I have discovered that I really like pens (by which I also mean pencils). I guess I always knew this, but I just realized “it’s a thing” and I’m not the only one who likes pens. So I found a few blogs of people who actually review pens. And via those blogs, I found some pens I wanted to buy.

I really love my Pentel P205, so much so that I didn’t have to go find it to remember the actual pencil part number.  So when I went to Dave’s Mechanical Pencil blog and looked at his “top 5 mechanical pencils” I was aghast to find it wasn’t on his list! And it had been edged from the top five by something called a Graphgear 1000. Vat ist dot?! (Yes I got so excited I went into really bad Jägermonster accent.) I had to go buy one stat!

(And I… ok just lied about that because I see now that the pencil that actually edged out the Pentel P205 was something else, but that makes my story much less compelling.)

But no one else reads this blog so I shall blithely continue.

I also started reading The Pen Addict blog. Many of his neatest pens are from Jetpens. So I decided to make an order. Now, Jetpens had the Graphgear 1000 pencil that I wanted… but they also had many other pens that I wanted. Specifically I had it in my head that I wanted a good fountain pen. First I checked Levenger, which is a lovely site that I have long drooled over, then I realized that I was too cheap to buy a pen there.

So I started throwing pens into my cart on Jetpens instead. And when my total started approaching $75 I got scared and removed most of it. Alas, I removed my Graphgear 1000! But, you ask, why did you remove the pencil you wanted so much? Because I found it locally!

Googling, again, I discovered an art store selling them right nearby (within an hour, that is), called Utrecht.

I was going to tell you all about the new pens and pencil I bought, but this is post too long without it, so I’ll add that info next time… HEY LOOK, I’m going to post more than once in a month!

If you read this far, here is an unfinished sketch, and my Pentel P205. I was considering starting a whole bunch of blog posts just to highlight “unfinished sketches” since I never seem to finish anything…

Things Unfinished

Someone asked me “did I get a best/significant/special” gift this year.   I did!

Actually, three come to mind, but two are mistakes.

1. Dominion, the board game. I put my “Amazon wish list” up and let people buy things off of it. Immediately both a friend and my parents bought me the board game Dominion, and got no message about the fact that t he item had already been purchased. I found out the next day since (providentially) I knew about it. We had to return one. It was very frustrating. (But still a great game!)
2. Girl Genius volume #??? – I ordered Volume 6 a million years ago (read: May), and it didn’t come. In the meantime I thought I ordered it, and ended up with Volume 5 twice. Argh. Finally the local comic book store said it was in, do I still want it. Yes! I did. But it took me awhile to go get it. A friend sent me Volume #7! But I couldn’t read it without #6 so I finally went to go pick it up and it was gone… he said “You will probably see it in 7 days, because someone else picked it up, hint, hint.” (It was 7 days to Christmas). So finally on Christmas I opened the graphic-novel-shaped package from my folks – and it was accidentally another copy of VOLUME 5. So now I have ordered myself a copy of Volume 6 (edition 2 reprint, since 1 is sold out, hence the problems) via the actual Studio Foglio store.
3. The special gift: 
   My senior pastor, of all people, saw USB “fairy light” Christmas lights and bought them for me for Christmas. It makes me almost teary because it’s so touching to have a pastor know you that well, to be able to pick out something special (and even geeky) that is exactly up my alley. In retrospect that was by far the most special, unexpectedly neat gift. To be understood and accepted as a geek by the pastor.
   

   Shiny!

4. The most special gift of all. 
   Well, of course the gift freely given and most perfectly suited to my needs – the needs of all mankind – is Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas (whether that is the actual birth date or not). If you don’t know Him as your personal Savior, you are neglecting to open the best gift you could possibly receive!  Even I have a hard time remembering who this season is really all about. I’m sorry to have to admit that.

How about you? How was your Christmas?

Now I may be wrong since I have not actually participated/played either of these genres of games, yet. But games fascinate me. And I think I have finally figured out the difference between “Alternate Reality Games” and “Augmented Reality Games” (without consulting Wikipedia, ha). So of course I have to tell you.

An Alternate Reality Game is a game that takes place through/among various media – go to a website, find a location, go to the location, find a phone number, get a scratch card in the mail, figure out the code and go to the website (pardon the random examples). It is called “Alternate Reality” because you are navigating a reality of clues that others aren’t paying attention to because they aren’t in the game. Here is a list of some.

An Augmented Reality Game is a game that takes place through an electronic medium (like an iphone screen, or a GPS, PSP or DS screen) that you carry in the real world (hence Reality) and as you travel to locations in the real world, it generates things on the screen that you interact with that do not physically exist. Hence it’s “Augmented” by an extra layer of reality.

I had a hard time explaining the differences between those things in my head, and finally got it straight – by my reckoning, at least.

What do you think? Sounds fun to me!

I like me a big old-school, gigantic, level-grinding, random-monster-encounter-every-three-steps dungeon crawler of a computer game (Final Fantasy #, Morrowind, Sacred, WoW…).

But sometimes I don’t have time for that.  (Actually WoW is another story – too cheap to play it, and also it’s one of those games that will eat your entire brain if you let it, and lead to addiction, for some.)

So here are a few of my favorite casual games, for PC.
Note, most of these are on Steam, but some are also available in other venues too (notably PuzzleQuest & Peggle are also on Nintendo DS, which is the only other platform I currently own).

1 ) PuzzleQuest – it’s Bejeweled, but every time you make a match, you get mana of that color, to use for spells! It even has a (standard, adventure) plot. This has a Space spin-off game, too. There were allegations of the computer being a cheater in this game, but the game designers said they didn’t have spare resources to program the computer to cheat!

2 ) Peggle – Cross pinball with pachinko, and add special powers. Insane fun, and lots of replay value! There is a sequel called Peggle Nights, but I haven’t tried it.

3 ) Plants vs. Zombies – Super cute Tower Defense without towers. Add in sunflowers, zombies, and catchy music. I cannot explain how fun this is. Go at least try the demo.

4 ) Spectromancer - Card-based mage vs. mage battle in tiny bite-sized chunks, with typos. Has online play too!  This game makes me trash-talk the computer due to the high random factor in your card deck. The computer HAS to be cheating. Grr…!

5 ) Wonderful End of the World – Strange Katamari Damacy clone with catchy music.

6 ) Osmos – Eat everything. Grow. Simple. Beautiful. Relaxing.

7 ) Cogs – Actually I find this insanely frustrating, but it’s so gorgeous! 3D tile-sliding puzzler with a strongly Steampunk theme. Shiny shiny brass.

8 ) AudioSurf – Automatically generates a race track based on the music you decide to play. Fun because you can see how well other people have done when playing the game using the same song you did. You can use ANY song – or even a podcast, but I’m not sure how that would work. This Week in Audiosurf would be a long game!

9 ) GemCraft - I LOVE this game, and it’s a free browser-based game. Tower Defense, there are at least 3 versions/expansions of this online (GemCraft, GemCraft 0, GemCraft 2) and they are all great, though I noticed some caused lag when I tried to play using wifi.

10 ) Scribblenauts! – This is the only non-PC game, but I just HAD to include it. This Nintendo DS game is mind-blowing. Solve the puzzles with ANY method you can imagine. Just type in the object you want to create! I solved one by gluing a rope to the back of a pterodactyl. Over 220 levels. Controls are clunky, but there are no other games where you can summon Cthulhu and have it battle a Kraken. Or a kitten.

11 ) What’s your favorite casual game? Let me know!

Now if you say “I don’t want to spend $10 on a game I don’t need.” I understand that too. So check out http://www.oldschoolapps.com – home for nifty, nifty old abandonware that has no license.

Ok one more free game link: Pixelships !

Now I just read two completely contradictory articles - by prominent tech folks who know what they are talking about - on how to “manage your friends” on Twitter.

TechCrunch (Michael Arrington) states here that “there is an unwritten Golden Mean that shows ‘more people follow you, than you follow, therefore you are interesting and I should follow you’.” So if you auto-followback and follow people in the “vague hope they will follow you” you would not look like an interesting person and interesting people won’t care about you.

Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) states here that “you need to follow everyone, because you learn from the people you follow.”  So if you follow everyone all the time, you will enjoy having a huge user base of people to interact with.

(Paraphrases mine.)

I think I fall somewhere in between, when it comes to “Twitter philosophy”.

Do you have an opinion?

The necklace I started in the last post is “mostly done” – I say “mostly” because I didn’t actually figure out the best clasp yet. But I could take a photo of the front anyway!

Mechanum Sidereal (it needed a good name)

Twitter is the insanely popular buzzword everywhere right now. But what is so great about Twitter?

It depends on what you want to get out of it.

Many people use Twitter to stalk celebrities. I’m sure that’s great, as far as it goes. I do follow some celebrities that I know won’t follow me back. (But not this one:)

O

Many more people use Twitter to advertise their business. I have seen a lot of successful (to me) podcast novels launched using Twitter in combination with a lot of other intensive advertising. I know many other people who use Twitter in combination with Etsy to sell their handmade goods. Both of these have worked very well, from what I’ve observed. (Wanna buy my Etsy stuff?)

I would say that the main reason I personally use Twitter is to chat. It isn’t an IM but it has evolved to be pretty close to one, with the @ commands and direct messages. I originally started following podcasters, to tell them I liked their shows. But many of them have become closer acquaintances now. I’ve met them! Still, it’s not the same thing –  ”knowing someone via Twitter” does not make them a close personal friend, even if you do know their dog is sick and they got a latte for breakfast.

That being said, it is still a great way to form connections! (If you want to follow me, I’m Nycteris there.)

Far and away the most highly lauded app I have heard people speak of is Tweetdeck. I claimed I would research and talk about a bunch of applications people suggested, but it turns out I am too lazy. I will just say that this app turns your screen (though two monitors work even better) into columns of streaming Tweets that you can group by various topics/etc. Sounds useful to me!

I will also mention that the Twitter plugin I use with Firefox is called Twitbin. It sits in the bottom tray, and if you click it, it opens a slim column on the left of your browser, where you can watch/post/interact with your Twitter stream. And then close when you’re done. Very handy and simple.

But I have to go now – someone just Twittered that he was doing a live show on Ustream!