I'm just updating the skin on my journal.

The flag is something I found kicking around the 'Net, no information on the file, or in it, to indicate whose it is. So, if it looks familiar PLEASE tell me so's you can get credit!

Soul Train is drawn by the lovely, sexy, and talented miss *ebony-chan . She's REALLY good when it comes to commissions, not too expensive, and she's got a knack for making your characters all regal and attractive. Check her out.

In other news... I'm pretty much playing WoW right now, as CoH has deteriorated into a cesspool of "LFF AE" broadcasts, deserted streets, and farmer vs rp hate on the forums. So until Going Rogue comes out, they can have it, I'm not playing in that environment. I know I've a lot of friends, and I miss you all dearly, but not so much that I'm willing to wade around in THAT.

And just to spice up the journal... a few yummy items that have popped up in my feed of late.

Sometimes... I hate modern life.

The minivan's transmission just went kerplooey. God knows how much it'll cost to get that fixed. Oh yeah, I just paid rent, so no matter how much it costs... I won't have it for at least another couple of weeks.

Maybe I should just put some cash aside for another car.


Well, it'll cost me $1950 to have the transmission rebuilt. It'll be done by Friday. Thankfully, a coworker has said he can swing by my place on the way to work (it's nice being less than three miles away) so I don't have to worry about that.

... and it has me puzzled.

I can play games on it, I can do all sorts of stuff locally.. but Web Browsing is painfully slow, and most images do not load at all. However, virus/malware/rootkit scans come up clean. Which means whatever's got my network stacked borked up got there legitimately.

Which means I have to access DA from my work laptop, while it is NOT on the work network (I VPN when I have actual work to do).

Since this is a hassle I may fall behind a bit on notes and such. If you really need to get my attention, my email address is in my profile - feel free to drop me a line.

I'm tempted to wipe the OS drive on this thing, and then reinstall Windows and all the "must install on C:" apps and utilities that I have. I'll probably need to reinstall a lot of other stuff as I use it, but since I keep most of my apps and all of my data on other drives, I won't be losing anything.

I've spent (some would say "wasted") a lot of time on MMO's in the past ten years or so.

I think the feature in open beta for City Of Heroes is probably the coolest thing to come along in the MMO worldspace.

Issue 14: Mission Architect.

This is a system where you get to write your own mission arcs, populate them with either stock characters or your own, and then publish them to the game for other people to experience.

Within the limits of the system (existing maps only, existing mob AI, and custom mission files cannot exceed 100K), you can tell any story you wish, up to five missions long. You can write the dialogue, the clues, the popup text, the info on each of the "big players", the contact intros, sendoffs, debriefs... it is amazingly cool.

I've seen some amazingly well-written arcs. People have figured out ways to chain events (ambushes, rescues, boss fights, etc) so that they can tell a story that, frankly, this game hasn't told before.

Granted, there ARE limits. You can only publish three arcs at a time; if one gets chosen for Dev's Choice, then it's locked from editing and you get a free arc slot. People also get normal rewards from running it at that point, you know, the usual loot and such. You can write as many as you want locally, but people have to team with you to experience them... and these 'virtual' arcs don't give nearly as many rewards, no drops, no xp... so you really want to run the published stuff.

And of course, there'll be a lot of schlock to wade through.

But so far? The roleplayers are all going nuts over this.

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In other news... and inspired (shamed) me into rendering some new stuff. It's still fetish-y pinup material, but... I think I might be getting the hang of this whole 3D thing.




Now, if someone would buy me an upgrade to Vue so I could actually import my Poser models and scenes, that'd be great.