Motorcycles and Commuting

Posted by on June 2, 2006 No comments

I’ve been giving some recent consideration to giving up my car in favor of a motorcycle. I’ve never ridden one in my life, but I’ve got lots of friends who are afficionados to whom I’m readily turning for advice. They all say, “Take a class,” and I agree with them — riding a bike isn’t the sort of thing you just toy with, and if I’m going to do it I want to do it right. This shit can kill me (note: So can lots of stuff) so I’m going to do everything within my power to stack the odds as far in my favor as possible. I’ve signed up — or, at least I’ve submitted the registration form — for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation‘s Basic RiderCourse class at the local community college.

Once I’ve got the training and license taken care of, I’m going to look into getting a bike. I’m pretty certain I want a cruiser, and I know for sure that I don’t want a sport bike. I’ve been looking at:

I think it could be a lot of fun and I think it could lead me into a lifelong hobby, but I’m very nervous. What if I’m a lousy rider? What if I sell the car and get the bike, and it turns out to not be practical as a daily “driver?” There are a number of ways this could go horribly awry, and I’m coming up with more. I guess it’s a question of weighing the payoff, I guess, but looking around at most of those I know who ride wouldn’t give it or their love of it up for anything.

Kingdoms of Kalamar (or, Campaign Settings Part II)

Posted by on May 8, 2006 No comments

In continuation of my discussing some of the different settings for the forthcoming D&D campaign, I’ve settled on Kingdoms of Kalamar. Read on to find out why. Read more »

Campaign Settings

Posted by on April 19, 2006 1 comment

So I’m starting up a new D&D 3.5e campaign and have been trying to determine which campaign setting I’d rather run. The choices have basically boiled down to:

Funny coincidence: Waterdeep and Geanavue were both created by the same man, Ed Greenwood, who is in my mind a towering genius of fantasy world design.

You may notice that all of the options I’m looking at are based in or around cities. I’ve found I tend to like urban campaigns a great deal, primarily for the wealth of options they offer the player. When any good you want or any service you require is readily available it means you can spend more time figuring out how to do what you want to do, rather than whether or not it’s feasible or possible. But, all three cities are positioned in areas designed to offer easy access to a wealth of other areas — subterranean, jungle, forest, water, etc. There’s also absolutely no reason other than convenience and roots to keep the players in any given place. If they find they dislike the city and want to go somewhere, then far be it from me to stop them. My job as the DM isn’t to restrict their choices so much as encourage them to make the right ones.

Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of each setting. Read more »

WordPress is Go

Posted by on March 29, 2006 1 comment

Okie doke, I’m all done. I’ve updated all the old posts to use regular old HTML and am now running fully on WordPress. This is using the Ocadia theme, in case you’re curious. I’d decided the old look of the site had become stale and tired, but I didn’t feel like re-engineering something all on my own. Thanks to Beccary for the great theme!

Switching Gears

Posted by on March 29, 2006 1 comment

So I’ve decided to move the blog off of TextPattern and on to the more dynamic and powerful WordPress. I will need to go through and convert the older Textile-format posts to HTML, so that may take some time. Please bear with our dust!

What’s Wrong with WoW, and More MMOG Thoughts

Posted by on February 24, 2006 1 comment

Found this interesting link in Gamasutra about how World of Warcraft is teaching and encouraging the wrong goals. I concur, so read on: World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things

While I don’t necessarily agree with or subscribe to his points in their entirety, nor do I place Street Fighter on the high pedestal that the author does — quite likely because I suck at it — I do think he’s somewhat on the ball about the general “dumbing-down” of MMORPGs. In general I’ve found the “theme park” play style that WoW uses to be somewhat bland and unexciting for me long-term, which is one reason why I’m giving serious consideration to going back to EVE Online. They recently made a major hardware upgrade, and CCP continues to be one of the most responsive and active developers I’ve yet seen in the MMOG space.

I’ve also got a couple of ideas to bring to EVE, one of which is here: The EVE Documentation Project. I hope to be able to take the community’s drive for compiling information about EVE and put it in a wiki where they can do a better job of maintaining and producing it. The forums (EVE account required) are trying to fill that purpose now, but they’re really not an ideal vehicle or tool for such documentation. I’ll hopefully be making a post to said forums at some point in the near future and we’ll see how things go.

Yojimbo 1.0

Posted by on January 23, 2006 1 comment

So it looks like BareBones Software has remembered how to make new products, and it looks like it’s Cocoa, too! A BareBones app that doesn’t feel like an antiquated holdover? Unpossible!

But, all that being said, they announced Yojimbo 1.0 today and it looks somewhat decent. It’s one of those information gathering tools, sometimes called outboard brains, where you dump all sorts of stuff–text snippets, URLs, pictures, whatever–so you can sort through it all later. It’s a concept that’s always interested me, but the other tools I’ve tried in this vein have never done the trick. Maybe Yojimbo will, or maybe it will leave me feeling like I need something better, like their vaunted text editor did until I found TextMate.

Words Are Weak

Posted by on December 12, 2005 1 comment

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

A good friend and pillar of my peer group passed away this morning. He had lymphoma.

He will truely be missed, and the greatest heartfelt sorrows goes out towards his widow, who will receive every single last bit of help and strength I have to offer.

We love you, Derek and Kassi.

Joss Whedon Took the Sky From Me

Posted by on October 1, 2005 1 comment

Those of you who know me know that I don’t post on my blog very often. Hell, those of you who don’t know me can tell how infrequently I post by just skimming down the previous entries. It’s usually only things that stir me greatly that precipitate my posting here and this is one such thing.

Long story short: Joss Whedon killed Firefly. He did so callously and what I deem unnecessarily and I’m going to go into as much detail as I can to convey why I feel that way. This contains spoilers, so if you don’t want to be prepared for what you’re going to see when you visit your local theater then DO NOT READ ON. Read more »

New House

Posted by on May 27, 2005 1 comment

Amanda and I are going to be renting a new house starting at the end of June. We’re both so excited it’s palpable.