We’re getting ready to get the computing smack-down laid on our gamer brains by a new generation of consoles, including the Wii U, the Playstation 4, and the Xbox One.
I know each of these platforms already has a boatload of games in the works, but nevertheless I’d like to offer my two cents to 8th Generation game designers, specifically on how to make better open-world games.
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In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, I’m uploading the entire run of my web comic based on the reverse idea: taking images of pirates (specifically screen-shots from the POTC movies) and adding actual quotes from president Barack Obama, tweaked only slightly to match the mannerisms of the characters.
These are meant neither to be pro-Obama or anti-Obama, but merely for the surreal humor.
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Statehood is a perennial issue in the District of Columbia, along with full enfranchisement of the residents of DC. It’s not for nothing that the District’s license place bear the motto “Taxation Without Representation.” Unlike other Americans, citizens of DC have no effective vote in Congress.
Interesting how all those Tea Party activists protesting in the District never made a big deal out of the taxation without representation right in front of their faces.
But, beyond all of the partisan politics behind adding a 51st star to the flag (DC is notoriously left-leaning and Democratic), a huge stumbling block in the DC statehood struggle is the fact that DC does not look or sound like a state.
If you are one of my close friends, I apologize, because you have heard this rant so many times over the past year that I am probably lucky we’re still acquaintances.
Despite what you might have heard in the news, Voyager is not “leaving the solar system.” It’s leaving the heliosphere, the tiny region of the solar system that is dominated by the solar wind.
To say Voyager is leaving the solar system by leaving the solar wind is like saying someone left the United States by stepping outside the White House. In short, it’s stupid, incorrect, and unscientific. Which explains why so many professional science journalists are saying it.
I have been pinged1 a few times lately by fans who are a little miffed2 that I rescinded publication of The Ligan of the Disomus so I could finish the book that precedes it in the Observer’s Casebook series. Why is the first book taking so long? Part of the explanation is that I’ve been working on other projects, including the 2nd edition of On The Head Of A Pin
But, the core reason is that The Crow and the Kinnebeck is a nested tale, otherwise known as a frame story or “story within a story.” A writer has to be extra careful spinning this sort of yarn. Let me describe the dynamics of the frame story, then offer a Top Five list of pointers for writers ambitious enough to attempt a complex nested narrative.
Ahoy! My latest design sketch, draft, or preliminary concept once again falls into the broad “civil planning” category.
I propose a new Smithsonian museum dedicated to the history of sail. Although this might seem like a niche subject, not only does the history of sailing cover the majority of human history and the majority of the Earth’s surface, but the United States was conceived and born through the power of sail. Such a huge chunk of our vocabulary is derived from the culture of sail that there are entire dictionaries devoted to etymologically nautical words and phrases, like Peter D. Jeans’s Ship to Shore: A Dictionary of Everyday Words and Phrases Derived from the Sea
In this proposal (really just a fun blog post) I’ll talk about why America’s early maritime history is important, and the interesting features such a museum could have, including graphic depictions.
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