Aw, come on...every body needs more monorails.
Bradbury: LA needs monorails!
"Ray Bradbury has written an editorial for the LA Times calling on the city of Los Angeles to build a monorail network before the city's traffic becomes completely unmanageable." [via Boing Boing]
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Friday, February 10, 2006
CryptoKids™ America's Future Codemakers & Codebreakers -- Site Start Page
Now, it is probably disturbing enough that the NSA actually has a "kids page" on its site. Teaching young generations the importance of code-making and code-breaking is always room for fun. Heck, I used to buy "How To Be A Spy" and "How To Be A Detective" books at the Scholastic Book fairs when I was a kid. Making it into a government program is what is making it a bit weird.
So, how would this sort of overt covert recruitment impact an espionage (or pretty much any modern setting) RPG?
CryptoKids™ America's Future Codemakers & Codebreakers
So, how would this sort of overt covert recruitment impact an espionage (or pretty much any modern setting) RPG?
CryptoKids™ America's Future Codemakers & Codebreakers
The Anagram Map of London
Here is an interesting resource for GMs who want to turn the world on its end for their players. This link is to a map of the London Underground, but with all of the tube-stations relabeled with anagrams of the station names. For example, Old Street is "Eldest Rot," Oxford Circus is "Crux for Disco."
I am sure that Urban Fantasy GMs of all stripes can find a use for something like this. This makes an interesting map to an alternate London, in a Grant Morrison inspired campaign.
The Anagram Map of London
In this case, the map is the territory. If you decide to use this in your games, please make a comment and share what you have done.
Edit: Since Greg Stolze mentioned this site in a post to the thread that I made about this on RPG.net, I thought that I would include a link to the site in this post as well. Anagrams are everywhere.
Edit[2]: Apparently legal action has forced the removal of the original map. You can find more information here. You can also find Anagram Maps for other cities (including Cleveland) here.
I am sure that Urban Fantasy GMs of all stripes can find a use for something like this. This makes an interesting map to an alternate London, in a Grant Morrison inspired campaign.
The Anagram Map of London
In this case, the map is the territory. If you decide to use this in your games, please make a comment and share what you have done.
Edit: Since Greg Stolze mentioned this site in a post to the thread that I made about this on RPG.net, I thought that I would include a link to the site in this post as well. Anagrams are everywhere.
Edit[2]: Apparently legal action has forced the removal of the original map. You can find more information here. You can also find Anagram Maps for other cities (including Cleveland) here.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Stephen Colbert | The A.V. Club
From an interview with Steven Colbert at the A.V. Club.
Stephen Colbert | The A.V. Club
"AVC: You were into Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, were you not?
"SC: Yeah, I really was. I started playing in seventh grade, 1977. And I played incessantly, 'til probably 1981—four years.
"AVC: What's the appeal?
"SC: It's a fantasy role-playing game. If you're familiar with the works of Tolkien or Stephen R. Donaldson or Poul Anderson or any of the guys who wrote really good fantasy stuff, those worlds stood up. It's an opportunity to assume a persona. Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers? And you get to be heroic and have adventures. And it's an incredibly fun game. They have arcane rules and complex societies and they're open-ended and limitless, kind of like life. For somebody who eventually became an actor, it was interesting to have done that for so many years, because acting is role-playing. You assume a character, and you have to stay in them over years, and you create histories, and you apply your powers. It's good improvisation with agreed rules before you go in."
Stephen Colbert | The A.V. Club
"AVC: You were into Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, were you not?
"SC: Yeah, I really was. I started playing in seventh grade, 1977. And I played incessantly, 'til probably 1981—four years.
"AVC: What's the appeal?
"SC: It's a fantasy role-playing game. If you're familiar with the works of Tolkien or Stephen R. Donaldson or Poul Anderson or any of the guys who wrote really good fantasy stuff, those worlds stood up. It's an opportunity to assume a persona. Who really wants to be themselves when they're teenagers? And you get to be heroic and have adventures. And it's an incredibly fun game. They have arcane rules and complex societies and they're open-ended and limitless, kind of like life. For somebody who eventually became an actor, it was interesting to have done that for so many years, because acting is role-playing. You assume a character, and you have to stay in them over years, and you create histories, and you apply your powers. It's good improvisation with agreed rules before you go in."
Monday, January 30, 2006
Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey for Governor of Minnesota - 2006
Um, yeah. Good luck with that.
Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey for Governor of Minnesota - 2006
"Honesty is very seldom heard nowadays, especially from a politician. So, I am going to break from political tradition. My name is Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey, Ph.D., L.D.D.D. I am a Satanic Dark Priest, Sanguinarian Vampyre and a Hecate Witch. My Magikal Path name is: Lord Ares.
"I despise and hate the Christian God the Father. He is my enemy.
"However, it doesn't mean that I hate all his followers. This Country was founded on religious rights and freedoms. This is guaranteed under the 1st Amendment of our great constitution. This right allows me to worship Lucifer and the Goddess
Hecate, just as it allows you to worship the Goddess/God of your choice.
"It is a common misconception that Satanic people are evil. This is a gross misunderstanding. On a whole those who worship Lucifer, are no more evil
than those who worship other Gods."
Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey for Governor of Minnesota - 2006
"Honesty is very seldom heard nowadays, especially from a politician. So, I am going to break from political tradition. My name is Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey, Ph.D., L.D.D.D. I am a Satanic Dark Priest, Sanguinarian Vampyre and a Hecate Witch. My Magikal Path name is: Lord Ares.
"I despise and hate the Christian God the Father. He is my enemy.
"However, it doesn't mean that I hate all his followers. This Country was founded on religious rights and freedoms. This is guaranteed under the 1st Amendment of our great constitution. This right allows me to worship Lucifer and the Goddess
Hecate, just as it allows you to worship the Goddess/God of your choice.
"It is a common misconception that Satanic people are evil. This is a gross misunderstanding. On a whole those who worship Lucifer, are no more evil
than those who worship other Gods."
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Boing Boing: BBC report on UK gamers from 6-65
While the study is geared towards computer/online gamers, I would imagine that there is some information in this that could be of use for tabletop gamers.
Boing Boing: BBC report on UK gamers from 6-65
"BBC Creative Research and Development have just released a stellar research report on gamers' habits in the UK -- how people from six to 65 play, what they play, why they play, and how they got to playing. It's a real eye-opener -- and chock full of stats-candy in sweet charts."
Boing Boing: BBC report on UK gamers from 6-65
"BBC Creative Research and Development have just released a stellar research report on gamers' habits in the UK -- how people from six to 65 play, what they play, why they play, and how they got to playing. It's a real eye-opener -- and chock full of stats-candy in sweet charts."
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
With Apologies to Mr. Edwards - RPGnet Forums
I don't often link to threads on RPGnet, but I think that this is a good one. Hopefully it will be one that won't end up going down in flames. From interplays on the RPGnet forums, I like what Levi has to say. Not all of it is useful to everyone (heck, a lot of it isn't useful to my gaming situations) but unlike some others who are groping at RPG Theories, I don't find his thoughts to be as detrimental as those of some others seem to be.
These ideas don't scorn or look down upon other styles of gamers, and they certainly don't use loaded or biased language to describe the game play of others. I recommend checking out this thread, and hope that it doesn't end in flames.
With Apologies to Mr. Edwards - RPGnet Forums
Like I've said, I don't really think that jargon does a lot of good in respect to discussing and working out concepts and/or problems with game play. But I'm not really sure if what Levi is proposing is really jargon either.
I guess we will see how it plays out.
These ideas don't scorn or look down upon other styles of gamers, and they certainly don't use loaded or biased language to describe the game play of others. I recommend checking out this thread, and hope that it doesn't end in flames.
With Apologies to Mr. Edwards - RPGnet Forums
Like I've said, I don't really think that jargon does a lot of good in respect to discussing and working out concepts and/or problems with game play. But I'm not really sure if what Levi is proposing is really jargon either.
I guess we will see how it plays out.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Time Machine Cuba by William Gibson
How an important person from modern Science Fiction discovered Science Fiction. From the Infinite Matrix website.
Time Machine Cuba by William Gibson
"I learned of science fiction and history in a single season.
"History I found in the basement of an old brick house I happened to pass each day, on my way to elementary school, in a small town in Virginia.
"This house stood vacant, but was in too conspicuous a state of repair to seem haunted, and had never interested me. One afternoon, though, I noted that workmen had arrived, and that some sort of renovation was being prepared for. Squeezing in past a sheet of plywood, I explored a series of cold, empty rooms. One of these (my heart beat faster) contained a damp old trunk. Having worked up the nerve to open it, I found only a few faded lithographs (as I now imagine they were) of airplanes. But these were airplanes unlike any I had seen, and they held my attention in a peculiar way. They were old, clearly of some other era, but exciting, and somehow frightening as well. Squatting there, staring at them, I felt as though some enormous wedge of information was being driven into my head. Various bits and pieces of half-knowledge were coming together, forming some new and utterly unexpected whole. I already knew, as if by osmosis, that there had been a war, though I didn't know when, or with whom. I had been raised, so far, by adults who sometimes spoke of 'the war' as some previous time or era or world, but I had somehow never associated that with other, more vague ideas of some past and general conflict. I had read comic books about war, and played with military toys, but had never considered how those might fit into some way the world had actually been."
Time Machine Cuba by William Gibson
"I learned of science fiction and history in a single season.
"History I found in the basement of an old brick house I happened to pass each day, on my way to elementary school, in a small town in Virginia.
"This house stood vacant, but was in too conspicuous a state of repair to seem haunted, and had never interested me. One afternoon, though, I noted that workmen had arrived, and that some sort of renovation was being prepared for. Squeezing in past a sheet of plywood, I explored a series of cold, empty rooms. One of these (my heart beat faster) contained a damp old trunk. Having worked up the nerve to open it, I found only a few faded lithographs (as I now imagine they were) of airplanes. But these were airplanes unlike any I had seen, and they held my attention in a peculiar way. They were old, clearly of some other era, but exciting, and somehow frightening as well. Squatting there, staring at them, I felt as though some enormous wedge of information was being driven into my head. Various bits and pieces of half-knowledge were coming together, forming some new and utterly unexpected whole. I already knew, as if by osmosis, that there had been a war, though I didn't know when, or with whom. I had been raised, so far, by adults who sometimes spoke of 'the war' as some previous time or era or world, but I had somehow never associated that with other, more vague ideas of some past and general conflict. I had read comic books about war, and played with military toys, but had never considered how those might fit into some way the world had actually been."
Monday, January 16, 2006
A Blogger Is Just A Writer With A Cooler Name
My name is Chris and I am a Blogger. I think that its funny that the media thinks that there isn't a difference between journalists and bloggers...well until there is one.
A Blogger Is Just A Writer With A Cooler Name
"I’ve been thinking of what I am -- about what any media person in the digital age is -- since having coffee last week with a 30-something newspaper editor who bemoaned the fact that newspapers keep on setting up blogs as these separate, exotic add-ons to their Web sites, instead of integrating blogging into their usual newsgathering operations. There’s simply no good reason to segregate the functions, he insisted.
"And it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing -- writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology. Even though I tend to first use Microsoft Word on the way to being published, I am not, say, a Worder or Wordder.
"It’s just software, people! The underlying creative/media function remains exactly the same."
A Blogger Is Just A Writer With A Cooler Name
"I’ve been thinking of what I am -- about what any media person in the digital age is -- since having coffee last week with a 30-something newspaper editor who bemoaned the fact that newspapers keep on setting up blogs as these separate, exotic add-ons to their Web sites, instead of integrating blogging into their usual newsgathering operations. There’s simply no good reason to segregate the functions, he insisted.
"And it occurred to me that there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing -- writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology. Even though I tend to first use Microsoft Word on the way to being published, I am not, say, a Worder or Wordder.
"It’s just software, people! The underlying creative/media function remains exactly the same."
Hooked On A Feeling
Nothing further is needed except for these two words: David Hasselhoff. Enjoy.
Warning though, don't click "Play" if you are at work and don't want to explain to others why you are watching a video of David Hasselhoff singing "Hooked On A Feeling."
Warning though, don't click "Play" if you are at work and don't want to explain to others why you are watching a video of David Hasselhoff singing "Hooked On A Feeling."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)