God of War: Ragnarok

⭐⭐⭐⭐

File under: Action and Adventure

I don’t have much time for games anymore, but over the last month or so, I’ve been chipping away—or maybe I should say chopping away-at God of War: Ragnarok. And I’ve to admit, loving it.

It’s a sprawling game that somehow manages to feel intimate and well-scoped. It’s not an open-world; if you stop to think about it at all, the world feels a bit too on-rails. But as someone who doesn’t love open-world games anymore—I get lost in them and just don’t have the time to explore—I found the constraints made the game better and easier to enjoy.

This is not to say the worlds here are limited; they’re massive and full of things to do. As I drew towards the game’s conclusion, I kept being surprised by a new side-quest or new errand that it was asking me to run. Most of which I very much enjoyed.

I enjoyed the story and worldbuilding as well, even though it hardly felt authentic and, at times, seems a bit too slanted towards giving the action-gamers what they want—bloody hacking and slashing everything in sight. Ragnarok takes extreme liberties with the source material, twisting the Norse and Greek myths in ways that often appear unrecognizable. For the most part, however, I liked what they did, especially with the characters. This franchise has a unique take on the personalities and relationships of the Gods, and while at times it’s a bit like a soap opera or HBO drama, I found it entertaining and, frankly, liked that I didn’t have to think about it too much.

Brass Bell by Screaming Females

It’s finally the weekend. Let’s rock!

New Jersey band Screaming Females have released a new song, and have a new album Divine Pathways, coming out in a couple of weeks. Upon first listening, I expected a solid, straight-ahead rock song, and that’s what we’ve got here with “Brass Bell.” True to form, this new single exemplifies what they do best, hard-rocking anthems that somehow manage to sound signature and familiar at the same time.

Bonus: the cover art looks like the covers from Ben Aaronovitch’s awesome Rivers of London series. Love that.

Frozen Suburbia

This week, we had a freeze here in Austin, which seems more common here in Central Texas. But also something we’re not equipped—on a variety of levels—to handle. Thankfully it didn’t effect my family and me much, but I feel for all those it did touch. I took a walk through my neighborhood yesterday, and it looks like an ice tornado came through. Beautiful, yes, but it is beauty built on destruction.

Here are some photos I captured.

Sing for Science

Hello, Journal. Today I’m listening to the Sing for Science Podcast conversation with Wilco’s frontman Jeff Tweedy and Cornell University computational psychologist Dr. Shimon Edelman where they talk Tweedy’s lyrics, the nature of consciousness, and a lot more. It’s wild. And interesting.

Sing for Science is created and hosted by New York musician Matt Whyte. The concept is to “use a song's lyrical content as a launching pad for the musician to have a conversation with a relevant scientist.” These episodes cover a wide variety of topics—Quantum Physics, Cardiology, Aerospace Engineering, Climate Science, and a lot more—within that framing. Though it’s new to me, I’m very interested in listening to more.

In this particular episode, Tweedy talks about the lyrics to “Less Than You Think” and the impetus behind them. I loved that Tweedy stuck up for the idea that he doesn’t need to understand, or stand behind, the meaning of the words he writes and sings. At least, that’s how I took it.

All too often, we expect artists to prove or somehow provide or explain meaning or belief when maybe all that there is to art is beauty and the act of creation. They go on to talk a lot about consciousness, free will, imagination, exercising creativity, spirituality, and a lot of other things.

I particularly enjoyed the end of the conversation around focus and flow and disappearing into your work, or how you might not, depending on how you work and how you experience time and focus. And then the subsequent discussion of shadow selves. Interesting stuff. Note to self: look up Chyros & Chronos.

It’s a fantastic listen, and I plan to check out Tweedy’s book. Maybe it’ll fit my reading challenge? We’ll see.

How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job by Dale Carnegie

⭐⭐⭐

File under: Work/Life Balance

This Blink wasn’t something I chose, but I figured I’d listen since it was auto-playing. As someone who struggles with work/life balance and who admittedly puts more weight on work—especially regarding my self-worth—I figured it might have something for me. It did, although it’s as corny as it sounds.

Most of what’s in here felt like good reminders:

• Emotional struggle and boredom can exhaust us.

• We want to be challenged.

• Criticism is good for us, assuming we are open to it.

• People are self-centered. Knowing this and using it can relieve personal stress and help you influence others.

I consider myself motivated by challenges and positive reinforcement. I am much more collaborative than I am competitive. So much of this resonated with me. What didn’t was that Carnegie, or Blinkist, paints much of this as manipulative—perhaps unintentionally.

Regardless, I think many of the tips here are effective, and the Blink was a good reminder of strategies I can use to make my work/life balance a bit easier.

Babel by R. F. Kuang

⭐⭐⭐⭐

File under: Alternate History

Wizard-level reading challenge: A book that features two languages

I had planned to read Babel based on all the rave reviews I’d been reading. And luckily, it fits a few of the categories in my 2023 reading challenge. I chose it for “A book that features two languages” because, well.

Babel is a fantastic fantasy epic set—mostly—in 19th-century England. It’s the story of Robin Swift, a Chinese student at Oxford’s School of Translation, or "Babel” as commonly known.

Babel is a complicated work; Kuang stitches a few powerful themes together with skill, creating a tale that’s gripping, if occasionally slow, while also exploring the power of language, the perils of imperialism, and what it means to belong.

Babel is infused—like the silver of the world Kuang has created—with magic, but in a subtle way that supports the tale and adds a layer of mystery that works as a highlight to the political intrigue and the smaller stories of the students as they make their way through the world.

I loved the explorations of language and translation, which Kuang knows a lot about. The plot is a bit slow and somewhat repetitive, but not so much that it creates friction. Reading Babel was a pleasure, engaging the reading on multiple levels.

Responding skillfully

The concept of skillful response resonates well with me. It’s often pitched as a benefit to meditation, and I hear it referenced often in guided sessions. Putting it into practice can be difficult, especially for me, as I’m an impulsive, trust-my-gut type. But as I’ve become more mindful and have put some intention behind the practice, I’ve seen the benefits in all aspects of life.

What does it mean to respond to things skillfully? Essentially, it’s simply being mindful and thoughtful when reacting to things. I can’t help but think about it in a literal way, meaning in terms of responding to communication, news, or another person’s words, but I think it’s much broader than that. It’s about responding to whatever life brings you with thought, mindfulness, and intention.

In practice, this looks like taking a beat before an anger- or frustration-fueled response or taking some time before sending that reactionary Slack message or email. I can’t tell you how often I’ve let myself mindlessly respond to something, only to regret it later. Why bring more chaos into an already chaotic world?

Experiments with AI art workflows

Hello, journal. For the last few days, I’ve been playing around with taking AI-generated images from Midjourney and running them through a bit of workflow using Photoshop and Illustrator, resulting in a full vector image. The goal here is to be able to manipulate better what Midjourney creates.

My biggest hurdle at the moment is my lack of skill with Illustrator. I don’t know how to use it well, let alone optimize things. I can correct colors and simple shapes, but making the paths more efficient and more complicated tweaking is beyond me. Still, I think something is interesting here.

I’ve also tried hand tracing, which works much better. It’s a bit time-consuming, but it’s fun and engaging. The results are much better, as you might expect, but I’ve run up against barriers primarily because of my lack of knowledge of the tools. In this case, I’ve been using Figma because Illustrator feels difficult.

You can see some progress here, the Midjourney image on the right and my vector drawing in Figma on the left. I quite like how it’s shaping up.

I think there might be some workflow that uses a combination of these. Once I finish working on this current conversion, I think I’ll dive back into Midjourney. I think there is a lot I could do to work the prompts to get something cleaner, to begin with. Then I could use a combination of Image Trace in Illustrator and hand tweaks to get something nice. I might even start experimenting with Procreate to add some hand-drawn flourishes. We’ll see.

The Eldritch Arrival

The Eldritch Arrival

I’ve been playing around with vector art lately. Still getting my footing, as it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like this, but I’m having fun.

On resilience

“Nana korobi, ya oki.”
“Fall down seven times, rise up eight.”

~ Japanese proverb

Hello, journal. Today I’m thinking about resilience, specifically how a person can, through the power of positive thought and perspective, train themselves to be more resilient in the face of adversity, both large and small. In my experience, the small things usually cause the most problems over time. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but it’s always been easier to let go when you have no choice.

My apartment caught fire when I was in my early twenties. It happened when I was at work; one of my roommates had stored some spray paint next to a faulty furnace. The combination turned out to be explosive. While the place didn’t burn completely to the ground, my poor cat, Waffle, died because he was too scared of the firemen and ran into the smoke. Nobody else was hurt, thankfully, but most of my possessions were ruined. By water damage, ironically. Though it was difficult—I had to find a new place for my girlfriend and me quickly, my roommates were devastated, etc.—I could kind of roll with it. I took on the role of the even-headed leader and helped get everyone settled. It was a lot of effort, but I wasn’t particularly stressed about it at any time. I think it was mostly because I felt like I had no choice. There was no going back and fixing it. The stuff was gone. The apartment was unlivable. The only way forward was to let go and move on. I think about that time in my life a lot, and I’ve often wondered what it was that allowed me to move on so quickly, so relatively easily. Especially when so many times after, I would spiral about much smaller problems. I have been much more stressed over smaller problems many times since then. I often think about that and wonder why.

For many years I saw this event as a minor disaster that I survived. Now I reflect on it as a moment of strength and resilience in my young life and something bad that happened that made me stronger.

Why worry about something you have no control over? I think about that a lot as well. It’s…an epidemic problem that, as I’ve grown older, I feel and worry about less and less. I let go of worrying about things I can’t control or influence. If I care about something enough, I will try and involve myself in making a difference. Otherwise, I’ll stick to what I can control: my reactions, feelings, and thoughts about a thing. I refuse to be the old man screaming at the clouds. I can’t do anything about the clouds, so I’ll just come inside and wait.

There is a Stoic practice around negative framing. Imagine the worst thing that can happen so you can be prepared for it. I wouldn’t say I like doing this, though I can see the value. What I do like doing is reflecting on the little things in life that make me happy. I do this often. What if I lost all my stuff? I’d be ok. What would I need, the bare minimum, to be happy? Turns out it’s not all that much.

This type of thinking helps in other ways as well. It allows for risk-taking—what’s the worst that can happen? Risks, if taken mindfully, can significantly enrich the experience of one’s life. Reflecting on the impermanence of life and embracing change can help reduce those things that aren’t doing us any good. I can make it easier to let go of what’s not serving us.

Time is fleeting. Things and people come and go. The present is all we have, the past is gone, and the future will be based on how we act in the present.