I’m NaNoWriMoing

I don’t know if you can actually make NaNoWriMo into a verb, but you know I like a linguistic challenge. Whatever you might call the process, as you can probably tell by the icon to the left, I’m throwing myself headlong into NaNoWriMo this year.

For those of you unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo (and I wager there are a few of you), it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it takes place every year during the entire month of November. Essentially, the idea is that you spend as much of your free time during November as you can possibly afford towards the effort of crafting a 50,000 word “novel” (50,000 words is “technically” a novella, but “National Novella Writing Month” just doesn’t have the same ring of satisfaction to it).

I’m going to take the opportunity to actually put some words to my perpetual concept Nycoboleas novel; only from now on, I’m simply referring to it by the subtitle: Seventeen Lies to Tell Your Children. I’ve got a good share of the story outlined, I now just have to wait until November 1st to begin writing. For an entire month. At roughly 1,600 to 1,700 words a day.

Any of you joining me this year? It’s my first NaNoWriMo, and I don’t want to have to suffer alone.

Smashing and brawling delayed

Amidst the slew of Nintendo announcements yesterday was a little nugget of despair for Japanese gamers: Super Smash Bros. Brawl would be delayed a couple months. No biggie, I’m sure it’s for localization purposes and that the US version will still ship at the beginning of December as planned.

Uh, no. Super Smash Bros. Brawl will indeed be delayed until February 10th, 2008 in the US.

But that’s alright! Give them a couple more months to add a few more layers of polish to the title. In the meantime, I am not exactly lacking games to play.

Tons of awesome Nintendo announcements

Nintendo held a press conference in Japan last night and announced a plethora of fantastic upcoming items of sheer coolness. IGN Wii has a live blog of the event posted, and I’ll throw out some links to some of the highlights here.

And these are just the things that I think are cool. There’s probably other announcements Nintendo made that other people would find exciting, but personally, this makes my week.

Green Leopard Plague

I finished reading the first winner in the 2006 Nebula Showcase (yes, I’m one year behind. But this is one of the last compilations to be edited by Gardner Dozois prior to his extensive surgery, so I’m entitled to play catch-up).

In any case, the winning novella was Green Leopard Plague by Walter Jon Williams, and I discovered that the entire text of the story is available online at Asimov’s. So, I encourage you to read it! It’s a fantastic story, well-written and imaginative, and for the non-negotiated price of free, you really have no excuse not to read this.

“He was a republican, you know,” Terzian said. “You don’t get that from just The Prince. He wanted Florence to be a republic, defended by citizen soldiers. But when it fell into the hands of a despot, he needed work, and he wrote the manual for despotism. But he looked at despotism a little too clearly, and he didn’t get the job.” Terzian turned to Stephanie. “He was the founder of modern political theory, and that’s what I do. And he based his ideas on the belief that all human beings, at all times, have the same passions.” He turned his eyes deliberately to Stephanie’s shoulder bag. “That may be about to end, right? You’re going to turn people into plants. That should change the passions if anything would.”

The pain of the year-end maelstrom

I don’t know which is more depressing: the lack of money, or the lack of time required to play all the games coming out this year that I want to pick up. Just this month I have Zack & Wiki coming out next week, and the double-bogey of Guitar Hero 3 ($90!!!!) and Battalion Wars 2 at the end of the month. On my birthday, no less! Which means there will be the possibility of picking up some of this stuff before too long, I’m sure.

Then November hits, and Super Mario Galaxy comes out, along with Ghost Squad, Lego Star Wars, Puzzle Quest, a new Trauma Center, and Fire Emblem. And don’t even get me started on December (Super Smash Bros. Brawl). I’m beginning to catalog the games I can do without for ebay auctions to help fund my addiction. Too bad there’s no online auction site where I can purchase more time.

A good example of marketing demonstrating its irrelevance

There are times when marketing people shouldn’t be allowed to speak. This is one of those times. Here’s a small portion of an interview with Insomniac Games’ marketing director, Ryan Schneider. Insomniac is the developer of the Ratchet & Clank games.

Kikizo: You’ve said that some inspiration is taken from games and movies, but have you found influences of Ratchet in other games?

Ryan Schneider: Yeah, I think that it’s flattering… well OK, first of all, there was a PlayStation 2 game which I won’t name, that was more or less a direct rip-off of Ratchet and Clank. There’s evidence all around us I think, of certain games that have borrowed from Ratchet and Clank. One that we’re even extremely flattered by is Super Mario Galaxy, with their spherical worlds; we did spherical worlds in Going Commando, and Up Your Arsenal. It would be amazing to think that Miyamoto-san thought that was so cool that he wanted to incorporate it into Mario Galaxy. Granted, he’s doing it in a different way, but it’s still a spherical world, so it’s flattering to see those sorts of things.

Yes. It was awfully nice of Insomniac Games to invent planets. Hey, Ryan – the standard globe called: it wants you to shut up.

Are you kidding me? Spherical worlds? Next they’ll be saying how cool it is that every other game in existence utilizes their concept of sentient beings.

The ball doesn’t get “kicked”, it gets “blasted”

I’ve had a couple questions about the current header graphic. Yes, that’s a shot of Caleb I took just as his foot was about to blast the soccer ball. Yeah, that’s right – he never just “kicks” the ball. Oh, no. Not my son. No, he blasts the ball. He runs up to that ball, and right when his foot connects with the surface, he belts out a powerful “PFFSHH!” that rockets that soccer ball at least a few extra meters.

That’s right: my son comes to play soccer bringing his own sound effects.

You can hear it from anywhere around the field, too. It’s pretty amazing. Then, after he’s “blasted” that ball into play, he expertly jumps to the back of the pack and quietly shadows the ball as the other kids maneuver it downfield. He’s not scared of getting into the fray, far from it. He’s being strategic about his play options. When his team loses their sense of direction, they rely on Caleb to helpfully point the way to the goal.

Yeah, I’m thinking this whole “playing sports” thing isn’t likely to last another year. If it doesn’t involve superheroes in any way, Caleb just isn’t interested.

Oh, and you can’t tell, but that black shirt underneath Caleb’s soccer shirt: that would be a Star Wars shirt. As if you needed more evidence that he is absolutely, unequivocally my son.