Jesse Heinig's Journal
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| Saturday, September 12th, 2009 | | 4:19 pm |
| | Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | | 2:12 am |
Actual Play: Vampire, the Requiem - New Orleans
Tonight I set down three of my friends and burned some capital to make them play in a Vampire game for me. Long story short, I'm writing a little story for Vampire and I want to test it; since I set the story in New Orleans, I decided to use the prelude in the New Orleans sourcebook as a jump-off point. This way, the players could flex their characters and get to know them, the folks who hadn't played Requiem could become familiar with it, and their characters could meet some of the important personages of the city, all to set things up for later. ( Read more... ) | | Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 | | 12:07 am |
Blizzcon
I spent today at Blizzcon, down in Orange County, looking at and playing the new Blizzard entries in the upcoming video games field - Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft Cataclysm. I have the inimitable ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) chumley and animachina to thank for the opportunity, both of whom were delights to see again and gracious hosts in spite of my general fatigue and crabbiness. I also experienced the convention with Vach, Rob T. and Mindy, so it was a regular festival of friends and geekiness. I think I recognized some background art from Leonard Boyarsky, my old co-worker from the days of Fallout. (Leonard, I understand, was picked up as an artist by Bliz, and there was a picture of a destroyed skyscraper backdrop that looked reminiscent of his work.) I took in several panels, played a demo of Diablo 3 and of the goblin in Warcraft, and also saw Ozzy Fucking Osbourne live in concert. Originally I didn't want to fight my way into the concert hall, but after watching him work the crowd on the monitor, I decided that I would be kicking myself for years if I didn't go watch in person. He really knows how to fire up a crowd, and is quite a demanding performer! Now, super tired. Back to sleep. Hopefully new phone will arrive on Monday. It's already late, apparently. | | Thursday, August 13th, 2009 | | 8:39 pm |
Phone broken.
My phone is currently broken, so if you were planning to call, don't. | | Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 | | 3:27 pm |
| | Monday, July 20th, 2009 | | 11:55 pm |
Birthdays and such!
Another birthday down. My wonderful friends kept me company and faekeeper provided me with scratch-made lemon cake! In other news, Kobold Quarterly issue #10 is out. Why should you check it out, aside from all the great articles about gelatinous cubes and hill giants and beer? Well, this issue also features the "haffuns," the John Wick take on halflings, with a few contributions from yours truly. Check it out at koboldquarterly.com. | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 4:32 pm |
Deaths.
There's been an outpouring among social network sites and news outlets of grieving folk pining for the demise of various culture heroes today, such as Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. I suppose that in some sense, our "stars" are our culture heroes in the mythic sense; they are the shared essence of our understanding of "heroes" (in a post-modern way). So we as a collective mourn the passing of these people because they have shared meaning for us, and in a sense we are mourning deaths throughout our culture when we mourn the death of someone we see as a shared icon. Here are a few other deaths today, so that we do not forget that we are mourning death, not playing favorites with who is worth mourning and who is easily and quickly forgotten. Death comes to all of us eventually, so it is the ultimate shared human experience. Mary Doolin, wife of the co-founder of Frito-Lay, in Los Angeles Joseph Gastiaburo, in New York Frank Costanzo, a World War II vet, in Pennsylvania Pahoua Vang, in Wisconson . . . and this isn't even starting the hundreds or even thousands of unnamed others across the world who go without notice in obituaries, or in languages that we can't read. When we mourn the loss of our culture heroes, we should also mourn the loss of everyone who shares with them in the universal end of human experiences. Today, as everyday: Mourn death. Celebrate life. | | Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | | 1:03 am |
Tired.
I'm really tired of not having a job, nor being able to get an interview. I'm tired of depending on others to help me out. I'm tired of spending all of my creative energy on things that I cannot sell, or promote, or use in any way to make a living. I'm tired of being unable to sleep or concentrate. Just tired. Current Mood:  tired | | Monday, June 15th, 2009 | | 3:02 am |
| | Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | | 5:09 am |
Rumination.
For a while now I've met with foul luck while looking for work. It's not uncommon in this economy; apparently I'm part of the 10% (or 16.2% or whatever %) that is looking for work and isn't finding it. It does require a certain level of equinamity to retain one's peace of mind under such a situation. I've kept a little busy with some freelance: You'll be able to see my work this year in such productions as White Wolf's new Geist game for the World of Darkness, a supplement for Legend of the Five Rings by Alderac, and a supplement for Houses of the Blooded by Wicked Dead Brewing Company. Thanks to wickedthought , I also scored a little work for Kobold Quarterly, the e-zine for open content fantasy gamin'. I'll point them out as they're released! Meanwhile, I'm also working on a couple of projects for my own amusement. The first is, of course, Dying Kingdoms, a local live-action fantasy game recreation that has grown substantially in popularity since I garnered the help of several excellent staffers and co-conspirators. The second is a nonfiction book that I've started outlining and researching, tentatively called The End of Disaster; I hope to write it over the next few months and then see if I can pitch it to a regular publishing house or even a small press group. Heck, I might just release it electronically as a self-published bit. In between writing gigs I still work on my computer programming skills, using the tutorials from the ACM to improve my understanding of Java, C++, C# and ActionScript. It's that last one that seems to have the best chance of landing me a gig, so naturally that will require the most attention. On top of all of this, existential angst has pushed my sleep schedule back into noctural cycles (which seems to be the natural state for me), so tonight I moseyed on down to the beach for a walk around Santa Monica. Even late at night it was quite safe and peaceful. I'm very fortunate to have a place to stay so close to the beach so that I can enjoy the dark waves at night. Back to work! | | Thursday, June 4th, 2009 | | 12:47 am |
Up!
So the original plan for tonight was "nothing" with a possible side of "Naxx run in World of Warcraft." Late in the afternoon, requests started coming in from folks who wanted to do stuff with the evening, and I decided to side with alicia327 , whose plan was to get out of the house, have some Italian food and see a movie at the theater in Woodland Hills. We watched Up, an absolutely charming spectacle by Pixar/Disney, with many little messages about letting go, following your heart to adventure, and letting people into your life. Two thumbs . . . uh . . . I'm sure some movie reviewer said something clever about that, so I'll let you fill in the blanks. I gotta say, getting out and about is a welcome change of pace. I just so rarely have good adventuresome ideas that I find myself twiddling my thumbs a lot. Still have some writing to do, so duty calls . . . | | Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | | 5:35 pm |
Small gains, terrible losses.
Concurrent with the right to exercise free speech is the duty to speak up and express one's thoughts and opinions. In an informed democracy, such discourse is an important - even elementary - component of the free exchange of ideas that leads to our examination of and commitment to such ideals as truth, liberty, and justice. The California court decision re: Proposition 8 is unsurprising, though some of the language contained in the decision is unexpected. Other pundits have spoken regarding the possibility that the decision may so narrowly interpret Proposition 8 that same-sex unions will be allowed to have all of the same rights and privileges of marriage, lacking only the moniker. From a reasoned perspective, should this not be considered a victory? As Thorstein Veblen pointed out, human beings are not rational actors, and as a result, what could be considered a boon from a rational point of view is not always positive from a humanist point of view. Children given hamburgers in McDonald's wrappers consistently report them as tasting better than the same hamburgers made with the same ingredients but without the trade dress. The entire field of marketing and branding exists to change our perceptions about products, services, or ideas that may be identical (or nearly so) to ones with different names and appearances. Ergo, we as a species make decisions based as much upon our emotions and our instincts as we do upon reasoned thought (perhaps strikingly more so, depending upon how much one reads various journals of current neuroscience). To that end, labels define us and our thinking about ourselves and other people in a profound fashion. We cannot ghettoize some people and claim that they are equal while telling them that they are not. We cannot argue that we have upheld the substance while ignoring the style. Our words - our descriptions, our labels, our names - create for us expectations. From those expectations we derive our hopes for and our understanding of the world. We can hardly claim to uphold equality in the breach when our very language says that we do not. We the people must include all of the people. We the people brooks no exception, for to do so is to say this: that if we the people guarantee some right to a few or even to many but not to all, then we the people have spoken, and we the people have said that those not guaranteed the same rights are not part of the same body for whom we reserve those rights. We state that those few are neither we, nor people. We the people must speak for all people; we must speak for all rights; we must speak for all time. We have acknowledged the existence of universal human rights and we have acknowledged the need for social equality. We must cleave to these convictions, for to deny them is to tear us apart from our fellow humans. It is to turn the unification of we into the division of us and them. Today, our system of justice has told the people, "You may act as equals, so long as you do not claim to be equals." We have told a class of people that they are separate, but equal; that they may exercise free speech, as long as they do it in designated zones; that they may live their lives according to their self-determination, so long as they do not offend the rest of us by striving for recognition. We have told them that they may do what they wish so long as they are properly reminded that we are ashamed of them. We should be ashamed of ourselves instead. The struggle for liberty and for recognition comes slowly and with turmoil. "Wait a while for things to change" is the oft-heard refrain, yet it seems that all too often change comes only when trauma shocks us into action. Bloody batons descending upon heads of poverty-stricken Indians marching to the sea - an assassin's rifle destroying the eloquent speaker who decried the unjust treatment of different races - human pyramids of prisoners tortured and humiliated in the abstract pursuit of "destroying evil," which became justification to create evil of our own. So it is that we must take today as another sign that struggle continues. Evil must be constantly opposed - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," as famously opined by Edmund Burke. We may measure the decision today as a lesser evil, one that is less in the balance because it could have been worse, it does some good, it opens the door for later. Choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil; if it could have been worse, it could have been better; if it does some good, it could have done more; if it opens a door for later, it should have opened a door today. Make no mistake, there is no ingratitude for progress, but neither can we rest upon our laurels and congratulate ourselves or comfort ourselves with the cold thought that this small step is some sort of triumph. It may have been a small step that Neil Armstrong took upon the moon, but it was a giant leap that catapulted him there. We must strive to make sure that our small steps are only the last few moments before the giant leap. Current Mood: rhetorical | | Monday, May 18th, 2009 | | 3:34 am |
This is What it is Like to Live in the Dark Ages
I woke up after about two hand a half hours of sleep with a vivid sense that someone was in the room and fleeting memories of dreams of a serial killer. Of course nobody was actually there; this was merely the sensation that likely gave rise to reports of succubi or (if you're a reader of Hitchens and Dawkins) to the "presence" of the Holy Spirit. I have a sense that there is a lingering memory of the serial killer as someone young, wiry, dark-haired, quiet and clever, adept with a knife and quite capable of simply walking into someone's home late at night and stabbing repeatedly until every occupant is dead. I do recall most sinisterly a scene from the dream, as if watched from a movie, of police digging up a shallow grave and finding it empty, then one detective mulling over a scrap of linen with a scrawled blank verse on it while the rest of the force moves on. Almost a list-poem, the scrap said something like "Here I have buried cunning treasure "Which never shall you find. "But if you are determined then "Look to one corner of my mind." Of course said detective then ordered each corner of the shallow grave dug up again to a depth five times the initial excavation. (I don't know why my mind didn't put it into some fixed depth, but rather in a relative form like that.) Then the police found a linen-wrapped body submerged vertically in one of the corners. (No, I don't know which corner, nor why the police couldn't tell that the ground had been disturbed even deeper in their initial excavation.) The brain works in strange, strange ways. Under such circumstances it's easy to see how people can irrationally respond to fear of things that simply are not real. | | Friday, May 8th, 2009 | | 7:45 pm |
Kiai!
Finished up my first piece of writing (hopefully, of many to come) for Legend of the Five Rings and sent it off for review. Still looking for regular work while I plug away on a book for Houses of the Blooded. Strategicon late this month also reminds me that I need to put some more word count down on Destiny so that I can get that project some momentum. The writing, it never ends! | | Friday, April 3rd, 2009 | | 4:14 am |
Main power restored.
Fixed the rig. Turns out it was an obscure software issue, not a hardware one. Saved me the cost of a new hard drive. Did learn that I accidentally bought slow DDR last time I bought memory, though. Fortunately memory is cheap so I should be able to get a couple of replacement sticks for just a few bills. | | Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 | | 7:52 am |
Fwoosh.
Computer just died (posting from roomie's rig). Inconvenient. | | Friday, March 6th, 2009 | | 3:35 am |
Who Watches the Watchmen?
All the nerds, of course. My summary to Telmar after the movie: "If I ever meet Zack Snyder, I'll shake his hand and look him ruefully in the eye and say, 'Nice try.' " I really understand when things have to be simplified and compressed for time and sake of practicality . . . but still, so close and yet so far. | | Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 | | 4:15 pm |
Graduated.
The paperwork has finally been straightened out; the school should have my diploma sent to me in the next three weeks. At last, I graduate. | | Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | | 10:08 pm |
Over the briny deep!
Thanks to the gracious invitation of aghrivaine and pyr8queen , I went a-sailing - sort of - on the latter's ship down at the harbor in Redondo Beach. R. Telmar, faekeeper and geekstress were also in attendance. The afternoon started a bit hot and muggy, and there was little wind, so we couldn't actually get under sail; we tooled around under motor instead. Then the clouds darkened a bit and the day cooled off significantly. We returned to the pier and enjoyed the cool weather on the ocean while aghrivaine grilled sausages and hamburger patties, and we had a delightful time! (Well, at least I did. I can't really speak for anyone else.) Afterward I ran a little bit of Dying Kingdoms for the attendees, but we got a slow and lazy start and had to end without having really "gotten into gear." Still . . . boat! On the ocean! With waves, and sea lions, and dolphins, and cormorants! 'twas fantastic. Arrr! Current Mood:  chipper | | Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | | 9:49 am |
Whew.
Been up late a lot recently. Lots of additional writing. Latest bit: a big chunk of The Wilderness, for Houses of the Blooded. Based on stuff I did at Strategicon. It just seemed to come out so well, I'm pretty enthusiastic about it. Here's hoping the audience likes it too. Now to get some zzzs before I wake up in 4-6 hours for this evening's craziness. |
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