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  • Dark Liquid 10:41 pm on October 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: collaborative, fiction, murder, , ,   

    Progress on Ten 

    I’ve been working on a project called Ten for a little while now and it’s getting exciting to see the characters involved coming together.

    For those of you that don’t know, Ten is a collaborative piece of fiction. Ten authors, ten characters, ten reasons for murder. Ten strangers spread across national and cultural boundaries are contacted with a mysterious offer. Would they like to play a game? Only, this isn’t a game. They each have a list of nine people to kill and if they succeed, they can have the one thing they wish for most. Fame, power, glory, a missing daughter returned, a dead wife resurrected. These are some of the things the mysterious benefactors can offer them but will these people kill for it?

    Ten is a kind of quasi-supernatural, international conspiracy-theory murder mystery and an experiment in properly writing a joint, collaborative novel including the full editing process, typography and cover design, all the way to print. It’s going to be a long undertaking, but eventually we plan to self-publish it and sell it at cost, licensed under a creative commons license.

    The first draft is being written on Protagonize, the other drafts will happen as they happen, where they need to. Nothing is very well organised as of yet and as the sort of chairman of the board, being the founder of the project, I’ve been keeping a loose grip on things but lately trying to take a more active management role.

    Anyway, as I said, it’s exciting to see things coming together. Over the course of the story we’ve had some authors drop out and need replacing. I’ve written chapters for 3 characters now when originally I had planned to be working in a purely advisory and editing role, rather than as a core author. I must say I’m glad to be joining in though, even if it’s under circumstances I’d rather not come up.

    As we are moving forward with the story I’ve been pushing for us all to work more closely together rather than just writing for ‘our’ characters like a glorified roleplay. We’ve been sharing notes on the wiki, slowly but surely, and now it’s time to start joint writing chapters together with the authors of characters the plot dictates we will meet soon. I want us to get down and dirty with all of the characters so we can attack the second draft and editing process fully armed with the knowledge of all ten characters and their plots, sub-plots and secondary characters in each of our heads. Mostly though, I want us to feel comfortable editing each others work. Writing strictly for one character will show up badly throughout the story, our own individual writer’s voices shining through. I want the story to be a truly collaborative piece, not just a combination of our voices, but a fusion, a sum greater than the whole of it’s parts. I think it will be awesome to read a book where we don’t even fully recognize our own chapters, because they wont be our own, they’ll be the sum of all the work every other author has put into them, a unique voice born from the combination of ten others.

    That’s the most exciting thing about this project, the test of creating a story written by a hive-mind author, with it’s own personality and voice that emerges from the combination of it’s constituent parts. That’s proper collaborative writing, right there and I am really looking forward to how it turns out.

    I’ve already found myself challenged and writing differently as I’ve picked up characters from authors that have dropped out and it’s a great experience. My latest chapter written for the character of Alexi, the failed and timid Russian magician, oddly become erotica without me intending it to, no doubt partly because of my practice and thoughts on Urges. However, if I had written Alexi from the beginning, I doubt that would have happened. Sharing characters adds new and interesting aspects to them and makes the journey all the more exciting, surprising and above all fun. I really hope the other authors can take even a fraction from Ten of what I’m getting by working together like this.

    As the story progresses, things are getting more and more interesting, the plots slowly weaving together, characters becoming more fully fleshed out, mysteries forming and answers beginning to lurk around corners. The first draft is going to be rough, really rough. The fun really begins when the editing starts.

    You can read the first draft of Ten so far on Protagonize.

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  • Dark Liquid 4:07 pm on October 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 2d, disappointment, , ps3, , sega, sonic   

    Sonic 4 – Be Disappointed, fast! 

    I am incredibly disappointed right now. It all seemed so perfect, a return to the original recipe, that perfect mix of features but with a new, modern twist but it was all for nothing.

    Sonic 4 is terrible. Utterly, utterly terrible.

    It’s like they’ve missed the point of the game entirely. The original 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games were a mix of two things; Speed and Jumping. Sonic 4 has some speed but the jumping is absolutely awful. Jumping in the original Sonic games was beautiful, it curled you into a ball, protecting you; you could manoeuvre in the air almost effortlessly; you bounced of things, imparting more momentum and giving you the opportunity to chain attacks together by repeatedly bouncing from one bad guy to the next.

    In Sonic 4, all of that has gone. Most of the jump when you jump, you aren’t a ball – you fall uncurled and vulnerable. You can’t bounce on anything with any kind of momentum, the bouncing mechanism having been replaced by a horrible, horrible homing system that sends you crashing into a target. It completely changes the game, slowing the pace considerably, which for a game all about speed is extremely disappointing. Air control is awful, horizontal control in mid-air is nearly non-existent which makes something as simple as jumping from one platform to the next a pain. Worse, it feels completely unnatural, like you are being buffeted on both sides by wind when in mid air.

    Speedwise, the game seems slower and worse, the spin dash is awful, most of the time it’s actually faster to run rather than dash, curling into a ball actually slows you down half the time. It’s ridiculous and I can’t fathom why such a decision was allowed – in the old games you were a fool to ever be uncurled, you’d spend 90% of the game in a ball, bouncing or rolling along at speed, not running around vulnerable. Instead, it doesn’t feel like a Sonic game at all but a bad knock up, a poor facsimile that is more insulting to the memory of the original games than a homage.

    The worst though is that I had such high hopes for it. A return to Sonic’s roots after the awful 3D games, a focus and speed and skill and nothing else. The physics of the original games were pure genius and Sonic 3 & Knuckles will remain one of my favourite games for all time. This monstrosity though seems like a bad fusion of Sonic 1 & 2, taking the worst from both and combining that with everything that was wrong with the 3D games, but in a 2D environment. I am crushed and I feel like a fool for hoping that there could be another Sonic game to rival, or at least live up to Sonic 3 & Knuckles. That I was mistaken after investing so much hope is soul-shattering.

    I don’t like the new graphics either. The old 16-bit graphics had a gritty, fun quality to them that seemed more real somehow. The textures and patterns they’ve used for the HD version make it look like everything is made of plastic stickers stuck on acetate, the worlds feel fake, the movement through them feels uninspired and dull. I was hoping for more crisp visuals in a 16-bit style but instead got shiny plastic with no character or soul. There is no substance to any of the graphics, they just feel like images moving on a screen rather than part of a rich interactive environment.

    Worse than the graphics though is the music. It is absolutely abysmal. I’d go so far as to say it’s insulting, the music having a horribly patronising childish quality to it like what I’d expect from a cartoon for toddlers. It’s just poor and I don’t like listening to it. The Boss stage music is particularly offensive.

    The sprites all suffer from the same crappy plasticity as the levels and Sonic looks terrible, the developers deciding to try and use the newer-style Sonic form the 3D games rather than the classic one. The boss battles and the animations of Robotnik (I’m not calling him Eggman) are shit, they look terrible and the animators haven’t seemed to have taken into account physics when doing some of the animations, so they look weird and unnatural.

    I don’t know how they could have gone so wrong with this, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Sega have been shitting on the Sonic brand since they made the jump to 3D, it was foolish of me to hope that it could be revived. If you are new to 2D Sonic and are between the ages of 6-8, you might like it with it’s shiny looks and childish music. If you’re at all like me, you’ll be bitterly, bitterly disappointed. I feel so completely cheated. There are no words.

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    • Chris 10:23 pm on October 17, 2010 Permalink

      Wow, that was overwhelmingly negative! I’m used to seeing some pros in a review even of a sucky game; they must have really screwed up O_o

      -will stay away from the game-

    • Kit Brown-Watts 11:41 pm on October 17, 2010 Permalink

      Exactly… you hit the nails on the head.. Why does sonic spent so much time exposed??

      This is clearly not the same team of people who made the original trilogy.. Didn’t accurately capture the *feel* of that at all..

    • Gardy 1:44 pm on October 18, 2010 Permalink

      As a lifelong Sonic fan (Original 2d games, not the shitty 3d games) i agree with most of what you’ve said. The spin dash is particually annoyingly bad and the vunirable in mid air move is dreadful. Sega has destroyed the franchise, they put no new ideas into this game (just rehashed enemies and levels) and put together piss poor music.

      Thanks SEGA you pricks

    • Dave 4:19 am on October 26, 2010 Permalink

      I was extremely disappointed in Sonic 4 as well… and it discourages you the second you load the game up with that terrible music in the main menu. I finished the first zone and turned it off immediately without hesitation. Nothing about that game is any good.. and I am especially turned off by the way Sonic looks when he is running. His legs just turn into some shiny graphic that spins.. it isn’t even animated like it was in the old game. At the very least they could have drawn some separate frames and cycle them. For all of the fuss they stirred up advertising the game you’d expect a little more work had gone into it.

      Check out Sonic Fan Remix.. it is only the first 3 zones of the original game but they should hire those guys to do their work from now on.

    • Dessimat0r 8:28 pm on October 30, 2010 Permalink

      I played the demo and didn’t like it either. It seemed really slowed down, and the graphics are also ‘showed down’. Whoever made it seems really adverse to any ‘fast graphics’ even though the FPS is high enough! Absolutely bizarre. You only need to look at something like Warioland Shake It! on the Wii to see a game that does 2D properly, with style, and without stupid pre-rendered, soft graphics that keeps the user feeling like they have proper control over their character.

    • SL Ruiz 2:32 pm on November 3, 2010 Permalink

      Very good review man, if you want a good platformer go check Super Meat Boy, that’s bananas.
      As for Sega and Sonic… forget it, Sega is not Sega anymore and the best we can do with Sonic is ignore it for now on… Just move on!

      Fuck the new Sega

    • TheGuy 10:52 pm on November 12, 2010 Permalink

      This game is an abomination, a disgrace to the Genesis Games. Sonic 4 does not exist, this is not Sonic 4.

    • jeremy 3:10 am on February 8, 2011 Permalink

      I actually didnt have a problem with this game, im suprised it got so much hate…

    • Dark Liquid 8:13 am on February 8, 2011 Permalink

      Its because it was billed as a return to Sonics roots but instead ended up more a 2D rehashing of the more modern Sonic mechanics. If taken as a game in its own right, rather than as a Sonic game, its doll not great as the jumping mechanic is still awkward but its playable. To anyone wishing for a proper old-school Sonic experience its a bitter disappointment made more insulting by putting all the “features” of modern sonic games in place of the expected old-school mechanics fans were hoping for.

  • Dark Liquid 5:37 am on October 15, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ramblings, tired   

    Braindead Ramblings from a Tired Mind 

    And here I stand, yawning into the abyss of extreme tiredness.

    Yeah, I pulled an all-nighter for some reason. For the last few days I’ve been in a bit of a brain slump, just unable to concentrate properly and generally being a bit slow when it comes to general problem solving abilities. For programming, this does not bode well.

    Last night though, I suddenly came out of it and was on a coding roll, so I didn’t want to stop to sleep and risk losing it for this damn coding malaise I was going through so instead, code, code, code and more code.

    It’s particularly good that I powered through because the code related to paypal – all the developers in the from emit a groan – yes, horrible, horrible paypal with it’s ugly, badly documented APIs, stupid bugs and lacking feature set. Not fun, I can assure you, though tonight I didn’t mind.

    I also had fun helping out a friend reverse engineer a formula from a set of outputs for a series of known inputs. A surprisingly fun challenge that led me to use graphs to compare curves in the input and outputs, to see if there were any correlations, patterns, etc. It’s reminded me a lot of harmonics from my electronics studies actually, even though the subject matter was entirely unrelated. Also, had some fun messing about with simultaneous equations as a way to attack the problem but those were mostly a dead end really, since we had no idea what operands there were in place for the inputs. Worked it out eventually though after a set of joint hacking in a google doc spreadsheet. Surprisingly fun.

    Speaking of coding, I’d like to say my super not-really-secret-I-just-don’t-talk-about-it project is coming along smoothly but it isn’t really. I keep finding unimportant things to work on with it, like adding multiple locale support with a proper range of tests but keep hitting walls trying to test setting the locale using rack middleware. Bloody annoying, I can tell you. I’ve decided I rather like pivotal tracker, an agile project management webapp that is free to use and so I’m using it for tracking progress on this project of mine and logging all the feature ideas that pop into my head. I’ve been playing with some integrations with it’s API, such as automatically setting up and syncing cucumber features with pivotal stories. Yes, for anyone who has no idea what I’m talking about, I’m not going on about the vegetables, but rather a nice testing system in ruby.

    I’m writing this feeling very tired about now, so I have very little idea as to whether anything will come out making and sense at all. I’m probably going to blather on wildly with no real goal in mind, mostly because it this stage of my tired, keeping any thoughts in my mind is pretty hard, they’re like slippery eels covered in grease, except less gross.

    I wish jQuery-mobile was out, I want to play with it for the mobile support in my project but alas it looks like I have to wait. Lots of cool features I’m playing with in this project of mine, though unfortunately it severely limits my hosting options as most people don’t provide MongoDB databases. However, this project is also serving as an excuse to flex my muscles with Rails 3 so I can’t just use ActiveRecord and miss out in playing with the new multi-orm support and flexibility features, though perhaps I should have tried a different SQL ORM rather than something completely alien like Mongo.

    I need to sit down and fix my laptop. Trying to replace the Windows partition on there has constantly met with failure. Linux and OSX (I think) are all fine it seems, I just can’t get Windows to boot. It’s determined that the filesystem it is booting from is unmountable or some such nonsense – quite how it can get to the stage it is at without being able access the drive it’s loading from is beyond me.

    Well, for now I think it is time for bed. I’m abso-bloody-lutely knackered. I’m having trouble typing accurately now, though oddly if I tilt my head at an angle and look slightly away from the keyboard it okay again. Which reminds me, I really need to spend the time to get good at touch typing. My words per minutes is awful, being something like 30wpm at the moment. I’m not sure what would be a good typing speed for coding but I’m guessing it a bit more than that paltry number.

    So here were are, past the 750 words barrier once again for another day! Nighty night, all. See you in the morning.

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  • Dark Liquid 10:11 pm on October 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: experiences,   

    Minecraft and Marriage 

    So, I’ve been playing minecraft a lot, you should be familiar enough with that by now. What’s different though is that now I’ve bought it for Dru and we’re playing together on a server I’ve setup on the mediabox. It’s been a strange experience, but ultimately very enjoyable. Dru and I rarely play games together, especially if they are computer games. Generally we have wildly different skill levels and it just leads to frustration for everyone involved but with minecraft things are very different. Being the sandbox game that it is, there isn’t that same kind of competitiveness nor is there the same kind of challenges involved regarding control systems and reaction times. It’s a very slow paced game and it’s full of wonder and exploration.

    I think it’s actually brought us closer together in a way. We’re together as husband and wife, exploring a strange new world and bending it to our will, shaping the elements to protect us against the dangers that lurk in the dark. There is something powerful about that, when there is just the two of you together against the elements and by necessity you become closer, trust each other more, rely on one another. I logged in during lunch to have Dru tell me she’d made me some armour to protect me and in the morning I’d spent some time before work building up our hut and making a little boulevard of tree across the lake to our door because I thought she’d like it (and she did).

    It’s weird, building things for each other, surviving together, working together like that. It’s a completely different gaming experience, even in things like Civilisation which is very similar in terms of sandbox-y type gameplay. The difference is thought that there are no real win conditions in minecraft, it’s purely what you put into it and it’s that, two people pouring themselves into the shared creation of a world, that makes a special kind of bond.

    This isn’t to say that we didn’t have a bond to start with, we are married after all, but rather it’s created another nuanced layer, joining us in an arena we’ve normally been distant in. Games aren’t a massive part of my life, I wouldn’t say I’m a hardcore gamer by any stretch of the imagination but it is important to me and to be able to share it with my wife like this really means a lot. I think that’s the thing I enjoy most about minecraft really, more than any of the single player adventures I’ve had it this shared journey I’ve been taking with my wife. There’s just something magical and intangible about it all.

    I wonder how many other people find that bond is the thing that makes the game for them, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s a large number. Minecraft is a very basic, buggy game with barely any features and many problems but it has that character to it that really appeals to a shared sense of wonder and collaboration and it think it’s quite possibly that, over any of the other things, that make the game as compelling as it is. The single player manages some of that to a degree but the multiplayer experience really is something else. Saying that, I don’t think I’d enjoy it in a public server nearly as much as I’m enjoying playing it alone with my wife. That sense of intimacy is what makes the game for me and that would be lost playing over the internet with strangers. Perhaps though, playing with friends I already know, a similar kind of feeling could be achieved, just imagining it I can already feel a taste of that compelling experience, the primed potential just waiting to be expressed.

    I’m rarely moved by games, in fact generally I don’t play many mainstream games because they seem very empty and soulless. Many are the same as all the others and even though they may have their own unique identity they are still based around a core that is all to recognisable. First Person Shooters are particularly bad for this, but it exists to a lesser extent in the other genres.

    Minecraft however has really made a real impact with me. I haven’t been this effected by a game since Aquaria, which is still one of my favourite games of all time and still astounds me with it’s simplicity and beauty. Indie games are the future and the strongest case for games as art as anyone could hope for. I doubt you’ll ever see a game that can provoke such a profound experience from a large publisher, though I’d love to be proved wrong.

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  • Dark Liquid 8:37 pm on October 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , panic, planning,   

    PlaNo WhinO 

    I don’t really have any kind of plan or pattern to writing. I don’t have a method or plan of attack, generally I just play it by ear. This isn’t exactly the best way, but I’ve always found I tend to flounder and get stuck with a sort of ‘analysis paralysis’ if I think things out to far or try and plan to exhaustively. I’m historically terrible at estimating deadlines or any kind of project management, so I’m a little confused as to why I’m trying to do so this time around for the coming NaNoWriMo.

    Maybe it’s because this novel I’m writing this time I’m actually serious about trying to publish. Maybe I’m insane to think I can, to be honest, I’m riddled with doubts, I’m not sure I’m in love with this story in the same way I have been with previous works. I dunno, gah! Doubts, doubts, doubts.

    Regardless, I’m going to tackle it head on and make myself go through the effort of multiple drafts and revisions. So far I’ve mapped out character, event and location relationships using some mind mapping software and I’ve slowly been making a list of various plot points I want to address. I’m still a little hazy on a lot of the specifics of the plot developments but I’m planning on expanding on the points I have – not writing the story and ‘cheating’ at NaNoWriMo, but rather just writing slightly more detailed story cards, brief scene coverage and more detailed notes about what is going on between the characters at that point in time. I’m going to start drumming up some character cards as well, making something akin to character sheets from roleplaying games.

    I tend to find that I can be a lot more organised and creative when I can organise my ideas visually and more important, spatially. Playing with some physical cards, organising things, making patterns I can actually see and move with my hands – I think it’ll help. Then again, maybe it wont, it’s not something I’ve done before and maybe I’m invested in it merely as a kind of crutch, hoping it will save a story I secretly believe is doomed to fail.

    One thing I do know is that I should stop double-guessing myself and just fucking do it.

    It going to be harder than ever this year though. Last year I wasn’t going to be at one of the i-Series LAN gaming events and last year I didn’t have minecraft eating my soul and every spare minute of my time. It’s going to be fun this year though and even though I’m dreading it, I’m really looking forwards to actually writing properly rather than whenever I feel it, on a whim, without any real goals or developing existing works rather than constantly churning out new ideas and leaving them without an ending or most of the time without a middle or much of a beginning either. Writing something with a proper goal in mind is important and exciting but it’s scary too, ugh.

    Well, I need to come up with another 250 words to bring myself up to this days total if I want to stay on a roll. Sustaining 750 words a day has suddenly become hard. I’ve also suddenly started playing minecraft, yeah… correlation in this case definitely does mean causation I’m thinking. I’m also not exactly writing without distractions at the moment either. Last one I wrote whilst at work and needed to go and get lunch in the middle of it, now I’m writing while watching TV and yeah, it isn’t working.

    Ugh 150 words now. It’s not even NaNo yet and I’m already struggling. There is no hope for me. I need to find something to kick my arse, the trouble is the reward thing doesn’t really work with me because meh, I can do without, after all I don’t have the thing now and so I’m fine to do without. A problem with the whole Epicureanistic mindset I guess. I’m just going to have to focus on the sheer awesomeness of what it will be to get published or the not quite as much awesome, but still pretty good thing of getting an agent or publisher at least show some interest or the lesser still, but none the less satisfying set of rejection letters from agents and/or publishers. Getting a response at all would be a good thing, it means that I’m actually a real writer rather than just a poser that churns stuff out but doesn’t actually write.

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    • Asheyna 10:04 pm on October 13, 2010 Permalink

      I hereby volunteer to kick your ass for you!

      Seriously… I’ll be a cheerleader. I’ve found getting my 750 words really easy some days, and insanely difficult others. One of the things I read somewhere was that even if you just write “I don’t know what to write” over and over again you’ll come up with stuff. Sometimes I’ll start with “I have no idea what to write, it seems kind of silly, I don’t know what or why…” and just sort of let my brain spaz lol.

      You are a writer, and a brilliant one! Having talked to you a little about your novel I’m excited for it. Whether you manage to write it all during NaNo, or it’s just a start I sincerely hope that you do write it.

      *huggles and cheers*
      Ash

  • Dark Liquid 9:05 am on October 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , copyright, creative commons, patents, public domain, sharing   

    On Sharing Ideas 

    Today, I have no conversations to harvest for content, so I shall be writing entirely of the cuff. I’m not exactly sure what to write about, I could steal a topic once again from the same friend of mine I have these conversations with, but that feels like cheating. In fact, that brings me to an interesting line of thought.

    I’m a thief.

    I steal ideas all the time, take other people’s work and build upon it. Rarely do I create anything completely from scratch, my inspiration always coming from without rather than within. I’m a remixer, rather than an original craftsman for the most part. Okay, so thief is a rather loaded word with several negative connotations, but it pulled you in, right? Right? Hello, anybody there?

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    • Asheyna 5:52 pm on October 12, 2010 Permalink

      Well one vote for Monty as king of the world right here!

      That being out the way, loved this post. To me you’ve just put forward the best argument for Open Source that I have had the pleasure of reading. It’s hard to refute your points, they make perfect sense from where I’m sitting. But then, we all know Canadians are crazy eh?

      I’m a thief too. Few of my writing ideas are purely original. Something that someone will say starts me off on this crazy little tangent in my head and voila, a story is born!

      Lastly, let’s make it official… you have my permission to use any conversations with me any way you wish as long as you don’t go about with the specifics. Which I know you won’t :)

  • Dark Liquid 12:59 pm on October 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Laziness as a Cure for Bitterness 

    I keep coming back to conversations I’ve had for fuel to write these things. Today’s particular topic is me again, ego-centric I know, but it’s not so much about me per se, as it is about philosophy again. Yes, philosophy, or perhaps more a sort of guideline for how to live my life in this case. This isn’t so much about the nature of things as it is about the way I choose to react to things. It can be summed up in a single word pretty easily.

    Laziness.

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  • Dark Liquid 2:31 pm on October 10, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: anxiety, ,   

    Minecraft 

    I decided to take the plunge and actually play Minecraft properly today, rather than just run around without a clue what I am doing. When you start actually playing it properly, it’s quite good, the adventure of exploring and surviving on your wits is really quite fun. Needing to forage for food to heal yourself after you’ve had a fall, fought off some horrid monster or otherwise hurt yourself suddenly becomes apparent after you’ve been playing for a little while, and then you’re thrown into some blind panic trying to work out how to survive long enough to get something to eat. Simple things such as needing light to see adds another dimension when you need to get some more resources, but they are in a pitch black cavern (probably, hopefully) and the only way you can find anything down there is to make torches – which you need coal for, but can’t find up near the entrance of the cavern which means you have to find somewhere else to get some so you can start mining this area.

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  • Dark Liquid 8:31 am on October 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: belief, personal,   

    Personal Philosophy and the Bliss of Ignorance 

    Discussing my own personal philosophy makes me question it further, which has to be a good thing. After all, it’s always been my opinion that unquestioning faith is a harmful state of mind to be in, so any excuse to challenge ones assumptions has to be taken as a blessing rather than a curse, an opportunity to learn more about the world and about yourself.

    What brings this up is some discussions I’ve had recently with a friend which lead to some further analysis of my own thoughts on the nature of reality, truth and understanding. What I decided, tentatively for now, is that my personal philosophy takes a certain inspiration from Constructivism, Empiricism, Epicureanism and Philosophical Skepticism. Now, one might instantly jump upon this as a sign that I promote relativism in my world view, and to an extent, that is true. However, I don’t believe that all things can only be expressed relative to others. There is an absolute truth out there somewhere, but I’m neither foolish enough nor arrogant enough to think that anyone had found it yet.

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    • Toby 10:46 am on October 12, 2010 Permalink

      If “all truth, all facts, as we know them are constructed from our own observations”, then how can you also say “there is an absolute truth out there”…? Just curious =)

    • Dark Liquid 11:36 am on October 12, 2010 Permalink

      Good point! Well, constructed in this case means truths constructed for ourselves, our experiences of others could be said to be our own constructions, which leads us down the route of solipsism which isn’t a very satisfying destination.

      Rather, the fact that there are multiple view points in the world, all constructing their own truths and that sometimes these overlap and other times conflict invites the idea that there is an underlying absolute truth from which all these constructed truth spring as a result of our skewed experiences of this absolute.

      At least, that’s kind of what I mean, it that makes it clearer :)

  • Dark Liquid 2:01 pm on October 8, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Urges Braindump #2 

    I’d like to say I’ve been thinking about my novel, Urges, but I haven’t really. For the most part I’ve just been moaning about being in pain (again) or studying for my driving theory test on Saturday.

    The brief few thoughts I have had all derive from the same thing, that thing being the “meat” of the story. Oh, that ever elusive meat, the second act which makes a story a story, rather than a cool idea and a weak punchline.

    Yesterday I posted about some of the ideas I had so I’m going to take this opportunity to develop them now, assuming I can remember what any of them were. This whole 750words.com thing does not lend itself well to referring to notes, but then again that is kind of the point, it’s meant to be an outpouring of words, a brain dump of text.

    But I digress… back to thoughts on my novel.

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