Zero Angel Richardson's Blog, page 18

September 19, 2013

Quick Tip: Wookie Voice

A wookie impression isn't exactly rocket science: make your best approximation of a bear noise, add water (or drink of choice), gurgle while making bear noise, and adjust to preference. Eventually, you'll be able to do it without the water.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own or have anything to do with wookies. Just trying to help people have fun.
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Published on September 19, 2013 11:10

September 18, 2013

Quick Update

Getting back into the habit of writing everyday, although I'm not up to full productivity levels (or anywhere close to be honest...I'm at like 5%).



I appreciate your patience and continued support, and I hope to have some good news sooner than later.

Thank you,
~Zero

PS Oh, and I'm sorry to people that were looking forward to some TV reviews with the new seasons approaching, but I don't watch TV at home anymore, so unless the stars align I wouldn't hold my breath. Apologies. 
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Published on September 18, 2013 23:58

September 17, 2013

Music Confession

I realize he's right up there with the rest of the musical pillars or whatever, but I cannot, cannot, cannot STAND Bob Marley.

I listen to The Summit which is a local public radio station that has completely changed the way I consume music and increased my satisfaction of listening to the radio tenfold since I discovered it.

I only have two complaints: Dave Matthews Band and Bob Marley.

Now, I can tolerate 1-2 DMB songs per month, and sometimes if I'm not actively listening I won't even notice it's on for half a song or so, but Bob Marley is one of the worst. No matter if I'm listening or not, the moment the first few strands of the song filter over the speakers I am filled with nausea and overcome with loathing. I can't even make it to any singing parts of the songs. They're irredeemable.

I tried listening to them when I first found the Summit, I thought of it as eating my musical vegetables. I know I should appreciate the music but I don't. I can't.

I had heard Marley before obviously and I never had such a strong reaction, but that was maybe once a year at the most. It's like nails on a chalkboard now. The revulsion I feel when it comes on is a stronger reaction than anything I've ever felt towards music.

I've always thought of myself as a guy that likes everything. Apparently I'm wrong. Bob Marley has shown me this.
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Published on September 17, 2013 10:59

September 2, 2013

"Way of the Warrior" sneak preview

Hello to all!

I know it's not the novella that you've been promised, but here is a sneak peak into one of the battle sequences of "Way of the Warrior". This sneak peak was available last month to subscribers of my newsletter. Please e-mail zero@apocalypsedesigns.com if you'd like to join. Thank you!

Note: If you thought "The Throne of Ao" had over-the-top action, wait until you see gods and goddesses of Ao in action.
“Where are we going?”“The front lines. Are you ready for battle?”Pure energy heeded her call as Ascalon appeared from the air, dropping into her hand, and she smiled in anticipation, “Always.”At least, she thought she was. But Hope was unprepared for the Hell through the portal. Immediately, she felt immense pressure as they settled on the alien planet followed by the warmth of Rick’s magicks enveloping her.A personal atmosphere she realized. She could see why. The hellscape burned in front of her. In the distance, twisting, shapeless monsters ravaged the world itself, but they were no longer on her world.Still, there were some familiar sights. Familiar, but unwelcome. She pointed at the gleaming, metallic Olympia in the distance. Weapons of magick and energy could be seen pouring out from the Olympia against the shapeless monsters. “Galateans!” she screamed.Acres of revolting abominations lay between them and the Olympia. “They’re on our side here,” Rick said calmly.“You’re kidding.” She looked sidelong at her companion and was astonished to see the spectral forms of the Seven Archmagi circling her friend. Each specter manifested its own magickal field and was visibly chanting even though no sound reached her.“Brace yourself! This is what our planet would be like if it were not for the Aegis protecting it. Without us, this is what our planet will be like. We’re going to fight through to the Olympia and relieve the galts.”“You’re not kidding?” Hope jested one last time before they began.She dismissed Ascalon and pulled Gugnir out with the same motion. She spun the spear quickly before arresting its movement with the palm of her hand. The crack of her spear’s passage through what passed for an atmosphere on the alien planet focused her and pointed her at the enemy.Magick!Not just skill and power. The magick of her inheritance; of her godhood. Magick to fight against the nightmares of reality. Magick to destroy the demon abominations.Pure power filled her and exploded on her enemies. She was a nova. I am my mother’s daughter! I am the Child of the Sun!“I am the Sun!” She rocketed across the battlefield to engage the abominations, throwing Gugnir mid-air to pin one of the things to the ground. She cheered inwardly as the explosion of its impact enveloped dozens of the lesser creatures.Ascalon appeared in her hand as she weaved in and out of the snapping, biting heads at the end of a sea of tentacles. The heads told her the next thing she would kill was this dark, twisted cousin of a hydra.Or maybe the mother of all hydra, Hope thought as she used the thing’s own necks to race up towards the sun, pole-vaulting even higher when she reached the head.Divine energy manifested into holy flame as her arc through the air peaked. Millions of tiny heads streamed out at her from the hydra only to be annihilated in her fiery wake.She sank her spear deep inside one of the larger necks. The head at the end of the neck was as large as an entire adult dragon. She dropped down suddenly, clinging to the shaft of her spear as another dragon-sized head attempted to swallow her whole and instead buried its jaws into the neck she had impaled.She gripped the spear with her left hand and willed it to increase its size, extending through the monstrous neck before calling her second favorite melee spear in her right hand and thrusting it up through the second pair of jaws still hanging above her.Gáe Bolga continued to lengthen from the thrust and began to branch out into dozens of thorns, filling and killing the hydra head. Finally, the extending Ascalon penetrated all the way through the other terrible neck, and instantly her dragon-spear swelled out from its center to become a massive discus that lopped off the entirety of the monstrous neck from its inside.Her sun fire burned it before it could regenerate.Ascalon snapped back into its original shape while Gáe Bolga’s many barbs erupted through the second head before retracting its claws and becoming a normal seven-pointed spear. All the while, her divine aura annihilated multitudes of smaller heads.I have to be faster!She disregarded gravity and flew up into the air under her own power as the remains of the two dragon-sized heads began their descent to the ground far below.Hope flew ever higher, but the dread hydra pursued her. She screamed at the abomination as she twisted and spun in the air, dizzying and entangling the heads following her rise through the air.Her spears shot out and kept shooting out, but never left her hands, extending until she was wielding two fifty foot long blades from the original shafts of the spears.She whipped around in the air with her spears, decimating the monsters as her blades sliced the air so fast as to be silent until sound caught up and the booms echoed across the battlefield.Her solar fire burned bright as the trunk of the beast finally became visible through the carnage.Her spears grew outwards, enlarging to terrific discs to deflect attacks and slice through her enemies. The heads fell away from her and she dropped the great discs to slice through more of them. She felt the warmth of the sun at her back and knew that her battle had cleared the atmosphere above the field to let in the sun. With her mother at her back, she called forth Gugnir, and held it up, channeling the energies of the sun.Gugnir dropped. Down to the ground, through the spine of the dread hydra like lightning, she directed the fire of her soul, the fire of the sun, to pour through the monstrosity, annihilating it utterly.
Ascalon and Gáe Bolga returned to her hands and took the shape of giant fans. She directed the fire out into the battlefield. Hundreds upon hundreds of demons burned.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this sneak preview! There's more where this came from, and I hope to have it out soon! I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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Published on September 02, 2013 11:30

Hashtag WotA

In the interest of keeping you informed: I have not died.

I realize that the promised updates have not come. For more, let me refer you to this: I'm crap at deadlines. I'm really sorry about that. I'd like to tell you all that the delays are a thing of the past, but all I can say is that I'm working on it.

One thing that is relatively easy for me to do though is talk about WotA; unfortunately, the list of people I have to talk about it is relatively small. Luckily, there is a modern day alternative to talking that does not take up much time: Twitter.

So what I have been doing lately (I've been trying for daily, but even if I miss a day, I usually release 2-5 tweets at a time) is tweeting factoids about WotA. Whether it's a monster, geographic location, character or legend, I tweet. Hashtag WotA.


Here's a link that should take you to all of them: @ZAWotA #WotA (may need to be logged in to Twitter).

If you're curious what sort of things I tweet, here's the last three:
#WotA: The beards of the titans grew like stalactites from their tears as the ancient race watched the dragons destroy the world.

#WotA: To this day, the dwarves, an offshoot of the titan race, have beards and hair more akin to minerals than hair.

#WotA: Young dwarves use their beards as a test if something is safe, prompting the phrase, "Shoving their beards where they don't belong!"
Please check them out if you're interested and let me know what you think! I adore feedback. Thanks!
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Published on September 02, 2013 01:09

August 28, 2013

Casual Acceptance of Bullying is Rather Horrifying

So this is somewhat embarrassing, Google's failed me. I cannot find the radio commercial that prompted this blog post, although I do have a reasonable memory and can recall portions of it. So any quotes here will be paraphrased from memory. Apologies.

Note: If you know what commercial I'm talking about, I'd appreciate if you can direct me to it online or if you remember what company did it so I can include that here.

It's the "smartphones are like tutors" commercial which has some pre-teen sounding girl complaining about a series of historical figures. Things like, "Alex Bell posted again. Just because he invented the telephone doesn't mean he can blow mine up all the time"

Now, that quote is from my memory, but complaining about historical figures isn't the "bullying" that I'm talking about. It comes later.

The girl says something to the following effect:
Marie Antoinette keeps posting pictures of cake so people will "like" them. So pathetic. Hashtag guillotine.
What? What?! WHAT?!

Am I the only person that is ridiculously offended by this?

Note: Can't remember if the girl said she was pathetic or not, but she definitely said "hashtag guillotine"...and that's enough to be offended by.

The first time I heard the commercial I just tuned it out. It was just another annoying commercial that may have been mildly amusing depending on my mood. By the third or fourth time however, I had the script practically memorized and that's when I realized what the F this little girl was saying.

Maybe your history isn't up to par, in which case I'll enlighten you. Marie Antoinette was the wife of King Louis XVI of France, generally maligned throughout history, and was PUT TO DEATH BY GUILLOTINE.

So here you have a little girl, not complaining about Marie Antoinette the historical figure (which would be ridiculous anyway), but complaining that she's posting pictures of cake so people will "like" the pictures. If you take out the fact that she's complaining about Marie Antoinette, then it's some little girl being a spiteful jerk to another girl who sounds rather unpopular and sad and is probably ready to kill herself because the only "friends" she has are of the electronic kind like this girl that is calling for her to be executed.

Can you say casual acceptance of bullying?

I find this horrifying.

That bullying in this manner is such an accepted aspect of modern society that it makes it's way into the BACKDROP of a COMMERCIAL that has nothing to do with bullying? It's about smartphones being good resources for education and the student in question is using it to be a horrible person.

Someone wrote this commercial.

Someone was paid to write this commercial.

That someone wanted to appeal to teenagers and pre-teens from the sound of the commercial, but also appeal to their parents.

That someone (or group of someones) thought it would be a good idea for the "child" of the commercial to be annoyed by everyone else and casually call out for one particularly sad example to be executed.

I don't think I'm reading too much into this because I've said it's so casual, and the casualness of it is what bothers me. (by the way, totally had no idea that "casualness" was a word until five seconds ago. I was going to make up my own word "casuality"...eh, screw it, rewriting).

What bothers me is just how damn casual it is.

Why can't we teach people to be nice? If someone's annoying you, then maybe don't suggest that they should be executed. Just a thought.

What are your thoughts on this?
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Published on August 28, 2013 17:24

August 18, 2013

Really?

My app review of "Juggernaut" is twice as popular as the next most popular post...IT'S NOT EVEN A GOOD GAME!

-_- (double-posted on twitter due to brevity)
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Published on August 18, 2013 22:43

Thoughts on the new look?

Although the inner me tends to try to do everything in black at first, I am not completely immune to the demands for an easier-to-read blog style. Thoughts?

I'll be customizing ApocalypseDesigns.com to follow suit with this. Thank you in advance for your comments!
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Published on August 18, 2013 21:27

August 8, 2013

Just got hosed again by one of my day jobs...

...and I really am not sure what to do.

I wish Americans supported the worker instead of the corporation, and I wish I could make a living doing not just what I love to do (teach), but what also requires a strong investment of my own time and money to even be qualified to do (six years of education in a field like mathematics isn't something anybody can do, but you'd think so with how they pay us—hell, six years of education in any field isn't something anybody can do).

Are only rich people and famished people supposed to teach? If so, I'm sick of being the latter, although it's doing wonders for my figure.

Make that two of my day jobs. Curiosity doesn't kill cats, it just makes you confront reality faster. WTF.

I've read elsewhere online how being an adjunct faculty member is like being in an abusive relationship where you're made to feel worthless and that any scraps you are given you treasure because you know how little you deserve.

If I'm still a teacher by January it won't be for a lack of trying. I need to be able to make a living and I can't tolerate abuse of this magnitude just to do something that I love. I am sorry to my would-be future students of who I may have changed how you feel about math and education in general, I'll put all of my energy and knowledge into my math books so maybe you can get the experience of me there. But I can't keep teaching past this semester.

How does this happen?

I love teaching. I think of myself as a teacher and I have ever since my first year volunteering (2004) when I was given a teacher's gift basket by the students with the rest of the teachers at CHS. I love being there to watch the light bulb moment—that euphoria a student gets when they realize what's going on and that they actually understand it. I love making those moments happen. I love the performance of lecturing and adopting the role of a mad professor so students are involved and not falling asleep (OK, so maybe I am actually crazy, but there's some level of performance involved). I love watching a student go from hating and fearing math to realizing that it's really not that bad if they put their back into it and becoming an A student who has completely overcome their math anxiety. And I love showing people that mathematics is not an arbitrary set of rules handed down from on high, but rather is the language of the universe—the tool mankind uses to understand the universe—and is not just the language of the universe but the universal language, discovered more than it is designed: a universal truth. I love math and I love teaching and making a difference. And I'm not fooled into thinking that I make a difference in every student's life, but the fact that I make a difference in any student's life is worth something I would think.

How does this happen?

If you follow me elsewhere, you may have heard that I am now certified to teach middle school and high school in Ohio (in fact, my certification is K-12, although I can't imagine teaching less than 5th graders), but apparently (and maybe I'm speaking prematurely but most schools start here in the next 2-3 weeks) no school wants a college teacher with as much experience and education as me for a "beginning" teacher. No matter where I go I either have too much education or not enough. And getting the certification wasn't exactly easy or cheap either.

How does this happen?

In six years of teaching at YSU with hundreds of student recommendations, there were so many anonymous people saying that I changed the way they think about math, that I'm the best teacher they've ever had or maybe just the best math teacher they've ever had or that they were going to drop out or transfer at the beginning of the semester until they had me and had to stay just for my class and in all those hundreds of reviews, I've had about 5 bad reviews. Those 5 bad reviews (OK, so there were only 3, but I'm rounding up because I haven't read last year's yet) hurt in spite of having dozens of good reviews alongside them at the time. None of it matters though.

How does this happen?

Maybe I'm too poleaxed to be thinking clearly and this post is a gut reaction that I will regret and take down later. I don't know. It was only supposed to be the first three paragraphs, but that was back when I still thought I'd be able to make it as a teacher and was just upset over having more than twice as much work for the same amount of money. I can always work more after all, so it was more annoyance then than fear and despair. When school is in session I usually only work 80-120 hours a week (sometimes as little as 60 if it's a slow week or between sessions at one of the jobs), so adding an extra 20-40 hours to that isn't such a big stretch. But going from 80-120 hours to 35-80 hours isn't exactly something I can handle because of the pay cut associated with such a drastic decrease in hours.

What is going on? How does this happen? The fact of the matter is that I can't teach anymore and I shouldn't have clung to what I thought was an opportunity to continue doing what I love and I should have kept trying to find other work before today. But now it is today, so I need to find other work for starting mid-December.

And for the record: my writing gives a little boost every month, but it's nowhere near enough to live on or even to consider trying full-time at this point. So that's not an option either.
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Published on August 08, 2013 10:41

August 7, 2013

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" Movie Recommendation

Because I don't want to talk about this movie, because I won't talk about this movie, because I can't talk about this movie: six words.

Gut-wrenching wonder of awesome. Must-have.


Zero Review: 10.0/10.0, Perfect A+
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Published on August 07, 2013 22:00