Ken Newquist November is coming. And that means so is National Novel Writing Month. In years past, I’ve watched and read as my friends fought their way through it, some succeeding, some failing, all glorious in the pursuit. I’ve sat, thought, considered and ultimately come up with one excuse or another not to do it. There’s always … Read more
Open Office is a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. Based on Sun’s Star Office, Open Office has been around for a number of years, and has proved fairly popular with the geeks, particularly those who dislike being beholden to Microsoft, Apple or any other proprietary software developer. It’s the predominant office productivity suite on … Read more
I’m an uncle again. My sister Kristen had a baby boy earlier this week — he weighed in at 8 lbs. 8 oz. and measured 22.5″ long. That’s an inch and a half longer and about 5 oz. heavier then NeutronLad when he was born … and about 2 lbs. bigger then his sister. Of course we’d have … Read more
Roger Ebert has famously said that video games may have the potential to be beautiful, well crafted, and technically competent … but they are not art. In a later column, he asked what video game made to date could possibly stand up against the greatest movies ever made? Admittedly, I find his premise faulty; I … Read more
I’ve had an Xbox for going on four years, and a 360 for one and a half. I’ve spent many a happy hour playing online, both over Verizon DSL and RCN Cable, on the 360 … at least until Halo 3 arrived. For some reason, Halo 3 refused to play nice like the rest of … Read more
My new MacBook Pro arrived Friday, and the first thing I did (after basking in the beauty that is a new Mac) was to start loading my “must have” applications on it it. Of these, the Quicksilver fast app launcher is probably the single most important tool I have — using it has become as … Read more
The Lehigh Valley’s annual Celtic Festival is underway in Bethlehem, which means that most of my friends chose to drink, eat and listen to great music rather than game. That said, two of us were still able to get a little gaming in, namely a playtest of the new Halo ActionClix collectible miniatures game from … Read more
Hallmark’s released their Winter 2007 ornaments, so it’s time to warp ahead to the future of this year’s Geek Tree. I have my eye on three new ornaments, two spawned by Star Trek and and Joss Whedon’s Firefly. First up is the three-warp nacelled Enterprise 1701-D from the episode of “All Good Things”, the series finale … Read more
Prepping for Issue #1 of Infinity Storm didn’t leave me with enough time to write a Game Day column last week. This week though, I’m back in the player’s seat for our ongoing Ravenloft campaign. The campaign’s got a few new tricks up its sleeve, mainly a whole slew of deadly effects from Paizo’s GameMastery … Read more
The Cosmic Cup had live jazz tonight (with my boss on drums, so I stopped by with the kids for coffee, hazelnut chocalate gelato, and good music. We didn’t stay long — StarGirl was tired after a big day at preschool — but the kids seemed to enjoy it, and it was a great break from … Read more