After another year of experience, I levelled up today to LV 39.
My WIS and INT both went up, but my STR, DEX and STA all decreased a little. My CHA seemed to remain unchanged.
I put both of my skill points into fish wizardry.
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
Age +1
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011Fish Wizard
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011There are few corners of this planet over which I hold no influence, but ironically one of those is the biggest corner of them all.
The Big Blue. The Great Green. The Endless Ocean.
It has always been a frustration of mine, but finally I have a remedy! I present… (drumroll)… this:
Yes indeed my good friends, for the first time in æons I once again sport a watch. But not just any watch, for this is the legendary Fish Master 5000.
Let’s get the basics out of the way quickly: stopwatch, countdown timer, thermometer, alarms, world times and phases and age of the moon. Simple stuff. Oh, and it tells time as well.
But this watch takes timekeeping into a hitherto unexplored dimension in that it gives the wizard that wears it (that would be me): supernatural knowledge of fishes!
Let’s take a closer look at the face:
Look just above the time, just below the center. See those fishes? Well the watch keeps track over a countless amount of incomprehensible (to humans) “fish variables” and distills the necessary information into a four point scale. It then displays the output as a number of fishes on the face of the watch. In the above image, what I shall call ‘fish power‘ is currently at 50%
This fish power is dependent on the location of the wizard wearing the watch, and this can be set by changing the longitude. It is also influenced by the time and age of the moon, as well as (no doubt) other mysteries that (those arch-wizards at) Casio are unprepared to reveal. All this magic in such a tiny package! Steve Jobs would be proud 🙂
The effect of having this device on one’s wrist is to make the world of fish no longer impenetrable to the wearer. As soon as I put on this watch it was as if my eyes had just opened, and I immediately knew everything about fishes.
For instance, a quick glance at my Fisher King 9000 tells me at this very moment, were I in the vicinity of Addis Ababa, I may be heading to the nearest lake with a fishing rod in my hand.
No longer – I could finally say – could any fish hide from me. Never again would I fail to know where (or when) all fish are, anywhere on this great planet of ours. At first, like a child, I reveled in this newfound power. I would swagger around the house bellowing such comments as “Try hiding from me now you scaly little bastards!”, or “I am the God of all fishes!”. But after some time a strange calmness began to descend upon me. I became reflective, and began to realize that what this device had given me was not dominion, but invitation.
Perhaps – I came to see – my destiny was not to rule the fish. Perhaps my destiny was to join them. At last – I ultimately realized – my world and theirs has finally intersected. At last I have become one with the fishes. Truly I am now a brother to every fish. Into their scaley little hearts I have been welcomed, and all because of the power of this magical device.
For the Fish-a-Tron X-9 is so much more than a timepiece: it is a ticket to a fuller existence – a land where the barrier between man and fish has broken. Where the endless depths of the ocean are no longer a mystery, more a promise.
And where the ancient silent song from sunken R’lyeh has never been clearer…
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
The Perfect Storm
Friday, February 25th, 2011As I type this, it is snowing heavily outside. We have had a great deal of snow this season, so much so that there was still a heavy coat on the ground after a few relatively warm days. But today it has returned with a vengeance. I went outside just now to take some photos.
The snow is very thick and heavy. This will be difficult to remove, even with the snowthrower. I don’t know when it began to fall, but it is already 4 or 5 inches deep (over the top of my boots) and shows no sign of slowing. The trees and bushes are burdened by the weight; the plough has not yet cleared our road. I can only wonder what KLS’s drive to work was like.
The entire season I had not ventured into our backyard due to the very thick (~2 feet) coat of snow. Just now I did.
It is utterly silent when the snow falls like this. The only thing I could hear was the crunch as I stepped through the drifts, and occasionally the sound of a flake falling into my ear as I looked up to take a photo.
Everything is coated with snow. From the smallest stalk to the tallest tree. Even the power lines are weighed down with a thick coat. There are no signs of the squirrels or birds or any other creatures that up until yesterday had carpeted our backyard with their footprints in the snow.
It isn’t very cold, maybe just about freezing. As I explored the snowfall increased in strength, and even began to get uncomfortable. I could feel it freezing over on the top of my head.
The above is a closeup of our cherry blossom around the side of the house. In only a couple of months that will start to bloom, and shortly afterwards will be laden with flowers. Right now the branches are weighed down with snow, and the trunk is 1-2 feet deep in snow and ice.
As I was heading back inside I stepped closer to the two bushes you can see in the above photograph. All of a sudden a sound – the flutter of wings. I meekly peeped, and could see birds inside. They are safe there in the dense foliage, under their snow-cap. I couldn’t make out what types of birds they were, or even how many. A few little ones. I hurried away.
This is the best kind of weather. This is Earth at it’s most beautiful.
Although I have seventeen American winters under my belt now I still love the snow, especially an impressive fall like this one. I wish all my Australian readers could experience exactly what this is like.
I Can’t Draw
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011There are a lot of things I can do well, and even some I can do very well. You may have noticed I don’t have a problem boasting about such things here on the blog.
So now it is time to boast about something I am really, really bad at. And that is drawing.
As an example, I was driving around on the information superhighway the other day and found this remarkable image on the website of a freelance designer:
It’s just a little something he (oil) painted in his spare time. It’s a homage to Monster Hunter, and – as you can see – it is a pretty stunning display of artistic talent.
By comparison, here’s a picture of a monster I once knocked up in my spare time:
I drew the above when I was about 19. It stayed on that blackboard (which, amusingly, was on the wall of a house we lived in) for about four years. Some of them after I left Australia. I was quite proud of this creation. It was one of the better monsters I had ever drawn.
To quote Jeremy Clarkson: ‘If I’m honest… it’s terrible.”
Here’s another piece of art I found online. To stick to a theme it’s another example of Monster Hunter art. This time the artist has lent his talent to designing a hypothetical set of armor for the character:
It’s what I would call the ‘complete package’. Egyptian themed armor, that not only looks incredible but is also accented by the sketches on the right that suggest the origin of the parts required to make it may be a scarab-inspired beast. It makes me wish this armor was actually included in the game.
I could spend a million years sketching and never rival the above. And believe me, I have tried. For instance here are two snaps of ‘character designs’ of my own. Specifically, different suits for cats:
Each of these are about ten years old. One was on our fridge for aeons, the other was a relatively recent addition after being found as a bookmark in an old book. In each case they represent the limit of my artistic ability when it comes to designing clothes for felines.
And – let’s face it – each of them is spectacularly awful.
So what of CG? Maybe my talent lies in computer assisted drawing? Maybe I can create something like this next (again, Monster Hunter themed) offering, which the artist admitted to knocking up “in a few hours” as a contest entry:
December 16 2001 was the day I began my career as a CG monster artist. It was also – not coincidentally – the day that career ended. Here are the only two works born in those fated few hours:
The top is (of course) Cthulhu. The one at bottom is… well it’s apparently Snakus Godus.
It is very difficult, as I sit here and pen this, to come up with a phrase to describe how truly sad and pathetically wretched each of these illustrations is. And yet there must have been a time when I thought otherwise. As evidence I produce the following image:
Yes good friends, that is a Snakus Godus t-shirt. In a rare moment of restraint I shall omit further details of this nigh-legendary item.
In my life I have failed utterly at drawing. I have failed at painting. I have failed at sketching. At character design. At CG art. At photoshopping. At sprite design. And at sculpting. I have nothing resembling an artistic bone in my body.
But I’m ok with that, because I like to think it gives me a greater appreciation of those that can draw. Such as my friend SFL, who created this:
A bear by a tree. Simple, artistic, beautiful. And something I myself could never create 🙂
The Hanged Man (live)
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011This post is for MMN.
This is the only photo I have of The Hanged Man live. Click on it to get full size.
Where and when was this taken? The year was likely 1992 or 1993 (certainly prior to May ’93, when I left Australia). As for the venue, I have no idea. It may have been taken during the “Roberts Amazing Love Affair” concert in June 1992.
Matthew: please theorize in the comments. And send Craig a copy, since he looks pretty cool in this shot 🙂