Book Review: Soon I Will Be Invincible
I’ve just finished reading Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman. It was an enjoyable read, but it left me disappointed.
Archive for the ‘books’ Category.
Amazon Kindle
On Monday I received my Kindle, after waiting three weeks. Yesterday I finished reading Small Favor on it, and I’m really liking it. Of course, I knew I would. And it seems they are caught up on the supply now; a coworker ordered one yesterday after I showed it to him, and his is being shipped to him now (to arrive tomorrow).
What? Someone’s being logical about this?
Two Harvard Psychologists are saying that boys who play no video games at all are more likely to get in trouble than boys who play some video games.
Wholly Crap
Been a while since I posted here, huh? Hmm. : /
Well, an update on what I’ve been doing:
I am starting work on a video game version of Stardust (you may recall that Stardust is the working title of my board game side project—or you may not), using XNA Game Studio 2.0, which I hope to eventually make available on the Xbox 360 (through Xbox Live Arcade or the as-yet-unannounced XNA distribution mechanism, if it is suitable). XNA was chosen because I like the ease of programming in C# and it’s kind of cool to be able to make games that work on the 360 (functionality I have not yet tried, since I don’t plan on paying the $100 for a year of the Creators’ Club until I have something worth testing on the 360). This is the first time I’ve done any graphics programming (I haven’t even done a custom Windows forms control before), so the fact that XNA makes it a bit easier is another benefit. I’m doing the graphical stuff first because it is good motivation when I can literally see the progress I am making. So far it basically just draws the board.
If he had black hair, he would be known as “Kvothe the Raven”
But he has red. Anyway his story is awesome. I refer, of course, to The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which I knew months ago that I would enjoy and which I received for Christmas, and finished last night.
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quickie
Saw Stardust (the movie) on Friday and it was awesome. Go see it.
Still making progress on Stardust (my board game project). Much left to do, but I’m enjoying it.
Getting back into the “swing” of “things,” or: To Blog or Not to Blog
Well, I haven’t written much here lately. I guess I kind of wonder sometimes what to write about, even though I have things on my mind. There is a fear of having ideas stolen if I reveal too much here, and so, about things I’m creating, I say little or nothing. Mundane things often seem too mundane to write… etc.
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thank you, Mrs. Rowling
Just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I love it.
Watch out for the hallows…
… they’re deathly.
This is the part where people smack their heads, and I laugh.
Anyway, last week I was diverted from working on Stardust and pretty much everything else because I was re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6), in preparation for the Saturday release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7, the last one). Now I’m reading Deathly Hallows but sharing it with my wife, so I’m not quite halfway through yet (when Half-Blood Prince came out I had finished it the same weekend it released). She gets to read it while I’m at work, since I probably should be doing some work, and I get to read it when I get home.
recovery, television, and the written word
I’m feeling much better today. Not fully recovered, but very much better.
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Yesterday my wife and I started watching a bit of Criss Angel’s show, Mindfreak. The steamroller thing was a bit crazy… many of the things we’ve seen him do, we have theories for how they could work (without real magic). Except the levitation. We suspect he uses magic tricks to cover up the very real supernatural abilities he employs.
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the post with the uninspired title (well, another one, anyway)
Finished Fool Moon (the second Dresden Files book) on Sunday, and enjoyed it as much as the first. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of them, but I’d like to own them (I like to own good things, like DVDs of movies I like and copies of books I enjoy, even if I never get back to watching or reading them again), and I’m going to refrain from buying them until I have more money sitting around.
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to do list
Finished that book, and I enjoyed it. I’m about two thirds into the second one. I want to start on a short story soon, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to it.
movies and books
I like Shrek 3. Not as dramatic a climax as the first two, I thought, but very funny and well done.
Pirates 3 I think is great. I like the fact that it has a much more complex storyline than most mainstream movies would be brave enough to put in. It was fun and funny and interesting and cool.
forgot to mention…
Just noticed that two posts down I said I started reading The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents; I wanted to say that I finished it the next day and as I suspected, it was a very fun read.
status report
Party A on FFXII (Ashe, Vaan, and Fran) are level 40 and Party B (Basch, Balthier, and Penelo) are 38. They all have every augment on the license board and everybody has all three Quickenings. Two characters have one Esper each (Vaan and Penelo), and I know the locations of two other Espers, though each handed me my ass (and I wasn’t even aware I’d dropped it).
a fortuitous turn of events
Through some mistake, it was believed that John Hodgman (author of The Areas of My Expertise, which is excellent) would be hosting an event event in New York featuring Neil Gaiman. This is not the case; the event will be run by Johnathan Ames, about whom I know nothing. This may have been a regrettable mixup if it had not ultimately been the cause of such a fortuitous happening: that through the post about it on Neil Gaiman’s blog, I found John Hodgman’s blog, which makes the whole thing worthwhile and speaks to the veracity of existence of fate, or destiny, or synchronicity.
