Category: Creativity –

Wednesday, July 1st, 2020 – Canada Day –

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-Wednesday, July 1st, 2020 —> +18˚C/ +68˚F – grey and cloudy @ 10:45 am in Atlantic Canada on Canada Day & Martha Sturgeon’s Birthday ?-

- Volffe standing Night Watch on Lovers' Lookout Hill -

– “Vollfe standing Night Watch on Lovers’ Lookout Hill.” – Looking North of North East at Del-Vahria from Keltic Vale. –

— The above screen shot shows the only thing I did in the past couple days here – Volffe planted weeds amid the ‘summer grass’ on Lover’s Lookout Hill – then stood there all night watching the clouds roll overhead.

— There is just a little bit of lag here – possibly due to the number of ‘assets’? and maybe the lag is a lot worse for builder characters – who probably carry a lot of memory with them – Shrug – I know there is a lot less lag when a character comes in opting to ‘play’ instead of  ‘edit’.

— I started totally rearranging my office here – disconnected all the computers and moved the heavy schnarr around – & I have been aching pretty much all over.

— I haven’t moved everything I moved out of the office back in – I’m not satisfied with a couple things and right now I’m waiting for Cathi to wake up { She’s on vacation all week, plus today is a Holiday up here & she’s a night person to begin with and is enjoying her much deserved rest. }

— And I got alerts telling me that a couple of my WordPress blogs ( This is one of them ) were messed up – & I think that was just a nasty marketing ploy to try to con me into paying premium prices for stuff that has been free for as long as I can remember – “Dangit!” — A conspiracy watch dog type warned me that the next thing they might do would be to deliberately mess things up bad to convince me that I need to pay like $30.00 a month for their protection scam ‘security’ schnarr- If that happens I’ll be writing to self publish and, “So screw them…”

— One interesting thing – other — more highly visited and written to blogs – don’t show their twitter feeds and freeze the left and right ‘Widget’ columns – even give up trying to load the widgets, especially when there’s a weather widget in the mix – but here, with this blog, there isn’t a problem –  “hmmmmm-?”

— Sigh, I was going to do my Pranayama and meditate at 11:00 am but I suddenly and rapidly became ‘blehhhh’ – { felt nauseous } and realized I better eat something – so I did, and now I gotta wait until 5 pm to do my Yoga stuff –

————— Love you guys!

~~~~~ Jim

“Hey – Look What I Found – & This Past Week In Game Building Land -“

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Sunday – June 21st, 2020, Fathers’ Day? & it’s +26˚C / +76˚F – off and on cloudy – and muggy? @ 3:34 pm in Atlantic Canada –

I thought I lost this -

– How about a rejection slip from Star Wars – for an unsolicited idea and sample bit of movie script in 1977? –

— I found the above hiding in plain sight here in my office when the ‘clearing away some clutter’ bug hit me. I thought I’d lost it a long time ago –

- Julienne - in slightly foggy reflections in Glaicer Valey -

– “Julienne taking a moment to appreciate the beauty through the coming fog – with reflections in Glacier Valley -“

— Glacier Valley has been around since 2011 – But – while I thought I did a good job of getting the slopes from high mountains right, and learned that white gravel doesn’t just just look like authentic hillside ‘crud’ { – that’s a technical term used by climbers – “Crud” – } —> It also looks like real snow in some places / under the right conditions. … And I was able to pick up a really good ‘Gaming’ monitor during Boxing Day/Week after my 3 month appointment taking photos and working them into a complicated database for the local museum here in the fall of 2018 – and wow – I was actually stunned at how good this looks on a decent gaming monitor.

- A Gremlin - Doug figured out how to morph this guy from a full sized human -

– “Gremlin -” I thought I’d have to try to get my cousin Emelie involved to come up with some decent creature designs – but while this character { one of Doug’s } has some glitches and weird appearance problems – it looks pretty darned good { or Evil – or both } – to me –

— Without the hat – this character has dark eye sockets on the top of his head, and his neck looks like it has a bones sticking out if you look at it too closely – but dang – { I wish the ears were creepier – but heck – } Having a couple of these guys running around burning down whole neighbourhoods could make for some interesting game play…

- Anie - in the shallows of the Enchanted Sea -

– Annie – up to her waist in pretty green water in the Enchanted Sea – Even stout hearted Pirates avoid this area whenever they can –

– Annie looks like she’s really worried that there might be hungry sharks in the shallows of the Enchanted Sea here —> An area that’s just mostly very basic right now – And getting a little bit more finished every day – Even if I work on this game until I pass out and wake up with my neck aching and my head pounding much too often…

- Moe lit some lamps -

– Moe – the slightly Pirate-like Cat-Person – learned that a little bit of some dust from Crystal Mines – when added to whatever they burn in those lamps – both increases the brilliance of the lighting and gives it some colourful tints –

— Moe was my first successful attempt at ‘creating’ a charismatic Cat-Person – With just a little bit of modification we have Fox People who might need bushier tails – But yup, they are different enough –

- Brilliant lighting from a distance -

– This was another view that ‘knocked me out’ – When you see this on s decent sized screen – it looks pretty darned good – & on the Gaming Monitor it looks Magical. –

— As I was ready to wind down – I knew I would pass out soon if I didn’t – Draelen – { My Character } And Nikki – His love interest – met in the dark on “Lovers’ Lookout Hill” and Me, out here in the ‘real world’ was stunned at how good this looked –

- A little more than two hours in real world time passed between the photo above and this one - taken from the same angle -

– Draelen might have been just as stunned as I was – And the morning fog and scenery isn’t bad here either –

— After the magical looking night in the two ‘photos’ – above – A one nano second miss-click messed up several game areas right around this ‘Inland Sea’ harbor – and after three long days of fixing things – we still more to do – But – yeah – seeing that we’re able to have results that look this good – doesn’t keep me from waking up with my forehead on the keyboard – but it does give me hope that we’re actually getting somewhere.

- Gaeren - The Ursan on the right - and his Delvahrian captain of the guard -

– Somebody had to make armor in the DelVahrian style for Gaeren – an Ursan { Bear Person – } –

— These two are in the same unit – guarding the city of ‘Emeliea’ with spooky clouds coming down from mountains in the west –

- "Tall Spruce with roots -" -

– We’ve also been seriously learning how to ‘make trees’ with Speed Tree software – from the same company that designed software that made some really impressive virtual plants for movies. –

— I have to ask Cousin Debi if this is what a real spruce tree looks like, and not a Colorado Blue Spruce –

— Sigh – And I better sign off and get some rest before I blink and wake up a couple weeks from now with a splitting headache…

— 🙂

~~~~~ Jim

Wednesday , – Copied and Pasted from ‘Aerendel Comics’ Blog –

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— The following was posted yesterday, on the —>https://aerendel.ca/comics/  Blog<— { link } on my Nephew, Charles McCauley’s Birthday 🙂 —

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Tuesday, April 10, 2018  —> +3˚C / +38˚F + sunny + clear with blue skies in Atlantic Canada on Earth { NorAm=Can+Mex+USA [-05] } @ 12:11 pm —

Jeff between the beach and Daelen hills.

– Jeff Karrlson – Near Fort Daelen –

— Jeff Karrlson { pictured above } is from “{ NorAm=Can+Mex+USA(-07) }” The only variance we are sure of between (-05) and (-07) is that the Maine, USA – border with Quebec to the north and New Brunswick to the East is quite different. — The Map for ‘(-05)’ has Maine extended about 25 miles farther East and Extending North and West beyond the north flowing section of the St John River, which forms the Quebec border in ‘Variance (-07)’ Edmundston is in New Brunswick in both Variances. – But Preque Isle, Caribou, Stockholm, Acadia, New Sweden, Carriveau Mill, and Sinclair are all inside Maine in ‘V(-05)’ and all part of New Brunswick in ‘V(-07)’.

— In ‘V(-07)’ Jeff’s Alcoholic father won over one hundred thousand dollars in the US multi-state lottery and celebrated by taking Jeff’s mother, two sisters and younger brother to dinner, got drunk – passed out at the wheel – and slammed into a tractor trailer pulling heavy earth moving equipment on his way home.

— Jeff had gotten his father that lottery ticket the night before, had noticed that the clerk had not entered the numbers his father played all the time correctly, went to another store, another clerk, filled out the ticket – double checked it more than once, and brought his father the ticket his father had demanded. The ticket with the wrong numbers, which Jeff pocketed, netted him 30.6 million dollars after taxes. He would much rather have had his family back.

— He quit his job, (peed all over his abusive supervisor’s desk), bought a slightly used Motor Home and drove around the USA – Mostly New York and New England – in the hopes that avoiding routine and seeing the earth come back to life in the spring time might help him get over his deep shock and depression over losing his family like that.

— He crossed into Canada a couple times. Canada felt different to him, looked more interesting. The people seemed to be more friendly. The French speaking people seemed more interesting and maybe even more intelligent and friendly that the people he’d grown up around in the USA – But he developed a great deal of trouble trying to sleep and then had trouble getting to sleep, experienced multiple nightmares, hearing – especially his little sister’s – dying screams every time he fell asleep for almost one month, before he became totally confused and lost in his exhausted state of mind, crossed into Canada at the Vermont-Quebec border, crossed back into Maine at an unguarded border and hadn’t realized he’d crossed back into New Brunswick until an RCMP officer stopped to ask him if he was all right when he’d pulled to the side of a narrow rural road, then finally parked where that young and friendly RCMP officer told him he could pull over and park, where he hoped to rest and maybe even sleep for the night. Like I said, he hadn’t realized he’d crossed back into Canada after accidentally driving across an unguarded rural border crossing two days earlier. But he didn’t explain that to the officer. He just yawned, admitted he was lost and looking for a spot to pull over and get some sleep.

—Later that night, the RCMP officer checked the information Jeff had given him, and confirmed that he’d gone through customs at the Vermont-Quebec border and thought it was reasonable that he’d driven around Quebec and then crossed into New Brunswick, and when the story about his family dying in an accident in which alcohol was involved also checked out the RCMP officer dropped his suspicions and became concerned.

— That night Jeff dreamed that a scientist – being tortured by some kind of dark-ops rogue military group somewhere inside the USA – told him to look after his [ the scientist’s ] niece, ‘Kaeren’.

— In the morning Jeff woke up as young school women walked near the parked motor-home and heard one woman call another ‘Kaeren’. He discovered a ‘For Sale’ sign describing a muti-acre parcel with logging trails.

— The young RCMP officer who’d told Jeff he could sleep there the night before stopped by that morning to check on him and told him where to eat and where not to eat in the area, gave him a ride to the officer’s favourite diner and introduced Jeff to the farmer who was selling that parcel of land at the request of his old friend (and Kaeren’s uncle) who had gone missing and was presumed dead after so many years had passed.

— Jeff had ‘gotten lucky’ when the news reporters in the states got both his name and address wrong when they reported the lottery winning. { He’d paid an out of work actor to pretend to be him for the official photographs and the actor used that money to move to Hollywood and found a modest rent, got a job as a waiter in a bar out there – and had enough extra cash to last several months while he went to every casting call he could – }

— After the farmer left the diner, Jeff told the officer more details about the accident that killed his family and the series of events that gave him his winnings and the fact that the reporters all got his name and address wrong and said he’d really rather not broadcast the fact that he had that much money, he was still in mourning and didn’t want to wonder whether anybody who seemed like a friend was only friendly because of what he had in the bank and the officer agreed to keep Jeff’s secret. He drove Jeff to the farmer’s farm, left him there with the farmer about to drive Jeff out to the property that was for sale, under the guise that Jeff’s rich crazy uncle wanted to buy property to keep it out of the hands of developers and corporations. – At the top of a steep hill, the farmer stopped his four wheel drive vehicle at a logging trail-blocking mess of fallen trees. They walked around the mess and followed a deer path to where a whole section of hills and trees had been swept away by a ‘freak storm’, that left a nearly flat, but uneven rocky bed behind. “Well, that’s different-” the farmer nodded, “Huh!”

— “Looks like a stone lake-” Jeff thought out loud.

— The farmer agreed.

— He later found out that the owner of the property, who had disappeared and was presumed dead, was Kaeren’s uncle, George. It’s a long story, but Jeff, Kaeren and George escaped a deadly encounter with the rogue dark ops military guys and crossed over into another parallel Earth that we haven’t quite classified yet – and from there, Jeff and Kaeren blundered across into another parallel world and ended up in Aerendel – where they have been temporarily separated and are trying to get back together.

— { Sorry, didn’t mean to be this long winded, but – that’s Jeff’s side of the Jeff and Kaeren and ‘Stone Lake’ saga. }

= = = = =

 

Jeff & Kaeren in Daelen

– Jeff & Kaeren = Reunited ( photo #1 ) –

 

— Update – They found each other. One odd thing that happens to some inter-dimensional travelers if they stay in Aerendel for any length of time – many, but not all, undergo subtle to radical changes physiologically.  Kaeren began showing hints that she was becoming a little more ‘Half-Elf’ every day, before Jeff began showing any changes at all. Jeff’s parents and family, including a favourite uncle who had died mysteriously in his home dimension, were alive in one village in Aerendel. They were 100% Human and quite bigoted about that – They shunned Kaeren, and Kaeren, wanting to keep the peace ( she was born under the Earthly Astrological sign of Cancer ) left with a troop of Half Elven Rangers to learn to develop and control the healing abilities she discovered when she came to Aerendel.

— When Jeff’s ears began to get slightly pointy – his father disowned him ( which didn’t mean much to Jeff’s financial status – but hurt him when he was barred from seeing his sisters and brother ) – he found another troop of Half Elves and joined them.

 

Kaeren and Jeff showing how close to the sea shore they are.

– Kaeren and Jeff – taken with Kaeren’s contraband cell phone – shhh! –

 

— Now this is interesting – In the photo Rocky took with Jeff’s contraband cell phone, Kaeren was not holding her ‘gear axe’. And in the photo that Rocky took with Kaeren’s phone, Jeff was unarmed. Hmmmm- that is interesting….

~~~~~ Jim

Yesterday’s News?

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Thursday, March 15th, 2018 —> -2˚C / +28˚F & not snowing in the dark @ 11:11 pm in Atlantic Canada —

Lights on Wellington Court

– I don’t know if it’s me – Or are there higher vibrations effecting the way we all see things lately – Even the streetlight and house lights on our street look a bit more magical. –

— We got something like 2 feet of wind-blown hard-packed heavy-wet-snow in our driveway overnight, and the stuff was so hard to deal with the snowblower was squawking and trying to go up and over the snow instead of through it – every three or four inches the darned thing would feel like it hit something solid – It really was a struggle. Our next door neighbour, who’s lived around here all her life came over and asked me, “Have you ever seen snow that was this hard to work with a snowblower?” { Nope }

— I had to stop several times to rest – and at one point, did not think I would be able to finish the job. We had to take a break to go get more gas for the snowblower – pushing hard and then pulling back and pushing again ( even though the thing is powered – when you hold down the lever on the handle -). Wheels were spinning and going nowhere.

Snowing - driveway, partially cleared van.

– Late morning – the snow hadn’t quite stopped – Doesn’t look like much, but the ridge left by the town’s contracted out snow plows was deadly. – and the four inches of compacted snow that hadn’t blown over the van in the impressive wind – probably weighed as much as a foot or more would have. –

— I fell asleep after we went to get more gasoline – woke up around 5:30 pm? & wanted to go back to sleep in a big way, but decided to give the driveway’s messed up edges another try –

— It turned out that using a lightweight snow shovel ( plastic ‘business end’? ) was a lot easier than going absolutely nuts with the snowblower ( & all the guys in my family die of heart attacks… eep? )

— But I got the job done.

— Almost forgot to mention, Cathi was able to work from home today – She gets more done this way & doesn’t have to deal with ‘schnarr’ office politix – And it’s always good to have her here. Even when I keep being told not to bother her with casual conversation – oops – But when I think something’s important lately I want to blurt it out before I forget it.

— Shrug —

Finally cleared the driveway as dark approached.

– It wasn’t snowing, but it was starting to get dark when I finished the driveway in pretty much the shape you see here –

— I did dig a canyon to the mail box ( the mailbox is wearing the number “5” here ) after I took this photo. and then, before I collapsed, but was about to, I saw that Cathi was finished with her last minute work stuff and brought her outside to show her a couple things, and that’s when I took the un-retouched photo at the top of this article. I love my iPhone. Just wish it saved the photos with the date and time instead of just the number for a name.

— Sigh —

 

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— That was yesterday, I felt pretty good after the bit of a workout with the shovel – which didn’t quite survive intact, it’s splitting at the semi-tubular – um – corrugations? – That look like they’re supposed to be a reinforcing, strength-enhancing feature? Looks like maybe one more deceptive bit of planned obsolescence engineering to me.

 

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— Meanwhile, our game world developmental spurt is going “gang-busters” – And today in a brain storming session one of our artists took a look at what we’ve been doing and said, “Yeah, it’s pretty – and some of those quirky innovations you came up with to hide flaws really work, but what are we doing here? Will it ever all come together? Will it ever actually be open to the public, maybe even paying customers?”

— So we broke out the pencil sketch diagrams and explained the dotted lines and she looked at all of that and gasped, “Holy [ Schnarr ] This makes sense. I really think it works – And I thought you guys were just kind of twiddling your thumbs and kidding yourselves – Wow – I like it.”

— So, with that little shot in the arm – we should bid a fond farewell for the evening and either get some rest or stare at computer screens like electronic zombies for a couple more hours – fueled with our – “The end is in sight -” Or more like, “The real beginning is almost here -” enthusiasm.

— I’m really impressed with the new builders who’ve shown up.

— Yes! —,

~~~~~ Jim

um – Tuesday, March 13th, 2018 –

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Tuesday, March 13th, 2018 —>  -0˚C / +31˚F —> Dark & I think it’s snowing @ 7:59 pm here, in Atlantic Canada — I think today might be Dana Delaney’s ( of China Beach teevee series? ) Birthday. & It’s Doug’s Daughter’s ( Rachels’s ) spouse for life – Derrick Kenwood’s Birthday ( He uses a forest elf’s image from our game as his facebook avatar 🙂 — Yay? —

Smiling Snow pyramid?

– I thought the snow pyramid to the left looked like it had a jolly, almost Santa Claus-like face, & to me at least – it looked like it was smiling. This was yesterday –

 

— My sister, Sharon, in Alaska – who has been having problems with connecting to her Skype account, heard from our friend, Chris, that ‘effbook’ has a free video chat function and she was all excited to try that – like I said, Skype has been making it impossible for her to log on and use it. & today we had a very nice, but slightly blurry ‘effbook’ video chat – Yay? – Yeah, always good to see her smiling face. 🙂

 

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— & Now this from our sister in Utah, Nancy —>

 

 Nancy Wellington Aylward –

— “I found out some information which I think might be helpful to all. We have been using a large amount of our cellular data these last two months, even though we all use WiFi when at home and other places like the gym. Yesterday I went online to AT&T to view our data usage. I looked specifically at my usage and noticed charges for data at 12:00 am, 3:00 am and 6:00am-every day! I am NOT on my phone at these times. When I told the agent this he told me that even though I am on WiFi I need to turn off my “cellular data” or my phone will look for the stronger signal and use the cellular data if that is stronger than the WiFi-which it apparently is at our house!! So for those of us who did not know this and were not told this by our carriers-always turn off your cellular data when using WiFi!!!!

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 — Meanwhile, over the border, in Aerendel, Laerry’s { Métis } cousin, Julienne, has apparently ‘gone native’ as a forest elf, perhaps with a little bit of Ottahrian blood? When it was time for her portrait, she quickly changed out of her work clothes ( she did a lot – pulled millions of weeds up and fed them to somebody’s cows – worked all night – I think – ) and, um, from the looks of things, she’s trying to catch somebody’s eye. Back home in the ‘Real World’ she was quite the musician – a prodigy with the ‘fiddle’ { she wanted to stick to mostly Celtic stuff – but could play the heck out of um, —> “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” – with a flair and enough rasp to sound like she owned it.

 

Julienne in the morning fog.

– by-line ‘TaleRocker in Aerendel’ –  (Using a contraband smart phone ( “No Service – EVER!” ) for a camera ) — Pre-Dawn sun rays on this planet in this ‘parallel’ dimension do some wild things with something in the atmosphere to give us some very interesting sky and fog colours – Julienne appreciates that, but she is, after all, a Bard – and can’t resist getting all dolled up and posing –

— Yes, Julienne has gone native, I think if you hang out with members of one race or another, you really do start to look, and maybe think and feel a lot like them – And ‘T-R’ hasn’t told us how he keeps his iPhone charged over there –

— shrug & 1/2 —,

~~~~~ Jim

The Play Of Light And Shadow { No – we’re definitely not in Kansas – }

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Sunday, March 4th, 2018 —>  +1˚C / +34˚F with light rain { actually looked like very fine – almost invisible snow was falling here } @1:23 pm in Atlantic Canada —> On Marcia Logan’s Birthday { And Michaela M.’s & a couple more people who might not want to be reminded that they’re aging —

 

Fashion Statement?

– “Fashion Statement” –

 

 

— { I did not expect the above photo to load full sized. }

 

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1.

 

I count my ‘mindless pursuits”

among the most productive form

of therapy

available to me

-when in the course of another day’s

fierce concentration

I find my ‘self’

where my brain says, “NO!”

and flatly refuses

to even attempt

to solve another

mind numbing

dilemma –

And then

a mindless game on a computer

or other ‘device’

may not seem like much

but if it’s engaging

enough

the deeper reaches

of my mind or soul or -?

-whatever-

often sighs with relief

as my ‘conscious’ mind (fried)

allows that simple solution

(I couldn’t see)

come bubbling up out of nowhere

in spite of all the conventional wisdom

our contemporaries spout

and try to live by

and act like they believe

we all should-?

 

 

2.

 

“Getting Somewhere?”

 

Moving the new desk into my cluttered office

I can’t move without knocking something over

but I look around

And hey – there’s more space in here –

 

( don’t tell Cathi – I’ll never hear the end of it?)

March 4th, 2018

 

 

 

“the Play of Light and Shadow”

 

Working all night

on keeping this world together

with duct tape and anybody else’s discards

after an un-predicted

catastrophe

brought earthquakes –

shattered homes

shattered lives –

 

There’s nothing to do

but keep on moving

-pull one more

piece of debris

from another collapsed

home

in the hopes that

someone under that mess

may still be alive –

 

Then – in the morning’s first light

old “Rescue Central”

sent in the relief team

and, exhausted –

we turn around and blink

dumbfounded at the piles of rocks and bricks

that just the other day

was a thriving neighbourhood

And I stare at the friend I’ve been working along side –

wonder where she finds the strength to do this –

and the two of us gasp and stumble toward nothing like ‘home’

numb to everything around us

until the play of light and shadow

on the one untouched masonry hacienda anywhere

for miles in any direction –

takes our breath away

we can almost imagine children

running around, playing

happy and free and

care-free?

Yes, we’re both  mesmerized –

Then she sighs and looks around at the hills and the jungle and the river –

“This place really is beautiful, ya know?”

March 4, 2018

 

= = = = =

 

~~~~~ Jim

Aggrivation With Scanners & One More Reason To Hate Google

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Saturday, March 3rd, 2018  —> +2˚C / +35˚F — Overcast and ‘Dark’@ 905 pm in Atlantic Canada. —> on multiple Birthdays day – Tom Poplawski, Elsa C., Ian Punnet — and the anniversary of the release of  ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ by Pink Floyd. —

 

— Moving stuff around in my “office” here these last couple days, I found some real treasures when I opened envelopes I don’t remember seeing before. { Might have been something someone handed me at a ‘Life Celebration’ { A funeral by a euphemistic name? Although we did try to keep it positive, my mother always was an ‘Earth Angel’ – She just dropped the ‘Earth’ part} }. And trying to get these scanned has been a buster-

 

Brookses, Bordens, Georges + Wellingtons

– Extended Family Portrait – circa 1950 –

 

— Really don’t know when the above photo was taken. Standing, left to right, Dorothy May Brooks Borden, Robert H Borden, Dorothy Eleanor Borden Wellington, Robert C Wellington Jr, Edith Grace George Wellington and Robert Carlson Wellington ( Senior ). Seated: Willie Brooks ( nee Willie Brooke ) Eliza Morgan Brooks, Clarence  George. & dat’s me on my Great Grandmother’s lap.

 

– I think this is World War II Liberation Money. It was the last thing my father gave me before he shuttled off to the Spirit Realms. –

 

— I thought he’d given me Liberation Money from the Philippines, But this looks Dutch to me.

 

Backside

– Back side of the above Liberation Currency –

 

— So, the first thing I tried to scan – on our mono laser printer ‘all-in-one’ got as far as ‘Scan to PC’ – and the danged thing would still be spinning, looking for the PC if I didn’t mercifully ‘pull the plug’ – { Hit the ‘Off” switch. }

 

Me in the 70's

– Me in the early 70’s at my Borden Grandparents’ 45th Anniversary Bash –

 

— Don’t know the exact date on this one either. There was a big party at my Aunt’s ( & Uncle’s ) in Milford. The photographer was a young guy, friend of my sister, Sharon.

 

Me?

– And, This was me at a ridiculous hour of this morning, trying to figure out a clunky old data base. –

 

— Weird things happen when your cursor gets too close to the ‘camera’ icon.

— And a lot of very odd and frustrating things kept coming at me today.

— So I soaked in a bathtub full of hot water until my brain turned soggy – { shhh, I won’t admit that the brain was soggy before the incident with the tub full  of hot  water –

— And later I reconnected an old scanner that seemed to be working, but it wanted to save everything as pdf files. { What the —- }

— The latest schnarr frustration came when I had to email the photos in small groups because the computer that can connect to the clunky old scanner doesn’t know any other way to do things, and now it decided it can’t use firefox and google chrome wants to send everything to a google drive so it can steal all your private information and sell it to the highest bidder. — and after I said “NO! Do not involve Google Freakin Drive! – it did anyway and then google freakin drive would not let me download from their freakin cloud, I could look at it, but I couldn’t touch? Or use anything? — Are you kidding me?

— Yup, so – every step of the way between thinkin’ I could scan and share a couple photos and now as full of flying monkey wrenches.  – Which – I hope – I managed to duck –

— { Quack quack already — }

— Sigh —,

~~~~~ Jim

Monday – Crunchy Monday –

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Monday, February 26th, 2018 —>-2˚C / +28˚F with light snow falling on crunchy overnight quarter inch of white stuff at 7:16 am in Atlantic Canada —> On Aunt Reggie’s Birthday 🙂 —

Twilight in Keltic Valley

– “Twilight over the Half-Elf Valley ” –

— The actual sky was more orange – As the sun set through a temperature inversion. But when I had to adjust the print so “TaleRocker” was almost visible – the process gave us a much more yellow sky.

Midnight in Keltic Valley.

– “Midnight In Keltic Valley” –

— This {above } shot is modified too – but in order to capture the feeling, I let it stay a bit dark.

 

TaleRocker by Douglas Jay Otterson.

– “TaleRocker” – According to Doug Otterson –

— Doug Says in a text message on the iPhone, “Hey look, I gave you glasses :)” – I was guessing that – on one of his infrequent nights off when he couldn’t sleep he spent a couple hours trying to modify one of his Builder characters. But then I realized that one of the times when he stayed with us in order not to upset his New Brunswick sweetie’s son, he signed on to my account and modified one of mine. On his last visit { Saturday } – He looked at what we’d done in the past week, looked at me, laughed and asked my permission to try to fix something when I was succumbing to complete burn-out – He gave ‘TaleRocker’ a pair of glasses – & after admitting that he gave him glasses, ‘messaged’: “I tried to get him to look a little more like you without chancing anything catastrophic” — Silly me, next time I logged in I had to use one of the tools that can modify characters to turn this guy around to see his face and yup, he’s got glasses.

L'Haeren

– Doug’s ‘Highe Elf’ builder character – Guarding the gate to our new and improved (?) Keltic Valley. –

— I should make him explain his own inspirations – But Doug told me this guy { above } gave him the confidence to try to get a character to look something like the ‘real me’ { After one of my attempts to come up with a replacement for a female builder character who suffered a catastrophic failure and fell out of the world and never came back – Actually looked like his daughter, Rachel as she’d grown up – & I hadn’t seen her since she was about 9 years old – & after he says spent about three hours messing with the facial morphing tools, he thought this one looked a little like me as  tall blond elf  { ‘Highe Elves’ see themselves as being more intellectual than Forest Elves? } & He said he saw me more as a Bard than a Ranger – { We met at a writer’s workshop at Cornell U. in Ithaca, New York } When I whined and didn’t think this guy quite looked like me, he spent more like five hours working on a Ranger and I’ve been using that guy’s screen shot as my Twitter profile for a couple years now –

TaleRocker Icon.

– Adjusted { Exposure } and Cropped – Icon sized image of TaleRocker with his glasses. –

— This is probably okay for an ‘effbook’ profile picture, but there isn’t enough contrast to make it a really good blog icon.

— Doug dared me to use it as my profile picture. I have to think about that. While I hedged and ‘thought about it – he said, “Take his hat off -” So I did and he has bangs that don’t quite fall in front of his eyes and they’re edged in a near indigo blue colour.

— And I’m not going to sit here and type until I wake up with my nose on the keyboard and find fifteen pages of “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” – or something. But I plopped that image to the left because Xhyrean wants to know how that might format things in this blog.

— “Argh”?

— But in all fairness, we got a lot done over the weekend. And I actually felt good about walking out into a beautiful new world before dawn this morning to put out the garbage, walking on the crunchy new quarter-inch of snow with a tiny bit of freezing rain on top of it.

— & Yes, Xhyrean, Everything does look amazing after staring at a computer screen for eighteen hours trying to fix unexpected catastrophes. & Hey guys, we have a tool to save what we have as it is and come back later to restore it if somebody else falls asleep at their computer and wipes out half the universe — 😉

— “Set and Save Checkpoints!”

~~~~~ Jim

“Darkness – Darkness -“

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Copied & Pasted from https://aerendel.org/komix/ :

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“Darkness, Darkness-“

by on February 20, 2018 at 9:11 pm

Posted In: “Boof!” –, “Weird Weather” – even in the game world? –, Computer Game Building Schnarr –, Conspiracies –, Creativity –, Dreams don’t always make sense – Especially when you’re wide awake –, Exploring Caverns –, Life should be more fun. –, Life should be more relaxed –, No bears in the news today –, Quantum Theory and Parallel Worlds –, Uncategorized

 

Tuesday, February 20th, 2018  —> 0˚C / +32F with light rain @8:15 pm in Atlantic Canada —> It’s Kathy Krafchick’s Birthday { & Patty Hearst’s too } —> Happy Birthday to both of them { Not that either one will likely see this … } —

 

The Stars Returned -

– The Stars Returned – & the night sky got dark. Kaeren was there to see it. –

 

— The [ above ] screenshot of Kaeren gazing at the starry sky [ came out too dark ] too dark to show up well here. I [ had to ] mess with the screenshot.

— A lot has happened since the last time I posted here [ re: progress building/putting together the game’s world ]. Kaeren was really busy – planted a lot of flowers, brought Springtime to DelVahria and to Keltic Vale.

— { & Out of Character -} The dark night skies went away and haven’t come back. We read notes and thought that this could be because of racial issues. Races that can see in the dark might keep the darkness –  and the stars – away?

— & Since I’ve been back { as ‘TaleRocker’ } we managed to light our streetlamps – Get our waterfalls to look something like waterfalls – dropped a large rock across the river at the border between Keltic Vale and DelVahria – lost a couple water troughs – And we think we figured out why a lot of the plants that Kaeren planted kept disappearing { apart from the obvious – Forest elves picking them, taking the plants home and transplanting them – } And we think we might have solved that little problem – But we’ll have to hang on and see what happens next –

— After the last time Kaeren got to go star-gazing night hasn’t fallen in, jeeze, weeks in this dimension – two days back on the Earth we came from – Time passes differently here –

 

 

Dark Couds -

– And we’ve seen some dark clouds lately – { & I Did have to mess with the exposure on this one, too. } –

 

— & We don’t know what’s coming here – none of us have been here long enough to know if they have a monsoon season or if hurricanes come this far inland –

— So, um, We’ll keep you posted –

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— { & because I knew and liked Kathy Krafchick – an intelligent, sensitive, artistic young woman who was a bit younger than me – when Patty Hearst was kidnapped – that effected me deeply. I tried praying that she’d come back to her family safely – and because I’d already heard of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ {{ I am 28% Viking – but that has nothing to do with what my ‘radar’ picks up – all sorts of absurd information finds its way into my brain, mind & soul (?) and stays there – }} [ shudder ] — I thought the justice system failed Patty Hearst and all of us when they sent her to jail for not being strong enough (or stupid enough) to resist her captors { and maybe get herself killed. ((?)) } um – }

 

Indigo Skies At Sunset -

– “Indigo Skies At Sunset?” – The orange glow around the mountains might be the temperature inversion effect we were hoping for? –

 

— I don’t know, maybe everything will come out all right in the end — ???

~~~~~ Jim

More Adventures in World Building { Game World Building }

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Sunday, February 18th, 2018 —> -6˚C / +21˚F & snowing ‘lightly’ @ 8:15 am in Atlantic Canada —

Connecting Two 3D Game Areas.

– “Kaeren connecting Stone Lake with Keltic Vale” – Looks interesting, but it’s not for the weak of heart. –

— I’d say I spent about 8 hours working on various areas inside the 3D interactive ‘Role Playing’ game we’re building. But it was probably more like 12.

 

— One area, DelVahria, is especially complicated. Most of it is inside a cave. This needs 3 ‘Heightmaps’ { The visible terrain you can walk on and can’t walk through – usually. } One for the ground and the depths of the cave – a second for the ceiling of the cave { and this one has to be flipped upside down at creation – This is because all the terrain you see is one-dimensional +/or solid on one side, but invisible and you can walk through it without knowing it’s there from the other side. } – And the third bit of heightmap terrain covers the cave and in this case looks like a mountain from the outside. — You have to carefully line everything up or it looks really weird. And then you can’t do anything to any one of the ‘maps’ while they’re all together. – If you try to modify the floor of the cave and use the tool that pulls it down – you also end up pulling the ceiling down over the spot you’re ‘digging out’ and you pull a section of mountain over the cave down too. One little ‘oops’ can take half a second to ‘create’ and hours to undo – So you have to slide all the pieces apart, one at a time – carefully – and make sure you don’t loose one in the process – I send the mountain one way and the cave ceiling the other. Then you make your changes, fix your ‘oopses’ and take a breath, close your eyes and move everything back together.

 

— I tried to connect ‘DelVahria’ with another area yesterday – & had disastrous results – all three pieces went in three different directions. I thought the cave ceiling sailed off into oblivion and I would never find it again. But I crossed my fingers and went off in a straight line, lost sight of other two pieces, and whattaya know? – there it was – something like halfway to Cleveland – naked and totally confused. It took me about fifteen minutes to bring it back home and then another five minutes to get it lined up correctly.

 

— Today I tried half measures – ‘created’ a new area and called it ‘Keltic Vale’ – and left its real estate completely flat – and tried to connect that to DelVahria. I used some of my father’s favourite magic words when the two areas refused to line up completely – no matter how much I tried one map or the other was always at least one silly increment off. But okay – I left them a bit off like that – lined them up as close to perfectly as any two areas ever get, and then knitted them together with a tool whose icon is a band-aid. I tested the borders by having my active builder character run back and forth several times and the character did not fall through a crack in the world and fall screaming into oblivion.

 

— Then I tried to connect these two areas with three others that I knocked myself out on this week. Those three areas are connected east to west with ‘Stone Lake’ being the farthest west. I thought they would all play nice if I connected Keltic Vale to Stone Lake. { See ‘Kaeren’ at work ( above ) standing there while I ‘married’ the edges of both areas, and gave her credit for that. }

 

— But, connecting Stone Lake to Keltic Vale broke apart the three areas that had been securely fastened together. I didn’t have to go quite as far out into never never land to find all the pieces, but then the process of lining them up and ‘marrying’ their edges again, and then using the ‘band-aid’ tool to cement their bonds all over again took something like 5 hours. And I had to test all the glitches – have Kaeren run around and fall through cracks in the world again and hope she could recover from the trauma of falling into another dimension. I really like the builder characters that I do a lot of modifications to, & I go into mourning when one of them disappears forever. – Luckily, that didn’t happen. Kaeren must like me back.

 

Kaeren with night vision.

– “Kaeren with night vision” – This is an un-doctored screen shot. – I usually have to mess with the exposure to get to the point where I can identify what I saw when I took the screenshot in the first place. – That’s ‘DelVahria’ in the distance behind her. –

— That’s DelVahria in the background. Kaeren looks frustrated here, doesn’t she? After hours of messing around with getting Stone Lake and both the other areas linked to Stone Lake back together, messing with borders that didn’t want to play nice, falling through a lot of cracks – And then going off on a wild and crazy hunt for a river that didn’t come back with Stone Lake { The ‘water’ just kind of hovered off in the distance, wondering if I’d notice it was missing – then took a lot of maneuvering and resizing to get it back in place. }

 

— So after hours of that kind of nonsense – The border between Keltic Vale and Stone Lake, which was fine five hours earlier – lost all its integrity and dropped her into the underworld no matter what we did – no matter how many times we used the ‘band-aid’ — I finally logged off and back on and had Kaeren run around a couple other areas for fun and then came back in to do some serious planetary healing and it worked.

 

— But then the link between Keltic Vale and DelVahria was even more messed up – trying to cross a simple no-nonsense straight-ahead border sent her teleporting off into mountains somewhere – and trying to get out of the mountains dropped her through the world again. More than once. So we logged out again, twiddled our thumbs for a while, logged back in and closed our eyes and ran across the border and – holy cow! It worked fine! Maybe this was a case of, “You used up all the memory I’m going to let you play with in this session, – kid.”

 

— AND – The sky went black at night – That hasn’t happened in a long time. I wondered why not and what I might have to do to get the night and the stars back – but there they were. Maybe the ‘world’ has to be up for a long period of time before the background routines allow for darkness and stars at night? Anything’s possible, I suppose –

Dark Skies and Stars!

– “Dark Skies over Stone Lake” – The lines around that area back there { which is what Stone Lake looked like from Keltic Vale before we got busy fixing things after we got the borders to work } – Define that area and tell us it is ‘selected’ while we’re working on it. –

— I was able to get the dark skies and stars to happen over at least one more area after checking out the settings in the ‘Environment’ Control/Editing panel.

Cave Entrance in Daylight.

– “Cave Entrance in Daylight” – With Kaeren about ready to cry and ask if she can’t just please go home and get some sleep. –

— At night the fog behind her is dark – in the daylight – those cave dwellers must have rigged themselves an ingenious method to get sunlight down inside their cave.

 

— So now, after twelve hours of working on this, I think I just spent another four cropping the screenshots and telling you all about what a long day of Game World Building is really like. Ya gotta love it –  or you’ll never stick to it long enough to get anything done at all.

 

— “Run Away Screaming-” “Aaaaaaaaaaa!”

~~~~~ Jim