Ken Newquist I’m in the process of redesigning my work Web site (and probably the sites for Nuketown and the GriffCrier as well). This time around my goal is to avoid cheating with my code, which basically means I want to avoid using any of the hacks or tricks that Web designers typically use to create a … Read more
Dungeons & Dragons is a great game, but when it comes to combat (and it almost always does) things get confusing. Who’s got what spells up? Who’s invisible? Who’s wounded? These and a hundred-odd other questions bounce around the table, slowing down combat, and annoying people. The folks at Alea think they’ve got the solution … Read more
It’s finally happened. StarGirl walking. She’s officially … a toddler. She first did it on Monday — she wanted to cross our third floor office, and suddenly decided that walking would be the best way to accomplish that task. She made it a foot or two before hitting a toy and falling down, but she did … Read more
Here’s a rundown of everything I’m reading right now (March 8), from audio books to comic books to good ol’fashioned novels. Audio A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (Amazon): A tale of political scheming set in a world in which the summers and winters can last for years. So far I’m enjoying it, … Read more
A rundown of everything I’m reading right now (March 8), from audio books to comic books to good ol’fashioned novels.
Underworld is the story of the secret war between werewolves and vampires, a war that humans have been blissfully unaware of for years, but which now threatens to erupt into our consciousness. It was also the subject of a lawsuit by White Wolf Games, who claimed that the vampires-vs.-werewolf storyline infringed on its copyright. Having … Read more
I’ve recently been considering the question of how best to display random information from a database. Specificially, I’ve been working on a randomizer for Nuketown that would display a random banner ad every time one of the PHP driven pages was loaded. This blog entry details my attempts to create a random generator via MySQL … and how I ditched that solution in favor of PHP.
The government (or those who want to run it) has been doing so many stupid things lately it’s hard to focus on just one thing. On the one hand, we’ve got Bush’s idiotic marriage amendment proposal, while on the other we’ve got Democrats failing over themselves to proudly proclaim they intend to do nothing to prevent Social Security entitlements from crippling the economy. Oh, and then we’ve got the whole Howard Stern suspension thing, which while not directly related to the government, was undoubtedly prompted by the FCC’s recent heavy breathing over Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple.
It truly staggers the mind. But since my normally apolitical wife Sue mentioned the marriage thing the other night, I’ll go with that.
I was driving home on Friday when I dug my Palm Tungsten C handheld out of my jacket pocket and nearly dropped the thing in surprise. It was hot — excruciatingly hot. It was so hot that that I literally couldn’t hold it in my hand, at least not the portion where the computer’s battery was. I half expected it to start uttering a self-destruct message. Visions of the Enterprise exploding above the Genesis planet flashed before my eyes.
Vanished Planet is a cooperative board game in which players struggle to prevent an ever-growing, inky-black entity from enveloping the galaxy. At the start of the game the Earth has been consumed by the entity, and has apparently been transferred to another dimension. The creature has already begun expanding beyond the Sol system, and it … Read more