I was reading Open Game Table The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs and I ran across ars ludi » Grand Experiments: West Marches. I’m tempted to try something similar for my next campaign. It wouldn’t be quite the same as I don’t have a pool of 10-14 players to call upon, but I like the idea of an open world to explore. Now to see if the campaign happens.
World of Filkcraft was highlighted on WoW.com for their I’ve Been Everywhere video. I went to the site and found more of their songs. They’re funny and I’m looking forward to hearing more. My favorite right now is Part of Your Guild.
It amuses me that this stage in WoW’s cycle, I’m probably going to downgrade all my fancy Emblems of Frost all the way down to Emblems of Heroism so that I can swap them for heirlooms. There are a number of items I could upgrade on my toons with the badges, but the upgrades would be incremental at best. I’m not at all interested in raiding right now, and anything I buy will almost certainly be replace early in Cataclysm.
The frustrating part about this is running from the money changer to the heirloom vendor and trying to make sure that I have converted the appropriate number of badges. Unless I keep WoWHead open, I always wind up converting too few.
Unless I get another character slot, I won’t be making a goblin. My horde server is completely full. I will be leveling a number of Alliance toons – though I’m probably going to skip mage, warlock and rogue as I haven’t particularly enjoyed those classes.
As we look at alternative sources of energy and the funding for developping them, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded How we subsidize fossil fuels – Boing Boing.
How to Turn Your Backyard into a Bird Refuge is the kind of project I think i can handle in our new place. Despite living in the country, I do not want to raise my own chickens/pigs/cattle/llamas. Setting up feeders and housing for wild birds is much more appealing. If nothing else, I won’t have to pay vet bills for birds. I wonder if there’s a way of turning the river portion of our backyard into a turtle refuge?
This amused me a few days back. It reminds me of this RPG.net thread: Biggest Powergamers in Real Life. History is ridiculously improbable.
I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called “World War II”.
Let’s start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn’t look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn’t get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.
I wouldn’t even mind the lack of originality if they weren’t so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we’re supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren’t that evil. And that’s not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese.
Not that the good guys are much better. Their leader, Churchill, appeared in a grand total of one episode before, where he was a bumbling general who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Ottomans of all people in the Battle of Gallipoli. Now, all of a sudden, he’s not only Prime Minister, he’s not only a brilliant military commander, he’s not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he’s also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he’s supposed to be the hero, but it’s not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.
…
… between calling the strongman “Man of Steel” and the Frenchman “de Gaulle”, whoever came up with the names for this thing ought to be shot.
So yeah. Stay away from the History Channel. Unlike most of the other networks, they don’t even try to make their stuff believable.
Street-Fighting Math: down and dirty guide to approximation and problem-solving looks like an interesting book. When I was in high school, my dad taught me to always come up with an estimated answer prior to solving a problem. If the answer I came up with was wildly different than my estimate, then I needed to figure out why the two diverged. This serves as a way of quickly checking my work (and developing mathematical intuition as a bonus). It’s a very useful approach even now that I don’t have math homework.
I read The know-it-all: one man’s humble quest to become the smartest person in the world a while back. I enjoyed it.
In this book, A.J. Jacobs tells the story of the year he spent reading through the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. Some of the story is about the odd facts he picks up along the way, but most of it is about the oddities of a year’s worth of immersion into the Encyclopaedia. He couldn’t be on Jeopardy because he interviewed Alex Trebek, but he managed to get onto Who Wants to be a Millionaire. He joined Mensa and took a course on speed reading. A lot of his stories revolve around a gentle self-mockery.
It was a fun read and made me laugh out loud several times. You won’t gain any great insights from reading this book, but it’s full of amusing anecdotes.
Have you ever wondered if you might be a Trekkie? Maybe you don’t debate starship weapon layouts or even Kirk versus Picard, but you may still not be safe.
This comic is a good illustrated restatement of Heinlein’s quote:
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled Nature.” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature”-but beavers and their dams are. — Lazarus Long in Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love.
My favorite lame joke along these lines is to ask for food with all unnatural or supernatural ingredients. 
This post on Murloc Parliament » Tanking Persona is very funny. I’ve tanked using every tanking class in WoW and I’ve also used all three of those tanking personas. Mostly I’m between Ultranoob and The Strong Silent Type. I save my dickhead foaming at the mouth for when I’m really annoyed and have Vent push-to-talk firmly off.
I think having to adopt a tanking persona is one of the reasons why I’ve pretty much quit tanking. I can’t be bothered to babysit a group through instances anymore, whether it’s through force of personality, self-mockery, or momentum.
(via Righteous Orbs)
I found this video fascinating. The ideas that stuck out were:
There’s a lot of good stuff to think about here. Most of the ideas
Open Culture highlighted this video on Three Minute Philosophy. It’s a fun, quick take on the high points of various philosophers’ philosophies. Obviously in 3 minutes you don’t get much in the way of subtle nuance, but it’s a good way to know that Kant was focused on objective ethics, Aquinas made a list of arguments for the existence of the Roman Catholic god, and so on. This is a great place to start an exploration of philosophical ideas.
If you liked this one, check out the rest of his philosophical videos.
I recently read Gail Carriger’s Soulless. The first half came as part of the Hugo Voter’s package. I really enjoyed it.
The story opens with Alexia Tarabotti being attacked by vampire she hasn’t been introduced to properly. Even more shockingly, his attire is completely unfashionable! After surviving the attack, Miss Tarabotti is left to unravel the mystery of the improper vampire with the aid of Lord Maccon, fourth earl of Woolsey and Alpha of the local werewolf pack.
The way things were phrased in this story kept making me laugh. There’s something about the way the supernatural adventure is juxtaposed with Victorian mannerisms that kept leading to one hilarious turn of phrase after another. The heroine of the piece manages to both fit the times perfectly and be an odd duckling. Watching her bounce back and forth between propriety and bluntness was one of the funniest parts of the book.
I plan to read the rest of this series as it comes out. Hopefully I can pick it up as an ebook.
I really like the idea of backing up all the kids’ DS games. Unfortunately, It looks as though I’d have to buy a regular DS or DS Lite, so I’m not sure if I’ll get around to doing it. It would make me much less nervous when we’re traveling with all those tiny cartridges. How to Hack Your Nintendo DS for Easy Backups and Single-Cartridge Playback.
What I really want is Steam for the DS. On the bright side, if it doesn’t happen in this generation of units, it’ll almost certainly happen in the next one.
I think this post I Can Still Love My Kids And Not Panic About What They See has a lot of wisdom to it. That is, it matches the parenting style I try to follow . Most of the time, when I feel uncomfortable discussing something with my kids, I take it as a sign that I really should discuss this with them. So far it hasn’t freaked them out, though I’m pretty sure I’ve bored them with excessive detail a time or two.
So when they asked me about violence, or drugs, or any of the other tricky things that kids ask about, I talked it out with them to separate reality from fantasy as best I could, and what I think happens in real life (for I’m not egotistic enough to think that My Take on sex or drugs or racism is the universal solution), and basically just hashed things out.
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
I want to get a blowup of this picture to put on Alec’s wall when he’s been bad.
xkcd: Temper.
Man, I wish I could disagree with my family like this. The part that really annoys me is that it would probably be a thousand times more effective than getting mad and yelling. Maybe I can keep this in mind next time my kids drive me nuts.
Today we went to the zoo. The kids really enjoy seeing all the animals – though it’s often the prairie dogs running wild that steal the show. We say a pair of prairie dogs chasing each other around this year with jumps and tumbles and lots of chittering. The arctic fox was running laps around his cage. Alec loved the turtles of course and Evan enjoyed the monkeys. At the end we rode the minature steam train around. It makes for a fun family outing.
Kids at the Winnie the Pooh Statue
