Dylan Charles's Blog, page 12

Beer Review: Samuel Adams Third Voyage

For a long time, I had a love/hate relationship with IPAs. They were too bitter, too strong tasting, too hoppy. Now I feel like I could go the rest of my life never drinking anything else. So when I saw a new Sam Adams Double IPA, (Third Voyage) I ran and grabbed my specially designed, high tech Sam Adams guzzlin’ glass and filled it to the brim with hoppy.

And I’m underwhelmed. I’m never happy with an ordinary IPA. I want to be sandblasted with flavor. I want to have trouble finishing the who...

Playing in Someone Else’s Playground

I’ve been working on a story to submit that takes place in an already established universe and the experience has been…interesting, to say the least.

When I’m writing for myself, it’s fairly speedy. I make up the rules for the world and away I go, only stopping because I saw something shiny on the internet. The story will be fully formed in my head and I’ll usually only change things based on the story itself.

But because I’m playing in someone else’s world, I have to abide by the rules. Which...

Hobbies

I’m concerned.

A few blog entries ago, I talked about the transience about my interests. I’ll be interested in baseball one month and then be interested in zombies the next month. But I’ve been stuck in my 40K interest for a considerable amount of time by this point. I should have moved on to something else by now.

Instead, I’m still painting models and readings 40K books and listening to 40K podcasts.

This worries me for a few reasons.

I’ve read that a person’s musical interests are pretty much...

From the Heart of the Storm

Even being in New England, it’s not that common for snow to arrive with such shocking force. In 2011, we got snow aplenty, but over a two month long period. Friday night was absolutely insane. I have not ever seen that much snow come down in one go in ever.

Emily and I went out into the storm at one point and walked down the street. There was no-one around. No cars. No sounds. Just snow and wind. It was almost alien in the isolation. It’s the quiet, the muffling, stifling quiet you find only i...

Sample Size

I’m submitting a story to a site that does not want the whole story, that just want a five hundred word sample from the story. At first, this sounded like simplicity itself. I can write five hundred words in twenty minutes. Boom, done.

But then I really began to think about the implications. They needed to be the best five hundred words I could possibly write. in a very small amount of space, I need to sell the entire ten thousand story.

I began to review the entire the entire story based on th...

The Constant Pursuit of a Hobby

I don’t understand people who actively and constantly pursue the same interest over extended periods of time: scrapbookers, sports fans, model builders, movie enthusiasts, it doesn’t matter. If you can stay interested in a topic, continuously, for years on end, you puzzle me.

As a for instance, I occasionally build and paint models for a tabletop game. I’ll get interested in it for a month or two and then I’ll wander away and do something else. Lately, I’ve been listening to a podcast by peopl...

Learning a Craft

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone out of my way to learn something new, unless it was for a job.

Today, Emily and I took a glass making class. I made birds and beads and bugs. I used muscles I have never used before. I was more focused on a single thing than I have been in months. There was an intensity there that I haven’t experienced since….I don’t know when.

There is an excitement in learning, an energy to be found, and I had forgotten it.

It’s something I want to continue. I want to lea...

It’s Called Stealing

The Internet is a vast and wonderful place. Creation happens here. Ideas, stories, cartoons, movies, images; they all get an audience that they might not otherwise get. The Internet has truly ushered in ademocratizationof creativity. If you put in a little bit of effort, you can find an audience for you work.

There is, of course, a flip-side to this.

I wrote a story, a few years ago, called “The Song and Dance Man”. I submitted it to Ichor Falls and Kris Straub published it and has the right to...

A Place of Our Own

Emily introduced me to sushi a few years ago and, since then, we’ve gone to about six or seven places in the Boston area and never more than once. None of the places we went to were necessarily bad (except for the one in Somerville where the waitress corrected Emily in the most condescending manner possible. Good fish though.), but there was just nothing there to make us come back.

But now I think we’ve finally found a place that’s worth revisiting a second time. We went to Cafe Sushi in Cambr...

On the Fringes of Geekery

Like many geeks, I am not, nor have I ever been, very comfortable in my geeky obsessions. They are hidden away, buried and untalked about. I’m not just talking about my love of movies and science fiction and the occasional computer game. I have secreted away still geekier joys, of which I will not speak.

But let’s say, hypothetically, that I enjoyed something like….model building. Hypothetically.

Today, I went to Pandemonium Books and Games(hypothetically) to buy a model. A lot of gaming shops...