Gone in a flash
Am I the only one in the world who can't view the Dr. Horrible videos? I watched the first two at work just fine and now when I try to view any of them at home, I get a black screen where the movie should play and the words "This video is not available at this site."

The hell? I've tried both Firefox and IE, my Flash is fully upgraded. All other sites are just fine. I'm kinda getting pissed here.

ETA: It was Norton. I disabled Internet Security and it worked fine. If you're having the same problem, I suggest you do the same.

Dark Knight is a perfect Darkpages film.

Batman: Vigilante/Moon
The Joker: Vigilante/Void
Harvey Dent: Adept/Warrior... reincarnates into Vigilante/Wheel

Hellboy, not being as "deep" as Dark Knight, is a bit tougher when thinking about Archetypes...

Hellboy: Freak/Warrior
Abe Sapien: Outsider/Fool
Liz Sherman: Elemental/Hermit
Jonathan Krausse: Ghost/Hermit
Prince Nuada: Adept/Sun

i walk
in loneliness
like the sistine
chapel

surrounded by people i'll never meet
no

you walk
in heels
like an animal
stalking prey
and boy

you shake hands with everyone you meet
so

tell me why
you can't cry
for the lost forgotten
tell me why
you want to die
in this city by the sea

tell me why
you walk on by
like an animal
stalking prey
tell me why
you're not with me
today

flicker lights
count the hours
rushing by us
i hear the hum
the lowly drum
of the city breathing
late at night
the moonlight spins
off the city bus
i hear the hum
the lowly drum
of the city breathing

in

out

and in

out

like an older man
gasping for breath
after his morning
cigarette

and now
i walk
on by
in my heels
like an animal
limping off
to die

and now
i talk
but the strangers
they don't talk back
ignore me
like i'm truth
and they'd rather
hear the lie

oh this dark
dark
city by the sea
it's a million people
but it's only you and me
and we sit
on the step
and we pass the can
you listen to me talk
i listen to you plan

gonna get
gonna get
gonna get
gonna get
gonna get
out of this
city by the sea
you say "someday"
"baby someday"
but i've known you now
for so many cans
and so many steps
so many days
and so many nights
that "someday"
oh baby that "someday"
is after "any day"
"any day"
any day but today

oh lord
i
walk
like an animal
limping off to die
baby, you and i
baby
you and me
two lonely castaways
in this
city by the sea

Man, oh man, needs it needs it
The downside to having made a cake made of pie is that I now know what a cake made of pie tastes like.

The downside to knowing what a cake made of pie tastes like is that now I crave cake made of pie.

Like, I really, really want a slice of cake made of pie.

Dammit.

So, the book is at the printers and it should be at IndiePressRevolution.com for the end of July.

Some feedback from a thread on Story Games...

"...it's bloody brilliant ...the kind of post-Agon dark space shooty game that I've been in the mood for recently. Also, the art and flavor text is perfect. Dark, inky, and grim, with just enough self-consciousness to know that this is all a bit ridiculous." - Jonathan Walton

"Wow. People who got the free one online: if you liked that one, this is going to blow you away." -Ken Atherton

"I absolutely adore the focused nature of the game and mechanics... Most of all, though, it's a story-telling game about war stories that looks fun, and damnit, not enough games are fun anymore." -Alexander Williams

"The whole thing's superbly executed and just f'ing works so damn well. ...reminded me a lot of Nemesis the Warlock, where we're playing the humans on their crusade to kill every motherf'er in the universe. Great stuff." -Rich Stokes

I am nervous about the book of course. I believe it's pretty good, but you always worry (well, I do) that there's something I've missed or I'm blind to. I think it looks and reads great, and when I've played the game it's been so much better than it was before. The flaws I saw before are not there now. I'm sure it's solid and works, but there's always that leap of faith when you put a part of yourself out there for people to buy, and judge.

It also contains strong language. So apologies to my parents in advance. I'm certainly glad I don't have to explain it to my gran.

In other news, Solipsist is in the black. The printing bills are all paid and David has made enough to pay for the art. We've sold 129 books and PDFs up to 16 July and the monies are all square now. Awesome. David worked really hard on the text and I like to think it looks and reads pretty well because of my work on it. I'll put a push on before and at GenCon to spread the word on this excellent game.

I am a little appalled by you guys. Only a few people told me they'd be downloading that Doctor Who documentary, but more than thirty people actually downloaded it. (What, you think I can't check a stats page?) So I've taken the documentary down. See if i ever do anything for you guys again!

While on the subject of things *I* am not doing: Jozelle Dyer is running some kind of raffle for free books. All you have to do is answer a couple of questions, and she enters you into the drawing.

Tonight is a big night! My super secret project wraps up, Psych comes back for its third season, and I am going to see 80s mall-pop queen Tiffany at a nightclub in St. Charles. There is a dress code. I have never attended a show with a dress code before!

Last night was a big night, too: I finished the Rose-warmers!

“Had my appendix removed yesterday...in bed, soup, painkillers, no class tomorrow. Will resched for next week.”

Hmmm.... could be the inspiration for his next script!

Man, yoga kicked my ass this morning. I'm not sure why but this class was the hardest one yet. I'll go again on Monday.

Reading: I put down the viking historical fantasy novel, The Whale Road when I realized that I just didn't give a fuck about the last thirty pages at all. Now I'm finishing up The Thief and Money Shot while flirting with the first ten pages of Childhood's End.

Planning: Saturday night fights, Sunday picnic with the Conspiracy of Shadows Pirates who could make it and sleeping on my new futon with Janaki (but not with Zorro).

Wearing: My new Dickies jeans and black shirt but I forgot my damned belt.

Writing: I wrote about the second session of Daggers and Deviltry and tinkered with other things.

And you?

Just as a quick FYI, the PDF version of Hot War is now available from Drive Through RPG and RPGnow at the baragin price of $13.

Want to know more? Then let me remind you of the exciting preview available on our website:

A 15 page PDF preview...

Samples of the amazing art...

Actual play threads...

And a whole bunch more stuff.

The pre-order for the hardcopy version is still on. Order it from Indie Press Revolution and get the PDF pack free and straight away. The pre-ordered hardcopies will be sent out to customers at the beginning of August.

Cheers
Malc

That's good enough for me
Played my first session of Dungeons & Dragons 4e tonight. In a way, it's what I've wanted D&D to be for years. Clean, simple, sure of itself. I went into combat clearly knowing what I could and could not do, what had to be done, how we complemented each other. Very nice.

So far, anyway. We'll see if anything changes throughout play but so far I'm very impressed.

Ahoy! Mutant City Blues will be making an appearance at GenCon, quoth simonjrogers:

We'll be releasing a limited edition softcover version of Mutant City Blues (60 copies) - the GenCon 2008 Special Edition.

Read more at http://simonjrogers.livejournal.com/72361.html

Check out some actual play at codeindigo

I have a 10-hour stop-over at LAX on Aug 8 (from noon to 9pm). Anyone wanna hang out?

Tom

On my meanderings round the globe, I got to play a fair number of games with a lot of good people. And I even managed to get actual play reports written up about some of them. This being the case, I decided to bring them all together in one place for the edification of all.

( The actual play... )

( Links to the games mentioned... )

Watch this...






Parts 1 and 2 are up now. part 3 goes up on Saturday. the whole thing comes down on Sunday.

Joss Wheeden, Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillian doing their take on a superhero musical.

Funny.

So this Saturday I'm going to be at Dex Con in New Brunswick. At some point in the afternoon I'm going to run a test performance of Something Is Rotten, my competitive improvised Hamlet game. If anyone is interested in playing, or even just talking about it come right up and let me know. I'm excited.

* mearls, I have discovered a minor problem with my cunning plan, which is that I have no idea what your email address is. Mine is rdonoghue at that gmail thingee.

* Many many thanks to captain_boots who solved one of my longstanding secret icons of the world mysteries, specifically that --->

As it turns out it's the symbol for Hollin Hills, a community in Virginia. With that, all of my mystery decals have been decoded, and now it's time to look for more! I have actually seen one or two, but they have generally been either too complicated for me to reproduce, or too far from anywhere I could take notes.

* Made some edits to the artificer powers, but Levi has made an offhand comment that has me thinking even more.

* Packing for Dexcon. The usual "Laptop or handheld" question is somewhat short circuited by the fact that I do not yet have a wall charger for the handheld, so the laptop is the only way. Plus, I admit I totally want to have the laptop on hand for when the new episodes of Doctor Horrible come out. Incidentally, if you have not watched act I yet, you are missing out. I look forward to many Captain Hammer t-shirts at gencon, and I note they were particularly wise to chose a service that can produce up to 4x. I describe this as "Knowing your target audience"

* I do not know why ipod touch cases suck so much. If I could get a case that doubled as a wallet and possibly had a card holder fore note taking, and which did not have one of those metal studs for mounting on your belt, I would be a happy man with much less crap in my pockets. This seems like a perfect target audience already exists. Fools like me who spend too much on an MP3 player and buy overpriced pens and notebooks would cheerfully shell out for the vastly overpriced Levenger's ipod wallet if such a beast existed. I can see the design of the ideal case so clearly that I may just build one out of duct tape.

* Ira Glass asserts that "Modern Jackass" may not be a real magazine, but as an idea of a magazine it is very useful. I'm not sure I'm sold yet.

* For anyone who doesn't know: I do breakfast in the hotel restaurant at dexcon at 8:00 friday saturday and sunday. This is explicitly an open table, and anyone who feels like it is welcome to join me. If you are thinking "Oh, but he doesn't mean me" then you are wrong. Come on down. This is not a big deal event by any stretch of the imagination, but I like people and I like breakfast, so I figure its worth combining the two. And if you're worried, while I'm not as easy to spot as Fred, what with the blue hair and all, I'm a large guy with glasses and hard to miss. Sure, that's only so much of a distinction during most of the con, but at 8:00 in the morning, while the herd still hides from the sun, I stand out. :)

* Also for Dexcon, I've got a couple Go Play car stickers. Real vinyl, the kind that doesn't fade. Ask me and if I still have any, I'll cheerfully hand one over.

I blogged her original video. Here is her version for Sesame Street. Like the original, this was done in one take, not cuts or edits, and you’ll watch it at least twice to see if you can figure out how the heck they did it.

This was a pretty good quarter for Evil Hat with IPR, despite the sense that sales numbers have dropped off overall. Part of this is due to the minimized expenses we've seen -- not having to reprint Spirit of the Century every couple hundred copies helps. Stuff that has been printed has been in small quantities. We also saw the debut of a new title -- Don't Lose Your Mind -- in preorder.

Here's the breakdown of the IPR numbers for the quarter:

Don't Lose Your Mind = 32 preorders in this quarter, all direct sales. Doesn't entirely cover the print run's costs, but it does take a healthy chunk out of it. Alternately, look at this as paying a big chunk of Ben's well-deserved paycheck.

Don't Rest Your Head sold 98 softcover copies -- 64 of which were to retailers, and 13 of which went to Endgame (for which I thank chrishanrahan and amberley) -- 20 pdfs, and 14 Print+PDF bundles, for a total of 132. That's pretty strong for Don't Rest Your Head, and nearly half of it was retailer sales. It's nice to see it getting out there like that.

Spirit of the Century was the usual workhorse of the set: 219 softcovers sold to retail this quarter, and another 23 in direct besides; 18 PDFs sold; and 83 Print+PDF bundles sold. That gives us a grand total of 343 copies -- better than Q1's performance by over 50 units.

Spirit of the Season was no slouch either. We saw 97 copies sold to retail, 9 copies besides, 28 PDFs, and 16 print+PDF bundles. That's a total of 150 copies.

Adding to the rest of Q2's performance, we get:

DLYM Preorder: 32

DRYH PDF: 42 +20 = 62
DRYH Print: 3 +112 = 115

SOTC PDF: 95 + 18 = 113
SOTC Hardcover: 26
SOTC Softcover: 325

SOTS PDF: 51 + 28 = 79
SOTS Print: 122

And lifetime:

DLYM: 32
DRYH: 1422 + 132 = 1554
SOTC: 3131 + 343 = 3474
SOTS: 151 + 150 = 301

To my own shock and delight, I'm going to be bringing a small quantity of Don't Lose Your Mind to Dexcon, some of which will be on sale at the IPR booth.

The official ship-date on Don't Lose Your Mind is still "after GenCon"!

EDIT: Oh! I'll also have a copy or two of the Italian edition of Don't Rest Your Head on hand, for folks who want to check it out. :)

Over the past two days, I did something I haven't done in a while.

I wrote stuff for the Dresden Files RPG.

It was a really strange sensation. Almost something like clarity.

I mean, yeah, I've demoted myself in terms of my role in the project somewhat, leaving the heavy system design work to Lenny, and the setting writing to Chad, but I've been wanting to get back in there and do a little divide-and-conquer action with Lenny on some of the implementation bits.

So 6750 words later, I've got the character templates chapter done up, taking into account some rebalancing of the costs for supernatural powers based on playtester feedback, getting rid of the permission construct in favor of simply presenting recipes for character builds. I like the look of it.

Over on the Jim Butcher Forum I've been leaking a few details about the chapter. I even posted one of its templates:

( Emissary of Power )

1) Yes, I am one of those guys who writes little dorky short stories about their gaming.

2) Both Anderson Silva's first UFC fight at 205 and Batman: Dark Knight are pulling on my eyes this weekend.

3) I missed making it to yoga by a few minutes. At six o'clock they lock the door to the studio. It was a shitty, really shitty way to start the morning.

4) A high school buddy/acquaintance contacted me via Facebook and reminded me how much of a daydreamer I was in school. He mentioned how my day dreams, playing with pencils as if they were swords and erasers as if they were space-ships really angered teachers. I had forgotten about that stuff. Funny.

5) 1st Quest is printed out and put into a nice 3-ring binder along with a red pen and my playtest notes. This shit is on now.

6) Lucha LIBRE!

Check out the move at around 2:25 in:

Because he is awesome, and because he should get something back from the Internet.

---

( Edit For Context: the sample Artificer class in Dragon magazine has only 2 at will abilities. This makes it impossible to make a human artificer, unless someone were to, say, come up with a few more at will abilities. Like these.)

Scatter Debris is balanced against Commander's strike. It does a little damage on the attack, but it needs to hit to go off, so that seems fair.
Unbalancing Shot feels like a nice gadgeteer attack, and feels like the right kind of "set them up" for a leader attack. It's possible it may be too powerful, since prone grants combat advantage, but since it will take _another_ attack to get them prone, I feel like a 3 man setup is not unreasonable to get CA.


EDIT: Considering different name and color for Scatter Debris, as one of the commenters rightly pointed out that throwing trash may not feel entirely heroic. I've altered the debris color text, but am considereing changign the name entirely to something like:



Thoughts welcome.

Photoshop disasters usually just points out poor work from the underskilled. One of the most common mistakes you see on the internet is an improper use of the "wet floor" effect that apple has popularized over the last few years. The trick to doing the effect right is to understand how reflections actually work in the real world. That is you need a pretty basic understanding of 3d, lighting, and how objects exist in space.

Obviously Disney Pixar has no experiance thinking about these fields of knowledge:


seriously.

Oh, in other news i wrote up this big rant about how Music simulation games, particularly the new Wii music (unveiled yesterday) haven't yet hit the sweet spot. I'm not sure if anyone would actually like to read that. If you have an interest in hearing my thoughts on the subject let me know, otherwise I won't burden the internet with more needless opinion and forecasting.

This blog is also an RSS feed.

So, some recent discussion of 4e on story games has made me think that there's a point about the monster manual and all the monsters therein which may not be obvious on the surface but which can completely open up your game.

Every monster in the monster manual is a lie.

( Behind the lie )

Well, I have finished watching The Exorcist. I was not scared at all, not even vaguely creeped out. SADFACE. I can see how it would have been kind of shocking for the time period, not scary! You know what I want to know, though? What is the fetish the cop has for priests? The cop kept putting his arm around the priests and asking them out to the movies and lunch. Where is the fanfic about that?! That's what I want to know!

*profanes all over the place*

Really it just made me want to watch Stigmata, because Stigmata clearly stole a bunch of stuff -- or are we calling it homage? Haha. -- but I enjoyed it a lot more. Not to mention Patricia Arquette and Gabriel Byrne. Hello.

Really I am posting to say: The right hand of my armwarmers is finished. I freaking love it. I modified the pattern a little -- I did an entire extra diamond repeat so that the hand would be longer, and I cabled the sides every five rows instead of every three. I wish I knew a little more about how to shape garments, because my wrists are smaller than my arms, and my hand is bigger than my wrist; I could have used a decrease row or two to shape the wrists. But ultimately I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Tonight is Knit Night at my local yarn shop, and I'll start the left armwarmer then, I guess, if I don't get too impatient and start it at lunch instead!

Cubicle 7's Starblazer Adventures, which I did the layout work on, now has a preview PDF up for your perusal:

http://www.cubicle-7.com/starblazer/stardownloads.htm

Comcast seems to be having some kind of DNS problem this morning. anyone else see signs?

hello from Farmington

I am posting with my iPod

I could rent a porno in my room but its the same price as a cd on iTunes so fuck that

I couldn't find my ds when I was packing so no pokemon :(

Almost dexcon!!!

* So, I realized that in talking about character sheets, I linked directly to the PDF and thereby neglected to make sure appropriate mad props got given to the creator of the landscape sheet I used as the basis for all the fiddling I did. That was uncool of me, so I want to flag it now. If you want cool sheets for 4e, watch this space.

* I seem to have gotten my 4e stuff down to a single kit. I'm using a bag I had from Duluth as the core, the three books, small pockets filled with dice and pencils, a Paizo fold up battlemat and some dry erase markers, A bunch of round counters from Fiery Dragon punched out and put on magnetic backing then stored in a counter tray (props to justinjacobson for finding that - it works way better than my other storage attempts), some mini stackable chips from Koplow and I'm good to go. I have some magnetic chips coming from Alea Tools but they haven't arrived yet, so they don't quite count. Side pocket has a handful of figs, and it's good to go. It's still a little big, and I'm debating switching into a bag that can hold my laptop rather than the core books, now that the pdfs for the books are legitimately available (if more expensive than buying the actual book at Amazon). I'll hone it a bit more and maybe get it to the point where it's portable for Dexcon.

* So, my other birthday gift was a printer, one capable of double siding. Now, this would only be so exciting so some people, but those people don't also have binding staplers. Just to see, I printed out the PHB's entry on the fighter in booklet style - 4 pieces of paper, 16 pages (14 used), tiny and convenient. I am totally making more of these next time we do a chargen jam. (I'm on a mac, so I just use cocoabooklet to handle the pagination for the booklets)

* D&D4 has been eating my brain in tangential ways. That core conceit of powers as "a little something extra" when you perform a successful roll is really compelling, and hugely portable outside of D&D. It's the conceit that separates D&D powers from Exalted charms in large part. Most charms just make you better, while most powers do something extra. Exalted 2nd cleaned this up a lot, by standardizing the "do better" charms as excellencies, allowing the other charms to be much more interesting. You can see a lot of the things that worked for charms working for powers - just further evidence that even if it's not to everyone's taste (nor should it be) it was not built in a vacuum. Which is not me saying D&D was directly influenced by Exalted - I have no idea if it was - but rather that if you said to me "Yeah, those D&D guys played and read some Exalted" I would have no trouble believing that. Anyway, I'm now pondering the semi standardization of the various "something else"-s and what that suggests in terms of gaps and combinations. It's pretty fun.

* Ipod Touch continues to be a tiny magical box. I'm not 100% happy with any of the todo list apps (and I don't know why apple doesn't just make it sync todo lists when it syncs Ical) and the interface is still unfamiliar, but all in it's been pure joy. I'm still kind of hyperconscious of carrying it in my pocket, but that will hopefully fade in time.

* I finally listened to the last episode of Have Games Will Travel in the car today. I knew it was coming, but it remains a shame. HGWT was, for me, the single best gaming podcast out there. Paul Tevis, the host, is an excellent reviewer and a masterful speaker. His tastes were close enough to mine to guarantee my interest, yet removed enough to bring my attention to things I would not look for myself. Now, I'm talking like he's dead, but he's not. He's still podcasting, and has just released a great little Gencon Runup with the ever talented Ryan Macklin, and he will be continuing to do Voice of the Revolution and his own shorter form "A Few Games More" segments, so he's still bringing the awesome. But I will miss HGWT. It and Sons of Kryos were the two podcasts which changed my perspective from "Enh, podcasts...who cares?" to that of someone who is perpetually behind on his listening.

So, I dunno. I find myself looking for where I put my microphone. I've talked about and toyed with the idea of Podcasting before, but in my heart of hearts, Paul was out there doing everything I would want to do, so I could let it slide. It seems I am now bereft of that excuse.

Oh boy, Hellboy
The day job took everyone out to see Hellboy II. It's...an adequate, enjoyable experience. This is how I summed up Hellboy II to a friend:

My friends online are going apeshit for it and my general impression is that I'm seeing Guillermo del Toro using the same tricks from film to film. They're good tricks but I'm not going to be wowed by them every time I see them.

Like an uncle who can magically produce a quarter from behind your ear, the magic fades with time and repetition.

There's a lot of imagination in the film, and the principals are very good, but it looks and feels like it was shot entirely on a lot (whether it was or not) from the BPRD interior to the Emerald Isle. I never felt like this was anything but a film. It didn't take me there, is what I'm saying.

I was bored during the fight scenes, underwhelmed by the resolution, and the last four minutes are simply not supported by the rest of the film. But Abe and Nuala had mad chemistry, I gotta admit.

The best part of the entire experience was the new trailer for Blindness. I'm looking forward to that.

I'm pleased to announce the newest collaboration between Tomorrow The World! Games (Ryan Macklin) and Gameslinger Enterprises (myself): This Just In From GenCon!

Ryan and I will be doing twice-daily live shows from GenCon, Thursday through Sunday, at 11 AM and 5 PM, recorded in the Westin's Congress meeting room. We're also doing several preview shows, the first of which is available through iTunes and via RSS at http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThisJustInFromGencon. You can also download it from our sponsor, DriveThruRPG, at http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?manufacturers_id=2417. We're excited about doing this, and we encourage anyone interested to come by our recording sessions in Indy. These events are open to the public and are on the GenCon schedule.

As for the introductory episode:

This Just In From GenCon 01

On this introductory episode of This Just In From GenCon, Paul & Ryan talk about what they're planning on doing with this live, twice-daily show -- 11a & 5p every day at GenCon. They'll be publishing these episodes after recording them, so folks at home can get a taste of GenCon and find out what's going on, while folks at the show can stop by to see what they might be missing and to say hi to their friends on the air.

Paul & Ryan close off by talking about two places they're looking to hit up early on: Paizo Publishing & Fantasy Flight Games.

Running time: 5:32 / File size: 3.8 MB

Edinburgh, UK - July 15, 2008 - BoxNinja announces the release of their Science Fiction RPG "3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars".

Designed by Gregor Hutton (Best Friends) 3:16 is a winner of a High Ronny Award for Games Design. Featuring a stunning cover by Paul Bourne (a|state, Cold City, Hot War) and haunting interiors by Gregor Hutton 3:16 is a visual treat.

This high-octane Science-Fiction role-playing game for 2 or more players has your Space Troopers killing bugs all across the Cosmos. You’ll advance in rank, improve your weapons, slay civilization after civilization and find out who you are through an innovative “Flashback” mechanic.

Terra’s plan is to kill every living thing in the Universe to protect the home world. See where your tour of duty in the 3:16th Expeditionary Force takes you and your friends. Revel in the kill-happy machismo and enjoy a campaign of Carnage Amongst The Stars.

3:16 is a Science-Fiction role-playing game about Carnage Amongst The Stars.

• Take your squad of kill-happy Troopers and annihilate bugs!
• Low preparation, elegant game system.
• Delivers developing campaign play.
• Lavishly illustrated and designed book.
• Winner of a High Ronny Award for Games Design for the original version.

"3:16 is one helluva kick-ass game" - Joe J. Prince, author of Contenders
"Fantastic, gorgeous design" - Ron Edwards, author of Sorcerer
-----
PDF (96 pages, $10)
Available NOW from IndiePressRevolution and OneBookShelf sites.
IPR
DTRPG
RPGnow

PRINT (96 pages, $20)
Available from IndiePressRevolution from August 1.

GENCON
See 3:16 at GenCon Indy (14-17 August 2008) on the "Design Matters" Booth (#1940).
-----
NAME OF GAME: 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars
AUTHOR: Gregor Hutton
PUBLISHER: BoxNinja
SKU: BOX0316
ISBN: 978-0-9559945-0-0
ILLUSTRATORS: Paul Bourne (cover), Gregor Hutton (interior)
PRICE: $20/£10 (print); $10 (PDF)
PAGES: 96
SIZE: Digest (8.5" x 5.5", Landscape)
NOTE: Strong Language, Mature Themes, recommended for age 15+
WEB: boxninja.com
COVER IMAGE:

I am watching The Exorcist. I keep having to start and stop, so after 24 hours of watching, I am still only about an hour into it. But, you guys, it is not scary! I am disappointed. I was expecting to be a little creeped out, at the very least. But this is no Stigmata (even though it's pretty clear to me that Stigmata was heavily influenced by this movie).

Is it based on a book? The Exorcist, I mean, not Stigmata. Stigmata is clearly based on the question: What would be super hot and a little creepy?

Haha.


(ETA: Yes it is! The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I am told in the comments that it is not even a bad book! Stay tuned as I wrangle a copy for free and live blog as I read it.)


Other stuff: My friend Jonathon used to complain that I never smiled in photographs. I smile a lot now. Maybe it's the difference between 18 and 28? Maybe not, because there are a lot of people my age who still don't smile in photographs. I am thinking about this because I took a series of pictures showing off my pomp, and I am smiling in almost every single one.

(I mean, I was going for a pomp, but I think what I ended up with is Long Island Mall Rat. Hah.)

You know what else? I am almost finished with the first Rose Tyler arm warmer. I am finished with the thumb gusset! It is on scrap yarn! All I have to do is a few more rows of the hand (I am making mine longer than the pattern calls for), and then finish the thumb, and I am done with the first one! I don't know why I am in such a rush to get these done -- it's ridiculous, it's the summertime! I can't wear them! But I want to finish them, and then maybe make pairs for all my Doctor Who-watching friends.

This will be cross posted

Thought I'll pass this on.

The Witch Girls Adventures website is open.
Let me know what you think.

:)

www.witchgirlsadventures.com

Sales figures are in for Q2, so here;s the quarterly excitement-o-rama that is the CGS numbers!

BUT! The big news of the quarter is that Cold City topped 1000 sales! Yes, by the end of Q2, we had hit 1022 sales. Which is wonderful. So thank you to everyone who has commented on, helped with, played, run, supported or had anything at all to do with Cold City. Hitting 1000 copies before the second anniversary of release was certainly an ambition, but it is a milestone that I am still extraordinarily pleased to have hit.

( Boring sales figure stuff behind this cut... )

It's Doctor Horrible Day!

What is Doctor Horrible, you ask? Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog is a story in three acts, and, well, all I know about it are these things:

* Neal Patrick Harris wears goggles
* Nathan Fillion wears a shirt that would look appropriate in Matt Wagner's Mage
* That Whedon guy is behind it all
* It's a musical

That was enough to merit a sale. I opted to pay for episode 1 on itunes just to try out some video on the new toy, but you can just watch it at the site.

two mornings in a row i've woken up with The Sick. gross.

off on my journey!

Syberia I & II by Benoit Sokal & the folks at Microids
Beautiful, moving, frustrating, engaging, annoying, weird, epic.

Kate Walker is one of the best protagonists I've played in a long time. And, get this, she actually has an arc. That you believe.

She grows and you care about her. You are annoyed when she is, overjoyed when she is, concerned when she is, and you're rooting for her all the way (especially when her personal life subplot starts along--*shakes fists at [spoiler]*.

Almost every puzzle has a logical solution (and they supply throughout the game the logic behind the solution so it remains contextual) and even though some had me pulling hair (my own), all were rewarded in the end.

It's simply a magnificent game, flaws and all (and there are flaws: obviously hierarchical dialogue trees that fall out of hierarchy, disjointed conversations, some obtuse puzzle presentation--though not design, the best cell phone service in the entire world).

The Encore edition is available through Amazon.com. It's US$9.95 and that's a steal. I've seen Syberia II alone go for $46 on the secondary retail market.

The requirements are low, so chances are very good your PC will run it just fine. (Mine did great with all the settings turned up and my computer is a three-year old home office machine.) I reckon it took me around 20 hours to finish both games (the first one seemed longer) and I don't feel any of that time was wasted (that's afterglow talking; there were times in the game I felt like I was wasting my time but, like I said, the reward recompenses you for your effort).

It's so sweet, with genuinely touching, surprising moments. There were some that dropped my jaw--literally--and had me uttering, "Oh shit..." at just how ingenious some parts were--and how some seemingly unrelated things wound up coming together.

I'm glad I was able to start the second one right after the first (it even asks you if you'd like to) because waiting between the two would've been torture. The final ending is one of the most gratifying, touching I've seen.

Seriously. If you're an adventure fan, you must play this. It's an exemplar piece of software.

If I reviewed games, I'd give this some very favorable sign, a sky of stars, a thumb or two, or some amount of upturned hats.

But all you really need to know is: It's good. It's great. Play it.

I'm playing D&D right now. This is happening. We tried to sneak into the bad guy's house. I even sacrificed a perfect sniper position to help back the group's bluff at the front door. Alas, as happens all too often in RPGs, our stealthy and bluff plan ended in bloodshed. Luckily, while the rest of the party mixes it up on the staircase, I'm in the bad guy's bedroom searching for the maps we're here for.

Ok, time to start killin' suckas; my initiative just came up. Wish me luck!

Edit @ 11:49 PM PST: Scored a crit with blinding barrage. Ordered Chris Tulach's death save to be a 20, which of course it did. So far, so good.

Edit @ 12:07 AM PST: Bad guys taken down, everyone has headed home. Time to sleep the sleep of victory.

So, my Birthday gift from my wife was an ipod touch. I am cheating on my n800, but it's so shiny and fun!

Anyway, the app store has opened up, and the word is full of more options for software than I can easily process. With the note that I'm looking to use this as a PDA, but I'm not above using it for a little entertainment. If I can get to the point where I can read PDFs on it, that's entirely made of win. So with that in mind, any ipod touch.iphone folks out there have any suggestions for the best apps to pull down? I'm willing to pay money for them if they're good stuff, but free is obviously a better price.

Today I found out that eating an entire tub of hummus causes me to lay down some furious gas. My feelings about it are complex, like I'd imagine a researcher who discovers some new strain of human-killing disease must feel: pride and wonder mixed with revulsion and fear.

I need to turn these nighttime strolls into a ritual. There were even more fireflies out tonight. I thought about my friends that I'm in love with. I can't think of a better phrase for it. For a long time I thought an intense mixture of loyalty and devotion was something I could only feel for someone I was putting my peepee in. I mean, the feeling's always been there. I just haven't always appreciated it.

Tomorrow I head for Farmington. I have no idea what kind of computer access I'll have while I'm there. Probably some. I mean, I'll be sitting at a computer all day. I just don't know who'll be peering over my shoulder and making it difficult to post about bodily functions.

Oh, my stimulation check came today. I won't be able to deposit it until next week. I'm not going to lie - the temptation to use it to get my new computer right now instead of a couple months from now is pretty strong. But then, this will be my best chance to put this credit card debt to bed once and for all.

My dad taught me to eat live frogs. You ever hear that saying? It goes something like, "Wake up in the morning and eat a live frog first thing. That way you spend the rest of the day knowing that the worst that could happen to you already has." I can procrastinate with the best of them, but most shit I just want to get done and I want to get it done now, and delays drive me insane. When I was a kid I always wanted to put off the crappiest chores and my dad would make me do them right away. I try to do that now. I could just do a better job of identifying the things that need to get done.

Man I like Italian ice.

avatar? more like AVATARD.

( why that show is overrated. )

So, no time really to do a full honest "State of the Hat" post right now, but instead I'll excerpt from my latest status mail to our development team: ( DFRPG Status Check-In )

Listening: Still listening to the Berserk soundtrack. I like this guy's stuff. He also did the Paranoia Agent soundtrack which I also know I like having watched the show, and I intend to pick it up sometime in the future.

Playing: I'm on the last mission of Grand Theft Auto IV and it's the first mission I've had problems with. I get to this motorcycle chase sequence and end up inexplicably losing my quarry every single time and failing the mission. It seems like one of those situations where I'm missing something obvious, but since it takes 20 minutes of car chase and shoot'em up blasting to get to that point, it's been frustratingly difficult to figure out where I'm going wrong. Also, I'm Pokemon'ing as usual. I'm almost to Solaceon Town at which point I'll be able to start breeding again which will be nice. I have a whole host of critters that my friends probably don't.

Reading: Still reading Happy Cruelty Day. With three days of free time in a hotel room, I'll probably finish it off before the week's out and move on to other things.

Watching: Ki-Duk Kim! I watched The Bow and Bad Guy last week and have yet to watch a movie directed by him that I didn't like. His silent protagonist thing he has going is really interesting and effective, and it hasn't been overused yet.

Planning: Dexcon! Dexcon!

Hey! Look! New icon! Do you guys know about my history with cameras? I love them. This is a directory full of pictures from when I was much younger and had a webcam that I abused mercilessly. And my new MacBook came with a webcam built in. Oh, the fun I am having!

Anyway. Can we talk about Doctor Who 2x13? Okay, technically it is 28x13, but who's counting really?

I know you are probably expecting some kind of serious meta, but I don't have any. I watch that episode (along with 2x12, of course!) once every few months, and cry every single time. That is basically my entire commentary. It makes me cry.

I think it might be the best season-end of new Who that there is. Certainly 3x13 sucked (and not just because I hate Martha), and do we have to talk about 4x13? I mean, seriously, do we even have to bring that up? It makes me want to punch someone.

Feel free to discuss in comments, or link me to your meta, though, because I am interested! I just don't have anything interesting to say. You know how that sort of thing goes.

So. 2x13. What I notice every time is that Rose is wearing wrist-warmers. I am normally not a fan of wrist warmers -- often mislabeled irritatingly as fingerless gloves -- but I really like these. And guess what! There is a pattern on the internet for knitting them!

I bought some Malabrigo yarn in Plum Blossom (the closest color Knitorious had to what Rose is wearing, which I think is more rupestre, really), and I have been knitting my own!

Here is a picture. I've changed the pattern a little -- I started on Wednesday following the pattern exactly, which meant doing a 3x3 cable every third row. But I really did not like the way the cables pulled at the yarn horizontally (even though it's really more accurate, if you look at the way the sides of Rose's wristwarmers pull), so I frogged the thing, and redesigned the cables to be every fifth row. I like this a lot better! (You can see the slightly cabling better in this picture.)

It's too bad that it's, oh, summertime, and wearing wool wristwarmers -- well, I am making mine kind of long, so they will be armwarmers! -- is kind of ridiculous. Totally ridiculous.

Probably I will shove them in a drawer and forget about them, and when winter comes around I'll not be able to find them. But who cares about that?

Oh! Also, I'm not sure if any of you are interested, but I uploaded a documentary on Doctor Who to this directory. It is 700mb, so I ask that (1.) you do not download it unless you really want it, and (2.) you leave a comment here letting me know that you've downloaded it so that I can keep track of my bandwidth usage.

( Don't Lose Your Don't Lose Your Mind )

(If you want to understand the cut-tag text, just jump forward to about 3:45 on the video.