just looking

I’ve been getting a little bit interested in games again. Not interested enough to spend any significant amount of time actually playing a game, but enough to spend some time thinking about them and looking at some interesting stuff.

I still haven’t finished Final Fantasy VIII, which I started playing in 2003. And I’m pretty sure the last time I made any progress with it was 2009. I jumped back in a couple of times recently, but I’m stuck at a boss fight that I can’t seem to get past, most likely because I haven’t played the game in so long I really don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. So I did some reading to refresh my memory, including finding a few various FAQs and walkthroughs that I had previously downloaded. So I think I have an idea of where I am now, and what I need to do to progress, but now I’ve kind of lost interest again.

Last night, I spent some time browsing through some of the stuff that’s marked down for Steam’s big sale this weekend. There are some good RPGs on sale cheap, including some good stuff that’s marked down to $1.50 or $3. But I’m pretty sure I’d buy something, then never get around to playing it, like I usually do. So I should really just not buy anything.

Over at GOG, I’ve noticed that they’ve added some more AD&D games since the last time I looked, including Dark Queen of Krynn, which is the one gold box game I never finished. And Neverwinter Nights, which I have a regular boxed copy of, for Mac OS, which I bought and never even installed, plus my brother’s old copy for PC (which he played all the way through, I think).

I’ve also been tempted to try out TIS-100, but I think I’m more interested in the idea than the execution on this one. If I want to learn a new programming language, I’m probably better off learning one that looks good on my resume, rather than one that’s really only useful as part of a game. Jeff Atwood has some interesting things to say about this game, and others like it.

Reading about TIS-100 has made me think more deeply about what I’ve been doing with my spare time lately, and what I want to do with it. I enjoy learning new programming languages, and reading (reasonably) high-brow stuff, but, at the end of a workday, I often don’t have the energy for anything other than TV and comic books. And my eyesight often fades at the end of a day, so doing more programming work is out of the question. Even reading can be a chore, depending on the material and typography. And playing a video game sometimes seems more stress-inducing than stress-relieving.

I wonder how somebody like Shawn Wildermuth can do so much work and travel and still spend 1300+ hours on Fallout 4. Lots of coffee, I guess. I can’t imagine spending that much time on a game, while still being a productive member of society. (Shawn, meanwhile, manages to blog, produce a podcast, create content for Pluralsight, and who knows what else. But I digress.)

I’ve been thinking that maybe learning a bit more about game programming might be a fun thing to do. Daniel Schuller’s book How to Make an RPG looks like it could be a good place to start. If nothing else, I’d learn Lua, since that’s the language he uses in this book. The book is almost 1000 pages long though, so that could be a pretty big commitment. (And I’m not sure if knowing how to write a game in Lua would be any more useful on the resume than knowing how to program the TIS-100.)

comics, new and old

I’m still reading my way through old Legion of Super-Heroes issues and having a lot of fun with it.

I even went on Comixology and bought the tie-in Action/Superman issues for the big Superboy story. I’ll admit that it was just about as disappointing as I’d expected it to be, though there were some fun bits in it. The plot was obviously tossed together to reconcile Legion continuity with the (then) new status quo with Superman, and doesn’t really make any logical sense. (Then again, a lot of stuff in superhero comics doesn’t make much logical sense.) But it’s good to have finally read it, after seeing it referenced so often over the years.

I’m continuing to enjoy the trip down memory lane provided by the house ads, letters columns, and “Meanwhile” columns in these comics. (You don’t get any of that in the Comixology versions, so that’s one reason why it’s still cool to read the dead-tree back issues.) I just passed the point where DC was pushing Millennium and its umpteen crossover issues. I didn’t read Millennium when it came out, and I’ve never been tempted to pick up the back issues, but now I’m kind of curious. It doesn’t seem to be available on Comixology, and the collected edition isn’t currently in print (but it’s available used on Amazon). It seems to be one of those series that had a lot of hype, but it fizzled out pretty quickly. Maybe if I see it in somebody’s dollar box at a con, I’ll pick it up.

Meanwhile, I just picked up the second printing of the Rebirth Special, unfortunately now $5.99 instead of the original $2.99. I already read the digital version, but wanted to pick up a hard copy. I have a few of the recent “Rebirth” issues, but haven’t read any of them yet. Reaction to Rebirth seems to be mixed:

So overall, where is DC standing?  In a fog trying to get the comics closer to the tone and feel of 10 years ago, but still clinging to recent continuity.  Can they have their cake and eat it, too?

— from A Fix-Up, Not a Reboot: One Month into DC’s Rebirth

That article also mentions what I’d consider a nightmare scenario, though I admit it’s not entirely unlikely at this point: a “Justice League Vs. Watchmen” series. (Seriously, just leave Watchmen alone, please! It’s a great book and it should stand alone.)

I’d say that DC continuity at this point is so confusing that I’m best off just cherry-picking the stuff that gets good critical reaction, after it’s been published, in trade form or on Comixology, when it’s on sale. That’s what I’ve been doing with the New 52 stuff. I’ve read some of Snyder’s Batman, and some other stuff, and enjoyed it, but I really never wanted to get too caught up in the overall continuity.

no NYCC for me

Well, I took a shot at getting NYCC tickets earlier this week, but I gave up on it after waiting about 90 minutes and seeing 4-day and 3-day passes sell out. I probably could have hung in there and gotten a one-day Sunday ticket, but it wasn’t worth the effort.

On the positive side, the debilitating pain in my foot that kept me home from work that day has almost completely gone away. And I’ve got an appointment with a podiatrist in a couple of weeks, so we can hopefully figure out what I can do to prevent this from happening again. I’ve already been a little proactive, spending $12 on a pair of off-brand gel inserts for my sneakers. Those actually seem to be helping a little bit.

I’d really like to go to at least one con this year, if I can, but SDCC and NYCC are both off the table now, and I’ve already missed WonderCon. It’s probably not too late to register for DragonCon, if I can talk myself into flying down to Atlanta.

no more Tekserve

I just heard the news that Tekserve is going to close soon. I got my MacBook fixed at Tekserve late last year, and they did a good job on it. There’s really no other place to take a broken Mac anymore, other than the Apple Store. And Apple is picky about what they’ll fix and what they won’t. (They wouldn’t have touched mine, since I have a 3rd party SSD in there.)

This is really disappointing, but I guess it was inevitable. Rents in NYC are going through the roof, so smaller independent stores of any kind have trouble staying in business. And there are multiple (official) Apple Stores in NYC, so fewer people are going to bother with (or even be aware of) an independent Apple retailer.

I guess if I need my MacBook fixed again, I’ll have to take a trip out to PowerMax in Oregon!

Evernote price changes

I just read about Evernote’s pricing and plan changes. The price of a premium account is going from $50/year to $70/year. My premium account renews in January, so I don’t really need to make any decisions just yet. I could drop back to a Plus plan, which would be $35/year. There’s not much in the premium plan that I’d miss if I dropped down to Plus. And, while $70/year seems a bit expensive, I could certainly afford that.

A lot of people posting in the Evernote subreddit are talking about switching to OneNote or Apple Notes. The latter wouldn’t work for me, since I need Windows support. OneNote is a possibility though. But I really like Evernote more than OneNote, and migrating all my notes at this point would be a hassle. (I currently have over 800 notes.)

NYCC tickets, part two: in the queue

I wound up staying home from work today, due to a problem with my right foot. I went to the doctor this morning, and it’s not broken or anything, but I need to go see a foot doctor soon. And this means I’m home, with my foot propped up, and nothing much to do. So I’m waiting in the “virtual queue” for NYCC tickets.

NYCC’s queue page isn’t as interesting as SDCC’s. There’s really nothing to indicate your place in the queue, and there’s no visual indication that there’s anything going on behind the scenes. I assume there’s some JavaScript that’s going out and pinging a server every few seconds, but there’s no indication of that. NYCC is posting updates to their Twitter feed, so that’s something.

It’s been about 30 minutes now, and I’ll give it a little longer, but I feel like I’m about ready for a nap, so I’m not going to give it much longer. And hey, if there’s something wrong with my foot, maybe I shouldn’t be making plans to go to a con that’s going to require a lot of time on my feet, walking around a giant convention center.

NYCC tickets

Well, I got the news today that NYCC tickets are going on sale this Wednesday, at noon. It’s going to be “first come, first served,” so I guess I need to get in there early or miss out. With this year’s “fan verification” thing, I thought maybe they’d do something more interesting, but I guess not. You just need to click the link at the right time, and hope for the best.

San Diego always does their ticket sales on a Saturday, so I can just stay home and try to get tickets. Since NYCC is doing it on a weekday, I need to decide if I want to try for tickets on my phone or maybe bring my laptop to Starbucks at lunch time. (I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get to the ticket site on my work PC, since we do some pretty serious web filtering on our network.) Or I guess I could take a vacation day, though that seems like going a bit too far.

I actually would like to go to NYCC this year, since I haven’t been to a big con in a few years. The last one was SDCC in 2012. And I’m starting to get more interested in what’s going on in comics right now, with Civil War II, DC’s Rebirth, and stuff like that. So I think it would be a lot of fun.

Legion of Super-Heroes

Quite some time ago, my brother Pat bought a big stack of Legion of Super-Heroes comics on eBay. Pat wasn’t a big comics fan, but occasionally he’d get the urge to read some goofy superhero comics, and he bought these on a lark. He bought a large chunk of the Paul Levitz run from the mid to late eighties. Specifically, the “Baxter paper” (aka volume 3) Legion book that started in 1984. (Remember when we used to all know the name brand of the paper that certain comics were printed on? No? Well, you’re not as old as I am, then.)

At some point, the comics got passed along to me. I had read a lot of earlier Levitz/Giffen Legion comics, including some of the earlier v. 3 issues. So there was some overlap with stuff that was already in my collection. But I’d stopped buying the Legion book in 1985 or 1986, and didn’t follow it regularly while I was in college. I left Pat’s Legion books sitting in a corner of my apartment gathering dust for quite a while. Eventually, I took them and cross-checked them against stuff I already owned, and eliminated the dups, selling those off on eBay. Then, I put the remaining issues at the bottom of my “to be read” stack, where they’ve been ever since.

Well, I finally decided to attack that pile of Legion comics today, and I’m glad I did. It’s bringing back a lot of memories. First, I’m glad to say that these books hold up pretty well, if you go into them with an open mind. Yes, some of the character names are goofy. (“Starfinger,” for instance.) And yes, the look of some of the characters is very 80s. But it’s all part of the charm. Paul Levitz manages to write stories with these characters that treat them with respect, and treat their history with respect, without it all becoming unintentionally funny. (Well, maybe it would be to some people, but not me.) The tone is just right.

The mid to late 80s were a really exciting time in comics. There are house ads for Watchmen and Batman: Year One in the back of these issues. Comic book sales were transitioning from primarily newsstand distribution to primarily direct sales (comic shop) distribution. Printing quality and technology were getting better and better. It’s fun to dip back into this era.

The Legion has gone through a ton of reboots and revisions over the years. I’ve read parts of various new versions, with mixed results, and the original Levitz run remains my favorite. I haven’t yet gotten to the storyline where they try to reconcile Superman’s revised post-Crisis continuity with Legion continuity, and I’m a little worried that it might really derail things. (But, hey, all good things must come to an end.)

Levitz came back for a new run, starting in 2010, and I also recently read the start of that run. Once I finish with the 1980’s stuff, I think I’ll go back and pick up the rest of the recent Levitz run. It’s pretty good, and you can tell that Levitz is enjoying himself. (Given Levitz’ previous position as President/Publisher at DC, I’m pretty sure he’s not doing this new freelance work for the paycheck. Rather, he’s doing it out of love.)

Fifteen years

I just noticed my 10 year post in the “on this day” sidebar. And my first post. So it looks like this blog is fifteen years old today! Weird.

I’m not really in a “reminisce about the last five years” mood right now, so I’ll just leave this here as a marker. I wonder if I’ll still be maintaining this blog in five years, at the twenty-year mark?

Flash Cakes and Glo-Balls

I’m reading a comic from 2010 and saw an ad for these. (More info here.)

I’m so disappointed. I’ve totally missed my chance to eat Flash Cakes and Green Lantern Glo-Balls. I wasn’t reading any regular monthly books in 2010, or really following comic news much, so I missed these entirely.

It’s probably for the best. Hostess cupcakes aren’t good for you and they have a lot of calories, right?