(I wrote this shortly after coming back from my holidays in July. Not sure why I didn’t decide to post it, probably post-holiday blues).

Back from holidays and I’m only a few days in work and it feels like an age.

So Sunday night (which is actually a few weeks back now), last day before going back to work, the bedtime routine with my daughter went like this:

My daughter was in bed, reading her book and I came up to say lights out, have to get up in the morning, first day back. She refused to, nearly finished the chapter Daddy. Okay, I gave her a few more minutes.

Come back up later, she’s still not finished (part of me begins to thinks she’s gone onto the next chapter, but I know that’s not fair), she still needs to get up early tomorrow, so I insist. She get’s upset quickly, a sure sign she’s tired. But all calmed and lights out.

She wants a song. It’s already a hour after both kids originally went to bed. Soon it’ll be my bedtime, because I have to get up before her. But I consent. Big hug and kiss.

Now I can relax, too tired now to do anything productive. But no, my daughter wants her bed setup the way she likes. Seriously? I look at the time. Remind her again, it’s late. But I agree, gritting my teeth and set her up.

Such a contrast to the routine on holidays and already a build up of stress.

We go for three weeks every year. Enough to cover travel and still have a solid two weeks of, well, doing next-to-nothing in the French country side. I still brought my laptop with me, but there was no internet connection.

About a week into the holiday, my phone died. Just stopped working. It was only then we realised that my phone had been our common clock. We were using it to decided to start making lunch or dinner, or when to get up with the kids. I was using it to watch the time and everyone else was referring to me for the time. But without it, and no watch, we were and everyone else was suddenly timeless. (Not truly timeless, of course. There were clocks, but you had to go find them, strangely no-one wears a wrist-watch any more).

Not that it was a big shock. Early on in the holidays, us adults were already sleeping in on the mornings. The kids are old enough to be able get up themselves. And I (or someone else) would get up, roughly around 10am, and get them dressed, feed and chuck them outside (if it wasn’t raining). 10am was just a natural point though. Normally it was the call of either my bladder or my stomach that got me out of bed at 10am, not an alarm clock. And so we were already working near-timeless before my phone died.

But now we had lunch when we all started to feel hungry or started planning dinner when it was evening and the kids were hungry. We’d still aim to put the kids to bed at the same time, but if they weren’t tired or they wanted to do something, we’d let them stay up a bit and when finished they went to bed and fell asleep quickly. No struggles or hassles.

And we the adults, we play games and go to bed when we started to feel tired.

And this enabled me to write. There is no writer’s block when there is no worry about time. You write till you don’t want to write or something demands your attention like the kids or hunger. You know you have more time later. I thought I’d just become lazy and just do nothing when I have too much time, that I need structure. Apparently not. I drew when I felt like it too. (I didn’t attempt to do any projects with my drawing, but that was a conscious decision I made before the holidays.)

I spent good time with the kids, with my wife and got fully rested. I actually spent time day-dreaming on purpose, something I would feel guilty about when not on holidays.

But once we had to hook back into timetables and deadlines, stress suddenly returns. And time becomes precious. Getting the kids to bed becomes pressured, because there are deadlines. Specific times they have to get up. Things that need to get sorted.

Time or the perception of the passing of time seems to be for me the source of most daily pressures and it sometimes feels a bit arbitrary. Kids school opens at 8am. Why? Why 8am and not 10am? (I read that teenagers, for example, work better if they sleep in late). Why do we work 9 to 5, Monday to Friday? It’s purely convention, an agreed use of time. The idea of maximising productivity is the act of making as much use as possible out of the time you have.

Even writer’s block to me feels partly due to time… I have to write now, this is my window, but what I write is crap. I’m running out of time… I become paralysed unable to act, as if some imaginary clock is ticking down turning my procrastination into worry.

Real world example: “From daunting to doubting”. Here is a post I wrote about my big writing project, where I’m losing enthusiasm and energy for it. It was the pressure of time, the “result” taking too long for me to see.

Now contrast with this post I made after the holidays: “I’m back from outer space…”. I got loads done and I’m excited again.

Removing the constraints of limited time, at least for me, is a big aid to creativity.

Related Posts:

• I failed at NaNoWriMo 2011, but it isn’t all bad
• I’d go mad for an iPad with but one change!
• Going on holidays tomorrow!
• Wordcount
• It’s quiet in here!

(Originally posted this on Google+, you can join me here, however I thought I’d flesh it out and post it on the blog. I suspect this will happen quite a bit).

There was one thing I liked about the first part of the current series (series 6) of Doctor Who. It was a really little thing but it featured in about three of the episodes that I noted.

(I don’t think there is anything spoilertastic here, but in case, be warned if you haven’t watched it yet)

In the episode “The Curse of the Black Spot”, the Doctor uses the word “Sensors” which the pirates don’t understand. The implication from the scene is that the concept can’t be translated by the Tardis to a concept the pirates understand.

Captain Avery: We made no signal.
The Doctor: Our sensors picked you up. “Ship in distress”.
Captain Avery: Sensors?
The Doctor: Yes. Okay! Problem word, seventeenth century. My ship automatically… noticed-ish that your ship was having some bother.
Captain Avery: That big blue crate?
Boatswain: That is more magic, Captain Avery. They’re spirits. How else would they have found their way below decks.
The Doctor: Well… I want to say multi-dimensional engineering, but since you had a problem with sensors I won’t go there. Look. I’m the Doctor. This is Amy. Rory. We’re sailors! Same as you. Rawrgh! Except for the gun thing. And the beardiness.

Then in the excellent episode “The Doctors Wife”, we hear a translation error from the Tardis. The Doctor explains to Rory and Amy that the place they find themselves in is sort of a “bubble outside of the universe” and Rory and Amy repeat it back to the Doctor who’s replies with something like “No, not really but if that helps”. Like using software-based translation tool to translate one language to another and then translating it back to the original language, the concept gets garbled and doesn’t make sense. Like the pirates who didn’t understand “sensor”, Rory and Amy (and thusly humans in general) couldn’t understand the concept the Doctor was trying to explain.

Rory: What is this place? The Scrapyard at the End of the Universe?
The Doctor: Not end of. Outside of.
Rory: How can we be outside the Universe? The Universe is everything.
The Doctor: Imagine a great big soap bubble with one of those tiny little bubbles on the outside.
Rory: Okay.
The Doctor: Well it’s nothing like that.

(later)

The Doctor: Completely drained. Look at her!
Amy: Wait, so we’re in a tiny bubble universe sticking to the side of the bigger bubble universe?
The Doctor: Yeah. No! But if it help, yes.

(So it’s not exactly how I remembered it but close…)

And then in the mid-season finale, “A Good Man Goes to War”, the Doctor pulls out his original baby crib with Gallifreyan text on it. Apparently the Tardis has some difficulty translating Gallifreyan to human and it takes a moment. I’m sure it was done for dramatic effect, but if not it implies that Gallifreyan written language is of a complexity many orders higher than human language, for the Tardis to actually take time to translate it “down” to human.

River: It’s okay, Rory. She’s fine. She’s good. It’s the TARDIS translation matrix. It takes awhile to kick in with the written word. You have to concentrate.
Amy: I still can’t read it.
River: It’s because it’s Gallifreyan. It doesn’t translate. {she hands her the leaf} But this will. It’s your daughter’s name in the language of the Forest.

(Cutting full quote in case of spoilers…)

According to the BBC website, 27th August marks the return of the Doctor. Can’t wait.

(I pulled copies of the quotes from Planet Claire)

Related Posts:

• My thoughts on the new Doctor Who Episode (S06E01)

It doesn’t look like Emperor Zerg at all!

I’m always disappointed by the shops in Eurodisney. I’m a geek and love good merchandise but most of the stuff seemed really tacky, great for the kids but not for us adult-kids. This year there seemed to be much more Star Wars stuff. There was even a Star Wars chess set, based on the original trilogy to boot. I nearly bought it, except it was too big and expensive and all the boxes seemed to be a bit mashed. They also had these little mash-ups of Disney and Star Wars characters in a few corners.

And this time round we discovered there is an actual book shop in Disney! But only found it as we were leaving, so didn’t really see in side. 

Related Posts:

• My daughter wants to be a Ninja!
• If all web-comments were read like this!
• Alan Moore wrote the Bible’s New Testament!
• The best comment spam ever?
• Bad joke comment-spammer keeps on rolling today

Last Saturday we had to spend the day in the city. My daughter was doing her first (and probably her last, she doesn’t want to continue) ballet show and rehearsals were in the morning and the show itself after lunch. So, me, my wife and my three year old son wandered Dublin city for a few hours.

The city used to be my second home before we had kids. And it was lovely to spend the day with no real purpose there. Everything’s changed but it’s still the same. Different shops, same streets. It was on Grafton St. where a busker was performing. A puppeteer. We stopped and watched for a while as the “silly statue” (as my son called it), interacted with the small crowd that gathered. The puppet itself looked old like a ragged classic jester but the puppeteer played loud modern dance music. A weird mix as this puppet made modern poses to the music while pretending to “steal” passerby’s shopping. It was quite obvious the skill and art the puppeteer had in bring his puppet to life.

I explained to my son that if you enjoyed a busker’s performance you should give them some money as a thank you but he was much too shy to come near the puppet.

I’ve wrote a little about my experiences on creating something for fun and my thoughts on creating as a product. But I also think how you present and frame your outpourings is as important, if not more important, than the thing itself.

For some reason, after I saw that puppeteer performing I thought of this article where a world famous violinist decided to busk in a subway station instead of a $150 per ticket concert hall. He dressed in ordinary clothes and just played his violin. Barely anyone noticed. By any definition or expert opinion, the music would be among the best in the world.

The article kinda makes some point about people rushing too much, not slowing down to listen and other such things. But I’m not surprised either. Any urban dweller learns to tune out things, “chuggers”, buskers, blaring music, glaring advertisements, smells from rubbish trucks and restaurants, etc. Sometimes something catches your eye and sometimes, like last Saturday, you don’t mind being distracted.

The puppeteer picked a street that’s popular for busking, on a weekend when people are browsing and willing to be entertained. The street is also popular for tourists to the city. He interacted with anyone who did stop. He framed his performance. His presentation was nearly more important than his actual act: he choose the best location, time and how to engage his audience. He stood on a box so he marked himself as not someone else on the street. If, like the violinist, he had chosen to perform in a busy train station, early on work day and refused to interact with his audience, do you think he’d have gotten the crowd we saw on Saturday?

And it’s like that with the internet. People prefer short blog posts than long winding slow-to-the-point ones. The internet is so full of spam, adverts, attention-whores, me-toos, trolls, re-posts, etc. that any good internet citizen, like any urban dweller, learns to tune out these things. Normal. Though we always slow down for certain voices (like specific friends or authoritative personas, reputations), certain trends (cats) and so on.

Producing a good or great work and putting it online means nothing without promoting it and sharing it in the right places and presenting it in a way that doesn’t automatically turn people off (like say presenting it as a “wall-of-text” or as a Word document instead of a webpage).

I remember arguing years ago that putting something, like say a free RPG online, was pointless because no-one would attribute any value to it. If they had to pay for it, they’d sit up a bit more (but also expect more). To be honest, that was a terrible simplistic view point. But “free” does have it’s own value indicators.

Which brings me all the way around to me being a moany git really. My frustration at my lack of ability to better present stuff I make. It’s not about validation. Going back to my previous blog posts on “making it for fun” or “making a product”, there is some thing to be said in treating the “making it for fun” as “making it a product for fun”. Which is a whole package of skills, that make introverts like myself don’t have by default.

What say you? How much does the way something, like a free RPG or fan-fiction, is presented/packaged (artwork, layout and other media) or how it’s framed (it’s relation to other similar things, it’s author’s profile, interaction with the audience, etc.) determine how you perceive it?

Related Posts:

• The value of presentation continued
• My initial impressions on the Nintendo’s 3DS
• My Three Axioms of Not Being a Dick that Discriminates
• My thoughts on the new Doctor Who Episode (S06E01)
• If all web-comments were read like this!

Inspired by fictitious entry’s posts on maps and geomorphs and some of the maps done by Dyson Logos, I decided to try my hand at doing an RPG map.

Here it is:

There are lots of little mistakes, I should have left more space at the top to do the church more fully and I scaled the “portal” at the bottom much bigger then I intended and… But who cares really. Normally my art projects require several iterations, references pieces, building ideas, etc. I did this in one sitting. Pencil to pen, very little sketching or references. And that was fun. It’s great to be able to do just draw. My kids draw like that. My son will draw a line and I’ll ask him, “what are you drawing?”, “I don’t know yet”. Same with this map, I started with the church and worked down. It’s like a mini-story, dead-end here, secret passage that the cultists use there and so on.

Of course, not that map couldn’t be done up as a proper art project. You just have to look at someone like Fantastic Maps to see how beautiful maps can be.

I then saw this article about recently discovered 1,800 year old tunnels under a temple in Mexico. All I could think was, this would make a great idea for a dungeon map!

Related Posts:

• My new Wacom Bamboo tablet!
• The RPG Blog Alliance
• Just to balance out my previously slightly depressing post about tabletop gaming…
• Is it really coming to the end of Table top roleplaying?
• Roleplaying Design versus Facebook versus Twitter versus Buzz, eh?

I don’t own a smartphone. I have no plans to get one either. I don’t own or carry any device that could be deemed to have decent internet (beside some nominal access on my mobile phone). This is odd because I invest so much time online, blogging, twittering, emailing, etc. Surely I’d want to be able to do that anywhere, right?

For the time being, I’ve quietly resisted, even though I know it’s probably inevitable. Okay, so I haven’t been really quiet, because I’ve obnoxiously demanded of others online why they feel the need to have a smartphone and found their answers lacking. But I’ve never come out as being against smartphones and I’m not against them. I am a geek, lover of gadgets, a programmer, big web user… I should be the perfect fit so I wonder if my trolling was more of an attempt to justify my reluctance to find answers.

Over the weekend, I think I answered why I don’t want a smartphone.

At first I thought it was purely a money thing. Previous to the popularity of smartphones, having internet on your mobile device was very expensive. Something you could only afford if your company was paying for it. And, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more and more aware of the cost of things, not just the upfront price but on-going  costs. Up until last year I was still using a pay-as-you-go phone, because I kept my bills lower than the basic bill-pay contract.

I try to avoid spending big unless I have to. Even when I bought the Wii, which wasn’t really very expensive even at launch, I felt uncomfortable forking that much money over for what is purely an entertainment device. (I have gotten my money’s worth out of it since). So you can imagine my reluctance to buying a smartphone which can cost much more than a Wii.

And then there is the cost of internet itself. When I got my current phone it was set up to pull down a few Internet feeds and display them as news scrolling on the screen. In one day it swallowed all my credit before I realised.

But no, it’s not cost (or at least not cost alone). My mobile-operator cold-called me to sell me a data package that was actually reasonable enough. I don’t want another extra bill per month, but it was low enough that it was soakable if I really wanted to have internet. Also, I have internet access/wifi in work and at home. So I wouldn’t need any extra data-plans at the two locations where I spend most of my time.

And I’ve always said, if I got a smartphone for free and my bills covered, of course I’d be happy to use a smartphone.

Maybe it’s not cost but the value of smartphones. Am I going to truly find one useful or will I find it’s just another expensive gadget to carry around? I feel like a little geek hipster here though, I still use a Palm PDA (“iPhones are so mainstream”). And it comes from before they had WiFi as standard. I remember when I first saw a Palm PDA, maybe 12-13 years ago, maybe more, I’m fuzzy on that. It was only green and black at the time. It had memo feature, calendar, games and ebooks. I thought it was the future.

Being a student at the time I could only afford the cheaper models, not the high end ones, but still my Palm PDA was/is still a great companion tool. However over the years it’s usefulness boiled down to a three specific functions. I use my current PDA as an MP3 player (with a 2 Gig SD card), a USB key and a digital notebook. That’s it.

Before there were app stores, for Palm devices there was the wild west of the internet and I tried a gallzillion different apps and games for my Palm PDA. There were lots of demos, and applications were more expensive than ones you might buy for an modern device. So when I hear about the great number of apps available for devices, I’m not that impressed. I’ll still use such a device for a specific set of uses. That’s not going to change.

Also, my PDA isn’t worth anything any more. This is a good thing. I treat it like muck and it’s still working for me. If it breaks, I’m not going to be crying over it. It served it’s time well.

But that’s also a bullshit reason. Modern smartphones come with a huge amount of extra features. They are slicker, have longer battery lives and interop with stuff I didn’t think possible. They would do more than an MP3 player or USB key. Of course the question is would I use those features.

I remember thinking that no-one would want a mobile phone with a camera. Certainly not me. Now I wouldn’t dream of buying a phone without a camera. They are great for taking photos of moments with the kids, for making notes (taking photos of port numbers or maps, for example), for sharing something visual with my wife or someone else or even on twitter.

While I may not know what smartphones would give me, I’m sure they’d bring something new, something interesting. And there is always those outlier situations where such devices are really useful (and it’s not just pub quizzes). I still wonder how we did things without mobile phones, really how did we?

It’s not that either.

I was at the playground yesterday running around with the kids. Getting sweaty as a lifted them up onto the big tower for the 20th “last time” slide. I had my mobile with me but I barely realised it was there. But in the evening, after the kids in bed, I was watching TV while reading my internet feeds on my laptop. And today I’m back at the monitor, working, engrossed in the bits lighting up the millions of pixels on my screen.

Do you know what it is, why I don’t want a smartphone right now? I want to be disconnected. (Plus a little of all the other reasons, but only a little).

I go to the gym twice a week, using my dumb PDA as an MP3 player, and I tune-out from work. Clear my mind. When I’m with the kids and family, I am with them. No distractions. Occasionally I might tweet something, a photo maybe, via text or MMS, but I don’t see a response from anyone till I’m home. When I’m work, I’m working, when I’m at my laptop, I’m online, interacting, absorbing information, I’m distracted.

My wife got an iPhone from work and now she gets emails at home that “need to be answered now”. While I know how useful and powerful such devices can be, I have to be able to turn off. While it’s only a matter of time (and money) before I end up with a smartphone, I think I enjoy my quiet a little longer. I have that doesn’t make me too much of a freak,

Related Posts:

• I’d go mad for an iPad with but one change!

So last week, I added my blog (well the roleplaying related posts at least) and my lost heroes dev blog to “RPG Blog Alliance”.

I saw a number of fellow bloggers/twitters joining up and thought I’d be in good company. But as of writing, it’s up to 131 members. That’s 131 blogs about roleplaying. 131 active blogs about roleplaying.

The feed is syndicated to twitter via @RPGBlogAlliance. And now my feed is constantly filled with new blog posts about roleplaying, from learning to GM to geomorph tiles to development blogs of new games. New content, all the feck’in time!

And there was me lamenting the decline of the roleplaying hobby. In just the last week, it’s gone from a manageable list of blog posts that I can read to avalanche of information I can’t digest in a timely manner, or at least before the next blog post comes in. That’s quite cool.

Related Posts:

• Review part 1 of my Custom Dice
• thedeadone gaming dice?
• Forgetting about it and moving on!
• Roleplaying Design versus Facebook versus Twitter versus Buzz, eh?
• My Cthulhu/thedeadone Fudge Dice!

So this is the final rendering of the “Meave” image I asked people to vote on last week. Because there wasn’t a clear consensus, I just mixed the two, some in front, some in back. It’s not perfect. It’s still quite tilted to the right, but I’m happy with it.

I also discovered my work has a A3 scanner. It only scans in at 300 dpp but that’s not too bad. So I re-scanned my “Matthew” image.

There is a distinct similarity in the two pictures, which I’m going to have to break with the next one!

Related Posts:

• New Lost Heroes Image: Renegade Chosen Matthew
• Some new art work: Meave and Dead Eyes
• Playing with the Lost Heroes RPG: “Book of Gods” Cover
• Satyrs and Goddesses
• Dead Desktop PC = More Drawings

Quick poll, which is better, the picture on the left or the right?

If you can’t tell the difference, the one on the left has the crows behind the character while the one on the left in front.

(If you can’t see the poll, visit thedeadone.net to vote)

Now that I’ve got both images on the computer, I’ve already answered my own question…

Related Posts:

• Final renderings and access to an A3 scanner!
• New Lost Heroes Image: Renegade Chosen Matthew
• Some new art work: Meave and Dead Eyes
• I’m back two weeks already? My my my…
• Playing with the Lost Heroes RPG: “Book of Gods” Cover

Damnit! I wish I had read some spoilers because then I would have waited till the second episode next week. And then watched the two in a row. If you’re reading this, expect spoilers, you have been warned.

That was a dark and intense episode and not what I was expecting. I can’t wait to see the next one but it really felt like it was throwing the audience into the deep end with this one. Seeing the Doctor die… in the first few scenes. A little bit of mind-boggling time-messing next. Bloom’in hell. No cheery gun-ho adventure here then.

The trailer hinted at a lot of possible things, which got blown out of the water with this episode I though. There is that shot of the doctor in a strait jacket… thinking perhaps some terrible fate landed him in mental asylum, but we find in the “next week prelude” that he’s been made prisoner by the American military, which felt a little of a let-down to me. Then River Song makes some reference to a terrible day coming, worse than death… makes me think that some awful horror is going to be inflicted on the Doctor, but no, it’s just River Song lamenting that the Doctor is slowing forgetting River Song as he travels in the opposite direction to her. While it does add pathos to their story, it suddenly felt that scenes had been inserted into the episode, just to use in the trailer and that the trailer is indicative of nothing.

And of course I can’t really make any predications for the next episode, it is Doctor Who. They do have a tendency to upend expectations. The new aliens are rather cool, with their “blink”-like forget me if you not looking at me thing. There was a couple of odd things, the future Doctor said something like, lets go somewhere I’ve never been, 1964. But then that’s where the current Doctor and companions end up. Isn’t that interfering in his own timeline? Is that the get-out clause of the Doctor’s death?

I’m not sure Amy’s pregnant either… if Amy is only basing that on her bursts of sickness, River had the same after seeing the Aliens. For a moment at the end I thought that the little girl in the space suit was actually Amy’s future child but I find that unlikely (but not impossible). Would give a reason why the future Doctor let himself die (so that the child could survive)? And if that is the thing that Aliens want Amy to tell the Doctor, what’s the relationship between the spaceman, Amy’s child, the Doctor and the Aliens? (Seriously it can’t be Amy’s future child…)

Also, that spaceship they found… didn’t that look eerily like the freaky time machine that was killing people in the episode “the lodger” (S05E09)? Are the Aliens time travellers then too? Or is the spaceman or the little girl a hologram of the spaceship or vessel for it’s pilot?

Too many questions, head going to explode!

Related Posts:

• Tardis Translation Error, a little reason why I love Doctor Who
• The value of presentation continued
• Fuck content, it’s how it’s presented that matters
• My Three Axioms of Not Being a Dick that Discriminates
• Look, being a parent is not what you expect or think it is