Nox!

Posted by Manda(rific) on Jul 18, 2010 in Travel | 0 comments

For whatever reason, today is one of those days where after a good evening of fun my body decides to revolt- instead of a hangover I get blessed with something even miserable: waking up entirely too early.

The past few days have been an absolute whirlwind. I’ve actually sat down to blog several times but it just hasn’t happened yet. After a few rough days of traveling we finally made it down to Orlando for the Infinitus 2010 conference – a gathering of Harry Potter ….folks. Fans? People who want to be educated about the series? Awesome people? Witches and wizards? Words do not even begin to describe.

While I’m still a bit too tired to give a full overview, I do hope to post a full assessment of the weekend sometime soon (you can heckle me if I don’t), so here are a few of my highlights for best moments:

- Seeing Chris Rankin (aka “Percy Weasley” in the films) on the way in/out of our meetup.

- Meeting such awesome, awesome new friends (and jamming with them at the ball.)

- Seeing folks much older than myself dressed up in full witch and wizard garb: proving that age is not a factor in enjoying the magic of a book series.

- Meeting the folks from A Very Potter Musical – and having one of them say hello to us personally while we were waiting in line to eat.

- Having a mini twitter scavenger hunt to seek out all the folks I know from the internet.

- Meeting some of my best friends in the whole world in person for the first time.

It was a completely wild weekend. Today we’re wrapping it all up by going to the leaving feast this morning and the park in the afternoon – I absolutely cannot wait.

I’m going to be the first to admit I am completely out of things to say at this juncture (I blame the tiredness and overwhelmedness) but I will be back with more to tell about Infinitus, as well as the photos I’ve taken. Thanks to everyone – the Vault members who helped send us up here, the new friends I met, the folks that put it on – I mean everyone for one of the best weekends of my life.

Photo: rest.

Posted by Manda(rific) on Jul 1, 2010 in photography | 0 comments

It’s been awhile since I’ve shared any photography, so here’s one of my latest pieces from a few days ago. It kind of happened on accident, actually; I decided I wanted to shoot self portrait and this is just kind of what happened. It sort of sums up my mood lately.

Click here if you’d like to see the full version on Flickr.

Watch This: Hooping Documentary

Posted by Manda(rific) on Jun 30, 2010 in Check It Out | 2 comments

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a were shopper. As soon as the sun sets, it’s like my wallet calls to me and says “Hey! You have the INTERNET! Go BUY THINGS!” Tonight, fortunately, I was able to refrain – but I did find this awesome documentary while I was looking for a new hoop. Check it out:

Although I’d heard a lot of this info before, it was still neat to watch. Have you ever tried hooping? Do you think it’s something you’d enjoy? How do you exercise instead?

And more importantly…what color hoop should I get next? I am thinking of a metallic one with greens and blues to mimic the ocean, or maybe one with my trademark pink stripes. What do you think?

Roll to Attempt to Post. You Fail.

Posted by Manda(rific) on Jun 28, 2010 in NERD ALERT | 2 comments

For those of you that have been following along politely with no particular comments, quietly ignoring the fact that behind the pink stripes is a bonafied geek girl, be warned: this post is full of all sorts of nerdy things.

People often like to give me suggestions for the Vault, often slightly unaware that I’ve been doing this for ten years and, well, there’s not a lot that I either haven’t heard yet or have tried and miserably failed with. There is the occasional good idea, but for the most part, it’s kind of explored territory. Most decisions I come to are in regards to how people have behaved in the past – if, you know, for the past three years something has not been working, it’s time to change it.

And so, it is after being approached twice (twice!) in the past 24 hours about changes to my site that I feel I need to share with the world what I shared with the suggesters: There are different kinds of role playing out there, each with a different audience. Whoa! This is new and radical! Role Players are DIFFERENT? They have DIFFERENT interests?

The largest place this is evident is that, well, when you’re playing a tabletop game, like D&D, it’s all about what works and what doesn’t work and you can TRY to do things but they might not entirely be successful and you better roll the dice to attack becuase it would be metagaming to just say “I attack! It works!” These numbers and systems and regulations are what makes tabletop gaming what it is – and what sets it apart from the forums. As an additional awkward fact, most of the people interested in this sort of roleplaying are, well, dudes. There are some ladies, naturally, but I’d certainly say it’s a genre crawling with dudes. The typical “game” might look something like this:

Anyway, Roleplaying Forums are, for those of you unfamiliar with them (I’m looking at you, Tabletop Geeks.) more of… dare I use this phrase, collaborative story writing ¹. I feel dirty just saying it. Most people who role play on forums aren’t looking for the system or the combat or the EXCITING, they are looking to… write. Most of the people I encounter on forum based games are either english majors or aspiring novelists, or people who just like to write. There’s no need for stats, because lots of these adventures are pre-planned.² There are a lot of women in forum RPGs – more than half of my own game is female. There is a lot of romance-type role playing, and drama, and things like that.

That’s just it – the main reason that forum role playing has no place meshing with the tabletop world is because there’s, comparatively, so little combat – and people are not remotely as comfortable with things going awry. Forum Roleplaying is your make-a-story-web-and-outline-your-paper kind of genre. Tabletop is more… you can this, you can’t that, this does and doesn’t happen. There is no dice roll for emotional encounters, there’s no skill for “make friend jealous.” And while I love D&D and tabletop games as much as the next nerd girl, sometimes I just want some of this:

So while, you know, introducing SYSTEMS and INTERESTING THINGS to the Vault – or any forum based RPG – is great in theory… the amount of people who play in both the Tabletop World and the Forum World is surprisingly small, and the people who come over to my side quite often aren’t looking for a continuation of their Sunday night D&D group, but just a place to sit down and write.

I think that D&D, and other tabletop games, have obviously inspired the type of… I’m going to use that word again, I’m sorry, collaborative story writing that we are used to on forum games, and there’s always going to be a few purists because of that. There’s even always going to be a handful of people who like both and think that our worlds should be combined. But if I don’t jump up and down to implement something tabletop-y on my forum, it’s not out of dislike – it’s just different worlds. You wouldn’t go to a LAN party and suggest everyone build matching suburban mini-mansions on The Sims and then go drown the old people.³ Just like I wouldn’t go into a group of people just looking for a relaxing writing session and say LETS THROW NUMBERS AND COMPLICATED THINGS IN!

Will I ever impliment dice rolls and other similar things on the Vault? Perhaps. But this is not the only game, and it will not last forever⁴, and there may be another time to bring the Tabletop World and the Forum World to dinner and introduce them to one another’s parents. Just not now. Let’s let the typewriter folks enjoy their little stories and words for awhile, and the rest of us can gather up our d20s and go (attempt to) battle a tarrasque.

_______________

1.  - I, for one, am not a huge fan of the Adventure Pre-Planning that goes on at my own site, or anyone elses. I like to roll with the punches and do other interesting things. I like unpredictability. I cannot, however, speak the same for others.

2. – I really don’t have words for how much I truly hate this phrase, but it seems to pop up often among RP Communities so I felt like it was worth mentioning. Every time I hear it, it’s not so much an empowering phrase about literary goodness, but instead reminds me that Forum Role Playing is probably closer in genus to Therapeutic Role Playing, as seen in places like psychiatric offices where people with issues try to put themselves in the other person’s shoes. Now you feel dirty too, don’t you?

3. - I have never done this. No matter how many Nazis or Zombies it is okay to shoot, it is never okay to drown a tiny pixel person by removing the pool ladder. They didn’t even have a chance. That said, I do build suburban mini-mansions on a quasi regular basis.

4. – Surprise! I have another game in the works! What’s it about? I have no idea! When will it be out? Probably 2014! Does that coincide with the end of book seven?! YES! Yes it does! IS THE VAULT CLOSING no, I wouldn’t do that to you. But good for you for reading the footnotes. Always read the footnotes.

I’m a Teepee! I’m a WigWam!

Posted by Manda(rific) on Jun 25, 2010 in Travel | 0 comments

Relax, man! You’re two tents!

I’m not sure driving three miles from my posh, air conditioned condo and camping out for an evening counts as “travel,” but for all practical purposes, we’ll still say I went on my first trip of the summer last night!

Landon came down on Wednesday with his family so last night we packed up and headed out to the Ocracoke Campground to pitch a tent for the night. I felt reasonably more prepared than our last camping adventure at Shakori, although maybe it was the promise of the aforementioned air conditioning being only a short drive away, or perhaps that we were able to turn around and go back for a forgotten wallet and bug spray. Whatever it was, we got a nice campsite up in the dunes and set up shop early in the afternoon… which, incidentally, was the hottest part of the day, getting up to 102 degrees. Thanks, beach weather.

In hindsight, we did agree that a non-dune site would have been better; the folks on the other side had nice patches of grass, were out of the wind, and closer to the bathrooms. (Priorities, people.) But the moon was full and lit up the whole campground and beach, and falling asleep to the sound of the ocean always constitutes as a win in my book.

I’m also not really sure why, despite having a really great time, I can’t manage to take photos during regular vacation-y adventures. I’m hoping this changes while in Orlando, but somehow throughout all of our tourist-tastic festivities last night, I only managed to get one photo:

Well, it was fun. As it turns out, I’m still not a fan of nature, so I don’t know why I torture myself with activities that require being directly exposed to it, but it was enjoyable none the less. Although it’s definitely been decided that before Shakori we need to invest in some actual “camping gear” instead of throwing stuff together right before we leave.

…and maybe a bigger tent.

The Day Off Conundrum

Posted by Manda(rific) on Jun 22, 2010 in Assorted Ramblings, Travel | 0 comments

So apparently in the Normal World, yesterday was the first day of summer. Clearly whomever decided this was probably holed up in some scientific laboratory in Greenwich where they study the seasons and time and other boring stuff like that. They probably have never lived in a, say, sub-tropic area or a place surrounded by water on all sides or, you know, the place where I’m at now – where it’s been absolutely stifling hot for weeks. Not to mention the fact that the tourist season starts to trickle in just before Easter and won’t stop until Halloween – summer, you say? Mine’s already at the halfway point. Forget just starting.

At any rate, preparations are well underway for what will probably be the greatest trip I take this year, aside from the potential yearly pilgrimage to Shakori Hills. I feel like I haven’t traveled in ages, last summer was so full of mini road trips to and from Lake Anna to visit my brother, impromptu beach visits, and things like that – this year I’m already at the beach, and working five-or-six-days-a-week so the trips have been few and far between. But I get by – hopefully all the working will pay off come winter when I have several months to spare.

But I digress – the business cards are ordered, the fancy schmancy matching four piece luggage set is ordered, the travel plans are made, and in just a few short weeks Lis, Jo and I will be rocketing off to meet up with a few other members of the Vault in sunny, probably equally as sticky-hot Orlando. I could potentially be doing work for the site right now, or cleaning, or something equally as productive, but my day so far has gone something kind of like this:

8:30 AM: The cat is out? I can SLEEP IN WITHOUT BEING BOTHERED?
9:15 AM: I am still awake. Like really awake. Food, then nap. Yeah. I’l eat myself into sleep. Food coma style.
9:45 AM: Well since I’m up this early I might as well work
10:30 AM: Maybe work in awhile. I’ll just, you know, check the internet and stuff. Make sure nothing monumental happened while I was sleeping.
10:15 AM: Oh, hey. I can book that campsite for Thursday. Debit card not within reach. Meh, do it later.
11:00 AM: Screw it. It’s my day off.  I’m going to read blogs and keep eating pop-tarts despite earlier revalations that eating pop-tarts in bed really has no redeeming value other than the fact that i am comfortable and fed at the same time, regardless of how fleeting hte comfortable-ness is when the Crumbs happen.
11:42 AM: Blogging. No further signs of productivity.

Today’s goals: Leave the house. Put on an outfit that does not entail sweat pants and that neon pink hand-me down tshirt.

Hmmmmm. Yep.

Posted by Manda(rific) on Jun 14, 2010 in Assorted Ramblings | 0 comments

It seems like I’ve had a lot of blog-worthy things to post about lately, but none of them have made it past the drawing board. Just weeks away from Infinitus, the workshop is…. well, it’s in progress. We’ll call it that. Do other, more important people procrastinate on this stuff as much as Jo and I are? Is anyone else out there doing a panel at a gigantic convention in a little less than a month and have little more than a few sticky notes to show for it?

Despite working diligently on some new upgrades for the Vault itself and the workshop preparation that I really don’t have much to say about, I can say I’ve definitely been opinionated on plenty of things. The recent unfortunate end to Abby Sunderland’s attempt at circumnavigating the globe comes to mind, along with the finale of the first season of Glee. I’m not sure how these two things are remotely related to each other, but opinions are opinions, and blog posts don’t necessarily need to follow a particular pattern, and by this point I’m just rambling.

The fact of the matter is, though, I’ve just been busy. I’m not sure I can even pin point it, it’s just been a cycle of days going in and out, the sun rising and setting, and poof! A whole week has passed! Working a “regular” job will do that to you – granted, working from home does to a degree too – but having days off at the beginning of the week just makes the problem worse. By the time my “weekend” is over – it’s already the middle of the week! And then ZOOM! It’s next week already!

Summertime is in full swing here on the island though at least, and aside from hovering over the computer inside all day working on website things, I’ve made it out into the sun a few times, and it’s been wonderful. I’ve taken almost exclusively to riding my bike now instead of driving, something I missed a lot in the cooler months. I haven’t been doing a whole lot on the baking or cooking side lately either – just busy, busy. Work, work. Day in, day out.

So to the not so faithful hoardes – how have you been holding up? About the same? Perhaps I’ll try a little harder to make a few of my post ideas make it past the initial sighs of  “That requires effort!” and actually come say hello sometime soon. :)