Words On Wednesday

The mobile version of Runescape recently entered beta release, and I was so excited to get into the program and try it out. Runescape mobile (not Old School RuneScape, as that was ported to mobile several months before the RuneScape 3 mobile beta) allows players to access the game through a genuinely mobile platform, rather than my unconventional access via remote desktop. With this release, there are some improvements over remote desktop access, but also some surprising shortcomings. Having played now for a few weeks, I have an informed opinion on the abilities and limitations of the mobile beta. I’ll go through a few of the elements for each platform, and evaluate which is better, or which I plan to continue using. First, the mobile beta is currently only accessible to paid members. Fortunately, that includes players who purchase membership through bonds as I do, but I did not have an active membership when I got into the beta program. I was already planning on using a bond agai...

After I finished Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” I asked my local library for recommendations. Jess from the Multimedia & Fiction desk suggested  either “The Woman in Black” by Susan Hill, “By Gaslight” by Steven Price, or “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson. As the title of this post reveals, I decided to go with Stevenson. “Jekyll & Hyde” references are nearly everywhere, in numerous different platforms for fiction. As with “Dracula,” I figured that it might improve my appreciate of these allusions by reading the original source material. Furthermore, I could get a .txt file of “Jekyll & Hyde” from  Project Gutenberg to supplement the audiobook, in much the same way that I did with “Dracula.” The format of “Jekyll & Hyde” was surprising. From all of the representations I’ve seen in other media, I expected a sort of omniscient narrator that saw both Jekyll and Hyde, as well as the transition between the two. Instead, th...

What is NaNoWriMo? November, for the uninitiated, is National Novel Writing Month. Realistically, anyone can write a novel at any point in the year, requiring as much time as they want. To participate in NaNoWriMo properly, however, you must write at least a 50,000 word novel entirely within the month of November. As such, it’s a little late to start for this year’s NaNoWriMo, but you could always start planning for next year. Source: https://nanowrimo.org/ As Kristian Wilson explains, there are numerous different ways that writers can approach NaNoWriMo. Most notably, there are people who plan a story and characters in advance, and there are others who begin writing at the start of November with very little forethought. Wilson describes these individuals as “plotters and pantsers” (Wilson, 2018). Either method is acceptable, per the official rules of NaNoWriMo. “I want to write a novel one day,” said many a would-be author at some point in their lives. Frankly, I’m sure a...