Anotherblog

Darths, Big Day Out, archery, Radiohead

As we approach the end of our series, I’d like you to find a friend for this convivial exercise. I suggest some boppy music to accompany you, and, perhaps, a video camera. But perhaps I give away too much.

We have been making magnificent progress with Darths & Droids over the last week. The five week buffer has been maintained, and we’re having terrific fun with the characterisations and setting up future events. Every bit as much fun as I’d hoped for when we started this exercise. The characters are getting richer and less stereotyped as we get more comfortable and confident with our progress. Currently a fantastic writers-room dynamic! And it’s thrilling to read the various forums and see it picking up new fans.

Our lunchtime group has been exceedingly busy the last while - as well as D&D, we’ve got an Irregular Podcast planned for tomorrow, and a Lorwyn draft Friday lunchtime, and we’ve got to start working on our puzzles for next year’s puzzle competition soon.

Sunday was the CISRA Big Day Out: good food, pleasant company (though sadly Jade was unable to accompany me), a good magician, some big snakes, and the awesome Adrenalin Rush bouncy castle, which gave me a rather prominent friction burn on my elbow and my chin. I taught some people to unicycle and did some juggling for the first time in a while, and talked music a lot. After, I managed to get to archery, and was glad of it, as it was a beautiful afternoon for shooting and I managed a 57 at 40m (X X X 10 9 8). I can still only do about 60 arrows before my arms pack it in, but I don’t feel like I’m struggling to catch up any more.

Finally, I’m really enjoying the new Radiohead album “In Rainbows”. It rocks a lot.

Relaxing, Darths & Droids, archery

Mr Rabbit here demonstrates the kind of floppiness that you may be exhibit after a fine weekend of excess and exercise, such as the one that I had.

Jade and I have been somewhat addicted to the Bavarian Beer Cafe, going once every two weeks or so, and it was another fine trip to the city on Friday for German food and beer, and also a look at the astonishing numbers of Bogong moths. They were everywhere in the city, and when I got home I was alarmed to notice several in the pile of washing I left in my laundry. And on the clothes on the line. And in the house. Crikey.

We’ve been making magnificent progress with Darths & Droids. We have now eleven completed episodes in the queue - that’s almost a month’s worth - and six more that have been written, but not illustrated yet. Very pleasing. The communal creation sessions are continuing twice a week, though now that we’re really feeling like this is working, we’re starting to get more defensive about our favorite ideas and that has lead to raised voices, thought thankfully not raised tempers. I’m enjoying the hell out of it. It feels, more than ever, like a writing room for a TV show, which I’ve wanted to do ever since reading Jane Espenson’s weblog. The important thing at this point is to build up a really big buffer so we can concentrate on the puzzle competition when we need to.

You’d think with all this creative stuff there’s not much time for games - still, we’re managing pretty well. Mr Coker brought along a new board game Condottiere, which was interesting (though potentially incredibly frustrating, so probably not one that I’d play much.) I’m still hanging out for another game of Notre Dame. That was awesome.

I managed to get in a round of archery on Sunday, and since I’d managed a round the previous weekend as well, I wasn’t too stuffed either. 30m: 55* 54 54 55 54 54 54 55 49 57* (*=all gold), and I was very, very pleased with my last six arrows, which were done when my arms were very tired, but with a great deal of concentration and discipline. I’ve really got to get my archery database thing back in working order…

Magic, laughter, Darths & Droids

Here, Mr Rabbit demonstrates the kind of magical energy focus that you should be able to achieve if you carried out all the previous exercises - especially yesterday’s - faithfully.

Speaking of magic, I went to a Magic: The Gathering pre-release for Lorwyn on Saturday morning. It was fun, but I didn’t really have time to play many games. I lost 1-2 with an elf/elemental deck versus a fairy/boggart deck, and was a little disappointed not to get my Plainswalker into play. Ho hum. Very much looking forward to playing with the usual crowd. It’ll have to wait, though, we’re doing a board- and card-games night next Friday.

We’ve upped the schedule for our webcomic Darths & Droids. We’ve been working fairly regularly at the strips, and we’ve now reviewed all the comics up to Episode 12, and written them all up to Episode 17. It’s tremendous fun, and it’s a real thrill being on a writing team. It’s one of those instances where producing-by-committee isn’t an insult or an indicator of blandness - almost all the jokes and character moments are improved in these meetings.

We’re going to three episodes a week (Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday) and we’re currently producing four or five episodes a week, so our three week buffer is continuing to grow.

Also! Jade reminded me that the reason she was able to shake the hiccups the second time was because she was laughing so hard remembering that the first time had actually worked.

Archery and hiccups and beat moments.

Nothing like a good vigorous bit of upper-body exercise to really get the week started. Yesterday was a holiday, and I actually went to archery for the first time in a couple of weeks. It was fun, though the wind was very strong. I didn’t bother with a target face, just shot until my arms got tired (60 arrows).

Speaking of archery, here’s an interesting comment from clickbanker Lynn:

“My husband grew up in Miles City, MT and when he was a little boy, he learned how to make bows and arrows from a very old man who was a member of the tribe of Northern Cheyenne. This old gentleman had been a young boy when Custer met his fate at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and had gone with his mother to the battle site to retrieve things that would be useful from the fallen soldiers. He showed my husband how to fashion bows from straight willow saplings. He even showed him how to make arrowheads by placing nails on the railroad track to flatten them into the right shape for creating an arrowhead. (Probably not something that the Burlington Northern would be too Happy about!) My husband used to hunt rabbits with his homemade bows and arrows when he was a boy and brought many an unlucky rabbit home to his mother for supper.

He has shown every kid in our neighborhood how to pick a good sapling to make a bow and has started them out with a hobby that can last a lifetime. Good luck in the pursuit of your hobby. For the Northern Plains Indian it was a way of life.”

Also, a post from another clickbanker Trudy, this time about my cure for hiccups for Jade:

“Well, don’t leave me hanging, tell me what it is that you did. My grandson has the hiccups all the time.”

Ah, well it was the “sudden fright” technique. I was a bit concerned that it would be a betrayal-of-trust kind of thing - we were staring into each others eyes (aww…) and holding each others hands. I waited for a beat moment, then suddenly squeezed her hands, jumped forward slightly, and said (forcefully but not loudly) “Boo!”. It worked tremendously.

The “beat” moment is a little hard to describe. It’s a moment of reduced attention, most commonly used by magicians, for example, to do something without being noticed. But a fright in that moment hits people more strongly, too. The best timing for a beat moment is just after an important moment (say, a second after the waiter has delivered food, as you’re both sitting back.) In this instance, the beat moment I used was just after a bit of conversation. Like I said, though, it’s hard to describe, and hard to do - for one thing, you’ve got to do something in the beat moment, and because it’s a beat moment it’s hard to do anything! Also, by trying to do something in a beat moment, you can often ruin it; the other person will sometimes sense it.