All posts by Pike

music, steampunk

Three Awesome Steampunk Bands/Musicians

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Script Frenzy is complete. I’m still debating whether or not to make the PDF file available for download for those who want to read about anthropomorphic chemical elements for whatever reason– frankly, I haven’t put much thought into it because I’m already looking ahead. Specifically, I’m looking to jump into Hardcore Novel Editing Take Three on a book that first devoured my life over half a year ago:

Twitter: The new facility for historical research.

To get myself prepared for this occasion, I’ve done several things, including: changing my computer’s color scheme to polished bronze, briefly hijacking my parents’ high-volume printer in the name of Queen Victoria, and making goggles.

No, seriously, I made goggles.

I’m also setting up a music playlist similar to the one I used while writing the first draft. Said playlist consists of liberal amounts of the “American Tail” and “Dinosaur” soundtracks, oh, and a few “thematic” artists.

So if you’re like me and like a little steam in your punk and a little punk in your steam, here’s a list for you of three of my current faves:

The Clockwork Quartet: Anytime I talk about this band I wind up babbling superlatives and synonyms for the word “epic”. To make a very long ramble short, I hold this band responsible for the following:

  • Inspiring me to fill my book with things like clockwork automatons (I would also toss “airships” in there, but frankly, Final Fantasy is responsible for that more than anything.)
  • Firmly cementing my already-present but rather nascent love of all things steampunk
  • Much of the “art direction” and “theatrics” of my book (as much as a book can have those two things).
  • Somehow breaking onto my Last.fm Top 15 despite only having two released songs.

For the uninitiated, the Clockwork Quartet makes songs that tell stories. AWESOME stories. About things like rogue clockmakers or distraught mad scientists. They’re very theatrical in nature, and I am 99% sure that you will find them “pretty spiffy” at the very least, or more likely, “ZOMG THAT AWESOME’D MY FACE OFF”.

When I first found out about them I listened to their two songs on repeat for six hours straight or something like that. I still listen to them a lot. Twitter will explode with my fangirl on the day that they release another song– mark my words. (I’ve also officially christened myself “The Stowaway”– it matches the names of all their other characters, and seriously, I will stow away on their airship.)

—
Vernian Process has been around forever. One of the great things about them is that they aren’t limited in style, or scope, really. I mean, they have an album of Castlevania remix songs. Is that win, or is that win? (Correct answer: It’s win.)

One of the things that I think they are best at is atmosphere music. I played a loooot of Vernian Process when writing “airship scenes” in my novel. They have an instrumental song called “The Maiden Flight” which is 13 minutes of sheer aether-soaring goodness. I’m pretty sure I could guess what it was about even if it wasn’t called “The Maiden Flight”, just because the imagery in the music is that evocative.

“Her Clockwork Heart” is another one of my faves of theirs– a wistful, bittersweet melody about a robot girl. Side note: this is another reason why I love steampunk music: you know how people toss around stereotypes about music genres? Country is gonna be about your wife leaving you and your dog dying, rap is about… well. You know. Okay, so, steampunk is about robot girls. And you know what, THAT’S FREAKING AWESOME.

—

Tom Slatter – I just stumbled across this guy recently, and can I just say, I have no idea why he isn’t more widely listened to. It’s quirky, experimental acoustic about airships and clockwork devices and automatons. Now I don’t know about you, but that sentence would have sold ME already.

Of course nobody offered me that description so it was the first song, “Mechanism”, on his album that really sold me. (You can go listen to it on the website, by the way. Go. Now.) Yeah, the chords are bizarre and there are weird notes flying around in the background, but that’s why it sounds SO GOOD. I had to listen to this one over and over again because it was brilliant like that. It’s not too often you come across something that is harmonious by being disharmonious.

(Disclaimer: I know nothing about music, except what I learned in middle school orchestra and from messing around in FruityLoops.)

Pic related.

Ultimately though, the great thing is that Tom Slatter’s music ends up sounding nothing like the previous two bands I mentioned and still comes out as quintessentially “steampunk”, and not just because of the subject matter of the songs or how “period” the music is. He nails steampunk by capturing the essence of subtle subversion that it is. The music is weird, but you know what, so is dressing up in goggles and mechanical body parts. That’s the point.

—

WELL! There you have it. Shoutouts to three artists that more people should listen to. As for me, I’m off to work, and then this will be followed tonight by leaping head first into novel editing! …or I might get sidetracked by a Back to the Future marathon. We’ll see.

animal geekery, fangirling, life of pike

And Down The Stretch They Come

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I was going to start out this post with something about how most girls go through the infamous “Horse Phase”, but then I realized that I’d just end up with dozens of “but I didn’t!” comments, so instead I’ll begin this post thus:

Yeah, I went through the Horse Phase. Mine was a little different from the other Horse-crazed girls I knew at school, though. While most of them dreamed of ribbons in the manes of Shetland ponies or wild mustangs or that sort of thing, I dreamed of

the thundering

hooves of

thoroughbred racehorses.

This obsession can be entirely blamed on this book, which my dad bought me for some unknown reason (since I had no real interest in horses at the time):

I read it when I was, oh, 12 or 13 years old, and was instantly intrigued by this world previously unknown to me: a world of racehorses– those brave, elegant, hotblooded creatures– and the people who loved them. I went on to read a bunch of the books in the series and then I started reading other books about racehorses and before long I was watching horse races on TV. I’ll never forget my first Kentucky Derby: an underdog horse named Grindstone who triumphed over a bunch of strong contenders. And that was it: I was hooked. I wrote a short story about that race for school, and from that point on I was a horse racing nut.

I drew thoroughbreds, I wrote about thoroughbreds, I read about thoroughbreds, I dreamed of owning a horse farm someday. Then I wanted to become a jockey, which I figured I could get away with because I’m short and scrawny, but reality eventually set in when I remembered that I have zero athletic ability and that I’m terrified of anything past cantering on an actual horse. Still, I wanted to get in on the action somehow, and I daydreamed up stories about my future horses and figured out what color silks my future horse farm would have (white bars on a teal body, and white sleeves).

My strongest desire was to see a horse win the Triple Crown: a perfect trifecta of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes, a feat which has only been accomplished eleven times in over a hundred years, and not since Affirmed in 1978.

So of course the Racing Gods thought it would be most amusing to toy with my heart, and over the course of my next several years of keen race-watching I got to watch heart-wrenching near-misses by Silver Charm in 1997, Real Quiet in 1998, Charismatic in 1999, War Emblem in 2002, Funny Cide in 2003, and the most soul-crushing upset of all: Smarty Jones in 2004. I’d been a fan of Smarty since watching him just romp the field in the Arkansas Derby. “That horse,” I said, “Is going to win the Kentucky Derby.” He did. Then he won the Preakness. And then… then he lost the Belmont to a horse named Birdstone, son of Grindstone, who I’d fallen in love with years before. Oh irony.

After that my interest started to wane a bit. It was a combination of usually being scheduled to work on Saturdays (when most “big” races are run) and simply sort of moving on from the obsession. But while I may not be quite as obsessed as I used to be, I still love the Sport of Kings. I can’t think of anything quite as thrilling as the two minutes that are the Kentucky Derby (this weekend, by the way!) and I can’t think of anything quite as nail-biting as the post parade for the Belmont when a Triple Crown contender is running. I love the spirit of thoroughbreds, I love the stories behind them and their people (insert obligatory “I liked ‘Seabiscuit’, bite me” comment here), and who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll actually get to see a Triple Crown Winner.*

Until then, I present the greatest race of all time (which I can’t watch without tearing up, by the way. I blame the Rudy music):

—

* In actuality the fact that horses these days are bred for speed more than distance has me questioning the idea of preserving the lengths of the original Triple Crown races, even for nostalgia’s sake. I envision a “modern day” Triple Crown as having a 1 1/8 mile Kentucky Derby, a 1 1/16 mile Preakness, and a 1 1/4 mile Belmont. But on the other hand, who am I to mess with the Derby? <3

classic video game monday, video games

Classic Video Game Monday: Donkey Kong Country 2

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In honor of the latest OCRemix project, I am here today to talk about the greatest of the three Donkey Kong Country games:

I’d go into a more detailed analysis of why DKC2 was the height of the series, but honestly looking back on it I don’t remember much about the first or third DKC. It was the second one that was the most memorable to me, and in my experience a lot of people feel that way. So that’s a good enough reason for me.

Off of the top of my head, here are some of the things that stick out in my mind about this game:

  • Greatest music of the series, hands down. No wonder OCRemix picked it for its project.
  • The snake level. I have no idea why it was so fun. It just was. As an aside, this level had the best music in the game. Seriously, if you only click one link in this blog post, click this one.
  • The roller coaster levels. Fun, fast paced, and original. These are levels that I would play over and over again just because.
  • Two best characters: Unlike the other two games, both of your characters were small and maneuverable without having one that was too bulky and took up tons of the screen.
  • Pirates. YARRR!! I think back to DKC and I think of pirates. Pirates were really only in the second game. ’nuff said.

I have this game on Game Boy Advance because I’m that person who buys new game consoles so she can play old games.

A good friend once informed me that this was me. He's right.

But honestly, if something is still just as fun fifteen years later, that’s a mark of success in my book. Rare in the 90s: The Pixar of Video Games. You can’t deny it!

life of pike, rambles

Poetry in Motion

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I remember very well a certain day in math class in high school. It was algebra or something, and the teacher had just finished filling up the whiteboard with numbers and variables and equations– a step-by-step proof of how she had solved a particular problem.

And I remember looking at it and thinking it belonged in a book of poetry. Because there were patterns there; patterns and rhythm just like in a sonnet or some other verse, and it was telling a story, just like poems do.

And then I thought, “…does anyone else think like I do?”

This actually bothered me a lot throughout high school. In a time when we were supposed to be deciding what we wanted to be when we grew up, I struggled to decide if I was a writey/artsy person or a mathy/sciency person. Because public school made it all pretty black and white that way.

We took all sorts of tests to help sort of steer us in career directions. These did nothing but further muddle the issue to me. “Right-brained/left-brained” tests invariably stuck me right in the middle, 50/50. The “What Career is Best For You?” tests usually told me my top two career possibilities were “artist” and “analytical scientist”. And don’t get me started on those Myers-Briggs tests, which would tell me I was something completely different every time (“Introvert” being the only constant.)

As the whole university thing loomed closer this dilemma only got bigger, and it troubled me a lot because I felt as though I would never find a niche. All around me I saw the artsy kids and the mathy kids. And then there was me, writing love poems from the point of view of chemical elements. I felt as though I would never be able to find a niche.

This whole issue persisted through my rather haphazard college years, ultimately leaving me rather unsatisfied and wondering if I had made a bunch of wrong choices. (Although, looking back on it, I think I probably would have wondered the same thing regardless of what I majored in.)

Thus began the soul-searching and the wandering around, trying to figure out what I actually wanted to DO.

And finally– just over the past few months, really– I came to a conclusion that I should have come to a long, long time ago:

There is no hard line between my interests. Things aren’t black and white like that.

Instead of trying to choose between what seemed like conflicting interests, why couldn’t I embrace them all? And were they even actually conflicting in the first place, despite what had been drilled into me by neatly defined school classes?

The answer to that last question is no. Because there is beauty in function, and there is poetry in science. And the other way around, as well.

Of course, now that I have had this little epiphany of self-discovery… now comes the hard part, which is trying to figure out what one DOES if one likes a little art in one’s tech, or a little tech in one’s art.

…other than, you know, being drawn like a magnet to things that exemplify that train of thought.

Datamancer is my hero.

I’m still not quite sure what the answer to that question is, but I have faith that I will find it, somehow. It’s hidden away in the serpentine paths of cogwheels and in the milky orange-yellow-violet-white of glowing Neon and in the symphony of the melody of rain on my windshield and my car’s wipers keeping time. It’s in carbon, that element that is valuable as a diamond but even more valuable as the graphite in my pencil which I draw and write with. It’s in the sky and it’s in the extraordinarily complicated flying machines that allow us to experience the romance that is the sky. It’s a story that should no longer go untold. How am I gonna tell it? Well, frankly, your guess is as good as mine.

I do know one thing for certain, though. Question convention. Don’t just step outside of the box, but stop allowing yourself to be defined by it. You just might find yourself in the unlikeliest of places. And that’s probably a good thing.

art, video games

The WoW Conundrum

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(I figure since I already wrote about a Linux Conundrum, I might as well write about the WoW one also.)

When I was blogging about World of Warcraft I had the honor of becoming a very visible member of the WoW-blogging-community. When I stopped blogging about WoW, I didn’t want to remove myself from that community entirely, because I had made so many friends there. So I still talk pretty frequently to other bloggers, or people who used to comment on my blog. One of the side effects of this is that “Are you going to play WoW again”, “When are you going to play WoW again”, and “Do you miss WoW” are questions I hear very, very frequently.

So here’s the scoop:

I don’t know if I’m going to play WoW again– leaning toward yes but no promises.

I don’t know when I’m going to play WoW again. Leaning toward “Cataclysm” (or the Pre-Cata world events) but no promises.

Do I miss WoW? Of course I do. But not really in the way an addict misses her fix. I won’t deny I was, at one point, pretty addicted to the game, but that was then and this is now. No, I miss it in more of a nostalgic way. A “man, remember when I used to run around Westfall collecting Red Defias Bandanas and that was the only thing that mattered?” way, or a “Man, remember 30s-bracket Arathi Basin?” way.

As such, when I do feel the WoW urge, it is almost invariably an urge to play a low-level toon. Like my warlock, or one of my other lowbies. I really have felt no desire to return to my 80s or to raid. In a way, I feel as though I’ve closed the book on their stories, but that there are still chapters to be written for my other characters.

Now I know what you may be thinking. You may be thinking, “Well, why don’t you just go back to WoW and play your lowbies?” Mainly because it becomes a matter of worth. At this point in my life I would have time to log in maybe three or four hours a week. And for me, three or four hours a week isn’t really worth the $15 a month. Especially because I’m broke.

And before you offer to pay for my subscription, I already have people lining up at the door offering to do so, including my own parents. But I have turned them all down because I still think I have other things to focus on right now– like artwork, or like editing a certain novel of mine.

That’s not to say I haven’t had moments of weakness or cheated a little. Some of my friends/relatives have let me dink around on their toons on occasion, just for fun. And it’s hard sometimes when exciting new WoW news spreads through Twitter or the blogosphere like a forest fire. But for the most part, I do still consider myself “Done with WoW”. For the time being, at least.

So, that is that.

All that said– Tawyn’s “story” may feel over to me, but her legacy lives on. She’ll always be a part of me, I think.

classic video game monday, video games

Classic Video Game Monday: Zero Wing

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There is a very good chance you haven’t heard of this game.

…but there is a very good chance that you have heard of what made this game famous:

Ah yes, All Your Base. The subject of a now-legendary flash animation, this is one of the earliest internet memes I can think of– early enough that “All your base are belong to us” was my “Favorite Saying” in my senior yearbook back in high school, and folks, that was a long time ago. Someday in the future, the early-2000s are going to make a fashion comeback and it’s going to happen with first-gen iPods and All Your Base T-shirts.

Little known secret, though: This game is really good. And really hard.

It’s a scrolling-shooter akin to Gradius, which means it’s basically like Robot Unicorn Attack, except you have powerups and lasers, and stuff is trying to kill you.

The onslaught of enemies is neverending and on top of that, you have to deal with obstacles like walls with tiny spaces that you have to squeeze through at just the right moment. This game is seriously difficult. I don’t think I’ve ever beaten the first stage. And yet I played it a ton anyway, because it was still fun.

Other things about Zero Wing that you may not have known:

  • The music is fantastic. Especially from the Sega Genesis version. Stroll through some of the stuff on the sidebar; it’ll give you Mega Man 2 flashbacks. It’s that good. Did I mention the first song was called “Open Your Eyes”? Told you it was like Robot Unicorn Attack.
  • The story, according to the original Japanese, is pretty hardcore:
    Engineer: It appears that someone has planted explosives.
    Radio Operator: The main screen is receiving a visual.
    CATS: Thanks to the help of our forces, your bases are all under our control. Make the most of these last moments of your lives…
    Man. CATS is a smooth-talkin’ operator, no?
  • All Your Base has gotten people arrested. No, really.

In short, if you can find this game, you should play it, at the very least for historical significance, but mostly because it’s simply a good game. Be warned, though– it’s often called “Contra Hard” for a reason.

…yeah I dunno what’s up with the giant California Raisin at the end. Really, I don’t.

free/open source software, linux

Open Sourcery: Ten Awesome F/OSS Apps

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…terrible pun in the title aside, I use a LOT of Free/Open Source software. It comes with the territory when you’re a Linux user.

In no particular order, here are some of my faves:

1. Mozilla Firefox

Possibly THE gateway drug that introduced thousands of us newbies to this newfangled Open Source thing, Firefox is far from perfect (and its memory usage blows up like a balloon if you leave it open for too long), but is still the best we’ve got. Chrome is giving it a run for its money, but while I’ve embraced Chrome as a good secondary browser, it a.) lacks Firefox’s insane addon vault, and b.) still has some weird glitches on Linux.

I loves me some ‘fox.

2. Pidgin

I’ll come right out and say it: when I was still on Windows (back in the day), I was a Trillian user. Trillian does not have a Linux version, though, so I was forced to switch to Pidgin. At first I did so rather begrudgingly but as time has gone on I’ve become more attached to it and now I don’t think I could go back to Trillian. Pidgin is nice, simple, clean, and has some fun plugins.

3. Clementine (aka OldSchool Amarok)

Typical Pike Playlist

I’m going to tell you a story. Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I used WinAmp. But when I switched to Linux, I fell head-over-heels in love with Amarok. Amarok and I lived together happily for many years, and then something horrible happened: Amarok “upgraded” to 2.0. Problem: Amarok 2.0 came packed with a new GUI I was less than thrilled with, tons of weird sound quality issues, and unstable Last.fm scrobbling. This would not do. So with a heavy heart I bid farewell to Amarok and bounced around music players for a while, trying to find a new home. Exaile and I had a nice little affair, but the void still wasn’t quite filled.

…then I remembered yet another reason why I love Open Source. Because some people had taken the OldSchool Amarok source code and forked it into a new (old?) music player: Clementine. Discovering that this existed was basically the best day of the year for me.

It’s still very much a beta and missing a lot of functionality but if you’re an Amarok refugee like I was I highly recommend this program. <3 4. Open Office

Secret Deleted Scene from Pike's Novel

…it’s basically Microsoft Word, but for free. Works like a charm; I’ve never had a problem with it.

5. GIMP

Oh look, I'm drawing furries in waistcoats again...

GIMP is one of those programs that you either love or you hate. The two main reasons I hear for hatred are a.) It lacks a bunch of Photoshop’s features, and b.) It is notoriously difficult to learn to use.

My reaction to those two points are: a.) I have never used Photoshop (no, seriously), so if I’m missing out on stuff, I haven’t noticed, and b.) … okay, it is difficult to learn to use. I won’t deny that one.

But if you’re willing to climb the steep learning curve, I think you’ll find that this is quite a splendid program with lots of functionality. I mean, I’m not a professional artist or anything, but I’d like to think I do more art-stuff than the Average Joe and I’ve done it all in GIMP.

As a side note, when I first started using GIMP, I HATED the way it would open up a bunch of different windows for each part of the program: one for your picture, one for the toolbox, one for layers, etc. … but as time has gone on I’ve become so spoiled by it that anything else would make me feel terribly claustrophobic.

So yeah. GIMP. I <3 it dearly. 6. Celtx

I'm a nerd.

I actually prefer “Sophocles” as a screenwriting app. But Sophocles has a ton of drawbacks. Drawback #1: Trialware (a good half the features are locked unless you’re willing to shell out tons of money.) Drawback #2: …not in development anymore, from what I can tell. Drawback #3: Proprietary formats that can’t be exported to anything else unless you pay money.

Enter Celtx, which is still a bit buggy, but is ASTOUNDINGLY promising. This goes beyond a mere screenwriting program and allows you to do storyboards, script breakdowns, et al. I really can’t wait to see where this program is in a couple years.

7. Choqok

As everyone and their dog knows by now, I love Twitter. It fills a chatty void that my inner IRC Junkie has been missing for years. I spent a good long time searching for a Twitter client that fulfilled criteria like not requiring Adobe AIR (I have my reasons for not liking Adobe AIR) … which, trust me, is easier said than done.

So after lots of searching I decided a while back to give Choqok a shot. And folks, I am in LOVE. This is a fully featured Twitter client that supports everything from re-tweets to favorites to following convos to searching to… yeah, you name it, Choqok does it. You can even customize your color scheme.

The only reason I don’t wax poetic about this program’s virtues more is because it is– as far as I can tell, anyway– a ‘nix only program, and I figure most of my readers/followers aren’t ‘nix users.

…man. I mean, I haven’t had any intention of “going back to Windows” for years, but this program seriously puts the nail in the coffin, it’s that good. <3 8. VLC Media Player

It plays everything. ’nuff said.

9. Konsole

I made mine green text on black so I can pretend I’m Trinity from the Matrix.

As an aside, when I went to xkcd on April Fool’s Day, this is what I did:

…and…

10. Linux!

This is actually just an excuse to show off my Iron Man wallpaper.

Cause regardless of how close/not-close it is to being “Ready for the Desktop”, I <3 my tinker toy! Wow, it was hard to narrow the options down to ten. I may have to make a Part Two later...

classic video game monday, video games

Classic Video Game Monday: Aliens

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Most people who know me know that “Aliens” is one of my favorite movies ever. It has action, it has humor, it has thrills, and it has Ellen Ripley, who pretty much single-handedly kicks the collective butts of Lara Croft et al.

Can't touch this.

Before I watched the movie, though, I played the game. Yup. Back when I was about five or six years old we played this on Commodore 64 all the time. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to one of the hardest games EVER.

We start out with the dropship sequence. This sequence involved piloting the dropship through a bunch of hula hoops in a first-person view. Sounds easy enough, right?

WRONG.

This thing threw hairpin turns at you and “rough air” made your screen wobble and your controls go all over the place. And if you missed going through one of the hoops? “Game over, man. Game over!” The only redeeming quality for this level was the awesome music.

Nobody in my household (gaming was a family affair back then, often branching out to extended family as well) could beat this level except for my little brother, who I’m pretty sure was still in diapers. So we’d hand the joystick to him, he’d beat the level for us, and then we’d resume playing.

…you know, as if it was going to get any easier.

Because next was the level where you had to get all (well, four) of your marines to safety, which involved guiding them one by one through a giant maze where they were prone to being attacked by packs of aliens. Heaven help you if more than one of your guys was attacked by aliens at once, since you could only “be” one guy at a time.

Alien attacks were more frequent if you were in “the nest”, aka “A bunch of random pixels making squiggly lines”, but they could happen at any time, and if you lost said attack, your guy would slowly be devoured while you couldn’t do much about it.

There was a bit of an element of strategy to it though: if you had more than one guy together, then they were immune to alien attacks. Which was handy. Your best bet, though, was probably to get them through to the end as straight as possible. You started in a random place every time and this level was so labyrinth-like that my mom actually took a pad of graph paper and mapped the entire place out.

My mom: hardcore with video games before the rest of us.

Once you got through this level it was time for a further descent into nightmares with The Most Difficult Level of All Time. This level involved staving off aliens with a gun while you waited for the door to open. If an alien got through, he took one of your guys, until you had none left, at which point it was game over. Here’s the thing, though: the game didn’t care if they sent a superfast alien at you at the top of the screen and a superfast alien at you at the bottom of the screen at the same time. The game didn’t care that you couldn’t be at two places at once. As such, I am 99% sure that it is impossible to beat this level with all your “lives” remaining. Heck, if you get through it with more than one or two lives remaining, you are a god among men.

(As an aside, Blizzard remade this level as a Blizz-game-related Flash game on the BlizzCon site a year or two back. The nightmarish flashbacks: they happened.)

As I very rarely could pass this level myself, my memories on the rest of the levels are fuzzy, though they were just as difficult and involved another maze like level, this time with bombs, and then going back to the FIRST maze, except this time you’re Ripley and you have to save Newt. Oh, and you have a strict time limit.

This game did save the best for last, though, because you do, in fact, get to beat up on the Alien Queen with your hydraulic suit…

…in a sequence that was kicked off in one of the most memorable ways ever in Commodore 64 gaming.

Primarily because I was five years old and *gasp!* She said a bad word!

And if you managed to beat all of that?

“Not bad… for a human!”

fangirling, super heroes

A Girl And Her Super Heroes

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I never actually read super hero comics when I was a young kid– I was too busy reading stuff like Scrooge McDuck comics, or Calvin & Hobbes compilation books. I did watch the early Superman and Batman movies quite a bit, though, and I enjoyed them as most kids probably did, buuuut my first real comic-characters-fangirling can be attributed to my friends in, oh, 8th/9th grade or so, who introduced me to X-Men.

The movie was coming out right about this time and there was a Saturday morning X-Men cartoon that I started watching and all in all it was a great time to get into it. Beast was my favorite. I mean, seriously, a big blue fuzzy guy quoting Shakespeare. You can’t NOT love him. Then I got into Wolvie and Nightcrawler and finally, the ever-so-drool-worthy Gambit.

(As an aside, I just found “Steampunk Gambit” on Google Images, and the Fangirl Senses are off the chart. Anyways, moving on:)

There was one thing that was possibly cuter than Gambit, and that was Gambit/Rogue…

…because I’m a hopeless romantic and I was a 15 year old girl who liked to daydream about guys in trenchcoats. (Hmm, some things never change, do they… *cough*)

Gambit/Rogue is still one of my OTPs by the way, up there with Locke/Celes, Cloud/Aeris, House/Cameron (shut up), and ahhh, err… uh… Khadgar/Medivh. >_> Aaaaaanyways…

Then I got to about the end of high school and suddenly I fell in love with Spider-Man.

Spidey was appealing on a multitude of levels. First of all, he was a giant geek. Like me. Secondly, he was socially awkward. Like me. Lastly, the movie reboot made him exactly my age. In the movie, he was graduating high school the same year I was. I know it’s just a silly little detail, but it really sort of helped me to identify with him.

This picture says it all, really. Courtesy Kizer180 @ DeviantArt.

The Spider-Man myth was plausible to me in a way that other super heroes thus far hadn’t been (well, if you can get past the whole radioactive spider thing.) Peter Parker was just a normal kid with normal kid problems, who happened to become a web-slinging manifestation of awesome. I ate it up. He was my fave super hero for a while.

Then…

…

…then came the “cool exec with a heart of steel”:

IRON MAN.

So, let’s talk about Tony Stark for a minute. Let’s see here:

  • Brilliant
  • Handsome
  • Rich
  • Builds robots and robot suits in his basement

Yeah, um, what’s not to love?

The “brilliant” bit is the most important part, though. In a modern world where science and technology are built on the backs of huge teams of people, Tony Stark built something awesome “IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!” and that’s just hot. He, with his suit, represents the lone inventor changing the world– the one person making a difference– the individual guy inside the technology. I could probably write an essay on it, really, and get all philosophical, but ultimately it just comes down to Sheer Awesomeness.

Also, last night I had a dream that I went to Stark Industries and Tony Stark was showing me around and WHO ME, FANGIRL?

…man. I just wanna shake Stan Lee’s hand. Don’t you?

free/open source software, life of pike, linux, rambles

The Linux Conundrum

19 Comments

When I was blogging at Aspect of the Hare I had the rather unique privilege of becoming one of the most well-known Linux users in the WoW blogging community. I talked about it a lot, made techie posts, and made no secret of the fact that Linux was my main (and for quite some time, only) operating system.

This had an interesting side effect: a LOT of people were inspired by me to try Linux for themselves. I got tons of e-mails and comments to this degree.

And this, in and of itself, had another interesting side effect, one that took me a little while to get used to: a good 80% or so of these comments and e-mails were people documenting their negative experiences with Linux.

Imagine, if you will… that you love something a lot and are excited when people want to try out that thing you love. Now imagine most of them hating it. Now maybe you understand why this was always a bit awkward for me.

Where am I going with this?

A few places. First of all, I feel there is something I should say as an unofficial spokesperson of the Linux community in this little corner of the Blogosphere:

LINUX ISN’T FOR EVERYONE.

Now before you go all crazy on me, I’m not trying to be elitist and say it’s only for programmers/leet hax0rs/hardcore geeks/etc. Rather, I’m trying to say that there are a lot of people who, I think, come to Linux with the completely wrong expectations and end up being disappointed.

Examples:

* If you can’t live without iTunes/Photoshop/the latest super-shiny computer games, guess what: don’t install Linux. Seriously. It’s probably not worth the hassle unless you’re a freetard like me who is willing to make sacrifices.

* If you don’t like using the command line, don’t install Linux. Now, granted, stuff like Ubuntu is making it easier and easier to do lots in Linux without the command line, but it is still very much CLI-oriented compared to, say, something like Windows.

* If you don’t like stuff randomly breaking, don’t install Linux. That’s not to say that Windows doesn’t break either, cause good ol’ XP broke on me plenty of times. But one of the best analogies I ever heard was that Windows is like a die-cast toy car, and Linux is a car made out of Legos. They can both break. The Lego car is much more likely to “break”. But that’s the point. You’re supposed to break it and put it back together.

I’m kind of mental (and possibly masochistic) when it comes to this sort of thing; dealing with computer problems gives me a strange sort of high that little else can give me. So I embrace the Lego-OS. If you are not of that mindset, or at least don’t want to deal with it at home, don’t install Linux.

* If you aren’t willing to spend hours on Google getting something simple like wireless working, don’t install Linux. In defense of Linux, this is frequently a driver support issue more than a Linux issue. But the end result remains.

* If you are looking for a clone of Windows that is somehow mysteriously “better”, don’t install Linux. Linux is not Windows. Just because you saw some YouTube movie of a guy showing off his shiny Compiz cube and desktop effects, doesn’t mean it worked entirely out-of-the-box for him. It probably didn’t. Is the tradeoff for having the Compiz cube really worth the effort, especially now that most people are using Vista/Win7? …well, that one’s up to you, but think about it.

“Piiiiike. I thought you loved Linux. Now you’re just trying to talk everyone out of trying it. What gives?”

I’m not trying to talk everyone out of it. I just want people to be aware of the commitment. Sort of like the animal rescuers who screen anyone who is thinking of adopting one of their “babies”. If you want to try Linux, that’s awesome, and I’m excited for you. Trying new things is always good, as far as I’m concerned. But you have to go into it with an open mind. Maybe you’ll end up really liking it.

But if you decide it’s not for you, that’s fine too. Use whatever operating system you feel comfortable with and suits your needs.

And remember the other side of the coin, too: for some of us, Linux is what suits our needs. Yes, some of us actually like this crazy mysterious operating system. Some of us like it for the utility, some of us for the bash terminal, some of us for the security, some of us for the F/OSS philosophy, some of us for two or more of the above, or myriad other reasons.

Oh, and the penguins. Can’t forget the penguins…



(Disclaimer: This ramble is not directed toward anyone or any event in particular. It’s sort of an amalgam of thoughts that have been floating around in my mind for months, and more than one LJ entry I’ve written on the same subject over the years.)