Ken Newquist Normally this time of year sees me putting together my GenCon Shopping List, but unfortunately I’m not going to GenCon this year. For the first time since 1999, I’m staying home, largely because a) I want to spend time with my baby daughter and b) I need to give my finances a break. But not … Read more
Acquire is one of those board game’s that I’ve heard about for years, but never got around to playing. The basic idea is to transform small start-up companies into massive conglomerates. Players have the opportunity to buy stocks, which can earn them cash if their companies grow, and must constantly work to develop their companies while … Read more
SARS has taken a heavy toll, both in terms of human life and economic prosperity. A new e-mail hoax plays off of that malady, combining it with malease over the Iraq War in a play to get people to forward a useless e-mail around the net. The hoax alleges that British Airways, aided (as in … Read more
Smiles are Addicting: I can’t get enough of StarGirl’s smile, whether it’s the wide, gum-filled happy grin or her crooked little “ain’t I cute?” smirk. Even when this smile is the result of her having just peed all over her clothes, the changing table, and her daddy, I can’t help but smile back. Grabbing Things … Read more
It’s a battle between Man and Machine … and while the Man’s not winning, I’m not doing all that badly. My first encounter with trying to get my Perl scripts to execute on any Unix box was a brutal massacre that left bits of my geeky ego scattered across my desktop. Like any good general … Read more
This is why I love living down the street from a college (and heck, working at one for that matter). Lafayette College, in Easton, Pa. is holding — of all things — a dark future film festival and art exhibition. Called “Future Noir”, the show opened June 8. The art component of the exhibition is … Read more
I expected learning Perl to be challenging, but I never expected to have to work so hard to get a simple “Hello World” script running. Perl’s a server-side programming language, normally found on Unix servers, which is extremely useful for writing all sorts of programs, especially those involving text manipulation. I know some Perl, just … Read more
Just about every week, my gaming group gets together to play our ongoing Greyhawk-based Dungeons & Dragons campaign. It’s nearly seven years old (its anniversary arrives in September) and its a source of continual fun, camaraderie and unrelenting chaos. It’s not all about D&D, although it dominates our agenda. We also play a huge number … Read more
Stargate is one of those long-running science fiction series that I’ve never been able to watch. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that its syndicated life — and its new SCI-FI Channel one — don’t match up with my own schedule very well. It tends to air at odd times on Saturdays and … Read more
I’e been kicking over ideas over what Web sites I can review next, either for Nuketown or Science Fiction Weekly (Internet Archive) (and kicking around a new story idea for GreenTentacles), and decided to do a little surfing for Weblogs. After all, blogs are the “big thing” right about now, and one would expect that … Read more