Theoretically I should have mixed things up with the bike or treadmill today, but I took the easy way out and did the elliptical machine 'cause I was too damn tired. Still a decent work out, just not as hard as the other two options.

In my ears: GutcheckCast #14 - License to Eat, Cato Daily Podcast: Doha Is Dead, Liberalization Lives, and 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction: Episode 34, which discusses D&D 4th Edition/GSL.

My review of the web site Paleofuture web site is up at SCIFI.com. Paleofuture looks at what our past selves thought the future would be like, rather than what it turned out to be.

Wizards of the Coast is killing Gleemax. WotC is refocusing their efforts after the fumbled launch of the D&D Insider initiative (ok, I say "fumbled" you say "catastrophic failure..."), which failed to include the overpromised and much coveted online gaming table and character generators for D&D 4th Edition and the painful Magic Online v3 upgrade which has caused a tremendous amount of frustration among Magic players (or at least, the ones I know).

I can't say I'm surprised. I thought Gleemax was poorly executed from Day 1. It was supposed to be a social networking site for gamers, but at its launch it was just a glorified message forum, and it never evolved much beyond that. I know some folks enjoyed the conversations they found there, but honestly, you can have those conversations anywhere. You didn't need yet another site for that, and if you couldn't deliver on the promised social networking aspects at launch, then why bother?

Good-bye Gleemax ... and good riddance.

There's a fitness tradition that's evolved on Twitter (at least among my friends) called
"On Our Feet", in which we post a single tweet declaring "OOF" and then whatever exercise we did. It's largely motivational in nature -- if I see Doug or Zack from the GutcheckCast posting about working out, then that tends to inspire me to make sure I get my 30 minutes in as well. It's also a chance for an instant reward as folks shout encouragement from the virtual stands.

So with that in mind, I've started an "OOF" category on Nuketown, and I'll be posting that day's exercise to it. Nothing big, just a quick hit to say "hey, made it!" ... and to help motivate me to exercise again the next day.

So ... 7/29: 30 minutes swimming laps at the pool.

After long months of intermittent exercise brought on by family craziness, business trips, bouts of novel writing and a dozen other excuses, I'm finally getting back to a consistent exercise regime. I had been getting to the gym and pool intermittently over the spring and summer, but for the most part, I've been slacking.

And it shows.

After reaching a personal best (at least in the modern era, which I'll define as beginning at age 30) of 196 lbs., my weight's crept back up to 213 lbs. Actually, it was 214 lbs. last week, but it inched back down again after a solid week of exercise and a few less Mountain Dews.

Black Gate is a quarterly print magazine committed to the universe of epic fantasy. Each edition features news, reviews, articles and interviews encompassing everything from books to comics to movies. The web site features news about upcoming editions as well as the occasional review of a fantasy novel, magazine, or anthology.

The Dark Knight is brilliant. It’s intellectually challenging. It’s psychologically terrifying. And there’s a damn good chance it’ll scare the living daylights out of your 13-year-old.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who saw Batman Begins. The movie hews close to the comic books, which have run to the dark side ever since 1986’s The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Miller’s re-imagined Batman lived in a brutal, gritty world in which hope was a distant dream rarely realized. It’s a tradition that continued in some of the best Batman stories since then, such as Batman: Year One and The Long Halloween.

SF Site is a bi-weekly webzine dedicated to reviewing fantasy and science fiction books and magazines. It also offers a smattering of TV and movie reviews, as well as staff editorials.

We're about halfway through our Planetorn play-test campaign, with the fourth session happening today, and perhaps another three or four to go before it runs its course. This milestone has me reflecting on where the campaign's been, where it's going, and what I hope to accomplish before it's all over.

Today's adventure finds our heroes having returned from the alternative material plane of Fierth, a sand-blasted realm which is threatened with destruction by the machinations of the red dragon Sulara. Our heroes have determined that the dragon is attempting to break open an ancient sealed portal to the elemental plane of fire within Mount Infernus. The mountain is the focal point of Fierth's ley lines, and when the portal falls, it's feared that the entire plane will go up in flames.

Horrorhack’s Library of the Damned is a blog by horror author and librarian Rebecca Brock that intends to discuss everything horror: books, movies, writing, hand-knit replicas of Freddy Kruger's knife gloves, you name it.

Posts have dissected the mediocre horror of M. Night Shyamalan (I disagree on her opinions of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but the rest is spot on, Tori Spelling staring in a Cthulhu movie, and one particularly peculiarly evil poster of a boy eating pork and beans. It's a new blog, but it looks to be off to a good, weird start.