New Video from The United!

02008 September 26 by Cameron

Talk about having lots of irons in the fire … Ever since local hero John Lore moved to San Francisco, I’ve heard nary a whisper from him about practically anything in his life. I guess being a professional photographer, video editor, hard-stomping musician, and all around force of nature kind of takes up a good chunk of time.

This morning I got a great big email chronicling his mighty rise to stardom. Living next to a famous brothel in Chinatown must have been inspiring, because he and his hardcore band The United just released a new video: Robots vs. Dragons!

Favorite Writing Tool: Freemind

02008 September 23 by Cameron

Lord knows, I do love me some Alphasmart goodness when I write. The instant-on, the complete word processing focus, the incredible battery life: it’s all good.

It pre-supposes, however, that I know what I want to write before I turn it on.

That’s a problem for me sometimes. Sure, I may bang out a little poetry or the beginnings of a short story with ease, but when I want to really get down to brass tacks and write something big, I end up stymied.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for the NaNoWriMo “more words at any cost” method when it comes to my yearly authorial mental enema. NMinus is a testimony to that, after all.

But when I want to write something that’s all complex and thematic and stuff, something that has to hang together under scrutiny, something that might — dare I say — reach toward being literature … Then, I want to know where I’m headed first.

That’s when I turn to my favorite writing tool in the entire universe, aside from my fingers themselves. I turn to Freemind.

The exchange rate on pictures being whatit is, I offer a thumbnail for your clicky enjoyment. You may be able to tell already that this is a mind map: a useful way to organize ideas and concepts, show the relationships between them, and cluster them together. This map is for a De Profundis game I wanted to examine and pull some ideas from, perhaps with the goal to rekindle it and build on the ideas that most intrigued me.

Gone are the days of dropped ideas, or worse yet, ideas buried in mounds of scrap papers or forgotten notebooks. My characters are developed. My plots are thick. My themes are consistent. Ideas go on their own little branch of the map for later referral or pruning. Source documents can be noted and grouped.

With a map of where my story is going, the time I spend at my Alphasmart becomes exponentially more productive.

The two things I love about Freemind:
* It’s easy to group related things together, either by putting them in the same branch or drawing arrows between them across branches.
* It’s easy to clean up the map and focus on any particular branch, because the branches are collapsible.

I also love the fact that it’s free as in beer/speech, and that it’s Java. It runs on everything. Even off a USB key.

I’ve handled lots of projects through Freemind, and it always pays off. Stories, script breakdowns, custom RPG adventures: any complex idea lends itself well to be mapped out this way. Definitely a major tool in my writing kit.

Freemind Home Page

Infected with Spore

02008 September 16 by Cameron

You just have to look over here to see how much I jabber on about Spore 24/7. Or you can look through a heap of Sporish goodness right now!

Don’t Forget to Validate Your Parking

02008 August 11 by Cameron

I don’t know why I haven’t linked to this brilliant webcomic already. It’s got everything! Well, “everything” if you mean a Hollywood screenwriter slaving away at his laptop while taking phone calls from everyone with an idea for the Next Big Thing bouncing around their brains …

It’s funny, funny stuff.

Anyway, I have to say, with this latest installment, I’m inspired to link like a MoFo. Mike Le, you are wonderful.

I’m Giving Away All My Best Material

02008 July 30 by Cameron

Seriously, the Dire Cafe is getting my best work.

I mean, even if the Dire Cafe wasn’t home to my ramblings about unfortunate junk mail or filking Flash Gordon or waxing rhapsodic over my unrepentant pleasure at watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I’m still taking some awful liberties posting Godzilla’s battle plans and revealing the hideous connections between Robert Frost and Hastur the Unspeakable.

What’s that? I’m not shilling the best geek vacation ever had at Carslbad Caverns enough for you? My mistake. Please: with my complements.

It could be worse. I could be advocating a complete redesign of the online game experience — not in one, but two parts. Or I could start gushing over how awesome the Dire Cafe is: again, in parts one and two. Under almost identical titles, even.

I mean, what the hell? It’s not like I don’t have a whole damn suite of websites of my own.

But no, every time I want to espouse on my passions or commune with my own kind, I have to traipse over the Berin Kinsman’s elaborately constructed haven for gamers, geeks, and movie buffs. I don’t know what he wants. All I know is that he’s getting it.

So, Mister Kinsman — if that is your real name — what are you playing at? What’s your angle? How did you suck me into the inescapable geekily social paradise? And why don’t I want to get out?


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