Soulless - How I learned I like Urban Fantasy

On October 1st at 7:56 am something happened. You see, several weeks before that I bumped into a fascinating person on Twitter by the name of Gail Carriger. I don't know who followed who first, but I'm fairly sure it was due to a Follow Friday suggestion from Jill Estabrooks.

Gail Carriger is a fascinating person to follow on Twitter, and her website is a boon to anyone interested in Steampunk. Also, she happens to be an author. Her style of humor on Twitter made me think her books would be excellent to read, but unfortunately her books weren't actually out yet.

So I really had no choice... I had to preorder her first book: Soulless. I admit I was nervous. I am not the type to preorder books. Also I haven't read much in the way of Steampunk besides The Difference Engine. Although I have a rather fluid gender identity the idea of reading what might be construed as a romance novel worried me.

And then on October 1st at 7:56 am it finally happened... Soulless magically appeared on my iPhone. Nevermind that I was supposed to be at work at 8:00.

My expectations were off however. Soulless was better than I expected. I had not read a book that good since Spook Country, or perhaps Keeping It Real.

There were many genres in Soulless. Steampunk, vampires, werewolves, science, romance, comedy... Listing them all off almost sounds silly. But that's exactly what this book is.

The Steampunk is woven casually in, like Firefly. The romance was believable and did not offend my X chromosome, yet made my Y chromosome beg for more. British humor bringing it all together naturally with preternatural Alexia Tarabotti standing in the middle of it.

I look forward to preordering her next book: Changeless. (don't read the synopsis of Changeless until you read Soulless, as it might have spoilers!)

I highly suggest adding this to your list of books to read. It is a fast read that keeps you interested. It blends several genres smoothly, letting you sample several while still staying in the comfort zone of whichever is your favorite genre. It won't challenge your beliefs in humanity or deal with very many social issues, but it will make you smile which is more important anyways.

Racism in MMO Games

Almost every day I log into an MMO I see racism. Yes, video games have racism. But I'm not talking about real world racism. I'm talking about being racist against other video game races. Show me someone who plays an elf and I'll show you someone who is racist against trolls.

My Gnome wizard in EQ2 hates Frogloks and Kerran, and those horribly annoying Sarnak. Casafin, my Fae berserker constantly makes fun of Arasai and those silly fat Halflings. And does anyone want to see a female Troll or Ogre? Sure there are always exceptions, everyone loves Mooshga. We all know a Froglok caster that tops the DPS list and is nice about it. But that is still racism, disliking an entire race and only making an exception for those that we are close to.

But this sort of racism is okay. Even the game creators say it is, and many NPC's are racist too. Races in video games are very different from each other. An dwarf and an elf are very different. Different cultures, different looks, and often times even different stats. And more importantly, the player chooses what race they want to be. And of course it's not meant to harm, it's just harmless role playing. We don't actually think ill of people that play particular races (except for those people that play those awful Sarnak, right?). Do the characters have a choice in what race they are? So is it right for one of my characters to hate halflings or does it make my character a bad person (except in the situation of Frogloks, they are just so annoyingly hoppy that it's okay to hate them no matter what).

Is this what it was like before I was born, when racism was acceptable? Could someone justify hating an Irish person because of their accent, and it not mean anything personal? Society said it was okay to hate, therefor it was okay. Video game society says it's okay to hate video game races, so it's okay. Right? Now, I understand that video games are obviously different than real life. We don't actually go around killing people of other races in video games (except for that thrill you get from killing a slow moving stupid ogre on the pvp servers, right?). We don't burn crosses on their lawns, and it's not 'real'. It's all make believe, pretend, fiction, role playing... But does it mirror something in us? Is video game racism a reflection of the fact that we can never fully get rid of racism in the real world? Is it a way for us to direct our need for hate? Or is it all just fun and games?

Personally for me, I have reasons for my dislike of races. I am allergic to cats and don't like litterboxes, so kerran remind me of that. Frogloks actually I would like, except their hopping animation I find distracting. Sarnak are just big, and friggin ugly (I'm just not a fan of their particular model being used as a character race). Arasi are fun to make fun of just because of their emo /dance animation. I personally actually have nothing against any race, it's all fun and games to me.

Programming and language

Most folks that aren't programmers think programming is either really hard, or really easy. In truth it is both.

Programming is just language. If you speak a second language, like French or Spanish, then you know what it takes to learn another language. Programming is just language. You type out a set of instructions to the computer. That's it.

The tricky part is that it is a very picky language, and computers do not understand typos or bad grammar very well. So in order to be a good programmer, you have to really understand your language. Similar to if you want to write published papers you need to be pretty good at English.

Many programmers only learn a few languages, because that's all they need. Similarly, if you are only dealing with people in the Americas', you probably only need to know English French and Spanish. But there are those people that know 13 different spoken languages, the linguists out there. Well some of us are like that, and know more programming languages than we care to count. There are also those that study and create and read ancient spoken languages, there are also programmers that are like that.

Luckily, programming languages are much smaller than spoken languages. Much fewer ways to say things. Also, usually you are talking about very concrete topics, like math and science, and not fuzzy topics like emotions. Also, you can try running your code and see if the computer says "I don't understand". The only real problem comes up when you word something wrong and the computer thinks you mean something else.

So programming is only as hard as you want it to be. Learn a little, or learn a lot. There is always more languages to be learned, and if you run out, you can invent some new ones.

I had a dream last night and it fit me like a glove

Last night I dreamed I installed linux. Ubuntu I believe. In my bed. Yes, I dreamed I installed linux in my bed. I mean, if you are going to have an OS installed in your bed, do you really want Vista on there?

But it just wasn't working quite how I wanted. Because apparently I installed linux in my bed. And my pillow was just simply not behaving quite right. Normally I like to tuck my arm under the pillow, but apparently Ubuntu wouldn't let me do that. Whenever I tried the pillow would move. It was otherwise a completely functional pillow, except that if you tried to put anything under it (besides the bed of course) it would just not work.

So, I tried looking in the man pages for info on pillow and beds... but you know how man pages are. After a good hour I still couldn't figure out what I wanted (although I did learn all sorts of other completely unrelated things I could do with my bed). I also discovered that changing the covers was a pretty easy task if you installed this other little thing. So I downloaded the RPM and sure enough, pretty cool, I could change the color of my covers. Still couldn't put my arm under the pillow though.

Looked up a few other flavors of linux, and sure enough, pretty much none of them let you put your arm under the pillow. Apparently they would have to completely rewrite the pillow in order to allow that. So I got frustrated and decide maybe I should just give up and go with Windows since I knew you could put your arm under the pillow in Windows.

At that point my alarm went off and I woke up. My arm was under my pillow. WTF.

So, now I'm trying to analyze this dream. I believe my mind is trying to tell me about the frustrations of linux. So much potential, so much power, so much freedom, but there is always that annoying little frustrating thing that you can't figure out how to fix unless you get way too deep. But yet a strong desire to go away from Windows. But... why didn't I dream about a Mac bed? That would be a nice bed. Probably really sleek looking, and all white. I would totally buy a bed from Mac.

Male or Female?

It's pretty obvious for all of us to know if we are male or female. I mean, just check between your legs, right? But do you ACT and THINK like a male or female? That's a much trickier question.

I've always claimed that I am somewhere in between. Androgynous, so to speak. Not in the sense that I am a neither, but more that I have traits that are feminine, and traits that are masculine. I think this is a good thing, because I feel that I can relate to either gender.

So I ran across a little widget on BBC that identifies if you think like a girl or a guy.

It gives you a nice little graph at the end. Turns out I am right in the middle.

As a general rule, on each part I scored higher than BOTH men and women, the only exception was the eyes test (which I thought was done poorly, normally I am quite good at reading people's eyes), and Words (which I misunderstood how it was supposed to be done). I am more empathic than women, more analytical than men. I'm mostly ambidextrous, so that invalidated part of the test. My hands apparently are built like a woman's (I already know that from working in a jewelry store for a while). I prefer masculine looking faces apparently (but mostly I didn't like any of the photos, they all looked like mug shots). I'm not entirely sure I understood the Ultimatum test.

So there you have it. I'm androgynous in my gender identity. I'm the best of both. Or at least, that's what BBC tells me. I think what would be interesting is to see how different age ranges test on it... Are 50 year old men more 'manly' than new age 20 somethings?

Amazon + Wizards = More Disappointment

Well, it looks like gamers have been hit again. 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons was released this last weekend (June 6th). But gamers have been anticipating D&D 4.0 for quite a while now. So I, like most of them, preordered a full set of books from Amazon.com.

I, like most gamers, misread what Amazon said on their website. The expected ship date was the 10th, however, most of us thought that would be the expected delivery date. It was a mistake on our part, there is no doubt of that. Of course Amazon wasn't shipping the books on the weekend, they only ship on weekdays. But why would it take until Tuesday to get the books shipped? Especially since they are preorders, couldn't they be packaged and ready to go?

It gets worse though. Here it is the 11th. And my books are not shipped yet. Most people I have talked to have not had their books shipped yet. I understand, an expected ship date is not a hard date, it can move. Currently anticipated delivery date is somewhere around the 23rd for my books.

But it gets even worse than that! Many gamers wanted there D&D books before the weekend, because that is when their group was planning on gaming. Realizing that their books wouldn't be here by then, they decided to upgrade their shipping, in hopes that it would get here by late Friday. Now comes an extremely important warning to all D&D gamers out there that might consider this: Changing your shipping appears to put you to the BACK of the shipping queue! There are people out there that upgraded their shipping to 2 day, but now their estimated ship date is in late July!

When Harry Potter books are released, everyone received their books on the day that the book was released. Except for the time that people received their books early. I understand that D&D books are not as popular as Harry Potter. A few days wait is understandable. However, some people are going to have to wait over a month before they get theirs. Right now I haven't heard anything to suggest if this mess is to blame on Amazon, Wizards, or both.

Our gaming group was lucky. I purchased a copy of the PH from Borders (we have two gamers in our house) and a full set from Amazon. The other half of our gaming group is halfway across the country (we play over the net), and it sounds like one of their books did ship and will hopefully get there before the weekend, so all of them get to share one book. If their book doesn't get there by Friday, then I guess we will have to cancel our session. Maybe I will play Wii Fit instead, if only I could find one in any of the stores... Whoa, deja vu...

4th Time's a Charm

I was very excited about the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, I pre-ordered the boxed set from Amazon. Unfortunately the delivery date was not the same as the release date. So I found myself buying a copy of the Player's Handbook from Border's (it never hurts to have multiple copies of the PH anyways).

One of the things I was looking forward to the most was the online table top. I don't like OpenRPG, which is why I helped co-develop d20 Chat. Both of course have their limitations, and I was hoping that the solution Wizards of the Coast was offering would bridge this gap, and more. I was looking forward to the character generator, the table top, the rules database, all of it! They called it D&D Insider.

When I got my PH, I saw in the back that there was a 10 day free trial of the tools. Which I thought was great (even though I planned on paying regardless, although I was not sure of the price at the time... but I was willing to pay quite a bit).

However, after much research, I could not figure out sign up for the tools. I have a forums account, I have a Gleemax account, I have the book, what more do I need? Where do I go? What's going on? After much research, I discovered that the toolset is not out yet. This annoyed me. I mean, we had previously been told they were planning to release them together, the books and the tools. Bummer.

I looked deeper, trying to figure out when they would be released. The answer? No ETA. Six months ago, this product was planning to be released at the beginning of June, and now there is no estimate. That is not a good thing. The direct quote was "I'd say a safe bet is at least a few months from now, probably longer". Wait, how long have they known this was going to be an issue? 05/07/2008. On that date, an article was posted talking about D&D Insider. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to read every individual column on Wizards. On top of that, in order to view the article you have to be signed into D&D Insider. Which means that info wasn't exactly a public press release.

I feel that we were mislead. We were promised a product, and it did not happen. I know that sometimes software does not make it's deadlines, I'm a programmer after all. Deadlines are moving targets. But in most lines of work, if you miss a MAJOR deadline like this one, you are in trouble. If a video game does not come out when it says, and instead no ETA is given, it is usually referred to as vaporware.

I know, it's only a few months, right? Except for the fact that they say they will only release one component at a time, and that it will likely be a month or so in between each iteration. The piece I REALLY want is the game table (my gaming group is spread across multiple states). This means it could be a year before I get the game table. That is, if it even happens.

Let us examine the track record of Wizards of the Coast regarding D&D software.

First, there was "Character Generator", it came with the original 3.0 PH. It was very buggy, and lots of the equations and data was simply incorrect. It was made by Fluid Entertainment. Later it did receive an update, which made it functional, and correct, albeit still not very useful.

They announced a big upcoming tool called Master Tools, it was going to be a character generator, 3d map builder, monster generator, and tons of other wonderful tools. It didn't really pan out, most features got cut, and it became "E-Tools: Character and Monster Generator". Which was not very impressive, and very buggy.

Wizards realized that maybe Fluid Entertainment was not doing them well, so they switched to Code Monkey Publishing. CMP worked very hard fixing major bugs, and adding more datasets. They also supported the open source project PCGen, and they supplied files that worked with PCGen. This was an excellent move. However, they expected miracles from CMP, and CMP simply wasn't fast enough about performing them. Perhaps CMP should have hired more people. Wizards dropped CMP just when everyone was starting to trust and like CMP (I purchased quite a few data sets to use with PCGen through them).

And here we are now. Waiting for D&D Insider to pan out.

This makes me hope that PCGen is going to support 4th edition. It also makes me think I need to get to work adding a battle grid to d20 Chat, as that is one of the most glaring missing features.