I live in what is quite possibly the most exciting period in history. I enjoy personal rights and freedoms unparalleled throughout the history of civilisation, and many of the biggest problems in every area of science and engineering are on the cusp of being solved, at least those that haven't been already. I live in the first age where my survival is almost guaranteed; because I live in a "developed nation", I need not fear starvation, exposure or pox, a situation unheard of even a hundred years ago. Every day presents something new to be interested in, so much that I could never possibly have time for all of it.

So it occurs to me that maybe I could stand to be a bit happier about being here.

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djinni's doing icon requests again. This guy is seriously nifty. Take a look at his last batch if you need convincing.

rowyn is a dangerous person. Last week, she put out a general call asking if there were any interested parties for a world-building game called Microscope. I was in the wrong timezone for that to really be practical, but I was interested enough to try it with some more local friends. Today, I managed to get a session of it going.

It. Was. Awesome.

We started with the idea of using it to generate a setting for another RPG, but it rapidly evolved into its own thing. Our starting premise was "the return of magic propels humanity to the stars," but it really didn't take us long to get way, way off message. What should have been the creation of an interstellar empire for Jaxeth to run a Traveller game in quickly turned into an examination of race politics and slavery on our very own planet Earth. Faster-than-light travel didn't even appear until half way through the timeline and... well, let's just say that the left hand side was much richer in events and scenes than the right.

It began with a meteorite. By some poorly-understood process (I suppose we could have explored it more, but we didn't), its impact spread some mystical energy all over the world, awakening magical power in a lucky few. This led, in turn, to the use of said magic, combined with the latest in bioengineering, to grant wolves the vital spark of intelligence thus far only known only to humankind.

They started life as a curiosity, moved on to becoming domestic servants, and eventually moved into the space programme as their adaptability became more prominent. The idea of a "manned" mission to Mars becomes a lot more palatable when you can roll disposable astronauts off the production line, especially if they want to do it.

Eventually, something changed. We didn't examine the events leading up to it, but at some point, a group of these wolves (referred to generally as the Canis, shorthand for Canis Sapiens) became organised enough, independent enough and sufficiently aware of their situation to rise up and drive the government of Kenya into exile, beginning a process of what can only be called "ethnic cleansing", declaring the country a human-free zone. True reconciliation between the two races would not occur for centuries.

Probably not much use as a campaign setting as we originally planned it, but it was interesting to see how it took on a life of its own and went in directions none of the players expected as a natural consequence of play.

If anyone's interested, there's a screenshot of the final timeline here (1364x654, 48.0KB).

Yes, we really did call it "unobtanium".

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Last week, my grandmother died at the age of 93. I travelled up to Scotland for the funeral service, which was today.

It's my opinion that the function of a funeral is to allow people to say goodbye, achieve closure and start to move on. In that, today's service was a total failure. The whole affair was terribly impersonal and disgustingly Christian throughout. The guy leading the service mentioned my grandmother exactly three times and spent the rest of the half hour going on about how awesome God is. Then asked for donations at the end.

While a Christian herself, my grandmother was also a deeply practical woman, and I can't imagine her wanting to say goodbye in such a manner.

Despite my distaste for the service, I held my peace. To do otherwise would have been even more disrespectful. But I think both she and those attending deserved better.

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I have a list of things I should be doing - a literal list sitting in front of me - and instead I'm sitting, getting bored.

This is not good.

I don't know what it IS, but it's not good.

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I'm teaching myself 3D modelling, for no particular reason. I'll probably get bored of it inside of a week, but before that happens, I'm quite pleased with how I'm doing so far. This evening's work:

( Image behind the cut )

No, it's not grey to be "arty". I just haven't learned how to apply a texture yet. It's really not bad for something done in two hours, even if I was following a guide.

Goldkin massively upstaging me in 3, 2...

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Move along. Nothing to see here.

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As most of you are probably aware by now, I've been seeing a psychiatrist for the last few months to try and deal with my depression. It's been a bumpy road, and while I do now have an antidepressant prescription that actually seems to help, I am still left with the feeling that they don't actually give a crap.

My mood still varies considerably from day to day, but there's a longer cycle at work too. I tend to feel better after having just seen the psychiatrist, coming away with the assurance that I've been referred to people A and B, and that things x, y and z are going to happen in the next couple of weeks. As said weeks come and go, with no contact and nothing happening, I feel steadily more and more crap as it becomes more clear that they're ignoring me again. I've looked into the possibility of being referred to another practice, but their waiting lists are on the order of two months for an initial consultation and there's no guarantee they'd be any better.

Not for the first time, I find myself considering faking a suicide attempt just to get them to notice. As always, though, I decide against it - they didn't care about the string of actual attempts I made throughout the year, why would a fake one work any better?

I may not be making posts, but I still love you all. Keep on doing your respective things, and stay awesome.

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Well, this is nifty. ICANN have decided to start selling TLDs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13835997

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