Something to Say (But No Time to Say It)

This is technically a “Nothing to Say” post, except that I don’t have nothing to say, so it’s also not really.  But, then, the “Nothing to Say” posts have always been among the most paradoxical posts in a huge sea of paradox, so no huge surprise there.  You could start with the last post in the series and work backwards from the internal links, or you could just go check out the series listing for ”the informals” and get links to them all.

The main point of the posts in this series is to do a bit of a retrospective on the Blog So Far—how many posts, how many words, that sort of thing.  Typically I do them whenever I can’t think of any other good topics, not when I just ran out of time.  However, this time I really did just run out of time: I’m attending another YAPC this year (yes, yes, technically they’ve changed the name to “The Perl Conference,” but it’ll always be “YAPC” to me), and, for the second time ever, I’m presenting a talk.  So I’m mildly stressed about it, because I radically overprepare for these sorts of things (which is amusing, as I’m terribly disorganized in nearly every other aspect of my life).  Preparation is the way I overcome stagefright: when people ask me if I’m nervous when presenting a talk, the answer always depends on how much I’ve prepared for it.  With little to no prep, I’m nervous as hell.  But my typical procedure is to write an outline, and then create slides or somesuch, and then write speaker’s notes, and then practice it over and over again (often in the shower), until I know it all cold.  And then I’m not nervous at all.  So I’m right in the midst of doing all that, and feeling like I’m running a bit behind (the talk is only about a month away, and I haven’t finished all my notes yet), and, while I do have a couple of topics worked out that I’d love to present, I just don’t have the time this weekend.  So I’m cheating a bit in calling this a “Nothing to Say” post. But it’s definitely a “Blog So Far” post, because I can do that fairly quickly and it’ll still be somewhat informative, without taking up a ton of my time.

How I usually start one of these posts is by checking the control panel of my blog.  Today it tells me that I have 423 total posts, from the first post (March 28th, 2010) through last week (May 13th, 2018), which is 425 weeks (if you count both endpoints, which you have to, because there’s a blog post at either end).  Assuming my date math is right, of course ... which, considering my upcoming talk is all about date math, it damned well better be.

(For those who are familiar with my Perl work and know of my Date::Easy module, this is the code to get that answer:

perl -MDate::Easy -le 'print( (date("5/13/2018")->epoch - date("3/28/2010")->epoch) / 86_400 / 7 + 1 )'

Which is really not as easy as it should be.  I’d like to add subtracting two dates—properly!—to the module before YAPC next month, but we’ll see how my time holds out.)

So, how many of those posts should count as actual posts is always up for debate.  The first thing we should subtract this time around are the “series listing” posts, which are categorized as “crosslinks.”  They super don’t count as weekly posts, because I did them all at once, not one per week.  So that leaves 415 posts in 425 weeks, which means I’ve missed 10 weeks in a little over 8 years.  Not awesome perhaps, but not particularly tragic either.

Then we have 55 posts on my Other Blog, but they totally count.  There are 38 interstitial posts, and they really shouldn’t count.  And there are 77 partial posts, which I last time tried to count as ⅓ of a post each (on the grounds that my normal posts average about 1,500 words and my partial posts are closer to 500).  Which is mildly odd math, but, if we roll with it, that puts us at just under 334 posts across 425 weeks, which is roughly a whole post every 9 days, so that’s still respectable, I’d say.

When it comes to words, I don’t do rough word counts any more.  I wrote a script a long time ago that I keep revising: it sucks in the whole blog post file, splits the text on three things—whitespace, pipe symbols (which I use to format links), and double-hyphens, which my posting script turns into proper em-dashes—filters out anything that doesn’t have any letters in it, throws out any formatting symbols I use that do have letters in them (e.g. “h1.” or ”{img}” or ”~~CENTER~~”), then counts the results.  And then I start removing things and recounting, so that I effectively subtract out certain kinds of words that I feel shouldn’t count towards my final word count.  The things I throw out are:

• “type” lines: These are lines at the very top of my post that tell my formatting script which blog they’re destined for, possibly the name of the post, etc.
• block quotes: If I’m quoting a long passage of text from someone else, that should hardly count towards my word count, right?
• links: Meaning the actual URLs themselves, not the words you click on (those still count).
• footnotes: This one is a bit more debatable, but I figure you can choose to skip over the footnotes if you like, and, assuming you do, then I shouldn’t count them in my total words.
• code blocks: Sure, I wrote them (usually), but code is not words in the traditional sense, and it often artifically inflates word count (e.g. ”$d” shouldn’t really count as a “word”).
• fine print: By which I mean those disclaimer-y things at the tops of my posts, like “this is part of a series” and “don’t count on the next part of the series being next week” and so on.  A lot of that is reused boilerplate, and, while I did have to write it once, I don’t feel like it’s fair to count it for every post.

So, according to this script, if I suck in every post in the “published” directory and every post in the “novel” directory, I come up with this:

total words          551189
- in links           3645
- in blockquotes     64602
- in footnotes       19457
- in code blocks     6128
- in fine print      5568
net words            451789

That’s around half a million words, even discounting as much as I do.  (I suspect there’s a few more posts somewhere that I’m not including, but I seriously doubt it could be more than 50 thousand words’ worth.)  About 20 thousand words just in footnotes (I thought it’d be higher, actually), and over 60 thousand that I’m quoting of other people’s words (of course, some of that is quoting myself, and some of it may be just for formatting purposes, like poetry or whatnot).  Still, a perfectly reasonable total, I think.  I have no complaints.

This post itself is a bit light, but not so much that I’ll mark it as “partial,” I don’t think.  I’m already over 1,100 words (final count, after editing, and adding this not-quite-a-footnote: 1,330).  And that’s good, because, despite the lack of time this weekend, I really don’t want to fail to deliver on my new blog schedule.  I already feel a bit lame for dropping back to half as many posts as I was making.  If I can’t even maintain that level, I really will feel a failure.  So this week I’m cheating a bit by doing a topic I can pound out very quickly, but I think it still qualifies as a full post ... even if mildly short on really interesting topics.  But celebrating half a million words spewed forth into the void of the Internet is not nothing, even though it may not particualrly impress you, dear reader.  But, as always, I can but point out that you really shouldn’t be reading this blog anyway.

See you next week.

Wise Men Build Bridges

We’re in the midst of watching Black Panther at the moment.  I gotta be honest with you: I really didn’t think there was any way for this film to live up to the hype—I mean, it’s so much hype.  Like, a lotta hype.  A whole lot.  And yet, somehow it kinda does.  Best superhero movie ever?  I think it’s a disinct possibility.

And, I won’t give any real spoilers, but I just gotta say one thing.  If you demand a pristine viewing experience, just jump to the next paragraph.  Because, c’mon y’all ... vibranium? armored? rhinoceroses?!?  I am positively squeeing over here!!

Anyway, that’s all we have time for this week.  Longer post next week, as usual.

Shadowfall Equinox V

"Keep the Dark Inside"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

When I put tracks into my mix file, there’s a complex set of symbols I use to tell me where I need to pull the track from, whether it’s in the right position, whether it has any vocals or not, and whether it belongs in this mix at all.  That last one is what I call the “suitability” column, and a question mark there means I’m just not sure this song belongs on this mix ... or maybe even anywhere.  Now, there are various reasons for this.  Maybe a song is perfect for the mix, but it’s just not that great a song.  More likely, it’s a good song, but I’m not quite sure it fits on the mix.  Sometimes a song like that gets bumped altogether—moved to a different mix, or just dropped from the mixfile.  But sometimes I just think that the song could go on the mix ... somewhere ... but not in the current volume.  And then maybe that happens again on the next volume, and again, and somehow the song just keeps getting bumped, never quite fitting in, but never quite sticking out badly enough to get permanently cut.

See, while a mix has a very consistent throughline, every volume is still a little different.  Each one focuses on a slightly different aspect of the mix.  For instance, Shadowfall Equinox I was perhaps the perfect balance of dark, and expansive, and lonely, and dreamy.  But there’s no doubt that Shadowfall Equinox II, with its rain and echoey underwater motifs, leaned firmly towards lonely.  And Shadowfall Equinox III, featuring Morpheus and not one, but two, selections from dark ambient masters Nox Arcana, was pretty dark.  Then along comes Shadowfall Equinox IV, bringing us Australis and Rapoon and Carmen Rizzo, all electro- and ethno-ambient, and, in retrospect, it’s certainly the most expansive volume to date.  So I guess it makes sense that this most recent volume is going to focus on the dreamy.

Dreampop is an amazingly useful genre that, perhaps surprisingly, shows up on a lot of different mixes.  Taking the Cocteau Twins as an example—and they are the godparents of dreampop, in many ways—we’ve seen them most on Numeric Driftwood, but they’ve also shown up on Smokelit Flashback, Darkling Embrace, and even Penumbral Phosphorescence.  Which tells us that dreampop can be soothing, trippy, darkly pretty, or just plain dark.  But of course it can also be dreamy, and that’s what we’re looking for here.  On this volume of Shadowfall Equinox, we’ll see the Cocteaus, 4AD labelmates (and the other quintessential dreampop band) Dead Can Dance, 4AD supergroup (consisting of members of both the Cocteaus and DCD) This Mortal Coil, and Norweigan dream-ambient duo Bel Canto, but it all starts with the occasionally new age, occasionally Celtic, occasionally world, but always fundamentally Canadian dreampop, Loreena McKennit.

“Prologue” is the opener to McKennit’s amazing (and amazingly diverse) album The Book of Secrets, and it’s got a little bit of worldmusic-crossed-with-RennFaire vibe that makes it tough to slot into anywhere.  Primarily because anything else that sounds even remotely like it is not as mellow and contemplative as this track, which has always screamed “Shadowfall Equinox” at me at the same time that I couldn’t imagine slotting it up against Jeff Greinke or Kevin Keller.  So it dragged its question mark in the “suitability” column around with it through 4 other volumes, until suddenly I found some compatriots that seemed to share its spirit.

So I made it the opener here, and promptly followed it up with “Yulunga (Spirit Dance)” by Dead Can Dance.  DCD are of course no strangers to worldmusic themselves, so the transition here is pretty nice: from Italo-Renaissance into droning Middle Eastern chanting.  “Yulunga” is itself the opener of DCD’s Into the Labyrinth, the follow-up to my all-time favorite Aion.  It’s no “Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove” to be sure, but it has a somber and relentless quality that makes it perfect for this mix.  Lisa Gerrard not only does the vocals here, but also on the This Mortal Coil track, “Waves Become Wings,” which is TMC’s third appearance on this mix.¹  Like many of the tracks from Ivo Watts’ 4AD collective, this one is pretty minimalist, mainly just Gerrard’s ethereal, almost indecipherable vocals (reminiscent of the Cocteaus’ Elizabeth Fraser, actually), and some keyboard work which is no doubt supplied by Watts himself.²  Somewhere in there you can almost make out Gerrard saying the volume title, but I’ll be honest: if the Internet hadn’t provided me the lyrics, I probably would have never picked it out.

From the Twins, we have “Sea, Swallow Me,” which is off the Cocteaus’ collaboration with Harold Budd.  Now, the majority of the songs on this album are too much Harold Budd and not enough Cocteau Twins, which I don’t care for.  But this one ... well, to be fair, it probably swings back too far in the other direction.  But then I’m starting to come to the conclusion that not enough Harold Budd is just the right amount of Harold Budd.  So I really dig this one tune.  It starts out somewhat typically for a Budd tune, then the Cocteaus really kick in, and it becomes a very layered, complex tune fully worthy of this mix.  And we’d be remiss to do a dreampop-focussed volume without returning to Twin Peaks and Angelo Badalamenti.  This time I went with the Fire Walk with Me soundtrack, which is slightly jazzier than the original Twin Peaks soundtrack.  Again, it might not have worked on another volume, but here it slots in just fine.

And we’ll round out the dreampop with Bel Canto, who are what you might imagine the Cocteau Twins would sound like if they were crossed with Enigma.  “Buthania” is a simple tune, mostly powered by some variety of flute, and it has an almost Native American vibe to it.  And, speaking of Enigma, Jens Gad was a producer for them, and I only recently discovered his excellent album Le Spa Sonique.  I would say it’s more downtempo than new age, but well worth checking out, and “Orbiting Suns” is the absolute best track on it.  Plus it makes a beautiful transition off the end of “Sea, Swallow Me” to form an excellent centerpiece for the volume.

And since we’re now speaking of downtempo, Naomi are here as well, with “The Book,” another track that has been dragged around with a question mark through several volumes of this mix.  Finally it seems to fit here, where it didn’t work on the other volumes.  Is it the added dreaminess of this volume that makes it finally work?  Yes, I think it probably is.

And you don’t have to stray very far from dreampop before you run smack dab into darkwave, which is really after all just dreampop crossed with goth.³  Our darkwave this time out comes from the usual suspects: Black Tape for a Blue Girl, who give us “We Watch Our Sad-Eyed Angel Fall,” a practically operatic, string-heavy instrumental piece, and Falling You, who share “march thirty-one,” the centerpiece of their masterpiece Touch.  It’s another haunting track with vocals from Aimee Page, and it makes a perfect closer.

Of course, we still need to pay homage to the original inspiration for Shadowfall Equinox: Hearts in Space’s “Shadowfall II.”⁴  First and foremost, of course, is a return to Jeff Greinke’s Wide View, after a brief break from that album last volume.⁵  The title track appeared as the second song in “Shadowfall II”; here I’m using it to introduce the center stretch of the mix.  Kevin Keller is also back, this time with a darkly perfect track from his Nocturnes album called “November.” And I call back to Ruben Garcia with the title track from I Can Feel the Heat Closing In, which is a great ambient piece set to the backdrop of a thunderstorm.

And that leads directly into perhaps the strangest choice here: “Within a Grey-Day Mood.” Long ago, when my eldest child was still an infant, The Mother bought a cheesy lullaby CD from a Wal-Mart or a Starbucks or something.  It was called Lifescapes: Lullabies, and, despite being nothing special in many ways, we played it to death as music for the kids to sleep by.  We lost the CD in some move or other, and then we had to track it down years afterward and pay probably four or five times as much as the first time around, just because it was such an ingrained part of our life.  So, fast-forward to a few months ago, and the family is wandering around a local Goodwill store, trying to find something worth buying.  I’m in the used CD section, which used to be one of my favorite places to check out, but nowadays you have to really want some music to commit to owning an actual CD, and pretty much everything I want that bad I already own.  But hope springs eternal, ya know?  And I happened to spot that familiar Lifescapes label ...

This one is called Summer Thunder, and it’s not nearly as good as the lullabies one.  But it still has a few moments.  It mainly seems to consist of an extended audio cut of a very long thunderstorm, which has been overlaid with someone (identified in the liner notes only as “Steven C”) noodling around on the piano.  As you could imagine, mostly this doesn’t work.  But occasionally it does, and the opener (the aforementioned “Within a Grey-Day Mood”) is easily the best track.  Plus, the thunderstorm motif makes it really flow beautifully after Garcia’s (much better) similarly-themed piece.

Shadowfall Equinox V
[ Keep the Dark Inside ]

“Prologue” by Loreena McKennitt, off The Book of Secrets
“Yulunga (Spirit Dance)” by Dead Can Dance, off Into the Labyrinth
“Reincarnation (Saisei)” by Kitaro, off Silk Road II
“Buthania” by Bel Canto, off Shimmering, Warm & Bright
“No Stone Unturned” by Jade Leary, off The Lost Art of Human Kindness
“Wide View” by Jeff Greinke, off Wide View
“I Can Feel the Heat Closing In” by Ruben Garcia, off I Can Feel the Heat Closing In
“Within a Grey-Day Mood” by Steven C., off Lifescapes: Summer Thunder ⁶
“Theme from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” by Angelo Badalamenti, off Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [Soundtrack]
“The Book” by Naomi, off Pappelallee
“Sea, Swallow Me” by Cocteau Twins / Harold Budd, off The Moon and the Melodies [Collaboration]
“The Orbiting Suns” by Jens Gad, off Le Spa Sonique
“November” by Kevin Keller, off Nocturnes
“Waves Become Wings” by This Mortal Coil, off It'll End in Tears
“We Watch Our Sad-Eyed Angel Fall” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off A Chaos of Desire
“march thirty-one” by Falling You, off Touch

Total:  16 tracks,  77:24

And that really only leaves us with two tracks.  “Reincarnation (Saisei)” is from the second volume of Kitaro’s music for the Japanese documentary series Silk Road, which is how he first came to prominence.  Now, Kitaro is pretty solidly new age, and generally I save new age for mellower mixes than this,⁷ but I knew that sooner or later I could find a Kitaro piece that would work here.  I really thought Astral Voyage would end up holding the key, but Silk Road turned out to be a better bet.  Especially on this particular volume, where the first section already has a strong worldmusic vibe, “Reincarnation” fits perfectly between “Yulunga” and “Buthania.”

Finally, the bridge between the worldy first section and the more ambient center section is a short instrumental piece from Montreal artist Jade Leary.  Another Magnatune find,⁸ Leary has a dark sensibility that I find appealing.  Much of his stuff has a harder edge that make him more suitable for other mixes,⁹ but “No Stone Unturned” is a quieter, more contemplative piece ... and that’s exactly what this mix showcases.

Next time, we’ll slink back around to some more sinuous fare.

⇐ Shadowfall Equinox IV

Shadowfall Equinox VI ⇒

__________

1 They previously appeared on Shadowfall Equinox I and Shadowfall Equinox II.

2 The liner notes swear Gerrard is also playing accordian on this track, but I damn sure can’t hear it.

3 And of course we mustn’t forget my theory that dreampop derives from goth, which I mentioned briefly back on Penumbral Phosphorescence.

4 Which I discussed way back on Shadowfall Equinox I, you may recall.

5 But not from Greinke, of course.  We just switched it up and went with a selection off Timbral Planes instead.

6 This album is very difficult to get hold of nowadays—heck it probably wasn’t that easy to find even when it was new.  You can probably find a used copy on Amazon if you look hard.  But I figured the YouTube link was about the best option on this one.

7 Primarily Numeric Driftwood.

8 I first told the story of how I discovered Magnatune in Rose-Coloured Brainpan.

9 That we shall come to in the fullness of time.

Waiting for a new vista

This is the weekend my office is moving from Santa Monica to Playa Vista.  Happily, I was not required to do much personally, but one of the things I did have to do was shut my computer down.  This is a big pain, you see, because I never shut my computer down.  In order for me to start my computer from cold, I have to do the following things:

• Enter my 56-character password to unlock my hard drive encryption.
• Enter my much shorter user password to log into the machine.
• Fire up a temporary terminal window.
• Run a command which will start up my actual terminal windows (2) and my music player.
• Enter my 43-character password to unlock my SSH key.
• Close the temporary terminal window.
• Fire up Firefox.
• Restore my Firefox session, with its 7 windows and 219 total tabs.
• Run another command which starts up my 1 Thunderbird window and Pidgin with its 12 IM windows.
• Fire up my 2 Chrome windows (in 2 different profiles).
• Start up all the other apps that I can’t remember right now.
• Move all the windows onto their proper desktops.

So, as you can see, I don’t shut my computer down very often, because it’s such a giant pain in the ass to get it going again.  So I’m not particularly looking forward to having to do that.  But it seems like the new office won’t be ready tomorrow anyway, so I’ve got an extra day.  Which is good, because I blew out a tire on the way to work last week and I have to buy new tires anyway.

So ... yeah, fun times.  As usual, longer post next week.

Saladosity, Part 11: The Right Equipment

[This is the eleventh post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Finally we’ve bought all our food and we can start looking at equipment.  If you’re a fan of Good Eats, Alton would say we’re done with the software and now we can move on to the hardware.¹  Now, for this post in particular, I’m going to be throwing a whole bunch of links at you.  That’s mainly so you can see what I’m talking about.  I’m not saying you have to buy these exact brands.  In fact, I’m not even particularly recommending these brands.  I literally just found the most appopriate picture, is all.

Now, you probably think I’m going to tell you the most important piece of equipment you need is a good knife.  Nope.  I personally think the most important thing you need to make a good salad is a good cutting board.  You want something big and solid and made of wood—you can never cut raw meat on it, of course, but we won’t need any raw meat for any of our salads.  I like the style that has a removable tray in it, but there are lots of options.  Main thing is, you want it to be big enough to work comfortably without running out of space, but small enough to fit in your sink sideways for easy rinsing.  (Perfectly fine if you need to flip it around to get the other side because it sticks up out of the sink so much.)  The tray makes it nice because you just sweep the chopped veggies into it and it’s easy to dump things into your bowl or other container.

Of course, a good knife is absolutely the second most important thing.  You have a couple of options here.  Personally, I thnk the all-around best knife is the chef’s knife.  Nice, solid, easy-to-grip handle, wide, heavy blade, perfect for chopping.  I like ones made of all metal, but, again, there are lots of styles to choose from.  Your other good option is a Santoku knife.  Again, I like the all metal style, but whatever floats your boat.  The Santoku lacks the sharp point on the end, which is probably a good thing (it’s one less thing to stab yourself with), and it has cullens (those scalloped depressions on the sides) which reduce cutting friction.  So it has a few advantages.  But it’s not as heavy, and the shape is a little less ideal, at least in my hand.  But I still like the Santoku, especially for cutting onions (for some reason).  So I commonly switch back and forth between the two.

The next thing you’ll need is a good vegetable peeler.  Now, there are like a zillion different kinds of peelers out there.  On the advice of Alton Brown,² I prefer a “Y peeler” style.³  The Mother, on the other hand, absolutely hates that style,⁴ and likes the old fashioned metal pieces of garbage that leave grooves in your palm and are prone to twisting unexpectedly and slicing the tips of your fingers off.  Which is nice if you’re trying to elude the police and don’t want to leave fingerprints any more, I suppose, but otherwise seems less than ideal.  The main thing I use it for is peeling cucumbers, which are my all-time favorite salad vegetable, but perhaps you like other veggies that need peeling.  And also there’s apples, although many people like to leave the peels on those.  Personally I’m not a big peel fan, regardless of the type of produce.  The main thing here is that you want something that feels comfortable in your hand and that will more often peel veggies than you.

Now that you can chop all your veggies, you’ll need a way to make your dressings.  In other words, you need a good food processor.  Now, there like a zillion different options for that, and you can spend as much or as little as you like getting one.  But I’ll tell you the one I particularly like: the Ninja kitchen system.  It’s a bit pricey, but you can often get a good deal on one at Costco, and, in addition to making excellent dressings, you can make smoothies too.  Which is a mega-bonus, as far as I’m concerned.  But as long as you can both chop and puree, that’s all you really need.

And now it’s time to move from the obviously-necessary to the so-you-think-you-can-live-without-it category.  Perfect example: an apple corer-slicer.  Perhaps you’ve not actually seen one of these; it’s a small circle of metal inside a larger circle of metal with 6 or 8 “spokes” connecting the two.  Sometimes the outside circle is actually plastic, as in this model, which also has nice rubber grips.  Basically, you put the small circle over the core of the apple and just push down, and: voilà.  Perfect apple slices, just about every time.  Now, you may think you don’t need such a thing—after all, can’t you just use a paring knife?  Well, sure ... you could.  But the whole point of this series is making eating healthy easy.  With one of these babies, you can get 6 or 8 perfect slices of apple in about 10 seconds, and at least half of that is spent just lining up the circles.  Practically the only time you have to spend preparing an apple is peeling it, and, if you’re okay with eating apple peel,⁵ then you’re spending no time at all.  Easy prep means you’re more likely to eat the fruit.

Similarly, many people think you don’t really need an egg slicer.  And there are some downsides to having one, such as being bitchy to clean, and, if the “strings” get warped, it gets harder to open back up.  But they’re cheap, and way easier (and faster) than trying to slice a hard-boiled egg with a knife.  And two bonus points:  First, your slices of eggs are perfectly consistent, every time, which you can never manage with a knife, because you’re constantly trying to slice something which is both round and slippery.  Secondly, after you turn the egg into slices, you can then turn it 90 degrees and slice it crosswise, thus turning your slices into chunks, so you have options.  Personally, I own the OXO model, but I’m sure many others are just as lovely.

Another thing you may think you can live without (but you would be wrong) is a good stick blender—at least I’ve always called it a “stick blender,” but apparently the proper name is “immersion blender.”  This is another item which comes in many different flavors: you can even get one with a whisk attachment.  But you don’t need anything fancy.  Now, a stick blender is excellent for making soup, and that alone would make it worth the 20 bucks (or even less).  But where it really shines is making mayonnaise.  See, mayonnaise is one of those things that is very difficult to find made out of anything other than crappy ingredients like soybean oil.  And, you can make it yourself, but it takes forever and it’s really easy to screw up.  Unless you have a stick blender.  If you have a stick blender, it takes about a minute of prep time, and maybe 30 seconds worth of actual work.  Trust me: you need one of these.

Now, I also mentioned earlier that you were going to need a good pepper grinder.  Can you live without one of these?  No, you cannot.  Do not try to substitute crappy pepper dust for freshly-cracked peppercorns.  The tastes are only vaguely related, like trying to substitute cheap lemon flavoring for actual lemon juice.  Now, I personally prefer a shorter model with good rubber grips,⁶ because I think those tall skinny models are more awkward than stylish: give me functional any day.  But the main thing is to have an adjustable grind and to be easy to refill.  I think having a transparent barrel, so you can quickly see when you’re about to run out, is pretty handy too, but some people favor form over function.  Whatever works for you.

Finally, we move into the category of you-don’t-absolutely-have-to-have-it-but-you’ll-be-happier-if-you-do.  For instance, take the electric lemon juicer.  Could you juice lemons without one?  Of course you can.  But it’s a huge pain in the ass.  And remember: we’re all about making it quick and easy.  The kind of juicer I have is a basic Black & Decker model with an adjustable pulp filter, two sizes of reamers, and an auto-reverse function.  Yep, believe it or not, that’s a pretty simple one—you can get all kinds of complex above and beyond that.  But that’s all you really need.

Once you make your dressings, you can just keep them in bowls, or tupperware-style containers.  But it’s much nicer if you have a big funnel and some glass bottles.  As far as bottles go, you certainly could buy them from Amazon, but why bother?  Just save some of the bottles from other salad dressings that you buy: peel the lables off, throw ’em in the dishwasher, and Bob’s yer uncle.  As far as funnels go, I (perhaps predictably) favor the OXO, but, really, one funnel is as good as another, for the most part.

The very last thing you could live without but won’t want to is a decent salad spinner.  Our plan is to make a big batch of veggies, then keep them around for at least a week.  That way, any time you want salad, it’s right there at your fingertips, and you’re only chopping up massive quantities of produce once a week or so.  But in order for this plan to work, you’re going to need to be able to store that big batch in such a way that it will last a week without getting yucky.  And, for that, a salad spinner is absolutely the best tool.  You can toss your veggies in it, you can use the magic of centrifugal force to whisk off excess moisture, and then throw the whole spinner in the fridge, where it will keep your salad moist enough not to dry out and get disgusting but not so moist it starts to decompose and become disgusting.  A salad spinner is the most super-awesome innovation in salad-making technology in the past century, I would say.  Do not fail to take advantage of it.


That’s all the equipment we’ll need, unless of course I think of more along the way.  But it’s probably sufficient.  Next time, let’s put all this equipment to use and start chopping up some of those veggies we bought.

__________

1 Although, to be fair, AB generally does the hardware first.  But I wanted to get the software out of the way because it’s way more complicated.

2 Did I mention I’m a Good Eats fan?

3 That is actually the exact peeler I own, as Amazon helpfully reminded when I brought that page up.

4 Probably because Alton Brown likes it.  She has an unreasonable distaste for that man.

5 Blech.

6 Again, this is actual model I own.  I must have a thing for OXO, which somehow I never realized before I started writing this post.

Supportive listener (as best I can be)

I just got back from renewing my membership at the MaxFun Drive.  Technically speaking, I missed the deadline for the annual drive, but, you know: supporting the artists you love listening to doesn’t actually have a deadline.  You can do it any time you like.  If you too love MaximumFun shows like Judge John Hodgman or The Adventure Zone, why not go toss them a few bucks?  $5 per month is nothing.  I can’t even eat a meal at McDonald’s for that any more.  Why wouldn’t I be willing to give a measly five bucks to keep the good folks at MaxFun “artist owned and listener supported,” as their motto says?  Well, dammit, I am willing, and you should be too.

Anyhow, that’s all I have to say for this week.  Hopefully more exciting topics next week.

Numeric Princess

"Fairy Tales Can Come True"

[While this is not technically part of my series on my music mixes, you still might benefit from reading the series list (for definitions of terms), and/or the introduction (for general background.]


My smallest human child just had a birthday, as I mentioned last week.  I may have also mentioned that, of all my children, she is the one who most shares my love of music.  Like me, she loves nearly all kinds of music, and she even likes some that I don’t care for.  Like, say, music from Disney movies, and in particular Disney princess movies.  Now, it is practically a cliché at this point to have a little girl who’s obsessed with singing the songs from Frozen, and my kid is not really bucking that trend.  But she’s also perfectly happy to sing songs by Ariel, or Tiana, or Snow White, or Moana.  So The Mother suggested that I make her a Disney princess mix.

Obviously I resisted this suggestion.  There are two broad classes of music that I really can’t stand: country and opera.  And as far as I’m concerned “opera” encompasses light opera (e.g. Gilbert and Sullivan), and, of course, Broadway show tunes.  I don’t care for musicals, and that includes Disney musicals, because they consist of hideously annoying show tunes, and I hate those.  Like, a lot.

And, here’s the thing: if I’m going to make a mix, I’m going to do it right.  And, as part of making a mix, I listen to the music over and over again, choosing the perfect songs, trying to determine the best order, sometimes making decisions about how much space to place between the tracks, and so forth.  And, here’s a batch of music that I really don’t want to listen to even once, much less over and over again.

But, hey: I love my baby girl, right?  Yeah, I must ...

So here is a mix of Disney princess songs.  I learned ever so much about Disney princesses while doing this.  For instance, did you know that there are 11 “official” Disney princesses?  And that there are rules for qualification to that august institution?  Of course, there are 4 princesses who conform to the rules but aren’t princesses—that would be Elsa and Anna from Frozen, weirdly, who it’s just assumed would eclipse all the other princesses if they were let into the club, and Moana and Anastasia, who it’s assumed will eventually join the ranks—and 1 princess who doesn’t conform to the rules but somehow still is (that would be Mulan, who is neither born into royalty nor marries a prince)?  So Alice (from Alice in Wonderland) isn’t a princess (no royalty), and Maid Marian (from Robin Hood) isn’t a princess (not human), and Elena of Avalor isn’t a princess (derives from a TV show, not a movie), and Mary Poppins isn’t a princess because she’s not animated ... even Princess Leia—who, goshdarnit, has “princess” right there in her name—can’t be an official Disney princess because she’s not a friggin’ cartoon.  Well, I personally like to think she’s just too cool to be a Disney princess, but obviously I’m biased: as a child, I was way more into Star Wars than Sleeping Beauty.¹

But, I say: screw the rules.  By my reckoning, Alice and Maid Marian and Elena of Avalor and Mary Poppins should each be considered the princess of her story.  Plus their music is cooler than those “official” princesses.  So I’ve included one song each from the 11 official princesses, plus a song from 3 of the 4 non-official princesses,² plus the 4 extras mentioned above, and I threw in Megara from Hercules for good measure (primarily because she also has a fairly cool song, and this mix was crying out for hip).³  So that’s a total of 19 songs by strong Disney female characters, presented here for your consideration.  Well, really they’re for my daughter.  But you can enjoy them as well.

Let’s start with the list this time.  For each song, I’ve actually credited the character, which makes sense for my little girl.  However, I didn’t want to completely ignore the talented women who provided the vocals, so I put their names in as extra notes.  Note that in a couple of cases, the songs are duets (typically with the “prince” figure), or even larger ensemble pieces.  Also note that there is actually one voice actor who was not just one, but actually two Disney princesses: Lea Salonga is both Jasmine and Mulan.⁴  Finally, note that every selection here is a single: there is no way in hell I’m tossing you a link to an entire album of Disney music.

Numeric Princess I
    [Fairy Tales Can Come True]

        “Part of Your World” by Ariel {Jodi Benson} [Single]
        “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” by Cinderella (with animals) {Ilene Woods} [Single]
        “A Whole New World” by Jasmine (with Aladdin) {Lea Salonga & Brad Kane} [Single]
        “Reflection” by Mulan {Lea Salonga} [Single]
        “For the First Time in Forever” by Anna (with Elsa) {Kristen Bell & Idina Menzel} [Single]
        “Belle” by Belle (with townspeople) {Paige O'Hara & Richard White & Chorus—Beauty And the Beast} [Single]
        “I Won't Say (I'm in Love)” by Megara (with the Muses) {Susan Egan} [Single]
        “Once Upon a Dream” by Aurora (with Prince Philip) {Mary Costa & Bill Shirley & Chorus—Sleeping Beauty} [Single]
        “Colours of the Wind” by Pocohontas {Judy Kuhn} [Single]
        “When Will My Life Begin” by Rapunzel {Mandy Moore} [Single]
        “Love” by Maid Marian {Nancy Adams} [Single]
        “A Spoonful of Sugar” by Mary Poppins {Julie Andrews} [Single]
        “How Far I'll Go” by Moana {Auli'i Cravalho} [Single]
        “Almost There” by Tiana {Anika Noni Rose} [Single]
        “Let It Go” by Elsa {Idina Menzel} [Single]
        “Noble Maiden Fair (A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal)” by Merida (accompanying Queen Elinor) {Emma Thompson and Peigi Barker} [Single]
        “Pay Attention / In a World of My Own” by Alice {Kathryn Beaumont} [Single]
        “With a Smile and a Song” by Snow White {Adriana Caselotti} [Single]
        “The Right Thing to Do” by Elena of Avalor (with Esteban) {Aimee Carrero & Christian Lanz} [Single]⁵
   

Total:  19 tracks,  56:01

Since several of the princesses offered a few different choices, I also ended up learning a lot about the different types of Disney princess songs.⁶  Typically the opening song is an introduction, which sets the scene for the audience and lays out the situation so everyone’s on the same page.  Then there’s generally an “I Want” song: this is where the main character (nearly always the princess⁷) sings longingly about all she doesn’t (yet) have.  Often the “I Want” song is the best choice for a princess: they’re terribly popular, they’re nearly always solos, and they tend to feature strong vocal performances that make them memorable to young girls.  The classic examples of an “I Want” song to be found on this mix are “Part of Your World” by Ariel, “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” by Cinderalla, “When Will My Life Begin” by Rapunzel (from Tangled), “How Far I’ll Go” by Moana, and “Reflection” by Mulan.

The absolute best “I Want” song of all time (at least in terms of Disney princesses), though, has to go to Tiana, for “Almost There.”  Now, the songs from The Princess and the Frog are just better than other Disney songs in general, and that’s because they’re not really show tunes: they’re much jazzier, which makes them far more palatable (at least in my book).  But “Almost There” is particularly notable in another way: even in the modern era, most “I Want” songs are fairly passive—e.g., listen to the lyrics of “When Will My Life Begin,” which is nice song and all (more pop than show tune, so that’s a point in its favor), but it’s still all about Rapunzel just sitting and wishing.  Not Tiana: she’s not sitting around waiting for her dreams to come true, she’s working her butt off to make them come true.  In fact, while “Almost There” give us our volume title this time around, it’s perhaps instructive to hear the whole verse:

I remember Daddy told me:
Fairy tales can come true.
But you gotta make ’em happen—
It all depends on you.

This is absolutely the sort of message I want for my daughter.  Contrast that with the sappy “I Want” song from Snow White: “Someday My Prince Will Come.”  Okay, it was 1937, sure.  But still: oh, my life will be so much better as soon as a big, strong man comes and sweeps me off my feet?  Puh-lease.  This song also embodies another type of song that I completely made up myself after sifting through dozens and dozens of princess songs: the “Ain’t He Dreamy?” song.  “Someday My Prince Will Come” is probably the worst offender in that camp, but “So This Is Love” (from Cinderella) is pretty bad too.  For that matter, “Something There” (from Beauty and the Beast) drifts dangerously close to this territory.

Beauty and the Beast was problematic in several ways, actually.  The super-popular song is of course “Beauty and the Beast” (a.k.a. the “tale as old as time” song), but Belle doesn’t sing in it—not a single line.  So that didn’t feel appopriate here.  And I already threw out “Something There.”  So it really only left me with “Belle,” which is the opening number.  The introduction song for a princess movie is rarely sung by the princess; it’s more about the princess and might be sung by an expository character (or the chorus).  But “Belle” is really her song, with the townspeople contributing bits here and there.  Plus it’s way more tolerable than the “old as time” one.

Similarly, for Snow White, I just went with the one I could tolerate the easiest: “With a Smile and a Song,” which is nothing to write home about, but at least it doesn’t offend my sensibilities as a father.  Aurora (a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty) is also problematic (for many of the same reasons), but I settled on “Once Upon a Dream,” which, while it does feature the charming prince and consequently verges on “Ain’t He Dreamy?” territory, has the twin virtues of being a) less sappy than “I Wonder” and b) short.

At least those older moves offer lots of choices, so I could throw out the really awful ones.  Jasmine, of course, has the opposite problem: there just aren’t any good choices other than “A Whole New World,” which also features Aladdin.  But it’s fine.  More problematic still was Merida, who just plain doesn’t sing at all.  But the fact of the matter is that Brave is the best of the princess movies,⁸ and Merida is actually one of the official princesses, so I didn’t want her to go unrepresented.  So I’m cheating a bit, but there’s a flashback scene in which Queen Elinor sings a comforting song to toddler Merida.  It only lasts about 12 seconds in the movie, but the soundtrack has the full version, and, most importantly, Merida sings along with her mother at the end of the song, so technically it counts as a princess song.  Yeah, I know: I’m reaching.

Anna and Elsa, of course, were never really in question: “For the First Time in Forever” and “Let It Go” are the songs from Frozen, and, as much I may personally dislike them, I was sort of stuck with them.  Since there are two princesses in Frozen, I felt justified in including two songs from it; “Let It Go” is unquestionably Elsa’s song, and, while Elsa does sing a bit on “For the First Time in Forever,” I think most people would agree that it’s really Anna’s song.  I consider it an “I Want” song, personally, although I’ve read that some people think the one about building a snowman should be considered the “I Want” song for Frozen.  But, hey: this one includes the incredible line “don’t know if I’m elated or gassy,” which is by far the best line spoken by a Disney princess, like, ever.  “Let It Go” I’m just plain sick of, like pretty much the entire rest of the universe.

“Colours of the Wind” is the least worst of a bad bunch for Pocohontas.  “In a World of My Own” is a fun little ditty from Alice in Wonderland.  “I Won’t Say (I’m in Love)” is actually a pretty good song from “tough chick” Megara.  And, while “Love” by Maid Marian certainly does border on “Ain’t He Dreamy?” territory, it has the advantage of being a really pretty song (and it’s also short, so it doesn’t wear out its welcome).

The “princesses” who didn’t make the cut:  Jane (from Tarzan) doesn’t sing anything.  Esmerelda (from The Hunchback of Notre Dame) only sings “God Helps the Outcasts,” which ... no.  Just no.  Nala (from Lion King) isn’t considered a princess because she’s not human; I wouldn’t hold that against her, but there’s no good song choices there.  And Kida (from Atlantis) only fails the princess test for the absolute worst reason: her movie wasn’t a commercial success (yep, that’s an actual official Disney princess rule).  But she also doesn’t sing anything.  No doubt the crazy Disney people think Atlantis failed because it wasn’t a musical.  Naturally that only made me like it better.  But oh well.

That just leaves us with two tracks.  In the case of Mary Poppins, I know that I’m really stretching the definition of “princess” here.  But I offer a few mitigating counterpoints.  Firstly, the original Mary Poppins has, hands-down, the largest collection of non-vomit-inducing songs of any Disney musical ever.  Pretty much every song in that movie rocks.  Secondly, “not animated” is a terrible reason why you can’t be a princess (second only to “not commercially successful”).  But, in the end, what it really comes down to is that the Ultimate Disney Princess CD has “Spoonful of Sugar” on it, and, dammit, that’s just a fun song.  Also a good message about cleaning up your room and whatnot.  What kind of father would I be to leave that one out?

Finally, the third worst reason to bar entry to the Disney princess club is that you’re a character from a TV show rather than a movie.⁹  Elena of Avalor is a princess from the Disney TV show of the same name, and there’s a song in every episode, and they’re actually good songs (well, most of the time).  Elena is not always the singer, so my choices aren’t as broad as they might be, but still there’s several good options.  I went with “The Right Thing to Do,” despite the fact that it’s a duet, because it’s got a little bit of a rap/hip-hop vibe that provides some much-needed (in my opinion) musical diversity for this mix.  Doesn’t make a bad closer for the volume either.

So that’s our Disney princess mix, volume I.  Will there ever be a volume II?  Probably not—this one was painful enough as it was.  But, then again, I do love my daughter, so one never knows.  The great thing about her, though, is that most of the time her musical taste is much better than this: in addition to this mix, I loaded another one onto her tablet.  I haven’t written that one up for my musical mixes series yet, but let’s just say it skews more heavily towards P!nk and Joan Jett than to Julie Andrews and Mandy Moore.  And she loves them both equally.

__________

1 Fun fact: I’m pretty sure I saw both of these in the theater.  Sleeping Beauty was originally released before I was born, of course, but Disney films have a tendency to be rereleased regularly, and SB hit the screens again in 1970.  I would have been only 4 or so, but I do have a very vague recollection of seeing that big black dragon up on the big screen, at least.  Sword in the Stone came back around in ‘72 and that one I remember very clearly.

2 Although Disney ended up with the rights to Anastasia when it bought Fox a few months ago, I’m still a little iffy on the whole idea of thinking of Anya as a Disney property.

3 Also, a lot of these songs are very short.  Even with 19 tracks, this mix is still just under an hour, which makes it the shortest mix I’ve ever produced.

4 The talented Ms. Salonga was born in the Philippines, in case you were wondering.

5 Few of the Elena of Avalor songs have been officially released, which is a shame, because they’re generally pretty good, as Disney princess songs go.  This one is only available on YouTube as far as I know.

6 Actually, I gather they’re just the general types of songs in any musical.

7 Nearly always.  Of the official princesses, only Jasmine is not the protagonist of her story—the movie is named Aladdin, after all.  Of the unofficial ones that I added, Megara and Maid Marian definitely qualify, and Mary Poppins is a bit of a toss-up ... is she the protagonist, or is it the children?

8 Most likely the lack of singing is a strong reason for my opinion on that score.

9 Closely followed by: you’re a character from a movie, but it’s a sequel.  Who makes these rules anyway?

End of another birthday season

When I announced the new blog schedule, I had hoped that I wouldn’t have any occasion to do a “short post week” twice in a row.  However, I suppose I failed to account for the March birthday season.  So we’re busy surviving another birthday weekend—second this month—and the tyranny of an unchecked six-year-old (who already thought she was the center of the universe) should not be underestimated.

Funny story: Friday night she apparently discovered that Toys R Us was “shutting down forever!”  So, despite the fact that she probably can’t even remember the last time she went to one, we were required to go on Saturday afternoon.  (Extra fun fact: if you followed the link about birthday weekends, you’ll notice that I covered her trip to Toys R Us/Babies R Us—the exact same one we were just at, actually—on the occasion of her second birthday.  In that discussion, I noted that: “Maybe Amazon is about to put them out of business too.  Wouldn’t surprise me.  (Or disappoint me, really.)”  Practically prophetic, as it turns out.)  Other than that, our weekend has been fairly predictable: screenings of movies such as Hop and Ferdinand, a morass of Littlest Pet Shop toys underfoot, a sparkling pink cake that looks as if a unicorn barfed it up, and enough replays of “Barbie Girl” to make one reconsider one’s life choices.  The one unusual point came in the food situation.  Oh, sure: we got McDonald’s, and we got donuts.  But, somehow, my little girl, who wants a cheeseburger everywhere she ever goes (including KFC and Subway), and is offended when she can’t get one, sent me to Jack-in-the-Box for chicken nuggets, scrambled eggs, and a grilled cheese sandwich.  (Which, due to JitB’s fantastically varied menu, she received.)  So that was ... unexpected.

But, overall, a happy birthday weekend for the littlest one, I believe, and we’ll shoot for a longer post next week.  Perhaps I’ll even combine a little family news with music news and share the Disney princess mix I concocted for her birthday.  Till then.

Quiescence

Nothing exciting to say this week.  I just ran out of time this weekend—lots of catching up on miscellaneous bits, and a trip down to my work office to pick up some furniture that they’re getting rid of.  So you’ll just have to tune in next week to see what topic I come up with.

Looking Forward to Pathfinder's Next Iteration

The second edition of Pathfinder has just been announced.

Now, I have an opinion on this, and I’d like to believe it’s an informed opinion, but (like pretty much all my topics), I feel like there’s quite a bit of background to cover before my thoughts make sense.  Happily, I’ve already talked about most of it before: for full details of my opinions, you could read my post on post-apocalyptic RPGs (where I cover a bit about the different versions of D&D, up through 3e), and my two-part series on Pathfinder (link to part 2 at the bottom of part 1; this one covers open gaming and the rise of Pathfinder’s first edition).  If reading all that seems like too much trouble, I’ll give you the short version:

• What we call D&D today was originally called “Advanced” Dungeons & Dragons.  In retrospect, we refer to this as first edition (even though there was a version before it: sort of a proto-D&D), or 1e.  It was ... a game.  It came out in 1978(ish).
• The second edition of “advanced” D&D came out in 1989, and we call that (again, in retrospect) 2e.  I have never heard anyone say that 2e wasn’t better than 1e.  1e was a hot mess of confusing and contradictory rules.  2e cleaned up a huge amount of that (but admittedly not all of it) and added long-demanded subsytems (e.g. “non-weapon proficiencies,” which would become skills in 3e).
• Third edition D&D (no longer “advanced”) came out in 2000, and was called 3e pretty much from the get-go.  What we retrespectively rename it is “3.0,” because of what followed.  Unlike the 1e to 2e transition, 3e pretty much radically rewrote nearly all the rules.  However, the basic shape of the game didn’t change.¹  Most significantly, 3e was the version of D&D that introduced us to the OGL (or “Open Gaming License”), a concept based on the open-source software (OSS) movement.  Whether 3e is better than 2e or not is more debatable, but I would say a majority (although maybe not a huge one) would say it is.
• In 2003, just 3½ years after 3.0, 3.5e was released (and here’s where people started using the software-style version numbers).  There were a number of good reasons to do this, primarily because the lack of public playtesting meant that there were some things in 3e that were just plain broken and really needed to be addressed—and, if you have to force people to buy all new books anyway, may as well fix as much as possible, right?—but it did force people to buy all new books (if they wanted to keep getting cool new stuff that was compatible with the game they were playing, at least), and therefore this is the first instance I can remember of anyone referring to a new edition as a “cash grab.”  3½ years really is a fairly short amount of time to ask people to reinvest in core rulebooks all over again, but at least most people agree that 3.5 was better than 3.0.  Oh, sure: a lot of people hated it and refused to upgrade on principle, but very few tried to argue that it wasn’t better.
• In 2008, 4e was released, and it was a radical departure.  Now, you may have noted that, in my Pathfinder posts, I described 4e by saying it “sucks.”  That was probably too harsh: I plead youth and a certain amount of bitterness.²  Today let’s just say that, while 3e seemed radically different at the time, because it was a complete redesign, 4e was a departure on a whole different scale.  It just wasn’t the same game any more (and consequently launched the so-called “edition wars”).  And, while some people like the game it was better than actual D&D, I preferred (and still prefer) the original.  I’m okay with rewriting and redesiging and throwing out whole chunks and replacing with crazy new ideas, but I still want it to be the same game.  Call me anti-progress if you must, but that’s my line and I’m sticking to it.  But, regardless of how you feel about whether 4e was better or worse than 3e (and probably they’re so different that “better” and “worse” aren’t even terms that could apply any more), the most significant point is that it wasn’t released under the OGL.  They took the open-gaming game and closed it.
• In 2009, the inevitable happened, and the open-gaming game was forked: Pathfinder appeared, keeping the same general engine as 3e (3.5e, really) and just fixing some of the more egregious warty bits.  Being disappointed with 4e, I switched to Pathfinder immediately and played it nearly exclusively.  Again, I’ve heard few people claim that Pathfinder isn’t better than 3.5e, and comparison to 4e is just as silly as comparing 3e to 4e.
• In 2014, 5e arrived amidst claims that it brought together the best bits of the previous 4 versions ... and, surprisingly, it pretty much delivered.  The most common criticism of 5e is that it’s “everybody’s second favorite version of D&D,” but it’s easily my favorite.  It’s back to being the same game that 3e was, in my opinion, but once again redesigned from the ground up, and streamlined and simplified to a degree I had previously thought impossible.  Not immediately, but gradually, I’ve switched away from Pathfinder over to 5e.³

Yes, this is actually the short version, and I’ve still glossed over quite a few details that I didn’t feel were entirely relevant.  Last bit of relevant info: who am I to offer an opinion, and what perspective do I come at it from?  Well, I’ve played every edition mentioned above, except for 4e, and I’ve been playing for about three-quarters of my life.  I’m a software developer who’s been programming nearly as long as he’s been playing D&D, and whose first serious computer program (at perhaps age 15) was a D&D character generator.  While I’m quite literally a graybeard, I do not consider myself a grognard: I love change, and I love updates to my favorite games, and I love it when things get easier to do and I love having more options.  And my perspective as a programmer leads me to think about new editions of the game like new versions of a software program: new features aren’t always good just because they’re new, but never upgrading means you’re stuck with outdated features while everyone around you gets the good stuff, and complete rewrites are tricky to get right, but pay big dividends when you do.  Also, I believe in open-source.  A lot.

Now, all that having been said, what do I think of a new version of Pathfinder, given what little info they’ve released so far?  Well, there are a few common (negative) reactions that I’ve seen a lot of that I want to address:

• Many people are referring to it as a “cash grab.”  This is so far past ridiculous as to be practically moronic.  Every version of D&D—nay, every version of any tabletop RPG—released after 3.5e has been called a “cash grab” by somebody, and usually a large/loud contingent of somebodies.  But look at the timelines up above: 1e to 2e was 11 years, and then 11 more to 3e.  No one ever said “cash grab” for any of those.  3.5e came along a mere 3½ years later, though, and the cries of “cash grab” at that point weren’t entirely unjustified.  4e was 4 years after 3.5, but 8 years after 3e, which is still pretty respectable.  5e was 6 years after that, which is getting short again, but I would argue that being sensitive to the fact that many fans were unhappy with 4e—and sensitive to the business argument that Pathfinder was actually beating D&D in sales at that point—makes it okay.  On the Pathfinder side, second edition Pathfinder (P2e? 2P?) will arrive next year, a full 10 years after the original, which was, you remember, based on the 3e ruleset, which is another 9 years old on top of that.  Updating a 19-year-old ruleset is a “cash grab”?  Please.
• Some people are saying that Pathfinder built its business model on customers who were afraid of change, and therefore updating the rules is doomed to fail.  But this is silly: if we were afraid of change, we’d have stuck with 3e altogether (many did), instead of embracing Pathfinder, which had more than a few radical new concepts.  Pathfinder gave us more options and kept play exciting while still simplifying a lot of complex bits—that’s why we bought it.  If they can do that again, we’ll buy it again.
• Some people are pointing out that several of the details released so far sound a lot like the changes that D&D introduced in 5e, so therefore Pathfinder 2e is a 5e rip-off, so therefore why not just stick with 5e?  The answer to this is two-fold.  First, those innovations didn’t actually originate in 5e—D&D stole some good ideas from other games with a lower profile.  If Pathfinder thinks they’re good ideas too (and, why wouldn’t they?), then they too should steal them.  To return to my software analogy, two competing pieces of software are often going to end up looking remarkably similar, because they’re both catering to the same customer base.  The similarities are irrelevant; we need to focus on the differentiators.  Secondly, speaking as someone who more-or-less abandoned Patfhinder for 5e in the first place, I’m hoping they steal as much from 5e as possible ... I actually want it to be more like 5e than what we’ve heard so far.  Include all the features that tempted me away and I’m likely to jump right back on board.

So, overall, none of the criticisms are striking home, and I’m pretty damned excited about the possibilities here.  Now, whether those possibilities will come to fruition or not is still an open question.  I’m not blindly saying that Pathfinder second edition will be great.  But I think it could be great.

What will determine whether it succeeds or fails is pretty simple, in my book.  It all has to do with why I (eventually) chose 5e over Pathfinder.  See, the reason that Pathfinder is better than 3e is that it adds choice.  As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that roleplaying is storytelling.  More choices for building a character, and more choices when advancing that character, means more flexibility in the kinds of stories I can tell.  When I read people saying that you never need more than 4 classes,⁴ my mind boggles.  Are there only 4 kinds of people in the world?  What kind of sad, impoverished stories are these people telling?  Every character in every story needs to be different from every other character, even if only by a little.  Every character needs multiple ways to be unique, to be memorable, to be heroic.  We need choices.

Unfortunately, choice brings complexity.  And complexity is not always bad, but it certainly can be.  If it makes the game harder to play, or harder for new people to learn, or makes it take longer to resolve what seem like simple actions ... all that complexity is no good.  When people say a new version is “streamlined,” what they mean is that a lot of that type of complexity has been removed.  Pathfinder has a lot of that kind of complexity.  Especially as the person who’s most often the GM in my games, I eventually just got burned out on how much effort and math and just plain work it was to manage all the complexity.

D&D 5e is definitely streamlined.  Combat is faster, and easier, putting together encounters is easier (and faster), there’s less math all around ... a lot of the complexity has been removed, and (again, especially from the GM perspective) that’s a welcome relief after the vast collection of fiddly bits that make up Pathfinder.  5e has a sort of elegance that’s very compelling.

And yet ...

And yet there’s a reason I liked Pathfinder in the first place.  It gave me more choices, and that was good.  Unfortunately the choices came with increased complexity, and that was bad.  5e gave me simplicity, and that was good, but it also reduced my choices, and that was bad.  I found that I missed all the options for building characters, or building monsters and encounters, or building NPCs such as main villains.  All of a sudden it was harder to tell the stories I wanted to tell.

One last digression:  I started my (professional) programming career in C.  C is what’s known as a “strongly-typed” language: every time you create a new variable, you’re required to say what type it is (integer, floating-point number, string, array, etc).  But that can be a giant pain in the ass, especially if you’re pulling in data from outside sources (such as databases⁵) and you don’t know what the type is.  For the last few decades, though, I’ve been programming in Perl, which is called a “weakly-typed” language—that is, when I declare a variable in Perl, I have to distinguish between singular values and plural values, but that’s it.  Strings, integers, floating-point: they’re all just “scalars.”  This was amazingly liberating for a long time.  But it turns out there’s a price to be paid for freedom: slower performance in some cases, potential errors from not being able to assume types, or from having the wrong type accidentally jammed into a variable, and so forth.  What I really want is to be able to choose between “strongly-typed” or “weakly-typed,” but within the same language.  When I declare a variable, I’ll choose whether to specify the type or not.  Interestingly, some of the newer languages (like Perl6) do allow this (they call it “progressively-typed”).  You get the best of both worlds.

Likewise, in my RPGs, while it may seem like I want both complexity and simplicity, and that those are diametrically opposed, in reality that’s a false choice.  I can have both in a single game, as long as each one is in the right area.  When I first started to think about it, I thought I wanted simplicity as a GM and complexity as a player.  But that’s not it, exactly.  What I actually want is simplicity at the table, and complexity away from the table.  Building a new character, or advancing my character to the next level ... those are activities that take place away from the table.  It doesn’t matter how long it takes (well, not to me, anyway), because it’s not holding up the game.  On the other hand, resolving actions such as skill challenges and especially combat needs to be simple, because they are happening in real time, during the game itself.  Now, there may be times when it’s desireable to simplify even the complex parts—for instance, if a new player wants to create a character quickly, or if a GM needs to put together an encounter on the fly—but those types of situations can be handled with judicious application of templates or a playbook-style set of examples.  In general, I think the at-the-table/away-from-the-table dichotomy makes the best split.

Will the second edition of Pathfinder provide this perfect split between complexity and simplicity?  I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does either, yet.  But Pathfinder’s differentiator from D&D has always been more options, and more complexity in those good places, and I don’t see that about to change any time soon.  And the tidbits they’ve released about the new version seem to indicate that they’re going to be stealing some of the features from 5e, in particular those that provide 5e’s simplicity in those good places.  So it’s at least possible that Pathfinder 2e could end up with the perfect balance.  And that would be pretty freaking awesome.

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1 Obviously that’s my opinion.  Some folks disagreed, and there has been a movement ever since to “get back to” 2e-style play which is commonly referred to as OSR (for “Old School Revival”).  The fact that the many OSR D&D clones don’t just use 2e rules straight up lets us know that even they believe 2e had lots of room for improvement; they just didn’t agree with the direction 3e chose.  But, honestly, that’s a bit too much background info even for me, and not really necessary for the story.  Primarily this footnote exists so nitpickier readers know that I’m aware of OSR and don’t feel a burning need to “correct” me in the comments.

2 The “youth” part, obviously, is a bit tongue-in-cheek: 6½ years ago I was still pretty old.  Certainly my kids would tell you I was.

3 The full story of why I like 5e so much will have to wait for its own blog post, I think.

4 Meaning the 4 original classes: fighter, wizard, rogue, and cleric.

5 If you know anything about programming and databases and typing, you might wonder why databases—which are themselves strongly-typed—have issues interfacing with a strongly-typed language.  If you’re really interested, you could check out my discussion of strong vs weak typing on my Other Blog.