Legend of the Five Rings

I'm taking a little break from the photography aspect of this blog, though I do owe an update on my progress.

Instead, for the last couple of days I have been painfully mulling around in my head what to play for Ghen-ki's 'Legend of the Five Rings' short campaign. Its only going to last a few sessions- two to four at best. I've never played it before and so I've been trying to figure out what a good first character might be.

I'm somewhat wanting to use this opportunity to play something that is not normally 'me,' and yet I am admittedly shy of straying. I play with some really dynamic, experienced players and its incredibly intimidating. But I am (at least as if this moment) determined not to be overshadowed and sidelined by other great players and their characters, even though I am by nature not a powerhouse type of player.

I think one of the first things I best cast aside is any notion of a character who will, 'make the world a better place for all.' I have a tendency to take a highly idealized approach to gaming, where 'everybody wins,' especially the players. This is somewhat hard to explain, as the goal of roleplaying is often to play in a world where the goal is to make 'the world a better place.' However, everybody has a different view of this and I am, apparently, a little rosey-tinted.

I tend to play the facilitators, the compromisers, the acquiescers (yes I see you, little red line telling me thats not a word... I lack a better term). And while that is entirely me as a person, it seldom seems to work well in a roleplaying setting. At least, not well if you want to feel integral to the outcome. I also play the idealists...

... Which is somewhat ironic to me because I also tend to play characters who are sneaky. A better world through stealth and treachery and all that jazz. Hmmm. Interesting. Weird. I rarely play characters of direct, decisive and brutal action. The 'goodness' in me wants to avoid the fight, convert the enemy or out-think him, or failing that, weaken him to such a degree that he is foolish to stand in our way.

However, for the most part this strategy has not really worked. My friends are the decisive action sort, thus I am often sidelined by direct action rather than the indirect, as the world works. And so here I am. Considering what I should 'go back to.'

I am, however, fighting myself here. I am, by preference, subtle. I seek synergy and harmony and collaboration in life, a gradual building of ideas and refining process until total agreement is made. I don't like 'disagreeing' with people, or confrontation. The thing I must do, then, is 'suspend myself.' I'm not playing myself in these games. But how do I do this and still assure that my character is fun? This is where I'm having some difficulty.

So I'm trying to narrow down the things that I should try to work on.

- Decisiveness. I need to work on playing a character who is 'more direct.' I let metagame commentary influence my actions and force me into second thinking too often. Too often, it leads me into deference to someone else. It might be helpful to them, and they may be trying to be helpful to me. But ultimately I end up feeling deferential and ineffective.

- Focusing. I have found, especially in my recent experiences with Amber, that I tend to 'generalize' a character. I want to be an effective pillar of support for all, and to do that, one often has to have a general, overarcing set of skills and abilities. But I seldom tend to grab a single discipline and run wild with it as a defining motif. The result is a character that can do much, but nothing spectacularly. A lot of my generalization of character is really an attempt to plug the holes and weaknesses of the group as a whole. Again, very much a support role.

- Confrontation. I need to stop fearing confrontations in-game, both with Non-Player opponents and potentially, with my fellow players. My experiences with Amber has taught me that I am, again, very much the facilitator and idealist. I don't tend to lose myself in ruthlessness or confrontation, especially when it comes to my fellow players. But I play with friends who are not necessarily against this. In fact, individual goals seem to be even more important than an overriding group goal at times. We are, after all, individuals.

- No more over-thinking. I do this a lot. In fact, this entire blog entry might be considered an exercise in overthinking (I'd like to think I'm analyzing myself and trying to gain something from it- no big epiphanies so far though). I have always wanted to pull off a grandiose scheme, even when a simple, direct solution would be best. Its really weird.

I will admit... I have aspirations for taking on a role that I have never succeeded in- a 'social-fu' character. Someone who is confident enough to take on the GM on a social level and attempt to be a successful, meaningful facet that can help steer the game. I'm not sure I can pull this off. Ghen-ki is an eloquent, and well-thought out individual. And while I would very much like to believe I am capable of eloquence, I understand that any I have is entirely in the world of writing. Here, I can dwell and consider my next move. In roleplay, I don't have the luxury to 'dwell.' My fellow players do not give me the chance to 'think,' and while I am witty when I am comfortable, I am seldom comfortable enough to do this in this kind of situation.

Which really annoys me, because I think a Crane or Scorpion Courtier would be really interesting. But I honestly am uncertain that I could pull this off. If I am going to be decisive, I should. And that bears some further soul-searching.

Certainly one of the most 'direct' and least over-thinking characters might be this notion of a Crab Hiruma Scout. I have rarely if ever played a direct 'fighter' in a game. I guess, somewhere in me, I always looked at them as the least interesting characters. They smash. They grab. They kill the bad guys. You play them in pretty much every video game imaginable. Theres not much thought here, at least not outside of combat. Now a Samurai is kind of unique in this instance. If we go by the 'historical Samurai' he was as much of an artist, gentleman and administrator as a warrior. But a historical Samurai is not an L5R Samurai, at least not one that really stands out. I have like 45 points so I better make them count.

My gut is to play something comfortable, like a Pheonix Shugenja or Courtier, who can pull off interesting (or to some, annoying) bits of lore-fu. Unfortunately in most games this is a fairly useless thing, and again, it leads to over-thinking on my part. And again, it would be a support character who offers only background and, in the end, would be quashed under the 'might makes right' mentality of a powerful Bushi. So... I really should just push aside this tendency.

Ahh... why must character decision be such a torturous affair to me?

New Kowloon/New Hong Kong

I love dimsum. I really love dimsum. But what can I say. Today was a just a little disturbing.

So I got together with my friend Pavel this morning for a little down at the New Hong Kong Restaurant down in the International District. We were getting together because we hadn't seen each other for a couple of weeks and wanted to catch up. I brought the new camera so Pavel could see how it compared to his own. And we, of course, partook in dimsum. Delicious, delicious dimsum.

Normally, I like New Hong Kong just a little over House of Hong. Its very comparable in taste, price and presentation with one notable exception...

... House of Hong has not yet introduced glass into their meatballs. I was fortunate not to be the one to make that discovery, but unfortunately, Pavel was. And theres nothing quite like biting into meat and feeling something bite back. At least so I hear.

It was fortunate that Pavel was not injured. The people there were kind enough to take the meatballs off our ticket and gave a further discount. They were very apologetic. But... thats still a little scary!

Hole in the Wall BBQ

Taking a step away from my shutterbugging for a moment, I'm going to remark on my lunch experience today.

I almost didn't go to lunch with Ben, Jerry and some of their Amazon co-workers today because Jerry mentioned that this would have to be a real 'quick' lunch. So I had images of dashing down to Pine St. to catch the bus to the International District only to be spending fifteen or twenty minutes with them. And then having to walk the 1.5ish miles home (because I do that to myself... I have to justify calories. I realize this is alien thinking to most of you. Take the bus, dumbass, you say).

Yeah, turns out Amazon's idea of a 'quickie' is my idea of long and leisurely. At Swedish/Chief Sealth, the kids and our staff get about forty five minutes on a good day, and its not duty-free. My idea of a 'quickie' is like fifteen minutes to stuff my face before I have to go back downstairs.

I am clearly working with the wrong organization here.

So with that said, we went to a new place (for me) today. Chuck's Hole in the Wall BBQ. So... before today, I have not found any real good BBQ in town that I was willing to jump on. I haven't looked that hard because I assumed there wouldn't be much but... eh. Yeah. Anyway. So while I have nothing official to base this on, I'm going to go ahead and call it some damned good BBQ. Maybe the best in Seattle, but that judgment is from friends only.

I got the pulled pork sandwich, "wet" (extra sauce) and "hot" (a sprinkle of hot stuff) and it was sooooo worth it. I find it very cool that the sauce has coffee integrated into its recipe (what else can you expect from Seattle, right?). I'm not sure if its psychosomatic and because I know it has coffee in it, I could taste it, but there is a special 'something' in there that I attribute to the flavor of coffee. On a continuum between vinegary and sweet, it notches towards the sweet, but not the sickly, sticky sweet of some midwestern stuff (which I tend to loathe). Its more reminiscent of a sweeter Texas-style and its really messy.

My friend Paul got a 'Pig with Lipstick' which is their version of very traditional 'southern-style' pulled-pork BBQ- pickles and cole slaw on top. I am a big fan of this. So I'll be trying that next time.

Madcap Shutterbugging

So over the last two days, I have been ravaging Seattle like Godzilla with a camera, kind of taking aim at anything I pretty much could in an attempt to learn my new camera's settings. I've been screwing around with the F and ISO settings, and trying to figure out the focal points and such within the viewfinder. While I feel like I am making some food progress, I know I have quite a ways to go. As per the instructions of my friends Forrest and Ben, I have completely abandoned all 'automatic' settings and am completely doing this by hand now.

One issue I am encountering is one of the 'true picture' versus what the live view is telling me what it will look like. I doubt there is any way around this- its a smaller, more condensed pic and its going to vary a little bit on coloration and such depending on the angle I hold it at. This is primarily an issue when it comes to light saturation when I'm tinkering with ISO and F, and at night when the small pic looks awesome but the big one is still squiggy.

But hey! Nothing I can do about that, so I wasted a paragraph. I just thought I'd mention it. Having said that, I can see some improvements. Unfortunately I lack a bus terminal at 11pm with a leather jacket-toting friend to try and recreate Day 1. I'll just have to wait until next Wednesday for that.

One of my original theories on my failure at night was that I needed a tripod. And while I still believe this would be helpful, I no longer believe it to be the sole overriding factor of my earlier failure with Ghen-ki. Below, I've taken two shots towards SLU/Downtown from my rooftop deck. One is with the camera balanced carefully on an undisturbed flat surface. The other, is taken in my hands.
Oddly enough the more 'level-looking' was taken by my hands. I also succeeded in the following with just my hands.
I played with my settings a lot and I found HUGE discrepancies between the effects of the sky and my pictures based on where I aimed my camera's focal point. In some, it was 'nearly day' looking, while in others, it appeared to be very 'night like.' I'm guessing the focal points (and possibly the annoying spotlight on the roof) had a lot of say in this. For instance. In the following attempt of downtown, I 'aimed high' and the result is a squiggy, crappy piece of the 'near day.'

However, the piece exactly before (below), I 'aimed low.' I made no changes to ISO, F or where I was focused, nor to my focal points (I don't think).
The result is painfully 2-D and far too dark (despite it being only 6:20pm at the time). So this definitely merits further study... I just wish I knew where to start!!

D-90, the First Run!

I noticed the difference in the quality of pictures immediately, between my new D-90 and my old Coolpix. With a little finagling. I think I'm beginning to learn how to program some of the things like shutter speed and how that relates to light. What I cannot seem to figure out is why my night shots remain blurry.

All night during our Amber game, I was off and on fidgeting with the settings and picking on poor Nick. I was trying how to use the passive light (rather than the flash) to take pictures in a lower light situation, like a house with lighting in the evening. This does create a yellowish-tint to the picture, but my real issue is the blur!

Anyway at the bus station, I was able to take great low-light pictures of the static, surrounding background as below.
But when it came time to try and frame up Ghen-ki, I hit a wall. He is quite blurry! Yet the background is pretty sharp. As seen below...I suspected I might have been off on what I was trying to focus on (the D-90 seems to have focus points in the viewfinder, though as of yet I do not understand precisely how they work). We were having a shutter speed issue at first with how I was pressing the shutter button (Ghen-ki was doing it correctly). But I think we resolved that.

In the end, my best result was as follows:And while I deem this a good first run, Ghen-ki is still clearly blurry and lacking in detail.

Well, hopefully I can figure out what I am doing wrong. :-/

My last frustration is an ancient one. I can't seem to keep a steady enough hand at night for those so-coveted night skyline shots. Here is my attempt with the Space Needle...

RIP, Tutankhamun.

King Tut's death solved?

I found this story to be very interesting. I'm curious to do a little research now- do the symptoms of Malaria match the symptoms of some of those of Howard Carter's expedition who supposedly succumbed to 'Tut's Curse' or a 'Curse of the Pharaohs' as well (most did not die at a young age at all, I'd point out. There is no curse. It was largely a media fabrication based on a couple of early deaths). I remember hearing as a child that it was possible the supposed 'curse' was a disease Tut may have died from, which infected a few members of Carter's team. It seems implausible.

More about Tutankhmun on Wiki here. I always found it very interesting that he was a kind of 'nobody' Pharaoh in Egypt. The Ramses' and Setis were considered far more glorious rulers. Tut's only real accomplishment was returning Egypt to the polytheistic faith that his father had tried to replace with the monotheistic religion of the 'Aten.'

Conworlding Blog

I've been flirting with the idea of creating a Conworld Blog, a place where I can drop all my drawings, ideas and creations for some sort of Fantasy (or Sci-Fi) world. I've been working on a very Fantasy-like world recently, but I equally have an idea for a possible dystopian future.

In a way, as I am wading into the world of Conlanging, I should really consider a possible sci-fi approach. That way, I could create a 'trade tongue' for the various Humanities, and perhaps explore where Human languages have gone and how they have evolved in the wake of interplanetary colonization.

Hmmm.

Aside from that, I just got back from Tats Deli in Pioneer Square. It was good. They have a tasty crispy chicken sub with buffalo sauce which is reminiscent in taste to Chili's Chicken Ranch Sandwich. Normally the spice would have been perfect, but I suspect they heard Jerry's order for 'extra hot' on his sub, and applied it to mine as well by accident. That would have been just fine with me, except I have a canker sore... kinda hurt.

I had lunch with friends and some of their Amazon coworkers. It was very pleasant for most the part (I can't engage them with shop talk unfortunately, as I have no idea what they're talking about). There was a new member of Ben's team from Jordan, just outside of their capitol city of Amman. I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask him about his life there, his perspectives on American life, culture and our education system compared to theirs. But we didn't really have time, and the conversation didn't really steer in that direction. And I didn't want to be too nosey.

Valentine's

I truly loathe Valentine's... probably because I have never had any reason to think otherwise. So to all you lovers out there, I am *very very* happy for you. To the rest of us... my sympathies. :-/ Please do not beat senseless any couples today... they can't help it. They're in love.

My Valentine's... hereafter referred to simply as "My Yet Another Sunday" will probably be a very quiet one, as Sundays often are. I've debated going to dimsum by myself, but that was quite a let down last time. It was funny! I went to House of Hong a couple of weeks ago by myself. Normally I love this place, its one of the two Dimsum places I like to go. But seeing as I was one guy, they stuck me in the corner next to the bathroom where I was hardly visible. And the few ladies with carts who did notice me took one look, saw I was sans +1, and actually moved on!! It was almost hilarious. What, so I have to be a 350lb+ guy, or at least two people to get some food?

OK so maybe it wasn't quite that bad... but it was a little aggravating.

So hey the random pic of coffee taken by my super-crappy LG Chocolate! This bears mention on this, my Just Another Sunday (the denial is thick, isn't it... hehehe). I ordered a "Jerry." They're tasty. Maybe a little strong for my tastes, and I'd rather see a shot of orange than toffeenut. But hey. To those of you who don't know who Jerry is (and thats impossible considering who reads this thing at the time of this post), he resurrected the Jerry from a now-defunct drink at Starbucks.

So I return to my quandary. What am I going to do... err.... today. Moreover, what am I going to do this week!? I'm off for Winter Break, mark II! (otherwise known as Mid-Winter Break... its not quite Spring Break and its not actual two-week Winter Break. Its just... Mid). I have a camera coming for me very soon in the mail, and I hope to use it at least some (realistically I will be learning how to use it for the foreseeable future). Other than that? No clue.

And since I am not yet bold enough to post gratuitous pictures of penises on my blog, I will instead post random pics that I've taken that somehow have caught my eye.

Well hey, I appreciate your honesty! (7th Ave. and Pike St). From Steve's Blog

At least they call it like it is! (Collin's Pub). From Steve's Blog

Don't get too excited... its Curling (giggle). No, I'm not going. Its our schoolbus driver Daphne's ticket. From Steve's Blog