It’s a Boy: NeutronLad

NeutronLad was born at 6:13 p.m., Wednesday, June 14, weighing 8 lbs. 3 oz. and measuring 22″ long. He has a full head of his mother’s red hair, and we’ll see whether his baby blues turn into his father’s blue eyes, his mother’s brown, or something in between (like his sister’s). Sue and the baby are … Read more

Nuketown Redesign Blog Updates

As I mentioned in Radio Active #31, this month I will be transitioning Nuketown from its current configuration to a new, Drupal-based content management system and a shiny new layout. To avoid having to maintain two sites while I migrate the database from one to the other, I will not be making any updates to Nuketown for the next week to two weeks.

All will not be quiet however. If you want to track the progress of the migration, please read my Atomic Age blog over on Blogger, which will be updated almost daily. Look there for announcements about the second round of beta tests, screen shots of the latest versions, and quasi-technical rundowns of problems remaining and solved. Comments and feedback via the blog or Nuketown’s own feedback form are welcome and appreciated!

Welcome to the New Burg, Same as the Old Burg

The Nuketown redesign picked up pace this weekend as I finally sat down and focused on it for a couple of hours. In the process I wrestled the new site’s visual design into place, ending up with a fusion of the current blog-like look and the experimental magazine-still site I was playing around with. If … Read more

Responding to The Karaoke Transcripts

In early to mid-May, Berin Kinsman posted a series of thoughtful essays on the nature of geekdom to Uncle Bear. Called “The Karaoke Transcripts” (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Denouement) the essays inspired plenty of intelligent debate, and I contributed my fair share of comments. Since things have been slow at … Read more

Drupal, Nuketown and You

If you’re wondering why Nuketown’s been pretty quiet for the last few weeks, it’s because I’ve been continuing to work on the beta. I’ve got a design that I like — it needs some tweaking, but it accomplishes my goal of changing up the site enough to be different while retaining enough for it to … Read more

Getting Past a Fear of Girls

A short film, Fear of Girls — about two stereotypical uber gamers — is circulating around the geek community. The ten-minute film tells the tale of two “advanced” gamers who are a cut about your normal geeks, which means they do stuff that would freak out regular gamers, like role-playing sex or dressing up in … Read more

Gazing Skyward with Stellarium

Stellarium is an open source sky simulator that allows you to view the constellations as they appear from any place on Earth, at any time you choose. It’s a beautiful piece of software, with fantastic sunsets and night skies (as you can see from the screenshots). I’m still exploring it — I’m still not sure … Read more

The Big Bag-o-Gaming Web Sites

I finally got around to consolidating all of my Knights of the Dinner Table web notes into one big mega file, which now holds about 38 links. Thanks to this endeavor, I’d say I’ve got about two and a half WebScryer columns researched now, so all I need to do is bang out the actual … Read more

Borgizing the Geek Tree

Ah yes — another Christmas, another Geek Tree! The Geek Tree, for those unfamiliar with it, is an annual tradition for me, one that arose when my wife pleaded for me to stop overloading the family tree with TIE Fighters, Enterprises, and Jedi. This year it will contain all the trimmings of previous years, but … Read more