Category: We Need More Positve News –

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

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 –

= = = = =

— { & 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

Jassper’s Latest Adventures in Game World Building –

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Tuesday, February 13th, 2018 —> -16˚C / +2˚F — Dark, cold and Mostly Cloudy @10:40 pm in Atlantic Canada —

— Jassper spent most of yesterday fretting about his minor surgery today, { “Friday the thirteenth is a Tuesday this month.”  — “But it’s bad luck to be superstitious -” 😉 “Yeah yeah, I know – but -” }

— His post should be visible here below this :

 

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Adventures In Game Development

by on February 13, 2018 at 12:32 pm

Posted In: “Boof!” –, Computer Game Building Schnarr –, Creativity –, Life should be more fun. –, Life should be more relaxed –, No bears in the news today –, Quantum Theory and Parallel Worlds –, Uncategorized, Welcome –

Tuesday, February 13th, 2018 —> -9˚C / +15˚F – Sunny & clear with over-bright sunlight reflecting off snow and ice @12:02 pm Atlantic Time —

Stitching Stone Lake And Wolf Ridge Together.

– “Stitching Two Game World Areas Together” –

— I wasn’t at my best yesterday – arthritis aches and all that. I logged in to our Game Building site and messed around with building another area – then stitched it together with ‘Stone Lake’. I was pretty happy with the way the new area looked – and was adding a few cosmetic improvements when with one click, I somehow deleted the southern half of that new area. So I bit the bullet, un-joined the two areas and built a new version of the new area – left it all dark and with some ‘geological’ problems I’d have to fix later.

— The above Screen shot ( or maybe it’s over on the left? ) shows part of the process of blending the two areas together, using a terrain tool to match up the borders. The white mesh stuff around what looks like a cave is how it looked about three quarters of the way through blending the borders – [ I later trimmed down that mountain in the all dark brown there because that area is not supposed to be higher than “Stone Lake” ] & after something like 10 hours I had the two areas ‘seamlessly’ joined and knew I had a couple days’ work ahead of me to get this right – but I’ll be recuperating from minor surgery, so I’ll have the time – I believe…

Jessicka / Kaeren

– This is supposed to be Jessicka from Jim’s latest novel –

— I don’t know how well this will load in the ComicPress Blog. The yellow is ‘pre-dawn fog’ in the Stone Lake area after a lot of work changing the path in from the new area (version 2.0) She does have reddish hair, is dressed rather modestly, I think she looks like somebody from my ‘sordid youth’, just can’t quite remember who – After the screen shot left her pretty much completely in shadow,, I had to mess with the exposure to get this, and what it looks like here is what I saw on my working computer screen. [ She’s got a ‘Ranger’s Pouch’ on her left hip there – probably  has some healing herbs or something like that in there. ]

— So that’s today’s progress report from Atlantic Canada –

— “Boof!” —

—jlb—

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— I think he did a darned good job – And today, he says he has survived losing to a toenail to a ‘minor surgical proceedure’ – but I think he’s probably mourning the loss of that toenail, and looking forward to several days taking a combination of Ibuprophen and Tylenol – that’s what the doctor told him to do for any pain he might experience.

— He also told me he went back in to our game world and resurrected the area that half deleted itself yesterday when he tried to get rid of a ‘billboard’.

— & I’m thinkin his builder character looks like a combination of one friend’s sister and a young woman I had a monster crush on in junior high school – But with redder hair 🙂 —

 

— Thank you, Jassper,

~~~~~ Jim

Does a 4 foot Mountain of Snow (& hidden ice boulders) blocking your driveway look like attempted murder to you?

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—> This was supposed to be our back up blog & repository for blogged articles from other blogs — Now it looks like it’s become our ‘GoTo’ mainstay. <—

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Sunday, February 11th, 2018 —> -2˚C / +27˚F & grey & damp @ 4:55 pm on Pamm’s Birthday in Atlantic Canada 🙂 —

Snow Ridge to the left of snowblower

– After I struggled to get through the ‘low end’ of the ice and snow ridge those wonderful people dumped to block the driveway, I went and grabbed my iPhone and took a couple photos – Schnarr! –

— Schnarr! I’m one of the youngest guys down this corner of our street and when the bleepity bleep bleeping snow plows go out of their way to plow us in like this it DOES begin to feel like attempted murder. Grumble grumble … There were chunks of ice hidden beneath three and four-foot ridges of snow that had to be 2 feet wide and a foot and a half tall, and the snowblower didn’t like slamming into those. I stopped near the road to pick up and/or kick those monsters out of the way and people driving up the street in 4 wheel drive vehicles looked at me like “Holy Snar!” 😉

- Sigh - Snow blower backed part way out of its groove.

– & this is what a little bit of progress looks like from the house side of things. – 27 inch snowblower versus four foot high snow ridge. –

— When Sears Canada laid off its workers and paid big bonuses to its executives a couple months ago – Cathi looked at the snowblower and said, “Hey, good thing we didn’t bite the bullet and shell out that money to extend the warranty on this thing. They announced that they won’t honour those contracts after today.”

Sliced ice and snow mountain.

– And that’s where the snowblower and I gave up today – Couldn’t cut any deeper into that stuff – Please notice the ice bombs and boulders hiding under snow at the left of that hill. –

— The snow mountain doesn’t look all that impressive in the above photo. The snowblower and I cut away more than twice the height of the snowblower’s – um – hopper? What do you call the business end of a snowblower? “Chipper”? Ick.

— But today I discovered that even our anthropomorphic snowblower has a sense of humour. When I started it up it went forward and back – fine – but the blades wouldn’t turn at all. I very cautiously checked to make sure there wasn’t a solid chunk of ice holding the blades stuck, then tipped the thing up and down a couple times to jar it awake. – And, leaving it in non moving mode, I pushed down the lever that is supposed to turn on the blades’ action and cautiously leaned as far forward as I could, to see if it was working. As soon as my face was in range for the snow blowing spout ( is that whatcha might call it? ) – The thing kicked in and got me with a slight wump of snow – I tell ya, artificial intelligence is here… 😉 —

"Doot doot doo - Shovlin out my back door..."

– I think I get at least one shot like this every winter since we came to New Brunswick – Canyon dug through snow mountains to get to our door. –

— Sigh —

Selfie.

“After -” { I should find a thirty year old photograph of me and claim that was me before I tried to shovel and snow-blow the driveway this afternoon. 😉 } –

— Lately I’ve become a fan of my iPhone camera – I used to think they were over-hyped and over-priced until we began having issues with our Samsungs.

Cathi's Painting.

– Cathi’s Painting

 

— & Cathi talked about this painting last night – Her aunt brought her on a trip to Europe in the 80’s – a tour of the Netherlands and Belgium focusing on art museums and artistic stuff.

— I think both Cathi and her aunt ( a concert pianist and supporting member of a national museum of art ) thought the view to the left here, in real life, was awe-inspiring. Cathi took a photograph and then painted what she’d captured and remembered and gave the painting to her aunt for Christmas that year.

— Her aunt loved it.

— Sadly, after her aunt died almost twenty years later, the painting came back to Cathi and of course, it still means a lot to her.

— { It looked like I had it framed perfectly in the LED screen — }

— Sigh, I should quit while I’m ahead?

— Am I? Ahead? – Of what?

— Shrug —,

~~~~~ Jim

Thursday – Morning After Another Foot Of Snow –

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Thursday, February 8th, 2018 —> -5˚C / +23˚F – with bright sunshine on our new foot of snow @ 11:30 am in Atlantic Canada —

Snow blown driveway and blue sky with clouds and brilliant sunlight.

– “Snow-Blown Driveway” – 11:30 am February 8tt, 2018 – With Van, Blue Sky + Some Clouds + Brilliant Sunlight –

— The sunlight was – possibly – too brilliant – I couldn’t see enough in the view-finder to know how level the photo might be – or know a lot of things that are crucial to ‘real  photographers’ — { Schnarr – }

— I tried to stay awake too long to get a jump on clearing the snow earlier, but the great big dump trucks plowing snow were experiencing troubles as they attempted their first clearing of Canada Street ( out of the photo, off to the left and a bit down hill ) – leaving about a five feet tall ridge of plowed snow when they could get up to speed. And that was something like 4:30 am – before the snow had stopped falling enough to say so.

Driveway with snow hills.

– Firewood under tarp { Pile slowly shrinking as we find time to get the wood out of the driveway and into the wood shed } in foreground – And Two good sized Snow Mountain Peaks back closer to the porch with a bit of the canyon leading to the deer hill between the peaks. –

— When the snow began falling yesterday afternoon – it didn’t look like much. I thought maybe they’d over-estimated our potential accumulation again. Nope – Luckily it was lightweight fluffy dry stuff and I didn’t drop dead from clearing the way to the shed where the snow blower lives ( After Cathi cleared the way once last evening ) –

Canyon toward Deer Hill.

– Closer to the Canyon –

— Being partially snow blinded { when trying to see the view-finder } had some interesting side effects – I couldn’t see the little bit of colourful lens flare to the right.

Close up on the van& snowy world beyond.

– & This was another happy surprise – The reflections on the van –

— This time yesterday I was thinkin that becoming a ‘snow bird’ & spending winters in bug-infested alligator-rich Florida might not be a bad idea. Today? It’s cold and beautiful up here. & A higher percentage of Atlantic Canadians are really nice people than most of the adults I remember surrounding me while I ‘grew up’ in the good old USA –

— Sigh — Have a nice day — Have a nice life?,

 

~~~~~ Jim

Canada Revenue Agency { Canadian version of the IRS ? } Has a Page Alerting People to Fraud —

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Wednesday, February 7th, 2018 —> -18˚C / -1˚F & Sunny & Clear @ 9:09 am in Atlantic Canada —

CRA Fraud Alert Page.

– Canada Revenue Agency’s Fraud Alert Page –

— The above is a screenshot, Don’t try to click on any links –

— A close friend told me yesterday that some evil scammers were calling senior citizens in Canada and telling them that the Canada Revenue Agency has a warrant out for their arrest and they better call an “800” number to resolve this immediately.

— Apparently, a dead give away is the fact that the telephone messages do not begin with the name of the person the CRA is supposedly attempting to contact.

— Another dead give away is the Caller ID with some of these calls – begins with a foreign country’s identification code number before the ‘800’ number.

— My friend told me he received a call from a distraught 80 something year old senior citizen telling him he’d received a call on his generic answering machine { with a robotic voice saying “Please leave a message” and nothing more } claiming the CRA had a warrant out for his arrest for Tax Fraud and Tax Evasion and threatening legal action and jail time *** But – the old guy was sharp enough to realize the phone number didn’t look right – it began with “011-855- [ xxx-xxxx ]” The old guy wondered what the extra numbers meant and what he should do, and repeated several times that he ( this senior citizen ) had never committed any ‘Tax Fraud’ and/or ‘Tax Evasion’ that the call accused him of committing. The “011” prefix means the call originated outside of Canada, probably in the USA – and when asked, the old guy said, “No – they never said anything like “This is a call to ” [ Name ] ” – it just started telling him, “The CRA has an arrest warrant out for -‘you’- [ …. etc. ].”

— My friend told his older friend that the call was a scam, made by somebody who is trying to scare anybody they can into calling the number they told them to call at which time they would try to scare anybody who called them into giving them private information, maybe even giving them a credit card number with the ‘secret code’ on the back – so the scammers could charge the limit on that card and hope they were untrace-able and could get away with that kind of fraud. My friend told his older friend to erase the message and ignore it.

— If it really was the Canada Revenue Agency, their caller ID would say “CRA” and maybe more –  and if there really was an arrest warrant out for him they would have been knocking on his door, not calling him on the phone like that.

— [ *** But – on the CRA Fraud Alert Page – farther down below the above screenshot – there is a warning that a Caller ID display can easily be ‘spoofed’ into saying anything. ]

— And apparently the senior citizen is losing sleep over this anyway, terrified he’ll be dragged out of his home in handcuffs and locked up somewhere.

— Schnarr!

~~~~~ Jim