7 Things I Wish Had Happened 10 Years Sooner

We currently live in a world of great change. I remember seeing cell phones the size of my forearm. I remember when e-readers were a thing of fantasy. There are days when I think I should have been born a long time ago, and other days when I wish I had been born a bit later so I didn't have to suffer through the growing pains of this technology boom. It may be hard to see, but in 100 years, people are going to talk about this time period as the third Industrial Revolution. Oh hey it's already being called that! Welcome to future my friends; we're living in our parents Sci-fi novels, isn't it great? Who doesn't want to be able to use 3D printers? A million other wonderful changes are happening that I can't even get to in a single article.

7. Good Horror Movies

Remember how there was the great period of horror movies where they had to have paramedics on site just in case someone fainted? Remember how there was the terrible period of movies when the last ten minutes should have been cut from the film to make it 9,000 times better? I suffered through the latter one. It was a miserable time for films. Especially those lovely horror films that were remade into something I consider a tragedy to good movies. Lately there has been an uprising of beautifully executed films. I wish that had been ten years ago when the slump was at its worst.

If you haven't seen anything by Guillermo Del Toro you should go change that right now, at least "Pan's Labyrinth". There has also been "Insidious", which feels like an answer to all of our yelling at the stupid characters to do something other than sit there and let the ghosts tear them apart.

Ticket to Ride: Game Review

In 2004, Days of Wonder published a board game called “Ticket to Ride.” Since its debut, dozens of expansions have been released all over the world. The version I have played is the North American version, but there are others based all over the world. There is even, unsurprisingly, an app for it. The game is fairly simple in concept, but can be much more difficult in execution. 

7 Ways to Tell You've Been Influenced by British Media

I am American. I was born and raised in the Central Valley, but I have been reading books and watching telly from across the ocean since before I can remember. I grew up quoting Monty Python and not quite getting American humor (I still don't get why American Pie is funny). I read the Harry Potter books the summer I turned 11 (still waiting for my letter). All of this has culminated into this bizarre way that I interact with the world. A lot of my friends have similar problems, so let's see how you can tell if you've spent way too much time being influenced by British media.

7. You say "wicked" or "bloody" just to get away with cursing

As a kid it was highly frowned upon by my parents if I cussed. Most kids had a similar issue. I read the Harry Potter books and started saying "bloody" and I got away with it! My mom had no idea what I was saying. The best part is that sometimes I picked up phrases and didn't even realize they were British--the joys of being a kid. Oddly enough, having read Harry Potter at such a young age, I still say Happy Christmas instead of Merry Christmas. I try to remember to say Merry Christmas, but it always slips out as Happy. I sometimes feel like I'm in second language acquisition and have to hunt for the American way to say something.

7 Ways to tell you're a Whovian

First of all let me apologize for my long silence, it has been a very interesting November. I am a fan of doing National Novel Writing Month, and did it again this year with excellent results! Meaning I finished writing 50,000 words in 30 days, which really means I didn't finish a novel, I just wrote 50,000 words; the novel is no where near done. Second, I am super excited for Christmas! Not because it's Christmas, but because this year's Doctor Who Special looks awesome! I'm looking forward to knowing why I'm suddenly afraid of Snowmen; good thing I live somewhere it doesn't snow (much). 

If you haven't seen the teaser for the Christmas special follow this lovely link.Yep, that's right, snowmen with scary teeth. Please excuse me while I hide under a blanket, maybe I'll make a fort, anyway not the point 8 year old me. Now to the point of this article, how do you know when you're a true Whovian?

7. You see TARDIS blue everywhere. 

I swear out of the corner of my eye I see the TARDIS all the time. There have been times when I have stopped what I was doing and said "Did I just see what I thought I saw?", only to find myself sorely disappointed to discover it was only a sign, car, mailbox, or a man in a dapper suit. Wait man in dapper suit!

A Handful of Words

Happy Halloween friends! I was put into the mood a bit ago to write a few drabbles. They were sufficiently creepy though, at least I have been led to believe so, for Halloween. I stepped a bit out of my comfort zone by writing in second person for two of them.

Book to Movie: My Sister's Keeper

First let me explain I don't usually go for this type of story normally. I hate the tear jerker make you cry in a corner type of book normally. I loved "My Sister's Keeper". It was well written and the characters made sense. They worked. Anna, the younger sister, had really good reasons outside of "I just don't want to do this anymore". She was into hockey and they were asking her to give up a vital organ, albeit one she had an extra of, but one that still is vital. One of the problems with that would be she could no longer be in contact sports, which rules out hockey, big time. All that lovely drama of "why are you trying to kill your sister" could easily be shoved onto "because it'll ruin my life!" Yes that is a bit selfish, but she is also a little girl. It is rare to be altruistic to fault at that age.

Dear FanFic "Writers"

This is not to those who are actually good at writing FanFics. I want you to understand right now that I enjoy a good FanFic. In fact I've attempted to write a few and failed miserably. So I do not publish them. Thank God.

Now.

Dear Fanfic Writers... --no let me try that again.

Dear FanFic "I'm-Attempting-to-Write-a-Story" writers.... No, that's not right either.

Dear FanFic-- 
...no.

Dear "I was really drunk (or high) this one time and I read (skimmed/Wiki'd/pointed at random words in) this story that I thought sounded really cool (so much so I wanted to rape the main character) so I re-wrote the story to how I think it should have been written (of course with me as the main character now) so tell me what you think but don't be mean cuz that isn't cool" writers... Yeah, that accurately sums it up.

How to write in Circular Gallifreyan

To call myself the provider of an eclectic mix of geeky things I must bring to your attention, if you were not already aware of, Loren Sherman's wonderful version of Circular Gallifreyan. It is beautiful, complex, and looks very close to the writing from the show. The main difference is all the lines he uses are straight. I suppose you wouldn't have to use only straight lines while writing it yourself, but the translator that he provides does not allow for this. It also will sometimes have multiple lines cross changing the meaning of the word. He doesn't have a reverse translator, but that is ok because it is a lot of fun to do it yourself. The translator that is available through his site is nice, but like he says it has a lot of bugs still to work out. One of the more annoying things with his translator is it can't yet do full sentences. This means if you want one you have to make it yourself, which is fine and fun if you have the right program.

7 Ways to Tell Your Paladin is Lawful Stupid

We have all been there. There is always that one guy in the group who wants to play the Lawful good Paladin, and your GM lets him. You mentally groan knowing exactly what to expect.

7. He goes over every detail of the plan a million times to make sure no laws are broken in the process. You have created a plan, maybe it involves killing the cultists in their sleep, and he disapproves. This leads to number three.

6. He is constantly watching the Rouge of the group for any signs of lawbreaking. This is also known as constantly using Detect Evil. Meet a person on the street and he does Detect Evil. If they’re evil he automatically attacks them.

Green Goo

I wasn’t very excited about going to work that day, and it didn’t get any better once I was told we were doing a new release. I figured it would be something lame like a movie. I was even more disappointed when I was told what it was. “Green Goo” they called it, some beauty product that they had come out with recently. I had heard about it from some commercial in the background during break. I sighed and got to stocking the item. We had boxes of it. The goo came in small plastic containers like body butter. I quickly lost count of how many I put on the shelves. One of my co-workers was going off about how awesome the goo was. She said it was great for your skin and all kinds of other wonderful things. I wondered silently what kind of product would be good for all of that. I looked at the list of ingredients and it was all strange stuff that I couldn’t pronounce, there wasn’t even water in it from what I could tell, and that was even stranger. I always paid close attention to ingredients of the things that I would put on my skin because of several allergies. I decided I’d wait until I heard more about it. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t putting something awful on my skin and of course being afraid of breaking out in hives was my biggest deterrent.