August 2010
8 posts
Set up a new WordPress site in anticipation for starting an new Dark Sun game with friends. I came to the realization a few weeks ago that pet projects like this have drastically increased my usefulness at work on web projects. College may have taught me how to be an engineer, but screwing around with D&D websites has made me understand practical aspects of the web that I now find invaluable.
Best part is when the next person in line drives up.
Not sure I agree that this is 4.5 D&D. My understanding was that the new classes were meant as easier to understand versions of classes they have already made within the same rules set. For example Storm Cleric vs Sun Cleric. Powers and rules should overlay with existing rules rather than requiring DMs to avoid old rules.
D&D 4 has already required patching in some areas like forced teleportation and stealth though, so I agree with the comment about tabletop patching.
Those of you with D&D Insider accounts might want to check out this preview article about the new D&D Essentials product line. The summary is that they’re reworking the way that certain basic aspects of the game function.
There are already a few specifics. Magical implements will…
July 2010
2 posts
June 2010
2 posts
Npr.org has built a fantastic tablet aware version of it’s website. You can enqueue radio spots and navigate around articles while they play. The full resolution embedded YouTube videos begs the question why all websites can’t do this … Oh right, it’s because they have invested in Flash.
Wizards of the Coast have released a zipped set of character sheets from today’s, Free RPG Day, DarkSun teaser release. Unfortunately they have used some sort of custom WinZip compression and the file set can’t be opened without a specific Windows program. I have the program on a virtual machine image, but am too disgusted to open it right now.
May 2010
10 posts
Finished reading “Abraham Lincoln: Vamprie Hunter” off of iBook, which was quite an enjoyable experience. 100% of the reading happened on a plane or train, which are spots I usually can’t read. Not having to keep the pages open really helped out given my R.S.I. issues. I turned right around and book off of the Amazon Kindle store to compare the experience. The book did not Whisper Sync to my iPad and there was no automated way to return the purchase off the Amazon book store. My customer service email is now in their system. Boo.
EDIT: Turns out that when you buy a book, the book shows up in the “Archive” section of a kindle. You can move it to the “Home” section buy clicking on it.
Pax East and now Friday’s Penny Arcade comic have confirmed the existence of Dungeons & Dragons Dark Sun play-testing in the wild. I will just have to wait until August.
For someone who builds web applications for a living, I have been very slow to adopt many of the recent fads for social networking on the internet. I have always been wary of sites like Twitter, Facebook, and the like, but a recent business trip has encouraged me to shed some of my original hesitancy. My company’s user conference in San Francisco is tomorrow (link) and attendees have been encouraged to participate by tweeting to a group tag #MLUC10. From what I have heard, the hash tag grouping feature of Twitter was originally a user convention given that Tweets are plain-text and limited in characters.
So now I have TweetDeck installed on several devices, this blog cross-posting to Facebook and Twitter, and a separate Twitter account for non-anonymous status messages that I want sent to work communities like #MLUC10 and not to my friends.
The question remains what I will use all of these things for and whether or not I will continue to use them. I have a feeling that without community and interaction among co-workers and other professional contacts my work life isn’t going to be affected by any of this. My consultancy practice seems to be quite happy with e-mail, IM, and texting. Most of my customers don’t want to have any public contact for fear of violating non-disclosure agreements etc.
April 2010
17 posts
An interesting comment from SETI director Jill Tarter on the recent Stephen Hawking Discovery Channel TV show. During the show, it was pointed out that broadcasting our presence to space faring civilizations that could visit us carried inherent dangers. SETI’s defense here is typical and sounds something like Pierce Brosnan’s defense of the aliens in “Mars Attacks.”
Personally, I thought the Steven Hawking show on Time Travel was far more interesting. The aliens show seemed more focused around contrived 3D animations which had little to do with what Prof. Hawking had written for the show.
“PowerPoint makes us stupid” - Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps
Two years after contributing to a fan-based funding of this book’s first printing (link) I have received an early release e-book from the publishers. Quite a classy move. I’ll post my impressions after giving it a read.
An excellent play with a touch interface. The 2D sprite animation is beautiful on the iPad’s screen. The iPad version is very good about persisting the state of a game. If you turn off your iPad or hit the home button to return to the app menu, upon returning you find your game paused and ready to be resumed. A delightful tower defense game.
Great looking streaming Netflix with an almost complete Netflix.com experience (drag and drop for your queue doesn’t work).
Allows you to carry around DRM-free PDF and text files from your computer. Files are uploaded through iTunes and can have folder organization.
No need to wait around for app versions of your favorite websites. I find no need for a Facebook iPad app because the Safari browser is completely adequate. I miss the ability to use “bookmarklets” for reposting links on Tumblr, but that’s about it.
Yes it is a high resolution, large screen iPod touch. However, with a full screen web browser, I can actually multiple-task much better because I don’t have to use non-persistent state 3rd party apps, quite as much.
I had the iPad touch open to the D&D compendium for a full 4e game today, and I can’t describe how nice it was to not have a laptop open on the table blocking my view.
- Me: After reading up on <technical details>, I had the feeling that I was slightly ambushed <on that phone call>.
- My Boss: Just remember standard tactics for an ambush—charge directly into the weakest group among the attackers, without waiting for orders from your leadership, who are probably already dead.
March 2010
14 posts
Your dad asks for a fact check on his review of an article on the Lord of the Rings and you are actually qualified to do it based on your college education.
Interesting article on early American soccer.
I have to admit I have fallen behind on episodes of Caprica. Everything seems significantly less Epic than the grand space opera that was Battlestar Gallactica. I think the episode synopses sum it up well:
- Amanda fears for her sanity while Daniel and Joseph get closer to finding the avatars of their dead daughters.
- Daniel Graystone faces a rival while Sister Clarice closes in on Zoe’s avatar.
- Joseph Adama reaches out to his son, while his daughter finds a new side of the virtual world.
- The Graystones attempt damage control while vengeance closes in on them.
- Pressure mounts on the Graystones and Zoe deals with her new life.
Coming from a show whose day to day episode usually involved the fate of the human race hanging in the balance, the events of Caprica seem mundane. I’m not saying that the interpersonal relationships or even the sci-fi aspects are not appealing; it all just seems unimportant given what ends up happening in the future of the timeline.
The Fall of the Roman empire story is interesting because it is followed by the Dark Ages. The loss is tangible. The first two Terminator movies are smaller scale than the future events, but their impact is still world shaking because John Connor is so important to the future. Even the prequel Star Wars movies have some gravity to them! I guess I just haven’t been given enough of a reason to stick with the characters of Caprica to see what happens.
Investigating what the cool kids are doing I believe I have found a better solution to my blog automation tech challenge.
Private Blog
Still using LiveJournal.
Given my ability to lock everything down to friends, combined with the knowledge that many of my friends still read their “friend feed” I’m still not ready to move off of my 5 year old account at Live Journal. Some day this may move to something like FaceBook, but I’ll leave that to future investigation.
Public Blog
tumblr > twitter > Google Buzz
The skinning, no-advertising, and interoperability features of tumblr.com are very attractive to a tech geek like me. My tumblr account will automatically follow RSS feeds that I set up as well as post to a twitter stream which can then be rebroadcast by more friend friendly sites like Google buzz. Check out tumblr’s “bookmarklet” feature. I find this super useful.
