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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 | |
fromthemorgue
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8:25a |
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| Monday, July 20th, 2009 | |
forbeck_feed
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8:06p |
My Star Trek Toy
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/forbeckcom/~3/G2dMvSP0nMM/ http://www.forbeck.com/2009/07/20/my-star-trek-toy/  The Star Trek movie toy set I designed for Playmates Toys is going on sale in August. The Star Trek Interactive Utility Belt comes with a phaser and communicator that allow you to interact with the belt and communicate with Starfleet Command. I designed the game play and wrote the dialog with some help from a couple of excellent TV writers—who I’m not sure I’m allowed to name at the moment.
There’s a wild story about my involvement with this that involves last year’s Comic-Con. While I’m at Comic-Con this week, I’ll have to see if I can get clearance to write about it. Once again, those non-disclosure agreements make me bite my tongue—which is why it took be so long to be able to mention this in the first place.
Now that it’s public knowledge, though, woot! I can’t wait to play.
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forbeck_feed
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7:26p |
Hobby Games Essayists Assemble!
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/forbeckcom/~3/CbwzZIQCmzQ/ http://www.forbeck.com/2009/07/20/hobby-games-essayists-assemble/ The esteemed editor Jim Lowder has given a hundred or so people permission to release the list of essayists they’re joining for Family Games: The 100 Best, the follow-up to the award-winning Hobby Games: The 100 Best. I happen to be one of those lucky souls, and here’s that amazing list.
We can’t say what we’re writing about yet. The only real rule was that we couldn’t cover a game we worked on. That, of course, left plenty great games to choose from.
The book should be out in late August. I can’t wait to read it.
FAMILY GAMES: THE 100 BEST
Mike Gray: Foreword
James Lowder: Introduction
Wil Wheaton: Afterword
David Millians: Appendix (Games and Education)
ESSAYISTS:
Andrea Angiolino
Keith Baker
Wolfgang Baur
Carrie Bebris
Uli Blennemann
Bill Bodden
Mike Breault
Richard Breese
Todd Breitenstein
Alessio Cavatore
Leo Colovini
William W. Connors
David “Zeb” Cook
Monte Cook
Luke Crane
Dominic Crapuchettes
Elaine Cunningham
Richard Dansky
Karl Deckard
Dale Donovan
James Ernest
Matt Forbeck
Anthony J. Gallela
Richard Garfield
Marc Gascoigne
Stephen Glenn
Eric Goldberg
Andrew Greenberg
Ed Greenwood
Jeff Grubb
Scott Haring
Bruce Harlick
Jess Hartley
Fred Hicks
Will Hindmarch
Kenneth Hite
Joshua Howard
Steve Jackson (GW)
Steve Jackson (SJG)
Paul Jaquays
Seth Johnson
Matthew Kirby
Corey Konieczka
John Kovalic
Robin D. Laws
Matt Leacock
Jess Lebow
Jon Leitheusser
Ken Levine
Nicole Lindroos
Ian Livingstone
Michelle Lyons
Hal Mangold
Jason Matthews
Erik Mona
Alan R. Moon
Colin Moulder-McComb
Bruce Nesmith
Kevin Nunn
Peter Olotka
Phil Orbanes
Andrew Parks
David Parlett
Sébastien Pauchon
jim pinto
Mike Pondsmith
Chris Pramas
Lewis Pulsipher
John D. Rateliff
Sheri Graner Ray
Philip Reed
Thomas M. Reid
Susan McKinley Ross
Charles Ryan
Steven Schend
Robert J. Schwalb
Emiliano Sciarra
Jesse Scoble
Mike Selinker
Bruce Shelley
John Smedley
Lester Smith
Jared Sorensen
Warren Spector
Stan!
Gav Thorpe
Dan Tibbles
Jeff Tidball
John Scott Tynes
Monica Valentinelli
James Wallis
James M. Ward
Darren Watts
Tom Wham
Bruce Whitehill
John Wick
Kevin Wilson
Ray Winninger
Teeuwynn Woodruff
John Yianni
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heron61
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2:03p |
40 Years Later
40 years ago today, I was a young child of 7 visiting my relatives in Akron Ohio. I remember us sitting around an old b&w TV, watching to Moon landing – the Eagle came down, and then Neil Armstrong climbed down the ladder and was the first human to stand on another world. I was already reading SF when I saw this, and it was strange to me that this was the first time that anyone had landed on the Moon. I also had thoughts and dreams of a future with lunar colonies, Mars landings, and all of the other SF wonders so commonly thought of in that day. Largely, none of this happened, & I don't particularly miss it. I remember reading about the potential wonders of orbital manufacturing, and we can now do far more on Earth. Also, the thing that I (and many other people) never considered back in that day was the fact that there's no remotely good reason to live anyplace in the solar system except Earth, even Mars and the upper atmosphere of Venus (the two most hospitable off-Earth locations) make living an the Antarctic or underwater on the continental shelf (the second being another location where settlement was also predicted in the 60s and early 70s) look impressively easy and safe by comparison. I would like to see humans visit Mars to see if there actually was (and perhaps still is) life there, and I would also love to see a probe explore the oceans of Europa, as well as a lander for Io, a longer term Titan lander, and probes to orbit Uranus and Neptune. Other than that, all of my current dreams for space go no further than Earth orbit – I really want a new and much larger and more powerful space telescope for looking for extrasolar planets, and I think that an orbital hotel could be made both safe and profitable in perhaps 15 years. As we become an increasingly networked species, I don't really expect any significant portion of humanity to be interested in ever going beyond near Earth orbit, I'm betting that in 15 years everyone except the third world poor would find being cut-off from constant wireless communication deeply unpleasant. While almost no one understood this back then, transhumanist dreams of a globally linked species improving itself mentally and physically and working to create new forms of intelligence turn out to be vastly more reasonable and likely than dreams of large and thriving colonies on Mars where people have lives that look remarkably like the 1960s or 70s, but with better tech. Perhaps, if the various transhuman dreams come fully true and we end up in significantly better and more durable bodies, it will become easy to visit other planets. However, short of some miracle like the discovery of a way to easily visit other star systems, I don't see any reason for humans or transhumans to live on other worlds. In any case, I vastly prefer the future we're headed for to the one that I thought we would have. Current Mood:  contemplative |
bcwalker
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3:41p |
Employment: Defining a Skillset and Explaining it to Others
What title do you give to an individual who possesses the knowledge required to locate specialized archives and databases that Google can't index, find information that--at best--Wikipedia has but a link to in the Bibliography of a well-written page, aggregate it into a workable pile and curate it for relevance to a client's query, and then present a polished report to the client? That's what a historian is trained to do, and it lacks a title worthy of the skillset; I've taken to calling it "research specialist", but something more specific is in order. Yes, I can explain it--with authority--in the interview. That, however, requires that I get past the initial hurdle; I need to sell it in the letter before I can argue it in the interview. It doesn't matter what the field of business, or the portfolio of the agency, for there is at least one specialized information center for each and every one in existence (and a few that don't anymore). What I encounter is that people do not know that Google and Wikipedia do not have all of the relevant information, and furthermore they don't know that neither of them can't get it all (even if digitized, it isn't indexed and thus can't be found by Google; Wikipedia's open nature already has it ruled out as a legitimate source in academia as well as top-tier offices of businesses and agencies, so at best it's a place to find links or citations for acceptable sources. The people that run businesses and agencies are damned busy folks; they need this information, but they haven't the time to get it or the knowledge of where to look. Neither do most of their subordinates; they may have a piece, but not the whole package. What decision-makers need is a specialist, someone that knows where to look, can handle multiple media forms, speak with other knowledge-specialists in their jargon (e.g. librarians) and then sift through the findings to collect and present the answers to the executive in question. This is not a position that's tied to a desk, let alone an office; it requires considerable autonomy, as you will often have to physically visit an archive or library, and it requires a direct link to the executive- you need to get access to him. You're a detached, autonomous agent; you come into the office only when you're beginning or ending a project, because the rest of the time you're in the field digging stuff up (so you're either at home or using a laptop for Internet-related searches; the rest of the time, it's old-fashioned legwork) or prepping for exhibition. Crown that with a job title, if you can. |
pwca
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9:39p |
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microgirl
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9:00p |
B******s!!!!!
Having *finally* watched the last ever ER......Noooooooooooo! How can you end it like that??!!!!! Aaaaarrrggh! Though there really wasn't any other way to end it, as it was a never a story/stories that would come to an end, we just happened to see 15 years of a long-ongoing life documented. But I wanna see what happens next! |
stannex
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12:27p |
If I Was A Conspiracy Theorist ...
Forty years ago today, man first stepped on the moon. "One small step ..." etc. It's so EASY to be blase about it all ... I see many people who are, and as someone who is STILL overwhelmingly impressed by the accomplishments of the Apollo program, that's stunning to me. Even MORE stunning are the conspiracy theorists who to this day maintain that NASA faked the whole thing. The overwhelming evidence suggests to such people that we DID actually go, land on the moon, and bring back lots of rocks ... repeatedly. Indeed, in the run-up to this anniversary, there have been lots of moon-related postings on websites all over showing evidence ... none more convincing than recently taken hi-rez photos of the landing sites. But wait a minute. Look at these photos.Do you notice anything strange about them? Maybe it's my art background ... but I notice that the shadows cast by the lunar modules all SEEM to be going in the opposite direction of the apparent light source. That is, all the shadows on the craters and rocks and hills are on the objects' LEFT sides (as we look down on them) ... but the shadows of all of the lunar modules are on the capsules' RIGHT sides. Now, I'm NOT a conspiracy theorist ... I DO believe these are actual photos of our man-made objects (and foot prints) on the moon ... but I really want someone to explain this shadow thing to me. Are there any science-tastic readers of this blog who can do that for me? |
thebitterguy
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3:31p |
Me & McKenzie down by the ghoul yard.
 So, yes. I've resumed, somewhat stealthily, my attempt to visit the final resting places of Canada's PMs. I've abandoned any attempt to do them in order, even though that's how the first two worked out. Previously I visited the grave of Sir John A. MacDonald, and over March break I took a trip to the resting place of Alexander Mackenzie. MacKenzie was the first Liberal PM of Canada, and took the role at the request of the Governor General when Sir. John A. McDonald's government fell. Wait, a PM who got chosen by the GG after a standing government fell? How... Canadian!  These flowers were left by the monument. I drove up to Sarnia to take a look at the monument, and found it without much difficulty. It was a nice march break, and the monument was well marked in the cemetary. Anyway, so McKenzie had an interesting life. He worked as a newspaperman, and was a very enthusiastic reformer. So much so that his newspaper went out of business after being sued for libel. His origins were fairly humble for a politician of the time. He was a blue collar figure, having worked as a stonemason and helping construct Fort Henry. He thrice refused a knighthood, and is one of the only PMs from the early days to have refused the honour. I do hope that's not indicative of any republican leanings on his part. He did institute the secret ballot, and created the Supreme Court of Canada and founded RMC. In the end, he died from a stroke at age 70 caused by a fall and a head injury. Quite a figure, and he had quite a role in establishing many of the institutions of the country. Two markers for his resting place. Judging by the divergent styles, I assume they were placed by different governments.   |
thebitterguy
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3:00p |
In honour of the day
Cynra & I are going to see Moon tonight. Enjoyable looking SF film, supposed to be very evocative of the '70s pre-Star Wars style Tomorrow, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kinra and I get together to kibbitz about stuff. |
pwca
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8:05p |
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playthisthing
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5:36p |
Space Junk
http://playthisthing.com/space-junk From Facundo Dominguez, an Uruguayan programmer who was also involved in infrastructure programming for Storytron, we get Space Junk, a very slick little physics-puzzler based where limited fuel, gravitational pulls, and patience are your primary resources. Your mission is to collect the vast amount of junk that has been left around the solar system, surely the side-effect of druken space rednecks driving their fusion-powered Ford space-trucks with reckless abandon, tossing beer cans out the airlock and supplementing asteroid belts with empty cigarette packs. You can pivot and fire off your rocket fuel to build velocity in a particular direction, Lunar Lander style.
At first the game seems underwhelming; a pretty good pixel splash of an avatar vessel gives you a solid anchor, but the asteroid navigation missions seem kind of shallow. Then the orbital missions roll along, and you realize that you haven´t had to think about geometry while playing a game in a long time. When you figure out that there´s a fast-forward button and that it´s essential to solving the more involved missions in a reasonable amount of time, then you might find yourself completely digging this fiesta of interplanetary debris.
Dominguez has posted a "Making Of" if you´re interested in his motivations behind the project.
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pennyarcaderss
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12:00a |
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pwca
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6:12p |
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gmskarka
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11:52a |
Damn Dirty Apes...
(Spotted on Chris Roberson's blog) Blam! Ventures have announced that they're producing a series of novels spun out of the original, classic Planet of the Apes film series, which will be illustrated by top SF, Fantasy and Comics artists. They'll be showing previews at this coming weekend's San Diego Comic Con. The first novel, Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, is written by Andrew E.C. Gaska, Christian Berntsen and Erik Matthews, with a cover by Steranko, and interior illustrations by a host of others. The novel will tell the story of Landon, one of Taylor's crewmates, and what happened to him during the events of the first film. The series website is here.Around 2000, I had contacted 20th Century Fox about licensing POTA for a roleplaying game. At the time, they told me that they were only interested in licensing the forthcoming Tim Burton film (which later rightfully bombed). I wonder if it's time to try again.... |
flatvurm
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12:42p |
I never trusted that giant head anyway
So it came to pass that I wound up with a coupon for a free sausage biscuit at Burger King. As luck would have it, there is actually a Burger King fairly close to my house, but I never got around to using the coupon because it's for a breakfast sandwich, and I am just so never awake during Burger King breakfast hours. But, for whatever reason, I decided last night that today would be the day that I'd wake up early and get my free sausage biscuit. I dunno, man...I'll just go that extra mile for free shit, you know? So I get my ass up today at a time that would probably be the equivalent to you normal people of waking up at like 2am, and I drag out to the BK. I had this whole plan...drop off some Netflix in the mail, pick up Jitney tickets, get my sandwich, and go to the bank. That was my plan. And I stuck to it. The cash register jockey at BK seemed somehow ill-equipped to deal with my coupon, but I really didn't think much of it at the time, and I got my sandwich and left anyway, so...no biggie. So I stuffed my new sausage biscuit in my backpack and continued with my errands. After all that was done, I headed home and, while debating whether or not I should go back to sleep and try to get in more or less a full "night's" rest, I ended up logging on the 'Net and that pretty much ended that debate. Eventually I got to thinking, "Well, I'm up, I guess I'll eat my free sausage biscuit." So I dug it out and opened it up and... What the hell?! There's no sausage! There's just...biscuit! Those unruly fuckers down at the BK just swindled me out of a free sausage patty. I'm...I'm really just not sure how to feel about that. In any case, I took no steps to correct this, as by the time I found out, I'm sure breakfast time was over and, in any case, I feel pretty safe in assuming that they wouldn't give a shit. And all else aside, I still had a free biscuit, so...who am I to complain. So what the fuck...I fried up an egg, put it on my biscuit, and ate it. Who's King in the Land of Burgers now?! Bastards. * * * Fast food shenanigans aside, I have been making an effort to effect changes in my dietary habits here and there. One thing is...well, I've kinda gone off milk. My daily ritual breakfast of a bowl of cereal felt like it was starting to consistently make me sick, so I figured I'd cut down on the milk for a while, since I have on-again off-again dairy issues. (Bummer sidebar about the milk thing: it also meant I stopped buying cereal, which was kind of lame because I was working on collecting enough Frosted Mini-Wheats points to get a free Star Trek t-shirt. But, you know...whatever.) Since I'd also stopped with the oatmeal during the summer (since it's too frickin' hot to eat oatmeal), this left me with a breakfast-shaped hole that needed filling. Somehow I ended up trying out smoothies. Dudes...I'm totally a convert. Smoothies are the new hotness for summer breakfast! I'm now buying yogurt by the bucketfull, since yogurt thankfully is not making me ill. So I throw some yogurt in with basically whatever fruit I feel like having, whir the whole thing around in a blender for a little while, and I have instant healthy refreshment for breakfast. It's so awesome. I'm thinking now of making everything into a smoothie. I, like, wouldn't need teeth any more. Smoothies, man. Smoothies. Unrelated to the dietary changes, though nicely relevant, I just read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, basically on enhat's recommendation from like a million years ago. It was a great book! It had that same kind of effect on me as Fast Food Nation, in a way, in that it kinda made me want to stop eating. But it also made me totally want to be a farmer, which was awesome. Basically, this guy traces the origins of some of his food from earth to plate. He talks about the processes involved in various modes of food preparation, from the common industrial food process in America to the much less common foraging your dinner from out in the forest. In any case, I'm hereby passing on the recommendation, because I enjoyed the book and if you like reading about food, then...well, it's a good book for reading about food. :) In other entertainment news, I think I'm kinda winding down on this Asian movie block. I've wandered out of the straight-up action arena. At some point I wanted to check out some supernatural-style flicks, especially the old Chinese hopping vampire type stuff, since I hadn't seen a lot of that, you know, from primary sources. That's been so-so. I've kinda got some fantasy stuff lined up, but...well, except for the eagerly anticipated SARS Wars and some other random stragglers, I think I'm pretty much wrapping up this movie block. I'm about Asian-movied out for the time being. :) (I say "Asian," but aside from those few Thai titles, really this was mostly Chinese cinema. I pretty much got my fill of Japanese (again) watching that Miike stuff that luminifer threw my way. I dunno, man...I just don't have the right brain mode to dig on a lot of Japanese stuff.) On the video game front, I just recently finally finished up Destroy All Humans 2, which I was glad to have picked up. Unlike my run through the first game, I actually made a point of getting my sidequesting and junk attended to before finishing up the story. The game was pretty fun. It made me miss panyang, since we played the first one together, and her mentioning it was the reason I (eventually) picked up the second one. But anyway, yeah. Humans were destroyed. I'm now working on this really fun PS2 platformer called Sly Cooper. Enjoyable stuff! * * * Huh. I'm out of gas. :) Laterz, all. * * * P.S. Could someone get in touch with mikestuy and let him know his Yahoo account has been hijacked and is being used to send out spam and malware? Thanks, kids. |
gmskarka
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11:38a |
The 11th Doctor in Costume!
Filming has officially begun on the new series of Doctor Who, so the folks have now been able to snap location shots of the 11th Doctor, in costume and with his new (and as-yet unnamed) companion). ETA: According to the BBC press release, the companions name is "Amy Pond." ( Behind the cut, to save your friends page ) |
simonjrogers
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5:20p |
Mutant City Blues Review
A review of Mutant City Blues on rpg.net by L J Steele. Incidentally, Hard Helix will be out in the couple of days. A great combination of superheros and dramatically-realistic policing highlighting the flexiblity of the GUMSHOE line and giving good advice on mystery-oriented games
Style: 4 (Classy & Well Done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!) |
adamjury
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9:46a |
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flatvurm
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11:36a |
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makinglight
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2:03p |
Forty years on
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011451.html A year ago today, Tor.com launched on the thirty-ninth anniversary of the first moon landing. Today, on that web site's first anniversary and Apollo 11's 40th, Tor.com is running a series of memoirs and reflections about the events of July 20th, 1969, by Kage Baker, Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Ben Bova, David Brin, Jeffrey A. Carver, C. J. Cherryh, Phyllis Eisenstein, Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, Nancy Kress, Geoffrey A. Landis, David Langford, Gregory Manchess, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., me, Teresa, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Kit Reed, Rudy Rucker, Pamela Sargent, Robert J. Sawyer, Robert Silverberg, Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Jo Walton, and David Weber. The series is going up a post at a time--Teresa's will appear early this afternoon, and mine later in the evening--so drop in a few times during the day.
The site is also giving away various geeky prizes, some worthy and some silly. Kudos to Torie "Yes, That's Her Real Name" Atkinson for pulling together this whole one-day event. |
eyebeams
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11:07a |
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thebitterguy
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10:40a |
Writer's Block: Investigations of a Female Nature
Lady detective? I'm going back to Elizabeth MacPherson from the book series by Sharyn McCrumb. I just read a lot of those in college. What's amusing is the author has also written books about SF Fandom & NASCAR, which must make her research the strangest thing in the world. Edit: And, of course, I forgot Victory Nelson. Whoops! She's definitely on the list. And she's even an actual detective. Both kinds! |
| Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 | |
ukce
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2:25a |
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ukce
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1:55a |
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