It figures: after successfully moving this site to a host that seems to be firing on all cylinders, I end up not really posting much. Truth be told, there’s not much going on, and what is going on isn’t all that noteworthy.

3D Modeling

The overwhelming bulk of my time has been spent in Blender. After finishing my Secret World-themed piece, I went back and tried a few things to get it looking better but didn’t spend a lot of time with it. I figured that improving on the actual thing I did early on in “my career” helps erase the cringe of it, but it also “skill-washes” it away so I won’t be able to really tell how much I improve over time.

I had to throw out a whole new piece yesterday because my workflow trapped me in a corner; in order to have gotten out of it, I would have had to wipe out most of the scene anyway, so I guess I’m starting over. The problem wasn’t with the techniques, but with the way I deployed the techniques. This is why I have an obsession with process and “best practice” because had I more concrete ideas on how to proceed, I don’t think I would have screwed it up as badly as I had.

Development Downslope

I have had zero urge to do development work of any kind, which tracks with my M.O. around this time of the year. I had been working well with Appwrite on my personal project and got my sign-up and sign-in set. I also got some of the domain data management interfaces present albeit ugly as sin. Then it was time for me to start the actual purpose of the app, and all I could visualize was mental static. I know what I have to do and how to do it, but not how to do it, if you catch my drift. This also extends beyond personal projects; I have zero urge to do development work, if you know me and get my meaning.

Words For the Eye-Holes

For a few years there I wasn’t reading very much. I think the last books I read were the “Rivers of London” series by Ben Aaronovitch. Last year I had been having discussions with my nephew on what books we were reading and this kept me sort of in the game, but after I tried reading his all-time favorite series “The Stormlight Archive” — for the ninth time, I think — I dropped off.

I did, however, start with “The Murderbot Diaries” series late last year. I had been putting this off because I have a belief that my interest in A Thing is inversely proportional to the amount of hype it receives; this isn’t a hipster thing (are hipsters still a thing?) but I just figure “it can’t really be that good, can it?” In this case, it’s close. I enjoyed this series a lot but like a lot of series (hey there, “The Expanse”!) after several entries, things start to look and feel very much the same between books and that can get really tiring. Considering how short the Murderbot books are, I blew through them quickly which of course crammed the series into my brain at lightning speed, possibly blurring the stories together.

Now, though, I am reading “The Divide” series by J.S. Dewes and I think I’ve found my new favorite books. It’s like if Battlestar Galactica had aliens as a known quantity but not front-and-center. While some of it gets repetitive, I cannot remember ever reading a book and having an adrenaline rush like I did at the end of the second entry. I finished at 10:30 pm last night and immediately bought the third (and last) book of the series.

Gaming

There is not a lot going on here. Like, at all. I fear my Star Citizen time is on indefinite hold until I see progress in their 2025 mandate to clean up the current alpha and I’m overly skeptical not because the Internet told me to be, but because I’ve been neck-deep in this project since the start, and I’ve experienced CIG’s good intentions several times before.

After having completed the first major portion of World of Warcraft’s The War Within content, and sticking around for the Kirin Tor “cleanup” epilogue and starting on Siren Isle content, I kind of fell off the WoW cliff. Almost immediately after my subscription renewed (3-monther) I stopped playing but found that we can put our subscriptions “on pause” which I suppose is a way for Blizzard to stealthily restart our subs after the pause period. Ah well; I might be been back for the second phase of TWW anyway, although goblins irritate the crap out of me.

After constant hounding by my daughter, I did re-up to FFXIV and once again made a concerted effort to find a groove in this game. I could not. I did get a bit further than I ever had before so it was nice to see new areas. Like others have said, my daughter beat the drum that “everything gets better after ARR” but when I looked at how far I had to go to get there, I laughed. She offered to level my characters for me, but I didn’t want to keep paying for a subscription I wasn’t using. Besides, I had stopped playing WoW and was spending most of my time in Blender, so I didn’t really have an urge to play anything anyway.

I have also been occasionally jumping into the current state of Star’s Reach from Playable Worlds. Now, this is why I wanted to write this morning, but I didn’t want to write just about this because it’s going to sound like One of Those Posts, so best bury it beneath a bunch of other stuff: I don’t really care for it, and I am shocked. By all accounts, I should. It’s being made by Raph Koster, and I have liked all of his games on account of his expertise and philosophies on gaming. It’s being called the “spiritual successor” of Star Wars Galaxies which was an OK game but had so many of the best game systems any MMO has ever had, but which few if any have replicated since. It’s sci-fi, which is always a plus in my book. And while I understand that the game is in development and not representative of final form or feature, etc. etc. etc., I have not found any desire to know about it. I don’t read about it, don’t watch videos about it, and I left the Discord recently.

But I do not think this is about Star’s Reach. Consider that my feelings about my personal White Whale game have turned over the past year. I stopped playing WoW, was quick to terminate FFXIV, and have been listlessly opening the fridge door of my Steam library in the hopes something new has magically materialized there. I’ve never liked when people loudly proclaim that they were “over gaming” like it was some kind of disease they finally sweated out, and I am not going that far in my assessment of my current situation, but it’s still weird and unnerving to suddenly (and with any luck, temporarily) lose interest in a lifelong hobby. In truth, I feel that my obsession with 3D modeling and my rediscovery of reading at the moment is to blame and I’m not staring do the barrel of any waning interest in digital entertainment. It’s just so sudden of an about-face that the whiplash is palpable.