Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

Someone asked this question:

“What would it take for you to put out your next album as officially mastered files (mp3, ogg, etc) that anyone could freely download or share across P2P networks? Basically, if someone was to approach you with a check that was cashable as soon as you released those files to the public, what would the amount on it have to be? What other considerations would need to be made? I understand that Divine Industries owns all the “mechanical” rights to your songs, and this would not preclude them from pressing and selling physical albums. It would also not interfere with any royalties you receive for song use, as you could retain control over all “commercial” use rights.”

I’m interested in getting input, feedback, yelling, about this idea. I mean besides “yeah that would be rad”, I’m interested in if anyone has any insight as to the pitfalls and perks of this kind of a deal in our modern age of digital downloads….

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/01/06/french-complaints060106.html

Oh those crazy French! Now I can be a language snob at times (it’s ‘cool’ not ‘kewl’, and it’s ‘you are’ not ‘UR’, and don’t even get me started on ‘l33t’), and I do appreciate the way things used to be in terms of language. I like using old words and old phrases because it’s romantic and/or entertaining. But, like Marlo says, languages evolve, and you can’t stop it. You can slow it down, but it’s just delaying the inevitable. Language is obviously tied in with every other human interaction and if you’re going to restrict yourself with language, you’re going to restrict yourself with business and every other kind of growth. Well maybe that’s what Quebec wants, and if so…keep up the good work.

Marlo brought a number of exotic treats back from China for me. Some of them were gruesome, but some of them were wonderful and the best candies I’ve ever had! Lots of jelly/gummy treats including some that were packaged in tiny little balloons tied with a rubber band, some very good quality chocolates, and a candy that seemed to be hard crystallized honey with a liquid honey center. There were also marshmallow discs with various pudding, chocolate or fruit jelly centers. I’m going to have to look for my favourites next time I’m at T&T. There was one brand of little cubes of various flavours that were covered in chocolate powder and they were m good.

On the topic of D&D, I’ve been playing Icewind Dale II on my computer, which is fun and addictive. I should be working on my one art job instead but I’ll start that this weekend if things go as planned. I made up versions of the characters from my regular D&D group (as noted earlier, the now-defunct one) and that’s fun and also educational. I get to play my players’ characters and I can see tactical angles they haven’t used (for example, the monk/rogue can use her stunning fist and then get sneak attacks in on the stunned target). Last night, after getting all the characters up to about ninth level, I decided to swap out the wizard. My original wizard specialized in summoning. My tactic in most of these games (Baldur’s Gate etc) is to send the rogue scouting ahead invisibly (maxing out her sneak skills) and then summon a line of creatures/undead in between the rest of the party and the enemies. I typically stand behind the line of summoned fodder and unleash with ranged attacks and spells. There are two down sides to this. 1. In Icewind Dale the monsters are very focused – once they see one character they will generally attack just that one guy, moving around everyone else even if it means taking a long way around. 2. If a wizard specializes in summoning spells, they can’t cast evocation spells, which are old favourites like fireball and magic missile. So that was getting me down and I realized that since my bard and my cleric can both cast lots of summoning spells, I figured it was time to get rid of the wizard and get another one – one that specializes in evocation! The bad news is, the new guy starts at 1st level while the others are 9th. So I just have to keep him in the back and see how that works out for now. Wish me luck!

I learned some things about running a D&D campaign. If you run a game for too long, people get tired and cranky about it. My regular gaming group broke up last night. We’ve been having trouble for a couple months. Originally I expected the game to last about a year but it’s been over two years now. Some of the chapters were received well by some and others were not (by some). Some went way longer than I had planned. Plus some of the players have conflicting styles (some love to hack and slash, others like to roleplay) which is always difficult for a DM to balance. I felt that enthusiasm has been waning for a little while now, and I’ve tried to salvage the campaign using different methods but when the most recent player dropped out I initiated a discussion about whether or not we should continue playing. We won’t – at least not as we have been. As Paul said, it seems we’ve been playing just to keep the momentum going after having invested so much into the story and characters…not because we were actually looking forward to the game itself. So the end result is that we’ve decided to take a couple weeks hiatus and decide if we want to run some other kind of campaign or even a whole different game altogether for a month or two. And if not, that’s okay too. But I have been daydreaming about Dragon Fist/Oriental Adventures in between my Mutants & Masterminds and Spaceship Zero schemes.

I got two volumes of the Loonie Tunes Classic Collection on DVD for Christmas. One from Marlo, and the second from The Woods’ (exchanged from volume 3 of Home Movies which MarMar ALSO got me for hexmas!). They’re providing hours and hours of entertainment and I love them. The audio commentaries, most of which are provided by a cartoon historian, are very interesting. One thing that bugs me about them is that they each have four discs. The first is Bugs Bunny, the other may be something like Porky Pig & Daffy, Sylvester & Tweety, “all-stars,” or whatever. I get the feeling WB knows that if they released one dvd set with just Bugs Bunny and another one with just Wile E Coyote and the roadrunner they wouldn’t make as much money. It’s okay though, there are a few gems in with the boring Tweety Bird episodes. And they do slip in some Bugs Bunny and other good ones in with the “all stars.” Super fun!