heh

Bao: "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Vinh: "No."
Bao: "Me neither."

Double Irony

This weekend, Ricky and Vinh’s friend Jimmy came over, and we played Burnout Revenge. That game still has a lot of stuff to unlock! I’ve completed all the events, but we still can reach new medals and new scores and get new goals and stuff, so that game has plenty life left – and it’s still so much fun.

Double Irony

At one point, we were playing one of the crash type games, and there was a level that had a side road, which is a big curve around a big gap. There was this ramp, so you can jump from one side to the other. The ramp is surrounded by buses, and the ‘landing’ was also surrounded by buses. We tried a few times to jump with the ramp, but most of the time we failed the jump.

Ricky’s first try ended with him crashing into a bus by the ramp. So we joked; “You know what would suck? If you jumped, and then you made it, but then you hit a bus on the other side.” Ricky replied, “Oh, that would be ironic.”

Indeed. Hitting a bus on this side of the cliff would be the same as hitting a bus on the other side, except with all that work in the middle. So that was the irony.

And then Ricky succeeds the jump, but just hits a bus on the other side. That was the second irony. Heh.

Anyway, that was a fun, yet uneventful, weekend. Also, just before dinner, I decided to play some WOW with Jia. We did a few quests, and this other Elf Druid was doing the same quests we were, so he joined our party. I would say, that was certainly more fun than solo-ing. It’s more fun playing with other people indeed…

…although… in a party, a rogue can’t build up combo points because everything dies so fast, so it’s… not as exciting for a rogue, it seems. Anyways, that was a good use of 2 and a half hours...

Anyway, I was just reading some blogs, and now I have an idea, a thought… but now I have to go through some philosophical thoughts before I can act on it…

Directional Travelling

What's the convention of saying directions when travelling? I mean, why do you say

"She's walking down the street"

Or when do you say

"I'll be up in Waterloo this weekend" instead of "I'll be down in Waterloo this weekend" ?

Open Conversation

Many months ago, I blogged about the movie technique of "slow motion dropping", and referred to Gankutsuou and FACE/OFF. Anyway, now I'd like to mention "open conversations", which I like hearing, and also would be interesting if they were applied in real life.

An Open Conversation is a conversation where both parties are open with each other, with the whole truth laid out in front. For example, if two people are in a singles-bar, instead of being nervous in asking each other out or starting a conversation, they can have an open conversation - if they both know they're nervous, they can cancel that and just talk openly without being nervous.

There's also another thing, and that's the whole truth, which they can joke about... ...

For example, in "Hitch" (starring Will Smith), near the beginning, Will Smith meets the other lead woman in the movie. They start talking, and although I don't remember everything, she started with "So what's going to happen now?" And Will Smith responds "Well, I'm going to sit down now, start a conversation with you. You will think I'm like every other man trying to score a date with you, and I will try to act very gentle-man like, to make you think that I'm different than the other men."

"But that won't work," says the woman - "I will just see through the BS. So instead, how'bout instead you don't act all nice and instead throw me a line or something?"

"Well, that also won't work - you'll just see through it - so there's no way I can win," Will Smith says.

"Well that's a problem, isn't it?" she says.

And so it continues. Both sides know exactly what will happen, and then they discuss it openly, and then they can have a real conversation after that without any masks or nervousness.

A second example, that is much different, has some sarcastic truth in it - I'm referring to Memento, when Leonard Shelby first meets Natalie (in the movie, not chronologically).

Leonard asks "so you have information for me?" - and he asks it in such a confident way... and Natalie responds with "Is that what your note says?" And Leonard blinks, grins, and says "yeah."

So this is kind of funny, but they both acknowledge his weakness, and that certain grin shows the funniness of it, and the possible flaw of it all. So it's a kind of funny type of open conversation.

My last example has a certain funny double-truth kind of thing, and it's from the first episode of Firefly, at the end, between Mal and Jayne.

First, Mal asks a pretty honest, yet suggestive question. A bad guy offered Jayne a deal that would involve turning against the captain, so Mal asks:

"How come you didn't turn on me, Jayne?"

That's a pretty open, honest question. It's like asking someone "Why don't you love me?" - I don't think people ask a question like that too often. Anyway, Jayne answers with "Money wasn't good enough."

Mal responds with "What happens when it is?"

And Jayne calmly responds "Well... that will be an interesting day."

"I imagine it will."

"That will be an interesting day" is a pretty open, truthful line. And then the captain didn't get mad or anything, he just acknowledged it as a fact. It's... such an open conversation, with much truth, and that makes it pretty funny.

Tokyo Drift

My Sister: "You should watch 'Fast & the Furious, Tokyo Drift' because you like drifting, Bao."
Bao: "Yeah, maybe. I just hope it doesn't suck. I hope it's not too cheesy, or too unrealistic, with fabricated drifts..."
My Sister: "I betcha 10 bucks it will."
Bao: "I don't want to spend 20 bucks to see it!"

Firefox Ninja

OMG! I actually was going to write something about somethign else, but screw that.

OMG! I just noticed that I was unable to fully enjoy DR. MCNINJA comics to the fullest intent! When you hover your mouse over the text, the alternate text shows up, but in Firefox, only some of it shows up, and it always ends with "..." - so I thought the author/artist was being secretive and wanted us to guess what was coming up, but really, it was Firefox's fault!

So now I have to start (and re-read) reading Dr McNinja comics on Internet Explorer! Damn you Firefox!

(now that's two things I don't like about firefox; this, and when there's a picture that's also a link, you can't directly save the picture)

not Magical

I was planning to write many articles about my magic set... ya know, how they do on the Magic website - after a set comes out, they still have a few months of articles about how the set was designed, the quirkiness of stuff, etc...

So I thought it would be fun to do that, or at least interesting, and a good use of my journal. Write stuff down, write down processes, things past - what a journal is for, right? And I thought people would get enjoyment out of it. I thought Alan would at least read them, and enjoy them and post comments, like how he would with real magic articles.

It seems Alan spends good time to write his preview articles, and he enjoys reading post-set articles, but this blog hasn't received comments on the magic cards for quite some time, and I don't think anybody reads them. I thought people would be interested in hearing how I came up with the set and my process, for when they make their own set and see how they can improve on my processes and stuff. But alas, I think I was wrong.

So, I don't think I'll continue writing stuff about the Magic set, because nobody seems to appreciate it.

Anyways... it's hot. Not as hot as it was a few days ago when it was 34 degrees, but still it's hot... and it's making me tired and not want to do stuff.

Magic Design Journal – Part 1 of 20+

Before we start with the journal, a few things:
At this time, there are 26 boosters left, and thus 26 rares; however, I looked at the uncommons, and if I’m not mistaken, I think there are approximately 26 uncommons (out of 75) that you haven’t seen yet! This includes Take Two, Infliction, Return to Earth and Soil, the white “Check” card, the green “Check” card, and many others.

Also, I put this thing together: http://www.baomon.com/blog/card-names-s.mp3 - The file is about 4.5 megs, or 4:30 long, and in it you’ll find the sources for some of the card names or other references. You’ll hear clips from Aladdin’s “Prince Ali” and some references to Firefly, among other things.

Magic Design Journal:

Coronam Vitae - XW [R]
Instant
As an additional cost to playing this spell, remove the top XXXXX cards of your library from the game.
Gain XXXXX life.

A few months ago, somehow we started talking about Thoughtlash, and David thought it might be… actually okay. I think if it didn’t have the cumulative upkeep cost, I think it might actually work – with Thoughtlash, you technically have 60 life instead of 20, yes?

So that’s the inspiration for Coronam Vitae, or Crown of Life. Coronam Vitae is latin, and it’s a piece of lyric from the Elfen Lied intro song. I think during creation it was more expensive… but then I didn’t think people would draft it. Oh yeah, it used to be a sorcery, with “Speedup – remove the top X cards from the game.” But, then I took that out and just made it a bit better.

Just like Thoughtlash, it trades cards for life. It’s rare, and other than possibly Double Jeopardy, it is the fastest, most efficient (mana cost) life gain in Combo Breaker. It’s found a nice home in David’s deck, although he first misread it and thought the cards go into the graveyard, which I can see, would also be quite useful. But alas, they’re gone forever instead, like Thoughtlash.

Such high life gain, instant speed, low cost – are very convincing reasons to make it rare. And that it was. (During creation, the name of this card was “Knowledge for Life”. There’s another card in Combo Breaker, which you haven’t seen, that used to have the name “Life for Knowledge.”)

Just a drop of water – U [R]
Sorcery
Draw 2 cards.
Dredge 2

This was one of the first cards I made. So people say it’s broken now, but it doesn’t even work the way I intended! I intended that you can draw a card, dredge this one, and then use it again! But alas, it doesn’t work, which is good, because then it would’ve been much more broken.

Simply, I wanted more card drawing in my set. The fact that it obsoletes Counsel of the Soratami didn’t even cross my mind, because the Dredge 2 was the most important thing. It used to have Dredge 1, but then it would’ve been too good.

So is it really broken? Probably. The average cost to draw an extra card a turn is approximately 2UU or 3U, or a bunch of life – for this card, it’s U and a 2 card mill. So you draw faster, but in the process you mill – of course, unless your opponent has a milling deck, you don’t really care.

Good news – nobody drafted it yet. There are 6 blue rares left. Good luck!

Gifts Returned - 2BB [R]
Sorcery
Put the top 4 cards of your library into your graveyard. You may repeat this process as often as you wish. After that, choose 2 cards in your graveyard; put those cards in your hand. Your next black spell has combo 1B.

This one breaks the cycle I was going for – the other cards above are all 1-to-cast rares (Coronam Vitae would sorta suck, but still) – but the black 1-to-cast rare hasn’t been drafted yet, nor officially previewed, so it would be wrong to talk about it.

Gifts Returned comes from Gifts Ungiven, but indeed different. It used to cost 4BB, then I thought that… it shouldn’t cost that much to take two cards out of your graveyard. Recollect is 2G, so in one way it would just be two recollects.

Then there’s the other part, the force mill and then the choosing. I’m not really sure I intended it to be such a great tutor. I meant it to take cards out of the graveyard, so you can re-use them… but then I obviously had the force-mill in it for a reason – I guess, in case your first force-mill gives you better options.

Also, it could be a draw back – since I’m calling it force-mill… but Jason used it really well. Duy opened it, Jason was to his right, but they were passing left and it got to Jason, and Jason used full advantage of it. Kudos for him to use it in a different way than I expected, heh.

Finisher - R [R]
Instant
Deal 2 damage to target player. That player draws 2 cards.
Flashback: Discard your hand.

At first glance, Char looks… boring and bland. Arc Slogger… ugh. Alan would look at these and see the beauty in them, and in that vein, comes Finisher. Ambrose opened it and passed it right to Duy, and Duy took it, so Alan didn’t get to see it, but I’m sure Alan would’ve also seen what Duy saw in it.

First, it’s called Finisher, because at the end, if you’re about to win (by damage or by mill), then you use Finisher to deal and “semi-mill”, and, if you’re that close to finishing, you can pay the flashback as if it didn’t matter. At the end, Deal 4 damage is good, and Force Draw 4 cards is almost like (but better) than mill for 4.

It’s rare because of the flashback – no mana – and also because of it’s flexibility. You can cast it on yourself to draw cards when desperate, and when really desperate, you can discard your hand for another 2 cards. This card has always been named Finisher, but near the end, I watched some of School Rumble again and "Arrow Message" became a good name, but I really liked the simplicity of "Finisher."

It’s flexible, cheap, and potent. All the combinations for a rare.

Muscle Sprout - G [R]
Creature – Plant Monster
Trample
Threshold – Muscle Sprout gets +3/+3.
If Muscle Sprout is attacking, and then you reach Threshold for the first time this game, creatures you control get +2/+2 until end of turn.
1/1

Lastly for today, we come to Muscle Sprout, another 1-to-cast rare. It used to have Threshold +2/+2, but in the last few days I pumped it up to make it better. I was considering adding Trample to the Threshold-attack bonus (other creatures), but that would be quite wondrous. I was also considering giving it haste, which would work nicely in its flavour.

Muscle Sprout rhymes with Brussel Sprouts, and Sprout implies “Instant something”, which is where the name comes from. It used to be black, and had a different name, but then moved to green for limited pointing.

That concludes this edition of Magic Design Journal. I think this will be a daily or bi-daily thing. Tune in next time for another 5 rares, or maybe 5 uncommons, or something.

Instant Messaging

I just logged into World of Warcraft to see if I can get in touch with Alan. But he wasn't logged on.