Polarity (From Bad to Worse)

These aren't particularly polished pieces, but I thought they were well-written starters and invoked emotions (and personal experiences of mine), and were fun little reads. I have been finding the material for these tiny little posts I've been uploading in a folder on my computer called "Where Do Good Ideas Go When They Die?" from when I would do random writing exercises in Creative Writing class.

Matt sat in the same place he always did: in the corner by the eighth grade hall entrance. He opened his brown paper sack and arranged his sandwich, pretzels and baby carrots in the order he would eat them. He took a bite of tuna fish and began searching for her.

            She was so beautiful today; she had her hair half in a ponytail and was wearing yellow—he had happened to catch a glimpse of her on the way to P.E.  He loved to see the sparkle in her eyes, wishing they would have contact with his just once. She moved so gracefully, laughed with such a musical noise.

            His heart leapt and his stomach tickled as he saw her sit down two tables away, directly within view. He smiled. How perfect! Today he could admire her throughout the entire lunch hour. Half a ponytail swung like a strand of golden silk.

            She sat with the other cheerleaders, poking at her pizza, when a large figure in a dark green sweatshirt sat down right in front of her.

            Matt could still see her eyes, and they were smiling at him. Cameron. Matt’s eyes narrowed and the food in his mouth turned to ash. He could see Cameron touch her arm, make her laugh. Look into her eyes.

            Matt put the rest of his lunch back in the bag and dropped it in the trash on his way out.

*          *          *

As I paced the floor again and again, wearing a trail in the carpet, the phone on the bedspread seemed to grin and wink. I knew her number. My fingers knew it so well they could do it without me looking at the buttons. I had dialed it so many times—I just couldn’t leave the phone on long enough for it to ring.

            I counted down from 45, holding the winking phone in my hand, then dialed again. I hesitated before I pressed the “call” button, resisting the urge to turn it off. No, I thought. No, no, no. I pressed it, and then forced myself to hesitate, even for a single moment.

            It rang. I almost dropped it, but instead I listened, practicing the algorithm of greetings and possible responses I would give when it finally stopped ringing. She wasn’t expecting a call. Not from me. What if she was doing homework, and my call was interrupting? What if she thought it was going to be a quick call? My finger trembled against the “end call” button, but there was no backing out now. She would see my missed call and then wonder why on earth I had chickened out.

            It kept ringing. I realized just how hard my heart was beating, and fought desperately to relax my grip on the phone. Why wasn’t she answering? Was she looking at the number on the phone and laughing to herself? Or was she sighing in frustration at who was on the caller ID? Or was she going to pick up any second? And then there was her voice, suddenly answering. I almost blurted out a greeting but she kept talking, telling me she had missed my call and to leave a message after the beep. Then there was a beep.

            “I…” I blinked, then hung up the phone, melting onto my bed and sighing. I put the phone back in its holder, stretched out. I sighed again. My mouth grew into a smile. “Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Sunny?

Quotes

I've just seemed to come up with some good quotes lately, and this is the place to post them!

"Creative men eat well." - Austin Ballard

"I'd rather believe in a God and be wrong than believe in nothing and be right or wrong." - Austin Ballard

"The name 'Austin' is just uncommon enough that my mind is always absolutely certain anyone who says it is talking to me." - Austin

"Life is good, as long as there's food." - Austin Ballard

"If a tree falls in the forest and lands on a deaf man, does it make a sound?" - Austin

Project Progress: Warlock

So this week I did something I always love to do: I got back into an old project! Heroes of Azeroth: Warlock, to be specific. You can look it up on the Project List page.
More than just being an exciting project again, it's given me hope that not all of my old projects will be abandoned. Especially ones that have a lot of promise, such as Corridor (see bottom of post), Raoul's Voyage, and especially Final Quest.

Perhaps what inspired me to continue with this project was a walk down memory lane a week or two ago. For the past two years, I struggled with a bug on WarCraft III where it wouldn't show my older maps as available to play on the game. Last week it was finally revealed to me on a support site that the reason it was malfunctioning was because my maps were "buried too deep" in folders on my hard drive. This made total sense, because when I got back from Brazil I organized the maps according to category, date created, etc... apparently they were simply too organized; the path of the directory was too long for the game to detect.

A shot of the Demon Summoning Circle. The two warlocks shown are dressed in red in the real version.

Once this problem was fixed, all of my old games from as early as 2003 became available to play! I had fun reminiscing through the amateur-made maps of my younger brother Redge and I, as we (as a 14-year-old and an 11-year-old) struggled to master the World Editor and its functions.

Among the most notable maps were Jail of the Teletubbies, Bob's Day in the Forest, Lawnmower and Agutro the Ogre. I also developed quite a talent in making cinematics as well, the best of which was He's Flying! and The Odyssey. When I was finished with those, I began to look at the maps I've made not so long ago. Warlock was one of these, and to this moment I can't remember why I ever stopped working on it. There were a couple of random bugs, but after fixing these I found myself enjoying adding brand new elements I had planned to add earlier. Now progress on Warlock is in full-swing, and hopefully I'll be able to finish it in a few weeks.

For those of you who have no idea what WarCraft is, let me just say that there is something special about making your own level on the game from scratch. The entire story was laid out by the professionals, but they left all the tools they used just for users like my brother and me to craft our own adventures. I have always loved map editors, from the very early and primitive Tides of Darkness editor to the Heroes of Might and Magic trilogy and even Age of Empires. Working on creating something is the closest one can get to feeling like the creator of one's own world, and I have high hopes for all my projects in this way.

Speaking of, I was able to play a game of Corridor this past week, and my excitement for it has been rekindled ever so slightly as well. Certain rules have been ironed out, and progress on the game has been furthered if not by materials, then by the ideas behind the game. As always, I will keep my Latest sidepanel up-to-date, as well as my Project List. Wish me luck!

You've Got to be Kidney-ing Me!

CAUTION: The following post contains a picture that may revolt viewers with weaker gag reflexes. Oops. There it is looming under this caption. Never mind.

Last week I was involuntarily thrust into an absolutely unexpected situation that I do not wish upon anyone, including myself again: I got a kidney stone.

I am 22 years old, 23 in April. I thought this sort of occurence only happened to gentlemen in their late 30's and older! I was completely unprepared for the pain and inconvenience involved with passing a small crystal through my body's internal plumbing. As I mentioned in the previous post, I had been having back pain lately, and perhaps this is the reason why.

Two Sundays back, after seeing the chiropractor twice the previous week and still feeling the occasional ache in the lower back, I received an attack of agony the magnitude of which I had never before experienced. Pain coarsed through my lower back, spasming the muscles there (or so I thought) and causing me so much pain my fingers tingled and I felt nausea well up inside me. Taking 800mg of Ibuprofen did nothing to dull the searing pain, and neither did massaging the muscles with Amish Herbal Ointment, cool gel, or a heated rice pad.

No wonder. The pain was internal.

The emergency health center recognized my symptoms, and after having a CT Scan done, the source of the pain was clear: I had a kidney stone.

The following week was spent trying to pass the stone, staying home from school, drinking at least a swimming pool and a half's worth of water a day, and wearing out the carpet from the computer to the bathroom. It finally passed on Friday, February 3, at 8:57 a.m.

Don't get me wrong, the pain on Sunday was excruciating. I give it a 10 on the scale of pain I myself have ever experienced (No offense, those who have had your femur cracked). But the worst part of all was the anticipation of something I understood little of. The doctors assured me that I would feel pain as the stone passed. I spent much of my time pre-living the pain, wondering if I wouldn't be able to handle it, if it would happen amid cries of pain in a public restroom, how long the pain would last before it was over, and most of all, when it would happen.

I was inexpressibly relieved when the nightmare ended Friday morning, and the pain was all of a second and a half. I was on Hydrocodone pain medication as well, which was not present during the despairing hours on Sunday. The biggest relief came from being able to walk into the bathroom no longer worried about the unknown. If there's anything I am grateful for in this experience, it's the thought of being able to sympathize with my wife, who is due to give birth to our first child in July. I can now imagine the pain she'll experience, but also the worry of the unknown. I now know the frustration of thinking "Was that a sharp pain? Did the stone fall into my bladder? Will the intense pain come the next time I need to pee?" as she will no doubt trudge through the blurry definitions of what a "contraction" is, and when the time she has both looked forward to and dreaded will come.

Passing a kidney stone may have been unexpected, untimely, and overall painful; but now I have gained the ability to sympathize with my wife when she brings a child into the world. And while my pain may be nothing compared to what she experiences, at least she can look at that thing that comes out of her body with wonder and declare "You sweet piece of heaven... your innocent little form erases all the pain you put me through." Next time I get a chance to go back to the Urologist, my little piece of whatever it is is going straight to the lab to be analyzed. And may I never see another one again.

The Final Age

This morning I was at the chiropractor getting some therapy on my back (it's been stiff for a week or so, and on top of that I took a nasty trip the other day and made it worse), and as I sat there with my face coned in between the two pillows I got to thinking... The cool gel and warmth of the ultrasound machine were soothing to my back, and it's amazing to think that those technologies have come out this very generation, if not perhaps within the past two. No one a hundred years ago would have ever in their lives felt the sensations I was feeling at that moment.

And then I started thinking, gee... the United States has been a melting pot of culture, and just a couple hundred years ago people would go their entire lives without ever tasting what we take for granted today. We can eat, at the touch of phone buttons or for a few dollars and a drive, food from virtually anywhere in the world. Chinese food is here, Pizza is common, Mexican food is everywhere... I even have an authentic Thai restaurant in my hometown. Some blends of spices were unheard of back in the day. The flavors that roll around in our mouths nightly were never experienced by our ancestors.

And forget the past hundred years. Imagine a thousand years ago, or before Christ's time. I read once we intake more information in a week (or maybe it's a day) than the common Israeli peasant of 100 B.C. would learn in his entire lifetime. Think of our colleges, or the Internet. There is enough information for us to learn to do virtually anything, and do it well. We know how the majority of things work. Science is constantly changing, but things like continental drift, gravity, and molecules are now common knowledge. Imagine living in the age of mythology, when the best you could do if you had a question is blame it on the gods. Now we can go literally feet away in any building, go to Google or Wikipedia, and find out almost anything we want to know.

Even a few years ago, I don't know how my parents took us on road trips without Google Maps or GPS on their iPhones. How did I ever survive as a teenager with Dial-Up Internet? Or without cell phones. The other day my wife and I went to the checkout at the supermarket and realized we had forgotten peanut butter. I ran down the aisle and, realizing I didn't know what size she wanted, called her up and asked her.
It's no wonder our technology is developing exponentially faster. Each new invention saves us a little more time in our schedules, until it adds up and we have all the time in the world to think, create, and invent.
Sometimes I long for the simple days, but as I walked out of the chiropractor's office feeling much better, I realized how lucky I am to be living in these days. When I have a toothache, it can be gone in a week with treatment. Imagine the common Dark Ages serf not even having a toothbrush, making never-ending toothaches inevitable to look forward to. Why do we complain about gas prices? It's a miracle we can get in a big carved metal cart and travel a day's journey in an hour. Why do we complain about the cost of a doctor's bill, when the ancient Roman citizen would just have to go on in life with pain because the herbs or poultice didn't do their magic?

Whether you're religious or not, you have to admit that we are in the Final Age of the world. Millennia of history have culminated in the uniting of the world's communications, the ease of travel, the completion of geographical discovery, and the pinnacle of technological research. We are fortunate indeed to experience that which no other members of the human race have felt since the dawn of man's creation.

Epic Chess

Happy Holidays, everyone!

I've worked on Epic Chess earlier last month, and had a bit of fun with it, but like all "great" projects, I've gotten bored with its downsides. However, I still think it's a great concept and easy to get back into any time I want.

A selection of Epic Chess cards.

Below is a list of what each card does. If you want, you can make your own simple cards. They obviously don't need awesome pictures on them like mine do. They can just be little tabs of paper with the word of the attack on one side. I'm also thinking that it'd be nice to have tiny rubber bands or rings of some kind, to record which pieces have buffs that last more than one turn such as Slow, Petard, etc.

Each card has an ability, but it also needs to have a spectrum of which pieces you can target (K=King, R=Rook, etc) on which side (B=Enemy bishop, K=Any knight, P=Your own pawns only). Many if not all also need a determiner of when you can use the card. For example, can I play a card and then make my move? Or does my playing the card use up my turn? These are things I still need to figure out.

Basic Cards - 2 of each card

• Slow - Choose an opponent's piece. The piece can only move 1 square in its respective pattern on its next move. (QBKR)
• Teleport - Move a piece to any unoccupied square on the board. A pawn moved in this way may not be promoted. (KQBKRP)
• Control - For your turn, move one of your opponent's pieces instead of yours. (KQBKRP)
• Disarm - Choose an enemy piece. It cannot attack during its next move. (This can interrupt check) (KQBKRP)
• Tactics - Use this turn to move 2 of your pieces instead of one; however, you may not attack with either. (KQBKRP)
• Stealth - One piece may move through other pieces for this turn only. You may not attack this turn. (QBRP)
• Doppelgänger - Switch an enemy piece with an equal piece of yours. (KQBKRP)
• Petard - Choose a piece. When the piece engages in battle (either attacking or being attacked) both pieces are destroyed. Kings are unaffected. (QBKRP)
• Strike - Destroy one enemy pawn, or one friendly pawn and one enemy adjacent to it. (PP+?)
• Revive - Place one of your dead pieces from the graveyard into an unoccupied square on your first row. (QBKRP)
• Loyalty - Choose a piece. If that piece is taken, place it on the square of the nearest pawn and kill the pawn instead. (QBKR)
• Haste - Move one of your pieces twice this turn. It may only attack one enemy during its two moves. (KQBKRP)

 
Unique Cards - 1 of each card

• Joust - Knight Card - On your Knight's move, destroy all pieces through which it moves. (KQBKRP) 
• Wall - Rook Card - Walls extend either vertically or horizontally from the selected Rook. No pieces can pass through the walls. They extend as pieces move out of their way, and remain until the Rook moves or dies. (R)
• Conversion - Bishop Card - Move your Bishop 1 space either horizontally or vertically, changing the color of square on which it moves diagonally. (B)
• Oppugn - King Card - When an enemy piece puts your King into check, play this card to instantly kill the piece. (QBKRP)
• Fervor - King Card - When played, allows the King to move as many spaces as there are friendly pieces in the graveyard. (K)

Those are the cards I've come up with, but that was the easy and fun part. The part I'm struggling with now, after several rounds of testing, is the most important rule: How do you obtain cards in the first place? I've come up with a tentative set-up rule, which is that each player draws five cards, but how do they obtain more? Or do they obtain more? Every attempt I've made to make this system work has failed.

Killing pieces to gain cards quickly sways the game in the favor of the player who kills more, thus making it easier to kill more and more, etc.

Drawing a card as an alternative to reviving a friendly piece when a pawn gets to the other side sounds like a good idea, but how often do you really get a pawn to the opposite side? And even then, you probably have only reached it after you've lost your queen, and reviving her is almost always a better choice than getting Haste or Stealth, which won't help you at all.

I think this game has lots of potential, but I need suggestions. If anyone wants to play a game of it with me, or have any ideas after trying it themselves, let me know. For now, enjoy this small bit of one of my rare projects!