Is it possible to be addicted to design? I never knew I’d end up having so much fun designing shirts & stuff when I first started that cafepress shop with my husband and our friend. I’d never done this kind of stuff before, and I’ve been stunned to see how well things have taken off (this month we hit the tier one volume bonus on THE FIRST DAY of December) and how much fun I’ve had with it. I’m getting more proficient with GIMP, although it still confounds me at times. It’s certainly helping me to design better items, even if the design takes longer. For example, the Epic Raiment of Holiday Cheer:

And of course, yet another new writers’ design, “write with curiosity:”

Among others. Yes, among others. Sigh… The Coffee mug of ultra-caffeination has also been selling like crazy, often 2-4 at a time.

Sure, it isn’t enough to live off of. But it supplements my husband’s income a lot better than the AdSense ads do, and it’s easier on my tendonitis than almost anything else I can do. It also dovetails perfectly with my ADD/bipolar/PTSD, because it’s easy to do in short bursts as the mood takes me, and I can apply it to almost any topic or interest–which means that restlessness and an inability to focus don’t keep me from accomplishing quite a bit. I pretty much despaired of ever finding anything that worked this well with my particular disabilities, so I’m going to let myself go nuts with it!

Technorati Tags: cafe press, cafepress.com, meerkats, Warcraft, World of Warcraft, writers, writing

I’m officially taking today off after spending the last few days cooking (and eating, of course). Phew! Tired but happy. And we have a fridge and huge freezer full of awesome food. All we needed to pick up this week was some milk, pretty much!

Tomorrow I’ll start in on the rest of the cookbook reviews; I’m looking forward to this. I’ll get them up hopefully over the course of this week–in time for holiday shopping!

Also, we have a couple new designs up at cafepress in addition to the new Epic Coffee Mug of Ultra-Caffeination:

I debated whether or not to rewrite this old post from my last blog since I’m not on a pvp server any more, but some folks found it useful, so what the heck. I’m updating it to include a few clarified thoughts and responses to issues people have raised.

Technorati Tags: gameplay, gamers, gaming, mmorpg, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

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This video makes me want to get Rollercoaster Tycoon. *grin* They match up the music with the video extremely well:

Also for fun, more than 60 videos by MarkDayComedy. I’d embed them, ’cause they’re hysterical, but there are more than 60…

Anyway, I wanted to get level 70 shirts out in time for the holidays. I know Burning Crusade isn’t coming out until the end of January or something like that, but, it’s the holidays! This means two things. One, I’m gradually rolling out level 70 designs. I think they’re better than the 60s; I’ve learned a few things since I first designed those, but they’re also still very similar. They include a couple of variations this time that they didn’t last time. Here are a few samples for ya:

We’ll discontinue all the level 60 stuff at some point, but we haven’t decided exactly when yet. Probably sometime between Christmas and the release date. In the meantime however, until we discontinue them all level 60 designs have been marked down. (There’s a limited amount I can mark things down because cafepress’ base price makes up much of the price, but there you have it.) So if you want one of the 60s, now’s the time!

Adventurers’ Last Words: Switching Weapons
Mugs, shirts, prints, more!

Technorati Tags: Burning Crusade, cafe press, cafepress.com, gamers, gaming, mmorpg, MarkDayComedy, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

Still more awesomeness from Jonathan Coulton (music) and Mike Spiff Booth at Adobe (video). This one is my third favorite, right after “Creepy Doll” and “re: Your Brains”, and it has the added “awwwww” factor. Very catchy tune and slick video editing. Yet again, you don’t need to be a Warcraft fan to enjoy it.

I saw a video set to this song featuring characters from Stargate: Atlantis, but I wasn’t nearly as fond of it. The person who produced that video made what I think of as a common mistake among amateur video-makers: the video consisted almost entirely of talking heads mouthing lines meant to match up roughly to the lyrics in shape. Boooring, sadly. You need actions and movement in a video, and that’s what makes Booth’s videos so good–he has a much better grasp of that concept. Most of the talking in his videos is used to underscore action and brief moments of emotion. Much better.

We’re doing the usual pre-election research, because we don’t blindly vote along party lines–we vote for whoever we think will do the best job, whichever party they happen to be in. Sometimes that means we vote Democrat and sometimes that means we vote Republican; it almost invariably means voting a split ticket. After being raised in a family that contained extremists on both sides of the fence, I ended up firmly Independent–I believe in individuals, not parties. Parties exist to get as many of their people in office as possible; it’s those people who actually do (or don’t do) something with that.

Unfortunately, politicians these days are such bastards that we were looking at one of the races and ended up coming to the conclusion that we’d have to vote for the guy we’d described as “one corrupt f***er” because he was the best option available. Ugh. Seriously, I think no one in their right mind would want to get into politics these days except the power-mongers, and those aren’t the folks you want in office by and large. It seems like there’s almost no one left worth voting for.

I really wish most Democrats (among others) didn’t seem set on taking a “vote for us–we’re not those guys” stance this time around. I won’t vote for someone whose positions and viewpoints I can’t find any information on, and I don’t like voting for someone simply because they’re the only candidate who’s willing to admit what they stand for. As it stands, there are local candidates I could end up voting for simply because they’re the only ones I can get any information on that don’t seem like complete and utter sleazeballs. It’s possible one of the other candidates would be better, but I can’t figure that out because they’re so afraid of losing votes by saying something that they aren’t willing to say anything at all! Until they figure out that this strategy won’t work, they (and we) are screwed.

Holy Cow!
Shirts, mugs, more for gamers!

Technorati Tags: Jonathan Coulton, music, politics, elections, videos, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

Jonathan Coulton’s “Skullcrusher Mountain” with video by the awesome Mike Spiff Booth. I did finally get the full collection of his music, and I highly recommend doing the same if you enjoy the songs so far!

I recently learned of an, umm, “interesting” practice I hadn’t known about before. Apparently, because reporters and journalists tend to be so incredibly busy these days, it’s considered good business sense to include a “sample review” with your book when sending a review copy to these folks. The idea is that if they find some comments in the sample that they agree with after reading your book it makes their lives easier (because they can adapt those comments), and any way in which you can make their lives easier makes them more likely to take the necessary time to review your book.

I can’t blame writers for doing this. If it works and it makes their books more likely to get reviewed then it makes good business sense for them to do it. Certainly if it’s being used in the manner suggested above–simply to make things easier when the reviewer finds things they agree with in the sample review–I guess it isn’t a horrible thing. However, the book that recommended this practice admitted straight out that there’s a surprising number of journalists/reviewers that use whole paragraphs from the sample review without altering them–or even the entire sample as written.

Okay, I tend to vacillate between cynical and naive I guess, but jeez. I don’t care if you agree with the sample review or not; that isn’t reviewing a book. As far as I’m concerned, unless you’re writing your review in your own words you aren’t writing a legitimate review. That’s a good argument for finding a few reviewers whose reviews you like and sticking with them for a while–you should get to know their style well enough that you’ll be able to tell they aren’t copying other people.

I hate the idea of being influenced by other people when I review a book. Typically I not only don’t read any sample reviews I might receive before reading a book and drafting my review, I don’t even read any other press kit materials I receive. I don’t read other people’s reviews (unless I was drawn to the book via reviews). I might read some of the press kit material between drafting my review and posting it in case I want to mention any awards the book has received (or background material on the author), but I don’t want it to influence my basic evaluation of the book in any way. And if I feel that an author is deliberately trying to influence my review, I will politely but firmly rebuff any such efforts–I’m stubborn as hell about my opinions, and while I’ll do my damndest to give a book a fair, unbiased chance no matter what the topic or slant, I’m not going to change my view on it just because someone tells me I should.

I tell ya, though, this is going to make me look a lot harder at the reviews I read.

Make a Wish Framed Tile
Shirts, mugs, more!

Technorati Tags: book reviews, books, Jonathan Coulton, music, reviews, videos, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

The Blue Forge Fire guild (of the Bloodhoof realm) has put forth the following recruitment video to help them obtain new members. I have a feeling they’ll hear from one or two people:

Found on the always-hilarious AFK Gamer. Thank you, Foton, for yet more laughs.

My husband has a new screed on his engineering blog, another toe tagged project–a rather fascinating (in that train-wreck sort of way) case study of web development gone wrong.

Also, for those of you doing NaNoWriMo (something I’ve avoided so far due to being more comfortable with non-fiction, but one of these years…), there’s a handy page of NaNoWriMo Tools including character sheets, names, settings, lists of plots, name generators, and a progress chart. Okay, so odds are that’s stuff you would have needed while preparing for this month, rather than during this month, but you never know. At the very least you’ll have it for next year.

18/00 Means…
Shirts, mugs, stickers, more!

Technorati Tags: NaNoWriMo, writing

Another delightful Mike Spiff Booth/Jonathan Coulton video set in the World of Warcraft. Great production quality and hilarious lyrics! Note that Coulton’s music is available for fairly inexpensive download on his site, especially given that it’s provided under a creative commons license that allows you to re-use it for non-commercial use, pass it on to your friends, etc. Yes, I’m so addicted to his quirky, catchy tunes that I ordered the whole freakin’ set, and I don’t often buy music any more. Le sigh… I gather it requires some kind of manual processing (understandable when you’re taking payments through Google and PayPal), so hopefully I’ll get that sometime today. I’m all impatient and stuff. *grin* Besides, I need something other than “your brains” “creepy doll” and “code monkey” going through my head repeatedly.

Traditional edit: Aha, it finally occurred to me to look at Coulton’s FAQs, which helpfully state that if you can’t figure out how to get the downloads (i.e., something went weird), just email him and he’ll take care of it. I emailed him, and I look forward to reporting that I’m bopping along to catchy weird music soon.

TE2: Via AFK Gamer/Uncle Foton, it’s Carnival of Gamers #19 - Late Night Addition–a bunch of links to interesting gaming rants and articles.

That’s a plan
Clothing, mugs, stickers, more!

Technorati Tags: Jonathan Coulton, music, videos, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

A deliciously creepy and funny music video based on a song by Jonathan Coulton and set in the World of Warcraft with great video-editing skill by Mike Spiff Booth. You don’t need to be a Warcraft fan to enjoy it! I highly recommend visiting Coulton’s site afterward and downloading his music. I plan to later today.

I think we’re going to stop bothering with the whole Halloween trick-or-treating thing. Attendance here is so anemic that it’s hardly worth it, and the kids barely even seem interested. We get fewer people every year. I’m guessing more and more parents take their kids to community events instead.

My husband has finally started doing some raiding in Warcraft. I know, rather late, but until not all that long ago he was just too busy with work. Essentially, our guild is part of a multi-guild raiding system; it’s meant to be a comparatively casual raiding guild, and most of the members are adults with families and jobs. They’ve hit the point where they can’t really take any casual part-timers along to their usual raid nights because they’re doing things that are too tough; if they take folks who don’t know what they’re doing they just don’t get any farther. So they’re starting a second raid group–run by officers from the first and a few alts of folks in the first who know what they’re doing–to give yet more casual folks the chance to get involved. My husband took the opportunity to jump in. The first time they did MC they only had 30 people, but they managed to down the first 2 bosses, which is well better than they expected to do. Last night they did AQ20 and again downed the first 2 bosses. Yay! He’s enjoying himself, and I’m enjoying listening in on the hysterical vent conversations. They only have one or two people who think they’re funny while being obnoxious; most of those folks are genuinely entertaining.

6-Sided Luck Framed Tile
Shirts, mugs, more!

Technorati Tags: Jonathan Coulton, music, videos, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

I do not subscribe to the belief that video games are inherently bad, addictive, and so on. I believe that like any other tool, they have the potential to be used well or poorly. However, because of the ways in which they’re enjoyable, they tend to tempt addictive personalities–much in the way that some folks get addicted to playing solitaire at work, drinking alcohol, web-surfing, or whatever. It doesn’t make solitaire, alcohol, or web-surfing “evil”, but if you have a problem with addictive behavior you should be careful around things you find addictive. It isn’t the fault of a video game if someone plays it to excess and ignores the important things in their life–it means that person has an addiction problem and needs to deal with it.

Technorati Tags: gamers, games, gaming, psychology, addiction, Warcraft, World of Warcraft

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