Fantasist's Scroll

Today is William Gibson’s Birthday!

For those of you who have been hiding under a rock, or are freshly hatched from the Great Egg, William Gibson is the father of the cyberpunk movement. He’s generally credited with coining the term “cyberspace” and popularizing a somewhat more realistic, or bleak, view of the future.
He also ran away to Canada in 1968 to avoid the draft. Which is the only bad thing I can say about him. I otherwise admire his work and thought processes. Certainly his literature is beyond compare.

Updates and such…

Well, I’ve been a little busy with site development stuff lately, which is why I haven’t been too chatty in this blog. But, I think it’ll pay off.
I’ve been working with MovableType elsewhere on this site and I’ve gotten some good results, I think. I’ve worked out a blog that I hope will help me get around some writer’s block and get me back into writing. Essentially, all I’ve done is set up an instance of this blog software to let me publish short fiction quickly and easily. And, the format will encourage me to not only write, but keep it tight. So far, all I’ve done is add in two old stories from ten years ago, which is when I was really writing a lot of fiction. But, I hope to add more soon. When I get more stuff in there, I’ll make it active and publicly available instead of the wierdly formated stories that are available now.

Also, I’ve been working on alternate methods of posting to this and my other blogs. So far, I’ve managed to set up a barely passable method via AvantGo. But, I’m trying to get a mail to MT gateway setup, so that I can just send e-mail to my blogs. That would rock!

More later!!

Happy Birthday, Buck!

Lord, I just really felt like Twiki!!
Today is Buster Crabbe’s birthday. For those of you who are too young, or didn’t have a father that was into the “classics”, Buster Crabbe is the original Buck Rogers. He was in the old, serial shot movies of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. They were old black and white films that had special effects based around sparklers, flashing lights, smoke and wires. And, they’re some of the greatest bad acting ever. The stories were the original “cliff-hangers”, where Buck was always left in the middle of some scrape that was impossible to escape. But, he always did, in the next installment, of course.
Years later, Gil Gerard played Buck Rogers in a more modern, updated version of the same stories on TV. It was good, but not quite the same as the old stuff. Buster, and some of the other First Generation sci-fi actors, did a cameo on the new show. That was pretty cool. He died shortly after that, actually. But, he’ll be immortalized on film as the Original Buck Rogers.

Today is William S. Burroughs’s Birthday!

If you’re not familiar with William S. Burroughs, then you’re not a literature nut or a pop-culture fan. This guy did it all. Mainly through a syringe, but sometimes through a typewriter. His work is surreal, to say the least, and ground breaking. It’s really mind-bending work. He wrote a majority of his most well known work while stoned out of his mind on heroin, or some other substance. Few subjects were taboo for him and his work is both frightening and intense. It worries at the edges of your reality like a determined dog trying to escape confinement. Even the attempt to read his work will expand your horizons.
Happy Birthday, Bill, where ever you ended up.
You can find a biography of William S. Burroughs here.
And you can find his work that is in print, here.

New Version of MovableType!

Hey, we’ve upgraded to the latest version of MovableType, version 2.51. And, thanks to the upgrade, we’ve added a search engine to the blog. I’m still reworking the stylesheets, but otherwise, it went quite well. Enjoy the new features!

My favorite comic shop is closing.

I called yesterday to find out if Phoenix Comics and Games had the new Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition boxed starter set and they told me that they’d be shut down by the end of March. I was a little surprised and disappointed, but I guess it really makes sense.
The economy isn’t all that great right now and comics and games are all about disposable income. Less disposable income = less comics and games sold = lower profits. Sooner or later an equation like that leads to a dead business. Which, sadly, seems to be what happened. I know I didn’t go because I was out of work for so long. I had virtually no disposable income for the past year. Well, really, I didn’t have any, but I didn’t realize it at first. In any case, my family and I will have to find somewhere else to go.
I have a replacement in mind, but they tend to be a dusty place which is hard on my wife’s allergies. And, they’re not quite as convenient to one of our favorite lunch spots as Phoenix was. But, still, if I want comics, I’ll have to go somewhere.

Well, for those of you who noticed, or cared, we’ve moved to a new home!

That’s right, Fantasist.net has changed ISPs, more or less successfully! Yea! It took a little doing, but I think it was worth it. Certainly, MovableType was easy enough to move. I can’t say enough about how relieved I am in that regard. It’s really a great product. I’m glad I chose it as my WebLog.

Stay tuned for more!

Well, I’ve been a busy bee this week. I have a couple of updates, both on and off Fantasist.net.

On this site, I’ve updated the Cartography page. I added in a neat map that illustrates an idea I had for a world creation myth. I imagined a god stamping out evil, in a way, by smashing the chief evil spirit into the world-covering ocean. Where the god’s hand pressed into the ocean floor, mud stuck to his hand and was pulled up through the ocean to form continents and islands. Then, the evil spirit tried to force his way back into the world, forming a volcano. So, to keep the source of all evil in check, the god creates human kind to guard over the breach in the world. In response to that, the source of evil creates his own race to fight the humans. Viola! A creation myth for a fantasy world!
In any case, to illustrate that, I did up a map. It’s free of any labels, but the basic idea is pretty well displayed. The map and idea, incidentally, were inspired by the cover of a game called Kahuna, which is a strategy card-game set in a fictional Hawaii.

Off this site, I have posted two constructed language templates. They’re geared toward creating phrasebooks for a conlang. The first, which I actually did some time ago, is a sort of “phrasebook for tourists”. It covers all the basics like simple greetings, small-talk, how to order in a restaurant, and getting directions. All the kinds of things one might find in a tourist guidebook.
The second phrasebook is meant to jumpstart some ideas about slang in a conlang. Of course, slang is very culturally specific, but I threw out some fun ideas. I hit things like street “jive”, cool vs. uncool, gambling and crime, and sex. Believe it or not, most conlangs don’t actually seem to include stuff like that. I guess because most of us take an acedemic approach. So, I laid out some basic topics, suggested a meaning, added in a literal translation and left a blank for a conlang translation. We’ll see what the reaction is, if there is any reaction at all.
The files have been posted to the Yahoo!Groups LangMaker2 list, which is available here. Unfortunately, you will have to sign up for Yahoo!Groups, and the LangMaker2 Group itself, to get the files. Eventually, I’ll put up conlang page here on Fantasist.net and post them for download there.

Until next time, keep creating new stuff!