For those of you who use the WITFITS syndication feed, I present for your consideration a new URL for the feed:
http://www.katonian.net/feeds/posts/default?orderby=published

I recommend updating your feed reader with this slightly modified URL. It addresses the issue where items in the feed are sorted by update date (i.e. the last time the author changed something in the post) as opposed to the original publish date. Since I have a tendency to modify old posts on the site to fix broken links or spelling/grammar mistakes I didn't catch the first time around, this change will prevent you from seeing those posts bubble up to the top of the feed. You can now look upon your reader in confidence knowing that the post on the top is really the one I most recently slaved over.

The key is the parameter added to the end of the url that changes the way it's sorted, "?orderby=published", as announced in the Blogger API Group. You can append this to any post feed coming from a Blogger blog, so if you are not happy with how your favorite Blogspot site's feed is ordered you can fix it.

If you maintain a blog at Blogger and you want to take advantage of this, you may want to update your site's feed auto-discovery links. Inside the Blogger template are a few lines of HTML that feed readers and such services can look to in order to determine automatically what the feed URLs are for the blog. You can follow these steps:

1. In your Blogger Dashboard, go to Layout->Edit HTML.
2. As is always a good idea when modifying your template, make a backup copy just in case something goes terribly, terribly wrong.
3. Look for the following code in your template editor:
   Old Blogger:
   
   1. <$BlogMetaData$>
   
   New Blogger:
   
   1. <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
   
   This is the Blogger template code that is automatically filled with information about feeds when your page is published.
4. Right above it paste something similar to the following:
   
   1. <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Your Blog Name - Atom (Preferred)" href="http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=published" />
      


5. Save your changes.

Now when a feed reader or service is pointed at your site, it will auto-detect the correctly sorted feed URL as well as the old ones.

Overheard in a parking lot:

Husband: That's a strong breeze. You know what that means...
Wife: (without looking back) Trouble.

I thoroughly enjoyed 300, the movie adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name. Nothing like some stylized violence to get your blood flowing. Plus it's fun to yell "This is SPARTA!" to a crowd of unsuspecting people.

Now I come to find out there is a PG-rated version coming out. Black20 has released the exclusive trailer. I think the changes they made are really good, though I wonder if it alters the tone of the film a bit.



Frosting!

Lately (or even not-so-lately) I've found myself stumbling over a creative impasse and whilst pondering it last night I realized that all this time I've had an untapped resource at my fingertips: you. There are certainly some creative types out there who read this from time to time. Lend me your ears (or eyes) for a moment--perhaps you can give me some advice.

For some time now I have been attempting to write an adventure for a game called Neverwinter Nights 2. The game, and its predecessor, are computer roleplaying games based on the Dungeons & Dragons rules. In addition to shipping with a lengthy single-player experience, each also came with a robust toolset and scripting language for creating your own adventures for the game that can then be distributed for others to play. The ability to create custom content was, for me, the most tantalizing aspect of the package. The community that has developed around the original and now the sequel is quite impressive. Even before Neverwinter Nights 2 was released, enterprising individuals had already developed some additional tools based on a pre-release beta toolset. The company (Bioware/Obsidian) has a good track record of supporting their community, to the point where they continue to patch the first game (adding features and functionality for builders) five years after its release.

I have really wanted to develop an adventure for the game to flex my creative muscle and storytelling abilities. For over a year I have, on and off, worked on the project, coming up with ideas for the story, trying to flesh out the world and characters that live in it, and attempting to put as much planning into as possible (instead of just rushing into the toolset like I so desperately want to). I have pages of notes now, and a head full of ideas, but I'm finding myself having difficulty putting the pieces together. I have a pretty good idea of how the entire story will be put together, but I can't seem to settle on how to get the players from point A to point B. It's been rather frustrating.

I'm sure not many of you out there are game developers, but certainly some of you have experience writing fiction, and many of you at least keep blogs. The question I put forth is: how does a writer connect the dots? How do I work through this block and figure out how to advance the story for my characters? The player in my case is analagous to the reader in the case of a novel or short story, and I'm struggling with having all the knowledge about what is going on but unable to determine how to deliver it unto the audience. Do I just have to force myself to make a decision and move on, knowing that I can always go back and change it if I need? I know that without the specifics of what I'm doing there isn't much one can give me in terms of advice, but if you creative WITFITS readers at least have a sense of what I'm asking and have any thoughts, I'm all ears.

In return I'll let you beta test it.

After weeks of work that have surely accelerated the graying of my hair, I present to you, loyal readers, the new and (improved?) WITFITS. Huzzah!

There are still some tweaks that need to be made, but enough was in place that I felt confident in sharing it with you. It was tested mostly under Firefox, so I cannot vouch for its appearance under any other browser (IE7 should look mostly correct but I suspect IE6 makes it looks like a monkey coded it, which isn't far from the truth). I hope to polish up the remaining nitpicky details this week.

Take a look around and familiarize yourself with the new digs. The oh-so-common blog sidebar is gone--you'll find it's former contents existing on separate pages accessible through the menu bar above. I strove for a clean main page with this new template, hoping to strike a fair balance between usability and aesthetics.

I am interested in what people think of the new look. Please vocalize your opinion, either in the comments here or by e-mailing me at witfits@gmail.com. I want to know what you like and dislike. I can't promise I'll change anything, but hopefully I won't have to.

Oh, and you may have noticed WITFITS is now parked at www.Katonian.net. The URL is a little bit easier to type. Don't worry, your bookmarks, feeds, and links that point to witfits.blogspot.com will still work.

With any luck this weekend will see the debut of the new template I've been working on and off for months. Looking at it you probably won't be able to tell how many hours I poured into it, but hopefully it will go over well. If it doesn't, well, screw you, I'm not making another one.

WITFITS will be down sometime this weekend as I put the new template in place and make sure it plays nicely. By Monday it should have a new look (or the old one if I fail). I'll be asking for comments on the design and suggestions, and will devote at least one post to my critique of it and the advantages and disadvantages of my design choices. For those interested in such things I will likely have a post about "designing your Blogger template from the ground up" in the near future.

Have a good weekend, I'll see you on the other side.

While we're on the topic of missing things, I miss /me. Sounds sorta conceited unless you've ever spent any time on IRC. I gained my first real exposure to the Internet around '96 when I entered college. "Chat rooms" were really popular at the time and unless your ISP abstracted you away from the inner workings of the technology (i.e. AOL and their built in rooms), you generally had to download an IRC client and connect manually by finding the name posted on a website, newsgroup, etc. I used pIRCh and mIRC, for those that remember such things.

When you chatted in such environments your text normally followed your name, sometimes in varying colors (depending on client and settings) such as:
<Kato_the_Stud> roflmao wtf bbq! a/s/l?

There was a command, "/me", that you could enter that would alter the output slightly so that your nickname wasn't highlighted or set apart from the rest of the text. This made it look like an action instead of someone talking, such as:
Kato slaps you with a large fish.

Here's a more complete example to show it in context:
* Kato_the_Stud joined
<MadonnaFan80> hi kato
<Kato_the_Stud> Aww yea, Kato in da house! Where all the ladies at?
Kato_the_Stud flexes his impressive muscles.
<RainingMen> uhh... check the room name
<Kato_the_Stud> Crap.
* Kato_the_Stud has left #Gay_Chat

After using it so frequently it became a hard habit to break and even now, some ten (!) years later, I find myself accidentally typing it occasionally when I'm using an instant messaging client. It tends to baffle people who aren't familiar with it when they see:
Kato: /me shrugs.

Am I alone in wishing /me was still around and worked everywhere?

Recently I found myself poring over articles at Memory Alpha, the wiki for all things Star Trek. I don't remember how I got there--some convoluted series of links across the InterWeb--but somewhere between reading about Yamok Sauce, Self-Sealing Stembolts, and the very cute Ezri Dax, I realized something.

I miss Star Trek.

Until the ripe old age of 27 I could always count on some sort of representative of the franchise boldly going where none had gone before. During that time there were four television shows and ten feature films set in the Trek universe, as well as dozens of video games and novels. I had caught episodes of the original series a few times while channel surfing, but my first real interest was piqued by The Next Generation which debuted when I was 9 or 10. I was hooked almost immediately and followed the show till its finale seven years later, latching on afterward to Deep Space Nine and then Voyager for my fix. By the time Enterprise arrived in 2001 my attentions were being drawn away to the concerns of the "real world": finding employment, a place to live, pursuing a career, etc. The universe I loved had begun to fade away.

But I think now I can make some time to return to that place.

There are many aspects of Star Trek that appeal to me: the stories, the places, the aliens, the characters, the technology, the analogies, the optimism. Interestingly, what has really fueled my interest in re-exploring the shows is the fact that Star Trek has built up over time such a large internal history. One of the reasons I like Tolkien is that he not only told a wonderful story (and did so poetically), but he also crafted an entire world for it to take place in, with unique locations, histories, and mythologies. Star Trek, in its 40 years and some 560+ hours of television and film, has developed quite a complicated and full universe.

Reading about topics like Holodeck technology or the Obsidian Order makes me crave exploring that world again. What's more, learning that many of the episodes of Enterprise sought to explain or give background stories to elements shown in earlier series makes me want to give it another chance. Clearly I crave well-developed, consistent fictional histories.

All good things must end, but if Paramount decided to voyage again into Roddenberry's imagined future I would find it hard to resist the opportunity to experience it again.

It's true. You really need to deal with the fact that everything you like sucks. Your favorite band? Sucks. They're a one-hit wonder group and they're only on the radio cause the hook is simple and annoyingly catchy. I've heard better music coming out of a pack of cats in heat. Your favorite tv show? Sucks. The writing is abysmal, the acting sub-par, and the premise is just retarded. It's as if the network execs took a thousand monkeys and put them in front of a thousand typewriters and used what they came up with on the second day (between bouts of poo throwing). Your girlfriend? Sucks. Not in the good way, either. It wouldn't be so bad if she was just ugly, but she's also dumb as a box of rocks. She kills more brain cells than alcohol and drugs combined. You favorite sports team? Sucks. Regardless of their record, they are horrible. The only fans they have are either too stupid to realize it or are beholden to some irrational sense of home team loyalty. You favorite video game platform? Sucks. It only has like one good game, and that's just a cheap rip-off of a better game for a different system. Every other system has way better games and people are having a lot more fun with them.

Just thought you should know.

Awhile back I mentioned that my day was made by discovering a trove of Bob Ross videos posted on YouTube. Last week I needed some background "noise" while working and so I revisited the links, listening to several episodes of the Joy of Painting as I coded away. It felt as if my spine were melting. I'm not sure how productive I was, but damn if I wasn't relaxed. I think Bob Ross could solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. If representatives for both sides were placed in a room with tapes from the show, I think after only an hour or so of happy trees, insights about friendship, and asides concerning woodland critters, they would be so mellow and thoughtful they'd immediately agree to peace.

Unfortunately, Bob Ross Inc. must not be real keen on having his work floating around in the public domain. Just the other day I went to find more white-afro painting goodness only to discover that the previously available clips were now marked: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Bob Ross, Inc." Not-so-happy little trees.

Bob Ross Inc. is certainly well within its right to request the takedown of these videos but it's a bit of a shame. People have uploaded these clips because of an enduring love for the show and its kind and charismatic host. I imagine it's a mixture of "Who else remembers this great show?" and "I want to share this because I bet there are others out there that will appreciate it."

I understand that there are legal reasons to take these down, ownership rights, protection of brand, etc. It still disappoints me. There is something so appropriate about the Joy of Painting appearing on YouTube. It seems like something of which Bob Ross would have approved, especially considering his show ran on Public Television.

Who knows, maybe the company will see the wisdom of making all the episodes freely available again officially via the Internet. I doubt it, but there is always a chance. There's something to be said for having one's legacy live on in cyberspace, especially when the potential for finding new audiences is so great.

Until then, here is a TiVo link to "Best of the Joy of Painting". You never know, your local PBS affiliate might still carry it.

(Update: A friend of mine just pointed out that Bob Ross Inc. sells all of the episodes on their website. I guess I can understand more now why they wouldn't want it out there for free.)

I got a call from Gamestop the other day. It was an automated message. The overly-chippy female voice had some bad news for me, though you couldn't tell by her gosh-darn golly-gee attitude.

Hi, this is Jenny, Gamestop's robotic female customer representative. Humans are expensive, so they employ me instead. Isn't that great? Anyway, we think it's super awesome you dropped a hundred bucks with us to buy the Halo 3 Legendary Edition. Your friends are gonna think you're super cool when they see that Spartan Helmet. But, uh oh, we have a pwobwem. Those super swell guys at Microsoft announced the real price of the Legendary Edition today. See, we've apparently just been making up a price and telling everybody it, cause we really like money. Anyway, Microsoft says it's now $129.99. We think that's rad, and you should totally come in and give us the remaining balance, but if you wanna be a sad sack you could probably come in and get a refund. Isn't that super? Have an awesome day!

I think the rolling of my eyes was audible during this call. I may have paraphrased a bit.

A hundred bucks was steep to begin with, but the lure of that Spartan helmet (however unwearable) was too much for me to resist and I was able to assuage my fiscal guilt. But now that Microsoft has announced it will be some thirty more dollar than what many thought was the actual price I can no longer justify it. For that price I can buy two games. Fuck the stupid helmet. (I'm sorry helmet, I don't really mean that... you're beautiful, I just... I just don't think we we're meant to be together. I was angry. I'm sorry.)

I'd really like to blame Gamestop for being assholes but I think this time they aren't responsible (Best Buy was selling the preorder for the same lower price but now they too are charging the new higher one). I'm actually impressed they called (or had a machine call, as it were) to inform me of the change. So it's the marketing asshats at Microsoft that are to be the object of my ire this time.

Nice job gouging your fans. Way to be dicks.