Sunday, May 20, 2007

BYBS: Planescape

The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings. Click this link, grab the blogroll code, add the code to your blog, leave a comment on Blue Panther Experience and post your blessing. Quick and easy!

This BYBS is about a computer game (yes, a computer game) called "Planescape: Torment." It is a unique experience that will not only take up some time, but will also cause you to contemplate the bigger questions in life.

The story is one of discovery and spirituality. Discovery because the player takes on the role of an immortal who cannot remember how he came to be; or even what his name is. Appropriately enough, the character is called "The Nameless One."

Hard to believe it, but yes, Planescape is what I would consider a spiritual game. I suppose one could call it "intellectual," but an experience which causes me to think about things like "good," "evil," "regret" and "what can change the nature of a man?" transcend the intellectual and cross into the spiritual realm.

The setting itself is what you might call "the after-life." Events take place in a sort of meta-physical world call Sigil, the city of doors. The idea is that one can get to all sorts of different world and places from Sigil, and the city serves as a sort of cross roads for the universe.

The game contains elements like a place where players can go to banter philosophy or word play with others. In true form, the location is called the "brothel for slaking intellectual lusts." The simple notion of such a thing: a place where one could go to indulge in a range of intellectual activities, is so original that it sets the place apart from all other fictional environments I know of.

Now many computer games out there are trash; plain and simple. They do, however, provide an experience that is distinctly different from say, reading a book or watching a movie. This particular game capitalizes on that fact and adds in plot elements and situations that would be original in any medium.

Given my outlook on life, I consider things that make me think to be blessings. Something like Planescape, that makes me think about the bigger aspects of life, fits in nicely with BYBS.

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Notes:

  • You can try to find a copy of this game in the "bargain bin" of local computer stores. If you cannot and are still interested, then you can try the following links or perhaps some other sites that specialize in adbandonware.
  • Planescape: Torment was developed by Black Isle Studios. I assume that it is copyright or trademarked or some yaddie-yadda by them.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

BYBS: Um...er...I'm Blogging...

The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings. Click this link, grab the blogroll code, add the code to your blog, leave a comment on Blue Panther Experience and post your blessing. Quick and easy!
This just in: moron blogger accidentally turns off comments!

I don't know how I managed to do this, but I accidentally turned off comments for this posting. MsDemmie of "Life at the Edge" was kind enough to point this out (and even reframed from using the word moron while doing so!). Big thanks to MsDemmie!

Now back to our regular program... -------

This was a difficult one to write: I'm not really feeling blessed at the moment, but here goes:

  • Shay of the S Spot (warning, sexual content) Not everyone's cup of tea I know, but to me this is a person working diligently, in their own way, on a very important topic. I don't think our society will ever be at peace until we accept and understand ourselves. This is an attempt.
  • BYBS - as usual, it has managed to lift my eyes from the aspects of my life that are bad and miserable, up towards what is good about being alive. To look at the things that I am blessed with instead of the things I don't like.
  • The Blue Panther for organizing and administering the whole BYBS thing. He has also been the impetus for many interesting thoughts thanks to his posts.
  • The Garden Gnome - despite being a gnome (silly, inside WOW joke), she reminded me that today is Mothers day, which I had completely forgotten. All things aside, I still love my parents and, for no explicable reason, they seem to love me. That sort of thing is very hard to find in this world.
  • My friends. Despite some rather extreme professional disagreements, they're still my friends. In their own ways, they love me and I love them. That's one of the best blessings in life.
There, now I feel better :-) Another big-honkin-blessing is any actually reading my posts - thanks for stopping by.

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Sunday, May 06, 2007

BYBS: Weekends

The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings. Click this link, grab the blogroll code, add the code to your blog, leave a comment on Blue Panther Experience and post your blessing. Quick and easy!

True to my style of blogging about the mundane, it seemed to me that it was about time I talked about weekends :-) I like weekends because:

  • It gives me a break from the grind of work.
  • I can spend time with the One.
  • I actually have enough time to write blog entries!
  • I can actually read blog entries.
  • I can sleep late.

These days I'm really appreciating a break from work because, for the last 6 months or so, it's been quite stressful. And this is from a person who expects stress at work. I appreciate the break now much more than I did before.

Spending time with the One is something I could always use more of: I don't appreciate her enough.

For the last 3 months or so, I've been working on a crappy software project™ in my spare time. This has sadly taken time away from blogging; though I've actually received fan mail telling me that this is a good thing :-S I often find reading other sites to be as rewarding as writing them, however, and I can't seem to find time to do that either. The weekend gives me time to look around.

I have a strange relationship with sleep. Scientists tell us that human beans have a "Circadian Rhythm" that controls when we sleep, but mine seems to be more like a gremlin (see previous post). My guess is that the gremlins are actually in league with the gnomes, who are trying to take over my lawn, but that's a whole other post right there.

Suffice it to say that I consider getting more sleep a very good thing™ and find it another thing to appreciate about weekends.

All in all, Sunday is the downside to the weekend, but then, that's also the day I blog, so I guess it all balances out.

Technorati: BYBS, Weekends, Sleep, Gnomes, Gremlins

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[1] Circadian Rhythms are sometimes confused with Canadian Rhythms, which is something else entirely. At any rate, you can find references all over the place from Google, but wikipedia has a nice article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm_sleep_disorder.