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Civic Diary 6-10-2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Well the California Primaries are over, my Twitter feed and news feed are filled with politics, and I’m of course thoughtful.

So I haven’t always followed up on primaries in the past, but as I’ve become more aware of politics and civic engagement, I see their importance.  It’s not just the presidential Primaries, but its the local voting as well – local politics has an influence on people’s lives, change minds, and build future political careers.  Those local bills and policies change a lot.  You’ll want to pay attention to.

Since that political meeting I wanted to go to was cancelled, I scheduled two more this month, figuring A) I can make at least one, and B) No one is going to cancel both of them.  I pretty much decided I want to find out how to do get out the vote work as a start to real civic engagement.

There are also local political clubs I found and joined one.  I figure it can’t hurt to check one out if I have time.

And speaking of time, I’m feeling the time crunch from work, social obligations, my projects, and more.  It really takes effort to make time for civic engagement, especially NEW civic engagement.  I’m having to rethink my plans and schedules.  That’s good, but man, it’s a bit of a pain.

Which brings in another realization – being civicly engaged is a long-term commitment.  yes, I knew this and understood it, yes some of my civic work has been long term, especially my more local and geek stuff.  Yes, I usually think long term.

But then I realized a good chunk of what influenced me was the 2016 election and the realization people could be better engaged in politics.  But still a apart of me had stopped thinking about anything past November.  I’m realizing that’s (obviously) short-sighted.

So yeah, I want to get more involved politically and see if there’s anything I can do for this election.  But I’m trying to shift my mind to long-term engagement beyond my flirting wit the idea of being on a city board – and I’m kind of drawing a blank right now as to what that is.

I mean I have my civic engagement in the form of social groups and museum work and speaking at cons and the like.  But it doesn’t quite feel like its got a lot of long-term planning in it – or even the long-term planning of doing “yeah, that’s good enough.”

However, I have come to realize about 70-80% of what I do outside of politics is pretty satisfying civicly.  I may need a bit more thought of what I’m doing, a few changes there, but I feel like my whole elder geek/geek job guru/social integrator thing works pretty good.

So that’s it for my Civic Diary.  How are you doing?

– Steve

Steve’s Update 6/9/2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

Hey all, so where are all those projects . . . well still busy. New job has my busy, but here’s where we are.

Sailor Moon Book

Sent to my co-author, who in turn just edited it and sent it back. I plan to take one more crack at it next week or so then I can actually format it. If all goes well, we’ll be looking over a print beta sometime in early/mid July.

The editing went really well. Frankly, there wasn’t that much left to do considering how many times we’ve been over it. I’m starting to think extended editng periods of sometime and/or swapping among people has real benefits. It makes me wonder if editing is best done by long editing cycles – or many smaller ones.

We’re looking good for September people!

Way With Worlds Book #1

I’m editing the second print copy. Still a bit annoyed I’m finding issues or things I want to change (mostly a bit of formatting and such), but that’s the way it goes. I’m going to give it two read overs to be sure, then try to make the last run count.

The strangest things?  I find more errors at the start of the book, even when I reread it.  It’s like somehow I have to get into an “editing zone” to do my best work.  Go figure.

As much as I enjoyed doing this I kinda confess I’ll be glad to get it finished. I think there’s only so long you can read your own advice, and I’m there.

Way With Worlds Book #2

Comes back from the editor end of Month. I’ll probably make the first editing run in July just because it’ll be fresh, but I might save it to August as I will be busy with Book #1 and the Sailor Moon Book. It sort of depends how well those go.

Skill Portability Book

This fun little experiment is probably out end of June. It’s pretty easy to do and needs only about one more big editing run – basically its my columns on skill portability expanded and improved.  Going to be a neat little experiment.

The Blog

Holding off starting a new series for now as I’ve got so much on my plate. I will continue to blog on No Man’s Sky however, and Civic Diary.

New Generators

I’m afraid with everything else on my plate there will be no new generator in June. Now as for July, let us see . .

And that’s it for me! How are you doing?

– Steve

No Man’s Sky: Why The Delay Is Good

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

So if you’ve been following No Man’s Sky, and haven’t heard that A) the game was delayed, and B) some people had a meltdown over it, you’ve been living under an extremely insulated rock.

So anyway, the game is delayed.  Though I’d like to address some of the bizarre reactions on it (including death threats to the lead and to a reporter), as I’m focusing on the game I’d like to discuss the delay.  Also there’s only so much I can write “stop it you morons.”

So, NMS delayed.  Good.

Why do I say good?  Because that’s a sign of two things:

  1. That Hello Games knows that there’s more work to be done.
  2. That Hello Games will admit there’s work to be done and do it.

First, as noted earlier, the NMS team seems to be doing everything right to actually make the game work.  Right focus, right methods, etc.  The fact that they can outright say “no, we need more time” means they’re aware enough of what they’re doing to take more time.

Secondly, the fact they will admit this in public, for a game whose hype has become a living thing entirely separate from their own efforts, is a good sign for the final product.  Unless the problems were epic, they probably could have gotten away with a flawed game with a day 0 patch or something.  They didn’t – that speaks to an honest about getting a good product.

The delay tells me NMS is probably going to live up to the (actual, not imagined) hype.  The team can say “stop, wait” as opposed to tossing out a game that – let us be blunt – would probably get a lot of love anyway.

I’m reminded a bit of Starbound, another game that I’m looking forward to (and that sadly, I will have to play through before OR after NMS because its pure crack to me).  The team has taken extra time to work on it, but as of the last beta I played – and I played through the game 3 times Early access – it’s evolved amazingly.  Time can make a better product (ask Blizzard).

The delay may be painful for some of us, but it’s just another sign we’re going to get a good product.

– Steve