2014 Q2

Warbreaker is a fantasy novel where magic comes from perception ("breath") and color. A person can give part of their perception away to others. Someone who has bought the perception of many others will see the world as supremely beautiful. Magic happens when people give their perception to inanimate objects.

Elantris is Brandon Sanderson's first novel.  I checked it out because I enjoyed Mistborn, and I liked Elantris as well.

Elantris is the city of gods.  However, one decade before the book takes place, the gods fell from grace, losing their magic and throwing the world into political turmoil.  

People are weird, and Amelie explores that idea to wonderful effect.

I first heard of Amelie in a Design School class.  They showed a clip from the start of the movie that describes Amelie's parents.  I can't remember if the lesson I was supposed to take away from the clip was that people are weird or that you can tell a fairly full story with a few short descriptions of some interesting characters.  

My cousin went to a Quaker high school, so when I went to her graduation, I had the opportunity to attend a Quaker service.  

At a Quaker service, everyone is silent until they have something meaningful to say.  Then, they say it.  Since it was the service before graduation, a fair amount of parents spoke, including one person who kicked off the service by telling a potty training story about his son (I think there was a moral to the story, too...).  His son took it well.

I discovered Guitar, as I normally do with new music, on Pandora (Akiko started appearing on my Paramore station).  My perception of Guitar's album, Tokyo, changed a lot once I actually bought it.  At first blush, the music seems like active, rhythmic, instrumental music.  And, as background music, it is.

A Googler showed me an optical illusion, and another Googler commented that they weren't fooled by it because they didn't have stereo vision.  This caused me to look into stereo vision (depth perception, seenig things in 3D).

I experience the following, which makes me think that I might be partially stereoblind (some studies estimate that 5-10% of people are stereoblind):

Papo & Yo is an indie video game telling the story of a boy and his abusive, alcoholic father.  In the game, you are a kid in a magical world that has to interact with a monster to solve puzzles.  The monster is friendly until he eats a frog, at which point he becomes enraged.  In the game, the boy deals with the monster until, at the end, the metaphor is explicitly called out, and the boy gets some closure.  Overall, I liked the game a fair amount -- it told a story well, and the conclusion was good -- though I think the game could have been better.