godspiel

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:36:37 GMT

The Online Gamer (NSFW):

Plus: Tauntaun Costume On The Loose

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:56:12 GMT

As Advertised (EpicWinFTW.com).

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:28:10 GMT

This never gets old:

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:51:05 GMT

According to Wikipedia the housecat from The Muppet Show was named "Gaffer".

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:58:28 GMT

For anybody that watched Doctor Who's The End Of Time, Part 1 (YouTube). This is one of my favorite Dead Milkmen songs, and counts as a spoiler.

Darth Vader wishes you a Merry Christmas.

Tommy Lee Gets His Fans To Finish His New Album For Him For Free (Musictoob/Yahoo). Actually he's making mini charitable donations in exchange for crowd-sourcing labor, making this the first thing Tommy Lee has done in his 47 years that I found vaguely interesting.

How Fanboys See Operating Systems

Couple stranded 3 days after GPS leads them astray (AP/Yahoo).

Star Wars Weather Forecast

Triforce Hidden In The One Dollar Bill (Buzzfeed).

Children Who Get Spanked Have Lower IQs (LiveScience).

The Ruins Of Detroit

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:34:38 GMT

Book 99 years overdue returned to Mass. library (AP/Yahoo).

Alien 'water world' found (MSN). The title is a little misleading, but this is still cool because it was found using off-the-shelf components.

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:42:56 GMT

So I caught up with Dennis (JetPack)

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:39:10 GMT

There's an AM radio station in Portland Oregon run by students at a technical high school with the Call Letters KBPS.

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:35:34 GMT

Garden Jawa. I'm too lazy to look for it, but I think they also make a Garden Yoda.

Making of the Computer Graphics for Star Wars (Episode IV) (YouTube).

Know Your Meme / "Weird Al" Yankovic Helps Explain Auto Tune (YouTube). Needs more Al. And, yes, that Cher video is 11 years old.

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:10:05 GMT

I'm having a complete brain fart. What is the technical term for the small graphic that serves as a website's identifier in the address bars and bookmarks of modern browsers? I wanted to search for a Firefox plug-in that would allow me to override the default (which is normally just stored in the cache, and not within the bookmarks dB itself), but can't think of the proper search term, and I'm too sleep-deprived to search through my web design books for something that rarely warrants more than a paragraph.

I've been using that null-title trick to cram more stuff onto the toolbar, but it doesn't work with feeds or sites that inherit one from their parent domain.

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:17:25 GMT

Principal bans four-letter word — ‘meep!’ Utterance from ‘The Muppet Show’ was used repeatedly to interrupt school (AP/MSNBC).

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:00:31 GMT

Joss Whedon's 'Dollhouse' canceled (HollyWoodReporter).

Alternate-Universe Sci-Fi Channel Show Asks What Would Happen If Germany Lost War (Onion).

Exclusive: Guess Who Is Trying To Sink Your Battleship (LatinoReview). Aliens! Aliens in the Battleship movie!

I'm Looking Forward to RetCon 2010

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:29:12 GMT

ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO LANDING
THERE


WE, UH...
WE NEED THE ICE
FOR SOMETHING

SOMETHING COLD

NO, NOT MARGARITAS

SERIOUSLY


OK, IT'S FOR
MARGARITIAS

LOOK: DAVE IS
HAVING A PARTY,
AND HE WASN'T
GOING TO INVITE
ALL SEVEN BILLION
OF YOU


DON'T LOOK AT ME
LIKE THAT


THIS IS PRECISELY
WHY I DIDN'T WANT
TO TELL YOU

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:47:40 GMT

Syfy is showing the original two V miniseries back-to-back on Sunday starting at 12:30pm. Ten and a half hours of semi-cheesy, Regan-era, fascism-allegory goodness.

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:28:02 GMT

Update uproar: Xbox 360 revision will disable "unauthorized" memory cards (Yahoo).

Dems go after antitrust exemption for insurers (Yahoo). This is about half my reason for supporting the Public Option. The other half is that even without the protection, I don't see them changing much. Most of these companies are so big they just coast on their market share. Cartel without collusion.

Report: Secret Service strained to protect Obama (Yahoo).

Afghan coalition government is an option, US says (AP/Yahoo). "The United States would be receptive to a power-sharing arrangement between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his election challenger if they agreed to it, Obama administration officials said Wednesday."

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:29:20 GMT

Wall Street on the Tundra (VanityFair). Article on Iceland's financial meltdown, from April.

The Theory of Interstellar Trade by Paul Krugman (PDF). How should interest rates be handled at relativistic speeds? He wrote this when he was 25-ish.

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:28:25 GMT

Need throughput? Don't care about latency? Try BoeingNet.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:36:14 GMT

Fit to fly? Balance Board tapped to detect shifty characters at airports (Yahoo). Hello, false positives.

This Is a Photoshop and It Blew My Mind (Gizmodo). "[Photosketch] can take any rough sketch, with the shape of each element labeled with its name, find images corresponding to each drawn element, judge which are a better match to the shapes, and then seamlessly merge it all into one single image."

Obama to end military gay policy (BBC). "A big gay rights protest march is planned in Washington for Sunday." Super! I've never been particularly anal about grammar, but shouldn't either there be a comma after big, or Gay Rights be capitalized?

Oh, and now Big Gay Al's song has crowded out Cleveland and the Breeders, and that's seven kinds of funny. Bare Minimum.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:50:28 GMT

The only thing that can get Cannonball by The Breeders out of my head is the theme from the Cleveland Show.

The only thing that can get the theme from the Cleveland Show out of my head is Cannonball by The Breeders.

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:54:40 GMT

There's an IDE for Python named Boa Constructor.

I approve.

You are being shagged by a rare parrot....

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:55:54 GMT

... and Stephen Fry is amused.

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:33:55 GMT

Too lazy to set the password on your wireless router? Have we got the interior house paint for you!

Four out of Five toddlers agree: It's DELICIOUS!!

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:53:59 GMT

id Software got bought up by Bethesda's parent company months ago, and I'm hearing about it now?

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:56:19 GMT

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:52:55 GMT

This is kinda nifty:

The other major way information was shared was the table map. When the game first started the PCs heard a rumor that years ago when other adventurers had tried their luck exploring the West Marches, they had sat in the taproom of the Axe & Thistle to compare notes. While trying to describe an area of the wilds, a few thirsty patrons had scratched out a simple map on the top of the table (an X here, a line here). Over time others started adding bits, cleaning it up, and before long it had grown from some scratches to a detailed map carved into most of the surface of the table showing forests, creeks, caves, ominous warnings, etc. Where was that table now? Gone, but no one was sure where — maybe carried off as a souvenir, smashed in a brawl and used for kindling, or perhaps just thrown out after it was too scratched to rest a drink flatly.

On hearing this story the PCs immediately decided to revive the tradition (just as I hoped they would) and started to carve their own crude map on a large table in the taproom of the Axe & Thistle. As the campaign went on all the PCs would gather around it, quaff an ale, and plan adventures. In the real world it was a single sheet of graph paper with the town and the neighboring areas drawn in pretty well, and then about four or five more pieces of graph paper taped on haphazardly whenever someone wandered off the edge or explored just a little bit farther. Because the map was in a public place and any PC could get to it, I brought it to every game session for the PCs to add to or edit and kept a reasonably up-to-date scanned copy on the web for reference between games. In the end maybe half a dozen different players had put their hand to it.

Was the table map accurate? Not really, but having a common reference point, a shared sense of what they thought the region looked like kept everyone feeling like they were playing in the same world.

From Grand Experiments: West Marches (part 2), Sharing Info

I vaguely recall someone (probably dunkelza) telling me about something similar. Oh, and while it's fresh in my head, this guy is working on a game called Microscope that's about world building, and sounds awesome, like Dawn Of Worlds on steroids.