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Tech Tips

Tablets at the Table, 2011 Edition

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 7:29am

When the iPad hit a little over a year ago, there was a flurry of posts in RPG circles about tablet gaming. Since then we haven’t seen a lot of talk about them – I’m not sure if folks grew bored with the topic, or if they’ve now become so common place that they’re not worth commenting on any more.

I suspect it could be the latter. At my game table we have three iPads (two first generation, one second) and an Android tablet. For my last two sessions I ran Paizo’s Crypt of the Everflame for Pathfinder almost entirely off the iPad, using the PDF of the module and the iTunes Remote app to control music playlists on my Mac. I wasn’t entirely digital – I still used index cards to track initiative (old habits diehard) and looked up a few rules in the Pathfinder core book and the Bestiary, but I was just as likely to look up something in the Pathfinder SRD.

Follow Friday for 5/20/2011

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 05/20/2011 - 4:30am

Here are my Follow Friday picks for Friday, May 20, 2011:

  • @flagonsdragons A podcast dedicated to role-playing games and beer, two of my favorite subjects.
  • @RealityBlurs Publisher of Savage Worlds books like Realms of Cthulhu and RunePunk
  • @DragonAgeOracle Excellent source for Dragon Age RPG related news, posts, rules & commentary

cnn.com: Return of the Commodore 64

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 05/12/2011 - 7:50pm

The Commodore 64 was the second computer I owned. The first was a Timex Sinclair (an ancient bit of technology that used a tape recorder for storing programs, and had a too-small, inflexible chicklet keyboard. Of course, it's big advantage was that it was mine -- while my mom taught me to program on an Apple II+, the Timex was the computer that I wrote my first original programs on.

The Commodore was a huge leap leap forward. For one, I got to hook it up to the spiffy new color TV I got for Confirmation. For another, it had an external floppy drive! No more having to carefully advance through the tape recorder, looking for exactly the right number to execute my program at. And the Commodore 64 had an amazing 64 kilobytes of memory, which made it ideal as a gaming platform for one of my all time favorite computer rpgs: Ultima II.

FollowFriday: Comic Book Publishers on Twitter

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 1:00pm

Here are my Follow Friday picks for 2/12/2010; inspired by Dark Horse Comic's Knights of the Old Republic giveaway (in which you had a chance to win a complete set of KOTOR books) I decided to do a round up of the major comic book companies on Twitter.

  • @darkhorsecomics Because they publish Star Wars: Legacy, gave Star Wars: KOTOR a great run & are launching a new SW title #followfriday
  • (also because @DarkHorseComics is giving away Volumes 1-8 of the KOTOR comic ... which is a fantastic read) http://bit.ly/9syXk3
  • @marvel and @agent_m because they got the value of Twitter from the beginning and are amusing reads #followfriday
  • @Dc_Nation Follow for a steady stream of DC Comics news, but don't expect the robot to talk back. #followfriday
  • @Wildstorm The feed for the DC line that does Twitter better than its parent company. #followfriday

Follow Friday for Oct. 23, 2009

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 10/23/2009 - 4:14pm

Here's my Follow Friday list for October 23, 2009:

Follow Friday for Sept. 9

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Sun, 09/20/2009 - 9:09pm

Two days late (and a tweet or two short), here are my Follow Friday picks:

  • @make Notes about awesome DIY projects you could be doing if only you had time. And skill. And tools. #followfriday
  • @easdnewsflash Easton Area School District on Twitter. #followfriday
  • @ChattyDM Because he never stops talking & yet still has plenty of good things to say. #followfriday

FollowFriday: Star Wars: Saga Edition

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 08/21/2009 - 10:44am

A whole host of people involved in Star Wars: Saga Edition in one form or another have joined Twitter over the last few weeks. It's great to see -- D&D 4th Edition and Pathfinder have sizable fan bases on Twitter, but until recently Star Wars has been lagging. Hopefully with these new additions we'll see a nice uptick in Saga Edition-related tweets. If nothing else I'd love to see in-game tweets from these folks -- we've had a blast tweeting our campaign adventures, and it's be cool to read about what others are doing.

Here's my Follow Friday list, Star Wars edition:

@GMChris, @GMDave, @TwilekGoodness Co-hosts of the Order 66 podcast, the fan podcast for the Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG #swse #followfriday

@wotc_rodney Developer for Star Wars: Saga Edition, Dark Sun at WotC, @silverforce77 Freelance writer for Star Wars #swse #followfriday

@Mapcrafter Scifi & fantasy mapmaker @jjmfaraway Knights of the Old Republic writer, Mass Effect comic book scripter #swse #followfriday

Four Essential Apps for Windows Netbooks

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Thu, 08/06/2009 - 4:30am

My family recently got an Asus netbook, which has plunged me once again into the world of Windows XP. Fortunately I came prepared -- while I spend most of my day on a Mac, I occasionally dual boot into XP on my MacBook Pro, and I've accumulated a number of must-have utilities for thriving in Windows.

Launchy: A fast application launcher that allows you to quickly find and run applications on your computer. It's roughly equivelent of Quicksilver on the Mac, though Quicksilver offers more advanced capabilities.

Cute PDF: A free PDF creator for Windows; "print" your document to the Cute PDF printer and it spits out a finished PDF. It's something I do instinctively on the Mac; it's nice to have that functionality in Windows as well.

Bonjour for Windows: Apple's Bonjour software lets you quickly find shared printers on a network. I use this to print to my Airport Express-connected HP LaserJet printer. The alternative is trying to use the Windows network printing utility, and that way lies madness.

Twitter Follow Friday: 5/15/09

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 05/15/2009 - 1:55pm

Here's my "Follow Friday" list for 5/15. I didn't get any education-centric folks on my list this week, but I'll try and make up for that next week.

Twitter Follow Friday: 3/13/09

Posted in by Kenneth Newquist on Fri, 03/13/2009 - 11:10am

#FollowFriday is a new meme that's popped up over the last few weeks on Twitter. The idea is that people identify folks they enjoy following and tweet about them using the #FollowFriday hashtag. It's a cool idea, though personally I wish that people would spend a few more characters explaining why they follow them.

I decided to join the meme this week, and thought I'd crosspost my #FollowFriday tweets on Nuketown.