good

May 8, 2019

For myself (DOG EAR)

won’t say who said this (they, alone, will know the bitter salty tears I wept) but a friend told me that he’d played my interactive fiction StoreyMinus a few times and went “Meh”. That’s a tough nut to swallow, if you are into swallowing nuts. I mean, how many hundred hours have a spent coding this monster? For those who don’t know about it (which, outside of my friend, is pretty much everone on Earth), StoreyMinus is my interactive fiction written with the Squiffy game driver. It involves a fictional character in some sort of situation in the tunnels and […]
January 23, 2020

Breaking Eggs (DOG EAR)

ough day yesterday. Lots of work around the house, cleaning out storage, and getting my model train layout to run. And at the train club it was kinda an off night (meaning a lot of people stood around and gassed while the rest of us picked up the slack). So by the time I’d gotten home and blogged the session, I was pretty beat. Fastwind to this morning, when those two lovable kittens, Chinki and Ritz, were screaming for breakfast at 5am (as always). Fed then and found my way back to bed. With two kittens slumbering (so cutely) on […]
July 23, 2020

Evil without a backstory (DOG EAR)

ou’ve seen them. The guy with the souped-up car with nowhere to go. Or the guy with the sinister tattoo that doesn’t seem to mean anything, nothing but skulls and eagles and flames. The guy with the massive gun who is amazingly well informed about a government conspiracy. Or ever the guy with a convict glare who has never even had a library book go overdue. And yes, girls can play too. They are trying to be so evil and so anti-heroic with their poise. Yet, if you sat with them and chatted them out (or, better yet, flipped open […]
August 12, 2021

A real find (DOG EAR)

was on vacation recently, visiting family up north while knocking out a whole lot of novels (I’ve got materials for weeks of reviews now). While rooming at my sister’s, I mentioned I’d like to stop in at any good used book stores. She had one, a little strip mall outlet that had room to grow and lots of books. I dove into it like a shark into a chum-filled ocean. While nosing through the scifi area, I found a collection of novels by one Christopher Nuttall, the Ark Royal series. It had a very interesting concept – it was a […]
October 7, 2021

Books and movies – a positive comparison (DOG EAR)

eah, usually I dislike the differences between books and movies. Occasionally they get it right (such as The Three Musketeers (1973) which (aside from the casting of Porthos, was dead on)). But usually they get it wrong (as I commented on a recent War of the Worlds remake from a few weeks back HERE). But sometimes they do it right. Now, by right, I don’t mean they do the story line-for-line perfect (that would be to much to ask – Hollywood has a lot of writers who wish to “re-imagine” (a word I despise; I prefer the more correct and […]
February 17, 2023

On Sheet – Good as Gold

n our last post, we discussed (well, I presented and you read) about how important it was to be a good guest. You’ll remember it in Duties of the Guest. A cynical view might be – why? Why bother making someone else’s layout a success? Isn’t the point of this to just have fun, and if it’s going to be like a monastery on a rainy Saturday, why bother? Well, it comes down to this – do you like running trains? Do you like going to different layouts? If the answer is YES, then that’s the reason you go above […]
July 6, 2023

Good and Bad Stories (DOG EAR)

as facing a two mile walk home while running (or walking) errands the other day. Decided that talking to a friend on the cell would make the distance shorter and the heat cooler (what?). Rang up a buddy. And he started telling me about his Moby Dick struggle. With a Kia. Really, the whole thing came down to him finding a Kia on an open stretch of road, coasting along in the left lane. For some reason, he found this actionable; he whipped around the other car, slowed a bit (i.e. brake check) and threw a jaunty bird. As I […]