New Mindstorms!

Oho! The long awaited update to Lego Mindstorms has been announced and it looks pretty cool. See some stuff at the Mindstorms site and a Wired article about the development. It looks pretty cool - Mac support from the "official" environment, Bluetooth support for wireless programming, new ultrasonic vision and sound sensors and all motors have built in rotation sensors. All that adds up to a remarkably capable update. Daddy likes!


Lego buying has been at a lull - it's been a while since I played with my Mindstorms and my office is pretty much full up on models. Add in a lack of interest in most of the newer lines and . . . I just haven't done much. But this new CPU looks schweet.

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Download This Revisited

Back in November I linked to the Something Awful "NESCover" album (original post here). For whatever reason Bwana keeps critically failing his clue rolls when attempting to uncompress the RAR file, so I zipped the files from my iTunes library. Grab it here if you have similar problems. (EDIT: 1/12/08 - This file didn't survive the conversion from MovableType to Wordpress. Actually, it wasn't on the MT site anymore either. If for some reason you find this post and want the songs drop me an email.) Oh and Happy New Year!

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Bits and bobs

Bunch of unrelated little bits, spewed at you into one big post. Enjoy!
  1. Podcasts - I've been attempting to catch up on my old podcasts lately. Two that I've enjoyed: Wil Wheaton's Radio Free Burrito and surprisingly, the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour podcast. I say surprisingly because I've never been able to get interested in the Pro Tour recaps. I subscribed to the podcast because it was the MTG podcast, and almost deleted it when I realized it was all Pro Tour focused. But what can I say, reading the web recaps of the Pro Tour is boring, but the audio recording conveys the . . . sport of it, the human drama of the various players striving against each other.
  2. Guitar Hero - I may have hit a wall. I got to the hard level without learning the hammer-on and pick-off techniques. I mean, I understand them but I don't actually use them. The hard difficulty adds a sixth fingering position, and that's hard enough but at the same time the notes come quickly enough that I need to master this other thing. My last couple of sessions with it have convinced me I need to go back to a difficulty where I can play it, but force myself to try the more complex fingering techniques. I'm not sure I'll break through the wall. We'll see.
  3. Web Site - I've been thinking about this site and my fledgling writing career. I've come to the conclusion that this site, as I currently use it is unsuitable for for a professional writer promotional vehicle. I see two options - 1) I spin that promotional stuff off into a new site and probably makes posts here even more rare. 2) I revamp this site (lose the "Sniping Post" moniker for instance, stop slagging various game developers, and stop using it to mock my personal friends). I go back and forth as to the correct answer. Any opinions? Should I separate the personal crap from my "professional" online presence?
  4. Holiday Reading - Lately I haven't had much time to read novels, I've been catching up with magazines, or reading MTG books. But now we're flying back east next week for a bit, so I got a batch of Amazon goodies today. :-) .

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Some people have no shame

Disney's Kanter says the new cartoon represents not an abandonment of an old, familiar world, but rather an alternate universe for Pooh and his crew."Christopher Robin is still out there in the woods, playing," she says. "We hope people will fall for this new tomboyish girl. The last thing we want to be is the ones who brought the franchise down."

USATODAY.com - Disney lets girl into Winnie's world

A few days ago a friend expressed sentiment about sometimes you almost feel sorry for people who work in marketing. Then I see this and I'm reminded that the profession has earned my enmity. They are making a new CGI Winnie the Pooh TV show - likely bad, but I'd reserve judgement. They are replacing Christopher Robin with a girl. Why? Apparently to bring an "older audience" to Pooh. OK, I don't need to reserve judgement anymore - this stinks.

There's a lot of babble in the story about "expanding" the brand which is pretty sad. Y'see adding a new character expands the brand. Replacing one character with another one doesn't  expand the brand, it changes the brand for no good reason. Grrrr.

(I saw it from The Whatever - author John Scalzi's blog.)

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Breaking through Writers Block

Geez. Almost two weeks of non-posting. I have an excuse, sorta. Wizards kicked me back to the chapter outline - rightfully so, but still a setback. The story is absolutely better for the rework but I've noticed every time I work on the chapter outline it's a huge writer's block - I get nothing done while I'm on it. But I sent off a revised outline today, and lo the block is lifted!


Karin is sick, so I spent most of the evening tending to the sick (oh I make a mean chicken noodle soup with homemade turkey stock - colds beware!) but after she crashed I felt the creative juices flowing. I've just finished cranking out part IV of my secret web-serial. When I want to write but not worry about fitting into the Magic style I've been writing on this. Come 2006 you blog readers will begin to thrill to the epic adventures of Captain Jaimie Arcolier - space pirate extraordinaire! Don't believe me? Check this fragment:

The pilot, a young whelp of an ensign stuttered out his call for full thrust. Tammy in engineering flickered into view in a corner of the viewscreen as the <i>Revenge</i> leapt forward. "Full thrust? William? You sure you can handle what I can put out?" Tammy chuckled throatily as the young pilot blushed crimson. Tammy locked eyes with Jaimie and arched an eyebrow. "Seriously Cap'n. How do you find them so young and innocent? You know I love it!"

Jaimie threw her head back in a full-throated guffaw. "Down girl! I promised his Ma we wouldn't hurt him. Get us into grapple in the next minute and I promise you an extra week of shore leave. Hell, I'll go with you. Haven won't know what hit them, but we'll have a full squad of new marines when we launch. That's a Captain's Promise there lassie!"

Tammy tugged a raven forelock in a mock salute. "Aye, aye Cap'n! It's a date!" her screen faded out as William swallowed ineffectually and continued to guide the <i>Revenge</i> into Electro-Grapple range.

That's good stuff there. I like it a lot. And you should all be very afraid, because I realized the perfect soundtrack for this serial - and it is this

Seriously though, this has been my outlet for a few months now. I expect to start posting about 1K words a week in the new year. It's a web serial in the style of the old-tyme sci-fi radio and movie serials. I like it a lot, and Jaimie Arcolier has a lot of fun in her red-haired chassis. I hope you'll like her as well - we'll see next month!

And yes, there is Scottish whiskey involved with this post. Today's post is brought to you in part by Strathisla (and Abba, natch - Take a chance on me!) But most of Jaimie's adventures to date have been written very sober. I'm just giddy to have unlocked the words again. Words - I've missed you!

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(EDIT: every once in a while Flock posts something with the GMT timestamp, instead of the PST one. This makes things order incorrectly if I have multiple entries on a day. So I fixed the publish time.)
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