Gasoline - twas cheaper before.

I remember when I could drive my escort home on $2. That wouldn't do much today...

Escape Claws

Well here's a bit of followup on the parking lot incident. First of all, one of my alert readers went out to the google maps and got an arial photo of the site. Turns out there's a pond just out of sight past a little fence and some kudzu & grass.

Then I got to looking for info on crawfish migration - and found this article describing a mass migration across a highway in Louisiana.



And here's a link to an article about catching crawfish which includes a paragraph about their migratory behavior. (And also indicates that if you get a good mix of small & large that it indicates a healthy population - which is what I saw here.) LINK TO ARTICLE

All that stuff indicates that they do leave the water to migrate, there was a large freshwater supply nearby (with elevated water levels due to large quantities of rain) and that they can at least walk the distance between two sides of a highway if people leave them alone... so it is plausible that they could have come out of that pond to wander the parking lot at 2:00 am.

I think I'll still followup with an expert...

Attack of the Crawfish!

A woman's scream filled the movie theatre parking lot and I bounded over to help. She and her date were confounded by an enormous bug - which turned out to be a huge crawfish. It rained a lot these past two days - but I think 'twas sexual displays I was seeing out there as the crawfish snipped at each other. (Or at least some kind of territorial display...)

I easily picked up five lively specimens and saw many more squished throughout the parking lot.

I must do some research on this... I've never seen so many crawfish out of water before. The other obvious solution to this is that someone had a bucket of crawfish in their truck and they either crawled out during the movie, or the person dumped them out in the parking lot. But the distribution of the crawfish was over the entire length of the parking lot - which makes me think it was a natural display, not a result of human action.

Want to Write Like Lovecraft?

Now you can with these awesome fonts based on his own handwriting.

http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/PROPDOCS/PropFonts.html

And who doesn't want to write like HPL?

See you later, John Phillip Law

Oh, there goes another one. John Phillip Law - the angel from Barbarella, Sinbad from the Golden Voyage and of course Diabolik from the last episode of MST3K. His stunning physique, piercing eyes and imposing presence have not been equaled on screen. (And that sounded kind of gay, but I'm just saying the man was born to play Hermes and never got to...)

Oh, well. We all die - but few of us get to be remembered as icons of 70's cinema. (Yeah, his career didn't end in the 70's - I'm just saying...)

Oh boy. Filled up with gas...

Can't wait for summer!

Expelled was boring...

....and full of lies. Check www.expelledexposed.com For more details...

Evolution?

There is a hilarious new movie coming out called "Expelled" where Ben Stein plays this creationist who tries to prove that there is a massive atheist conspiracy to push something called "Darwinism" into schools despite the fact that "Big Science" knows that evolution isn't real.

What's that? Huh? It's not a comedy?

Seriously? Ben Stein thinks that there is an atheist conspiracy to promote evolution?

He doesn't think fossil evidence, molecular evidence, the fact that every animal on earth is related by DNA, the obvious mutation and change observed in microorganisms, and the thousands and thousands of biologists who not only work based on evolution but also study nuances and mechanisms in ways that directly demonstrate its effects mean anything?

Oh my goodness. That's sad.

I recommend going to www.expelledexposed.com and finding out what is up with this strange and misguided film.

And if you want to see an amusing example of what kind of folks the Expelled filmmakers are, check out this link: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

Dundjinni - Finally some progress?

I love the mapping program Dundjinni. It is probably the easiest to use mapping software for D&D (or other) RPGs. The newest patch, version 1.07, comes with some great fixes and terrific news. They've updated their EULA and now you can use Dundjinni to make commercial products! Of course there are rules, but according to the announcement they want a credit in the product.

If I ever get around to making such products I certainly would credit them. I need to read the EULA, but in the mean time here is the announcement from their site:

NEW PATCH + NEW EULA AT DUNDJINNI!

Helping a customer.

Arthur C. Clarke - I can feel my mind going.

Well, once again I tried to catch up on the classics only to see it all end in despair. -SIGH- I got my TV working using HiDef finally after 3 years of having a big-screen without a tuner to drive the signal.

So after getting the DirecTV HD receiver (with the dvr - it's no TiVo sadly) I started cruising the channels looking for stuff to see with HD resolution. And what should I find but 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"Hmmm, 2001. I haven't seen that since I was just a kid," I thought to myself. "I bet that would look sweet on HD." So I recorded it and watched about 20 minutes of it on Sunday and then sat down last night and finished it over some popcorn.

And somewhere on the other side of the world Arthur C. Clarke, age 90, picked up his list of people who had not seen his movie in HD, put a tick by my name, and died content that he'd given my eyes something to do while my mouth chewed puffed corn.

What can I seriously say about Clarke and his work? A few things:

1) I have only read one of his short stories, but I remember liking it.
2) I enjoyed 2001 and despite the psychedelic ending think it is still one of the best hard sci-fi movies ever made.
3) I absolutely adored Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe.

The quote from Clarke (possibly) that I always hear is that "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That's good. Not sure if he originated it, but I like it.

He also said of UFOs: "They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth." Amusing.

The coincidence of my having just finished watching 2001 only to discover that he died less than 24 hours later is disappointing. I was thinking of writing him, and hear that he did answer e-mails regularly. Not so now, I suppose. Not so now.

X-Ray Delta One, end transmission. Over and out.

Spring?

It certainly isn't officially Spring yet, but this buds for you.

The love between a monkey and a bear

Why do these toys do this stuff? Don't they know this crap is destroying America?

Gary Gygax - Rest in Peace

Role-Playing Games. Not some lumbering beast, but a thousand thousand variants on a theme. Evolution. From strategic miniature simulations came the idea of playing a Tolkien world, developing characters and doing more than dealing with raw numbers.

The man who in most people's minds brought that whole world to the light of day and spawned an entire industry (which in turn spawned the computer gaming industry to a great degree) was E. Gary Gygax.

Last night he failed his saving throw and passed away.

Sadly, no healing potions will aid him now. No party member will be carting him off to the nearest temple for resurrection. He's gone.

But in his wake what a vista!

His game (his and Dave Arneson's) was Dungeons and Dragons. Here's just one kind of spin-off.

A guy named Richard Garriott played D&D and decided to make a version of that on his Apple computer. That game was Akalabeth, which evolved into Ultima. Ultima begat many sequels, and Garriott eventually created Ultima Online.

This was really the first successful MMORPG with a mainstream draw (not to demean all the MUD players out there - I feel ya playhuzzzz).

Effectively Garriot had evolved D&D type play into a fees-per-month monetized Internet-based community driven extravaganza.

Which really drove folks like Blizzard to make World-of-Warcraft. And if you've paused from playing WOW long enough to read this entry, then you should say a kind word in memory of E. Gary Gygax - a man who helped entertain millions even if he didn't make that much money doing it.

Diary of the Dead

Lots of zombie goodness. This is classic. I liked this much more than "Land of the Dead," and I didn't hate that one. Some of the acting is a little "stiff" in the beginning. I don't know what order Romero shot in, but as the characters start out they seemed too much like they were acting and not like they were "real" people. But as soon as the s-hit the fan, they started feeling more like real folks.

Real stupid folks.

But real folks. I guess here's this one meta-complaint about zombie films. In every zombie film (except Sean of the Dead) it seems like even though we can assume everyone knows zombies aren't a natural part of the environment in their "world" - it is not reasonable to assume that their world has no zombie films or fiction. So how is it that none of the heroes know what to do when the zombie apocalypse starts? Sad.

I want to see the zombie film where the disaffected geeks and survivalists are the ones who make it. I'd like to see how their culture of extreme geek and paranoid military protectionist policies play out in a world where the dead get up and eat the living.

Yep.

I'll just sit here by the theatre door and wait....

Finally seated...

Not started yet, but so far so good. :)

An unfortunate theatre worker...

So many casualties.

Diary of the Dead

Me and the wife watch the folks makeup as zombies for the premiere of George Romero's new zombie flick.

A book a month?

Mrs. Smith has resolved to read a book a month. So far, so good... But what was she pointing at?

Clowns Protest Claims that they're "Scary"

Flash! Clowns Ain't Scary! (At least according to this article:) LONDON (Reuters) - Unhappy clowns from around the world say a study that reported that children didn't like them has wiped the big smile from their faces, and have been falling over their large shoes to put their case. A poll by researchers looking at what decor to put in hospital children's wards found that youngsters do not like clowns on the walls and even older ones think they are scary.READ MORE

Hmmmm. I wonder why people thought they were scary? It just doesn't make much sense...

Oh, it's probably a matter for the sociologists and psychologists. I can't for the life of me think of any social cues that might lend credence to the idea that clowns even could be scary. Can you?

Unless you count Gacy, but he's just one example - right? I mean just because one clown is a raving psycho doesn't mean they all are... But I can see where the clowns might be offended. A bit.

We certainly don't want to see clowns out protesting. Can you imagine how disturbing that would be to see a carload of angry protesting clowns? Sure it looks like a canary-yellow Cooper Mini, but I assure you it is chock-full of White Grease-paint and the scent of meringue.

Wellerisms

I've a friend who likes to say, "I see said the blind man, who didn't." As I remember it, he said he picked it up from his father - who attributed it to being an "old saying."

But thanks to my friend Internet, I learned today that these types of sayings can be narrowed down to a particular person who first made them famous through a literary character. Of course I'm speaking of one "Chuck Dickens." (edit: It seems likely that even if he made the technique famous, it predates him. Just wanted to clarify that.)

Chuck's book, "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" was populated by a character named Wells who liked to say things with an amusing formulaic method which might roughly look like this:
OLD SAYING OR COLLOQUIAL OBSERVATION is true, as demonstrated by the following punnishly accurate but didactically contrasting example.

Here's one that amused me:

"Business first, pleasure arterwards, as King Richard the Third said wen
he stabbed t'other king in the Tower, afore he smothered the babbies."

Chuck had Wells squeeze in forty-one of these gems in that onerously titled tale.

The "I see..." example is more commonly used thus:

"I see said the blind man and he picked up his hammer and saw."

Occasionally a deaf man or dog (or even horse!) is squeezed in there too.

These kinds of ideas are variations are apparently common in the Dutch language as well and are known as "Apologetic Proverbs." Wikipedia has a nice article on the matter, but here I quote a couple that also succeeded in amusing me:

English:

"We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out
of the car.

Dutch:

"Het is kruis of munt" zei de non en ze trouwde met de bankier.
(English:It's cross or coin said the nun, and she married the banker.)
Explanatory note: In Dutch "Heads or Tails" is referred to as "kruis of munt", literally meaning "cross" (i.e. religion) or "coin" (i.e. money).

At any rate, it was nice to find the embarkation point for this bit of wordplay. Any number of elaborate variations may be found in common usage and in literature - but I find knowing a bit more about their historical relevance and sourcing to be intellectually satisfying.

Further Reading:
The Tom Swift books have their own amusing word play known as "Swifties." Although amusing, they are probably on the way out because most writing teachers instruct the disuse of adverbs relative to how things are quoted or said, and the Swiftie is entirely dependent on adverbially describing the observation or quote. Read about it here.


And just for fun, I decided to try my hand at one of these things. I went to my wife and asked her for a common saying.

She said, "The grass is always greener on the other side."

"The grass is always greener on the other side," said the grave digger as he
shoveled the pile of earth.

Not terrible for my first try... I like the way that "other side" could reference both death and at the same time prepositionally refer to the pile of earth.

Yahoo RSS Feed Reader

I'm a longtime fan of Yahoo! and their "my yahoo" web portal. Usually they've made good advancements and I guess it makes me a bit old-fashioned that I still use it rather than jump ship to other technologies every time something new comes out.

Despite their good record in general, they still sometimes mess up when it comes to Ads. Since Ad revenue is one of their main (if not the main) source of their income, I guess it makes sense that they have ads wherever they can. And as long as that doesn't interfere with my actually reading content, that's all fine and good.

But here we have an example of ad placement ruining the content experience. When I open an RSS feed message to see the full text, a pop-up floating flash-ad obscures the text of the entry. And it has no "close" button. And if I try to mouse over it I'm assaulted by fly-out options - none of which include "close" or a handle to move the ad.

This is a terrible implementation and now that I've become accustomed to getting my RSS feeds as part of my portal experience, I'm inclined to go build my own content page elsewhere rather than deal with this. I'm going to write them a letter. In the past that has been a colossal waste of time. Finding someone helpful at Yahoo is generally far more difficult than what I expect writing my own portal page would be.

CORRECTION: It appears that the example I've shown here was a bug in the particular ad. Which just goes to show me that Yahoo! probably isn't out to kill me, and that those people in the van probably were just lost tourists, not Yahoo!-Ninja-Assassins. Good to know.

These Chiropractors are the Wurst Belchers...

A sign on the square in Marietta.

Theory Shmeory

Never buy any other kind!

If you have to buy a rubber frog, be sure it is a magic lucky frog!

Internet Media - pshah!

Headline writing is probably fun. To someone.
I remember the (possibly apocryphal) story that after Loeb (of Leopold & Loeb) was murdered by a fellow inmate, newsman Ed Lahey got out a headline that read, "Richard Loeb, despite his erudition, today ended his sentence with a proposition." Witty, in that the plea of the killer was that Loeb had propositioned him, then assaulted him, and that in order to defend himself he'd had to cut Loeb 58 times with a straight razor in the shower. (They were serious about self-defense in those days.)

Anyway, since Yahoo! apparently can't even tell a Diva from a Dude - well, I don't expect we'll be hearing about the clever web headline of 200X anytime soon. Unless you count the headlines over at The Onion. Some of those are pretty memorable.

Thanksgiving Traditions.

If it is the day before Thanksgiving, we must be smoking meat at Mr. Gunn's...

Grendel/Hoggle - Seperated at Birth?

Yes, perhaps they were. Or perhaps Hoggle got dropped into the deep fryer after his post-Labyrinth fame had worn out. Either way, I kept thinking that the Grendel in the new Beowulf film reminded me of someone - and I finally remembered who it was. Thanks, Internet!

Beautiful Day!

Unbelievable weather out today!

Surgery set for October 10th

For those of you following along from home, I'm planning to get gallbladder surgery on October 10th. If it is complication free, I could go home as early as the same day, possibly the 11th.

If it were to go poorly (not EXTREMELY poorly, but just kind of poorly) it might take a bit longer than that.

FYI.

First Draft Complete

I don't know how many words the final draft will be, but I've completed the first draft and avoided the Billy-Bass.

Now I just have to flesh out some of the more encyclopedic background chapters and then I can start on my edits.

Bwah-ha-ha.

Mo is out. Now it is Kali vs. Moses.

Playing gods - playtest

Time for more coffeeeeeee

Mmmm. Coffee - then off to see what Radford's game has that Pantheon doesnt besides a prototype...

Michael Shermer starts the day...

A presentation based on his book "Why People Believe Weird Things."

Chupacabara - Pig - Dog - Idiot - Omen - this clip has it all!

This is from the weekend edition of FOX & Friends. I hope somebody watches out for these poor people.

Chin chin 2 for lunch.

Mmmmm. Table mustard.

I saw Michael Shermer!

Neato! He signed my book.

Saturday @ DragonCon2007

OK - There is so much going on at Dragon*Con - and I'm all over the place in my interests, but I've sort of narrowed things down to these choices. This of course ignores stuff like wandering around in the Dealer's room (where I got 20 D&D minis for $1 each!!!).

Jref presentation.

Neat! Be a psychic and win a million dollars!

Mur Lafferty reads.

I pretty much missed this entire thing trying to get across three hotels.

MBA

www.miniaturebuildingauthority.com

Made of resin - not plaster!

Hey curtis!

Last little bit

Almost up to the badge dude.

Registration 1

Harry potter 7 party

Testing autopost of pix from my treo.

Extending Firefox to include D20 search

One of my favorite websites is the D20SRD site - http://www.d20srd.org. They've got a nifty plug-in for the little search drop-down window in Firefox.

Get it here:
http://www.d20srd.org/browserGoodies/index.htm

Nice.

Will we finally see the full Wicker?

According to the BBC website, they are finally releasing the "FULL VERSION" of the classic British horror film, "The Wicker Man." This in contrast to the brutalized 80 minute American release and the previously released 100 minute "director's cut."

Apparently - at least according to actor Edward Woodward - the new version is closer to two full hours. I've been unable to find the specs on it so far, but I'm excited. I love British horror from the 1960's and early 1970's - and this is an exemplary piece with its weirdly behaving discordian villagers, the strangely hip Christopher Lee, and the sexually and religiously repressed Woodward as the cop looking for a missing girl.

This ain't a happy fun-time film. But I like it better than Race with the Devil. (LOL) (Which, by the way, appears to be in re-make mode according to IMDB.)

D&D 4th Edition

Could this be the e-tool I've been waiting for? I'll have to wait and see, but I'm already disappointed to hear they want a subscription based service fee...

Yet, it looks cool in some ways.

Part 1


Part 2


By the way, this makes my June 14th post seem a lot more prescient.

20,000 Words

Well, I made it to 20,000 words. I think I'm still on track to get to a "full Novel" before September 11th.

If I don't here's what happens: I have to put up a Billy Bass on my wall for 30 days.
This "bass of shame" will sing (to my utter humiliation) every time I enter my office, reminding me that I should have worked harder towards reaching my goal.

I really don't want that...

OMG - An actual post about gaming!

A funny thing happened at my most recent gaming session. I forgot about the movement rules in D&D 3.5 - and when one of the other players tried to explain it, I just sat there unable to "get it." Sad. I knew it was a basic geometry principal at work, but I couldn't remember which it was.

First, let me remind you of the movement rules. When you are making diagonal movement the first diagonal step counts as 1. The second counts as 2. The third counts as 1 again. The pattern repeats.

But at first glance, the distance between the diagonal of the square shape compared to the vertical or horizontal size didn't seem different enough to count for anything, and my gut instinct was to count all movement as 1 point. Then, I pulled out a pencil and measured the straight distance across 5 grid squares. And then I measured the distance across 5 grid squares diagonally, and could see the diagonal distance was greater.

Here in this illustration, we see Howard the Kobold who wants to run up and shatter the big jade throne before the golem guards can activate. Howard moves 1 space forward, then 1 diagonal, then 1 straight across, then 1 diagonal. The movement costs are 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 because the first diagonal costs 1, and the second costs 2.Of course the geometric principal that was floating around helplessly in my brain was the Pythagorean theorem. This rule states that relationships of the sides of a triangle are a ² + b² = c². More to the point, it means that the relationship between the length of the sides of the square and the diagonal of the square is that diagonal length is going to be equal to the square root of 2.

We can solve for c using the formula squareroot(a² + b² ) = c
(I couldn't figure out how to make the square-root symbol cover the a & b... Sorry!)
But it always ends up being the square root of 2, which is an irrational number.
Still, if you use a calculator to solve the value, you get something like 1.4142136 - which is slightly less than 1.5.

Since there is no half-square movement in D&D, the rule of diagonal movement costing first 1, then 2, then 1 again is a rough mathematical equivalent to having it cost 1.5 movement to move diagonal. If you end on a 1.5 it costs 1. But if you go two diagonal spaces, it costs (1.5 + 1.5) a total of 3.


Oh Geometry, why did I forget so much of you? And why don't schools use gaming to teach math? Doesn't troop and unit movement seem more fun than just solving problems?

I still remember physics from Nuclear A-School in the Navy - we always dealt with the terrible fates of metaphorical cats. Though we never really shot a cat out of a cannon into a brick wall, we certainly knew how to calculate the theoretical velocity of the cat at the moment of impact. (assuming a vacuum through which to fire said feline, a device to measure the speed of the cat, and somebody to keep the animal rights people from stopping the important experiment!)

Mage Knight Happy Luck Auction

Wow! I won an e-bay auction for a Mage-Knight sample set. It was closed-box and there were no indications what it would contain. I was hoping for some floor-tiles and wall-tiles for the 3-d dungeons - but was blown away to find 110 figures (mostly very useful ones) and a bunch of treasure chests too!

Delight ain't in it. I'm overwhelmed with auction-bliss! At $20 - what a bargain for me!

Postcards from the center of the Earth!

I buy a lot of used books. Sometimes I find stuff in them. I always think about trying to get this detritus back to its original owners, though I rarely find myself able to do so.

In this case, I bought a copy of E. R. Burrough's hollow earth stories - an omnibus edition with "At the Earth's Core," "Pellucidar," and "Tanar of Pellucidar." Inside was a post-card from 1977. It was a guy named "Rob" and sent to Mr. Jim Boudreau in Albany.

I bought the book at a used bookstore in Rochester in 2002.

Here's what the postcard said:

22 Jan 1977
Dear Jim,

How were your holidays? Mine were
great. I'm here in Austria with my girl-friend Martha. I've spent
the last couple of weeks job searching in Vienna with little luck.
Foreigners aren't needed in the labor force! But Martha and I have been to
see many old friends here as well as to the theater and an operetta. Write
soon and let me know if you have a job.

-Rob.

Sent to:
Mr. Jim Boudreau
10 Beach Ave. Apt C
Albany, New York
USA 12209

Anyway, I've included scans of the postcard front & back. If you find this postcard, Mr. Boudreau - I hope you've found work somewhere since 1977! I wonder about you. Did you get to see Star Wars? I heard it was quite the thing that year. And did Rob and Martha ever get work in Austria?

Who knows?