Ken Newquist For the last few years I’ve been thinking about getting back into model rocketry — it was one of my favorite hobbies when I was a kid, and it’s just the sort of focused-yet-relaxing activity I could use more of nowadays. Plus, Jordan’s now three and loves to build stuff. While I don’t think she’s … Read more
Geeks are supposed to be the loners. The outcasts. The freaks with no friends, and no desire to make them. We live on the fringe, and in a world with 24/7 high speed internet and online pizza ordering, we need never see the light of day, let alone another human being. And yet, for all … Read more
This show features a Radio Active first as I do a game and music review of the same product: Wizards of the Coast’s Sharn: City of Towers for the Eberron campaign setting. The show has a ton of listener feedback from Radio Active #34, as well as a review of the Vintage Gamer podcast, a … Read more
For the last few weeks I’ve seen people searching for “toxic chopsticks” on Nuketown, which I assumed was in regards to some sort of hoax, but since no one ever sent me the text, I couldn’t debunk it. This morning I tried searching Snopes.com and came up with the story “Chopsticks”. According to Snopes, the … Read more
Over at Uncle Bear we’ve had many a conversation about long-tail fandom, the idea that there’s so much good stuff out there — science fiction novels, games, movies — that you don’t really need be current to satisfy your geeky desires. I tend to stay a little closer to the wave front then Berin — … Read more
You’ve got your cyberpunk, your hard science fiction, your urban fantasy, but some days, what you really want is a good ship, faster-than-light travel, and a trusty blaster at your side. The Space Opera Renaissance (Amazon) looks like it’ll provide exactly that. The new anthology, released July 11, looks to be gathering a positive buzz online … Read more
I’ve been tinkering with a C#-based RSS ScreenSaver for Windows based on the example screensaver project included with the Visual C# Express Studio. Things were going well — despite the fact that I’d never done anything in C# before — until Friday when I tested it on a production box and discovered something … odd. … Read more
An e-mail claiming to showcase photos of a hanged/hanging and/or captured Osama din Laden is a hoax. The e-mail originated as an attempt to get people to download a trojan horse virus on to their computer, but it later morphed into a scare mail warning people about the alleged apocalyptic dangers of opening the e-mail. … Read more
Superman Returns is the archetypal superhero soundtrack, expertly incorporating the full spectrum of full-color emotions — heroics, passion, dread, wonder, inspiration — while paying homage to John Williams’ original tracks. The soundtrack opens with the familiar Supes crescendo in “Main Titles”, calling to mind the engrained vision of Christopher Reeve’s Superman running down a Metropolis … Read more
A powerful thunderstorm hit Easton Pa. on Tuesday night, knocking out power to my house and to the college where I work. It made for a long Tuesday night/Wednesday morning as we sweltered in a house with out fans, but thankfully things cooled down when power came back up Wednesday morning and the air started … Read more