13:03

I'm writing a story that has a community of androgynes. (Huge surprise, I know.) They were originally like modern humans, but were genetically engineered thousands of years ago. Now I wonder: Is there anything culturally or otherwise significant or important that a community of androgynes would have lost or would not have, compared to a culture that has males and females? And vice versa?

03:27

I saw the Hobbit some days ago. It was pretty good. Not all that memorable.

And this night, I saw Looper. I haven't felt that anxious while watching a film in a very long time. In fact, I think that only The Fly comes close, and I saw that when I was 11 or something. And maybe Mad Max (the first film, not the two sequels). The offending part in Looper was awful body horror that happened in just one scene where a guy's older version starts getting scars on his body and then his fingers and limbs disappear, and as it goes on (for horrifyingly long, even though the scene itself is like two or three minutes or something), it becomes clear that it's because other people keep cutting parts off of the younger version's body. It was terrifying and it probably took me over 10 minutes to calm down a bit. For the record, I'm still not calmed down.
The time travel stuff in Looper was done actually pretty well, now that I think about it. The full grace of it can be seen in these quotes: "I don't want to talk about time travel shit. Because if we talk about it, then we're gonna be here all day, drawing diagrams with straws." "This time travel shit just screws with your head."
Time travel never makes sense. I don't particularly like it, but I went to see the film anyway and expected it to not make sense, so I could just watch the story and be glad that even the characters don't know how causes and effects work exactly.

11:37

I participated in NaNoWriMo this year and wrote this: <URI:_Forged in Ice 2 (NaNoWriMo 2012)>. It has over 62000 words, which is pretty good, considering that my own goal was 25000 words and NaNoWriMo's official goal is 50000 words. I noticed that the local writing meetings were a good way to get a lot of words. I even bicycled twice or thrice that 20-km trip to the meeting place!

I didn't do much else during November. Except this: にほんごのべんきょうをしました。

I still haven't drawn much lately and I find that troubling. I caught an annoying cold somewhere. I haven't seen any films lately.

Oops, forgot to link this on the 20th of November: http://www.transgenderdor.org/

00:56

Looking at the dates, it's been a while since my last entry. Between that last one and this, I've been on a summer vacation that I spent on working at conventions and role-playing. I worked in Finncon, Ropecon and Tracon. I played altogether 12 times in August, which is quite a lot.

I also played some neat board games lately. Alhambra was one, it was sort of like Carcassonne, except the players buy the tiles with money and all players have their own cities that they build. Power Grid was another, in it the players build power grids on a map somewhat similar to Zug um Zug and buy power plants. A third new game was Tanto Cuore, which is like Dominion but with anime maids. It's surprisingly awesome.

I made a Goodreads account and pretty much got hooked. Here you go: http://www.goodreads.com/veltzeh

I have almost no courses related to my chosen subjects to be studied, so currently I'm studying Japanese (because why not), technical drawing (that seems easy) and algorithm mathematics (one of the only courses I can include in my basic studies because I've studied all other courses already). Related to the Japanese course: it's (un)surprising how my motivation goes up when faced with a subject completely unrelated to everything I'm supposed to be studying.

My tooth hurt yesterday like it had a cavity, but now it doesn't. I twisted my knee during the disassembly of Tracon and it hurt for three days. Now it's better but as I've come to notice, too much pressure will still make it hurt. There's quite a batch of flus and colds going around, but I haven't yet managed to catch any, unless having a blocked nose cavity for two days counts. I haven't drawn much anything lately, which is a shame.

Now for a batch of exciting links.
Why is this so funny? ;D http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-1474/
Music on floppy drives! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qoFpX9JJSc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE5AcQsmcbg
Heh heh heh. http://survivingtheworld.net/Lesson1238.html

12:51
I found some more stuff I'd written, so here you go.

A couple of fellow players were talking about Pathfinder Society and came upon the perfect Wayfinder modification. (A Wayfinder is a regular magnetic compass that can cast light.) The modified version can cast detect evil and then the compass needle points at the closest evil, which means that it's a literal moral compass! I bursted out in laughter at that.

Thanks to [Rice] last December, I found about about the newer FMA anime, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. (Depending on where you are, you might be able to watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/fmabrotherhood/) I ended up spending a good bit of December watching it and then thinking of little else but it for the next months. Heck, in addition to the few drawings (like this: FMA:_Envy) I even wrote fan fiction! Here you go: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7747508/1/Forged_in_Ice

Envy is mightily pretty, yup. It even looks better in FMAB than in the first anime.

Also some more links.
Homotanssit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aP8gGjLXq0
Font to help dyslexics: http://www.pixelscript.net/gilldyslexic/
Battlestar Galactica as a 16-bit game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PalLUSh7rh4 (spoiler warning right here)

2012-05-24
11:17
I finally saw "The Avengers" two days ago. I liked it, though it didn't leave very strong impressions. It somehow felt like Loki was a pushover, but that actually fits with his established character. Actually, I think the actor wasn't good enough for his role. Then again, that too might have been intentional since the movie works, and as far as I know, it isn't supposed to be just like the comics.
That said, even if the movie wasn't very impressing, it wasn't at all disappointing either!

2012-04-08
00:06
I have seen "Iron Sky", and it was great. "Is there anyone who DIDN'T arm their spaceship?" Cue the entire cinema hallful of people bursting with laughter.

2011-11-26
00:41
I saw "Contagion" yesterday. It was a nice film; no overly enlarged emotions or action, and I had time to think about things while watching it. The passage of time was a little confusing. I've read that it's a pretty realistic rendition of a disease outbreak, and I have to say I agree. I don't know much about such stuff, though.

16:50
Now I've seen the new Tintin film. I think I'll have to declare it "nice" too. Some critic in the paper complained that Haddock's alcoholism was too exaggerated. Yeah, no. The drinking went pretty much the same as in the comics, except that not much of it was even shown.

21:22

I went to see "The Three Musketeers" yesterday. It was okay, but would've worked better if it had more comedy. Also, at no point did the main characters hold a musket (if I remember correctly), which was sort of disappointing.

Other than that, I've been too busy with schoolwork and spent most of my free time role-playing. Interesting, isn't it? NaNoWriMo (or 30 characters for me) is well under way, though I have too little characters at the moment. Please blame my courses. If you want to see what I've done, find my previous 30 characters link and substitute the year.

Oh and there's this, too: http://www.transgenderdor.org/

While I'm throwing around links, I got this one off some IRC channel and people said it was mind-blowing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3A1nprfuJs (dance show thing with crutches). Sure, it was odd, but my mind is rather intact. Of course, it's possible that I missed something.

I also saw two other films lately (a month ago probably), so here's something about them.

The first one was "Cowboys and Aliens". Yeah. Didn't really expect much, and it was quite watchable. As far as I can tell, it took itself fairly seriously despite the title that I imagine would cause feelings of ridiculousness. For some inexplicable reason, one of the scenes I remember best is when one drunk guy undressed and prepared to take a dump in a pond. Whyyyyy do I remember that so clearly? Gah.

The other one was "La piel que habito". I remembered at a critical point that yeah, one film critic said that it had horror elements in it. NO KIDDING. Of course, I expected a lot worse (in my opinion), like losing an arm. I was taken by surprise anyway.

22:59
I figured it would be nicer to collect little diary entries into just one bigger diary entry! So here you go, some film "reviews" and stuff that the cats did.
Also, today I bicycled way too much. Ow. I've also signed up for too many courses. Mandatory exercise works with a partner are evil. Luckily in some courses one can do them alone too.

2011-08-28 14:54
In the night, the black cat brought in a living, squeaking field vole. I managed to close the doors before it made it further than the storage. I was a bit clueless about what to while the cat played with the vole, but then I captured the vole in a jar and threw it outside. It was pretty much dead already though. I went outside to see what happened and while the black cat was just lounging around the vole, the grey-white one came, picked up the vole and scuttled off with it. A couple of hours later the black cat sounded like it had captured something again, but apparently whatever it was vanished in the grass or something.

20:02
I saw "Captain America" a few days ago and liked it. Fortunately it was less partiotic than I imagined, though I have to admit that I didn't expect really anything. The musical number was surprisingly good. I've never found Captain America very interesting as a character, but the film made him more interesting. Now I just wonder what all was changed...

2011-08-18 18:03
The black cat is on a roll. Last night, it brought in a young field vole and ate it. Only a single lung remained. At least I think it was a lung. It could've been a liver, but it looked more like a lung. It was so small that it was hard to tell and I wasn't planning on examinging it closer.
The night before that, the cat brought in two field voles and ate them too. Crack, snap, crunch.

23:20
"Green Lantern" was nice though not particularly memorable and the dialogue was clichéd. It was still pretty well made. Could've been better, but well.

2011-08-05 02:46
I went to watch "Never let me go" yesterday. I'm not quite sure what to think of it. I'm not too wild about romance, but the setting was interesting and I certainly didn't miss any action. It was sad but not sad at the same time...

2011-07-26 12:28
I went to watch HP 7.2 yesterday. It was a decent movie but not particularly remarkable. Actually, it was quite a lot like the book in that sense. A few things were changed a little. At the end I kept and kept waiting for Harry to fix his wand, but then it never happened!

2011-07-11 13:01
I went bicycling because I felt tired, and now I feel still tired. I think I'll blame the heat again.
Last night one of our cats (grey-white one) brought in a dead field vole two or three times. It was probably the same one and the cat just wanted to show it off. It then started eating it inside and made a lot of tiny crunch and crack sounds. All that remained of the vole was a drop of blood on the carpet.

2011-06-25 02:02
On Tuesday, I went to watch "Paul". I hadn't seen a comedy in a while, so it was sort of refreshing. It was also pretty good, though it rode a bit too heavily on the main character's personality.
On Wednesday, I went to watch "Priest". I have a haunting suspicion that it would've been better if I hadn't bicycled all the way to the theatre and back (that's 40 km). That said, it was a sort of odd film: it had new bits and clichéd bits. I don't remember anymore how well that worked out, but it was watchable.

22:12
I went to see the film "Source Code" today. It was had a neat idea and was made rather well. I guess the biggest issue was the question "How the heck could it work like that??"

Here's a funny video: Cannibal Corpse Lounge Music, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc-V3NYckOI

Also this one about units: http://t.naurunappula.com/screen/0735/0735983.jpg

19:04
I managed to finish the Game Contract. I think it could use some betterment.

14:09
I went to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" yesterday. It was okay, though the title isn't really descriptive at all about the content. The film didn't really make an impression and relied heavily on the four main characters.

I've also been working on writing something about a game contract (like social contract but for RPGs) but I don't feel like I'm very good at writing it.

22:21
Now I have also seen "Thor"! The film was a positive surprise. While it could have been better, it was quite good as it was. The sceneries were eye-candy and some scenes were funnier than I thought they would be – though it's possible that I was affected by the others' laughing. The sounds in the theatre were too loud in the loud parts, but that wasn't really the film's fault.

18:52
Now this is the Weregeek strip that I think summed making and playing a character pretty well: http://www.weregeek.com/2007/03/05/

19:32
This seemed like a good article to share.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice
Also http://www.dca.med.ualberta.ca/Home/index.cfm

14:46
Yesterday the little cats were scratching frantically near my door, so I went to let them in. I did wonder why they were so insistent, but the door had been open the day before so maybe it was because of that. I went back to my room and after a while felt something touch my foot. It felt like a spider and I sure have a lot of those around here. I couldn't find anything, but that happens too.
Next, I noticed that there was a field vole in my trash can. :D
Okay, I take the trash can out and after a while the vole comes out and skitters off. A few seconds later, one cat came and promptly caught the vole in its mouth.

01:15
The Elftown Prose Contest started today and I decided that by damn, there's finally a prose contest and I'd enter it, period. Okay, theme is horror and I don't really care for horror. But I can make this fantasy thing kind of horrific, right? So I sat down, wrote four hours and the result was EPC: For Love, Sky-Chaser (the original story is at The Sky-Chaser).

18:45
Have a wall!

Last Wednesday, I took the car for maintenance since my mom thought it would be a great idea to do that while 60 % of the family was on vacation. Well, I took it there and they said that the car should've been inspected as well! I said they can do the inspection while at it, then. After that I just sat around waiting for it to be done.
A bit after half the reserved time, they called me and said that some obscure part whose name I have no hope of translating had fractures and should be replaced. Replacing the part would need to wait until tomorrow but I needed the car back that day, so I said no. Then they said the car might not pass inspection if the part was not replaced, argh. I still decided to not have the part replaced.
Luckily, they got it done and the car even passed inspection. I reserved a new time to replace that odd part. They gave me the bill and I went to their cashier to pay. Oops, the bank card to my parents' account is being declined for some unknown reason. Well, fine, I can use my other card, even if it means paying from my own account. But no, that doesn't work either! They're the same bank's cards, so apparently that bank had a problem or something.
Okay, I still had one card I could try, because I have two accounts and the other one is in a different bank. But wait, that account doesn't have enough money! The reason is that just one day earlier I had to pay my parents' electricity bill because they'd forgotten to do that when they left!
The cashier tried to call the bank whose cards weren't working, but they didn't respond. The nearest ATM was a little too far away by foot (I couldn't get there and back before closing time) and I really didn't want to start playing lottery with the buses whose schedules and routes I still can't read or understand. The cashier told me that there was a store I could get money from, since the bank card was of the same company as the store.
I walked to the store but they couldn't give me enough money since it was such a small store. I wondered for a while what to do and decided to go back to the car place, just in case the cards started working again.
The cashier then told me that I could pay in parts and I was relieved. Only after fussing with the cards and me forgetting the code to it since I rarely used that card and was stressed, the cashier specified that paying in parts didn't mean time but cash and pay by card. Then we had to fuss some more to cancel the payment.
I walked back to the store, got the cash and walked back to the car place again. Awesome, now I had enough money! I nearly forgot that I didn't remember the code to the card and the next wrong code would freeze it, but luckily I remembered that in time and the payment could be done another way.
Finally, I managed to pay! The cashier gave me a small box of candy and I left.

I went to pick up the vacationers from Helsinki on Saturday night. I thought that it would be a great time to see two movies whose showing time was starting to be over, so I reserved time for that. Route planners told me that the trip to the movie theater would take two hours. I reserved 45 extra minutes to find the movie theater and buy the tickets.
Of course the trip took longer since it was winter and winter speed limits were in effect. However, that was only maybe 10 minutes. The bigger problem was that there were no free parking spaces on the streets. Even before I left, I thought that I would take the car to a parking house if I didn't find an easy street spot.
For some reason, driving around the streets looking at the streets and finding a parking house took a whole lot of time. I went into a parking house whose location I roughly remembered on the map. The trip down was unnervingly long. I chose to park the car near the entrance because I thought it would be easier that way. I was late for the movie and there seemed to be two ways out of the parking hall. It said they would open with the card I'd gotten when I drove in. Well, of course they didn't. After a bit of agonizing I pressed the alarm button on the machine, expecting that I'd need to speak to someone. Well, the door just opened, which was really surprising, but at least I got out – into a new, stranger tunnel.
I walked on and hoped that the foreign-looking squatters weren't going to rob me. After a while of walking it occurred to me that I didn't remember to note where I had left my car, so I started writing notes of the tunnels and elevators.
Eventually I made it outside and started walking to a direction I thought was right, since I had no clue where I was. Surprisingly, I got the direction right, and then I had to look for the entrance to the dang movie hall, which was surprisingly unapparent.
There was some kind of restaurant in the building when I got in and I wondered where I could get tickets. I wandered around for a while and just couldn't find any place to buy tickets. I eventually asked a ticket-checking person where I could get them and was told it was on the first floor, right by the main entrance. As I walked away, I figured that I'd probably entered through some other entrance. Why can't they have clearer directions?
Finding the way down was complex and I eventually had to go out again, but this time I ended up right next to the main entrance, so now I could finally buy the ticket.
I got to the movie a little late, but due to the ads, I managed to come in the exact moment before the movie started. That was a rather impeccable timing, though I worried about finding the car.
When the movie ended, I hurried my way back to buy a ticket for the other movie. I didn't buy them both at the same time because even though I calculated that I would have time to watch both of the movies, I couldn't know for sure if the timing was good enough. I got the ticket and went to watch the second movie. I agonized half of it how I was going to find my car and whether I'd have enough money to pay for the parking.
When the movie ended, I hurried out and walked my way back to where I had come out of the parking complex. I went in and figured that it was the wrong door. I went back outside and found the original door which of course was locked. After a bit of walking around, I decided to go back in the first door I tried, since it was apparently the same complex.
It was some metro station and I wondered where to go. I found a map and stared at it without really understanding it, since it was a strange map and I was still stressed. I walked around a bit, looked at the map again and found a way that should take me to the correct parking house.
I went into an elevator that surprisingly opened with my parking card. I walked a rather long way along the tunnels and found a pay machine. I decided I'd find the car in time even if I paid now. Of course the payment was more than I had cash. However, the machine accepted cards too – except mine of course. Two invalid cards and one strange error.
I walked that long distance back out again. I'd have taken cash before I went in if I'd seen an ATM before, but I hadn't. I decided to walk around and search for one but once I saw guards walking on the street, I just asked them. Of course one machine was right on the other side of the market square thingy.
I walked there and there seemed to be foreign-looking kids around the ATM waiting for someone to come get money so they could rob them. Luckily they left right before I got to the spot. Or maybe they were just positioned oddly around the ATM for some other reason, who knows. Either way, I got the money and walked back to the parking house.
I managed to pay and could finally leave. I set up the car navigator so I could follow its directions once I got out. I drove to the post where I was supposed to put the parking card in the machine, but the bar raised and door opened before I'd managed to do anything with the card. Great, so apparently I would've gotten out even without paying. Geez!
Of course, the navigator just wouldn't find a GPS signal. I decided to drive on and wait since that's how the previous navigator had gotten its signal eventually. This one just didn't seem to get one. However, I recalled that it could plan a rout even without the signal, but for that I'd have to give it the starting point address. I drove on, looking for a good place to stop and where I could see the current address. I found one eventually and put in the address.
The danged navigator took me to an obscure route through the city instead of directing me to the main road where I could've driven without watching out for every danged crossroad. I thought that if I could just find a direction sign, I'd follow it and not the navigator, but I'd follow the navigator until I did since it probably was still directing me to the right direction at least. Of course, as soon as I saw a direction sign, the navigator agreed with me and directed into the main road.
After that, I decided to only follow the road signs. The navigator would actually have taken me through some other route, even if its directions would have eventually taken me to the right destination.
Finally I was at the airport. Only two or more hours late. Sigh. If I ever plan on going on such a trip to Helsinki again, kick me hard. Going there requires hours of extra time and maps at the least, and a local guide would be really useful. Ideally, any cars should be left far from the city.

The two movies I watched were "The Way Back" and "Tron: Legacy".
I went to watch "The Way Back" for its sceneries, but the plot and such was okay too. It had refreshingly little romance and stressful character conflict, which I liked. I would've wanted to see even more landscapes. I felt that the rather nondescript desert got a little too much screentime.
"Tron: Legacy" was okay and pretty much what I expected. The sound effects went a little overboard at times and I could've gone without the programs with personalities trying to imitate humans. The music was pretty nice.

22:15
I finally managed to finish Neverwinter Nights 2. I'd left it hanging near the end for one reason or another. I also think I didn't kill that one dragon because it was too tough and immune to sneak attacks, oh woe. Nevertheless, it is finished now! I think I shall play it again some day. I wonder if I could kill some party members...

01:39
Today/yesterday I felt for the first time that I might actually be ready to face whatever adolescence would bring. Yes, I'm aware that I'm a day short of being 25 at the moment. Why, oh why can't adolescence be postponed to a time when one actually is ready? Then again, the fact that I think I'm ready now could be influenced by my knowing of what would happen.

In other news, I drew a rather successful picture:

22:06
The editorial of this comic: http://egscomics.com/egsnp/?date=2010-02-16 brings up a point about criticism that I've been wanting to write about.

Also, the webcomic in general is great. :D

01:05
I finished my 30 characters! You can check them out here if you want to: Veltzeh's 30 characters 2010.

In other news, our house is having a small cold-related crisis. During the Monday-Tuesday night, a bunch of the power network inside the house stopped working. It worked fine when I went to bed, but now neither my nor my parents' room has any heat or light, though miraculously the one socket where my computer is is powered. Also the socket in the warehouse stopped working, so the freezers are on an extension cord. Some heating elements aren't working in the living room, plus one socket is dead there too. Also the dishwasher didn't seem to work, and only a part of the oven works. Interesting, isn't it?