Well, yes, I haven't posted since August 28th.

Wrote and edited (3X) and now podcasted a story called "Zulu-5". See the AAP blog for details.

And now beating myself up for it because it isn't right. I edited the dang thing 3 times, but it still doesn't seem right. Oh well.

See, back a few weeks ago I just decided I'd had enough. If I wasn't going to write, fine. If I write, fine. I decided I wasn't going to feel guilty about not writing anymore, and I wasn't going to consider myself in the writer's block anymore. It's part of a subtle (for me anyway) shift of perspective, to wit:

I recalled a metaphor I'd used some time ago as to how people are like folders on a computer, and how no one seems interested anymore in clicking on them and seeing what's inside. People are their own virtual realities inside their heads. If you're lucky, a lot of people want to come in and build things and shoot each other and generally have fun inside your personal VR world. If you're not lucky, you wander around in your personal VR like a game server with no one on it. You've got all these cool toys, all this space, with doors and guns and trees and snow... but no one's there to play with. So basically you go around destroying trees and trying to figure out how to glitch yourself up to the roof. Because you're bored and lonely.

So I just decided, well hell, no one cares anyway. So I'm being a little nicer to myself. I bought myself a copy of Halo 1 and a game controller for my computer here, and I've been externalizing the metaphor tonight. I found a few other people on a game online and I spent a couple hours flying around in a Ghost and getting shot with tanks and run over by Warthogs. I've never used one of these controller things. I'm still getting used to it and fiddling with the set-up on it trying to find some kind of intuitive layout. It's not like Doom, that's for sure.

I'll get Halo 3 when the price comes down, but for now I'm just trying to figure out how to move properly and shoot and all that.

I want to get Halo 2 and go find the stage from This Spartan Life. I know it's on the Headlong map. I want to explore all the neat buildings and stuff. That's mostly what I want to do, just go explore. The shooting people is optional, but they don't see it that way I guess. I'm not interested in going much of anywhere in the real world except for the Science-Fiction Museum and the Air and Space Museum. But there's all this space inside of Halo... beaches and forests and urban areas.

Anyway, it took me a few hours to get all this stuff to work right, but it's okay now.

Hope to go to Huntsville Tuesday, and desperately need to write some on Avalon.

Go to Google Video and put in "Lord of the Halo" and watch "Fellowship of the Halo" and "The Two Betrayals". They're both around 3 minutes long and are two of the Lord of the Rings trailers done in Halo machinima. (There will also be a third called "The Return of the Arbiter" but apparently it hasn't been completed yet.) These things are incredible. They're fragging perfect. Go. Go now. Watch and be awed.