Three good, three bad

[firstfrost]

Goofy things I like:

• I'm playing Morrowind right now. Well, not right now, but it's my current game. It looks like it could take years to finish, even without buying the two expansions. I found myself in game, sitting on a hill watching the sun rise. It was lovely. I felt like a character in a commercial. Now, I played the first Elder Scrolls game, and it was too much like wandering through a landscape of randomly generated bits. This is Elder Scrolls 3, and it seems to be a landscape of bits that someone thought up. The difference is vast.
• crs got me hooked on Schlock Mercenary. Space opera and comedy, but with good drama thrown in. And it updates daily!
• Middlesex used to have a good counter girl. Then they switched to a less good counter guy, and that was sad. We got three half-reubens instead of a half-reuben and a half-roast-beef, that sort of thing. (Why would anyone want three half reubens? Though maybe it wasn't the counter guy's fault.) But now they have a good counter guy. He put a lime wedge in my water.

Vaguely annoying things:

• I have an amazon credit card, on the theory that buying the things I would already buy will turn into Amazon books every so often. Good theory, but they seem to be really poor at sending me the certificates (I think I've gotten 1 out of the 3 I'm owed, including one that I asked for a second time.) I'd be happier getting them by email, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
• Two of the books I checked out from the MITSFS yesterday claim to be books 1 and 2 in a series, but really, the series is a continuation of a longer series and I shouldn't read them until I've reread the other thing.
• I'm playing Morrowind, see above. Sadly, I can't play it for more than about two hours at a sitting, because it makes me a little motion sick. (I have the girl-kind of motion sick, which means that I don't like when my field of view thinks I'm moving and my inner ear thinks I'm not; getting carsick is apparently more the boy-kind of motion sick.). Now, I probably don't really need to play more than two hours of a game at a sitting, but this does seem to mean that when I play before going to bed, I always go to bed a little queasy.

Comments

motion sickness

[desireearmfeldt]

Motion-sickness comes in gender-specific types? Who knew?

(sigh... Complete and total immunity to motion-sickness is one of those superpowers that seems to be eroding as I get older. Though as with the glasses, this means I'm still ahead of the game at the moment. :) )

[mijven.livejournal.com]

What kind of motion sickness is difficulty playing on swings and merry-go-rounds? I'm having a bit of trouble with that lately. (If I actively swing - i.e. exaggerated pumping motions - I'm fine. But just sitting while swinging... urp. Just sitting works, happily.)

Re: motion sickness

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

> Motion-sickness comes in gender-specific types? Who knew?

Computer game people do. :) Or, at least, I heard that working at Looking Glass. Maybe it's not actually true.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I would expect that to be boy-kind. (But it's not completely all-of-one all-of-the-other.)

[twe.livejournal.com]

Hah! As you may recall, extensive testing with Coke cans in Nichols third some years back, revealed that you are really a boy and izmirian is really a girl (or possibly just in very good shape).

Now, if only I could remember how the test worked. :)

strange

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

My amazon.com card sends me certificates on time and without prompting. Weird.

Re: strange

[arcanology.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I never have had any trouble with mine either.

Vaarsuvius

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

Er.... it was something about standing against a wall and trying to pick a can up off the ground without bending your knees?

Aha!

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

I bet that explains why you've been going to bed earlier recently, too. :-)

Re: Aha!

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Yeah. :-P
"Play play play, play play... hmm, now I'm all dizzy and odd-feeling. I should go to sleep."

Re: Aha!

[countertorque.livejournal.com]

Sleep is the best cure for motion sickness that I've found.

What's Morrowmind?

[jdbakermn.livejournal.com]

And what are the books that you checked out from MITSFS?

Re: motion sickness

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

I don't know about boy-type, but there is a correlation between video game style motion sickness and gender (women). I have a pet theory about this in terms of the move to 3D video games (3D where the motion sickness thing appears) exacerbating the whole "women don't play video games" thing, but I don't actually have any evidence for it.

Re: What's Morrowmind?

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Morrowind is a 3D (hence the motion sickness) RPG. (And one of my old Looking Glass comrades worked on it!) There's the main plot, but there's also all these guilds and factions and clubs to join that will send you on quests (sometimes to attack other guilds!), random people in towns who will send you on quests, random monsters in the countryside, random dungeons, and so on. The mechanics include enchanting items with effects you choose, if you've trapped the soul of a monster to power it, and herbs and things you pick from the countryside to alchemize into potions. There's more mechanics to play in than I'm likely to have skill to deal with. My current set of quests includes:

• Go back to the Fighter's Guild in Balmora to tell them I killed the bandits near the Caldera ebony mine.
  
• Get the jewelry from the thief hiding in Shuishihi and return it to the lady.
  
• Bring the four types of mushrooms back to the Mages Guild in Balmora.
  
• Kill the Camorra Tong people for the Thieves Guild and report back to the guy in Fort Moonmoth.
  
• Visit the six shrines I haven't yet for the Imperial Cult (I made it to the Fields of Kummu).
  
• Find Carayel in that little fishing village whose name I can't remember, get the fancy bowl back from him, and bring it to the Shrine Sergeant in Ebonheart.
  
• Free the slaves at the Dren Plantation.
  
• Go back to my master in the Blades when I'm done puttering, and get the next quest for the main plot. This may take a long while, because I keep picking up these other quests.
  

The two books are The Red Wyvern and The Black Raven by Katharine Kerr. They claim to be books one and two of the Dragon Mage series, but the Dragon Mage series appears to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Deverry series. So I should just go start from the beginning again there.

Re: What's Morrowmind?

[arcanology.livejournal.com]

I had to give up on the Deverry series after it became clear that I had read a giant pile of them, and any time I was in danger of reaching something really interesting she would switch point of view characters and wander off into another series. "It's all about reincarnation, so I never have to finish anything"... bah.

Re: motion sickness

[seborn.livejournal.com]

wow. I wonder what variant of girl motion sickness it is that I don't get sick playing most games, but something like Super Monkey Ball where I'm explicitly moving the background (as opposed to, say, a first-person game where the background moves because I'm ostensibly walking through it, which is fine) makes me nauseous within an hour.

Re: Vaarsuvius

[izmirian.livejournal.com]

Or was it kneeling and touching the can with your nose ... ?