1000 buffalo stampede

March has its Ides, and Autumn has its bi-lateral talks with North Korea … or not. In other words, I was watching the Presidential Debate earlier. I picked up a live webcast from Yahoo News, which made it very convenient to read from my Comfy Chair. I was able to grab screen captures on request, and so can do my own photo ops (not for profit), such as:

Just like a real news source. Nifty. Debate wise, I thought Kerry did a very good job once he got into it. I missed a few minutes of the beginning, which is when I understand the Senator was a little stiff. I thought his points on Afganistan, which Bush never really addressed, were right on. He stumbled with the “passing the global test” and a few other items. Overall, he did strike me as being of Presidential caliber, and – finally – interested in having the job. The President didn’t come across well to me at all, and he sure didn’t strike me as especially bright. His calling terrorists “folks” has picked up universal scorn, especially from a man who says “evil-doers” more often than Captain America. I think the President made his point about the dangers of engaging in bi-lateral talks with North Korea clear enough. I don’t neccesarily disagree – there’s certainly a high degree of risk there; one point does not a winner make, however. Kerry’s response – essentially “just because George W. says it’s so doesn’t make it so” – has some merit as well.

Of course, everyone will walk away from the debate filtering it according to their particular biases anyhow. Therefore, I suggest, courtesy of CNN, the transcript of the debate. CNN also provides political blogs of the event from Paul Begala (pro-Kerry) and Bob Novak (pro-Bush, or moreso than Begala) – I read them afterwards, myself. Interesting points in both of them. I also enjoyed the commentary at Burningbird.

“TPK” – Total Party Kill – is what they call it when the whole group of adventurers dies in the course of their dungeon delving. Such being dangerous work, after all. More properly, they, in this case, refers to my friends and their poor characters. The group is working through character generation, having just suffered a TPK. In the depths of Sharn, the City of Towers, the former soldiers sought to fulfill a …

Oh, wait – Amar’s character survived, on account of not being with his comrades. Clangadast, the warforged monk, was seeking knowledge in the ways of the mystical (and Amar was off across the country). Can’t go talking about the exact circumstances – imagine Clangadast’s surprise when he learns the fate of his companions.

So, between mugs of pearl jasmine green tea over at Zocalo, I upgraded my version of AbiWord, an open source word processor. I’ve been a fan of AbiWord for a good while now, having used it on my old Linux and iBook, and on the current TiBook as well. On all these systems, I ran it as a Unix application (well, duh for the linux system) under X11. But, my new upgrade for AbiWord was the OS X Panther native version, so it runs as a “native” application on the platform. And, so far, a very well behaved application: it fires up extremely promptly, and takes advantage of Panther’s smooth fonts. These days, I do a majority of my initial writing in BBEdit as plain text – BBEdit is a text editor, not a word processor – one of the main differences given that BBEdit isn’t concerned with fonts, formatting and the like (keeps me from getting distracting). But for some tasks, or prepping the writing for publication, I need a word processor – and in that role, AbiWord fits nicely. It launches within seconds, as opposed to OpenOffice.org’s, uh, several seconds.

I mentioned it’s open source, right? And, in addition to be available for Mac OS X and Linux systems, there’s a Window’s version available. It also opens MS Word format.

It’s been a nutty, nutty week, mainly filled with work. But, better busy than bored, as I always say. I’m looking forward to running my game on Sunday. I’ve been running prewritten adventures for my bi-weekly Eberron campaign; it’s been a great reduction in both time and stress for running my game. I tend to take things, ah, seriously, so I’ve been working on simplifying the process of running the game. Thus far it’s been a good amount of fun. Using the written adventures (or modules as the old-timers might say ) as a base frees me up from overly wondering whether the story makes sense. Besides, the embellishment is the fun part, at least for now.

On the other hand, between picking up some of Ronin Art’s interesting starship designs and watching my way through Firefly (the entire series on DVD), I feel I’m getting the hankering to run something sci-fi. Firefly, which I’m really enjoying watching, is interesting in that it combines a western with space opera. It give the series a rough-n-tumble feel, and – from a gaming/storytelling slant – provides an alternate, readily pictured concept to fill in the gaps.

See, I was chatting with my friend Chris recently on the subject of RPGs. Among the other babbling topics was that of science fiction games and why they don’t as well as fantasy games in the long run (yes, a debateably subject). One of the thoughts we formulated through the discussion was that science fiction games, and sci-fi in general, lack the common understanding. Nearly everyone can picture the Middle or Dark Ages well enough if you mention, oh, say King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. No doubt in part as a result of our common history and education. Now ask the same people to picture the future. People aren’t going to imagine the same thing; by default, the common “stuff” won’t be shared. Star Wars and Star Trek, and their corresponding games, get around this somewhat was they have hours of reference material available. People know what the Enterprise and a Star Fleet uniform look like, and they can all picture Tattooine and the Death Star. They have common understanding, and in a good, immersive RPG, common understanding is essential – having people hold a common image provides for richer collective storytelling.

But, outside of various licensed properties (and Star Trek and Star Wars are likely the two biggest. Certainly there’s other good sci-fi series and films out there, and games based on them as well. I find Firefly interesting because of the general concept – mixing the space opera with the western – that might have some good “legs” for a game. Well, it would be fun regardless, really – it’s a fun genre.

I woke this morning to the sound of rain, and cars driving down wet streets. It’s been a little on-and-off this morning, but mostly on. As in a heavy, drenching downpour. Driving out to Zocalo, I found the source of the fire-engine screaming a handful of minutes before: bad crash on the westbound lane of 580. And when I say bad, what I mean is a Cherokee spun out, smashed against the concrete dividers, facing into traffic, with the rear passenger side wheel hooked over said divider (about 3 -4 feet high). Not good doesn’t quite cover it. I would have taken a picture except I (a) forgot to pack the camera, and (b) probably wouldn’t have been very safe trying to get that shot.

So, for now, I stay hunkered into this oversized leather chair, feet on the ottoman, listening to heavy rain, good music, drinking my tea and reading the news. The Economist is particularly sharp this week, it seems. I got through several articles, and the main cover stories. I’ll likely post about their article on American voting, democracy, and the misuse of re-districting to lock up Congressional seats (the sub-title on that last piece is “Pyongyang on the Potomac“). I do enjoy the The Economist – have since I was turned onto it while living in Maastricht. I could go on and on about why, but for now, I think their mission statement says it all:

First published in 1843 to take part in “a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress