The first thing to say is, “Damn, I am intimidated!”  It’s winter and it’s cold and I am not sure I want lug the camera outside or lug it to work.  The only hours of daylight are while I am work.  But this seems more the excuse.   I have what I have always wanted and now I have to prove to myself that I can produce the images I always said were not capable with the P&S.  Its interesting how baggage can come from the most benign sources.  Oh to have my brain in control.

But I have moved one step forward and relaunched a third year of the photoast photoblog.  Alas, will I get some photos onto it?  Time will tell.

I have also begun the browsing of photoblogs that have tips and tutorials and such.  I need to maximize this camera.  It is no longer about taking photos for an ethereal reason but a definite statement to return to creative statements.  I need to FOCUS on something and be enthused about something and actually WORK on something with energy and interest.

Ahhh the mode of a old-timey blogger with all the feelings and the emotions on the page.

more added as they are noted.  updated regularly.  forever.

• T.A.R.D.I.S. USB Hub
• BaconBot Tee
• d20 socks
• Aperture Labs mug

Soonish…

• LCARS theme for iPhone — Yes, a Star Trek:TNG based theme for your iPhone.  Its a little complicated assuming you have all the apps installed on your iPhone the same way the maker does.  The thing is that I always wondered about the secret society of ST — the designers.  SOMEONE had to come up with all those new mechanical, graphical and uniform designs that constantly changed throughout the series.  And they seemed to be quite the lucrative business considering the absolute massive amount of coverage they would provide.  The second generation, the original series that is, people were probably all retro-cool.
• LED Sheep — And here you thought that MIT kids playing Tetris and Space Invaders on the sides of buildings via computer controlled lights was cool.  Try using living creatures!!  Does that make the sheep dogs components in an object oriented programming language?
• 10 Stories that should have fooled you — To someone who had all the cool AP stories of the day emailed to me by a bored partner, these are not all that weird.  But they should have been used on The Onion News for a weird “true” April 1st twist.
• CupCakeCamp Canada — the “camp” idea, inspired by the BarCamp/DemoCamp idea where adhoc or loosely organized events happening in a relatively short period of time and are pretty much open.  But how about cupcakes instead of developer thingies?  There’s a cookieCamp somewhere, right?
• a new meme — Well, maybe not.  But the author of the post seems to believe it is inspired by weird bugs in Nintendo 64 Goldeneye games that cause the sprites to spaz out, seemingly dancing frenetically.  But someone how I think all those japanese kids recreating dances to a pop tune might have started somewhere else.  So it comes down to another weird thing japanese kids are doing.

Its friday and i haven’t worked much today.  Too many interruptions and a disastrous lunch (been a long time since a resto forgot about me) left me distracted and unfocused.  I think I might have to take The Beast (what we call our brand of T61s with 15.4 widescreens) home with me and … oh fuck, I didn’t bring my bag with me.  Oh well.  Sort email and answer things on Monday.

• Pocket Yoga — Speaking of Lenovo, this is a design concept for a “pocket PC” that didn’t take off.  The funny thing is that it hit the Interweb rounds at the same time I have been seeing ads about the Sony Vaio P, while not as small and sexy, is definitely along the same lines.  Lenovo should have gone with this instead of the “slide out screen” they seem to believe will be so innovative.
• Annie!! — Yeah, you would go vader on their asses too.  Spike might show cut to pieces versions of the three movies ALL … THE … TIME but at least they know how to advertise it.
• Doom: Fall of Mars — Remember original Doom?  The master of the old school FPS games?  Well imagine it reimagined as a isomorph game.  Heh.
• Augmented Reality Toys — A few months ago a demo app of a lil green monster was doing the rounds.  Essentially you printed a little square, ran the app and pointed your webcam at the printout.  And a monster appeared on your screen.  This uses the same idea but turns it into a game that would use goggles instead of your webcam.  FUN !!
• Birds Fly Away — Wow.  Not only is this a great song but the way she demos it in her kitchen, live mixing her music!!  Oh such sexy talented toys.  Of course, I went out and got the album right away…. maybe I should pay for it. (thanks wil)

• Porch to Patio (pdf scan of magazine) — Marmy grew up with a porch, a porch she still years to have again and sit on it in the evenings and watch neighbours go by while sipping a cup of tea.  I grew up in the burbs and half way through my life we built a patio.  I was a BBQing place but little else.  My parents current house has a front end patio that is BBQing and entertaining in the summer and gives them a place to sit and greet people as they come up the driveway.  Not many walking neighbours in that rural area.  I sat on that patio and read books & drank beer when I last went to visit.  I now want a porch but I don’t realistically think I would ever say hello to my neighbours. (via jason)
• Anna the Red’s Bento Factory — No matter how annoying it is to others, Marmy and I are japanophiles, amused and fascinated by most of Japanese culture, the good and the bad.  Bento is just fun, like a child’s lunchbox all organized and sorted.  Bento designed to look like characters is just MORE fun.  Too bad I wouldn’t eat half the ingredients in an average bento lunch.
• Watchmen opening credits — I was one of the generation who was astounded and in awe of The Watchmen.  I didn’t read it in the monthlies but in the graphic novel format but I am not sure when i was first introduced to it; probably Mukey.  It showed me what comics COULD be, much like The Sandman, did but kept the ideas of superheroes intact.  It never occurred to me that a movie could be made of it, let alone be faithful to the feel, if not the actual panel for panel storytelling.  I have not seen the movie yet but these titles DO give me great enthusiasm, as I spent the last year just being calm & suspect of the project.  This was the perfect way to introduce the world and some of the flashback & newspaper stories in the graphic novel.
• The McGangBang — In my continuing tradition of repellant yet compelling fastfood choices that could possibly kill me if I tried them, I give you a McChicken sandwich inside a double-cheeseburger.  Its not as dirty as it sounds but it kinda is.  Neat blog too.  That said, i am losing my interest in the general topic blog, the personal blog that is more linky love and personal commentary and really being attracted to these subject-matter blogs.  I am taking a 180 opinion of where I should go with all of this, I guess.
• Cake of Resignation — Not all resignations are a bitter and nasty event.  Some are for good reasons with nothing but goodwill for all concerned.  There is no bitterness and therefore, cake is a perfect way to say goodbye.

• THRU YOU — Unbelievably well done remixes of You Tube videos, all music based and with incredibly high production values.  I bet it will be a for-sale DVD soon enough, once the royalties and rights will be worked out.  Then again, that may be impossible in this “GIVE ME” kinda world.
• Saturday Morning Watchmen — If you are old enough, click through to this hilarious version of The Watchmen, which I am yet to see.
• Pink Dolphin — A bubble-gum coloured dolphin swimming in a lake in Louisiana.   I wonder if the tuna made from this critter would taste like bubble gum?
• Fail Sticker — Can I buy an entire roll of these and put them all over my users?
• Ambassadors of Cute — Japan wants some kawaii girls to be international representatives?  I can understand them working in tourist booths in Tokyo but sending girls that look like hot highschooler fantasies out to other countries seems a little … kogal ?

The reading of two recent posts on gaming oriented blogs has my thoughts spinning.  I thought I would share.

The first started with my favourite Olde School Gamere, Jeff Rients, and an “edition wars” he started (well he didn’t but his post did) when responding to someone’s whining about randomness in an encounter.  The original post was “Keep Randomness Out of Your Encounters“.  Short story?  Good rolls on the DM’s behalf sicked a bunch of monsters on the players that their characters couldn’t handle.  They had to run.  They whined.  The jist of the post, as I read it, was that randomness was not a good thing.  “The module designer failed to account for the potential of the summoning happening nearly every round.”  But isn’t that always going to be a possibility in ANY game where dice play a part?  You could roll badly and the DM could roll wonderfully, IMO — in monsters’ opinions.  That doesn’t make the encounter unbalanced, just unfortunate.  It doesn’t matter if this was a Live session, where encounters are strictly planned to advance the game & players’ part.  This is D&D where things can go wrong and good players/characters prove their mettle by overcoming the bad situation.  Or they tuck their tails and return when they’be regrouped.

Now Jeff took this in another direction, believing the player wanted the idea of random encounters, and other random elements he loves, taken out of the game entirely.  That led to a little misdirected “edition war” in the comments.  Its weird because very few people in the comments actually said “4E sucks, Olde School Doesn’t” but people took it that way.  Wow people are touchy.  But he DID make a very valid point about the intangible difference between the way the game used to be played vs how it is played now.

Some days it feels like Gygax and Arneson invented Craps and these new guys are selling Go with a picture of two six siders on the box. That’s a pretty weird situation even if you like playing Go.

It’s true.  The more and more Marmy and I play the new edition, the less and less we feel ike we are playing D&D.  Its not just about a style of play.  It really is about putting a brand on something completely different but expecting people to accept it as the original concept.  Its hard for me to verbalize exactly what I mean but it comes down to this.  At some point, I am going to be making enough changes & house rules to the existing 4E, to where I am going to have to come to a decision to just not play 4E.  Is 4E a good game?  Yes it is, immensely so.  But is it the game I want to play?  I am not sure it is any more.  Back in the day, I knew that GURPS had a much more interesting and well rounded system than D&D.  But I didn’t want to play it.  It didn’t matter that it could have most of the elements that D&D had, there was something about it that felt like I would be led down a different RPGing path than I would in D&D.  4E is doing that to me as well.

Oh well, time will tell.

The other subject I wanted to cover is in the opposite direction of edition wars.  Its about the excitement around the MegaDungeon.  It started with a VERY fun sounding project by Monte Cook called “Dungeon A Day”.  It will use the subscription model to sell you an ongoing campaign set in one of those megadungeons from the old days, like Gygax’s “Ruins of Greyhawk” or “Ruins of the Undermountain” from the Forgotten Realms days.  Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun.  And this is coming from a guy who never really got into the dungeon delving in his Olde School days (was more of a clear-the-wilderness kinda guy) and wouldn’t have a place for it in my solo games with Marmy.

Chatty made a very good point about catching the fever and the worry that others would jump on the idea but only run with it for so long.  But taking it in a positive direction, he has already started formulating his own dungeon.  Discussions about how he can wrap the 4E ideals around the dungeon crawl, but keep the Olde School ideals intact, are VERY interesting to read and the opposite of the above arguement.  I am definitely going to be watching his and other’s threads on the meme.  And I am even thinking of tossing away some money for a subscription but it’s hard to justify paying for something I am only going to read…. well, at least for a gaming product more than $10.

My own megadungeon idea?  Its always been there.  Its a meld of the Gygaxian idea of “forays into the depths” school where people go in and out, clearing paths as they go deeper but regularly leaving to restock and resupply.  Sometimes they find rooms they clear, other times they slam the door and have to return when they are higher level.  Lower levels are tougher than upper levels but the focus is BIG.  My twist on it was to use the old scifi schtick of the floating arc spaceship.  No, not that the dungeon is a spaceship, but that idea where the people are living their entire lives in the bowels of the ship, never realizing that there is a world of space outside the windowless corridors.  They would have been born and raised in a cleared part of the dungeon.  They would delve into dangerous regions becoming heroes or villains discovering other communities.  The entire world is the dungeon.

Perhaps I should start my own mini-campaign thread?  Nah, I am having enough wasted time not paying enough attention to WeffenRuuga.

• 56 Zombies — a fun illustrator and his drawrings of zombies.  Not updating often but something worth checking back in now and again.
• Bacon Blue Cheese Meatloaf — while this will also be recorded in the Delicious (PUN INTENDED !!) links for ‘recipes’ it is worth mentioning here because, well y’know, all links go better with bacon.
• Love Your Tender — Marmy’s favourite music video of ALL TIME !!
• WoW Steins — If I still played WoW I would be all over getting myself one of these.  It kind of fits into my plan to collect a series of flagons, steins and mugs representing the stereotypical drinking vessels found in your stereotypical D&D tavern.  So far, all I have is an earthenware stein.
• Angel of Death — Ed Brubaker, the comic book writer, doing a webTV series starring the stunt woman/actor Zoe Bell.  I don’t know if there are location problems happening with the show but I can no longer even go to the main site.  Great management of the idea of Internet TV when half the fucking world cannot even see the fucking show.  Its on the Internet for a fucking reason gents!!!  You do this and we will just fucking torrent it.