Aleae Iaciens

Since I'm already maintaining one weblog at my website, it seems a little silly to keep paying for TypePad's service. Thus, I'm moving Aleae Iaciens over here. The new address is already active, as you can see, and has all of AI's previous posts (and comments to those posts); the old site will remain active until the end of the month.

The new Aleae Iaciens has an Atom feed; please feel free to use it. At the end of the month, when I cancel the TypePad site, I'll look into migrating the existing Livejournal feed if nobody's done so.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 09:20 AM | Permalink

I don't really have any time at the moment to give a full update; the end of the semester will do that to you.  But I can give you a sneak peek of what's coming down the pike...

Continue reading "Upcoming posts" »

Posted by Chris Anthony at 12:26 AM | Permalink

One of the things I really, really love about TypePad is that pretty much every page on the administrative side takes variables through POST and GET.  The logical consequence of this, naturally, is that if you forget that in this particular (otherwise generally fully-featured) text editor, CMD-Left Arrow means Navigate Back instead of Home, you realize only just a moment too late that what you've done is erase the 500-word post you just wrote, because TypePad will generate the page from scratch when you hit CMD-Right Arrow to navigate forward again.

The upshot is that this post might be a little more scattered than usual, since I'm going to be prone to thinking that I've already written something in the post's first incarnation.  (I've switched over to Writely in order to write the rest of this, since I like its behavior better. It seemed silly to do so the first time, because I didn't think I was going to be writing so much.)

Continue reading "Updates" »

Posted by Chris Anthony at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've turned off the "only post excerpts" option, and returned to a full-text RSS feed.  It was a good idea, I think, but I ended up getting fewer clickthroughs, which I suspect means that people wasn't realizing that there was more article on the site itself!  Anyway, RSS aggregators should pick up the full text of posts again.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 05:25 PM | Permalink

Some of you have probably noticed that I've changed the way the RSS feed works - it now lists only the first 200 words or the Introduction, whichever ends first.  Is that working for you guys?  Do you prefer the full-text RSS feed?

(I note that I've made the change for purely selfish reasons - with a full-text RSS feed, people don't have to click through to the article itself unless they want to comment, so I don't get as accurate a view of who's actually seeing the articles.  So I'm not horribly averse to changing back.)

Posted by Chris Anthony at 08:24 AM | Permalink

I've been busy enough that I haven't been checking my referral stats as compulsively as I usually do, so I hadn't noticed that Aleae Iaciens is edging up on 1,000 pageviews!  (That's right - 1,000 views in just over a year.  Maybe if I were to post more often...)

So I have a couple of questions for you guys, since you all seem to be relatively on top of things.

First, what is a "gamist"?  Ever since selentic linked to a few gaming weblogs, I've been seeing this word pop up; I assume it arises from The Forge, but I can't figure out what it means.  Brian tells me that it's someone who falls between pure simulationist and pure narrativist, which terms I actually do understand, but I keep feeling like there are connotations to gamist that I'm just not getting.

Second, what do you all want to see me talk about?  I honestly want answers here; I'm not just asking because I'm blocked.  I think I have ten readers now (!!), and it behooves me to talk about the things that people want to read about.  Should I work on the system more?  (The more I think about it, the more I wonder if I shouldn't actually work out two systems for the game - one with cards, and one with dice.  I like the card-based system, but it's not easy to get until you've played it through once or twice.)  Should I keep talking about the history of Frontier, or should I talk more about where it is "today"?

Seriously - tell me what you want to see in this space, even if it's just "keep doing what you're doing" or "I don't have any suggestions, I'm just enjoying the ride" (or "you really should give up on Frontier and work on something else", although I'd like to hear why).  And, as a reminder, if you're reading this from an RSS feed (like the Livejournal feed), I only see comments that are posted here, so please click through before you leave a note.

Okay, enough chatter for now.  Barring overwhelming response as to what I should talk about, I'm working on a side piece about the geography of Frontier which should settle some questions that have been asked.  With any luck I'll be posting that early this week, although with a midterm to study for and a paper to write, it probably won't be before Tuesday...  (Some of you may also notice that the setting is changing as I nail more of it down; obviously, the more that gets nailed down, the less will be retconned.  But if you have questions about that, or concerns that I've forgotten something I wrote earlier - hey, it happens - feel free to let me know.)

Posted by Chris Anthony at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As soon as I say "I'll work on this to have it ready by...", something comes up to prevent that.  In this case, it's a paper, an exam, and a work deadline, which will be consuming my time until Monday.

I'll get to the government write-up as soon as I can.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 04:26 PM | Permalink

Also: I don't know if this is LiveJournal  or TypePad's syndication screwing up, but posts don't seem to be appearing on LJ for several hours after they're posted here - I've timed one post as having an eight-hour delay.

Is anybody reading this on a non-LJ feed?  How quickly do the posts show up on your trackers?

EDIT: Okay, I've just checked the RDF file, and it doesn't have either of today's posts yet, including this one.  So it may be a combination of factors.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 11:08 AM | Permalink

One of the reasons I took History and Politics courses this semester was so that I'd have a more firm background in, well, history and politics, to lend verisimilitude to the worlds I built - especially Frontier.  But now I'm running into some odd problems.  To wit: we've just covered the American Revolution in both courses (American History to 1865 and American Political Thought), and now I can't stop thinking about making the colonists' takeover from the Federales a revolutionary war instead of a social takeover.  In any event, I'm going to have to think about that point in history a little more than I have been.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 11:03 AM | Permalink

I haven't updated in a few weeks, so I thought I'd drop a note and let the five of you know that I haven't given up - I've just been swallowed by school.  I'm still thinking a lot about Frontier, I just, y'know, haven't been posting.

I know that fade is working on a post, too, so you'll have some content that isn't inane in a few minutes!

Posted by Chris Anthony at 05:18 PM | Permalink

I want to work on Frontier, but what's coming to mind is writing out characters!  Sadly, I don't have a full system yet.

Should I work on the system, and get it at least to the point where I can make a basic character?  Or should I keep working on the setting, and write out characters in prose in preparation for statting them up?

Posted by Chris Anthony at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I really don't like the last line of the Federales post, but I'm failing to come up with any ways to make it better.  Any thoughts?  Anything else you'd like to know about the Federal Police Force?

Posted by Chris Anthony at 12:08 PM | Permalink

I will not delete the original text of this post, but I have placed it in the extended body so that it's less glaring.  Sorry for the lapse of self-confidence.

Continue reading "There are times..." »

Posted by Chris Anthony at 09:34 PM | Permalink

I just made changes to almost every post on Aleae Iaciens, so if they all get reposted to the RSS feed, um, I'm sorry.  I'm hoping they don't.  I don't want to flood anybody's aggregator.

(I didn't change any of the existing content, for the record; it's more a philosophical change than anything else.  I've taken the Creative Commons link off the sidebar, and I'm putting the link in each individual previous post instead.  I still like and support Creative Commons, and I may put the whole thing under a CC banner when I'm done with it, but it occurred to me this weekend that I'd really rather have finer control over what's covered by the CC tarp.)

For the record, the only previous post that is not now covered by a Creative Commons license is Fade's introductory post, which I didn't want to tag without asking her first.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 09:24 AM | Permalink

So this is apparently my 200th day of having this weblog.

I should probably post something game-wise, but...

...I got nothin'.

(Well, that's not true.  But I got nothin' that might not be a potential copyright infringement if I post it here.)

We'll see if I got somethin' later in the day.  (God, I hope so.  This dry spell is murdering me.)

Continue reading "Huh." »

Posted by Chris Anthony at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Courtesy of Chad U. (and possibly others, but Chad's was the first link I followed), the new trailer for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (55.7-meg .mov), scheduled for release on December 9 in the US.

I don't think I've read these books in over 15 years.  (The same goes for Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and subsequent books.)  I really should go back through them again; if nothing else, I have a son who's getting to be just the right age...

Continue reading "Weirdly, I never liked the TV series." »

Posted by Chris Anthony at 10:45 AM | Permalink

Via Tepes (who posted this more than a week ago, but I've only just started posting here again), we find that Steven Berlin Johnson posits:

Continue reading "A curious exercise in alternate history" »

Posted by Chris Anthony at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

(TypePad has now managed to eat this entry twice.  I persevere.)

It seems that my friend Moe (you may remember him from such films as Obsidian Wings or the In Nomine mailing list) has started a new weblog, Weblog Licentiae Moeticae.  Anybody who reads this weblog (all four of you) should probably read WLM, since Moe writes on many* of the same topics that I do and is a better writer than I am.

I'm also kind of hoping that Moe will kick my ass and make me start posting here again.  (Possibly in a passive way - ass-kicking by example, as it were.)

* I would probably not, for instance, write an Ambrosian hymn** on SCA tournaments.

** I make no promises about sonnets or triolets.

Continue reading "Excuses" »

Posted by Chris Anthony at 06:11 AM | Permalink

I am infinite, I contain multitudes.

*checks notes*

No, wait, wrong introduction.

Hi. The name's Fade. I'm guest-authoring (co-authoring? demi-authoring? pseudo-authoring? subordino-authoring?) around here now, though I have no clue what I'll be talking about. Game design, presumably. Or something pretending to be like it.

I've designed one game that's in a state of pseudo-publishing, such as it is: SPANC, which is hovering in that grey stage between contract-signing and actually being sold. It's an especially dark sort of grey right now, as Certain Parts have actually been finished, but...it's not out. Yet. (Not that I'm bitter or anything. No, I'm perfectly content to wait forever on this game coming out. It's not like I'm anxious or anything. Not at all.)

Beyond that, I fritter away my time, as far as game design goes, on creating settings I'll never use and game systems no one else will ever use. I'm told this is common, so I don't feel guilty about it in the slightest. I shall try to be interesting, when posting here; if you find otherwise, it's probably fairly easy to skip my posts. If this should be inconvenient, abusive comments are a popular choice!

I live for feedback. I'm very sorry about that. I'm...not really trying to change this, granted, but I'm sorry! Really. Kinda.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 07:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Quick post!  I'm new to weblogs beyond LiveJournal, and so it occurs to me to wonder if there's a posting client for TypePad other than the web client and the bookmarklet.  Any thoughts?  I thought I'd seen a link to one, but I can't find it now.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 07:59 AM | Permalink

This weblog is syndicated at LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/users/aleae_iaciens), and it is possible to leave comments on the individual LJ-feed posts.  However, there are two reasons why, if you're going to leave a comment, I'd rather you do it here:

• The LiveJournal feed is only going to archive ten posts at a time, IIRC.  Once those posts fall off the back of the feed, so do any comments you've left.
• I don't get e-mailed notification of comments from the LiveJournal feed, so I can't guarantee that I'll see your comments there unless I'm actively trolling the feed.  I do get email notification of comments here, which makes keeping track of them a lot easier.

Thanks!

Continue reading "Quick note" »

Posted by Chris Anthony at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)