Heroism

You want to see heroism?

This here is true heroism at its greatest.

(Link courtesy of @ebertchicago's twitterstream)

Interesting Statistic

Technically, I crossed this threshold several entries back, but I was pleased to see that I now have more posts for 2010 so far than all of 2008 and 2009 combined. Though admittedly, 2009 only had one entry, since last year I was focusing on my other blog to the detriment of this one.

If I can keep up my current posting rate, I should be able to double this in only a couple more months, even if I don't write when I'm gone on vacation next month (more on that in a later post). Go me!

I Write Like Who, Again?

The answer to the question from my last post was The Expendables, by the way. Highly entertaining movie if it's the sort of thing you like (which I do), and whatever you thought of the trailer and ads is almost definitely what you'll think of the movie.

Anyway, there's a website people have been talking about lately called I Write Like, which supposedly analyzes a writing sample from you and tells you which well-known author your writing resembles. I don't know the technical details behind it, but just for fun I ran four of my posts from this blog through it.

Three of them came back as David Foster Wallace, while the outlier was Cory Doctorow. I've never read any of Wallace's works, and though I recognized the name, I only really knew that he was a writer and had committed suicide a couple of years ago. But reading about him in Wikipedia makes me definitely want to read his stuff for myself. As for Doctorow, I've read some of his essays online and articles in Wired, so I'm familiar with him. I guess I don't see the comparison, but I have a lot of respect for Doctorow, so I certainly don't mind.

Of course, you can't read too much into things like this. But they're fun to play around with, and the temporary ego boost is nice.

The Question Of The Day Is...

...do I go see The Expendables or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World this weekend?

Sew It Goes

On Sunday I did something I've never done before: I sewed a button on a shirt.

Yes, it's pretty mundane, but in a weird way it was a big deal for me: I successfully did something that was both practical and had intimidated me for a long time. For some reason, I never learned it back in Home Ec in junior high (or if I did, I had long since forgotten it). And it wasn't something I learned in Boy Scouts either -- you'd think we'd have learned at least basic sewing, considering it could potentially have useful application in both the outdoors and day-to-day life, but I guess obscure knots you'll never use are more important.

Anyway, I had a dress shirt that was missing a button on the front, and since I have to wear dress shirts most days for work, I wanted it to be back in the rotation, so to speak. I thought about taking it to a tailor and having it fixed, but then I thought "This isn't something major like having a suit taken in; I should be able to do this rather than pay someone to do it." Plus, I already had the necessary materials in a storage box in the closet. With a button, black thread, a needle, and a helpful tutorial from eHow, I was set to go. It took a little while, and it wasn't the most elegant sewing in the world, but it got the job done.

I think it's a good metaphor for a lot of things in life: it's something that seems hard at first, and maybe even impossible. But a little bit of preparation and research go a really long way, and before you know it, you'll wonder why something like this ever intimidated you. And the nice thing about confidence is that it builds on itself -- if you can manage to do one thing, you can do the next, and so on and so on (or is that sew on)?

Bonus Post: Scheduling

I've decided on a posting frequency schedule for my two blogs in order to establish some regularity and encourage myself to post consistently. As of today, this blog will be updated on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Hired Minds, my other blog (there's a link over there on the right; this is a fast post and I'm being lazy) will get new content on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. There may be occasional "bonus posts" like this one where I post on a non-scheduled day or multiple times in one day for a special reason. But otherwise, I will do my very best to keep to that schedule, and to that end I've already written the next post for both this blog and HM. So now I just need to think of something for Wednesday and Thursday...

Con-templation

Today is the last day of GenCon in Indianapolis, which is the largest convention dedicated to gaming in the country ("gaming", in this case, referring to board games, card games, RPGs, miniatures, etc). I went each year from 2000 through 2005, went to Otakon instead in 2006, and then back to GenCon in 2007, but haven't returned since then.

There's a few reasons for why I haven't been back yet -- we didn't have the best experience in 2007, so we weren't much interested in returning in 2008, plus we had taken a two-week trip to Japan earlier in the year anyway so we weren't itching for a vacation. In 2009, we still weren't quite up for it, plus our employment situations around the time when we would have needed to decide if we were going pretty much precluded any possibility of attending anyway. This year, I actually considered going back in late April, but the need to make the logistical arrangements so far in advance (due to the massive attendance and limited number of hotel rooms) meant that I had waited too long to be able to do it.

But now I am very seriously considering going back in 2011, even if I end up deciding (again) that it's the last time I go. I have a lot of great memories of GenCon, as it's where I've not only discovered games that I love to play and have introduced to other people (such as Apples to Apples), but it's also where I've met a lot of cool people and made new friends. As such, I feel I need to see if it is something I want to keep doing, or something I want to leave behind, but on a good note.