Friday Night Magic

Anyone with a google search should know that fedoras are out.

Look, I'm not trendy, my daily outfit usually consists of  a brown bomber jacket, (with a fur collar) a mono colored t-shirt,(of the black, lighter black, white, or blue varieties) darkwash jeans and worker boots; but even an untrendy, unstylish guy like me knows that fedoras are a no-go.

Anyway, as gawkery as that sounded, I bring this up because I was at Friday Night Magic.

I like Magic, I like it a lot actually. I try to draft 2-3 times a month. I'm working on a pauper deck, and I'm 3 cards away from finishing my Soul Sister deck.  (I'm trying to convince someone to trade me for an 3 Archangels of Thune)

But the two things I dislike about Magic, are the business model, (Booster packs are scary and are basically a slot machine. The idea of paying $40 for a card is absurd to me too. That's two weeks of gas for me, or half of my grocery bill.) And the non-friend group people who play it. Some of those people wear Fedoras.

It isn't new to talk about what Fedoras mean to people, especially in an internet savvy age. But man, you'd think people would try to not to be a fedora guy.

While sitting around waiting for the draft to start, my friends and I (me, 3 guys and a gal) were approached by this dude.

A dude with tan cargo shorts, black tennis shoes, pieced ears with goat horn earrings, a leather fedora , a shirt one size too big that said "MAKE ME A SANDWICH" on it, and said

"I'm starting a game of Cards Against Humanity, want to play?"

We said no. Easiest decision I've ever made.

And I hate Cards Against Humanity.

Oh and a plus, my friend bought two tickets for a Neutral Milk Hotel concert, and gave me one as a gift.

Still here

I'm still here!

I've been playing Magic lately. Not so much buying new cards and drafting, but deck building.

I wanted to see how "standard" (type 2) worked, and while it feels balanced, paying $40 for cardboard is crazy to me. Actually I should talk about how I got to that point.

I've played fighting games for a long time. By far and away my favorite style of competitive game. A 1 vs 1 game about martial arts involving strategy, reflexes, psychology, problem solving, and practice, that's perfect, plus I also adore fighting game character designs. (Mark of the Wolves Terry Bogard <3)

As the years went on, I couldn't get my friends into fighting games, and with few games having legal GGPO netcode, I got out of it, and switched to Magic, a game my friends like.

So I play Magic, I love drafting, but that's about it. Deck building is a lot of fun, but I don't know, I needed to ramble.

End of the week post

Hey everyone! Turns out that the Yoga I've been keeping up with has helped slim me down a bit. I'm not the skinniest guy, (thank you lumberjack genetics) but I can tell that I feel better and look skinnier. (see above photo.)

I haven't been as diligent at programming as I want to be, but as of right now, I've been working on cleaning up everything. My apartment, my folders, my financial records, etc. By doing this, I'm going to set everything in motion from an even cleaner state.

On the other note, Aces Wild is still amazing, and I asked a kind of friend of a friend with a streaming audience to try and plug it, in which he did, so hey bargaining!

Forward Path

I went to my library, to look for a programming book, and as per usual, my one book I was hoping to grab, ended up having 5 cousins to go with it.

Not only did I get a programming book, I ended up getting 3 folklore books, and a book about fast food, and the history of fast food. (the short of it: the fast food industry has always been a gross, creepy, greed-filled thing.)

On another note, I won't be livestreaming today, Metal Gear Rising game came out today, and two of my internet friends are streaming it, so I doubt anyone will want to watch me play Crimzon Clover.

Speaking of which, Crimzon Clover is actually fantastic! Totally worth playing for any maniac shooter fan.

PS here's my TBR pile
Beginning Programming
Fast Food Nation
African Folklore
Feminist Folklore
Folklore of the Sea
Shambling Towards Hiroshima

Listening to: Crystal Castles - Vietnam 

Good Day

Yesterday went really well! It started with getting a giant chunk of homework done. (despite not understanding parts of it) then it transitioned into researching programming stuff, writing a "Hello
World" program, and being able to do a pretty difficult (for me) yoga workout.

Problem is I ate a few sweets on the tail end of it, but for the most part, I got a bunch of stuff done!
Today isn't going to be a goal day, but rather an organization day, I'm going to clean the heck out of all my work environments and whatnot.

Listening: Madvillian -Great Day

#4 update

I got my livestream working! I wanted to have a "game night" where I could drop all my responsibilities, and have some fun on Thursdays.

I'm a big fan of classic styled, or blue skies styled, action games and I figured a livestream would be an outlet of some sort.

Anyway, on other stuff, I only ate 4 potato chips yesterday (I shouldn't mention that) and while I didn't do yoga, I figured out a way to help play less Magic.

Enter the cube.

Basically, you make a 360 card booster drafter, where you provide all the booster packs. It's fun, probably difficult, and a game design challenge. What you have in the cube is just as important as what you don't.

Since my friend gave me a shoebox of Magic cards, and I couldn't think of how to use all the cards. Maybe a might put me in the right direction.

Either way, I think it'll be fun, and if my friends don't have money to play Magic (meaning, I personally don't want to pay for booster packs) I'll suggest the cube I'm making.

I do need to buy a storage box however.

Now Listening: Solitude - Madlib

Resolutions

I'm cutting back on a ton of stuff this year.

I'm not reading tumblr anymore, I only want to drink a cup of coffee a day, and I'm going through the process of healing.

Healing, not as in physical therapy but healing as in finding my center.

Slowly, I'm becoming more calm, more down to earth, and hopefully more reasonable/forgiving.

Anyway, my center:

1. Records: Who knew music was so incredible? I really like the analogue sound of vinyl too.

2. Videogames: Not so much the newest and greatest, but the few that really work for me. (Most recently, a game like that was Aces Wild.)

3. Yoga: I try to do this everyday or every other day. I adore the feeling, and now I have my own yoga center. (which may or may not be my bedroom)

4. Live Streaming: Okay, I said I don't like games, but I like showing my friend circle the games I like to play.

The best feeling is fixing myself. And by fixing, I mean, finding stuff that I'm more true to.


On the other hand, there's stuff I want to get away from:

1. Magic: Yeah, the card game. I'm not an addict, but a couple of my friends are, and they want me to be super into it. I like the game, quite a lot, and I've been peer pressured into buying cards. (which is dumb now that I think about it)  but I don't want to give more time to it.

I might draft with my friends once a month tops. Also, some of my friends give excuses for their Magic habits like gamblers give excuses for playing too many slot machines.

2. Video game tabloids/news/game enthusiast gossip: I'm more or less going away from games because I've been into them less and less. And with me recently discovering "music" (seriously, I've only listened to radio music up to this point, outside an occasional cool friend showing my their vinyl collection.) I want to spend my "fun time" finding out about cool music, than know what's what with videogames. I still want to visit this one game forum however.

3. My fear of programming. Ugh, this is the hardest one to admit, but honestly, I have programming anxiety. I have the hardest time programming, and it's nothing but my fault. I have to own up to it, and try again from scratch. Right now I'm having a hard time thinking of a new idea for a game, but either way, if I know how to do stuff, I might have a better idea on how to design one. (as much as I've read about/studied game design)

4. Potato Chips: I hate that I love potato chips. Everyone has a craving for something, and usually my cravings are the crunch and the salt of potato chips. Of all the stuff on here, this is the one I'm going to quit cold turkey.


And finally where I want to go

1. Programming: See #3 above.

2. Better organization: My desk is cleaner! It's a start.

3. Take better care of myself: I should allow myself to make more mistakes, and generally be nicer to myself. I've been pretty harsh before, and I'm slowly getting better. Also, allow myself a little more ego. Not too much, but yeah.

Listening to: Aruarian Dance - Nujubes