Bad Fortune

NO, it ISN'T.

Ignorance on Fire WOULD, however, make a great name for a prog rock band.

Game of the Year

Binary States

1


On


Positive


Clockwise


Live


Married


Pregnant


Girl

Just in time for 4th Edition

Found via Boing Boing:

A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE
Circa 2nd Century A.D.
Deep blue-green in color, the large twenty-sided die incised with a distinct symbol on each of its faces
2 1/16 in. (5.2 cm.) wide

Gaslamp, Steampunk, Dragonsteel

I stumbled across Shaun O'Boyle's collection of Modern Ruins Photography the other day, and it got my, ahem, gears turning. There are some fantastic photos of industrial complexes, shipyards, and decaying facilities there in evocative black and white. The Big Steel and Bethlehem Steel sections are particularly haunting for me, as they perfectly visualize the echoing metallic caverns of Ashworld, from my Technologist short fiction. They are images of stark, mechanical, frequently claustrophobic environments - deep, echoing places where the works of man take on their own twisting jungle-like quality. I think they've shaken loose a few jammed cogs - maybe I should pick up writing those shorts again.

What's a Cubit?

All relevant parties are fine, by the way. Just kind of hemmed in at the moment.

Ready to Rock

If you like sim games, and you are not familiar with Galactic Civilizations II, head on over to the site and check them out. It's from Stardock, which produces a lot of great third-party software - inventive and useful stuff you've probably never heard of but need right this minute.

Anyway, GalCiv2 is a middling-to-good sim, not quite on par with Civ4, but stable and challenging enough to hold your interest for the 20-30 hours or so it takes to play a complete game of galactic conquest. Where it really shines, though, is the shipyard. GalCiv2 allows you to design your own starships from a host of components. Here are a few asteroid-themed ships I put together using a mod that allows you to do that sort of thing.


That's just the colony ship. Here are some others:
Deep Sounder Recon Craft
Iron Determination Mining Tower
Terminus Station
Steel Workshop Construction Platform
Meteos Cataclysm-class Troop Transport


And here a few older ships from a previous version:
Starseed Colony
Stardust Merchant
Quasar Defense Drone
Ion II Escort Fighter
Echo Drone
Sunflare Destroyer
Nova Mk1 Battleship

Brimley

Found at I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?

Fall Flickr-Bomb

Hi there! Been a while, I know. Nothing complicated to post right now. Just thought I'd toss up some photos from our trip back to the cabin in October.

You can see the change in the leaves from the previous post here. What you can't see clearly is the change in the cabin itself. This shot is about 10 feet to the right of the old one, and the intervening space is an all-new enclosed deck with beatiful full-length double pane windows. Jim did the whole thing over the summer and it look great. It almost doubles the size of the cabin. Quite a homestead up there.

The pond looks pretty, too.

We also went up to Mt. Belleayre, the public ski resort, for a craft festival. Lots of hemp, beer, skis and painted rocks. We took the lift to the top, where I used the mosaic function of my camera for the first time.

More stuff later.

Public Service Announcement IV

Zoom Zoom

Old and busted:

New Hotness:

Mazda3 S Touring
160hp 2.3L I-4
5-Speed Sport Automatic
17" Wheels
4-wheel Independent ABS

Woodsy

I know this is crazy late, but Courtney and I spent the first two weekends of June up in the Catskills at her family cabin. Very very rustic. I dropped a Flickr-bomb of shots from the first weekend, when we were joined by her sister Meghan and her beau Alvaro.
It was a lot of fun up there. They have running water and a gas supply, but no power. No phone or telephone reception, either. Bears, though. And one country-western station. While the combination of those last two might have negated the negative aspects of both, it was not to be.

We rode ATVs around for a few days, dodging rocks and trees and hanging caterpillars. The Catskills are currently being devoured by three seperate species of moth, at least one of which travels by hanging from the trees at about eye level on silk strands and riding whatever animal comes by. I hate nature.

I also totally kicked my girlfriend's ass at Scrabble. I'm awesome! One day, they will build a statue of me.

Seriously, it is beautiful country up there - an excellent place from which to watch the fall of civilization. Hey, it never hurts to plan ahead.

The next weekend we went to Courtney's class reunion at Yale. It was extremely wet and muddy for most of the time we were there, but I got to see some of the fancier bits of campus and meet many of her friends. She has pictures of that weekend here and some shots of Memorial Day here.

Say it with Google Image Search

When a forum post starts to go bad:

Beautiful Things

Courtney and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is much better than the MOMA, because modern art blows. It had been a long time since I set foot in the Met. Abouth the only thing I remembered was the armor exhibit (go figure). This time I could look at several of the pieces with some actual working knowledge of history, which was a nice change from my usual "blundering" form of museum-going.

Aside from the permanent exhibits, of which I have some pictures, we saw some interesting special features. One was a very cool look at Tibetan arms and armor. Some very difficult to find pieces in there, since we don't really associate Tibet with warfare. It is, of course, a very turbulent area, where sword and musket were actually useful combat implements well into the 20th century.

The other special was Anglo Mania, an examination of English fashion and its influence on the world. The exhibit consists mostly of "traditional" elements - dresses, coats, furniture from high eras of British history - set against "transgressive" pieces - recent modern avant garde crap. Very silly.

The Sackler Gallery, part of the Asian Art Exhibit, was probably my favorite.

Public Service Announcement III

BF2 Jesus

From a Tactical Gamer discussion that got.... wierd.

Meal of the Damned

For future reference, the Value Meal of Satan is the Double Cheeseburger combo (large) with 6 pc Chicken Fries.

Maalox or Holy Water recommended, particularly if you opt for the barbeque sauce.

Public Service Announcement II

Public Service Announcement

Family fun

Wheeeeee!

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