A little while ago, Arref talks about the D&D Product: Book of Vile Darkness

Today, I happened to be at the Block, which is the outdoor mall up here in Northern Orange County.
I was looking through the 25% off table, since if I didn't mention it before, the Wizard of the Coast stores are paring back, severely, their RPG sections,
paring them back to only their own products.

Anyway, I went from there to the actual rack they have now for their core books...and there was no sign of the Book of Vile Darkness...I had wanted to flip through the book myself, as Arref had.

I asked the clerk...and he said that this WOTC branch "didn't carry it"

Given the conservative nature of Orange County, I should not have been surprised. I'll have to visit the independent local gaming store and see if they have a copy.

Found this while surfing today. It wouldn't work well on my dial up at home, but here at work it is sweet to play around with:

Visual Thesaurus

A small victory.

The "program" that i use here at work to enter information on the drawer boxes is actually an old Lotus spreadsheet. Why they don't upgrade to something more modern...I have no clue, but they are consistent, after all, they are still running Windows NT and a copy of a order program (Syteline) which has gone through 3 iterations after the one they have.

Anyway, at one point in this massive spreadsheet are the cells to input the freight charges. We charge according to the rates and add on a surcharge per box. I suggested the other day that having the total count of the boxes displayed in this area of the spreadsheet would be a good thing, rather than having to navigate back to the totals area to get that info.

In the latest update to the master spreadsheet, Cathy took my small piece of advice. It wasn't hard to do (just a simple cell referent from the totals screen to a cell in this area of the spreadsheet), it was just no one thought of the idea until I did.

Other things I read.
(as a take off from Djinn)

Daily:
Orange County Register (newspaper, its about as conservative as the NY Post is back home, but better written.)

Weekly:
Friday edition of the USA Today (I know its the cotton candy of newspapers.)
Sunday Edition of the OC Register
(Sometimes) Sunday Edition of the LA Times

Monthly:
Locus Magazine. (Semipro magazine about news and such in the SF world.)
Scientific American

AD&D Stats from Real Life

Via Arref

This is what I got:

Str: 7
Int: 12
Wis: 13
Dex: 9
Con: 9
Chr: 10

I'm not sure how valid these values are. Strength, Dex, Con and Charisma seem about right, Wisdom seems high, and if I might be modest, Intelligence a bit low.

If you are a fan of the movie "The Princess Bride"
you have to .see this picture.

It's clearly photoshopped, but its funny.

I've got to get the amazon links in place, but you'll note I've progressed ahead in my reading.

Ring of Five Dragons was a disappointment. Maybe its because I've read some really good fantasy lately, or perhaps my mood, but I had no patience with some aspects of the novel. Sure, the triple letter imaginary words were fine, and the alien societies depicted were all right.

But things just gnawed at me. Sudden changes in character that had no warning whatsoever. A far too pat end portion, where all of the antagonists, somehow, are neutralized one by one. (Except the one Lustbader has apparently designed as the sequel's main one). Casual brutality that serves little purpose whatsoever. Yes, we've established the conquering alien race treat women as chattel, especially the conquered population, but did we really need the brutality and sexual assault/rape that ends the life of a sympathetic female character toward the end of the novel? I'm not sure gratutious is the right word, but this reminds me of Allan Cole's Wizard of the Winds, where he does the same thing, almost, to one of his female characters. Its as if the author wanted to be especially odious and misogynistic to his female viewpoint characters.

ROFD is supposed to be the first in a series, the Veil of a Thousand Years is next. I have absolutely no interest in reading that book. There is plenty to like in ROFD, the world building and the alien races are interestingly drawn, but, like Wizard of the Winds, all of its good qualities are stained and drowned by the negative ones. It was a waste of my time to read the book.

I read, as a chaser to wash the taste out of my mouth, Gardner Dozois' annual Year's Best SF collection, the one published last year (and thus for the year 2001). These collections are always a mixed bag of nuts, there is almost guaranteed to be stuff you like a lot, stories you think are all right, and stories which you skip.

This one is no exception. I'd encountered a few of these stories before, and re-read those. On K2 with Kanakredes, by Dan Simmons, for example, where an alien joins a climbing expedition to the most treacherous mountain on Earth. The Dog said Bow Wow, by Michael Swanwick, one of his usual strange birds. Although I really was turned off by Stations of the Tide, few of his stories have failed to entertain and delight me. This one posits a post-civilization crash world, where all forms of electronic equipment are verboten, and with good reason, but its told through the story of a man and his dog. Anthropomorphic intelligent dog, anyway (think like the Vargr in Traveller).

I've finished with that, though, and have just started getting into another oddity of a book, Vandemeer's City of Saints and Madmen (the small edition, not the newer, larger, hardcover). Its very Borgesian, so much so, consciously, that in this strange city of Ambegris where the stories in the book are set, there is a shop called the "Borges Bookstore". I think I am going to enjoy this. I'll of course let you all know in due course.

Jared Strait, a 20 year old Oregonian who had filmed an anti-suicide spot a few months ago, came undone and
ended his life last sunday.

The dark hand of despair is powerful indeed.

Millions of dollars, a high profile appointment and promotion to a cabinet-level department, and the Department of Homeland Security has for us citizenry...

A public service campaign.

Not that I am against such a thing, mind you, there is useful information to be had...but I was expecting...something more. This brochure is the sort of thing normally found from that place in Colorado whose name escapes me, the place for all of the government documents you can get via their catalog.

National Engineer's Week: Future City Competition

For 7th and 8th Graders, they just announced their 2003 Regional Winners.

I would have loved to enter this, if it was around when I was this age...but then again, they do have the entrants use Simcity software, and that wasn't exactly around when I was 12. Back then, the Atari 2600 was state of the art...

Viva la (less) Resistance!

A national science foundation press release on a breakthrough
on dealing with electrical resistances

So what? Imagine storage capacities two orders of magnitude greater than what we have now. If this breakthrough can be brought to practical application, you could carry something that could fit in your wallet that could hold the equivalent of 50 modern DVDs...

Via Electrolite.

Update: A more technical description of the breakthrough is available
at Physics Web

While more jargon heavy, it makes it clearer that this discovery is more and could lead to much more than just a better way to store data...

Of Links and Readers

Let's face facts. BJS is not precisely a hub of the Amber Blogging world. It's actually, I believe, to be pretty much of a backwater. It's not as popular or as referenced anywhere near the heavyweights.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, necessarily. I forget where, but there is a "power law" that seems to apply to Blogs. Within a given community or subcommunity, there will always be a few blogs who everyone reads, and others which have a far more limited clientele.

My readership is actually a few people more than I expected. Honestly, I thought I could count everyone who read this Blog on a daily basis, or knew who they were. The comments I've gotten lately have expanded that a bit, and in one case, I had no clue that Claire had me linked in her blogs. So I have reciprocated her link, for example.

The question is, am I missing anyone else? I don't think so, but then, I had no clue Claire read my work until I saw her comment. If you do have a link to BJS and want a reciprocal one, well, let me know, okay? And it's okay if you don't have a link to me, either. Most people wouldn't want to send their readers over here, anyhow, for good reasons.

The only other point is that this blog is rather insular, but that's all right. There is, as far as I know, precisely one blog outside of the Amber Blog world which has a link to mine. (Thanks, Gabe)

In a way I envy people like Ginger who definitely gets a lot of cross-traffic from the "mainstream" Blog world..but then, I am an acquired taste, to say the least. I'm not sure what I would do with more than a dozen readers.

Some of you, though, my friends, deserve a far wider audience. And that's not depression or anything, just a testament to your skills and abilities.

Yes, I had a bad night, last night. I don't think you can call it a panic attack, but its similar, I shut down, hastily say good bye to anyone I am talking to, the storm of neurons in my brain frying.

I did do something different this time, to no avail. I tried a phone number that a friend sent me, you know who you are, unfortunately the number was for LA county and didn't have anything worthwhile. I guess trying to reach for help is a good sign.

Anyway, it was precipiated by a number of things, including the fact that my beloved minidisc player went to its eternal reward yesterday at work. Its past its warranty and I don't have the documents for it anyway, but buying a $150 electronic gadget is not going to happen. So, its a loss.

People at work are going to be happier, and have said so: I have an embarassing habit of singing as I listen to music. It doesn't matter if the song is "happy" (which I have trouble listening to these days) or "unhappy" (much more in my mood--you can imagine American Pie, for instance, gets heavy rotation). I sing. And it annoys my co-workers.

They won't have to worry about it anymore. "I'm sorry that your player broke, but I'm not sorry about no more singing" is what my Boss told me.

Just another bean on the plate of my discontented life.

The importance of spelling.

It seems that one site has capitalized on Blogger's popularity, and the propensity of people to misspell words in URLs

All of the following "misspelled Blog sites" go to one place, some sort of pre-millenial christian site:

http://atrios.blogpsot.com/

http://calpundit.blogpsot.com/

http://tbogg.blogpsot.com/

This site apparently has bought a swath of such sites, or redirections, because some of my friends also seem to have this potential misdirection of a missspelled address:

http://shadowthriller.blogpsot.com/

http://djinnthespazz.blogpsot.com/

http://beingfrank.blogpsot.com/

When you leave Aaron's site, you get a popup window begging you to bookmark the "right" URL.

"Fun", eh? Maybe these guys can "exorcise my demons". You know, roll rocks on me, dunk me, put me on a rack.

And the classic, the burning at the stake.

UPDATE: It does seem they simply bought the domain blospot.com. Tricky! And intellectually dishonest. I understand their branch of Christianity is strongly evangelical, but to try and get readers this way is, if not breaking a commandment, its certainly contorting it out of shape.

Ping

I posted all of this as a comment to a post on Arref's Blog, but I thought I'd repeat it here.

Oh I don't think it {Daredevil the movie] was boring...but it could have been done better.

The plot was a bit underformed in my opinion. Colin Ferrell fleshed out Bullseye very well for example, and I do like Jennifer Garner.

On the other hand, when Daredevil comes to fight Kingpin, we are not given any setup to suggest that Kingpin could take on a superhero. In the comics its made very clear Kingpin is very capable, physically. Sure Michael Clarke Duncan is a big guy, but that didn't suggest that he would be able to take on DD.

I was also talking with Bridgette, we both agree that some reference to the rest of the "comic universe" would also help make it seem more whole. In Batman and Robin, for instance, Bruce Wayne makes a throwaway reference to Metropolis, suggesting a wider universe out there.

Daredevil doesn't exist in a vacumn, the only way I know him in fact is via crossovers with comics I did read. Spiderman was often in his same orbit, since many of their enemies were common (Kingpin, Paladin, Dr. Octopus, etal). Is it asking so much to, for example, for in the Daredevil movie for Matt Murdock to admonish his lawyer friend or suggest "What, are you going to start reading about that web swinging superhero too" or for, in the next Spiderman movie, for Spiderman to see, just a glimpse, and gone, of someone else navigating the rooftops on the east side of Manhattan?

Something for the math oriented is Pi-search.

This has an engine to look for strings in the binary representation of Pi. Since any character, via ASCII, can be converted to a binary code, this means that you can look for letters, words embedded in the digits. Think of the ending of the novel (not the movie!) Contact.

Thus, we find Zelazny is embedded at the binary position 467807378 (note this is not the 46780738th digit, but its the 467807378th digit if we converted PI to binary numbers).

Weimer is at position 1649292666.

But Amberite is not to be found in the first four billion binary digits of pi.

There is actually some serious math involved at this site, the age old question of Pi's randomness (or lack thereof) is mentioned.

Dense,but interesting article on Supernovas, and the mysterious "dark energy".

Would you believe me if I told you there's now a supernova named Frodo?

WISH 34:Non Standard Characters

Do you prefer to build a character with a unique concept, or do you prefer a simple or more standard concept to start with? Do you find that your preference correlates with a preference for elaborate initial backgrounds or with background development in play? If you’re a GM, do you find unique-concept characters easy or hard to GM for? What about playing alongside them?

Usually, I will go with a more standard concept, with perhaps one or two tweaks to make him (more commonly than her) unique. Work within the system to make characters as individualized and not cookie-cutter as possible.

On rare occasions, though, I have been known to play a character outside the standard templates. I refer you to my Amber character Tannim. He has a strong line of draconic blood in him (combined with Chaosian heritage). Thus, his shapeshifting is unique and poignant, he can only shift into two forms, but one of those is a small dragon, with, yes, a breath weapon. His shapeshifting and abilities do not quite fit into the standard ADRPG paradigms, he is unusual in that respect. To this day I am not sure what prompted me to create him, sometimes I think it was ex nihilo, although ever since I created him, I've seen more and more novels appear (although not read) with variations on the idea. (eg. The Dragon Delasangre).

As far as background to my characters, I usually like to have a modicum, or a seed of a background in place before play starts, and then the character can be developed both in play, and with subsequent stories and contributions and sometimes playing out backstory. In this way, I fill in the blanks and make the character more whole as time goes by. Different incarnations of a character can reveal new and varied facets as well. For example, it was only in this latest incarnation of Marcus, in Bridgette's Age of Retribution, that I established that Marcus knows how to speak French. Hadrian has developed and refined himself over his several incarnations, as has Dora, and the world of DuMarque.

As far as Gm-ing unusual concept characters, well, Strange Bedfellows could almost be considered a zoological park of unusual concept characters. Sure, there are relatively standard Amber PCs in the game that you might meet at any convention game. Rob's musketeer-like William comes to mind, or Keith's Brandeigh.

On the other hand, I also have in Strange Bedfellows:
A half dryad Amberite
Children of Elders unique to my game, and within that group, one who is 1/2 anthropomorphic felinoid (almost a furry, really)
Children of Elders who normally do not get players clamoring to be their children, like Sand, Delwin, and Dalt
Characters with ties to unusual powers and beings, sometimes such relations do not always go smoothly...
A PC from an alternate multiverse, descended from Oberon's sister
One PC whose twisted history and background is unknown even to the character, but the Player has fiendishly had fun
devising.
So do I mind unusual concepts? NO. I welcome them, within bounds of balance and fairness.

The trick is balance. I don't like characters or concepts which overshadow all other PCs. "Min-maxing" is not something I appreciate very much, and such players are not welcome in my games.

I'm pretty lucky though, the players in my game who have unusual concepts are not those who are prone to abusing them, they are aware that such concepts are a two edged sword, and that weird background and nature can bite you on the butt when you aren't looking. There are disadvantages if you wanted to play, for instance, a sentient half-chaosian, half-magical beast, but if it provides a rich game experience for the Gm, the player, and the fellow players, and doesn't become the be-all and end-all, then I welcome such a beastie into my campaigns and games. In Con games I am usually a little more restrictive in accepted concepts, because the richness of a unique concept is often harder to come across, to express fully and fairly.

The previous post reminds me of one of those things I'd love to have. Long ago, in a land far away known as Staten Island, my older brother introduced me to an anglophilic card game.

It was a melding-type game (like Rummy or Canasta) although instead of regular cards, the cards had English Monarchs on them. All of them from William the Conqueror to Queen Elizabeth II. You could only meld cards if you had all of the Monarchs of a particular dynasty, and the larger, longer dynasties were worth far more points.

It was a lot of fun and educational, too. Where else would I have learned about people like Lady Jane Grey, the nine-days-queen?

I wonder if the game still exists (I have no idea even to its name).

Yes, I am working on Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe...Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Day. Not a holiday here at DBS

On "This Week" on Sunday, George Will recited the entire list. I somehow think he can do it from memory, rather than a teleprompter or a script.

I'm not *that* good.

I worked on advancement points for SB this weekend. Saw Daredevil, too.

Its not a surcease or the philosopher's stone, but I'm better than last Friday. Still, I watched the movie with
a level of apathy and disinterest which is unlike me.

Anyway, it seems the comments aren't working well, either. I'll be glad when I don't have to deal with Blogger or Haloscan anymore.

Ping.

An explanation.

It emerges that my radio silence Friday possibly scared the crap out of some people, or at least unnerved them.

It also seems that my posts detailing in sometimes too intimate detail the dark torture of my mind are upsetting too.

So, dear readers, if I have any left, let's try a slightly different paradigm. The "Ping".

The "Ping" means I hurt, but I am alive.

I won't bother, upset, or take up your time with the bad things I feel. Arref said that pain shared is halved...but on the other hand,
when readers have a visceral reaction to my writing, and get upset...well, then, as I have said many times before, in many contexts, its
not my goal in life to cause that pain and upset.

So the Ping. A shorthand for endless stupid and boring details of my dark mental state, and at the same time telling you I am still alive. I'm not
savvy enough to have a bot post blog entries automatically, you can be sure that a Ping is a true sign.

Okay?

So. Ping.