Tag: Linkfest

Journal

Top Ten Posts on Man vs. Bear in 2013

Last year, when accurate visitor data was still a shiny new concept around these parts, I went and looked at the posts that had achieved the most visitors over 2012. It proved to be an interesting exercise, so this year I’m expanding it to look at the top ten. In order of visits, the most popular parts of the archive were: 1. Why I Have Problems with the Big Bang Theory 2. 13 Things Learned About Superhero Games After Running 30 Sessions of Mutants and Masterminds 3. Why Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ Can Be Dangerous to New Writers 4. What Writers Ought to Know About Die Hard, Part Two 5. What Writers Oughtt to Know About Die Hard, Part One 6. Seven Notes on a Lover’s Discourse While Halfway Through the Book 7. Sri Lankan Love Cake FTW 8. 10 Thoughts on Shame and Writing 9. Running a Villain Audit 10. GenreCon 2013: The Aftermath It’s interesting to note that

News & Upcoming Events

Top Five of 2012

So I was checking out some of the site stats last night – something I rarely do here on my personal site – and spent some quality time looking at the data. Since I’m off at write-club today, trying to catch up after a slow weekend of writing, I’m going to take advantage of the data and the changing-of-the-year feel to showcase the most visited posts here on Petermball.com in 2012. Number One: 13 Things Learned About Superhero Games After Running 30 Sessions of Mutants and Masterminds Number Two: Why I Have Problems With the Big Bang Theory I have to admit, the order of these two surprises me. I know a lot of people found their way here when I posted about my M&M campaign for the first time, largely courtesy of the link showing up on a bunch of gaming message boards. It represented probably the single-biggest spike in traffic I’ve ever had, and under any normal circumstances, I probably

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Makin’ a Racket

I’ve been worrying my flatmate recently, ’cause I seem to have developed a jaunty whistle of late. This is not, as a general rule, the sort of thing that happens around our house, least of all to me. ‘Course, historically speaking, this isn’t actually true. I spend a great deal of my day with little fragments of music running through my head. I always have, one way or another, and I’ve always been fond of having music on while I work. What’s really happened is that I’ve inherited my sister’s stereo with it’s five-CD turntable and I’ve moved it out of my bedroom and into the study where I write, surf the internet, and occasionally play computer games. Up until this point, all my music had to run on either Fritz the Laptop (which meant he couldn’t do anything else) or play on the DVD player attached to my TV. Neither of these have been particularly optimal, so my music

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Busy Today

GenreCon looms like a big, awesome loomy thing, which means I’m alternating between YO, I’M CRAZY BUSY DUDES and flaking out on the couch in front of wrestling DVDS. In deference to my current state, I’m going to skip today’s post and point towards an awesome thing on the internet: THE LIZZIE BENNETT DIARIES About four months ago my flatmate wandered past and said words to the effect of “Hank, The Vlog Brother who isn’t not John Green, is doing a youtube recreation of Pride and Prejudice. You should really check it out.” Given that the last time he said this it led me to John Green’s Swindowntown Swiddleypoopers youtube videos, I flagged it as one of those things I should follow up on and immediately forgot about. Which is, like, utter damn stupid of me. ‘Cause, a) I really like Pride and Prejudice, b) I really like smart adaptations, and c) I’m fascinated by people doing smart things that

Works in Progress

12 Things

We’re mid-way through a long weekend here in Oz. This still catches me off-guard, since I’ve spent the majority of my adult life not really paying attention to long weekends, but the acquisition of a dayjob changes your relationship to such things. And so we’ve hit Sunday and I’m mooching around the new house, grooving to a mix of the Hilltop Hoods and the Beastie Boys (RIP, MCA), just kinda…randomly getting things together. And so, in that spirit, a random grab-bag of twelve things I felt like mentioning. 1. MOVING IS, LIKE, 90% DONE So my flatmate bought a new home and we moved into it. Most of the last two weeks has been spent getting stuff there, unpacking it, figuring out where it will live for the foreseeable future, and generally waiting for the internet to be turned on. You know, moving stuff. There’s a part of me that wants to just kick back and say “yup, we’re done

Journal

Week of Doom

So, the birthday. I got some good, solid slacking-off-with-an-arm-thrown-over-my face. I went and had dinner with my parents and my sister. There were new pairs of Converse sneakers (my secret vice), Crème brûlée, and a card from my mother that was covered in unicorns. They put a birthday candle in my crème brûlée, so I even blew out a candle for the first time in years. Then I went into work today and logged onto my facebook and found a wall timeline full of people wishing my happy birthday, which is one of those things about modern life and interconnectivity that I haven’t quite gotten the hang of. Plus, I always feel like I’m disappointing people by being so sedate  in my celebrating. To say nothing of the fact that I’m a horrible facebook user, what with being a convert to Twitter. Still, thank you all. I shall endeavour to celebrating harder next year, I swear. # Tomorrow will be the sole sane day in

Works in Progress

Horn Spotting

So back in 2010 I get an email from Alisa over at Twelfth Planet  sent me an email that said, in effect, there’s some people making a TV show that’d like to use a couple of TPP books as background props.  Apparently there are contracts that needed to be signed when this kind of thing happens, which is one of those things about making television that I never really thought about, and I was being given a heads up that the permission had been granted and there was some kind of TV show which may or may not use Horn and a bunch of other Australian small press books in the background. This was two days after my dad’s heart attack, so I mostly nodded and made sure there was nothing I needed to be doing and went back to fretting and coping with the fact that my dad was due for open heart surgery in a few days time.

Journal

The Writer in a Silly Hat

I was given a particularly silly hat for Christmas, and the first thing my mother said was oh god, it’ll be up on his blog by tomorrow morning. My mother is a wise woman, but she failed to take into account the delays inevitably caused by moving house and cleaning and the other minutia of the last few weeks. Not that she’s wrong about me posting a picture here, just the time frame: Best. Present. Ever. The hat came about because my sister buggered off to Nepal a few months back, planning on walking to the base camp of Everest, and asked if there was anything I wanted. Usually when my sister goes places I shrug and mumble something non-committal and end up with a motley array of t-shirts when she returns, but Tibet proved to be a special case. “You know what?” I said, “I’d really dig a sherpa hat.” The fact that she found one with its own woolly Mohawk is really

Works in Progress

The internet knows everything, and so I ask…

I was at work today, innocently doing my job, when one of my co-workers turned around asked “have you ever come across a transgender zombie story?” At which point I allowed that a) I had not, b) google wasn’t inclined to find me one, and c) I adore my new dayjob more than any other dayjob I’ve ever had. Still, it’s a vexing kind of question to be unable to answer in the affirmative. I fired off the question to a couple of friends in the hopes that they’ve heard something, then figured I’d ask the question here just in case someone had come across such a thing. Transgender zombies and/or protagonists appear to be fair game, so far as such things go, so if you’ve come across such a thing in your readings please drop by the comments and let me know. In short: help me, Obi-net-kenobi, you’re my only hope. # I’d be linking you to Catherynne Valentes not-quite-review of

Journal

Once we give toasters a modicum of AI, the whole damn world is doomed

If you haven’t read Kelly Link’s Swans before, you can do so over at Fantasy Magazine today. I really recommend it, and I’m totally okay with you going over and reading it now. I mean, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m happy to wait. # Tried cooking chili tonight. Ordinarily not a thing that’s noteworthy, but so far I’ve managed to burn the bottom of the saucepan and forget to put on the rice and leave off half the optional ingredients that I usually put into a bowl of chili in order to transform it into the kind of chili I enjoy eating. Tried to work at the day-job today. Again, not ordinarily noteworthy, but after spending three hours watching tech support try to figure out why my computer wasn’t actually interested in doing things necessary to my job – on my computer, or any others in the office, for the work server obstinately believed I shouldn’t be there – it

Smart Advice from Smart People

International Women’s Day, Redux

Right, so, by this point everyone’s more-or-less seen this, but for the small percentage of you who haven’t: