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"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul" - Edward Abbey
If anybody had noticed, i've been a bit tardy in posting updates lately. This can be put down to a number of causes, among them work, other projects and just a slackening of interest and desire to keep up a (near) daily web-log like thing. So, with the input of some helpful friends and some web surfing, i've decide to change the format of theorganization.net to something more 'zine like. This should allow for less day to day updating, and perhaps a bit longer and more thought out bits (unlikely). At any-rate, that's what i'm doing, so deal. (quick poll for anybody still hanging in there, which font do you like more sans-serif, or serif? mail me)
I finally was pushed over the edge to do this by a number of factors, but the most interesting one is an article at Slashdot (i'd give you the URL to the article, but the f'ing site is slow as hell) about Wizards of the Coast. Actually, it points to an article at Salon about Wizards of the Coast and how it fell into the hands of Hasbro. Now, before i'd even read any of this, when i learned that Hasbro now owned Dungeons and Dragons, well i just about had a conniption fit. Actually, you should ask my work mates - i did have a bit of a freak out. Hasbro. DnD. These things just do not go together in my mind, which is evidence of my aging and being unable to handle new concepts i guess. Its just that, back in the day, DnD was still 'counter-culture', or at least people thought you were pretty weird if you played. Not like, well, Milton Bradley games, or Monopoly, nice safe Hasbro games. I ran a programme in the summers for kids who liked to play RPG's and other 'strategy' games (diplomacy, risk, to many to name). I got asked by parents if it was safe for their kids to be playing these games! "I remember that movie about a young child who went crazy playing RPG's!" or "These games are evil!" - really, these are quotes from parents! (the movie in question is 'Mazes and Monsters', staring Tom Hanks) All that co-opted by Hasbro. What a pity.
However, the guy that wrote the Salon story has a pretty cool website. He does indie film, game stuff, a zine of his own, all that great web stuff. I was reading through his site late at work, with all the lights off, listening to creepy tunes when i started to read a 'module' that he had written for a RPG called TRAUMA. Its called "Instrument of Precision", and was freaking me out. Very cool. He also has some nice photos of Ireland with witty commentary included. I emailed him, will see if i get a response... His 'zine idea is also part of the inspiration for this redesign. His original idea for the 'zine was for each issue to take only 30 min. of work.
I called it a "30-Minute Zine" because my goal was to write each issue in thirty minutes. I didn't usually reach that goal, but the point of it was to make each issue the result of a single burst of activity. You can think of it as a live performance captured in words, if you like, but I'm not going to make quite that grandiose of a claim. [link]Great idea! Not sure if this is going to be the same, but i really liked the idea.
Have spent the last 2 weeks working on a 'robot' to compete in the OCAD sumo robot event which happened this past Sunday. My friend Scott and i built a 2 pound 'lightweight' class 'bot. We somehow managed to reach 3rd place! I should have some photos tomorrow, and will try to get some kind of photo log up after that. It was really a lot of fun. Lots of robots, i think they said over 40! Everybody was super friendly and cool. Good tunes being spun too. It was a bit stressful as between on set of bouts we had to rebuild the power wiring, as our batteries were flat-lining. Quick working with the soldering iron, and the fleet feet of Scott got us back in order in time! There were some pretty crazy 'bots there - this one team had build a mobile baby doll! Very weird and crazy - this doll doing hand stands as it thumped and bumped toward the opponent. Unfortunately it lost very quickly, but it was one of the coolest/weirdest bots. The same team also had a big rig all set up for the 'robot dancer' class. I was reminded of crazy industrial noise shows with performance art going on. Kind of hard to explain, but trust me, it was cool. Big noise, dancing people, flailing robots. All good.
I'm going to try to wrap it up now. I'm sure that i'll remember something that i wanted to talk about tomorrow and will want to do a quick update, but i'll try to resist the temptation and just save it up for a larger update, rather then going back to the old smaller two sentence updates. We will see if it works... i might just have to add a section of links that i've looked at, at the bottom, just so i don't forget them!
peace
ps. i'd also like to give props out to Tony, the Baker and Becca (i bet she will hate me for that link) for prompting me to finally do something with this site.