The Asian tsunami. If you wept at the destruction from recent wars, and terrorists, and man-made disasters, then what can you do in the face of something of this magnitude. Over 56,000 dead … over a million homeless …
My heart goes out the the survivors, families and the deceased.
Amazon is accepting donations to the American Red Cross.
Thanks to Apple’s iTunes Music Store, I’ve been able to restore – no, actually restore and increase – my collection of Kerouac’s readings. Being a big fan of Jack Kerouac’s writing since my early college years, finding a tape collection of Beat Generation readings and music back in the mid-90’s was like finding a long buried treasure ches (hey, it was new to me). I hadn’t previously encountered recordings of Beat “stuff”. Several of the tracks were Kerouac, which of course was the major draw for me in the first place.
Unfortunately, the collection was on tape, and got lost and damaged during my big move out to California years ago. I had really forgotten about it – until I encountered the two Kerouac “albums” at the iTMS a few weeks ago. Now, I’m enjoying hearing portions of the writings I enjoy so much spoken by the author.
The first of completely randomized series of reviews of stuff that I feel strongly about. Assume if FoE3 sez something about it, it’s because I liked it that much (or disliked it that much, but I plan to focus on the good stuff). Since this is being cross-posted at the Endgame forums, I’ll note that this is the opinion of myself, and not that of Endgame in anyway. I’m just a ravin’ loon what happens to know ‘em. Although, unless I note otherwise, I picked it up at Endgame, so they don’t get off scott-free.
Title: Advanced Bestiary
System: d20
Publisher: Green Ronin
SRP: $36.95
Preview Materials: Green Ronin’s website
A hardback book with something of an old school cover, the Advanced Bestiary is current through the 3.5 revision of the D&D rules. Yes, it’s yet another monster book, but I think it’s one worthy of the discriminating DM’s bookshelf. First, it takes a unique look at the monster book genre: it presents its creatures as templates. Well, technically, it cheats at that – a sample monster, resulting from the use of the template, accompanies each listing. The utility of this approach should be noted. By using templates, the Advanced Bestiary helps extend both its usefulness as well as that of your favorite monster books – the template can be provided to nearly any D&D or d20 monster. continue reading…
It’s a rainy, geeky day. I got up late – I’ve been up late working on projects for much of the weekend (or drinking good scotch, of which I was recently accused of being *infamous*). It’s been rainy steady out here since yesterday. No complaints here – I could be someplace where it snows.
Anyway, sitting in Zocalo, typing away and looking out the window at the rain. Very odd morning – some woman starting talking to me and wouldn’t shut up. Now, before you think I’ve gone feral, let me say I was very polite. She started chatting about the artwork on the walls, and from there … *whoa*. I wanted to be nice, and was, but within minutes I was hearing about her husband’s casino job, temper, and how she’s basically crazy, but is learning to not talk so much (“uh huh”, thinks I). Anyway, I kinda of nodded and whatnot as I read eWeek.
On the flip side, as I was typing this, a not-crazy woman asked me about the BSD sticker on my Mac, from [the BSD Mall] [2]:
We chatted about macs for a bit – she’s a graphics professional and has a G4 tower and a 12″ Powerbook. Her husband, says she, is a Windows guy. He’s sitting there reading his paper. Anyway, it was a very normal, non-insane discussion. Restoring my faith that not every person is a raving freak who’s going to tell me their life story.
While all that was going on, I gathered and uploaded some image files for my upcoming [Dragonstar campaign] [1]. I shopped [RPGnow] [3] and came up with a handful of inexpensive sci-fi mapping tiles and rooms. They’ll supplement the existing Skeleton Key starship desk plans nicely in allowing me to put together techno-installations, forgotten research stations, and orbital facilities. I took a virtual stack of eye-catching science-fiction portraits and put them up at my private campaign site, to let the players look ‘em over and get ready for the session. Positively geeky, eh? 
Between all that, I managed to read a few decent articles on the Symantec / Veritas merger and technology services as commodities, both being pretty applicable to the day job. I also dealt with SBC, and had my long distance and cell phone brought over to the account (which I already converted to paperless last week). It also turns out I can get a static IP address from SBC at an affordable price – $15 additional. *But*, apparently, it’s not applicable to the discounted DSL. So, I can have $26/mo for DSL, or $65/mo for DSL with a static (that is, they won’t add the $15 to the discount DSL price). Grrr… I’m going to have to work on this. A static IP would be clutch for handling some of the advanced server-based techno-whiz-bang junk I’d like to pull off.
[1]: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/dragonstar.html
[2]: http://www.bsdmall.com/
[3]: http://www.rpgnow.com
Mini’s madness! I was taken with the bug to get working on some minis (I have lots of minis I’ve bought with good intention, but … other things came up between buying the minis and finishing the minis) and had been putting some different models together. In looking for materials, I happened to check *the one box I hadn’t* and found my missing Confrontation cards (which went missing over the summer).
Now, I’ve replaced many of the cards, thanks to the fine folks at [Endgame] [1], and as predicted, find the cards shortly after I’ve gotten replacements. Nonetheless, I have a second set, and there were some cards even those crafty Endgame-ites couldn’t come up with. Very pleased about this turn of events. I’ve gone and put all the cards into binders, as my friend Anthony suggested. You know … before I go and loose them. Again.
Between that, I worked on some WH40K minis and my WWII Soviet tank battalion. It was quite a flurry of activity. Heh. No rest for the wicked and geeky.
[1]: http://www.endgameoakland.com
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