Ken Newquist Game Master’s Day is one of those great ideas that never quite seems to get enough love. It’s held on March 4th (“March Fourth for Game Master’s Day”), which means this is the first year I’ve actually had a post up about it on the day it was happening. The idea is that today’s the … Read more
It’s February in Pennsylvania, which means we’re alternating between cold and icy, cold and muddy, and just plain cold. Oh we get the occasional spring tease, when temps spike up to the mid-40s, but those are quickly gone. Now granted, it’s not New England, which just got another foot of snow, but it’s still miserable … Read more
One of the things I enjoy about my Mac is stumbling across different applications (or uses for applications) that I never knew it had. Some of these are legacies of earlier versions of the OS, introduced before being supplanted by some later software, while others are simply obscure, lurking in the corners of your Applications … Read more
Two big story arcs have concluded in the comics universe over the last few weeks: Marvel’s Secret Invasion mini series, in which the alien, shape-shifting Skrulls attempt to take over the Earth, and Batman R.I.P, in which the Dark Knight dies. Or appears to die, because really, what are the chances that he’s actually dead? … Read more
Star Wars Omnibus: Tales of the Jedi, Vol. 1 reprints Dark Horse Comics’ Knights of the Old Republic era comic books printed back in the early to mid 1990s. It consists of the first three such stories — The Golden Age of the Sith, Ulic Qel-Droma and the Beast Wars of Onderon, and The Saga … Read more
The Xbox Live version of Ticket to Ride is a faithful port of the popular board game, recreating the train-themed game on Microsoft’s game console. The game board features a map of the continental United States with its major cities connected by different colored train routes. Players draw different colored tickets from a deck each … Read more
Another week, another game of Star Wars. The adventure rolls on with a special flashback episode. Last week, our band of heroes learned of 32 Belasco Division E-company (aka the Early Birds), an Old Republic Army advance assault unit that went missing on Toprawa during the Great Sith War. This week, we’ll be playing soldiers … Read more
My Christmas Reading List for 2008 went well; I finished two novels (Revelation Space, The Last Colony) on the list and made a serious dent in the third (The Amber Spyglass), while also finishing a hefty graphic novel (Star Wars Omnibus: Tales of the Jedi, Vol. 1) It was great lose myself in books for … Read more
My Christmas-turned-Winter Reading List is front and center on this episode of Radio Active as I run down the books I’ve been reading recently, including Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds, The Last Colony by John Scalzi and Star Wars: Omnibus: Tales of the Jedi, Volume 1. I also talk about my new writing gig at … Read more
It’s been awfully quiet around here the last week or so, and I thought I’d post a note before folks wonder if I’d crawled off to a cave for information detox.
If only.
I work at a college as a web applications developer. And the thing about working in higher education (or hell, any form of education) is you tend to move through life somewhat perpendicular to the real world. My year starts in July, and ends in June, because that’s how our academic calendar rolls. My life gets crazy in late August and late January, because that’s when the Fall and Spring semesters begin.
The pace hits an even more frantic note in January and July/August because that’s when the faculty and students aren’t on campus (or most of them aren’t at least) so we conduct this biannual mad dash to get all of our critical upgrades and new programs in place so things will be nice and shiny when everyone hits campus.
The lulls (and yes, there are lulls) come about two weeks into the semester and last until about two weeks after it ends. Which isn’t to say we’re sitting around playing cards all day, but it is a more relaxed, less frantic state of being.
But now is not that time. Now is the crazy time, and thus, the profound lack of posts around here.