I have spent the last couple days working on some graphic design bits and I now have something more attractive in place at www.genesisoflegend.com even if the content is still sparse.  I additionally do have someone helping me out on creating a decent template/design.  Eventually I ought to have my very own fully built site and a game to sell on that site, thoug it will be a long ways off I think.

On other things, I have tomorrow off due to Canada Day and would be ammenable to having people over for coffee/gaming if they are local and interested.

I suppose that I owe the countless fascinated hangers on (/sarcasm) another update. Sorry if this little post is less coherent then usual, I slept rather poorly last night even though I devoted plenty of time to that endeavor.

I got an email at work on wednesday or so which invited me to a quick interview on monday afternoon. The reason why this shocks me is that this was an incredible long shot. It would provide me with 4 months worth of experience, acting as a biologist in the species at risk shop for the department. It is the position generally which I aspire to earn full time, and that experience alone would be enough to compete for similar jobs on a full time basis. The odds of me getting any of the positions are admittedly low, but I would be overjoyed if I had the chance.

Beyond that, I had two evenings with Eve who is unfortunately off on vacation for more then a week. I also did manage to muster at least two nights work on my book, though I still need at least another 5-10 nights of work before I could manage a second simple playtest, or more like 20 sessions of work if I wanted to make that playtest more comprehensive. I don't think I lack in playtesters, so I might just make it a simple one and have a third test later on. If I am lucky I might be able to get some work done tomorrow morning.

Oh, I also do get my wednesday off thanks to working in Quebec, which ought to make my life a bit more relaxing.

http://www.ocwconsortium.org/index.php

Open Course Ware consortium has a pile of free courses and the like available online from a host of different universities. For anyone interested in expanding their educational horizons without the necessary money/time, check it out.

After my class today, I have come to realize that I am in fact possessing of some skill in Jodo now. While it has taken me a while to get here, I am moderately effective with my weapon of choice. 5 years ago I was a clutz knowing no martial arts. Now I am average in dexterity with one art under my belt.

It's nice to feel satisfied about at least that one thing. Now I just need to be attacked by a drunken samurai while I am walking home from class.

The only thing of substance which I have managed to do this evening was the creation of a dinner (chicken, spinach, onion and whole-wheat pasta + Szechuan spices). I have put my effort toward my writing, yet I have only gotten scraps accomplished thus far. I have been too tired, both mentally and physically, to get much done in the evenings after work which frustrates me. I have goals yet my exhaustion prevents me from accomplishing them in any sensible time. I have been crashing at 9am or so in the evening which is far from useful.

I would feel less irked about this development if my work was actually intellectually stimulating. My work is boring and the commute is long, but that's about it. I just feel like I am spinning my wheels in both my writing and my work, though life is progressing apace. Perhaps some later use of a couple vacation days will help me.

So I had a heck of a time getting out this early morning for birding, a task which sent me for a 6:55 am bus. Unfortunately the connections are rather poor on sunday mornings and I had to make a number of desperate bus transfers to make it to the bird-survey site in time. It was an absolutely excellent morning though, as we caught far more bird species including piliated woodpeckers, Indigo Buntings and Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds. Thanks again to Souldiaspora for the identifications and instruction, both of which are priceless. Unfortunately more bug bites were the price of admission, but it was worth it imo.

I took the greatest haste in returning back to my apartment to switch gear, dropping off the birding gear then snatching my martial arts equipment. I had a semi-private instruction class from the senior sensei in the city, the one who we feared had abandoned us. Turns out he just had family in town and is still instructing us for the time-being. I was in a good frame of mind for this and I learned a shocking amount that class.

Then there was simply dashing over to Ironphoenix'a place for rampant gaming which lasted a great many hours. My thanks to the fine host and it was a pleasure to see all of you. Speaking of pleasure, I believe that sleep beckons. Quite a busy day on a whole.

Today was birding followed by open doors Ottawa with the folks. Both went well, though I admit there were far more bugs in the woods then were in the british official residence. Came home and managed to bake up two dozen rhubarb muffins which are the tastiest thing coming out of an oven in my opinion.

Tomorrow will be a bit busier then today was. Starting off with some morning birding again (starting earlier though). Then I dash home to pick up my martial arts gear and run off to Jodo. After that, I will run on over to Mike's place for an afternoon/evening of gaming. I may be forced to skip Jodo due to the tight timing, but I can handle that as we are starting to have nice 2-3 hour long free practice classes on thursday evenings.

On that note, sleep sounds wise as I need to ID ovenbirds and red eyed vireos in the morn.

Doom, as a sidescroller. Makes me miss the 90's, which is bizarre for me to say.


http://www.codinsoft.de/doom2d.html

Believe it or not but my mother found an excellent looking site. It provides a diverse menu, including a grocery shopping list. Both the meals and the component ingredients may be tailored to be best price, local food, one person, easy meals, gourmet meals and a few other options. It even gives the option of a weekly email with all this information. It looks very neat and I thought you folks might appreciate this.

http://www.soscuisine.com/?sos_l=en

Today was my "spend a small fortune" day. I hadn't really bought groceries in 2-3 weeks, just living off my existing stores yet I was doing a decent bit of cooking. Farmer's Market produce was purchased, including garlic bison smoked sausages, apple cider, apple vinegar, various plants, spinach and beeswax candles. After my Jodo class (more on that later) I met up with my mother and spent over a hundred bucks on more groceries. I am now fully stocked, mostly with extremely heavy such as pop cans in bulk, greens, frozen stuff and the like. Top that off with a large bottle of good russian vodka bottled in Latvia, a good bottle of Southern Comfort and a bottle of Beau's Lugtread beer.

I am now damn-near broke, but at least I am well stocked. Now I just have another week and a half of running on fiscal fumes.

Oh, and it is starting to look like our senior teacher in Jodo is abandoning us. Feck. He moved in to this city and integrated somewhat into the dojo but that pushed aside the fellow normally teaching. This meant the old sensei retired from the martial art and the new one hasn't shown his face over the past two weeks. Functionally, we lost two teachers. This does not please me, as I would now be third in seniority.

Found out about a ton of neat training which I would find legitimately helpful. I am currently looking at the "Wildlife Tracking and Awareness" course as well as the "Traditional Bows" course. Yeah, the latter consists of training on how to make and shoot your own bow.

http://sticksandstoneswildernessschool.com/

Alas, my lack of car makes it less likely. I can't really make my way to a small town outside of Toronto by foot. I will keep the link for the future though as I might have a car later on. :)

So I have spent time with Eve monday night, tuesday night watching Star Trek and last night. Last night she wound up actually cooking a meal for me at my place while I was out at Jodo which was jaw-droppingly awesome. Considering how long those evenings lasted, we have been spending a little bit of time together. Problem is that it has resulted in major sleep debt. Even last weekend and the wednesday had me staying up rather late, so this week has been very dangerous for me during working hours.

I am going to be horribly antisocial this weekend. Sleeping a ton, doing laundry, cleaning the mess that is my apartment and actually stocking up on foodstuffs. If I'm lucky I will even be able to get some writing done this weekend as well.

Domesticity over here is a must. Groceries are missing, laundry is plentiful and my apt is somewhat of a mess. I think my sunday will be rather quiet... Oh well, it's not like I have been idle during the week so I have an excuse. :)

(I managed 6.5 hours of sleep last night, huzzah!)

Sushi on Wednesday was fun, nice to see folks again.

Last night I had her over and things went rather well. Chemistry is there, enough that I kept her over _far_ too late. Today was painful, but it was worth it. *smirk* Have to say that it is a novel change to be courting someone in more traditional fashion. I have fallen into my previous relationships and the courting thing, it's new to me. Going well.

My freeking wireless on my netbook is being a pain again. I tried to hook up to the network at Guelph which screwed up my wireless somehow. Gah. Any volunteers to help me out on this? The other option is for me to simply bother my father. I tried to google an answer and I wasn't doing well.

I packed up my gear on Thursday evening and managed to run away from work at a little before noon on friday. I felt a little guilty skipping out on work halfway through the day, even though I booked the afternoon off. I think it's mostly because I'm not used to this "vacation days" thing. Either way, I made good time to the mall where I met up with my ride. We made surprisingly good time to Guelph, though we stopped off at a lousy pub for dinner in Pickering and it was not worth the money. Made it through Toronto with almost no traffic and got into Guelph at a reasonable hour.

The seminar was a tad unusual, in that the focus was not, in fact, on grading as it usually is. There was a bit of politics in terms of grading, meaning that no one of my rank or higher was permitted to grade in Jo. This meant that we were just practicing with the senior sensei from Japan who taught us a good number of techniques. I managed to clean up a large number of basic moves and the more complex Kata, even though I spent almost no time on the higher level ones. Perhaps next year I will have more of a chance to work on the higher level techniques, but I think I may have gotten more out of this session and the different emphasis.

I actually spent a significant portion of the seminar teaching students more junior then me, something I found both surprising and useful. I have a rather goal oriented approach to martial arts techniques and I find that telling people _why_ they are doing a physical action helps them do said action in a more effective way. I have amassed a decent selection of tips and tricks over my years and this seminar gave me a number of other ones to use for instruction. In the process, I also wind up identifying my own mistakes and it forces me to work on correcting them. I have also improved my ability to detect problems in other people's techniques which is a much needed skill. I think that I will attempt to get some formal training in coaching/instructing so that I could better teach Jo in the future. I have seen the stark difference between sensei's skilled at instructing and those unskilled at instructing. I would much rather be one of the former if I can help it.

The weekend was interesting in a few ways though. I bought two bottles of 180ml fine Nikka Whisky from Japan, apparently purchased from a corner store while some of our folks went off to Japan for training a month ago. I shared one of the bottles with many folks at the seminar and it was appreciated, but I still have one remaining. I also purchased a hand crafted wooden sake cup called a masu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake_set). Coincidentally, I managed to get some writing done during the weekend which is a relief. My netbook helped a great deal. Now just to deal with a very small bank account balance for the next week or so.

So, how were your weekends?

I will be away over in Guelph for the Spring seminar for Jodo once again. Accordingly, assume I will be incommunicado after tomorrow morning until sometime on monday evening. This will be the first time going to the seminar without actually grading. I hope that the seminar will be as informative as it usually is and I do want to ask some of the higher level sensei a question about a particular move.

Yay! I expect to be thoroughly broke after this, as is traditional.

Here are two fun and newly complete podcasts which some of the folks on my friends list might appreciate listening to. Both of these are relatively mature, in the best kind of way. You don't need an mp3 player, just a computer of some kind to download and play the mp3's.

1) Metamor City by Chris Lester at http://www.metamorcity.com/
This is a fun little setting based off the premise "what if magic strengthened rather then weakening as technology was developed." It's an urban fantasy, sort of an odd shadowrun style setting. The first book deal with a group of friends who happen to be psychics in a poly-situation. It gets better from there.

2) Antithesis, book 1, Predestination and other Games of Chance by J.D. Sawyer. The title has been shortened to simply being "Predestination". http://antithesis.jdsawyer.net/
This is a science fiction setting (hard sf, no aliens thus far.) with a major emphasis on characterization. Very reminiscent of George R.R. Martin in my opinion.

I recommend that folks give both the books a listen. They are free and each of them have excellent production values.

Giving it a try. Wish us luck.

(Only a little cryptic.)