Remember when I posted that id be writing here more? That was a lie. A bold faced lie.
Anyway, to whom it may interest, I started a book project for Nation Write A Novel Month that I didnt meet the word count for but am continuing.
Ive decided I will be posting early chapter rough drafts periodically on my Patreon for my 1$ tier.
For those interested you can view the announcement and intention here
https://www.patreon.com/everydayadinosaur
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Hah hah hah
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Mediocrity
The movie opens with perhaps the most uninspired retelling of Batman's origin with the death of his parents and him falling into a cave and being swarmed by bats. It then jumps many many years into the future with Bruce Wayne bearing witness to Superman's battle with Zod that lays waste to much of Metropolis. This, I assume, is meant to indicate the erecting hate boner Batman has for supes.
They spend a lot of time in this movie painting a love/hate relationship the world has with Superman. Sure he saves people, but he can't be everywhere at once, and oftentimes there's a lot of destruction involved.
The rest of the build up to the climatic battle as referenced into the title is building up loosely why these two would fight. Batman hates Superman because he's an alien who's own people tried to take over the world. Superman hates Batman because this version of the Dark Knight likes to brand people with a bat logo and is kind of a prick. And then there's Mark Zuckerbergs take on Lex Luthor...
...you could have replaced Lex Luthor with the Joker, and his motivations would have made way more sense. They turned who, in the comics is a very smooth, very intelligent man into a babbling psychopath who's only real motivation seems to be a burgeoning God Complex against Superman.
Plot points are brought up and abandoned, others are used and go nowhere. Lois Lane discovers bullets made by Lex Corp that are there because...it somehow makes Superman look guilty? Oh and there's the scene where Batman receives a message from the future from The Flash, but it's unintelligible at best and is never brought up again. Bruce doesn't even freak out he just sits there like "well that happened".
Wonder Woman is kept very low key until it's revealed that it's even her. When she first shows up, I thought she was Zack Snyder's Cat Woman. Granted, our patience is rewarded by a very badass performance in the final act.
The rest of the Justice League are teased. But I am stretching at even calling it a tease. I wouldn't even call it a fondle or a tickle. They didn't even make the smart decision to cast the Barry Allen from the TV version of the Flash, because according to producers, it didn't fit the edgelord image DC wanted with their cinematic universe. Poor decision, in my opinion.
If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil the ending. But I will stress the amount I face palmed at them stuffing a historical Superman story line into the movie at the end, coming from nowhere and serving no purpose.
In all the movie tries too hard to get you invested in what DC is trying to do. And it falls flat on it's face with poor plot pacing and wayyyy too much of people staring off into the distance and looking very unhappy.
You could not pay me to sit through this a second time.
Back up and running
This is just a filler until I can find the time to write an actual article. I started this blog as a morning exercise to keep me occupied and optimistic about the job I had at the time working in a retail store bakery. A well known chain.
It was hell.
Well I no longer work for the overlords. And have moved on with my life but as it seems writing is still in my blood and I've decided to pick this blog up where I left off.
The focus will be nerdy but I also want to dedicate at least some of the content to stuff that is, at least to me, uplifting. Things to help people get through their day and through the grind.
While also promoting my upcoming writing projects.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Caffeinated Gaming: The Sims 4
I love The Sims, brainchild of Will Wright that hit store shelves in February of the year 2000. At least as far as I know, it was the first of it's kind, taking the world management of Sim City and making it all about the people and their lives. As the franchise went on, it got more and more elaborate, becoming not so much a game about simulating day to day life for digital entities, but putting said digital effigies you created into crazy situations and telling stories with them.
Why else would you kill off an entire family dressed up in stereotypical indian costumes, just so you could move in a new family and have the ghosts of the previous family haunt them as though it had been built on an Indian burial ground?
Whereas the original focused solely on the household, and later on in it's expansions, visiting community lots to shot, eat, date, shag, and play, you were always sort of tied down to one area of wherever you wanted to go. It eventually began to open out starting with The Sims 2, until the Sims 3 presented to us a seemless open world to explore with our Sims, even taking control of their jobs directly.
Now it's fourteen years later and with the release of The Sims 4, gone now is the open map, as well as a good many other things, on top of the cool things that you can do. But underneath it all, I have begun to sense a return to the series roots in the original, for better or worse.
For starters, the Open World is gone, as I pointed out, a fact that sticks in my craw. Instead, we are given the ability to explore the surrounding neighborhood our Sims occupy, littered with the expected collectibles. The focus is more on the Sims, because they are ten times more lively than they have ever been thanks to multi-tasking. We can do up to three things at once if they're manageable. You can read on the toilet. You can have a drink and watch TV while talking with the bae.
You can tell some very personal and interesting stories with The Sims 4. For instance, I made a sim with the Bro quality, who wrote Bro-related books, and romanced a local hottie. They saw a lot of each other, and had a great time...but when they got married, because of their work schedules, the only time they saw each other, was when they were going to bed. It was sad, and almost too real a situation.
Though, then I reflect on The Sims 3, where my Sim would get home from work, have a quick bite, and then pop down to the watering hole for a bit. To do that, my Sim would just get in his car and drive across town to the bar. In The Sims 4, with the removal of the open world, we have to go through a loading screen to get to the community lot where said bar exists. If you wanted to check on your other Sims in Sims 3, you'd just right click their portrait and it would just zoom in on them, because they still existed in the same game space zone. Sims 4 has to load the lot they are in. It's all minor annoyances, done for the sake of making the game run smoothly and require as little from computers as possible. And I appreciate that, but all the changes feel like such a step back. Three generations back...As though I'm playing a retro version of the original Sims. There is little reason to visit community lots at all except when your Sim wants to via their Whims. You can fill your Sims social needs just hanging out in your neighborhood, and unless your Sim is just really keen on doing stand up at the local bar, your day to day will be a lot of going to work, and coming home.
That is unless you get in on a good crafting ability to make money from home. Like writing books, or writing songs, or selling the collectables that spawn around your neighborhood (like magic, at dawn there are a slew of new fossils, crystals and ores. Laws of physics and geography be damned)
Granted, we are in the age of Vanilla Sims 4. Pre-Expansions. The expansions have always been what makes the series shine, expanding on existing features and heaping on new ones. I have some serious high hopes for whacky and insane adventures to put my Sims through in the years to come, just as the Sims 3 and previously, The Sims 2, had before it.
Should you buy it?
If you're a Sims fan, you've already bought it. If you're on the fence, to be honest, I'd wait and see what expansions come down the pipe to flesh out the experience.
Why else would you kill off an entire family dressed up in stereotypical indian costumes, just so you could move in a new family and have the ghosts of the previous family haunt them as though it had been built on an Indian burial ground?
Whereas the original focused solely on the household, and later on in it's expansions, visiting community lots to shot, eat, date, shag, and play, you were always sort of tied down to one area of wherever you wanted to go. It eventually began to open out starting with The Sims 2, until the Sims 3 presented to us a seemless open world to explore with our Sims, even taking control of their jobs directly.
Now it's fourteen years later and with the release of The Sims 4, gone now is the open map, as well as a good many other things, on top of the cool things that you can do. But underneath it all, I have begun to sense a return to the series roots in the original, for better or worse.
For starters, the Open World is gone, as I pointed out, a fact that sticks in my craw. Instead, we are given the ability to explore the surrounding neighborhood our Sims occupy, littered with the expected collectibles. The focus is more on the Sims, because they are ten times more lively than they have ever been thanks to multi-tasking. We can do up to three things at once if they're manageable. You can read on the toilet. You can have a drink and watch TV while talking with the bae.
You can tell some very personal and interesting stories with The Sims 4. For instance, I made a sim with the Bro quality, who wrote Bro-related books, and romanced a local hottie. They saw a lot of each other, and had a great time...but when they got married, because of their work schedules, the only time they saw each other, was when they were going to bed. It was sad, and almost too real a situation.
Though, then I reflect on The Sims 3, where my Sim would get home from work, have a quick bite, and then pop down to the watering hole for a bit. To do that, my Sim would just get in his car and drive across town to the bar. In The Sims 4, with the removal of the open world, we have to go through a loading screen to get to the community lot where said bar exists. If you wanted to check on your other Sims in Sims 3, you'd just right click their portrait and it would just zoom in on them, because they still existed in the same game space zone. Sims 4 has to load the lot they are in. It's all minor annoyances, done for the sake of making the game run smoothly and require as little from computers as possible. And I appreciate that, but all the changes feel like such a step back. Three generations back...As though I'm playing a retro version of the original Sims. There is little reason to visit community lots at all except when your Sim wants to via their Whims. You can fill your Sims social needs just hanging out in your neighborhood, and unless your Sim is just really keen on doing stand up at the local bar, your day to day will be a lot of going to work, and coming home.
That is unless you get in on a good crafting ability to make money from home. Like writing books, or writing songs, or selling the collectables that spawn around your neighborhood (like magic, at dawn there are a slew of new fossils, crystals and ores. Laws of physics and geography be damned)
Granted, we are in the age of Vanilla Sims 4. Pre-Expansions. The expansions have always been what makes the series shine, expanding on existing features and heaping on new ones. I have some serious high hopes for whacky and insane adventures to put my Sims through in the years to come, just as the Sims 3 and previously, The Sims 2, had before it.
Should you buy it?
If you're a Sims fan, you've already bought it. If you're on the fence, to be honest, I'd wait and see what expansions come down the pipe to flesh out the experience.
Blog's not dead
Sometimes, life happens.
Sometimes things get put on the back burner.
Sometimes you lose that spark and have to go find it again.
Sometimes, you have to take the time to take care of your own business.
All in all, my job has been really keeping me tangled of late, while at the same time trying to maintain SOME kind of social life.
Hoping to get some things written and posted here in the coming days as they come.
Sometimes things get put on the back burner.
Sometimes you lose that spark and have to go find it again.
Sometimes, you have to take the time to take care of your own business.
All in all, my job has been really keeping me tangled of late, while at the same time trying to maintain SOME kind of social life.
Hoping to get some things written and posted here in the coming days as they come.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Video Game Wood Carvings
Then just recently on a day off I was poking around the garage and found a choice piece of rosey wood, and spent a good hour contemplating what I wanted to put on it. Being an avid gamer, my first instinct was to find something relevant to my interests. A logo or something. Being an even bigger fan of Bethesda Softwork's Elder Scrolls series, I decided to opt for what is commonly now known as the Skyrim logo.
Little bit of gaming trivia for you.
The second photo is the first one I did. Not very deep, as I would have liked, but it WAS a rather thin piece of wood so I didn't want to push my luck. Minutes after posting a picture of my efforts on facebook, a friend asked if she could have one, and how much it would cost her. I told her twenty dollars, to cover labor and everything. By lunchtime I'd found a decent piece, drawn the pattern, and by 4pm that afternoon, I had the first image you see above, which I feel is a better, more accurate rendition of the iconic image.
At my friends recommendation, I tossed the pictures up on the Phoenix Comic Con facebook group, and the response has been positive. I've even offered to do up some for people if interested once I get some fresh material, having used my last two good pieces for what you see.
Even have some friends curious if I might do other woodwork for them. It feels good getting back into an artistic swing of things.
Though I hope Bethesda is cool with me making these.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
So, what are you Grateful for?
What are you grateful for?
It's a question that's always given me a moment of pause. There's a lot of things in my life that get on my nerves, but what am I honestly grateful for? It's the part of Thanksgiving that always puts me on the spot in my family where we go around the table before grace and talk about a thing that we are happy to have in our lives. And we want that to be a meaningful thing, even if the thing that comes to mind is "I'm grateful the Diamondbacks at least made an effort this last season".
But it doesn't have to be something astronomically meaningful on a grand scale. Who are you trying to impress? There's no shame in being grateful for smaller, even insignificant things. After all, as I keep saying, it's the little things. When you wake up, before you start cursing the day and everything it's going to deluge into your life, take a second to think of something to be grateful for.
-"I'm grateful I have clean socks and underwear this morning." (I am notorious for forgetting to my laundry the night before)
And then just make a mental list of things to be grateful for.
"I'm grateful there's still some milk for my cereal."
"I'm grateful for the existance of coffee."
"I'm grateful my favorite Webcomic updated on time."
"I'm grateful we'll have a full team at work today."
And so on and so on. The idea is to take stock and count of all the good things in your life, rather than putting all of your innermost passion on the things you hate, or the things you're dreading. Even if you absolutely despise what you do for a living, you can at the very least say "I am grateful I am employed", because you are. You are at least grateful for that.
It can be a bugger to just compile a big list of things like that. So I recommend starting with just one thing. One thing that you're grateful for. And take a moment to appreciate this thing, or person, and love it. Love coffee? Have a cup of coffee, and really savor it, or enjoy it in that one coffee house you rarely get to go to.
And now that you have that one thing, you can start adding other things you find in your life that you're grateful for. Even if it's a situational "The carpool was on time, today was a good day". Or something not even relevant to you ("I saw a bunny on my way to work"). You will be amazed at what you can find a bit of gratitude for in things around you, or the things you take for granted.
And never forget to always take some time every day to be thankful for the things you're grateful for, even if it's just two seconds of silent reflection. Do this for yourself, focus on the good, and the good will start coming back to you.
Have a great and prosperous day.
It's a question that's always given me a moment of pause. There's a lot of things in my life that get on my nerves, but what am I honestly grateful for? It's the part of Thanksgiving that always puts me on the spot in my family where we go around the table before grace and talk about a thing that we are happy to have in our lives. And we want that to be a meaningful thing, even if the thing that comes to mind is "I'm grateful the Diamondbacks at least made an effort this last season".
But it doesn't have to be something astronomically meaningful on a grand scale. Who are you trying to impress? There's no shame in being grateful for smaller, even insignificant things. After all, as I keep saying, it's the little things. When you wake up, before you start cursing the day and everything it's going to deluge into your life, take a second to think of something to be grateful for.
-"I'm grateful I have clean socks and underwear this morning." (I am notorious for forgetting to my laundry the night before)
And then just make a mental list of things to be grateful for.
"I'm grateful there's still some milk for my cereal."
"I'm grateful for the existance of coffee."
"I'm grateful my favorite Webcomic updated on time."
"I'm grateful we'll have a full team at work today."
And so on and so on. The idea is to take stock and count of all the good things in your life, rather than putting all of your innermost passion on the things you hate, or the things you're dreading. Even if you absolutely despise what you do for a living, you can at the very least say "I am grateful I am employed", because you are. You are at least grateful for that.
It can be a bugger to just compile a big list of things like that. So I recommend starting with just one thing. One thing that you're grateful for. And take a moment to appreciate this thing, or person, and love it. Love coffee? Have a cup of coffee, and really savor it, or enjoy it in that one coffee house you rarely get to go to.
And now that you have that one thing, you can start adding other things you find in your life that you're grateful for. Even if it's a situational "The carpool was on time, today was a good day". Or something not even relevant to you ("I saw a bunny on my way to work"). You will be amazed at what you can find a bit of gratitude for in things around you, or the things you take for granted.
And never forget to always take some time every day to be thankful for the things you're grateful for, even if it's just two seconds of silent reflection. Do this for yourself, focus on the good, and the good will start coming back to you.
Have a great and prosperous day.
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