Hey Folks,
Happy 2017! It really seems alter eon has undergone a lot of development lately. Perhaps I should give it another shot. I went on a mudding binge throughout my early teenaged years and since then have become very wary of anything with too much grinding or player politicking of the nastier sort. What would you all say is a mud with very little repetitive activity and a decent player base?
I know where you're coming from CAE when you talk about motivation and the existential terror of stepping out into the world and looking for the right environment. At some point you've got to make the leap, and see where you land.
I found a friend in Japan who has a spare room and is willing to rent out to me, so I'm taking a huge risk and going over there on a working holiday visa to look for English teaching work. Needless to say I'm very nervous. In the mean time I'm finishing up this English teaching certification and cramming as much Japanese into my head as I can.
I'm sad to hear about your lady's dog Dark. Those losses always leave a space in your heart that no other dog can fill.

@Garrett, methinks your problem was not swimming when the tide was coming in, but swimming too close to jelly fish .

@Nial, Good luck with the English teaching. I know some people have done that, but like anything else it depends upon where you end up and how things work out, since Japan like anywhere else in the world has good or bad parts and indeed good or bad schools to work in, but if your going as far as wrenting rooms over there your probably aware of that.
Mud wise, I'm loving alteraeon right now, and not really noticing the grinding because I'm totally focused upon doing quests, and also because I so much enjoy all the nifty little activities and things that druids and mages can do (my char is a druid mage), such as brewing salves and tinctures (some of which rock), experimenting with potions, making spellstaffs, maintaining liveoak minians etc.
I'm also having fun with the leather armour crafting skill, though haven't made anything particularly good yet, and I'll be interested to see what happens when cooking gets added into the game.

If your looking for none grindy muds, three I can very much recommend are clok, frandom and avalon the legend lives.
Frandom is essentially a giant interactive fiction game built as a mud, albeit without complex guess the verb parsers. You progress not by fighting, but by wandering around, examining things, exploring, talking to people and doing many questes. It's a very cool game and one I do want to get back to.
Then there is Clok, which has some of the best crafting I've seen, very much the thing if you want to really feel like your part of another world doing wilderness ruvival, ---- I've also heard good things about lament on this score but not played it yet.

Lastly Avalon the legend lives is the thing if you want a truly huge and immersive game world with a lot of stuff to do. The only thing with avalon is most of what you do in terms of activities revolves around other players and organizations, still from what I gathered while I was there other players were pretty nice.
all of these have db pages so feel free to check them out, also as I said I am enjoying alteraeon quite a lot at the moment myself, I'm Thelok on there if you want to give me a yell (I'm not a one for grouping but I'll e glad to gift you some xp or carve you some runes).

@Guitarman, hope your dad is okay, my dad had a bypass last year after a heart attack. He's okay now, but it was definitely worrying, also thanks for the words about my lady's dog.
Dulcimer and mandolin? that is cool! I love the sound of both, indeed I've sung with a lute player before myself which was definitely an experience.

I'd agree with you about stormlight being like the best of WoT, though not too loudly since my lady ias a huuuuuge! WoT fan, I want to get her a replica ais sidai ring for our wedding aniversary. We even have arguements about what Aja she'd be, she fancies yellow for the healing but personality wise she's definitely a green, especially with how angry she gets about injustice, sometimes if she sees something upsetting about the news and gets justifyably irate I'll say "You are so a green!" and people think we're weerd .

anyway digression aside, you'll like the stormlight story in arcanum unbound, actually it was my favourite one of the lot.
Dark tower did have an odd ending, and I want to reread the series myself since I wasn't in a good place when reading the last three books. My lady has just finished reading cell which she liked, though she said was most distinctly a horror.

Doosmday book is good, I can recommend it, though check the link for the review over on fantasybookreview.co.uk for details.
Hopefully

Well it's nearly seven in the morning and I've had a rather sleepless night doing doctor who, so I'll probably go and see if I can get another quest or two done this morning before I crash, though i would finally! ike to sort out the amazon ecco today if I can, and now this post is getting waaaaay too long so methinks I'd better stop .

That's great about your dad!

I'm graduating LCB on February third. I am ever-so-slightly* concerned that things will go back to HFIL when I get home.
* By which I mean "extremely"

@Guitarman, cool about the mandoline and dulsima. Evermore is a fun song, though I really! dont' like the way the vocalists are so off in it, still the words are cool.
I always admire anyone who can play anything with strings, especially interesting things .
I'll have to ask my lady if she's read the kept woman, she does read mystery novels and I know she's read some of Karin Slaughter's (the woman has a great name for a mystery and suspense writer ).

@Cae what is fhil? At first I thought you meant hell, then I thought hill, then I thought phil as in the short for philip.
So, which sort of extreme is it?

I confess this week for me hasn't been good. I've had a rotten cold, mrs. Dark and I are back and  wondering what next and it's very lonely without Neo, Mrs. Dark's dog who died over christmas, which means she's not been feeling good either. She's also having assessments for a new dog as well, which is necessary if not especially fun.

On the plus side my new windows 10 desktop has turned up, though I'm having a friend come and help me wire it into place, get all the quad speakers in etc, in the mean time I'm doing yet another omni backup of everything, well backup and making sure I'll have everything to transfer across to the new machine, assuming I can find wherever windows 10 puts things like internet explorer favourites etc.

That's probably not going to be until Sunday or maybe even next week though, since my friend is a busy fellow.

Other than that, and feeling a bit out of sorts I've been playing quite a lot of cosmic rage, which has slow paced activities that are perfect when feeling slightly down, albeit I've occasionally got a little bothered by the game's somewhat obscure help system, still as it's starting out I'm willing to give the bennifit of the doubt.

@Dark: uh oh, I hope your windows 10 experience goes ok. Please keep us posted, as I'm quite curious and scared of the thing to try it myself at the moment. I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to put NVDA on there as a backup reader, don't enable it at startup though, as you'll still want to most likely use super nova for your starting reader as it's what you are used to. But if you had NVDA on there as a backup you could use it with different apps if supernova starts giving you trouble. Of course, sometimes apps just don't work with screen readers full stop. There's also the matter of microsoft's free windows 10 screen reader Narrator, but I think the layout could be a bit unconventional. Here's hoping though that super nova worrks with windows 10, it must do a bit, as you ordered it from dolphin directly. I'm really interested to see how this goes.

Dark,
Internet Explorer favorites are found in c:/users/dark/Favorites
if your name dark is your user account

@Phil, thanks for that, that's good to know.
@Aaron, actually supernova has various layouts. The one you refer to with capslock or nubpad 7 and letters is I believe called the universal layout, which was introduced in about sn 10 I believe.
I however am used to either the function keys layout or numberpad layout, which is what I use on either a laptop or desktop, that is the one with numbpad 7 to read title, numbpad 2 to read status bar, numbpad 6 to read line etc.

Also, supernova and hal are the same program.
It used to be that Hal was the screen reader, and Luna the magnifyer while supernova was the combination of both. Then I believe around version 9 or so, Dolphin changed the name, so everything was either called the supernova screen reader, supernova access sweet or supernova magnifyer.
I did prefer when it was called hal, and actually the exe file to run it right up until version 13 was still hal exe, though that has changed in later versions I believe.

Either way, I'm hoping that things work correctly in terms of windows 10, though as I've not managed to get hold of my friend to do the connection the new computer is still sitting in a cardboard box in the corner of my living room, and since i've got to dash back to my parents on wednesday for a week it might be even more delayed which would be mildly irritating, especially since I've just done an omni backup of everything and if we wait too long I'll have to do another.

@Guitarman, I've never managed anything with strings, I just don't tend to have the mind for it I think. Singing on the other hand or certain other instruments fair enough, so I'm always impressed at people who can play any sort of guitar, albeit I'm more a fan of the dulsima than the base .
my lady is a fan of mystery novels, I'll have to ask her if she's read that one.
There have been real psychos who did have actual torture chambers, albeit probably not as many as in literature. As to the personal life questions, again it depends upon how it's done and how it flows around the rest of the book whether it's too much of a digression or not, plus whether the rest of the book is decent.
I confess I'm not as much a mystery bod myself, I tend to prefer more speculative fiction be that traditional or offbeat fantasy, horror or science fiction of any stripe. Generally i find crime a little too mundane for me to want to read about long term, albeit I'll take the odd recommendation if something sounds good.

I'm reading a short story collection at the moment, "the mad scientists' guide to world domination", all sorts of stories about mad scientists by various authors. Some have been really good, I enjoyed one called "the mad scientists' daughter", all about katharine moreau, Justine Frankenstein, Beertris Rabachelli, MAry Jekkyll and Diana Hyde all living together in a house in victorian london, it finished with an application from a Miss Vanhellsing  who's father had done some astounding things in blood work and who's friend, mrs. johnathan harker had recommended she contact the group about moving in with them as they could understand her rather specialized problem .

Generally though i confess I've not enjoyed the collection as much as I enjoyed the last random collection I read, which was called The Monster's corner and all about stories from the monster's perspective.

Then again, a lot of the stories delve rather into superhero teretory with villains and super weapons and such and often got a little too stupid for my liking, or tried rather too hard at humour.

One problem I have had is I wanted to write a review for the second interworld novel by Niel Gayman, but I got a bloody awful cold and didn't feel like it, now it's sort of gone out of my head. I think though I'll just go on to the third one and do a review anyway, besides I want to see what happens in the series .

Actually that was a rather fun trilogy, all about people who walk between different paralell worlds trying to keep the balance of magic and science across the multiverse equal.

Other than that I've still not got my windows 10 machine sorted and sadly we're dashing back to my parents this morning so my lady can have her assessment to rbe registered as blind in the Uk. This  unfortunately does mean a wait on sorting out my new pc, which is something of a pest, particularly since I'm not wanting to start on anything too major since I'll have to backup again.

I have been playing a lot of cosmic rage, but getting a little irritated at lack of ship info, meaning I buy a ship and find it has no weapons or defense systems, and since there's no way to install those I usually have to go and get it blown up. I suppose I could just buy another asteroid hauler and bang on as many  upgrades as possible since at least I know that has shields.

I have however also been returning to crazy party, which has been great, particularly since I've got some of the unlocks working and have also got some more battle cards sorted out nicely, albeit I don't like that when I've tried online battles frequently one person will end up getting pounded on by three others and in the last battle I tried that was me which was a little depressing.
Then again, the boards are cool, and this time I have! remembered to take my sauveguard file with me so when I go back to my parents I can continue with the game.

Anyway, as I've got a long train journey today in the cold and wintry darkness of Northeast England I'd probably better dash.

@Dino interesting.
My dad always wants to play the ukulele, and there is apparently a ukulele band in nottingham where my parents live though I've not heard them yet. Of course in England the ukulele is very much associated with George Fornby, the comedian from the 1940's who used to play it regularly and do commical songs.
A couple of years ago though i did run across a guy who played and sang a lot of west Indian songs accompanying himself on a ukulele, and that was really! cool, especially since he was also a trained operatic baritone, and to be able to go from shubert and German  Lieder to randomly silly, often quite smutty carribian songs was really! impressive.

For me, my lady and I are back at my parents and hopefully she's going to get herself registered as blind, albeit we've still both had dam awful colds, especially my lady so I've not done anything too astounding as yet.
The site is now at least back to being editable so hopefully I'll have some more database updates out soon.
I'm in a bit of a bind with book reviews though since while the third interworld book is great, it's not really something I can review without having reviewed the second, so I might  just give things a miss for a bit with this series.

Game wise, I've been playing a lot of Crazy party, which is great fun. I've been experimenting with different deck types and also trying to collect gems, since I want to unlock the last board which needs I believe 25 gems, I like the fact that the boards now have their own minigames.
Anyway, hope everyone else is doing okay this cold grim and rather scary winter.

LOL not much going on here in the Potato State or the Gem State as it's known by the locals, well except me working on the world-famous fantasy novel I've been writing on and off for the past four years. LOL. Well that and trying to record a video audition for the one "Reality" TV show I remotely like, The Voice. Unfortunately I lack the equipment to record the sort of quality video they would want and so the trouble has been finding someone who does possess it. For those who don't know, The Voice is basically a singing competition where the top price is a recording contract and I believe there's cash involved as well. But after being told many times at Karaoke that I should try out I've decided that at the very least it could be a fun experience.