I surivived

I am told I was in surgery an extra hour or so, because my gall bladder was on the wrong side of my liver, and just short of inflamed enough to switch to open (non-laparoscopic) surgrey. Other than that, things went well. Other than I don't have my contacts in (so excuse typos) and between the general and the Lortab I'm a bit out of it right now, so that's it for the post. I be go bed (again) now.... Read more

Still a little bit Hoosier

I went to bed last night completely forgetting that it was the NCAA Championship... couldn't sleep (despite having only a few hours of sleep the night before), and suddenly remembered the game. Got up, checked the score just as it was going into OT (so I missed the exciting game-tying shot), but managed to tune it in (our TV is set up for Wii and Netflix normally) and watch the tail end of it.

So yeah, still a little bit hysterical Hoosier. And definitely a whole lotta Jayhawker, today.... Read more

My first real ER visit.

Having a baby didn't count - that was planned.  And at a more reasonable hour. And less painful, on the average.

Bah.... Read more

Kalyr RPG - An Iconic NPC

In Rob Donoghue’s design blog post what I want from setting, he lists three things he likes to see, one of which is faces: Faces are what they sound like - NPCs. I am not proposing a need for stat blocks or detailed backgrounds, and most of my needs can be satisfied with a sentence or [...]... Read more

Save The Point!

The Point in Cardiff is under threat! According to this thread on The Reasoning’s forum, somebody who recently moved into a nearby property long after the place has been a rock venue is trying to get the place shut down because of the noise. If you don’t want to see yet enough rock venue being forced to [...]... Read more

Whee.

I'm scheduled for a laparoscopic cholecystectomy on Wednesday. Fun stuff.

Because geez, I have SO much free time to spend recuperating.

I guess I'll get some sewing and coding done, though.... Read more

Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy

The Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics is a new venture being spearheaded by Piet Hut, also known as Pema Pera in Second Life. Piet and collaborators have already done some actual scientfic collaboration a virutal world, through Qwaq. However, he? and others, to the point that I can start using the pronoune “we”? [...]... Read more

I had a sonogram today

My sister accused me of Photoshopping. Nope, the only modification was to blank out the name of the office that did the imaging, so as not to get in trouble the gals who snuck a printout for me when that wasn't part of the scan order.... Read more

November goes silly!

November always seems to be crazy for gigs, but this year, it’s just getting silly. My diary is getting full, and it’s only March! First, the Marillion tour: Saturday 8th November Inverness Sunday 9th November Glasgow Monday 10th November Newcastle Tuesday 11th November Bristol Thursday 13th November Leeds Friday 14th November Manchester Saturday 15th November Bournemouth [...]... Read more

Also officially no longer a Hoosier

Although I tend to think of myself as a roundball fan, apparently I no longer am, because I haven't watched any of the NCAA tournament. And to all appearances, I missed a *really* good game last night when the Jayhawks moved to the Final Four.

I've lived here more than a quarter century (officially old!) so I guess that means I'm finally over Hoosier Hysteria.

I blame Wichita State. We had season tickets one year (through Big Brothers/Big Sisters) and it was downright painful to watch. They've mad... Read more

CD Review: Panic Room - Visionary Position

Panic Room are one of three new bands formed from the ashes of the original incarnation of Welsh celtic/prog band Karnataka, made up from Jon Edwards (keys), Paul Davies (guitar), Gavin Griffiths (drums) and Anne-Marie Helder (vocals and flute) from that band, plus Swansea bass virtuoso Alun Vaughan on bass. Their debut album [...]... Read more

Design Journal: Adventure's not quite my thing

In case it wasn't clear, I'm developing this fantasy world and supporting rules for (hopefully) paying customers. So I've really been thinking about this and trying to decide if "adventure" is the best approach for me to develop a fantasy world. The big problem Dragonlance had was that it had a very strong and deliberate story… if you took a "hard right" at module DL3 (the third in the series of twelve or so), the rest of the series of modules could get thrown right out the window. The w... Read more

Admin: Comment system changes

I've done a lot of hacking to the comment system (a much-hacked Pollxn) to make some minor improvements recently… I think it's all working right, but please tell me if it isn't. The details, for those who care You'll be glad to know that I've finally managed to add to the notification emails a link back to the thread and the actual title of the post. (As obvious as those seem, that data wasn't available to the program until after a new post was processed. It took some rearrangement of... Read more

Officially old.

Kansas (the band, not the state) is opening for Styx as the first Friday night concert at the Kansas State Fair, and I'm actually tempted.

Other than the "someone always dies on K-96 on Friday night" thing (the fairgrounds are in Hutch, an hour or so out of Wichita, and traffic is both brutal and drunk), and the fact that some of the Names are not in the respective lineups anymore.

(Blues Brothers movies aside, playing the KSF is not quite as "all-time career low" as it sounds, though they do gene... Read more

Visionary Position has landed!

I’ve finally got hold of the long-awaited debut album by Panic Room, “Visionary Position”. Because I’ve been away from home over Easter, the whole of teh internets (or at least the whole of the girlyprogosphere) has been going on about how wonderful it is. And all the time it had been sitting on my doormat [...]... Read more

Admin: Software change

I've made a behind-the-scenes software change that hopefully won't give you any grief. If you see errors in formatting (especially in old posts) please let me know. The details, for those who care I use the Blosxom blogging software with a home-grown plugin to use Wiki markup to format the text. I type simple text symbols and the plugin converts the symbols into HTML codes. Stuff like *this is bold*, and it's that simple. I write nearly all my creative work this way, because I work in a pl... Read more

Obama should not suffer for being maximally ethical

I read a particularly annoying letter to the editor in The Tennessean this morning that assets that Obama’s candidacy is “over” because he refused to abandon the preacher, a longtime friend, who made some racist (anti-white) statements.  What’s more, this letter writer, Edgar Davie, seems to think that this is as it should be. I certainly [...]... Read more

Farewell Arthur C Clarke

Arthur C Clarke was buried today. Of the trinity of golden-age science-fiction writers (the other two being Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein), I believe he was the greatest of them all, and it’s his writing that’s stood the test of time the best. His style to me was the very definition of “Hard SF” with [...]... Read more

Design Journal: Writing a fantasy world

So here's the deal. Fudge needs good fantasy support, and I think part of that is having a solid fantasy world to back it up. But writing a D&D-ish fantasy world that is interesting and captures attention is difficult. Ideally, this world would draw people to Fudge. Which means it ought to be innovative, while at the same time familiar. Dragonlance did that... it took a standard D&D world and innovated within that context by creating the dragon wars. They created an over-archin... Read more

Moving toward dreams

One of the things that keeps coming up for me is that writing and possibly publishing roleplaying stuff has been a dream of mine for years... but the longer I live, the less writing I do. I get wrapped up in stuff that, while fun and often worthwhile, moves me away from fulfilling my dreams. Or maybe it's more like, "The more complicated the Internet gets, the less writing I do." I think Gary Gygax's death has really highlighted this for me... while he had a spotty career... Read more

Gorilla Con followup

Gorilla Con was about what I expected, which means it didn't live up to my hopes. There were basically no roleplaying games outside of Living Greyhawk. (The one pick-up game that was offered started at midnight, and that just didn't work for me.) That kind of sucked, and I wasn't mentally (or emotionally) prepared to run anything. But I got to play a few board games (Cutthroat Caverns is cool!) and talk to some folks... some of them unexpectedly even knew my name, and one rec... Read more

Looks like Sequoia has something to hide

And I'm not talking about my sweet old mixed-breed dog by that name, either.

No, I'm talking about what is apparently another voting machine company whose product won't stand up to the light of day. And who hasn't heard of the Streisand Effect either.

The real question is, why hasn't building a better mousetrap voting machine become an open-source project?... Read more

Five Great Science Education Places in Second Life

I originally wrote this for Second Opinion, Linden Lab’s internal newsletter. It was going to appear as the “Fab Five”… in what turned out to be the issue after the last issue. Oops. Since it never saw light of day there, I figured I’d post it here. It’s been a number of months [...]... Read more

Cambridge Rock Festival

Almost all the lineup for this year’s Cambridge Rock Festival on 17th-20th July has now been announced. Sunday’s bill just about makes me fall off my chair in amazement. With Marillion topping the bill, this is looking like an incredible day. Marillion Mostly Autumn The Reasoning Breathing Space The entire festival runs for four days, and there seems to be [...]... Read more

The End of The Astoria

It looks like The Astoria is doomed “The construction of Crossrail means that the Astoria can’t be saved”, the mayor said. He added that a new, plusher concert venue would be included in the new development in Tottenham Court Road. Mr Livingstone said: “It wasn’t at the cutting edge of modern comfort”. Ken Livingstone really doesn’t get [...]... Read more