Maebius Musing

Now with Flashy (Macromedia Flash) Goodness!!!!

I am in the process of redesigning my Web-game how I originally pictured it in my mind, but did not know the technology or programming skills to make such a world come to life.

So now, I am able to integrate PHP and Flash actionscript with the SQL database! What this means, is that essentially, I can make either the entire game in Flash so it is animated and pretty, or I can simply impliment sections of the game in Flash (such as combat) while other sections like the forums, taverns, shops, and the like are all PHP-enabled like the current game.

If you’d like to see the old version of the game, please check out the site here:
http://www.everthorn.net/RPG

Currently, version 1 is playable in a sense, but does not have all the features I originally planned, and ran out of time/willpower to complete it. I’ll be rewriting it from scratch using the newly discovered Flashiness, so it’s more like I envisioned.

Also, the play style will be more “sim-like” instead of your classic Hack&Slash RPG game. Continue Reading »

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Lately, we have been working outside to get the garden all tilled up, planted, and the usual springtime stuff. Unfortunately, the weather lately has either been a comfortable warmness, or more recently, a BLAZING INFERNO of heat. I mean, it is early May, and the temperature the last two days was hovering around 85 F.

Too hot indeed.

Nothing much else esoteric going on to muse about. Time musing is spent lately on World of Warcraft in the evenings, and another round of hectic projects at work.

I promise more musings in the near future.

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As the summer draws near, and vacation plans must be ..well.. planned, I am struggling with two frames of mind.

On the one hand, we would love to go to various events that would be lots of fun and spiritually rewarding. Things like the S.H.A.R.E. fest this weekend. Things like Starwood. And things like all manner of similar festivals and gatherings of the pagan and otherwise open-minded variety.

On the other hand, weekends are the perfect time to get things done around the house and work on much more practical and results-driven enterprises. Things like renting a BobCat and clearing out the over two years built-up poop in the barn. Things like finally getting the rest of the railroad ties and building a new (and much nicer) retaining wall where the old stone one is dangerously crumbling.

However, both types of activity are valid, in their own way. Continue Reading »

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I understand on some level the idea that Trash is an unavoidable part of life in today’s world. Regardless of how crunchy/hippy/green we are, there are going to be times when things simply must be disposed of.

However, during the last few months I’ve been trying to figure out ways to minimize our own trash footprint. And consider the ramifications of what the society-at-large is doing in it’s consumerized excess. There are hundreds of topics that can be discussed here. Thousands of alternative uses, processing, and procedural shifts that might impact local production and disposal flows. But that’s not what this musing is about. Continue Reading »

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It is sometimes a mistake to climb, it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt.
-Dream, in SANDMAN: “Fear of Falling”

A poet once penned a rather famous line about seeing the world in a grain of sand. Well, mountains are piles and piles of sand and rock..so it begs the question of how much more awe-inspiring, yet less subtle is a mountain? What part of human psyche attaches such reverence to things bigger than normal existence?

Granted, things bigger than we humans are inherently ‘different’ and perhaps more powerful as a natural result of their size. And it is a fact of human nature, that power and status are important to almost every culture around the world, whether that power is from financial stability, mystic wisdom, or who gets to hold the cola bottle found along the path.

But what I find extremely interesting is that both the big and the small, all serve as metaphors to something ‘else’ in certain contexts. Not only are the seas, mountains, the heavens, and such hugeness used to draw our minds eye ‘elsewhere’, but the same has been done with the minutiae in the world.

And perhaps that’s a key to some esoteric and mystic Truth. That this concept of “elsewhere” does exist, both above and below our every day experience, if you only look beyond or more closely than your average everyday eyes perceive most of the time.

Mr Neil Gaiman put this quite well in a recent blog post on 05/18 (See link to his journal in my blogroll to the right of this page). So I will not repeat such things here.

But it seems this current of thought has become more pronounced lately in society….or at least, I am more aware of such connotations floating around other places. Perhaps it is reactionary to a sort of spiritual lethargy in the modern culture. Perhaps it is an increasing awareness of our role in ecological stewardship, and an off-shoot of the “green” initiatives appearing everywhere. (Which I may comment on “Super-Greening” in a future blog post)

Regardless, lately, there have been a number of major Hollywood films that have been/are being made which touch at least somehow on alternate worlds. Most visibly, I think the almost overwhelming glut of Comicbook movies. Spiderman, Hulk, Fantastic 4, X-men, the list goes on. While movies at their heart are somewhat escapist, and all but the true documentaries try to take us outside mundane life into an artful world, these types appear to show a world where normal life is also interspersed with “extra-ordinary-ness”. Where things happen that are bigger than ourselves.

Additionally, the whole genre of Fantasy/Sci-Fi seems to have exploded into the over-corporate market lately. Lord of the Rings, Eragon, Stardust, Golden Compass, Dark is Rising…to name a few recent and soon-to-be-released movies in this style.

And the fact that these types of movies are being budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars, and raking in exceedingly larger profit-margins, shows something of our need…or want…to be taken “elsewhere”.

I’m not sure of the cause, but I agree with the results. The virus is spreading.

And for those looking for the goldan Compass, Here is the trailer:
http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

And here’s my Daemon: http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?111052

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