Ultrablamtacular!

My awesome editrix is going out of town this week. And I just found out tonight that she ordered the new Batman video game to keep me company while she’s away. Jona rocks.

So…if you’re reading this blog, you probably already know that the Ennie Award voting is open.

Someday, I’d like to be up for one of those bad boys. And I’d like people to vote. For me, obviously.

So go vote. The Funzor density of the nominees is high.

I was working on an adventure for the SIFRP game I’m running (which, though I’ve located some flaws, is still working pretty well, and is still a Thing I Like) and I needed some details about pre-industrial mining. I remembered an article I had read an indeterminate-but-long time ago about the development of humankind’s ability to dig and drill in the earth. I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d read it, but I narrowed it down to one of three magazines and started googling.

I didn’t find it on the goog, but I did find it. I turned up the entire text of an article I sort of remembered from what turned out to be a decade ago based on a vague recollection of a magazine and one phrase that stuck in my head. The internet is awesome.

Many years ago, when AltaVista was the big deal in search, my dad commented that the internet was useless because while you could find all sorts of things on it, you could never find the thing you wanted. He was right then, and the fact that he’s wrong now is what makes the internet so awesome. It’s like having an enormous photographic memory. I know. This is old hat. But seriously. One partially remembered phrase.

Today is Free RPG Day! Head out to your Friendly Local Game Store and pick up some cool stuff, try out a new game, and buy the father in your life that Father’s Day present you’ve been putting off. Dads love RPGs!

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Here’s a guy who made a bunch of D&D monsters. In origami.

Credit where it’s due: You could run a blog for years and have people think you’re clever, just by stealing judiciously from BoingBoing, which is where I got this link.

While writing about stuff I like, I skipped something else I like because I wanted to save it for a separate post. This one. Because it’s something I like, but it contains something I didn’t like for Ultrablam. If you’d like to read the story of why I didn’t go there, and how I got from there to here, then read on!

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I just wrote a long post about something I didn’t like. I feel like I should post about  some things that I do like, to sorta balance the cosmic scales.

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I know I keep talking about game development and software engineering. Sorry. But they’re two activities I engage in and when I find areas of similarity between them, it sort of catches my attention.   Read more…

What was sort of a nebulous goal, a member of the gee-wouldn’t-that-be-nice category of thoughts, is now a committment. I’m going to GenCon. And I’m taking this ever-so-soon-to-be-named game system with me. I’ll be a member of The Forge booth. I’m really glad to have this in the realm of the real. It’s chilling and galvanizing to have a real, honest-to-goodness deadline. Read more…

So. I’ve been on this gangster kick lately. We just watched the entire run of The Sopranos over the last couple of months. Then the other night, we caught enough of The Godfather Part II on TV to assure that the good ones of that franchise end up on our screen soon enough. But commercial interruptions soon led us to watching Goodfellas on instant Netflix instead. What a great movie that is. Additionally, the lovely and talented R. is running a V:tM game for our group (yay! I get to play!) and I siezed the opportunity to create an Eastern European mobster-turned Ventrue.

What’s Russian for “Fugeddaboudit?”