“Bay, One and Melita”
They are all opening mobile phone divisions.
Myst Blogs is a compilation of various blogs
and journals from Myst fans all over the world.
Enter the mind of Myst fans!
Welcome to the new Myst Blogs. Read other Myst fans' latest blog posts here — and join if you have a blog! Also check out Uru Blogs to read in-character explorer blogs.
I woke up this afternoon to one of my ‘forward looking’ dream-images (some of which, over the years, have come true to varying degrees). This time, it was a series of weblog posts about various things in the Myst community, but nothing at all related to Uru itself.
This makes me wonder if I really am at a new state in my life, regarding Uru. I’ve said to several people now two possibly conflicting statements:
1) Uru *can* work, but it needs some dire work to get there. This is the essence of my old ‘Response to Rand’s Letter‘ post on the Ubi forums, and even five and a half years later I stick by that.
2) With MO:UL’s closure, I’m not going to participate (other than Guard appearances for stuff like the ‘Pats Parade) on any successor. My #1 gripe at the Ubi Shutdown was that we never got any real chance to see Uru stand on its feet in a ‘paid’ format, and that’s all I ever wanted. I’m not going to get into what happened with MO:UL that made it not survive - plenty of discussion there already! - as that is not the point to me. I got to finally see it as a paid service, and as the cliche goes ‘my work is done.’
Now, I want to stress that this does not mean I don’t like Uru, and don’t want it to survive. Go back and re-read my first statement, including the Ubi post, as well as various forum posts over the years. I care, end of story. If you think otherwise - again, spend a couple days and read through my posts on UO and GOG forums, as well as here on the weblog. Then come to me with a good (and non-flaming!) argument, and I’ll listen.
But, as of last year, my focus has shifted (possibly because of the first Interregnum via UU). To me, the community itself matters more than what venue(s) we seek together. Its what drives me today as a whole - even outside that community. I still talk about Uru, and evangelize about it (though to a MUCH lesser extent than I used to). My main talking point now is its extensive and friendly community; Though not without its detractors (who constantly remind me of Prokofy) I think we do better than most groups.
And that’s something I can really rally around, until the end of time if needed.
–TSK
Woo, another one of those three-hours-of-sleep nights before a day that I have to work. But I found one thing to make it all better. I just found out that the grocery store in the mall has a breakfast menu.
And on that menu? Biscuits and Gravy for under $3.
You see, I’ve always had this thing for breakfast. My friends have never quite understood why. Kinda borne out of some of my younger experiences.
Back in the days of my youth, my father used to make breakfast for me every day before I left for school, french toast or pancakes, with a strong backing of orange juice and milk. And every morning with my delicious meal, I would take a little pill called Ritalin. Ritalin has a side-effect of suppressing hunger. I was put on it during regular school hours. So lunch was never really a big deal for me, I was never really hungry for it, and because of the quality of school lunches, never really cared. So breakfast was the only thing I had to look forward to each morning before drugging myself up to get shuffled off to the oppressive social nightmare of being an awkward overweight child in a small rural midwestern school.
But seriously, hot breakfast is the best thing ever. Woo.
I’ve been gaming a lot more recently. Audiosurf was on sale for $5.00 this weekend and I picked up a copy. Surprisingly fun and more than worth it for the free Orange Box soundtrack included. Very addictive little game. I bought it just last Saturday and I’d already put 12 hours into it by Monday. I also finished Bioshock, which was just as amazing as everyone said it was. Nearly finished with Psychonauts. Excited for Spore coming out in a little over two weeks. Thinking of picking up Overlord or Thief: Deadly Shadows on Steam for something to play in the meantime. Been playing a good deal of games with variations of Pheener, Edrick, TW, Vaaht and GS. With them, I’ve played Garry’s Mod, Ghost Recon, Unreal and Team Fortress 2. The new TF2 updates are sick. I haven’t earned any of the Heavy achievements yet, but I’ve loved what I’ve seen. Been playing a lot of Soldier and loving it now that I’m getting the hang of it. Arena rocks, though I’ve only been able to try one of the new maps.

A variety of implausible usage scenarios are described by Microsoft: looking at banking websites on shared computers or doing Internet shopping to buy gifts without the recipient finding out. The most likely situation, however, is the obvious one. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.Mozilla, on the other hand, is working on something incredibly cool: It's a natural-language command line for your browser, and it's designed to abstract away a lot of the technical details we have to worry about in our everyday Internet lives. (Here's a tutorial for the 0.1 version, which is their current prototype.) For example, if you're browsing somewhere and you find a section of text that's in a foreign language, the current way to translate it is to copy the text to the clipboard, go to Google Translate or somewhere, paste in the text, select the language you're translating from, and click Translate. The new model? Highlight the text, press a hotkey to bring up the command line, and type "translate". Firefox will translate it in-place--the text right on the webpage will change into English. And that's just the first command they came up with.
GOT YOU, YOU SCARLET TRENCH COATED SEDUCTRESS.
I have a bone to pick with her. She's run off with my hat, and my London lot need their regular supply of its glory. Can anyone lend me £700 for a trip to North Africa?
I'm looking at you, Snowcat. Do this for me, and I'll let you touch the hat with a special touching stick.




Cue inevitable fan outrage, and signs that all might be well.
'...any disappointment from the core fans should not be directed toward Fox.'
Something about that phrasing rubs me up the wrong way. Obviously those who were jacked up about the movie since the earliest stages of conception and happen to be on the message boards cited are going to complain the loudest, and Fox might be forgiven for trying to tone down the uproar. But what about the rest of us who enjoyed the original graphic novel and simply want to see a very decent work of fiction done right? Or those who just like the look of the film and don't want to let some legal wrangling stop it from being seen?
Obviously I'm not saying that Fox should listen to every single fan opinion that exists on the net - anyone who reads Shortpacked knows how irrationally pig-headed any fandom can be - but the idea that Fox thinks only the people who eat and breathe Watchmen can take issue with the prospect of the film being denied a release does not sit well with me.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this. I probably am. I certainly hope so.
Two good pieces of news in the notebook front:
-> Pulled out the 40 gig from its little case (the one I’ve been using to make it my Debian Slug disk) and looked up the part number on Toshiba’s site. It’s a 5400 RPM, and is the same size as the old Sager and HP disks. I can live with the 100 Meg/sec spec as given, that’s more than I’ll normally draw in most instances, other than installs. The 16 Meg buffer is a *very* nice plus though!
-> Debian ‘lenny 2′ installed just as beautifully as Etch did, with the added bonus of a working wireless card (after getting the firmware setup of course - for which a link to the appropriate instructions was included in the ‘dmesg’ boot sequence). That is a first for me and Linux, and doubly pleased when I discovered that in Linux, I had more hotspots mapped out and with better strengths than in WinXP (most locked though, good move in an apartment building ;) ).
So, new plans:
1) Put 40 gig disk in HP, re-install ‘Lenny 2′ and get wireless up again.
2) 60 gig disk goes in the external case (which is USB-2 and FireWire), re-format with ext3 and FAT16 partitions. Probably 40/20, respectively.
3) Drop a VirtualBox Guest OS (WinXP) on the external disk. See if I can get the old Half-Life games running on it, plus a couple other things that are needed for work (and is only in, or works better with, Windows - like the Exchange webmail, that is a damn sight better to use in IE).
The eventual goal - if this all works - is to look into converting the desktop to Linux, or a Linux/WinXP dual-boot (the latter by dropping in a new SATA disk just for Linux). It will be nice to finally use all 4G of the current system’s memory; It can hold 8G IIRC but I’d have to consider a dual-boot with Vista instead of XP to make that upgrade a more viable reality.
The only major issues I see in the games department are Oblivion (’nuff said) and perhaps Uru (though the CC variant I believe will run on Wine OK). Hence the sad need for a dual-boot - I don’t know if even a Quad-Core will be able to run something like Oblivion in a VM well.
–TSK
PS - As so the NSLU2 ‘Slug’ body, its been put away again. Once I’m happy with Linux on the HP, it can sit on the table when not ‘on duty’ and be used as the long-duration login system. Lord, I did not realize how much I depended on UNIX console access until I actually tried a system without one…
I love swimming pools. I love the ocean and lakes too, but I’ve done most of my swimming in pools. Outdoor pools are the best.
The town where I grew up, northeastern US, has the best public swimming pool in the area. It was wonderful when I was growing up, and it’s still wonderful. It’s hot here in the summer. When it’s not raining, it’s great swimming weather!
My hometown pool, summer, 2008. The hand is that of a family member, doing laps in the lap lane. I’m the person taking the picture (waterproof camera). What a great day.

Yes, yes, been busy, not updating, blah de blah. I'm sure this blogs readers (that's right - BOTH of you) were still able to sleep at night. More artwork from the delicious Steph Jackson, this one being a random three part comic idea I brainstormed a while back. Presented here is her take on the first part. Since she easily gets distracted by shiny things, don't expect the rest anytime soon. If you're nice I might post Back to Reality Chapter 4 tomorrow. Good? Good.
Yes yes.
In July 2008, Cyan announced that they would self publish a multiplayer version, making this the fourth time a multiplayer version of Uru will be released! The initial release by Cyan will have no new Cyan content, but fans will be able to create their own content (with some restrictions). Cyan will review player created content and add it to the game, for other players to enjoy.
Two good links
MMORPG Article
http://mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?LOADNEWS=7159&bhcp=1
History of Uru - Wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst_Online:_Uru_Live
Three screenshots
My first screenshot from the 2003 beta. I start Uru. I am in the desert in New Mexico. What will I find?
My private age - Relto - my home in Uru . This is a private age, though I can invite other players as guests.
Bevin, a neighorhood in Uru. This is a shared age, an age owned by more than one player. The age can be open to all players, or private, which means that only the owners can access it.
Do I like Uru? Yes - I do. Would I recommend that you play Uru. My answer - I don’t know.
I’ve been with Uru for…well…forever. I was one of the first people admitted to the 2003 beta test. I’m been a player, a supporter, a critic. I’ve been a volunteer moderator for the official web forum, starting with the first publisher, Ubisoft, in 2003, then with Gametap and Cyan. (I don’t mod anymore - short answer - no time). I’ve made friends.
When I was laid off in 2003 (company merger, layoffs, you know the story, working again, all is good), Uru kept me going during unhappy times. I’ve never considered myself to be what we call an “avid” fan - though if you look at how long I’ve been in Uru, and my involvement in the community, I’m much more of a fan than I think I am! Uru has been a constant in my life since 2003. I know the game world - it’s a part of me. I’ve lived there. There were times when I would not logon for weeks, but I would always come back. I have the solo player version of Uru,; it’s beautiful, but I miss the multiplayer version. I will play MMO URU when it comes back
I’ve also been a critic. Uru is beautiful and sometimes it’s wonderful, but it’s also flawed. I won’t go into the flaws here (maybe a later post), but think about it. There is enough interest to resurrect Uru three times (four if you count Until Uru), but then the game was cancelled, several times. Something is going on.
Will you like it? I don’t know. I don’t think those of us who have been with Uru forever are the best judges of whether other people will like it. We aren’t objective. Uru is our history, our community, our home. I recommend that you read up, and perhaps, give it a try. Uru (called MORE) is going to be very reasonably priced - about $25.00 (US) for a 6 month subscription - payable via Paypal, so it will be available around the world. Here’s a link to the official site, including the online forum.
Enjoy.
amarez - mszv
