I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.

(This entry open to all. If you know anyone interested, send 'em my way.)

In preparation for a potential fast need to get packed and move, the first purge of books is happening - and it's both easier and as difficult as I expected it to be. Tomorrow I hit the used bookstore, and see if they're interested in such things as my Spenser: For Hire books, some of my Clive Barker books, and a few other random things. There are a few items that are of special interest though, and I'm offering those to folks who might come across this note first, just in case.

(I was going to host these on LJ, but I'm on a slow borrowed internet. So I have a Facebook gallery instead.

Most obscurely, I have an ARC of "A Game of Thrones" by George RR Martin (complete with note from the publisher thanking you for giving it a chance) and a chapbook release of "Lila the Werewolf" by Peter S. Beagle.


And, finally, I have a number of medieval cooking and food resources, of varying authenticity, from "Curye on Inglysch" (Early English Text Society original version) to "Food and Drink in Medieval Poland".
(pic)

These items are being offered to my friends first, and maybe on Ebay next.

More items coming soon, including possibly some of my more obscure Discworld stuff (autographed "Where's My Cow?" Science of Discworld, etc), and some of my autographed stuff. I will entertain offers for my Neil Gaiman signed "Strange Little Girls" program from the Tori Amos tour, that he wrote the stories for. It also doubles as a calendar, and will be especially useful for that when 2001 rolls around again. I'm not sure how to price that stuff, nor even how much I want to let go of it. It holds memories, but memories aren't doing me much good right now.

I also have a crapton of CDs (probably over 600) and a bunch of DVDs to part with. Lists of those will be coming soon.

Background: I'd taken a 2 hour nap after going to Hubba Hubba on Friday night, and then heading to Dickens Saturday. Then I went directly to Gaskells. My food intake all day was low.

So, body needs food, but is getting mostly sugar. Craving for protein. Hrm...brains. Brains are protein right? This is how zombies really came into being - a combination of lack of sleep, and the body's need for food. And then there's everyone who says "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

We shouldn't refer to them as the "walking dead". Calling them the "sleepwalking dead" is far more appropriate.

I'm currently playing a game called The Lacuna Expanse, a browser-based non-turn oriented resource allocation game. It's probably akin to Farmville, but without the social engineering aspects of it, not being tied into Facebook, and not evil. I can't be certain, because I haven't played Farmville.

In any case, it's an addictive little game, and there's a contest running that gives me resources for mentioning the site, and providing a link to it, so that's what I'm doing. It may be the game that's keeping me away from WoW, although I was kinda doing that on my own anyway.

I seem to have hooked groblek already, so it's got the Seal of Approval from two different geeks. Also, the game is only about 6 weeks old, so there's still plenty of time to get in while the getting is good.

Oh, yeah. It's free, too.

Year 0: Our proverbial bags are packed, resources stored away and everything we think we should need to settle a new world is ready to go. Normal inter-galactic travel is, of course, impractical, but the existence of multiple worlds through a fold in space we have called the Moon rift looks like it will get us to region of space ripe with opportunity. Sadly, the telemetry we get from our probes seem to indicate it's a one-way trip - information travels through a narrow beam, but matter just floats right by it.

Our colony is named after the battle cry of an obscure comic book character. If we meet any enemies, we hope it will confuse them as much as it confuses us. But never mind that. We leave soon.

Month 1, new colony time: We are not alone. We've always suspected that life existed in other solar systems, other galaxies, but until now we hadn't encountered any. Now we have. We were in the process of setting up the colony, the farms, the mines, the power plants, when a message came in. One of welcome One of peace. But one that has made us cautious. There is a group out there called The Lacuna Expanse. Apparently this is their system. They say they welcome us, and have much to trade, and all they need is some substance referred to as Essentia.

We remain suspicious, but they offer gifts without question, and with few requirements. They are leading us down a path we would have gone down on our own. So we follow the tasks they ask for us, waiting, always waiting, for the other shoe to drop.

Basketball is a peaceful planet. We can only hope it stays that way.

Year 1, new colony time: We are thriving. The Essentia given to us by The Lacuna Expanse, our neighbors we have not seen, is as wonderous a substance as they claim. The crops grow faster, the mines become more efficient, bald people regrow hair and it even makes fungus burgers taste better. It's no wonder they are on the lookout for this.

They have sent us plans for some manner of planetary receiver that connects us to something called Network 19. Through it, they claim, we can find out what is going on all around us. An interesting proposition, that we will likely take them up on.

Supposedly there is a mole in their organization that is giving us these gifts of Essentia and the Network 19 plans. But we've seen this strategy of trust and suspicion before. We are using our intelligence counter-measures, sooner than we anticipated.

Year 2, new colony time: Network 19 is a blessing and a curse. We are truly not alone, and it was a shock to learn just how not alone we really are. Not only is it a populated universe, it is also a noisy one. Our probes show no inhabited planets nearby, but we continue to hear of the exploits of other races. Empires, as The Lacuna Expanse refers to them. It is difficult to say how correct they are in using that term, but hopefully we will be ready, should we ever meet. We are increasing our technology as much as we can, in the hopes of not only being able to stave off an unseen enemy, but to expand, so that we shall not fall, all in one place.

Year 3, new colony time: Success! Our second colony is well on its way. The planet we chose was rich in resources, but smaller than we would have hoped, but we are not minding that - it is enough that we are no longer limited to one planet. Also, it appears a wider variety of food grows on that planet; it will be good to have more food to choose from. There are only so many ways to prepare beetles.

We are also learning just how dependent we nearly became on The Lacuna Expanse. Without the "gifts" they offered, building this colony is a slower task. But we have learned lessons, and we are applying them.

We are also sending out probes, carefully and cautiously, looking for friends, neighbors and new planets to expand to. It is a big galaxy, but not so big that we cannot leave our mark.

Year 4, new colony time: The Moon Rift appears to be closing. This will likely be our last message.

While The Lacuna Expanse is an unknown quantity, that may or may not be an enemy, we have discovered a race that we are less in doubt about. The Saybeen Demesne, as they call themselves (although they spell it differently), appeared out of nowhere, declared themselves as enemies of everyone, and have apparently forcefully taken over worlds. It is our hope that we will escape their notice, even as we explore and expand to new worlds near us. But we are also preparing for war.

We hope that the silence from our old home is indicative of caution, and a desire to avoid homesickness, and not a sign of anything worse from our homeworld. We hope these messages have found you well. We hope these messages have found you.

Should another rift open elsewhere it may lead here as well. https://us1.lacunaexpanse.com/#ref… is the code that might put you in touch with us, if you land in the same place.

Unorthodox Economic Revenge indeed. Hiss...

Lacuna Expanse. Sorta like Sim City meets Farmville meets Master of Orion. Free to play, and you play it outside of Facebook (although you can login with your FB ID, and have it send updates. I have chosen not to do that.). It's in the first month of availability, and it's a big universe out there, so you won't get overwhelmed.

If you feel you might want to play, use this link: https://us1.lacunaexpanse.com/#ref… - it gives me in-game stuff, and free stuff is a good thing.

There's also a native (and free) iPhone client *and* it's all done in Perl with the APIs made available, in case you want to create your own interface. What more can you ask for?

So, I've just started playing Lacuna Expanse - a planetary building and space exploration game.

Apparently it's similar to Master of Orion - although I never played it. I think of it as being akin to Planets, back in my old UCSC days. It starts out very time consuming, goes through a phase where it's less so, and then probably picks up again later, as you create more colonies.

There are probably similarities to Farmville-like games, but with the bonus of not being related to Zynga, and therefore, you know, evil. It's also not part of Facebook, although you can use that to login.

If you're interested in playing, I can get you an invite code, which may help me out a bit. Let me know.

If you don't make the playoffs this year, it's your own damn fault, and you deserve not to.

Signed,

Someone who has your pitching staff in his Fantasy Baseball game.


(Yeah, it's a football helmet icon. But the name of all my fantasy sports teams is "I Hate This Game", and thus it represents all of them. And now you know the rest of the story.)

Anyone want to create an image of the SF Bay (looking out past the GG Bridge) with the caption "CaliFiorina Dreaming"?

I'm not sure how to tastefully imagefy her anti-choice views, nor her economic policies, but her being in favor of oil drilling should be easy enough to put into a single, bloggable, meme-able image.

So, the "Add a Dislike button" turned out to be a scam. Surprise, surprise, but it got a lot of people. Obviously there are a lot of people, who might otherwise be careful, who were willing to take the risk of being phished or infected in case it was true. (The link in question eventually connected folks to an existing Firefox add-on that *does* give you a dislike button. But it's not part *of* Facebook.)

What *other* sorts of things could you use to get people to click your phishing link? I mean, sure, you could promise porn, but people are sorta expecting that. Similarly, funny animal pictures probably won't cut it either.

Here's a few that popped into my head:
1) Cheat at Spider Solitaire. New add-on lets you take back as many moves as you like, and lets you see hidden cards.
2) Newly released $ACTOR/SINGER rehearsal tapes. (I would go with Michael Jackson here, actually.)
3) Outtakes from $MOVIE. Choose a current movie, maybe add "Long lost" to that, and use something like "Gone With the Wind".
4) Bootleg performce - $MUSICIAN in concert. This could work well with artists that don't tour very much. If I were a target demographic kinda guy, I would use Tom Waits here.

What would tempt you? Or what do you think would tempt others? (And remember - this isn't about wording, but about content.)

Nothing deep, I know. But just wondering.