Ken Newquist Toybox Wars is a table-top miniatures game in which the inhabitants of your toybox rise up to fight each other to the death. The core mechanic is simple. Each toy — be it a miniature car, squad of army men, teddybear — is represented by 10 six-sided dice divided into one of three pools: Dodge … Read more
The Dark City A Team campaign (and we really do need to come up with a better designation for the upper level characters) resumes tonight after the unexpected death of the entire B Team at the hands of the Kobold King last week. Before we do so though, we’ll be running through a playtest of … Read more
Friday’s game day was supposed to see our lower-level Dark City campaign characters’ wrap up Paizo’s Crown of the Kobold King module and then return to our home city of Obsidian Bay for some much needed down time. And then … Total Party Kill. It was our own fault. We went up against a dozen … Read more
In this show I talk about my trip to the DrupalCon Boston geekfest, spend a few days playing in the snowy wilds of New Hampshire, my wife Sue starts a blog of her own for Red-Tail Designs. Meanwhile, in Netheads, I find out what it takes to survive Giant Robot attacks and live with a … Read more
The Elucidator is a quarterly print magazine published in Easton, Pa. It’s the sort of thing that people outside of the town might never expect to be here: a magazine reviewing local culture, life, and arts. It’s “Chew” and “Imbibe” columns check out the Lehigh Valley’s bars and restaurants, while “Listen” reviews a variety of music, and regular photo essays explore life in and around Easton.
Like I said, it’s nothing you’d expect to find here. Unless, of course, you actually lived here.
Easton’s changed a lot over the years, in some ways for the bad (gangs) and many ways for the good (the arts). There’s an established arts community, multiple art galleries, some cool downtown events — including beer, garlic and shad (yes, shad) festivals.
Gary Gygax passed away this week, shocking the geek world and sending a cascade of remembrances surging across the web. My gaming group is no less saddened by this, and in honor of Gygax, we took a one-week break from our campaign to run the classic 1st edition module, White Plume Mountain. Technically, we’re not … Read more
DrupalCon Boston is looming large, but before I get there I decided to go visit my sister in New Hampshire. It’s a long trip — seven hours or so from Easton, longer with the family in tow — so I had plenty of time to get caught up on my podcasts. First up with Pulp … Read more
I spend a lot of time on the Mac — at work, at home, when I’m dreaming. These are the hacks that I use almost every day to get the most out of my computers.
Zoom in on anything
For a zoomed in view of anything on your computer, hold the CTRL key and then brush upwards on your trackpad with two fingers. To zoom out, hold the CTRL key and brush downwards with two fingers.
Get Google Talk working with iChat
There is no Google Talk client for the Mac, but you can access its instant messaging capabilities by setting up Jabber in iChat. This will not support voice chat, but it works just fine for text. Learn how to set up Jabber via this Google help page.
Fast launch applicatons from the dock
Sometimes you want to quickly browse your full list of applications without delving into the Finder and clicking on the “Applicatons” folder (or following a shortcut from the Desktop).
A hack I learned by visiting the Apple Store was to drop a shortcut to my Applications folder. Under 10.4 Tiger, you could then right-click on the folder and see a full list of all your apps. Then select the one you want, and it launches.
On this issue of Nuketown Radio Active I struggle to wake my narcoleptic MacBook Pro, try out The Bourne Ultimatum as a movie on demand, discuss my upcoming convention trips to DrupalCon Boston and Balticon 42 and spend some time trying to infiltrate the Secret Lair podcast. In Netheads, I figure out how to actually … Read more
I’ve never been a huge Warhammer 40,000 fan, but it’s been slowly corrupting my brain for the last few weeks as Berin’s been talking about the novels on and off at Uncle Bear and fellow Blackrazor Damon picked up not one, but two copies of the Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy RPG. I’m sorely tempted to … Read more