News and New Digs · 2:12am Oct 22nd, 2016
At the start of August, I moved away from my long-time home of London, Ontario and am now in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Stitchwolf got a job here that started as contract and finally became permanent, so I was able to finally follow him.
So far I'm enjoying the city. The food scene is phenomenal, surprisingly so given its location. The people are quite friendly overall, so no issues there. The roads though... ergh, those can use work. Glad I got my suspension dealt with before moving. I'm in a part of the city where I have quickly learned rush hour goes through and that it sucks.
Winnipeg is a pretty flat city, unlike in SW Ontario where there are at least some hills, some noticeable variation in elevation. This does make it nice for biking, and I was able to get a few weeks in there. Met a bunch of cool people during the Ciclovia 2016 Tweed Ride. Turns out there are people that take tweed and the old-timy look quite seriously. I look forward to biking again next year when things start to warm up again. It's getting near freezing here already and I get to look forward to a winter with temperatures close to -30C/-22F for most of it and a little lower than that with windchill for a 1-2 weeks in the middle.
The apartment that we're sharing is the smallest either of us have lived in. God, I miss the kitchen space we had. And the kitchen itself. Still, the place is nice enough. Parking is at least covered, if across the street. That'll be nice when winter comes.
One thing that irks me a bit is that I now live literally down the street from the city's cheapest first-run movie theatre and there hasn't been anything I wanted to see since August. The last thing I saw was Kubo and the Two Strings. If you haven't seen Kubo and the Two Strings, go see Kubo and the Two Strings if you still can. It's an excellent little movie, though I really don't care for the way it resolves itself, as it seems totally antithetical to the whole idea of the rest of the movie. Still, it's original cinema that's good enough that it should be supported. At least with the end of October approaching and November on the horizon I'll likely be making steady use of it until... probably start of next year.
Since my last blog post, the biggest thing writing wise I got done was that Wargame and I hammered out chapter 4 of Bon Bon Dies at the End. Also gave it some spiffy new cover art courtesy of dori-to. Please, give it a look, let us know what you think. I hope that the final chapter won't take as long.
To those who read Actually, I'm Dead, I have been working on that as well with Wave Blaster. I'm sorry for how long it's been taking, I really am. With all the havoc of my move and his family situation, we've really fallen out of rhythm with it. We are pushing to get it done before Halloween and it will be 20 chapters total. That is our deadline we've set and we will be doing everything we can to hit it. Chapter 19 is about 7K words in, with a few more K to go. I don't know if it'll make up for the wait, but we'll do our damnedest.
I'm also working on my own piece of ponyfiction separate from everything else. It's an Octiscratch first-meet fic that's currently 6K long and about half-way through its outline. It was based on an evening out I had myself at the start of the month. We'll see if I can get the rest done, it's not turning out quite as well as I'd hoped and likely will be subjected to judicious editing before going out, if at all.
Talking about Bon Bon Dies at the End reminds me; one of the things I've been doing with my time is catching up on watching stuff I had been neglecting. With the release of Ravager I decided to watch the entirety of Don Coscarelli's Phantasm series. I had seen the first one ages ago and found it... weird. It's still weird, but I dug it a bit more. I can most definitely see why he directed the John Dies at the End movie, as John and Dave have very similar vibe to Mike and Reggie in Phantasm, as does the overall universe. The rest of the series was pretty cool I felt also, if a bit all over the place. The second and third were the ones I liked the most. Oblivion was alright. Ravager was... really about as good a capstone as the series could get now, alas. It was a good last hurrah for the old gang, showcased as best it could some of the post-apocalypse ideas from the aborted Phantasm 1999 A.D/2012 A.D script that had been floating around for almost 20 years at this point. The final denouncement, how the series itself wrapped was... about the best, most logical thing we could hope for. The Tall Man was just too powerful a character to have it dealt with any other way that wouldn't seem contrived. I did love Angus Scrimm in that role, just such a wonderful presence as that character.
Another thing I had been doing was catch up on some video games I had purchased on Steam but not really played. Now, those of you who are Aliens fans like me will probably remember the absolute clusterf
k that was Aliens: Colonial Marines when it launched. I got the PC version during Steam's winter sale last year for a couple bucks and decided to finally look into playing it. Good news and bad news on that front.
Good news is that the graphics were mostly fixed, so it actually looks pretty good now. Bad news is that the AI was still dumber than a box of rocks, though again, not as bad as launch. There was some really good news though I learned of, in the form of TemplarGFX's Overhaul Mod. This adds shaders, particles, engine tweaks, and other enhancements to the game graphics to make them look better, but where it really shines are the AI enhancements; the xenos are now legitimately terrifying and difficult enemies. They will run on walls and ceilings more, retreat, take cover, jump and make quick attacks, all stuff they were supposed to do at launch but never did. Enemy soldiers do the same (minus the ceilings and walls), and they feel like real threats and not mindless bullet sponged like they were initially. Your companions are (largely) useful now, will not block your path, will get kills and cover your butt as well. The smartgun shows up 3 extra times over the course of the main game. I also played the Stasis Interrupted DLC which was very much a necessity to fill out the backstory of what happened between Aliens and the game. It did an okay job of that.
The mod doesn't fix the issues that the narrative has, or some of the voice acting, or the characters or that absolutely horrifically idiotic idea for a final boss battle, but it does make the game overall much more playable. The AI enhancements, while not perfect or totally consistent (sometimes enemies or allies will still just sit out in the open) are apparently miles ahead of this game at launch. There are some parts you can still run and gun, but not nearly as many, and you will live in terror of xenos jumping out and eating your face, especially in the dark, confined areas.
If you own Colonial Marines and haven't played in a while or could never make it through at launch, and are a fan of the movie franchise, I would urge you to give it another shot with the mod. I had a good time of it, you might as well.
Also played through Bioshock: Remastered. Will probably do Bioshock 2 sometime soon. I'm a sucker for achievements.
Eesh, can't believe I just wrote that much about ACM. I think that tells me that I've gone on long enough here. Back to story work in some form.
Thank you all that manage to read this! Best wishes, hope things are well for you all.
Congrats on the move and here's hoping that everything continues smoothly. Any chance either of you will be able to make it back for FE? I understand if not though, but you will be sadly missed if you cannot.
Looking forward to the new stories and will give them a read when I can. Anyhow, best of luck to the both of you and wishing you all the best in your future endeavours.
Glad to hear things are going well for you two n_n
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Thank you! Hope your trip is still going well!
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Thank you also. I'm not really sure if we'll be able to make it back or not, but would be nice. Depends on finances and timing for spring break, etc. We'll know more as it gets closer.
4266529 It was amazing!