By the title I am, of course, referring to my lack of posts lately, and the fact that this one is mostly just an apology for same. Naturally I’ve got all the usual excuses: hella busy at work (hi, I’m contracted to a bank right now.. yeah.) I’ve been ill (mmm… flu season in southern California. I’ll have mine with a side of ‘oh shit, everything’s on fire!’) and then… well.. I managed to be alive long enough to hit a short convention nearby. Just a small con thrown by a local company, which I’ll tell you all about later. For now, I’ll give you a hint.

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Cause honestly that’s all I’m capable of just now. Work is being bat-poop crazy right now and honestly I barely have time to make dinner let alone make a string of coherent words and sentences to post in this here space. So in the hopes of tiding y’all over a bit, here’s some links. Over here’s a pretty cool guy who talks about comics and cool TV shows and when you’re really lucky he’ll talk about what he’s up to in his Role playing game. (Old School pen and paper style, even!) oh, and movies! This guy seems to do EVERYTHING! I love that.

And if that’s not enough to slake your geek-chatter thirst, these guys over here have some interesting stuff to say about, um, all kinds of things. I particularly enjoy reading their reviews since they tend to be actual reviews and not just screaming fist waving rants. Ahhh, so nice to be spoken to like an adult, isn’t it?

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You may have guessed, if you’ve read more than one of my posts, that I enjoy a few creative outlets. Knitting and spinning are, to me, incredibly enjoyable experiences that help me feel a connection to pretty much the whole of human history. I get wrapped up in letting my mind boggle that almost since mankind has been clothing himself he’s been doing the same thing that I do when I sit down to spin. Just dang. I find the act of creating the yarn (and subsequently knitting it up) assuages my creativity and my need to make something.

The trouble is that there have always been other things that I’ve wanted to do. I’ve been madly jealous of my brother’s artistic skills (and subsequently the artistic skills of several of my friends.) I once also dreamed of being a writer of fiction when I grew up. But, it was not to be. I can’t draw really, and I’ll spare you my fiction (for NOW!!!) so I just go on feeling like I ought to be doing something creative with my life. Instead, I get up in the morning and go to work, and I slog though the tedium of an office, and come home again and make dinner, and when I can I snatch some time at the spinning wheel while I watch today’s episode of Whatever’s On TV… you see where I’m going with this, don’t you? Maybe even sympathize?

Geeks are well known for their desire to add to the creative force that is human culture- producing everything from fan art to fanfics to movies that are an homage to some slice of geek life. But not all of us are so brave as to get out there and be creative in public, and while rolling around the ‘net I have found that more reasoned heads than mine have a few suggestions. The first tip on this list seems to me to be the most important step.

Name your vision.
If you’re in love with working in a particular medium, you’re heads above the crowd because you know what you love to do. And once you know what you love to do, you can create a vision of how you will express that in your life.

If you don’t know what you want to do, then it’s going to be very difficult to do it. There are several other fantastic ideas, such as taking 10 minutes to just do something towards furthering your work, and creating a morning ritual to get your creative brain off to a good start. The best advice I can think of is the same advice that I’ve seen everywhere that talks about this sort of thing: Just Start Doing It Already! Really. Of course, that’s easier said than done, but there are plenty of ways to force yourself into it- NaNoWriMo is the only thing coming to mind right now, but I’m sure there are more.

Is there something that get’s your creative juices flowing? Some other kick in the butt than forcing a novel from your fingers in one month? Comments on my madness?

*As an unrelated note, if any of you are trying to click those artistically fabulous links over there to the right, we know that the store is totally borked right now. We’re working on it, but it seems to have committed suicide in a rather spectacular manner, so it might take a few days to finish getting it all smoothed out and back up. Sorry ’bout that.

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So I was bored at work today and while I was doing a little wandering around the web I read something that gave me pause to think. You see, there are several skills that I have been trying for years now to learn, to somewhat less than stellar results. Learning Japanese is rather at the top of my list just now, and languages particularly seem to be difficult for me. Part of the problem is that convincing myself to sit down and actually STUDY anything is nearly impossible, since I hardly ever feel like I have learned something after an hour with a textbook or in a class, so I nearly always end up feeling like I CAN’T do something, mostly because the whole thing feels so damn daunting!

Here’s where the at-work web surfing came in. The blog I stumbled onto had an article in its archive about mastering new skills. The author takes a common statement (that it takes 10000 hours to master a skill) and breaks it down into less-scary sounding chunks, and honestly makes the whole process sound almost commonplace. This is what he said:

OK, we’ve got our skill. And, we’ve got our number: 10,000 hours. Let’s call that mastery. (Worst comes to worst, let’s say you practice 10,000 hours and you’re still not a master. I guarantee you’ll still be awesome.)

Let’s call Mastery “Level 5.” See, learning’s a gradual thing. It’s not like you’ll suck after 9,999 hours of building flat-pack furniture and then wham, one more hour of practice and you rock.

In fact, after 8,000 hours of practice you’re bound to be amazingly good. Good enough to be a pretty good teacher to others. Not black belt, maybe, but brown belt. Let’s call that Level 4, or “Adept” level.

Ok, I like that. Not only does it make sense, but it lends itself to a whole new idea… In fact, it’s mentioned a bit later, as the header of the next section:

Leveling Up

So let’s say you’ve been building flat-pack IKEA furniture for 1,998 hours. You sit down on a Sunday afternoon and assemble that gorgeous LEKSVIK bedside cabinet you bought. Adding 2 hours to your tally, you realize you’ve reached Novice level.

Time to party!

… Are you kidding? Leveling up?! Now THAT is something I can get behind. As soon as I read that I actually felt the light bulb go on over my head. When I’m studying, I’m not uselessly sitting there reading about Japanese grammar or drawing up flashcards- I’m grinding my Japanese skill. I GET it!! After I reach 2000 hours, I get to level up?! Damn straight!! I think that after I hit 6000 hours (thus hitting the ‘adept’ level according to this scale) I suspect a quest is triggered. Perhaps I have to travel to Japan to keep grinding my skill? What do you think?

…

Here’s another interesting (and sorta geeky) idea about learning languages specifically. I’m not quite sure how I feel about his technique, but I agree about his basic premise about grammar.

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yeah, so I’m running kinda late today. A real post will happen later, sorry to put it off again. I know I suck.

Here, I’m sure you’ve seen the video, but here’s a neat article about it, AND the video, too. Science is totally cool, yo. Word.

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Hi! I’m, um, not dead. I promise. Just stupid busy with this crazy ‘real life’ thing. I’m actually going to have a real post later, or maybe Monday, but I’ve been stumbling across some fun stuff lately and I thought I’d share one, since I felt that it was just geekey enough (in a nerdy sort of way) to be amusing to you all. Here, in all it’s graphic glory, is just exactly how much stuff is, in fact, worth it’s weight in gold.

This guy has compared the average price for a pound of gold to a number of things- like a pound of one dollar bills. And then he went on and compared a bunch of other things. Kinda neat, I thought.

I have a few more fun things to share, but I think that they’ll be the subject of a real post so I’m just going to have to leave you hanging. BWAHAHAHA! *ahem*

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Well, maybe not. I actually DO have a post floating around as yet unformed int he back of my head but I haven’t had time to sit down and think it out. My Best beloved is having surgery tomorrow so I’ve been a bit wrapped up in getting ready for the fun that is the hospital waiting room. I’ve got 2 knitting projects, a magazine for the San Diego Comic Con, a novel, and about 4 DS games to help me wait out a 2 hour procedure. Think I’ve got enough stuff? Maybe I need another game….

Anyway, I have a slightly random question to all you folks out there (more than likely all y’all that are moms, let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?) I have a teddy bear that needs a bath, but I know that washing machines are a bad way to go (glass eyes should not be smacked around, you know.) and besides I really don’t feel like spending $10 on the dryer to get the stuffing dry. Any ideas on surface cleaning stuffed toys?

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This past Saturday was World Wide Knit In Public Day (no I am not making this up.) The point, I think, is somewhat dependent on the person who is knitting in public, but for many people it is a way to get others interested in knitting. It’s a way to start a dialog with the public, many of whom stop and ask questions and comment on the work.

I started pondering this as I prepared my projects for Saturday (I decided on my lace shawl, if anyone’s interested,) and I started thinking how impossible this sort of thing would be for video gamers. First off knitting is a bit more portable. Also it doesn’t require electrical outlets.

Sure there are handheld game devices, but they seem to somewhat defeat the point. It would be nigh impossible to drag a big enough screen out into a public square to ensure that the public could see the game in question, thus hopefully sparking conversation. Then there is the insanely wide variety of games to showcase- ranging from Old School Super Mario Brothers to Grand Theft Auto to Dance Dance Revolution. And, naturally, no matter what game one chooses others are sure to have extreme objections to that game.

It’s kinda sad, I think really. There’s a great capability for common ground and community for this sort of thing, if it’s taken out of the scary (and loud, and often dark) arcades and brought into the sunshine and the public, but the very things that make it so powerful and interesting and varied are the very things that make it impossible to ‘take out to the people.’ I guess I’ll have to stick to knitting video game inspired sweaters, and explaining them to anyone who asks.

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Thanks to a medical command regarding diet and general health here at Chez Spwug my dearest and I have started on a diet. Also I am making him take a couple of short walks every day to help him get into better shape, as he is, well… prone to sitting rather than moving. Thanks to the demands of various works (including helping out with Diginin Publishing,) and then the natural desire to relax after a day full of various work, he is fairly chair-and-sofa prone. Upon reflection I realize that I, too, have gravitated sofa-ward. I mean, I even play WoW from my sofa (can I just mention off topic here how much I love love love having a laptop these days?)

This sudden need to shake that lifestyle up has coincided rather interestingly with the advent of the Wii Fit, thus making me really start thinking about geeks and health. It is, after all, a fairly well known stereotype- the overweight pimply geek that either games nonstop or hangs out at the local comic book store. We all know the image, but how many of us actually conform to it? I have a number of friends who, in addition to rather serious gaming habits manage to make time for rock climbing, for body building, and for martial arts to name a few. They are distinctly not conforming to that geek physique image. The advent of Dance Dance Revolution got millions of gamers off their butts, and the Wii Fit is sure to do the same, though for a somewhat different reason I suspect. I’m personally looking forward to seeing how it pans out. I myself need to find an exercise based fun thing that I can do to get ME off the sofa a bit more- is there anything you guys could recommend to busy chick?

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Ok, so we kinda caved a bit this weekend and downloaded the new Wiiware Final Fantasy game “My Life as a King.” I might be a bit of a sucker for both the FF mystique and also for a shiny new city builder. And this is definitely both shiny and full of Final Fantasy goodness.

You start out, a child king, walking into an empty city with your two advisers- Chancellor Chime, and Sir Hugh. After a quick chat with the giant glowing crystal in the middle of the town’s main square, you get right to work effectively summoning houses (thus conjuring a population to live in your city) and other assorted buildings. The twist to this RPG-lite is that you can’t go clearing out the dungeons yourself- you must commission adventurers and send them off to do the dirty work for you while you stay in town chatting up the common folks and basically waiting.

The game is divided up by days (Chime also acts as nanny, sending you “to bed” to cycle through the days,) and at the beginning of the day you issue behests, thus telling your adventurers what you want done. I’m only about a ‘month’ into it, trying to collect buildings from the dungeons so that I can find out about the shadowy monster mastermind, and solve the riddle of what happened to the old king who disappeared mysteriously years before.

I’m really enjoying this game, and look forward to the inevitable million or so hours that I will be lost to it entirely instead of participating in “Real Life.” Hell, I was barely able to tear myself away from the game to go out to a Jonathan Coulton concert last night, and man, I’d have missed one hell of a show. I didn’t know that three average-to-geeky guys could remove clothing that fast!

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