I am back from EGG Con this past weekend, and it was fantastic. I sold a lot of books and played a few games. Heidi Gygax Garland and Erik Garland did a hell of a good job with the Con. Reminds me of Gary Con in its early days. It is kind of small, but I hope it grows; it is really a great con.Jackson, ILI got to play some NIGHT SHIFT in Jackson. I ran a session of "For Whom the Bell Tolls." It was a fantastic experience to see Valentino, Renee, Andy, Rowan, Denise, and Candy brought to life by…
Money tree plants are rumored to bring good luck and prosperity, making them popular gifts. 19 Money Tree
Who doesn’t love a sunset.
Pasted up on the base of a light pole, framed by silver steel, is this hand painted flower. Quick and dirty, alive with the rush of creation. The magenta center dot is the only thing that feels considered. The rest is all organic and emotion. The sticker addition is also quite respectful. It’s not a signature, but a comment, in context, but not the focus of the conversation. Midtown, Manhattan.
Finally getting around to reading “The Age of Reading is Over” in The Atlantic (the hard copy, one of my last since my subscription has lapsed, arrived). It’s some of the saddest stuff I’ve ever read, and I’m not even to the AI section yet!
The pattern persists, the pattern persists. I woke up late again, the pattern persists, the sink isn't very full of dishes, but it's not empty either, the pattern persists, I slept badly again, the pattern persists, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, the house smells bad, I forgot to clean the cat's litter box... I forgot? I highly doubt it, maybe a cigarette will calm me down? Nah, there's a sweet treat in the fridge, damn, I should cut out sugar. There's nothing special about me, I have…
Since my trip back from Japan in February (literally—the idea popped into my head waiting for takeoff) I’ve been working on a new way to make games. I forced myself to think about the future and asked “how might games be made in the new world?” (some may say the post-ai world? perhaps a not-so-distant future?) It took a lot of work but I’ve done it! To test my new system I’ve been recreating many old arcade games to see how easily and succinctly these classics sit and fit in my new system.…
Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me. The long-ish walks I take around the neighborhood for exercise often pass through a long, narrow overlook park called Fairview Park, which basically has one long, winding one-way street with ascending hills on one side and descending hills (and a sidewalk) on the other for most of its length. Not long ago, they put up a map of the park near one of the entrances, and I noticed that it denoted a hiking trail zigzagging up the hill and connecting to…
I slide into reality like one of those old great ball players who slide into third base with hopes to lead his team to a run that wins the game.Jim Carroll said, “I just want to be pure.”I don’t know how possible this is for me. Then again, there are those who live with their impurities and still manage to come out on top or they figure out how to get ahead without chopping off the heads of the people in front of them I know I was told the last shall be first and the first shall be last.And in…
8th JulyHere we are into July already. This was something of a frustrating trip and yet also fairly enjoyable. I had heard there was a family of long-eared owls in the Pentlands. Gordon had been walking his dog and had enjoyed a tremendous display from them - the adults flying nearby and catching food to give to youngsters in the trees overhead. Loads of photos were going up on birding sites, others having similar encounters. I waited until a decent weather day and caught the 44 bus to Balerno…
A crew of Canadians and Michiganders took a remote operated vehicle (ROV) to the deepest point of Lake Superior, a point known as Superior Maximus. It’s the first such attempt in some 40 years. In that attempt UW-Milwaukee researcher J. Val Klump piloted a submersible craft to the deep. This one was done by a robot which feels safer and kinder to the lake. To give a sense of how deep Superior Maximus is, the surface is about 650 feet above sea level and the deepest point is 733 feet below sea…
Hey Michael Kriegh! We're so glad you decided to add Cameo Balconette Lift Up Bra Buff to your top drawer! How does it fit? Do you like the style? Tell us everything! dear J from Pepper… though i am not sure i am the sort of customer you really want to hear from, i will give it a go… i am more thrilled than you can imagine with the Cameo Balconette Lift Up Bras i recently purchased (as i have been with all the lingerie i have purchased from pepper)… i searched long and hard for non-custom bras…
Bee on clover blossom Continuing to reset my brain, I am currently enjoying time away from home and work by doing family stuff in a nicely green part of our little country. This involves a lot of reading (did I recommend 'Dungeon Crawler Carl' already to you? No? Please go check out that series). Eventually I will even come around to continuing The Stormlight Archive series 😜 Also, I have a lot of material to photography, which I have been doing to my heart's content. This results in quite a…
As is tradition, the Resonite panel and meetup will happen at Eurofurence 30. You can meet team members as well as community members there. If you’re attending EF, don’t forget to drop by and say hello! It will take place on Saturday, August 22, at 11:00, in room CCH X 9-11 (first floor). Can’t wait to see you all there. Additionally, there will be a special episode of the Purple Hour done in the evening of the 18th, near the CCH. If you’ll be there, don’t hesitate to show up, this probably…
Don’t get me wrong, it looks kind of cool, almost like an “advisor gun” of the type that the original SF A-Teams (the “Gypsies of the Battlefield”) liked in the early days of the CIDG program in Vietnam, but I have to wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze and they got the dwell time worked out to where it works better than the old Universal Enforcer. I give you, Auto-Ordnance’s factory SBR M-1 Carbine: According to AO’s press release (emphasis mine): Designed for optimal maneuverability and…
Thirty years ago, when I first started writing for Doctor Dobb’s Journal, I decided to do a piece on the object-oriented features that were being added to MATLAB 5. I didn’t know much about them, so I called The MathWorks, told the publicity rep who I was, and asked if they could find me a co-author. A couple of days later I got a call back from a woman who said she had volunteered to help with the article. I assumed she was also from marketing, so I explained again who I was and what I wanted.…
Three weeks from today, my onground classes start at Spartanburg Methodist College; it will be both similar and different for me. It will be my 3rd year of full-time work at the college, after 1 year of adjunct work, but the beginning of the tenure track for me. I'll write more about that in a few weeks. I wish I could say that our plans to be in our fixer-upper house in Spartanburg are on schedule, but they are not. I will make a few phone calls today and hope to figure out where we are. We've…
In a world where television isn’t always all I want it to be, it’s delightful when something feels 100% entirely right. So it was on Sunday night, where the BBC broadcast its closing montage for the World Cup. BBC Sport always do these wonderfully – I have a soft spot for the one made for the 2016 Rio Olympics, and yes, the music there was the obvious choice – but I fancy this is one of the very best they’ve ever done. Every time I watch it, I spot something new. When the planes appear at 29…
Paris’s public transport tickets suck… for now! In his blog post yesterday, Terence Eden observed that of all the cities he’s travelled to over the last year, Paris had the most-ridiculously-unhelpful public transport ticketing system: Fuck Paris. The only way to buy a metro ticket is to download an app. Fair enough. But, after downloading the app it tells you to install another app! What the actual fuck? A convoluted, messy, and frustrating situation which has resulted in awful reviews for…
Sometimes when I've pointed my finger and poked my stick too much, muddying the stream, the best thing to do is absolutely nothing, silently, until the water clears. To attain perfect clarity by not interfering is also action. Waves of stillness. Words full of quiet. To dance like a mountain on a cloud. These are the signs of the Witness.This morning I am called, not to improve my doing,
I made up this little cheat sheet this morning to tuck into my logbook for Maine cruise. I've done the same in the past, particularly with the sounds South Carolina and Georgia, sjust o that I can wrap my head around the local geography.These are the larger rivers between Casco Bay to the west and Penobscot Bay to the east. On last year's cruise I did sail on the Sheepscot River. I anchored one night just around the corner from the Kennebec River, and I also spent a night just below the mouth…
Two weeks ago a buddy took me and the kids for a short boat ride to Sambro Island. They did all the planning, getting the boat in the water, etc. I took the kids. There sits a lighthouse with a small, modern, solar station beside it. It and all the buildings around it are falling down with the memory of how Canada became to be. This trip happened days after I listened to a story on CBC radio about another lighthouse at risk of being lost. We aren't good in Canada at commiting resources to…
The kitchen light was the only one on in the house, and Cole was already under it when Russ came down. Six birds on the counter, out of the plastic now, pale and sweating in the trays. Their mother had made this every year for the church supper and God knew how much of it for other people’s funerals, and someone at the visitation — one of the Kellner women, an aunt by marriage — had said of course they’d want her chicken tomorrow, everyone would expect it. As if expecting were a kindness. So…
I've not seen sunflowers with orange petals before. This local planting caught my eye and Idecided to stop and photograph a few of them. To my delight bees were feasting onthe pollen. (click to enalrge)Summertime––warm days, lots of sunshine, stormy afternoons and delightful things everywhere to photograph, things that may not be there in the other seasons. Swimming, flowers blooming, boaters, kids playing sports and a lot of other visual eye candy. Here are just a few things I’ve encountered…
It’s time again to return to Door County, Wisconsin. This year, we kept things super simple: fewer trips up and down the peninsula, more time on the lake, more quality time together. Apart from the no-see-ums, which made our kids look like they had chicken pox, we accomplished our goal. Before we left, I told […]
Bad news: My 11 a.m. Tuesday flight to New York was cancelled Monday afternoon. I now have to get to the airport at 5 a.m. to play standby roulette. Good news: Managed to get a seat on 7:30 a.m. flight to Atlanta, and a connection to LaGuardia. Bad news: Middle seat… Good news: …in an exit row! Bad news: The layover time in Atlanta is 30 minutes. Good news: Doing a 10K bike ride most days has made me pretty good at airport sprints. I should be able to make it, assuming the flight doesn’t…
not last nightAfter dinner when I checked this it was still tacky. Got the 2nd (and final) coat on it this AM. I tried to sand it with 320 grit and that didn't go well. It wasn't tacky to the touch but the sandpaper grabbed and stuttered like it was. I'll have to let this set up for while before I try that again.found the MIA center punchI spent almost an hour sifting through the shitcan trying to find it. Got this sent out this AM. I still don't think it is worth to try and fix it but he is…
Some of the things I most love doing now, I loved doing as a child. Here is a list of five of them, what are yours?1. Writing poetryI don’t know why I started. I also don’t have those poems anymore, thanks to the awkward almost adult “this is fucking crap!” phase. (if you are a young poet, please listen: if you feel like throwing your old poetry away, don’t. By the time you are an old lady like me you’ll long to read your poems).2. Being craftyI remember sitting with my grandmother, tongue…
12 Miles of NothingnessThe idea for this walk came from the "Boundary Walk" for the Beltane Pilgrimage. AI based research managed to find 8 out of the potential 29 walks. A tick-list was formed. Rare access to the car, meant I could head off to Tenbury Wells for a route that I approached with justified trepidation.In this part of the world, the paths are usually in chronic condition. A look on the map, and I could see that there was little of interest. Although the paths were better than…
How has the weather been suiting you? Is the so called heat wave a good or bad thing, putting aside, if one can, the fact that when we are all brown bread, it will likely be even hotter? At my age there is nothing I can do about it anyway - if ever I could have in real terms. Well, for me, I love it. I delight in getting up and seeing sunshine. I feel lifted by it even when hot, though hot and humid probably takes the edge off it for me. Dry heat is fine, sticky heat less so. But on the whole,…
