Robyn Paterson's Blog, page 22
November 22, 2015
Rob’s New Podcast- The Department of Nerdly Affairs
Hi All!
It’s been a while since I posted to my blog, some of which is because of the usual Fall craziness of being a teacher, but now I have another excuse! I’ve been working on a brand new podcast called The Department of Nerdly Affairs with one of my oldest and best friends, Don Chisholm. The podcast is a bi-weekly talk podcast (new episodes every second Friday) where Don and I discuss different aspects of “nerd” arts and culture from a Gen-X’er point of view.
What does that mean? Well, we...
September 5, 2015
A little perspective change on science fiction writing
I’m currently listening to an audiobook of Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi, and while enjoying it a thought occurred to me. We often say that Science Fiction is based on the phrase “What would happen if?” and then extrapolate out the story from there, but I think that’s wrong.
Listening to that excellent novel, it occurred to me that “What would happen if?” actually encourages writers to think in terms of events and plot. If I say “What would happen if Giant Bugs from Arcturus dropped from the...
September 2, 2015
Review- Dragon Blade (Jackie Chan) (Mild Spoilers)
I just finished watching Dragon Blade, and I have to say I have really mixed feelings about it. It’s a giant pile of awesome ideas and potential wrapped in a badly directed and mismanaged package. The core idea is great- a team of Silk Road mediators in Han Dynasty China lead by Huo An (Jackie Chan) have to keep peace among the 36 different tribes that control parts of the Silk Road which runs between China and Rome. One day, a Roman army shows up on the Chinese border city of Wild Geese led...
August 31, 2015
Hunter x Hunter (2011) Anime Review
The manga Bakuman is about two young manga artists (Takagi the writer, Mashiro the artist) who work their way up through the manga industry at it’s top selling publication- Weekly Shonen Jump. Written by two veteran manga creators, it’s a masterpiece on many levels, and at its core it’s both a critque of the industry and a how-to for those who want to become future manga artists. Another way to describe it is if Scott McCloud made his incredible Understanding Comics as a story about a young...
August 18, 2015
The Street Fighter
When I mention the name Street Fighter, most of you probably picture something connected with this…
This is pretty natural, since the Street Fighter series of video games is a serious contender for the most popular game series of all time, and is without a doubt the best of the console arcade fighting games. However, prior to 1991’s release of Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior, for almost twenty years people would have had a completely different picture in their heads. This one…
1974’s Th...
August 9, 2015
Review of the new SJW900 App!
Nailed it! Warning- Lots of swearing.
July 23, 2015
Voice Dream Reader
I always look for ways to improve my reading speed for books, and recently I came across the iOS app called Voice Dream Reader. It was a little expensive for an app, being $12, but it had glowing reviews and it sounded like what I was looking for, so I purchased it to give it a go.
To say that I was impressed is an understatement. Simply put, Voice Dream Reader is a fantastic program for reading on your iPhone or iPad which reads pretty much everything except Mobi (Amazon Kindle) files. But t...
July 8, 2015
The Power of Privilege
The concept of Privilege (in the modern social justice sense) was coined by Peggy McIntosh in 1988 in her essay White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies, and was intended as a new way of looking at social inequality. At its core, the concept is very simple- we are all born with certain social advantages and disadvantages and we should be mindful of this fact when dealing with/judging other people. It is meant (in i...
April 16, 2015
TyranoBuilder- Visual Novel creation made simple
I’ve always been interested in visual novels as an art form, to me they’re the idea of Choose Your Own Adventure stories taken to the next level. I also love the sheer democratic nature of them, not only in the choices you can make, but also the fact they’re so easy to make. At least, they are in theory, and software like Ren’py, Novelty, and now TyranoBuilder have been working to make that into a reality.
TyranoBuilder isa “new” (in English) piece of software for graphically building visual...
April 6, 2015
Jackie Chan: My Stunts
In a follow-up to my piece on What writers can learn from Jackie Chan from last week, I hunted down a copy of the documentary Jackie Chan: My Stunts from 1999. In a lot of ways, this documentary is the 90 minute version of Tony Zhou’s 14 minute analysis, with Jackie revealing all the old-school techniques they use to do stunts in his films.
I have to say that seeing him show off his approach to producing stunt-driven action films is really inspiring. It really shows you how much thought and...
