As you may have noticed, OPW had an outage today. Our host is playing silly games, reporting inaccurate disk space numbers. This caused our database to shut down politely lest it become unable to save your content fully. I am officially Peeved. We're working on it with them.

As soon as I get a moment, I'll be working on a "status.onepostwonder.com" site that is not hosted by the same company, as well as a standby display on the main site for those cases (like today) where you would have been able to see it.

* * *

Today I had a group of guests in the office. These fine folks work for one of our clients. Unusually for us, I'd done a special sort of project for them in which I never actually met their team.

I'm glad that finally happened. There's nothing like face time to help you see folks as talented individuals who need a hand with their highly worthwhile work. As opposed to, y'know, generic timesink #23094823094823.

I want to build a spiral lift for balls, that, as it spins, lifts the balls to higher heights, from whence they can roll down a track or tracks of yet to be rube-goldberg inspired loveliness.

How to build the spiral? How to turn it? 

Actually first, what balls? I have pingpongs around. And marbles. (cue the "don't lose your marbles" quip)

Plan A: Pingpong Lift from stacked discs of carboard. I have a kid-free and party-free Friday & Saturday on tap. And lots of amazon shipped boxes.

Still drawing a blank on turn mechanism. I'm sure something will turn up.

YOU GUYS YOU GUYS YOU GUYS

Somewhere in California, three women are memorizing* lines that I wrote. they're rehearsing and they're gonna act it out onstage. I have proof. 

Copyright Jules Dee Photography, this is Jeanette Godoy and Katie Ventura, rehearsing Pretty Petty Things.  

*I assume. we all know that off book is a lie. 

I was really looking forward to having no rostered shifts for 6 days. 

I really was. I have a lot of lesson plans to finish up and house work to catch up on. (I'm trying NOT to think about the hallway linen cupboard, I don't need to break out in hives. -OMG the winter sheets haven't been put into storage and there's singles mixed in with king singles and doubles. And no, not thinking about it, not thinking about it.)

But the Boss asked for the 27th time today if I'd thought about the xmas decorations yet and if I could please make sure I had them up and done by Thursday next week. (Which would have been fine only I wasn't rostered to work next week) So I thought I had better mention that. Damn it. There go my days off.  

At least my little guy is happy. If Mum's not home there's no Latin lessons. 

It is obvious, even intuitive, that no todo list site (or any other kind) will be perfect.  This appears to have no restraining influence over my impulse to keep searching for the perfect one.

I used Hiveminder back in the day but it was just too often an impedement to simple use, and now I understand they're shutting down, so moot point.  I then went back and forth between Toodledo (also pretty user aggressive, plus it has some assumptions that cause me to stumble) and doit.im (written by crazy people; nice UI but the first time you have to hand-delete a bunch of items one by one it wears thin, as you realize deleting a task is a pain.)

So now I'm on the hunt again.  I want something with a slick web interface that I will use most of the time, plus nice Android widgets with lots of control over what I get.  Ha ha.  Anyway.

RemembertheMilk: An old classic.  I revisited it, but I was immediately reminded of one of my top needs: start dates, or some other way to defer an item until the future.  I don't want to see next month's bills; I couldn't pay them now if I wanted to, and I don't want to.

Wunderlist: No context or other tags.  Wtf?

Google Tasks: I wish, but barely higher tech than paper.

Todoist: Utterly crippled without premium.  I have no objection to premium; I have in turn paid all three sites I mentioned above in the past (and present, for Toodledo) and rtmilk also, I believe.  But not without establishing that it's useful for me.  Todoist requires premium to even have contexts on tasks. Feh.

Zendone: Looks super impressive, to the point of being overwhelming. Once again, though, no start dates as far as I can tell. There seems to be a weird disconnect between different sites: is a due date when you should be working on something, or when you should be done?  I say it's the latter, which is why I use start dates to cover the former.  I don't want to even think about my cable bill until the 1st, but then it's due on the 5th and not later than that.  And so on.

Must resist bad programmer impulses at a time like this.  My todo list, wherever it is, won't get done at all if I wind up trying to write a todo list site.

homestuck has turned into a goddamn Bataan Death March of hilarity.

I finished Mass Effect 3 this past Sunday. I played all three games in sequence, one right after the other, as one character, with a consistent role-playing mindset, and I only back-tracked the story once (and then just a couple minutes of story time) when I got ultra-fed up at the bullshit game mechanics at the end of ME2.

The first game was a bit tedious in its side quests but the game part (the shooting) was enjoyable enough and main story was solid and set the stage for the arc to play out.

The second game had the best side quests (loyalty missions for every squad member, all of them great little short stories) and propelled the main arc forward in a good way, but the shooting was poor.

The third game had the best gameplay and some interesting quests, but was mostly concerned with wrapping up the arc in grand fashion, which it did.

As games, I'd have to rate them ME3, ME1, ME2. As stories, ME2 followed closely by ME3, then ME1. But if you compare them to other games, I think they're lacking as games. The gameplay without the stories would be pretty crap. You might ask, why make them games at all? Why not just movies? 

I think there's value in the gameplay anyway, even though it's rather dull. Doing the missions lends weight to the storyline as you propel it forward. You become invested in the characters and their decisions. Because it's your Commander Shepard, wearing the face you chose, fighting the way you want to fight, saying the things you want her to say, it becomes much more personal.

BioWare, the company that makes these games and some other games like them, states its mission as, "[our] vision is to create, deliver, and evolve the most emotionally engaging games in the world." I think it's interesting that they don't emphasise gameplay in this statement, just emotion. I mean, they do a pretty good job with the emotions.

I just wish they'd pay a similar amount of attention to the game. More than once, especially in Mass Effect 3, a battle was stopped at a certain point in order for a scripted event to take place in lieu of defeating an enemy, and when that happens the emotion I feel is "jerked around."

So I'm on the fence about whether BioWare games are my thing or not. I can see the appeal. And maybe Dragon Age: Inquisition, with it's vast, open world, would appeal much more than the ultra-linear Mass Effect story. I guess we'll see.

Right now I'm playing Bayonetta. About which I'll have more to say later, I bet!

Vince got me a ticket to see this the other night for my birthday. 

Five stars, highly recommended, would see again, would name my kid after it.  

And then there's the tech, which is its own 5-star event. 

Seriously, my capsule review is that the script is so tightly woven, the actors so genuine and the moments so heightened, that you really could have done this show with just "lights up, let 'em at it, lights down." and then Danny Boyle (who directed the London Summer Olympics opening ceremony, Slumdog Millionaire, etc. etc.), brings in his visual aesthetic, while being smart enough to stay out of the actors' way.  So you have what seems like an ocean of starlight descending from the heavens, and then you realize it's a million individual antique light bulbs, each on its own cord, each globe housing a visible glowing filament. 

Miller and Cumberbatch complement each other perfectly, and I wish I could have seen it twice. I saw it with Miller as the Creature, an incredibly physical, potentially exhausting role. Victor, comparatively speaking, is British and wears beautiful clothes.  So, seeing it with Cumberbatch as Victor was kind of like watching Sherlock with the volume turned up higher. Not bad, just not wildly different. 

If the Creature hasn't been on stage for a while and we get a little break from the absolute force of nature that he is, we can see Victor's brilliance, his drive for knowledge and desire to dissect the indefinable spark of life. Put them both on stage together, and it's like watching an orca meeting a seal; the seal's really pretty and wonderful in and of itself, but blink and you might miss it. Unless the orca's decided to let you see the seal.  

It gave me a ton of food for thought, which is why I'm digging into a Mary Shelley biography right now. 

It is still playing through the month of November, but hard to find. There are two screenings scheduled in Princeton in the next couple of weeks. I don't think I'm going to have time to see it again, but if you do, you should. ntlive.com. 

A while back, I offered some free portraits.

Anyone recognize this lovely lady? (Who I must appologize to for not doing her justice...)

This weekend I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in a local choral festival with a fabulous, talented, and accomplished director as well as a wonderful organist and several instrumentalists (harp, oboe, flute, and handbells). We had nearly a hundred voices, most members of church choirs in the area. Although it was a large group, singing with an exceptionally skillful director turns even the hard work parts into a pleasure. One comment this man made has stuck in my brain even more than any of the music or technical tips.

He talked a bit during the first part of the rehearsal about why we were there, and about the experience of singing with each other, music created from our voies working together to create a . His comment was, "If everyone got together and made music with other people once a week, the world would be a very different place."

I think he's right. Choral singing is, as most group musical endeavors are, about more than each person making our own music well. It depends on each voice being in tune with their neighbor and fitting their contribution into the group. It means holding back, perhaps, so one voice doesn't dominate or stand out, or so another part comes forward when its line needs to be heard.

It also means letting go of the distractions of judging each others' performance, allowing those thoughts of how someone else should be doing something better or differently melt away into the unified sound that is the choir. It means giving, not only giving of our talents in performance or worship, but giving of our egos to become a unified group and to allow others to join with us as equals in making that joyful noise.

And that, my friends, is peace and harmony that sticks with me long after the final note has sounded.