Ten Years of Weird

I'm interrupting our regularly scheduled programming for a quick anniversary acknowledgment.  This blog passed its official ten-year anniversary more than a year ago (the first post was on January 2, 2011), but I assert that today is an even more special day.  Exactly ten years ago today, I began my first April A-Z challenge.

Even though that wasn't even my first month-long blog challenge, I still see it as the birth of the true voice of this blog.  Prior to that, I had been focused much more narrowly on the two original topics of the blog: old-school D&D and Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game.  I think I even tried to always "pay the Joesky tax" (does anyone even remember what that means?!) on RPG posts, too.  But on April 1, 2012, I began to mentally remove those fetters.  That's when things really started to bloom.

To be clear, there's nothing at all wrong with my original topics.  I keep pondering & writing about them quite a bit.  But I think I really needed the freedom to more completely follow my weird, as they say.  (Note this internal blog link is from December 2011, so I think these juices were stewing prior to that fateful day exactly a decade ago.)

In April 2012, and over the next few years, I met quite a few fascinating people, one of which I count as one of the most important people in my life despite having never met in person.  I've gone through a lot in the last decade -- a new job, moving across the country, loss of a parent, hitting my 50s -- and this blog & its people have been lifelines at times.

I can't promise a return to super-active blogging over the next decade, but I still value this place and the chance it gives me to, well, be Cygnus!

Holiday Roundup

Ever since my new job started in 2015, this blog has definitely taken a back seat.  I'd like to try to reverse that a bit, and maybe by posting a quick list of highlights (from 2018) and wishes (for 2019), I can kick things into gear.  Anyway...

HIGHLIGHTS

1. A few months ago, I was hugely flattered and humbled to receive blog comments from one of my favorite authors.  The wonders of the internet...

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2. This year, an old classmate of mine from 5th & 6th grade (roughly ages 10-12 for non-US readers) joined Facebook, and we spent a few weeks over the summer reminiscing over the groovy late 1970s.  Digging into old boxes from that time revealed something else that I had forgotten:  As a kid, I once wrote to sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, and he wrote back!  It was just a form letter, but he added a few flourishes at the top and bottom...

For the life of me, I don't know why I didn't remember this when I wrote this post.

By the way, I'm not sure what the "P.T.O." at the top meant.  Clarke's letter came from his home in Ceylon... now Sri Lanka... so, maybe "Pacific Theater of Operations?"  Doesn't sound right.  "Please turn over?"  I think the sheets were typed on one side only.  Any ideas?

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3. This blog has gone into some oddball territory, but I'm not sure if I've ever talked much about my love of coins.  I never really amassed a huge collection, but I've always liked the history, symbolism, and lore.  I also have had a sweet spot for the pre-decimal coinage of Britain... you know, pounds, shillings, pence, farthings, and so on.  At two different times this year, I took a deep dive and constructed some interesting graphical images.  First, some nice visual examples of the classic types, with their amounts laid out clearly:

Next, after finding an auction catalog of weights of silver coins -- listed by monarch from the Dark Ages to the 20th century -- it was interesting to tabulate and plot how British silver money has been "debased" over time... i.e., how the amount of silver needed to make up one "pound sterling" got smaller over the centuries.  Here's the data:

Click on any of these to enlarge

Note the gradual drift downward from 1400 to the late 1600s... until Isaac Newton came in (as master of the mint!) around 1700 to bring together perception and reality!  There's also a mini-history of metal-working technology in this plot, too.  The spread of weights gets narrower over time, as mass production became more accurate.

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4. What do the following songs have in common?

The Who's Baba O'Riley, Slade's Run Runaway, BTO's You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, and Rush's The Necromancer (final part: "Return of the Prince").

I'll attempt to hide the answer on your screen... just highlight the text to see it:

The majestic I-V-IV-[V]-I chord progression!  (That second [V] in square brackets is optional; just lengthen the IV if it's missing.)  I don't know why, but that particular progression does it for me every time.  Finding quasi-universal patterns like this is a fun side-quest in my search for a playable Glass Bead Game....

WISHES

1. Believe it or not, I'm still working on a piece of short fiction that I first got excited about in 2014.  The first draft is about halfway done, and I've gotten some feedback on that half from the best writer I know.  I've got my fingers crossed that I'll grab enough time to finish it this year.

2. Yes, I'm also continuing to add notes to my corpus (corpi?) of thoughts about: (a) the Glass Bead Game, and (b) my own D&D retro-clone Homebrew '82.   Low low priority these days, but still going.

3. I've been slowly working my way through the 33 short stories in Dangerous Visions, the ground-breaking book edited by the late Harlan Ellison and published the year I was born.  This anthology exemplified the "New Wave" of the time, and it was only this year -- after collecting Harlan's works for the past few decades -- that I found a copy at a used bookstore.  As I read each one, I'm writing spoiler-free mini-reviews, and ranking the stories into 3 groups (skip, okay, wow).  I'll publish them on the blog when I'm through the whole thing.

4. I'm kinda sorta still doing tumblr, even after the controversial purge of NSFW content earlier this month, but I'm mainly just collating and reblogging stuff I find cool.  I'll occasionally scan images from old comics or magazines that I haven't found online, or maybe post some of my numismatic musings (see above), but I'm not a super-user by any means.

I hope everyone who got to the bottom of this post has an awesome 2019!

Janus Review

It's been a while since I've done a January blogiversary post.  Servitor Ludi was started on January 2, 2011.  It blows my mind to think of this weird project as 5 years old, but the data is the data...

The last two years have been busy in other areas... 2014 filled with uncertainty, interviews, and preparing for a leap into the unknown.  2015 being the first year in a new job and new state.  Are things settled down enough to get back to the 80-ish posts per year of the early days?  Probably not, but I do hope to inch my way back up to that neighborhood.

I recently got an idea for a theme for the infamous April A-to-Z Challenge.  I've been down that road three times before, and it's always been rewarding.  Stay tuned for a definite announcement once I've pondered it a bit more.

I've got more content queued up for the Youtube channel, and a few other ideas for posts clunking around, but I don't have any other grand plans.  Over the past few months, my family and I have been binging our way through the 1993-1998 TV series Babylon 5, which I may write about here when we're done.  Other than that, I guess you can just expect more of the same -- games and geekiness, all with a sprinkling of esoterica.

I hope 2016 brings you all joy and fulfillment!

Whose Tube? My Tube!

The day is here.  Here is the big announcement:  I've started a YouTube channel called "Cygnus' Magic Words."

The URL may change eventually, but for now it's the following mush of characters:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGAqpg-eqicLiaFwQW-iZKA

The tag line is "Magic words for the soul."  More from the channel description:

Since 2011, I've been blogging at servitorludi.blogspot.com about games, philosophy, and whatever other weird bits of esoterica I can think of. I'm no master of the Game, just a servant who wants to see what the future holds for both the high-concept stuff (like Hesse's Glass Bead Game) and my old favorites (classic tabletop roleplaying games like D&D).

Here on Youtube I'm exploring another aspect of that weirdness: the magic of WORDS. On my blog I've posted a lot about my favorite creative people, many of whom are wordsmiths of some sort. Posting excerpts of text is fun, but sometimes the words need to be heard by the ear. Sit back, close your eyes, and see how the words will change you.

Right now I've got four videos up.  You won't see me directly, but you'll hear me reading a variety of things -- both poetry and prose -- that I hope will inspire and move you.  What you'll see with your eyes, in most videos, is a sequence of Kandinsky-like artworks that I've generated via a randomizing computer program.  Why?  No reason other than it was fun to make.  (I'm not the first person to think of doing this, but I haven't cribbed from anyone else's algorithms. I'm still tweaking and optimizing.)

That's all for now.  If you're inclined, go have a listen.  Please let me know if there's anything that you'd enjoy hearing, too.

Teaser & Quiz

Two quick things...

First, Cygnus has got something kind of big up his sleeve.  A new project will be revealed very soon.  (Well, maybe in a week or two; we'll see.)  I'm not quite ready to spill the beans about it, but let me give you all one hint:

Mondo.

Second, I'm curious if any of your memories might be jogged by a little trivia obscura. Long-time readers will know that I'm obsessed with signs, symbols, and alphabets of all kinds.  There is one set of symbols that I've had in the back of my mind for almost 40 years now.  They made their first appearance in popular culture in the 1970s.  Thanks to the internet, I've finally been able to reconstruct the full set accurately:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell me where these symbols come from.  (I won't ask you what they mean, because I'm not quite sure about that, myself!)

A to Z Theme Reveal

Please, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.  What's that he's saying?  "You can't do a theme reveal post if you've already revealed your theme over a month ago!"  Shhhh, Wizard.

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Starting next Wednesday, I'll be doing A-to-Z themed posts on the theme of MANIFESTOS.  I've posted my calendar on the right-hand side of the blog.  Since teaching will still be kicking my butt quite regularly between now and May, I've given myself a bit more slack: 3 posts a week instead of 6.  I hope you all stick around after the challenge month is over to see how it all turns out.

Why manifestos?  They're tiny packages filled to the brim with passion, meaning, and truth!  Or at least some interesting person's view of how best to pursue passion, meaning, and truth.  As I mentioned a few posts ago, I'll broaden it out a bit to also include some manifesto-ish songs, poems, essays, and codes of life.  Some are just pure linkbait lists from the centuries before BuzzFeed.  :-)

Other notes:

Although I'm avoiding the manifestos that make me sick to the stomach -- and I've definitely come across some that do -- I'm not going to the opposite extreme of including only the ones that I agree with completely.  I'm trying to not shy away from some that I'm not quite sure how to feel about.  My goal isn't to endorse the content of every single one, of course.  Take from them what you want.

I'm also not an expert in many of the manifestos that I'll discuss.  Some are long-time faves, but others I just learned about in preparing for the challenge.

It's funny how many of them can be classified as being on one side or the other of a particular tug-of-war that's been going on for all of human history. The two sides in that war are:

Be nice to one another

versus

Do your own thing

By exploring my 26 chosen examples, I'm hoping to see new ways that we can reconcile those two clashing impulses... or maybe even come to understand them as not contradictory opposites after all?  We'll see!

Taking the A-to-Z plunge!

I have no idea if it was the smart thing to do, but I did it anyway!

I just signed up for the 2015 Blogging from A to Z challenge.  After doing the challenge in 2012 and 2013 (see post summaries here), I took a break in 2014.  Although I'm starting a new job this year, I also had a moment of inspiration a few months ago that pretty much decided the perfect set of topics to write about...

Thus, this year's theme is an A-to-Z of Fiery Manifestos.

"What?" you're thinking, "Is Cygnus going political?"  Although I'll profile a few manifestos that had specific governmental changes in mind, I'm aiming to cast my net much more broadly.  So I'm also including declarations of principles, iconoclastic essays, some awe-inspiring poems and songs, and other sundry "laws of life" that people have felt strongly about over the years.  Not all manifestos are called manifestos.

It's the passion that's the unifying principle, here.  If a person has had enough insight to compress their pursuit of Meaning and Truth into a short document -- and if they do it with enough red-cheeked verve that it inspires others to get off their duffs and change their lives -- then I'm there.  I've always been a sucker for these things.

Right now, I'm planning on breaking one of the cardinal rules of the A-to-Z game: the calendar.  With everything that I have to do at work between now and April, I think it's best to plan spreading my 26 posts over more than one month.  I'll start on April 1st as always, but my current plan is to do 3 posts a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), which will have me hitting the letter "Z" around the end of May.  I hope that doesn't break the brains of the good people in charge.  But, well, being a bit of a rebel certainly fits in with my theme!  :-)

Very Inspiring Blogger Award

Many thanks go out to the Armchair Squid for nominating this little corner of the internet for the Very Inspiring Blogger award.  If you're not reading Squid's insightful thoughts on books, comics, movies, Star Trek, family life, and tennis, then what the heck's wrong with you? by all means go check him out!

Rules!  There are rules, right?

1. Thank the person who nominated you, and link to their blog.  (Yup!)
2. Display the award logo.  (These are easy, right?)
3. Nominate 15 other bloggers (more or less) and provide a link where they may be found.  (Hmm, getting harder...)
4. Go to their blog, leave a comment to let them know they have been nominated.   (Still harder...)
5. Mention three things that inspired you the most during the past few weeks.

Oh, let's do that last one next.

First, there's my lovely wife, Mrs. Cygnus.  While the boy and I have been out in our new, Rocky Mountain Way locale for the last few weeks, she has been back on the east coast, getting the old house ready to sell, finishing up her job, and packing up the remaining stuff to be shipped out very soon.  Inspiring doesn't even begin to cover it.  She'll be rejoining us this weekend.

Second.  I'm teaching 30 undergraduates about outer space this semester.  The room I teach in has an old-style chalkboard (those are getting harder to find these days) and the chalk they give us is quite messy and powdery.  After one class of multiple erasings, it's hard to see the cloudy, almost-whitened board.  They don't seem to regularly wash the things, either, so as the week goes on, it gets cloudier and whiter.  It's kind of a running joke in class.

So what did I find last week when I came in to start teaching?  Three of my students up at the board with sponges and a water bucket they must have "borrowed" from some nearby supply closet.  We had a clean blackboard that day, I tell you!

(Was this strictly "inspiring?"  I don't know, but it sure warmed my heart.)

Third, is something that I'm not allowed to talk about yet.  Sorry!

My nominations:

In recent years, the term "blogging" has seen quite a bit of cognitive drift.  Thus, I'm not sure if many of the places I visit online are officially called blogs or not.  Let me just give you a list of links to some of these fun places, and hopefully they'll make your days better.

• I have no idea what the title Xanthor's Perfect Cromulence means, but it's a Tumblr blog full of retro-awesome science fiction imagery and factoids.
• I know I've blogged about fellow Glass Bead Game enthusiast Ron Hale-Evans before, but I don't think I've pointed you to his Pinboard page, on which he posts daily lists of URLs that he's found interesting.  I usually discover or learn something interesting whenever I catch up on his linking.
• In the "definitely not a blog" department, I've been enchanted by a series of stop-motion animation videos on youtube.  Doctor Puppet gives us new adventures (usually wordless, but narrated) of Doctor Who and his companions, in adorable puppet form.  A must-see for those who, um, put their hand in the hand of the man from Gallifrey.
• Jon Peterson, who runs the blog Playing at the World, is a professional historian of wargames and role-playing games.  He doesn't update the blog often, but each entry is a treasure-strewn dungeon crawl of historical baubles.
• If you're a fan of humor that is sometimes grotesque, usually NSFW, and often head-scratchingly bizarre, please pay a visit to LiarTown, USA.
• A lot of people are already reading io9.com, a blog about "science, culture, and the world of tomorrow," but I thought I'd give them a plug anyway.
• Oh, Porky, where art thou?  For purely selfish reasons, I wish this old-school gaming mogul would start blogging more frequently again.  His insights on games, narratives, philosophy, and cosmic weirdness are beyond compare.

Only seven?  Sorry, that's as many as I can think of right now.  Many of these sites I've never commented on, and I'm probably not going to start because of this award.  Still, by all means visit them and show them some love.

Thanks again for the award, Squid!

Archipelago of Last Years

Well now, it's been a freaky end to a freaky year.  Today was the day the movers delivered (most) of our stuff to our new place in the Rockies.  The word "most" in the last sentence was the source of some of the freakiness, but all is well.

I'm reminded of the Rankin-Bass TV special Rudolph's Shiny New Year.  In that story, once a year ends, its elderly embodiment (who starts out as a Baby New Year) goes into retirement on his or her own private island.  I'm not sure I'd want an everlasting island to commemorate all the drama and stress of my own 2014, but it seems to be leading to somewhere good for my family and me.  So maybe it ought to be cherished, sleepless nights and all.

For this blog, 2014 saw a bit of a slow-down.  There were only 35-ish posts, which is a bit less than half my average of about 80 for each of the previous three years.  Still, I was able to participate in some extremely fun blog-hops, including Squid's Cephalopod Coffeehouse, the nostalgia-filled Then and Now (in which we revisited old faves to see how they held up), and our own Songs of Summer.

I finally managed to work up a full play-by-play example of a "Glass Bead Game."  It was based loosely around Beethoven's 9th symphony, and it used Charles Cameron's fantastically easy-to-grok "Hipbone" format.  Here's a run-down of the 10 moves in that game:

• Intro & Moves 1, 2, 3  (the Ode to Joy & friends)
  
• Move 4  (laugh, clown, laugh)
  
• Move 5  (Astrifiammante)
  
• Moves 6, 7  (Olympic-level magic)
• Move 8  (Rob Reiner's masterpiece)
• Move 9  (a fungus among us)
• Move 10  (the Walrus was you)

On the fantasy role-playing game front, I didn't get to work much on Homebrew '82, my own fantasy of what this kind of game should be like.  However, I did make some progress in figuring out how I'd run such a game... the making of detailed maps turned out to be not too terrible a task... and I realized that much of the day-to-day world management expected of a Dungeon Master should be outsourced to some very personalized software.

For 2015, the big decision I have in front of me is whether or not to forge ahead with the infamous April A-Z Challenge.  In the previous post, I mused about some ideas for it that came shooting into my brain unbidden last month.  I'll probably wait a bit, to see how drained I get by the first few weeks and months of my new job.  :-)  There's also that fiction piece that's been beckoning to me since Halloween.  Whatever happens, I think it's going to be an exciting 12 months!

Have a Hap-Hap-Happy New Year, everyone!

Murphy's Law: Halloween edition

Holy frijoles, I can't believe it's been a month to the day since I last posted.  Getting our house packed up for our upcoming move has taken up nearly all of my free time... and we still don't know precisely where we'll be hanging out the "Cygnus Family" shingle come January.

I got the urge to post because, wouldn't'cha know it, fate picks now for the following.  No more than 36 hours ago, I got the first glimmer of an idea to write a story -- part sci-fi, part sci-fact, part semi-autobio.  I've done short form fiction on the blog before (urp), but with emphasis on the short.  This thing is likely to end up being longer than a typical blog post; it may also blow past the canonical 7,500 word boundary between "short story" and "novelette."

I've already amassed something like 2,000 words on the outline alone.  It won't let me alone.

Ah, we'll see if this momentum continues.  But now, to commemorate the impending night of the rending of the veil between worlds, let me just point you to another story, this one completely wordless, that I think captures the heart of the All Hallows season nicely.  With cute kitties!  :-)

Overdue

Holy crap, has it been more than a month since my last post?  If I searched, I could probably find myself saying "life has been crazy" about a dozen times over the life of this blog... but this hiatus has been living proof.

Hmm, where to pick up the golden thread?  In the last post, I teased about something Star Trek themed that I found at a New Jersey flea market.  They were 'zines!

I have a soft spot for these typewritten, photostatted, fan-produced gems. They were the forerunner to today's fan fiction forums, and they highlighted the true love that fans can muster for their favorite imagined worlds.  The two zines that I found were from the "movie era" -- specifically, the 2nd issue of More Missions, More Myths (1985) and the stand-alone story The Honorable Sacrifice (1981).  They're probably not in any way valuable or collectible... but this was the first time I've seen any Star Trek fanzine "out in the wild."  For $2.50 a pop, how could I go wrong?  :-)

I regret to say that I still haven't been able to start reading these stories, but I'll post if I have insights.  On first glance, I wasn't surprised to see Spock as the primary focus of most stories, but McCoy was much more a major player, throughout, than I thought he'd be.

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Just about any "other news" I can think of to report seems to revolve around the Doctor...

• We're only a few episodes into Peter Capaldi's run as the 12th Doctor.  So far, I don't think my prediction for him to be all empathic, intuitive, and Cancerian is holding up too well, but we'll see how the season progresses.  Still, Cancers are supposed to have major sweet-tooths, and we saw this Doctor noshing on something creamy and delicious early in the latest episode.  Good thing he kept his utensil with him...

• I was surprised to see 10th Doctor David Tennant rambling about his love for the almost-forgotten 1980s band The Housemartins in this clip.  (It's labeled a "deleted scene," but it was actually in the episode... just playing silently in the background while he's riffing.)  But, to the point: the Housemartins rock!
• My son, just starting his second year of middle school, recently completed a Language Arts assignment to write a multi-paragraph story.  He brought home his writing, and I was proud as all get-out to see a developing story about how River Song hid a secret message in the Declaration of Independence, to lure the Doctor to come back to 1776 and fight off a Dalek invasion at Independence Hall.  He even had Amy Pond saying "Oi!"  :-)

Anyway, I hope to be able to post a bit more frequently as the fall goes on.  Allons-y!

Ceád Mile Fáilte

A couple of interesting news items today.

First, I've noticed that the total view count odometer for Servitor Ludi has just "turned over" at 100,000.  This number is small potatoes for a three-and-a-half year old blog, but I'm proud nevertheless.  Thanks so much to all readers past and present.

Second, I ought to announce that in January 2015, my family and I will be moving.  I've gotten a new job in Colorado, and it looks like our stretch of roughly 18 years in New England are just about over.  That pretty much matches the only other span of time I've spent in one place -- birth to age 18, in New Jersey.  (To quote Archie Bunker, "Nobody wants to live there, but someone has to!")

Does English have a word that simultaneously means "excited," "optimistic," and "nervous" -- with a hint of "scared out of our wits" thrown in for good measure?  Well, let's call it kltpzyxm.  We're quite kltpzyxm about this next step.  :-)

Post title:  Irish for "a hundred thousand welcomes."

New Blogfest: Songs of Summer

Ah, summer.  Sunny mornings full of possibility, lazy poolside afternoons, and rockin' nights lit by tiki torches.  What songs bring back the sunscreen and beach-sand to you?  What songs defined your one perfect summer, be it decades ago or just getting started with today's solstice?

Welcome to the Songs of Summer bloghop, hosted by the Armchair Squid, Cygnus, and Suze.  On Friday, July 11, 2014, please join us by posting 5 of your favorite summer songs, and sharing some memories about them.  Maybe between us, we can build the perfect soundtrack to accompany us over the next few months.  If possible, include links so we can hear these gems.  And, if you're in the southern hemisphere, join us to dance those winter blues away!

Please sign up to the link list on the site of our friendly neighborhood cephalopod, then post on July 11.

See you there!

Don't ask me why

Argh... I really don't intend to let the blog sit for weeks at a spell.  Last month I groused about not having enough time, and I suppose that's still true.  But I think I'm also in the middle of a blogger's block of sorts... nothing much seems to solidify as the subject of an interesting enough post.  Still, it does me good to "core dump" my thoughts here every so often, even if there's no über-significant theme to it...

• I'm planning on posting something fun to the Then and Now blog-fest on June 13, hosted by a quartet of awesome people.  The idea is to spotlight a movie that was a part of your life when you were young, but now which adulthood lets us view through a different lens.  There are so many movies to choose from, and I still don't know which one will rise to the top.
• This fall, the TV networks seem to be planning not one, but two new shows about 1960s astronauts and the space race.  I don't think either one looks particularly great, but this news made me recall my plans to design a space-race themed game.  I'll probably be digging into those outlines and drafts to see what can be done with them.
• The comments in Squid's post about the Star Trek episode Journey to Babel took a left turn into discussion of colors and synaesthesia -- the unconscious mixing up of sensory stimuli.  Although I've never experienced it directly (i.e., tasted the color blue, or heard the smell of roses), I have always associated specific colors with the 26 letters of the alphabet and the 10 digits.  These were set in stone in my brain at a very young age, and they haven't changed at all over the decades.  They've been helpful in memorizing names and dates, I think.  I also once attempted to render these mental colors in bits and bytes.  I'll post them here, and if anyone can use them to divine any truisms or secrets about my inner mental workings, I'd love to know... :-)

• The title of this post was inspired by the song that's been going through my head for the past few days.  (Hmm, much more about Cygnus' gray matter in this post than I anticipated.)  Actually, the more I thought about the lyrics, the less sense they made.  Oh well, you can't go wrong with the Piano Man...

All your life you had to stand in line
Still you're standing on your feet
All your choices made you change your mind
Now your calendar's complete
Don't wait for answers
Just take your chances
Don't ask me why

Slouching towards Spring

Sigh... there are still piles of snow here and there, refusing to leave.  It kind of mimics my own internal sluggishness regarding the blog these days.  The rest of life occupies roughly 25 hours a day, leaving little negative space for this here enclave of ludology.

Nevertheless, I'd like to make time for a miscellaneous update, if only to peek my own head up above the waves, like a periscope, to get my bearings.

• Last week, my family and I finished watching the single season of Space: Above and Beyond, a phenomenally well-written 1995-1996 sci-fi TV series that should have gone on longer.  We've now just started in with the Eccleston season of Doctor Who.
• I'm so not a computer game person, but for a couple weeks I've been mildly addicted to 2048, an popular browser-based abstract puzzle game.  I haven't yet beat it (current high score: 20,980), but I'm balmed to know that there's SCIENCE behind why it's so addictive.
• I've had my final two moves in the "Ode To Joy Game" (see the most recent post) planned for at least a month -- with game-board images already "in the can" -- but I haven't been able to get the text of the posts written yet.  Hopefully soon.
• Although I had an awesome time doing the April A-Z challenge in 2012 and 2013, I didn't manage to think of a good enough theme this year, so I'm taking a break.
• Okay, was anyone else as upset as I was about last week's series finale of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother?  I don't think I've mentioned here that this was one of the only weekly sitcoms that I watched pretty regularly.  Its ending was well-written, kind of shocking, and will surely continue to be divisive amongst fans.  I'll link to a (spoiler-filled) article or two that reflect some of my own feelings about it, and just leave it at... poor Tracy McConnell!
• It's been a while since I've done any work on my Homebrew '82 role-playing game rules variant, or on the associated "Avalon Lost" campaign setting (scroll down to posts 13-18 here).  However, a few days ago I did get, all in a flash, a mindwarping idea for the final adventure in the Avalon Lost universe.  I might write it up for the blog, as long as I remember (if I ever start DMing in the future) not to tell my players that this blog exists.  :-)
• Later this week comes April 8, 9, and 10, three special holidays in Aleister Crowley's new religious tradition of Thelema.  It's the 110th anniversary of the writing of the Book of the Law.  In recent years I've fallen out with my own tradition of reading the three chapters on their associated days, but I'm planning to make time for it this year.

That's all for now, friends.  More soon.

Quo Vadis, Cygnus?

Excuse me, it seems someone has stolen my [blogging] mojo....

Here's the thing: I've got no shortage of plans and projects for this blog.  But I've also got work -- that's been quite draining lately -- and home -- that isn't draining but also takes its own chunk of the day.  Because of these, my blogging time ends up being concentrated into a few hours right before bed, when I'm usually just in the mood to browse.  Certainly not to write, and usually not to comment that much, either.

So the question is:  how to get back into the groove?  I just took a little stroll through memory lane (i.e., past posts) and reminded myself of some of the projects that I'm hoping to get back to:

• Although I haven't yet dipped back into Surfaces and Essences since my interim review, I do intend to finish that sucker and post my Glass Bead musings.
• I also hope that said musings will help lead to more ideas for a real-world variant on Hermann Hesse's chimerical game.  It may be helpful to continue posting more mini-reviews of other peoples' attempts to do that, too (see here and here and here). There are a few other neat ones out there that I haven't talked about yet.
• On the RPG front, I really want to complete Volume 1 of the Homebrew '82 rule book.  The current version contains 53 pages all done and nicely laid out, followed by about 20 pages of rough notes that need some tender care.
• In a much more embryonic state are my ideas for a kind of Right Stuff RPG, where players take on the role of hotshot astronauts at the dawn of the space age, and follow them into one of many possible futures.

The problem with many of these things is that I assign them to the category of "stuff that requires deep thought."  In other words, I have the prejudice that they require fresh daylight time when I've got a nice stretch of hours in front of me.  In other other words, I've got some unreasonable expectations, there.  :-)

The posts that I do tend to churn out are those that, for one reason or another, I don't assign to that "deep thought" category.  Maybe there's some ironic humor in there, since many of my posts probably end up being pretty esoteric and introspective.  But I don't pre-judge them to require the kind of white-hot spotlight of concentration that is reserved for "serious" writing.

So it's looking that I've got two mini-goals for myself...

1. Trick my brain into thinking about the writing of my preferred projects as one-off blog posts, and not components of the Most Important Work of All Time.  Now that I think of it, I wonder if a simple solution could be to just do that writing in the very Blogger composition tool that I'm typing into right now, instead of in the LaTeX-linked text editor that I associate with deep thought (and with work)?  I'll try it.

2. Start a new series of blog posts on something fun and light, so that I can keep to my goal of posting roughly once or twice a week.  Of course, me being me, I know I'll find a way to make these posts pretty esoteric and strange.  My current idea is to profile some strange alphabets and writing systems.  I really love those things.  It's related to what I had fun with for my 2012 April A-Z posts, and I did do one post sorta like this back in January.

(What say you, good readers?  Is it fair for me to ask if you have any specific posts of mine that you think might make for a fun series?)

Anyway, apologies for the navel-gazing.  I do think that writing this all out has helped me to find a bit of extra purpose to continue on....  And, hey, there's that mojo.

Groovy, baby.

May activities

After the whirlwind month of April, I hope that my posting to the blog won't take too much of a nose-dive.  Other arenas of life are demanding their fair share of time, too...  To keep things lively, there are two community activities that I'm planning to do at the end of this month:

(1) Cephalopod Coffeehouse

The esteemed Armchair Squid is hosting an online book club, in which each participant can choose their own favorite book (which was read during the current month) and post a review of it on the last day of the month.  I just started reading the new book by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking.  It's kind of a beast, though -- 592 pages chock full of philosophy and linguistics.  I hope to have it finished by the end of the month!  It looks fantastic, and it may end up being useful "glass bead game research" for me, too.

(2) Obscure RPG Appreciation Day

Hosted by the enigmatic Catacomb Librarian, this old-school role-playing game celebration aims to shine a light on the lesser-known, and hopefully not yet completely forgotten, games that often don't get their due in the shadow of their more famous older brother, Dungeons & Dragons.

The aim is to post a review (or rant, or some other related material) about a fantasy-themed RPG published between 1975 and 1989, on May 30.  That's just one day prior to Squid's book club deadline, so I hope to have this one 'in the can' a bit sooner than that.  I've identified my game, but won't be revealing its identity until the day of the post.  :-)

Licht, Liebe, und Leben

The fantabulous Yaz Pistachio has granted me the Liebster blog award. These are fun occasions to share a bit about yourself and build connections to one's fellows in the blogosphere.  About a year ago, I got another of these bloggy awards from Amanda Heitler (does anyone know what became of her?), and at that time, I punted on the fun facts about myself.  Time to make up for that!

So the thing is to provide 11 random facts about myself, answer the 11 questions posed by the granter of the award, nominate another 11 bloggers, and pose them 11 new questions. I don't think I'll hit all 44 of those marks, but let's see...

Eleven Fun Facts About Cygnus:

1. For about a year in college, I was the theater critic for our university newspaper.

2. I'm half Irish, one quarter English, and one quarter Italian.  My son has to sum up his ethnic origins in thirty seconds.  :-)

3. I juggle.

4. Ever since I can remember, I've had kind of a sixth sense regarding old-style television sets (the ones with vacuum tubes, I suppose).  I could tell if one was on within a radius of 30 or 40 feet, even if it was in another room, around corners, with the sound turned all the way down, etc.  It's an unmistakable fuzzy, staticky resonance that fills the whole body.

5. If I ever join a religion that requires me to face the most sacred place in the world while praying, I'd have a hard time choosing between Harvard's Widener Library and Moe's Books in Berkeley.  Two of the choicest concentrations of holy objects in the world.

6. Like most boys, I had disagreements with my Dad growing up.  But he made Mjolnir for me.  We're good.

7. There's a line in the REO Speedwagon song "Keep On Lovin' You" that I misunderstood for most of my life.  The singer likens his subject to a snake, who's "All coiled up and hissin."  For the life of me, I always thought it said "All coiled up in hearsay."  I still like my version better.

8. Because of strange scheduling conflicts and coincidences, my wife and I defended our dissertations and obtained our respective advanced degrees -- at different universities -- on the same day.  It's crappy that we couldn't be there for each other, but at least the stress was over and done with in one go.

9. One of the strangest places I've ever been was Vigeland Park in Oslo, Norway.  Hundreds of oddly distinctive statues -- some of which reminded me of Ally McBeal's creepy dancing baby -- all created by the same artist, dot these stately grounds.  I suppose part of the strangeness for me was that I was there around 11:00 pm, in the month of June, and it was still light out.

10.  I don't really speak German, but I can recite (and sing off-key) the first few verses of Schiller's Ode to Joy in the original.  At least one German said that I sound like a native speaker when doing it.  Just don't ask me "Wie geht es Ihnen?" or anything complicated like that!  :-)

11. There's no place in the world I'd rather be on a Saturday night than home watching Doctor Who with my lovely wife and adorable son.


Eleven Questions from Ms. Pistachio:

1. Why do you blog?
In 2011, I started this blog because my excitement about games (both the old-school role playing variety and the philosophical Glass Bead variety) was peaking, and I needed to gush about them and explore their connections.  In 2013, I keep blogging because I haven't yet plumbed the depths of those connections, and I keep finding new, fascinating connections -- of the people variety.

2. What is your goal for the next six months?
Get back to 4-5 days a week on the treadmill.  :-)

3. The next year?
Successfully enrich young minds.  (I'm slated to teach courses in Spring 2014 and Fall 2014...)

4. The next five years?
If I really am serious about constructing the Glass Bead Game, I'd probably better learn to play a musical instrument.  (So many people see music as the glue that holds the Universal Language of All Ideas together...)  I think I can trick myself by actually taking the plunge and buying some kind of portable electronic keyboard.  Once good money has been paid, I'd feel too guilty if I didn't start piano lessons on it!

5. If you could have any meal for dinner tonight, anywhere in the world, what would you have?
On special occasions, my wife makes a Szechuan peanut butter noodle dish that has the most exquisite flavor combo.  Cannot be topped!

6. Who are your influences?
Part of that story is being told in my April A-Z posts.  The others were a whole host of teachers, advisors, colleagues, and friends.  See #11 below for one of them. 

7. Have you ever had a recurring (sleeping) dream? If so, care to share it?
There are actually 5 or 6 that make an appearance every so often.  They all seem to be either visits to places that do not really exist, or memories of times that did not really happen.  (As you may be able to guess from fun fact #5, many of the places involve secret sources of rare books!)  These dreams feel utterly real when having them, and when waking up there's often a brief time when I have to sort out my memories a bit.  Am I sure that I've never been there, or done that?

8. Without looking it up, do you know what your birth stone and zodiac sign are?
Leo, and I'd guess the stone is golden yellow in color (topaz?), since Leo is ruled by the Sun.  [Bzzt... nope.  But what do peridot and sardonyx have to do with a solar lion?]
 
9. What was the first name of the first person you kissed/who kissed you?
Carla.

10. What is your favorite pizza topping?
Oh, Squid precognitively stole my answer.  How can it be anything other than bacon?
 
11. Most interesting teacher you ever had?
Well, the most interesting was the geometry teacher who encouraged us to steal spoons from the restaurant at which we had an awards banquet.  But let me go with "best" teacher instead.  In high school, we had a split course in anthropology and sociology, taught by the gentlest soul I've ever known.  Mr. K (first name Gyula) was polymathic in knowledge and introduced me to many concepts that changed how I thought about the world.  Even well into college I looked back on the notes I took from his class.  But what's burned into my memory is his consolation of a girl who was going through a rough time.  A few kids were sitting around a table -- study hall, I think -- but none of us knew what to say after hearing what she was going through.  Mr. K kind of spoke to all of us, but really was addressing her.  He told a few anecdotes, some about his own life, one from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, and ended simply with "You know I believe in you."  My summary doesn't do it justice, but trust me -- magic.


Eleven Other Bloggers to Get the Award:

Glurp... this is where I have start to have problems.  Many of the ones I'd choose were already a part of my group of 11, and Squid picked off a few others.  What say you good readers just look to the right at my blog roll and pick a few new places to visit.  I know it's not to easy to "Follow" other bloggers any more (i.e., there's no longer an easy "follow button" at the top of the screen; at least for me), but please make the effort if you discover someone interesting.  Many of these folks are old-school role-playing game enthusiasts with streaks of creativity that just won't stop.

I'm going to pass on creating the 11 new questions, since I'm not explicitly tagging anyone with them.

Oh, and the title of this post is German for Light, Love, and Life -- gotta balance being a Liebster with being a Lichtster and a Lebenster (if that makes any sense).  This phrase was also the title of a mythical magical lodge that supposedly started the whole Victorian English occult revival in the 1800s.

A-Z: Here come the weirdos

April is almost here!  On Monday I begin spamming posting once per day, except Sundays, on my theme of "An A to Z of Masters of the Imagination that You Oughtta Know About."  Each day will see a brief profile of a super-creative artist, author, magician, or whatever, along with some choice quotes or snippets that show you why I'm so enamored of their output.

A couple of warnings...  First, I hope not to disappoint my RPG-playing readers by posting a lot of stuff that may not be quickly adaptable to the game table.  I'm taking the long view, I guess, that good inspiration from these creative weirdos can be the seed of a lot of quality gaming down the road, even if the ideas may need time to stew.

Second, I'm not sure how well I'll be following the detailed advice of the good folks at the A-Z Challenge.  I will do a post on each letter on its proper day, but beyond that, everyone has different ideas about what makes for good blog posts -- and good bloggers!  Caveat emptor.  :-)

Lastly, I wanted to put up some kind of teaser for whom I'll be posting about, without actually giving away the names.  I realized that 26 entries is just about right for the number of songs on a classic double album.  Thus, to give you a taste, here's the track list for that album, with song titles crafted from little bits and pieces of each days' post (or just random factoids about the person being profiled).  Feel free to speculate about the identities of my weirdos in the comments, but I won't confirm or deny until the time is right...

Side I (A-G)
Fern-colored Eyes
Ding Dong Daddy
Stereophany
Alice and Bill on the Beach
Les Beaux Temps
Fortress of Strength
Blue Food

Side II (H-M)

Djam Karet
Graphomania
Fourth World
The Mauve Zone
Ruby Red
Joyful Sitting

Side III (N-T)
Professor Pratt
The Only Lasting Truth
No Escape from Growth
Who Else?
Rustle of Umbel-Bloom
Darktouch
Omega

Side IV (U-Z)

Cygnus and Serpentarius

Take the Phone off the Hook

Kosmos

Whoosh

Memory Palace

Mystic Mathematicians

Back From the Future

I never officially signed up for the Back From the Future blog hop, but after seeing one entry today, an idea popped into my head.  But first, da rules:

You're up before dawn on a Saturday when the doorbell rings. You haven't brewed your coffee so you wonder if you imagined the sound. Plonking the half-filled carafe in the sink, you go to the front door and cautiously swing it open. No one there. As you cast your eyes to the ground, you see a parcel addressed to you ... from you. 

You scoop it up and haul it inside, sensing something legitimate despite the extreme oddness of the situation. Carefully, you pry it open. Inside is a shoebox -- sent from ten years in the future -- and it's filled with items you have sent yourself. 

What's in it?

Just a single piece of paper.  At the top is a short note signed by a symbol that makes me know with certainty who sent it.  It says:

"In a year or two, you'll have the ability to install a program on your computer that will alert you immediately (with as loud a sound as you desire) if and when you type a certain phrase.  Install it, and make it scream bloody murder if it detects the following keystrokes:

I'd really like to *, but *

It doesn't matter what the asterisk wild-cards are.  Just freakin' do it."

Below that note is a scan of the abstract of a scientific paper that's dated from the early 2020s.  I read it once, then I read it again, then I hit my forehead with my hand.

Then I get to work.