, Tally, also does not start this trip off of her own free will.  Blackmailed by the city authorities, she sets of in order to get what she thought was always one’s right.  My biggest irritation is that even after she reaches her destination, she doesn’t seem to take the time to consider the effects of her actions.  More development of the charcters -perhaps a little more insight by way of internal dialouge- is highly desired.  The character of Shay is well described, not by her own actions, but by the observation of
others.  We wouldn’t know that she is slightly impulsive unless the love interest, David, hadn’t alluded to it.  This is the type of character personality description that this book needs a little more of.

Also, I think that the language is too simple.  For a book to be found in the teen’s fiction section, I would expect there to be a more challenging vocabulary.  I would be intersted in doing a reading level test on this novel to see where it really lies.  Aside from kissing, I would say that this book is at a sixth grade reading level, at 10-12 years old, that is hardly teenage years.  Perhaps I am being too harsh, but it is a GOOD thing to challenge younger readers with newer words.  I think one of the longest words in the book is “volunteer.”  I used to read novels with a dictionary next to me and occassionally a list of new words.

While the content of the book is enjoyable and I have the second book, Pretties, right next to me, I feel that some editing from a more critical eye was needed.  I can get off the negative horse, though and talk about the good things that follow here.  Uglies is partially about a society’s ideas of beauty after a catastophic event of our known world.  What I did like was the explanations -though slightly glossed over- of biology, how humans determined beauty and symmetry.  I also enjoyed the depiction of the utmost importance the library and archival materials played -and hopefully will come in to play again- of the images in magazines.

I am also relieved to see that there is an author who values the strength of a romantic relationship.  Instead of becoming more selfish when she find attraction, or perhaps love, Tally works to right her past wrongs, and in the process discovers that doing the right thing is hard.  She also learns that doing the right thing is, ultimately, RIGHT and finally begins to make decisions on her own with conviction.

As I mentioned, I like the content and picked up both Pretties and Specials at the library this morning and will probably be done with the whole series in a week.  I hope to see the vocabulary improve and perhaps we will see if the content (unlike the Harry Potter series) remains appropriate for the same age group start to finish.

Originally published at Me Playing Games. Please leave any comments there.

While Curse.com hopes to gain revenue from people using their site and putting up ads, they are quickly gaining enemies with those who use the WoW Matrix AddOn client.  With the  World of Warcraft 3.1.0.9767 patch, efforts have been made to block WoW Matrix from gathering Curse information.  Why can’t we all just get along?

The Rainbow Gnome has also made relevant comments, I’d check it out; he titles it “The WoW Matrix Wars Get More Intense.”

Originally published at Me Playing Games. Please leave any comments there.

I fell for it.  Fully and completely. And I’m sad that it isn’t a playable class, I was ready to purchase the game at that second.

Diablo 3’s new character class was announced on Wednesday April 1, 2009 as the archivist.

The character description can be found here, as long as Blizzard decides to keep it up: Archivist character class

The narrative from someone discovering the Archivist is as follows:

In my writings, I have recounted stories of the barbarians and their endless battles with the demons of the frozen north, and devoted pages to the wizards of Caldeum who harness the primal forces  of reality. But the might of these heroes is nothing compared to the power of the archivists of Westmarch. These brave souls wade into battle wielding tome and quill, armored not in ensorcelled plate or links of chain, but in the knowledge of generations past. These archivists fight not only for our future, but for our past as well.

I first encountered an archivist in the ruins of the great city of Travincal. While exploring one of the long-abandoned temples, I was drawn by the flickering of faint torchlight through a distant doorway, and then, as I crept nearer, by the sound of a voice. There was a feeling in the air of danger near at hand, an electricity that made the hairs on my neck rise. I inched forward, breath caught in my throat, grateful for the safety of the hallway’s long shadows. Then I saw him.

He was surrounded, the looming shapes of his foes bearing down upon him. His hair was unkempt and frazzled, his calloused hands cut and stained. But he had an air of supreme confidence, of a submerged violence that threatened to explode into being. He leapt forward, his hands grabbing for the leather bindings of his nearest enemy.

The archivist’s eyes searched for an opening, a weakness. His hands wrenched suddenly about his adversary and a sickening crack pierced the still air. Its spine broken, the book lay unmoving in the archivist’s now gentle grip. As he lifted its lifeless form into the dim light, the pages of the ancient tome fell open, the secrets of the text laid bare. I remember the words he read, the religious fervor of his voice: “Here begins the first chronicle of the life of holy Akarat, prophet of Zakarum….” And on the shelves that stood all around him, tome after tome waited.

I have the utmost respect for the archivists, these warriors of myth and legend. We know their names: Alimet Two Quills, master of illumination with both left and right hand; Morienne the Scrivener, a midwife whose poetry stole the hearts of kings and brought tyrants to tears; and Salazar Cid, the Master Transcriber of Gea Kul, whose bombastic penmanship is known in all the lands of the Twin Seas and beyond. But these are only a chosen few. The members of their honored fraternity are many, and their numbers grow every day.

In the dark days that I fear are yet to come, much will be decided by sword and axe, with steel and spell, but I believe that in scroll and tome our survival lies.

Some of the spells and abilities that the Archivist would have are:

Lorenado (like Tornado).
Quest Bolt. The video on the site shows the Archivist throwing “!” (the symbol for a quest giver) at enemies, turning them from a hostile target into a quest-giving, neutral NPC.
Shush. This calls forth a voice from the past to cause the ears (and bodies) of enemies to explode.
Book Vision. Highlights the books and bits of lore in the room the character is in.

This even sparked conversation on the Society of American Archivist’s Archives & Archivists listserv.

Congratulations, Blizzard.

(Also posted on www.thenovicearchivist.com)

Originally published at Me Playing Games. Please leave any comments there.

So… I know this is horrible.  I know I’m a sucker for things that have point systems. I recently joined Jinx! which is a site that makes hilarious gamer-related clothing and other stuff.

I am a night elf rogue and I think this is awesome.  With the advent of WotKL, it really should say 401, instead of 376.  Clicking on this link and creating an account to browse will help me earn stuff. Like maybe this shirt   Someday when I feel I have $25 or so to treat myself with I will get a fun shirt from them.  And take awesome pics of myself in it and send it to them

Originally published at The Novice Archivist. Please leave any comments there.

I have discovered the miracle known as audio books within the past year.  I will drive between St. Paul/Mpls area to Madison visiting my family for the holidays and that can be a 5-6.5 hour trip depending an traffic and which interstate I choose to take.  This entry is partially inspired by Richard Cox’s blog, Reading Archives and partially by the content of the book itself.

This book is not “about” archives.  At least, it doesn’t say it is. I will also say that I am not finished with the story, I’m on CD 3 out of 5 and I’m saving the rest for my ride home on January 2 or 3.  These are the points that I am most interested in: The girl works at a homeless shelter and one of the elderly men that they had known for about a year passed away.  They had helped to get him an apartment of his own and when they cleaned it out, they found a box of photos that were among the few possession that he brought with him when he arrived.  Upon his death, the shelter director had gone to Laurel, our protagonist, to help her curate a show of the photos.  The elderly man had often talked about having a show someday and the director wanted to make sure he didn’t have family who would want the photos or copyright, etc.  Laurel is also chosen for her experience in photography and she prints out photos from the negatives and does some research on his former life before the shelter with clues from some of the older photographs.

While the genius in the writing is the other, more personal part of the story and the interconnectedness between herself and the elderly man, I was facinated by the writing and the understanding of the process of what she was doing.  First, this is the kind of archival work that I would like to find.  I have earned my photography minor, possibly putting more work into that than I did into my Spanish major.  Secondly, the steps of intense archival work are there.  She has no archival training, but she does have photographic knowledge.   There is description of her thought processes on how to store, selection of what to print, creating an inventory of the images and negatives as well as searching for copyright restrictions or anyone else who may hold copyright.

This book is not just a novel, but it also has documentation of how a non-archivally trained professional would go about taking care of a collection.  It is a little slow going at times and I do need to take a break after each CD or so, but the ties to the archival world are fairly strong.  If you are interested in reading/listening to it, however, I would suggest reading or re-reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  There are a lot of references to the characters/people of that book as well.