Richard Dansky's Blog, page 68

More Adventures in Swaptree

I can now swap The Bourne Legacy for Lizards in Captivity.

Is it just me, or does this sound like part of David Icke's private porn stash?

Alas, Babylon

There's something sad, in a small way, about connecting through Philadelphia International at dinnertime and not actually finding a place to get a cheesesteak.

Or, for that matter, a Tastykake.

I have grown old in the gaming industry

Took a short walk last night after dinner and stopped into a convenience store. The clerk stared at me for a minute in ways that made me wonder if he was going to go for a knife, and then said, "You work on that Rainbow Six?" I'd completely forgotten I was wearing my old Raven Shield shirt, which I still haul out on occasion because A)it's a shirt and B) it fits.

"Yeah," I said. "I was the writer on it." He grinned and started talking about how much he loved video games, until suddenly, he took

Details

The rundown:

I'm in Montreal, working on Splinter Cell: Conviction.
I am very, very busy.
I have very limited net access at work, in part because I'm very, very busy.
"Very, very busy" generally precludes a lot of email, fantasy baseball roster shuffles, Facebook Scrabble turns, LJ posts, and pretty much anything else not directly approved by the stubble on Sam Fisher's chin. Apologies if it looks like I'm hermiting, but sometimes the day job becomes the evening job, the weekend job, and the night j

More Adventures in Swaptree

I listed another pile of books on Swaptree today, as the pre-travel cleaning frenzy rolls desultorily along. Among the titles now up for grabs: Space Vulture, Diamondback, The Devil's Right Hand, and World's End.

The one it wouldn't take? A brand new King James Bible. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

Thoughts on Public Enemies...

....Starring Johnny Depp in a wide array of facial hair, a remarkably lifelike Christian Bale puppet, Marion Cotillard, and the soundtrack from Last of the Mohicans.

Public Enemies doesn't work for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it's clearly a critique on the "War on Terror" - wiretapping, "enhanced interrogation" of suspects yielding bad info, carefully placed leaks in the media, and so forth. Personal politics aside, once that became apparent it was impossible to un-see, and it detracted f

On a more explosive note...

I loves me some footage of active vulcanism from orbit.

Perils of Background Music

Good writing music is important to me. It helps set the mood, reinforces tone, and drowns out the annoying hum of the tiny overworked fan inside my trusty computer.

This can lead, however, to some interestingly incongruous moments when working while jacked into an iPod with a rather...eclectic collection on it. One of these involves looking up at the tail end of a four-hour writing jag on a project (yes, I have more than one of those) that involves large guns putting large holes in large people,

New Book Review

My review of George MacDonald's Phantastes is up over at Fantasy Magazine. Phantastes is one of those books that laid the groundwork for modern fantasy, a sort of transitional form between the old "fairy story" and the modern fantastic fiction approach, and as such it would be interesting just as an artifact. The fact that MacDonald was devilishly good , well, read the review, and if you like it, you could do a lot worse than to read the book.

And because I haven't caused enough SAN loss for one day...

...I give you the trailer to RoboGeisha.

No. Seriously. I'm giving it to you, and I don't want it back.