The End of 2006

I spent a few hours yesterday running through some gaming tests with my friends to figure out what system I want to use for the upcoming 1200AD campaign I'm starting. The tests were interesting, comparing the "A Game of Thrones d20" with "D&D 3.5" in producing the same battle.

Tomorrow is January 1st - and I'm going to start working on my "real" novel in the morning. I've done a lot of pre-work, defining characters & plot elements. Today will be a real slogger for me as I have to finalize some of the work.

The most important thing is that I don't get bogged down on some of the details, but just keep going. I think momentum will be very important to me for the first draft, which I want to have completed by Feb 28th. When I get my chapters all done I hope to have a word count around 90,000.

I spent about two weeks trying to get my story, "The Angle of Incidence" ready to become a novel - but in the end realized it just didn't have enough material in it. I hope to turn it into a long "short story" and submit it in the future. I really like the story it tells, but to make it into a novel would require troweling on a lot of stuff that might not stick, and might look artificial.

So instead, I'm working on a non-supernatural Thriller. My working title is Southern Knights - and it is the Red-Neck DaVinci Code.

My first chiken tikka masala

This is a photo of my first ever effort at cooking my own Chicken Tika Masala. It turned out pretty darn good. I wish I'd used more yogurt so there'd been more sauce for the rice.

Now I just need to figure out how to cook my own Naan bread, and I'll be able to make one of my favorite meals at home.

Look out General Tso, you're next!

Merry Christmas

I was working on a special geek-christmas card, but due to family illness didn't get it finished in time for the date. Perhaps next year, or perhaps I'll just post it out of holiday sequence. That'll teach 'em.

Waiting for santa

I can't catch up with the past

I'm a gamer. You either identify yourself as a gamer or you don't.

I do.

I've been in a love-hate relationship with computer games since they first became available to me through the VIC-20 and the Atari 2600 Video Computer System Console. On the one hand, I love the way the games let you simulate battle without keeping track of mathematics or having to keep track of hundreds of counters, yet on the other hand the rules of the computer limit your ability to innovate or question the rules as implemented.

The classic example is in Computer Role Playing Games where either the storyline is on a "rail system" where you can only act towards the completion of the programmed plot, or the limitations of the mechanics don't allow you to innovate in your problem solving. For example, if you're playing a rogue in a D&D style computer game and you suspect that one of the King's council is actually going to betray him there is no way to (a) accuse him until the game lets you, (b) poison or otherwise dispose of him to protect the king, or (c) blackmail and/or collude with him to overthrow the monarch.

Or for a more simple example, in Neverwinter Nights (v1) the maps of the inside of buildings are completely different areas than the outside so you can't look out the window and see who is coming because even though you're supposed to be in the same area, you're not.

Anyway, limitations aside, I'm still amazed at the evolution of gaming. Text adventures and arcade shooters have evolved to an astounding degree in the past 30 years... at least on the outside.

But how much have the "GAMES" themselves evolved? Don't be fooled by smoke & mirrors. Yeah, thanks to the work of the graphics card industry, you can now get 3D models with astounding textures, and the computing power to render nearly photo-realistic environments. But if the game is still just a 3D shooter, is it really "better" than Duke-Nukem 3D? Do new weapons and better looking models really make a difference?

Eventually the rendering is going to be irrelevant and what will drive the success of a game will come down to three factors.

1) Marketing: There is a segment (a really big segment) that will buy anything if a hot commercial pushes it. They don't get repeat business this way, but sometimes can clear a lot of inventory.

2) Story: If the game is competently built, an excellent story will sell itself. Games with superb stories and these modern engines can essentially become interactive movies. Half-Life 2 has a great engine and an interesting story. It is essentially an action film where you play the MUTE hero and everybody else yaks all the time giving you the plot through voluminous expository speeches. I wouldn't pay $.50 to see it in theatres, but I happily dished out $50.00 to play the game.

3) Gameplay: If the story is crap and the marketing is crap - the game can still be successful if the GAMEPLAY is awesome & addictive. If you can tell me the narrative of Tetris, Bejewelled or Pac Man, well then you're some kind of very special idiot. Nobody cares about the story, they're just fun to play.

I was originally just going to post a link to the granddaddy of all adventure games , which - just like real casino games - you can now play ADVENTURE online!

My Secret Obsession - very tiny cars

I love little cars. I'm WAY too big to actually fit into one and ride around, but I just love tiny machines that get great gas mileage and yet would fit neatly in the back of my enormous pickup truck.

Lucky me!

While doing research on the ISO Isetta, I found a really neat micro-car museum. I decided to see where the museum was, figuring some day in my travels maybe I could make my way to The Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum if I ever made it all the way to MADISON, GEORGIA!!!

Yes:

The Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum Inc.
2950 Eatonton Road
Madison, GA 30650

Merely an hour and a half drive from my house. Oh, boy! If I didn't have the flu I'd probably go today. But a trip of 90 minutes takes a little planning. Maybe I'll make an event of it.

And I could go check out Crowe's Open Air BBQ, just up the street from the museum. Hmmm. BBQ and tiny little cars - that seems like a good idea for a nice afternoon.

The website says:
Museum Hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
1:00pm to 4:00pm
closed Nov 21,22,23 (Thanksgiving week)
closed the week Before and 2 weeks After Christmas
closed the months of JUNE & JULY


That's a small window of opportunity, but it might be doable. I'd just have to burn a vacation day. Though it sounds like it'll be next year before I make it. Oh, 2007 - you're such a temptress with your little cars and BBQ...

Life is Astounding

We are so amazingly privileged in America. I try to never lose sight of that. While I've never "lived off the grid" I am certain that I could survive thanks to my country-ish upbringing. Like the song says, I can lay a trot-line. I believe I can also hunt, grow food, find shelter, find water, etc...

But I can also sit in my bed (like now), write on a laptop which is wirelessly connected to a broadband Internet connection, watch a DVD of "Kolchak - The Night Stalker", and struggle to survive the flu.

I suppose I could also struggle to survive the flu without electricity, but this is more fun. In fact, I just found a nostalgia factory in the form of a website that lets me play classic commodore-64 games through my browser. Now I don't even need an emulator - it's Java, baby!

Still, I wish the flu would leave me and my wife. At least the kids seem to be faring well, though I suspect their inoculations led to my infection.

Remove "UnDock" from your START menu

I am a corporate laptop user. We have docking stations. There is an annoying little menu option when I click START that is perilously close to the shut-down option. It says "Undock Computer" and it annoys me to a terrible degree.

There is a registry hack to get rid of it. Here it is if you want it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoDriveTypeAutoRun"=dword:00000091
"NoStartMenuEjectPC"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\RestrictRun]

Save that code as "no-undock.reg" and then run it to get rid of that pest.

Humans - a lossy format

You may know by now that James Kim, an editor at CNet, died this week in the mountains of Oregon after he and his family got snowed in on a mountain pass. This story troubled me on so many levels.

Let me tell you my tenuous connection to James. I'm a fan of Tech-TV's Screensavers. Note that I don't say I "was" a fan. I "am" a fan. When Tech-TV merged to form G4, I quit watching because they canceled most of my shows and fired a lot of the people I really felt a kinship to. There was nothing like Tech-TV's shows that really called out to me. There were no regulars on The Screensavers that I didn't feel like would be welcome in my home.

I moved on when that show was canceled, but always kept a place for it in my heart. I had met Pat & Leo at various tours they did here in the south, and in person they were as affable and easy to like as they were on television. Plus, they usually knew what they were talking about, which is a trait that I really prefer.

After The Screensavers ended, I felt a little lost - but had a lot more free hours on my TIVO. Recently I discovered that Leo & Pat (And John C. Dvorak and frequently Jerry Pournelle, plus others) had a weekly podcast called This Week in Tech (or TWiT). On the show I found the same sort of lively, friendly tech-savvy discussion that had made The Screensavers so cool. In many ways, this seemed to be the pod-based resurrection.

Then this past week, tragic news came as Leo & Pat told that James Kim, a mutual friend of theirs, was missing along with his family. My first thought was that they were probably murdered by a wandering serial killer. It never occurred to me that they might have become snowed-in on a rural mountain pass.

Now comes the tragic news that James didn't make it. Going back to look at a video montage over at Cnet I realized that James was very thin. Going for seven days with no food and then setting out on foot to try and hike 30 miles for help in icy weather when you're skinny - that's a formula for trouble. Sadly, James wasn't fat and reportedly didn't have the kind of training and equipment that would serve him well in icy weather.

But fortunately his family was found and his wife and daughters will be OK. I wish he had made it. I'd have much preferred a Reader's Digest style "Drama in Real Life" where James walks 30 miles to get help - only to discover that his wife and kids are already rescued. Sadly, that's not what happened. Whatever caused Jame's death, he was doing the thing he thought most important - risking his own life to try and save his family.

I feel sad for his family, for Pat & Leo, and for Cnet. He seemed like a really nice, funny guy.

A Series of Unfortunate Events - the Music

The Tragic Treasury is out on i-tunes and provides many songs from the audio versions of A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Dungeons & Dragons - The Complete Series DVD

The Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series from the 1980's is available for pre-order and will be released December 5th! Wow! This was a cartoon I totally had to sneak around to watch because it was about Dungeons & Dragons. Sort-of.

The guy at the video store showed me the box but couldn't sell it to me - but it is cheaper at Amazon (CLICK HERE TO BUY - AND DON'T FORGET TO BUY ME ONE TOO).

guess where I ate breakfast