Author name: Brian

On writing

Writing / / 1 Comment

Once upon a time there is an angsty teenage boy who thinks he knew all about love. To teach him a lesson, Eros turns him into an animal and sends him out to challenge his belief and to find what love really is. The boy meets a grumpy old hunter who is seeking courage – the only thing he’s not brave enough to do is to live his own life for himself and take responsibility for his own choices. Together the pair follow the yellow brick road to the ruins of an emerald city, wherein lives a sorceress who they hope can give them what they lack – but she turns out to be as beautiful as she is unkind, and she … well, she does something … and the hunter tries to sacrifice himself but the boy saves him from it and helps him realize how selfish his decision was. The hunter wanted to know how to stop caring about everyone, but in the end, instead he learns how to make a choice to care about another person. And the boy learns that there is more than romantic love – there’s the kinship he feels with this grumpy old hunter, though neither will ever admit it…

… no, that just won’t work. It’s contrived and boring, and I can’t think of anything for the villain to do or any reason why she should be doing it.

…

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A Name

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My last name is derived from my ancestors’ “Kundig” which, in German, apparently means “knowledgeable, expert, well-informed.” (http://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/Kundig) And I once paid one of those heraldry places that’ll look up your name in a database and print out its history in a Franktur font on a piece of paper that looks like parchment; with this authority, it declares that my last name is derived from “Gend” which is a short form of old Germanic names such as “Gandalf” which itself was derived from Old Norse “gandy” meaning magic.

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Goofy’s Mystery Tour 25th Anniversary

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On Thursday night I was a volunteer character at Goofy’s Mystery Tour.

It’s a yearly competition at Disney’s Hollywood Studios after park hours. Three hundred teams (four players each) spend an hour answering 80 really hard multiple-choice Disney trivia questions, then they’re set loose in the park with a puzzle (math, logic, rebus, wordplay, &c.) on a sheet of paper. Solve the puzzle, find the right group of characters to verify it (Scientists, Skiiers, Dapper Dans, Disco Dancers, &c.), and they’ll get the next puzzle and a clue for the final puzzle. 15 puzzles, 2 hours, and if they can gather enough clues they might be able to solve the final puzzle.

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2018-01

Adventures, Jill / / Leave a Comment

Jill and I celebrated New Year’s Eve at home for the first time in years.

We usually go to Disney’s Hollywood Studios early (around 10 AM) and camp out at a picnic table in front of Min & Bill’s (to the left of the end of Hollywood Boulevard) all day. Back before DHS became one big construction zone, they used to have DJ Elliot alternating with Mulch Sweat & Shears all evening, culminating with MS&S performing a live show synchronized with the fireworks at midnight. It was a great experience. But this year the midnight show at DHS was the usual Star Wars fireworks show that we’ve already seen several times. Magic Kingdom is insane on NYE (you’ve got to try it at least once in your life, but you don’t need to do it any more than that), Animal Kingdom closes before midnight, and Epcot doesn’t have any particularly comfortable places to sit for fourteen hours.

Jill made us lunch reservations for Via Napoli at Epcot, so we went there … and almost wished we hadn’t; driving distance was about 10 miles, but the roads were packed and traffic was at a standstill so it took us nearly two hours to get there. At one point we were stopped in traffic beside a parking lot tram which was being brought in from another park. But we went and dined and got New Year’s hats (paper this year) and got home safe.

At midnight we Skype-chatted with Eve while we had the Dick Clark celebration on TV and the Magic Kingdom fireworks on Jill’s laptop. We then heard our neighbors out front so we joined them for a little while in an impromptu street party with lots of sparklers.

I’ve had the past week off work because I was maxed out on vacation and I hadn’t used any of my floating holidays. I feel accomplished – I tackled lots of things on my to-do list. Fixed, upgraded, restocked, and otherwise tended to anything that needed attention around the house. So I feel a little bit centered, balanced, as we go into twenty eighteen.

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Anime, late 2017

TV / / Leave a Comment

I’m really enjoying the new anime series “Kino’s Journey,” a remake of the 2003 series in which a traveler and a talking motorcycle visit many strange countries, staying exactly three days in each. It’s very Twilight Zone, setting up a strange situation and exploring how characters respond to it (like: what if there were a country where murder was legal?).

I watched the previous series five years ago, and I feel much the same about this remake: the episodes are largely standalone, the protagonist is mostly a blank slate, but the artwork is gorgeous. The theme of the series is “The world is not beautiful, therefore it is beautiful.” I can get behind that.

This evening I watched the episode “Kind Country,” which I remembered from the original as soon as I saw the little girl’s cherry hair-clip. It’s wonderfully bittersweet, as is the episode that’s coming up next week, “Country of Adults.”

I’ve also been watching the series “Recovery of an MMO Junkie,” which is a romance between players of an online videogame in their 30s. The concept is cute and it’s done with a sweetly innocent touch, but I’m disappointed that it seems to have run out of steam and coasted to a halt. Yesterday’s episode (the tenth one) is apparently the final one, aside from an OVA which Crunchyroll is broadcasting next week, if that makes any sense.

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StreetPass

Jill, Tech / / Leave a Comment

Jill and I each have a Nintendo 3DS. They’re great little systems for some quick gaming now and then. She likes the Mario games, I like puzzle games (especially Professor Layton and Ace Attorney), and we both still visit our Animal Crossing villages every now and then.

One of my favorite features is StreetPass: when I carry the 3DS around with me for a while, the number of steps I’ve taken and the other 3DS owners I’ve walked past will “power up” some minigames. It’ll give me the names and home states of the people I meet this way. Carrying one around a Disney park will usually get us a few connections, though not as many as it used to.

Best Buy stores have something called a “Nintendo Zone”, where bringing a 3DS into the store will “meet” other 3DS owners who’ve been there recently. (This used to also be offered at McDonalds and Starbucks as well as a few other places, I think.) But I’ve long been curious about how exactly this works, and how to set up a Nintendo Zone in our own house so we can make lots of these connections much more often.

Turns out it’s easy! In short, all it needs is an open access point named “attwifi”, with a MAC address that’s set to the same thing as being used by other access points. More detailed instructions at “https://www.reddit.com/r/3DS/comments/1k0g58/setting_up_a_streetpass_relay_at_home/“. It can be done with a laptop, or a wireless base station, or a Raspberry Pi, or a wide variety of other devices.

I set one up yesterday and I’ve already “met” people from Canada, France, Japan, Australia, and lots of other places.

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Fan fiction

Writing / / 2 Comments

I found myself nose-to-nose with a ferret – in a figurative sense at least, as he stood on his hindpaws to roughly half my height. He was standing on the doorstep. Paws clasped together in earnestness. Friendly smile on his face. “Budgeron Ferret,” he said by way of introduction, “and I understand you could use my help. May I come in? And do you have tea?”

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