Miscellaneous update: heat wave edition

The heat has been pretty much unbearable this week. As such, I’ve tried to balance some productivity with some fun inside stuff.

Books

After I finished reading The Eagle, I went through a span of several days where I felt like I didn’t want to read anything for a while. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but I didn’t think it would last long. I picked up Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger from time to time, and, as it’s not a long book, I finished it last night. It was a bargain book, and I was hoping that it would be a story that stands on its own; admittedly, this was because I didn’t want to have to find the sequels, but I’m going to have to at some point, because it really functions as the beginning to a larger story. So I have to read the next one at some point…

A couple of nights ago I started reading Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, and it looks like that will be holding my attention for a while.

Music

I’ve been working on a song, little by little. Lyrics are much more difficult for me than guitar, so it’s going to take a while to finish. That’s fine, because it’s all for my own enjoyment. My fingers are coming along slowly, as I get them accustomed to playing the guitar every day. I’m hoping to change the strings on my acoustic this weekend, because it’s been a few months and they’re starting to look and feel worse for wear.

Video Games

The Steam “Perils of Summer Sale” ended on July 4th, and I restrained myself, not dropping a lot of money on a bunch of games that I’m not sure I would play. I have a terrible habit of buying games and letting them sit for months (or forever), and so I only picked up one game, Civilization IV Complete, for $10 last weekend. I had intended to buy another game or two, but there were a couple of occasions where I added a game to my cart when it was 75% off for the day, decided to think about it before buying, and then forgot about it (Torchlight for $5 was one of them). I wasn’t too broken up about that, in the end. Like I said, I’m really bad with playing most games that I’m “interested” in – something weird about my personality, I guess – so the one game was enough for me.

As a side note, there are many games that I know are available for Mac that are not available on Steam. Like Dragon Age: Origins. EA has made a concerted effort to make more games available for Mac over the past year or two, and they’re available elsewhere, but with DA:O I’m holding out for a while. I like the fact that Steam seems the most likely candidate to provide updates, something that has been universally absent for that game in particular on the Mac.

In general, I’m really happy with Steam, although I’ve only used it to purchase three games thus far. I do wish that they would release more than two or three games per month for Mac. I’m not blaming them, though. I’m sure that they’re constantly dealing with issues related to the games that they make available, and so I’ll continue to check a couple of times a week to see what’s new or on sale.

Etc.

As far as what else has been going on, I’ve been doing a little gardening (trying to keep the tomato plants sated and healthy has been my greatest challenge) and other yard work (in small spurts), as well as plenty of chilling out indoors, trying to stay cool. Fortunately, the worst part of the heat wave seems to be over, moving toward the southeastern coast now. We’ll still have temps in the low 90s next week, but it shouldn’t be as bad, thankfully!

Finished: The Eagle

The Eagle

Last night, I finished the final book in the Camulod Chronicles, The Eagle (Jack Whyte), for the second time. I have now read all nine books in the series at least twice, and some of them three or four times. The books are the fulfillment of the author’s idea of creating a fictional history about the rise and fall of King Arthur that is, to my mind, something which “could have happened.” In them, much of the far-fetched fairy tale is abandoned in favor of a higher degree of realism.

Without giving too much away, I definitely recommend these books to anyone who is interested in fiction set during the decline of the Roman Empire or at any time in Britain’s history.

I can certainly find fault with the series. In particular, it seems that, while there is a wealth of characters throughout, most of them are either totally good or totally evil. Additionally, after nine novels detailing a story that takes place over more than 100 years, the final book crashes and burns in the last several pages, which was extremely unsatisfying. However, I found the books to be highly entertaining overall, and I’ve lain awake reading them late into the night on countless occasions over the past several years.

If you are interested in checking out the series, the first book is called The Skystone.

Recent links of interest

My personal output has been even lighter than usual over the past week. The main reason for this is that I am working on a long post about politics, and I’m struggling with wrapping it up. I need to write a conclusion, and I also need to think carefully about the cohesiveness of the piece before I post it, because I have a tendency to be less than concise when I write. So, there’s plenty of revision still to go with that one…

On Wednesday I made a day trip to visit with my brother and his family. It was a fun, crazy day, the only way it can be when 2-year-old twins (and a 6-month-old infant who’s teething and crawling) are involved!

I’ve also been reading a lot. Books. Yeah.

Meanwhile, here are a few highlights from the posts I’ve read over the past week or two.

Click here to read Krist Novoselic's May 4th post, "Analog Music & Cars in the Digital Age"

• Nirvana bassist / political activist Krist Novoselic has a blog on Seattle Weekly’s Reverb, where he posts twice a week on music and political issues. An avid lover of vinyl, he reviewed the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street [Super Deluxe Edition] last Friday, and yesterday he reminisced about Shocking Blue, a classic but under-appreciated band from Holland whose “Love Buzz” Nirvana recorded for their first 7″ single. Krist is an affable and very intelligent guy who absolutely loves music, and his posts are a lot of fun to read.
• John (BBB) posted a humorous idea regarding the return of CC in Cataclysm, and ReversionLFM of Looking For More made it come to life!
• Andrew of Systemic Babble wrote a great rebuttal to an article on Gamesbrief by Nicholas Lovell, who stated that Steam’s “monopoly” on PC downloads would be the downfall of the PC game industry. The discussion in the comments is very interesting as well. Additionally, he recently posted a wonderful link to The Scale of the Universe, and Friday’s post regarding the most recent developments involving Israel really resonated with me.
• Jacemora, Druid of the Moon, followed up on the idea of using a Mangle-spam rotation. Mangle vs Shred seemed to be a popular question when the changes to Mangle and the Glyph of Mangle went live with Patch 3.3.3. Many ferals, myself included, seemed to feel at the time that Shred and its positional requirement were still the best option for high damage. His verdict: Shred is indeed the way to go.
• Gordon at We Fly Spitfires wrote an immensely popular (and very funny) post this week entitled MMO or Baby? He also has a review of the WoW Remote Auction House beta, and since he posts almost every day, there’s plenty of other good stuff to check out.
• In Wednesday’s Tree of Life post, Keredria talks about Christian guilds, and mentions that she may post more on religion in WoW in the future. I hope she does, because her post was entertaining and informative.
• Finally, Dr. Tom Bibey wrote about his favorite bookstores in a manner that made me immediately want to go book and music shopping at mom-and-pop stores… again… yes, I have a problem!

Enjoy! Hopefully I’ll finish the piece I mentioned above sooner than later… or some other legit post, at least.

Moving beyond WoW: hobbies, and the power of suggestion

I pretty much hated Silithis, but it made for a cool pic.

Last week I wrote a post about how well I’ve been adjusting to life without World of Warcraft. For the most part, I have had far fewer cravings for the game than I had expected, and have even felt very uninspired with respect to finishing up the feral druid articles that I had been working on at the time I decided to take a break.

World of Warcraft… and the power of suggestion

So a couple of days after I published that article, a friend of mine posted a “come back to WoW” comment on my Facebook page.

And this is where the title of this post comes from. The simple suggestion by that person reopened my mind to WoW. The call of the game, and the corresponding opportunity to be with friends, made a stronger impression with me than either of us could have anticipated!

So, does this mean I go back? For the time being, no. I still need time away from the game, and if I do play again, it will be in a different situation, with a smaller time commitment and different objectives. I’ll mix some of the familiar with the unfamiliar, exploring parts of the game that don’t necessitate a regular raid schedule. But now is not the time yet.

Each day has felt like forever, and yet the past month has flown by. It’s interesting how that happens…

* * * * *

During this break, I’ve engaged myself in hobbies and activities that I had previously not taken the time to enjoy when I was playing. First and foremost, I’ve been reading a lot.

Books

Last week,  Franklin & Marshall held their annual used book sale, a three-day event. I went over with a friend on Monday (May 24), the first day, and between the two of us we bought around 35 books for under $50! I was able to pick up about a dozen Agatha Christie novels (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot), as well as three of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, a Lord Peter Wimsey short story collection, and a couple of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. With paperbacks at 50 cents apiece, it was difficult to go wrong!

I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and those authors who lovingly craft tales that attempt to fill in holes in the Holmes canon), and other authors of mystery fiction from the last half of the 19th-century through middle of the 20th. I suppose that my interest comes partially from watching so much of the PBS program  ”Mystery” while I was growing up. At any rate, I can devour these books fairly easily, and if I get tired of one, I’m usually in the process of reading three to five books at any given time, so I eventually finish them all!

I’ve also recently picked up The Second Rumpole Omnibus, a collection which I had set down about eighteen months ago and forgotten about. I left off at a story that I wasn’t enjoying, but I am determined to power through it and move on to stories that I’m sure I will enjoy more.

Finally, I’ve recently started rereading the second to last book in Jack Whyte’s Camulod Chronicles, The Lance Thrower. I’ve only ever read each of the last two books in the series once, and I’d like to read them again in order to have a better understanding of what happened. For anyone interested in historical fiction and an Arthurian theme, the entire nine-book series is highly recommended.

I tend to read books multiple times, which I guess is strange. However, a book that I enjoy is almost always a book that I can read more than once, since I tend to get new things out of it on a second or third read-through.

There are some local bookstores downtown that I’d like to check out on one of my walks, so perhaps I’ll be able to pick up some more treasures in the near future.

Music

In addition to constantly uploading music to my hard drive, I’ve been playing more guitar lately. While my intention has always been that I would play my guitar every day, I had let it go this year to the point where I was almost never playing. As someone who loves to play guitar, noticing the callouses disappear from my fingertips was disheartening, and when I would occasionally attempt to play, both my muscle memory and fingertips were so ill-equipped that I would put down the instrument after a few minutes… And the cycle continued – disillusionment led to less playing, which led to more disillusionment when I’d try to play again, and so on.

Lately, since I moved out of my old place, I’ve gotten the opportunity to spend more time outside. I have, of course, been walking and taking pictures, but I’ve also spent a lot of time sitting on the porch, reading or looking at my surroundings. Being in a new place, and more exposed to the outdoors, has inspired me to pick up the guitar at times. As such, I played more guitar in the last three weeks of May than I did from January through April combined. I haven’t yet played a long session, and I’ve done very little as far as working on new material, but the simple act of sitting down with my acoustic and playing through some old songs and song bits has been gratifying. My callouses are slowly developing on my left hand again, and my picking hand is true more often than it had been.

Photography

As I mentioned, I’ve gone on a few walks where I took some pictures, and have posted photos from those walks on two occasions in the past few weeks. I’m about as fledgling as they come when it comes to photography, but I’ve concentrated on taking pictures of things that I find beautiful or interesting. I’m still learning how to use my camera, and it is my hope that as time goes by and I gain experience with it, I will be able to post a greater variety of quality photos. Most recently, I’ve concentrated on nature photography, but I would like to expand my horizons!

Video Games

Ah, this is where it gets tricky. In lieu of WoW, I’ve spent time with a half-dozen games over the past few weeks: Portal and Half-Life 2 for Mac, Dragon Age: Origins and Tiger Woods 07 for 360, and Scribblenauts and Professor Layton and the Curious Village for DS. Portal, Half-Life 2 and Tiger Woods have each gotten more than 90 minutes of play from me; the others did not hold my attention for long, for various reasons.

There is a common reason that none of these games has become my “go-to” game at this point: simply, I am still wired for WoW right now.

However, there are other reasons. In the case of Dragon Age, while the game seems to be very interesting (and I’m loving the music!), I don’t like the control scheme at all. I need to put some more time into it before I decide to scrap it and perhaps pick up the Mac version, but my first impression was frustrating… I’m not a big fan of using a console controller for these types of games.

In the cases of Professor Layton and Scribblenauts, I’m probably just not feeling puzzle games right now. I like them both, conceptually, but I’ve only put about 30-40 minutes into each in the past month. I’ll put them down and pick them up later if I feel so moved.

I have many other games to try, and so I’ll continue to throw a few against the wall every so often and see which one sticks.

Conclusion

I’ve had mixed results with not only finding other hobbies to get back into, but having the discipline to keep at them. With books, it has been easy – in fact, I’ve had to pace myself at times. Playing guitar has been more of a process (albeit a rewarding one), and finding new games to latch onto has been a challenge. We’ll see how June goes!

Random linkage, new Gravatar

New Gravatar photo

Here are some links from the past week or so that have given me food for thought:

• John, the Big Bear Butt himself, posted a massive list of book recommendations on May 14th, and it has literally (um, no pun intended?) flipped my mental “to-read” list upside down. While I’m still working on finishing up a few books myself, I’ve found myself wondering what I’m going to read down the road, other than a few suggestions from friends. This post just opened up a can of whoop-ass on my feeble reading goals. My old guild master, Secure, has been recommending the Wheel of Time series for as long as I’ve known him, and this list just made that bug in my ear buzz a little louder… Book recommendations are never bad, as far as I’m concerned!
• Kara at Vomi Mot wrote a couple of days ago about Dungeons & Dragons and Christianity. Her article is a reaction to an article by William Schnoebelen of chick.com, in which he details his experiences with D&D, along with his road through witchcraft, satanism, and finally to Christianity. While I don’t have any opinions that I feel qualified to express here, I found her response to be well thought-out.
• My friend Greg at parkinthepark has some commentary and information on Voltage Pictures’ massive lawsuit against tens of thousands of people who pirated “The Hurt Locker” online. He also sent me a link to an article on the subject by Peter Serafinowicz at Gizmodo entitled “Why I Steal Movies… Even Ones I’m In.” This is a compelling battle to watch; as fast as technology and the behaviors of users evolve (and as much as producers and publishers of various media attempt to keep up), the collective business model is adapting with an alarming lack of swiftness. Check the links for more info.
• Gordon at We Fly Spitfires has posted several items that intrigue me (doesn’t he always? LOL!). On the 14th, he posted about his new toon he created, with backstory, for Age of Conan. The next day, his topic was Should I Purchase The Half-Price LotRO Lifetime Subscription? If I had a PC, I’d be tempted myself… May 17th brought an article about racism in MMOs, and yesterday’s post concerned the subject of the death of role-playing in MMOs.
• Andrew at Systemic Babble posted a link to an Impressive 3D Optical Illusion, as well as an article about a new measure proposed in Canada’s House of Commons by Liberal MP Keith Martin that would see Canada’s government encouraging parents to prevent their children from watching TV or playing video games one night per week.
• Larísa over at the Pink Pigtail Inn has an interesting idea: what if we all stopped blogging (and reading blogs) about World of Warcraft until Cataclysm is released? She also posted today about resistance to the concept that Blizzard is a business, while Tobold has a response to Larísa’s blogging proposal.
• Keredria at Tree of Life posted an educational article on Government Structures in WoW, based on information from wowwiki. Honestly, I’m ashamed to admit that this is a subject I had really never spent much time thinking about, but some of the governments they list for certain zones are fascinating.
• Finally, Ronnie James Dio died on Sunday morning of stomach cancer. The legendary vocalist was an inspiration and hero to several generations of rock and metal musicians, and his recordings with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven and Hell are some of the most revered and respected of all time. You can google his name and find tons of information about him, but for a long list of remembrances and tributes, check out blabbermouth.net (links to their search results for “Dio”).

There it is: I’ve laid bare some of my internet/blog-reading interests for the past week… Now maybe I can go work on a real blog post of my own at some point today!

Thoughts on the Sherlock Holmes movie and TV series

When I was younger, I often watched the Sherlock Holmes television series starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. Various family members would get together to watch Mystery! on PBS, and while we got to see many excellent series on public television, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Poirot were two of my favorites.

One of the things I really enjoy about these programs, along with Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, the Lord Peter Wimsey series starring Ian Carmichael, Cadfael, and James Herriot’s All Creatures Great And Small, is that they seemed very authentic. Earlier and later interpretations could approximate authenticity, but these shows made me feel like I was watching the real thing.

Produced from 1984 to 1994 by Granada Television, the Sherlock Holmes series featured Brett playing what was, in my opinion and those of many others, the definitive Holmes. I’ve seen many Holmes portrayals, including the iconic Basil Rathbone movies from the ’30s and ’40s, and most of them have their merits, but even today, whenever I sit down to enjoy a re-reading of one of the stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon, Mr. Brett’s face and voice fill my brain. I’ll say it slightly differently: Jeremy Brett plays Sherlock Holmes in my head whenever I read Sherlock Holmes.

When preparing for the role, Brett became the role. As such, he studied descriptions of Holmes’ mannerisms, vocal characteristics, eye movements, posture, etc. When I watched him as Holmes, I felt like I was really seeing Holmes. Then when I read the books, I imagined him doing those things that Holmes would do. And in addition to Brett himself, the film style, camera work, props and settings all seem to realistically depict the times.

The reason I write is because this new Sherlock Holmes movie looks like it has “disappointment” (mine) written all over it. Robert Downey Jr. looks like a New York City cab driver. Based on the trailers I’ve seen, the film seems very bloated, with Hollywood-style action, over-the-top explosions, and significant liberties taken with the Holmes character. Watching the trailer almost feels like watching a modern-day James Bond trailer, which is not something I would expect from a film about Holmes. I understand that the canon does include moments of action, explosions, murder, etc. However, while I won’t rule out watching the movie at some point, I’m afraid my expectations are already lowered.

Perhaps I don’t have an open mind about it? That’s what I struggle with regarding this event: perhaps it will be “good,” and by not watching it I will miss something. So I haven’t made up my mind, but I’m already underwhelmed, and I can’t help that.

I’ll always have The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and the books; this movie can’t take that away. I’m just not sure what to think about this movie.