So, on Friday, yolen and I went and saw Cry Baby on Broadway. It was fun! I've never seen the movie, but yolen says they made a few minor changes. The songs were amusing.

Saturday, we went to the Loew's Jersey City and saw Blade Runner: The Final Cut on the big screen. I caught a few changes from the director's cut.

Sunday, we napped.

Monday, I took the day off from work, and loafed.

Today, my birthday present from yolen arrived in the mail: Baker's Edge Brownie Pan.

Now, to go move laundry.

from seeing Joe Jackson in NY with yolen. It was part of her birthday presents this year.

The show was good. Before the show, I met up with a high school buddy I hadn't seen in 15 years or so. We stopped by BXL, because it was right next door to Town Hall, where the Joe Jackson show was. jungle_goddess, be aware that there was no Lucifer on the "On Tap" menu! Or at very least, I didn't see it there, so I wound up ordering some Ommegang Witte (which you probably would not care for, it being a wheat beer and all). Which reminds me, interested in hitting the Mermaid Parade again this year? It's on June 21st.

There is something eminently satisfying about making a light lunch out of a nice crisp apple, a good cheese, and some salami.

The other day, I was looking at the Library of Congresses' online Prints and Photographs catalog (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html), looking for some old photos, because I'm still thinking about retrofuturism things. I searched for "explorer", and found this photo by Mathew Brady (the famed Civil War photographer) labeled "Dr. J.J. Hayes, artic (sic) explorer". Googling about didn't turn up much, until I found I.I. Hayes, and realized someone had misread the handwriting on Brady's photograph.

So I sent an "ask a librarian" query on their site, and yesterday got back the following:

Thank you for your recent question for the Prints and Photographs Division of
the Library of Congress.

Further investigation in our collections and caption information reveals that
this does appear to be Isaac Israel Hayes. Other images of him in our
collections are correctly identified. A correction has been submitted to our
cataloging staff. Thank you for contacting us about this matter and for your
interest in our collections.

Almost a month since I last updated; I should make posts about several things, the biggest being Frolicon (which was fun),

But instead, I'm here to tell you I just bought one of these from Target. Next up, some sandpaper, brushes, and paint, so I can try and steampunkify it.

So it appears that Gary Gygax is dead. I find this saddening.

I think back across the years, to the summer between 6th and 7th grade, when started hearing about this game, and then finally got to play. I immediately went out and bought the "basic set" -- the old one with the blue cover book and the dice that would melt if you left them on a radiator. I introduced several other friends to D&D with that.

I had missed out the previous school year on having the cool science teacher who ran the once-a-week after school wargaming meet, but quickly joined the group the following year. I made quite a number of friends via gaming. And I branched out from playing D&D to running Traveller, and trying all the others -- Boot Hill, Top Secret, Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha (how I treasured finding that, then out-of-print, when the local hobby shop re-arranged their shelves and rediscovered a copy that had quite literally slipped between the cracks). I collected and read games, even if I didn't play them that much, like Tunnels and Trolls, or Empire of the Petal Throne.

I remember all day gaming sessions with anywhere from 4 to 14 other young males. Pizza, chips, and soda. Basements and living rooms. AC/DC or Kiss or Judas Priest hovering in the background. Occasional breaks to play Atari 2600 games or throw frisbee around outside.

Sigh.

Later came Car Wars and Cosmic Encounter, and Atari 800s, Apple IIs, and TRS-80s. My first gaming convention (Origins 1980 -- I still have the booklet, which I used for a few years to collect autographs of everyone from Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, to Marc Miller, Tom Wham, James M. Ward, Steve Jackson, Winchel Chung, ...).

I lost track of most of my gaming buddies when I went off to college -- no facebook or livejournal back then -- but I made new ones, including 1cmf, who I've been gaming with since 1983/4; elflord2112; and media_junkie, not to mention quite a number of you who I met via gaming & the college even after I had graduated, because I was one of those alumni who lingered around the school hanging out with my still enrolled friends.

D&D and its offshoots have been part of my life for 30 years, and for that, I'll raise a glass to Mr. Gygax, even if these days I mostly wind up playing Carcassone and GURPS.

Thanks to you, Mr. Gygax, and thanks to my friends. Thanks to you all.

3    1472858  khockenb-Hea-Gno-Mal-Neu died on the Astral Plane.             
                Killed by Pestilence (with the Amulet).                 - [314]

This time a Valkyrie.

( screen shot )

 No  Points     Name                                                   Hp [max]
  2    4004382  khockenb-Val-Hum-Fem-Neu ascended to                           
                demigoddess-hood.                                     302 [302]

catwithbell

For king_duncan and others: Tainted Love on ukuleles.

I've been in lurk mode, I guess. Last time I posted a substantive update was Thanksgiving! So, I guess, let me give you a few a few highlights, and if you want to know more, just let me know and I will elaborate.

Christmas was good. We had yolen's family over for Christmas eve day, and went to my folks on Christmas day. Added more books, music, and DVDs to my collection.

New Year's eve we stop by yolen's parents and then took a taxi to Hoboken and J.S.'s annual party.

January 14th-19th we took a cruise (Royal Caribbean this time) out of Ft. Lauderdale, stopping at Cozumel, Mexico and Belize City, Belize. The ship (Navigator of the Seas) was huge, with the elevators running 14 floors, and even had an ice-skating rink. We had fun, though we liked our first cruise better, in part due to scheduling. That cruise went day-in-port, day-at-sea, day-in port, day-at sea, where as this one went sea, port, port, sea, plus the ship got into ports early and left early. The back-to-back days of waking up very early to get off the ship were rough on us night people, and having to leave port before evening was annoying. We went to the beach in Cozumel and did a tour around Belize City and then out to some Mayan ruins (Altun Ha).

The flight back was a bit nerve wracking, as we got to the airport around 9am, for a 5pm flight, and asked about getting an earlier flight. Due to a pushy employee, we wound up on standby for a 11:50 flight instead of confirmed on the 12:50. Fortunately, we made it onto the standby flight and didn't have to deal with our luggage sitting around Newark without us.

In geek news, I ascended another nethack character, this time an Elvin priestess.

(I'm looking at you king_duncan and you spiralsongkat)

Any of you planning on doing the RPM Challenge? http://www.rpmchallenge.com/. It's like NaNoWriMo but for music. The goal is to record an entire album[1] in the 28 days of February (or well, 29 this year since it is a leap year).

I'm not doing it, but it may inspire me to restring my guitar.

[1] defined as at least 10 songs or 35 minutes of music.

Is it wrong to eat a cookie from the box of cookies that you baked and brought into work for you co-workers, knowing you have twice as many cookies still at home?

So, Saturday yolen and I, along with A., headed off to gadget_girl_now's place for the belated Zombie Movie Day. It had originally been scheduled for two weeks ago, but when it conflicted with another gathering, was rescheduled.

Lots of folk, there. In addition to gadget_girl_now and her husband and children, also putting in an appearance were the_malum, thudthwacker, eafm, R.T. (ggn's brother in law), kosciost, A.P., catwithbell, and one or two others I'm missing, as well as some of the afformentioned people's young-uns.

Altogether, we watched 4 1/2 movies. We started with Night of the Living Dead (the 1968 version), and followed with Shawn of the Dead, then 28 Days Later. Next, we got 30 minutes or so into Wild Zero before it was vetoed, and then we switched to Dellemorte Dellemore (aka Cemetery Man). After that, Yolen, A.P., and I stayed overnight, and hung out a bit the next day with GGN's family.

Got home around 6pm last night, and spent a nice evening watching the Simpsons, Family Guy, and Deadwood.

Inspired by this post over at boingboing, I'm envisioning a nifty combination of tools for anyone who needs to minimize time between a picture being taken and having it available to (the public/your editors/whoever).

Here's what you need:
Digital camera. You probably already have this. It needs to take SD cards, though. Get something decent but not expensive. Call it $400.
Eye-Fi 2GB Wireless SD card $100
Cradlepoint CTR350 Cellular Travel Router$150. This is a nifty box that speaks EVDO out one side and WiFi out the other. (You can see where this is going.)
Novatel U727 EVDO USB Modem ~$80 with a 2-year $60/month contract with Sprint for unlimited data.
Tekkeon Mypower Battery, $120, to power the Cradlepoint Router.

That's it, so totaling up, we're talking $850 plus a 2-year contract for $60/month. Less, if you already have a camera. And what can we do with it? Take pictures anywhere there is EVDO coverage, and have them automatically uploaded to Flickr/your remote PC/where ever you like.

If you're a low budget news agency, I could see this being a no-brainer. Send a reporter to the scene and your editor can start picking photos out of his or her photo stream and posting them to your news site in near realtime. Or, for that matter, if you are a protest group that wants to document your protest but are worried about police taking your cameras or forcing you to erase photos, this way they are automatically backed up out of reach. (Have two guys with cameras/SD cards, and a third guy with the modem-router-battery in his backpack.)

Granted, you could already do some of this with cell-phone cameras, but they tend to be a bit crude. This you can do with a nice zoom lens attached. Until EVDO cameras hit the market, I think this could be made to work.

Lots of crap. I haven't posted a real update in over a month. So here's a quick-ish highlight post. I'll probably edit this as I remember other things I've done.

A month ago (9/26), met up with felisdemens and her husband, as well as skitty in Manhattan. (Waves, it was nice to meet f-list people in person.) We saw some art, wandered around the village, ate Ethiopian food.

On Sunday, 9/30, yolen and I met up with nsingman and jungle_goddess in Manhattan, and had a tasty and filling brunch at Brasserie 8 1/2, before catching the A train up to 190th street and the Fort Tryon Medieval Day, a one-day RenFaire. Post-fair we went to a very nice Belgian place on 43rd street, who's name eludes me at the moment.

On Monday, 10/8 the_malum came over and hung out for a bit. We had dinner and watched Heroes.

On Saturday, 10/20, yolen and I went to visit her college friend Chris's place, for a day of socializing with a number of other her college alumni and s.o.'s. Chris and Bill had turned their basement into a Haunted House for Halloween, it was very cool. They made a game of it, where you were let in for 5 minutes, in which time you had to find as many hidden white Go-stones out of the 20 they had hidden. Menawhile, there was a fog machine, spooky music, and animatronic haunts going on. I managed 13 stones, which earned me 2nd place and a banana hanger.

I've been reading books on my phone, lately. I'm using Plucker on a Treo 650. I've read King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (4.5-stars on out of 5), The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (disappointing, 2.5 stars), Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (3.5 stars), and 1634: The Baltic War by Eric Flint (3.5 stars). I've also re-read Four-Day Planet (3 stars), Uller Uprising (2.5 stars), Space Viking (4 stars), all by H. Beam Piper. In paper editions, I've read Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (4 stars), the first three books of Merchant Princes series by Charles Stross (The Family Trade/The Hidden Family/The Clan Corporate) (4 stars), 1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint (3 stars), and am currently reading The Total Package: The Evolution and Secret Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Tubes by Thomas Hine.

Want. Not a $100 want (I'd say $25, or $10 for a paper poster) though, so I'll just look on with pleasure.

but for now, you can all be distracted by a man flying with rocket jet assisted wings:

This past Thursday, yolen and I went into Manhattan to see Gaelic Storm, who put on a decent show. On the way there, we had a minor brush with fame, when after getting off the PATH and heading down 6th, I nearly bumped into Uma Thurman, though I didn't realize it at the time. It was just a woman, a guy, with two kids on Razor scooters, who were blocking the sidewalk, and I was trying to get by. Apparently, they were taking the kids out for ice cream.

Friday evening, I took advantage of the fact thudthwacker didn't need to head home right away (since eafm and offspring were off on a road trip), and coerced him into catching Shoot Em Up with me. The movie was amusing, if kind of linearly plotted. Basically, lots and lots of over the top gun combat stunts, plenty of inspiration if you ever play Feng Shui (the RPG about Hong Kong action movies, not the home redecorating mumbo jumbo).

Saturday was a quiet day. Yolen went to class, I let in the exterminator, we ordered Indian food and watched some NetFlix. I unpacked a couple boxes of junk.

Sunday 1cmf, onecrazymother, and boys came over. We all ate pizza, and after the adults played Munchkin Impossible (yolen won) and Take Your Pick (onecrazymother won) while the kids played with Legos and watched some Bugs Bunny, Creature Comforts, and Clone Wars. Thanks to them for bringing yummy strawberry rhubarb pie and banana bread.

I knew that Lego Batman was in the works, but I was out of the loop enough that I did not realize that Lego Indiana Jones is scheduled for 2008!

Ok, this will be a summary of things I saw at Dragon*Con, which might not be of interest unless you're me.

First up, at the airport yolen and I ran into nsingman and jungle_goddess, who were on the same flight down to Atlanta, which was amusing, because flying down to Atlanta (for Fantasm) is how we met in the first place.

After the flight, we took the MARTA to Peachtree center and took the habitrail to the Marriott. While looking at the long check-in lines, I spotted the self-check in kiosks. Between this and the automated check-out, I went the entire weekend without interacting with hotel staff.

Thursday night the four of us had dinner in the hotel. (I had the BBQ burger, yolen had a salad and chicken strips).

Friday, the first panel we went to was Star Trek vs. Battlestar Galactica, which as someone else noted, is a good idea for a fan panel, but a lousy idea for a celebrity panel. Still, we got to see Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, Jamie Bamber, Aaron Douglas, and Richard Hatch.

Oh, let's forget trying to go in temporal order. I was going to do that, but I don't have my schedule handy, so I'll just go for impressions.

Gil Gerard looks and sounds *much* better than when we saw him 3 years ago. From what I read, he had some form of gastric bypass surgery, and has lost 150lbs. Erin Gray still looks pretty.

We got lots of Season 3 BSG spoilers, including The Big One At The End. The downside of not having cable, and waiting for DVDs. Richard Hatch showed a clip on Bear McCreary and the music of BSG. I think we're going to pick up the soundtrack CDs.

I picked up two recent Emerald Rose CDs, including their newest one (Con Suite). Funnily enough, I never made it to the actual con suite at Dragon*Con. For that matter, there was the whole gaming track, and I never even made it into the open gaming room. I think that's because they moved it. Last time I was at D*C in 2004, the gaming room was the bottom level of the Hyatt, so I'd wander around between panels and looking at costumes, and finding myself on the game-floor, wander in and see what was being played. This time, the gaming room was in the Marriott, which despite staying there, didn't have many panels I went to.

But thank goodness for staying at the Marriott over the Hyatt. D*C was even huge-er than before, and the elevator problems in the Hyatt were correspondingly bad. (Too many people and not enough elevators.)

Nichelle Nichols was very nice. Marc Singer is funny. Ron Glass laughs a lot.

Picked up a bunch of GURPS 3e books at 3/$10. Also got Muchkin Impossible, Star Muchkin 2, and Munchkin in a Blender.

Doc Hammer wasn't giving out spoilers for the 3rd season of the Venture Brothers, but was entertaining. He has the same haircut as Pete White (the albino on the Venture Brothers).

Saw a whole lot of very good costumes. The guys who won the costume contest did Wallace and Gromit, along with the penguin from The Wrong Trousers, the sheep (Shawn) from A Close Shave, and the were-rabbit from Curse of the Were-Rabbit. This year we decided to watch the Masquerade on DCTV in our room, and I think it was as good if not better than going in person.

Claudia Black is pregnant, and renovating her house. She thanked everyone at her talk, saying that everytime she signs an autograph, she's thinking things like "that will pay for a new toilet seat".

Picked up the deluxe boxed version of Kill Doctor Lucky. Didn't buy any t-shirts.

Had a very nice steak dinner Sunday night with nsingman and jungle_goddess.

Robert Asprin has a new Myth book finished, and is negotiations with Tor about trade paperback rights. He also has some other new book coming out, something about dragons. I buttonholed him in the food court on the way out, to get a picture with him for my brother.

Timothy Zahn has a young adult series he's pitching around, and read us the first four chapters. Not something I'm likely to buy, but not bad. He's also pitched 3 new Cobra books to Baen.

Didn't make it to any of the film festival this year, either. The problem is D*C is so huge, if I had a time machine I could probably go 2 times seeing different panels each time, and not run into myself. For that matter, a time machine would be useful to let me put in 20 hours at the con, get 10 hours sleep, and then resume con activities only four hours after I stopped.

I think I'd like to go to a con that's somewhere between LunaCon (about 1000 people) and D*C (about 30,000). Something with around 5,000-10,000.

The borrowed laptop from work worked just fine, even if I didn't bother posting from the Con.

Saw a bunch of you there, if briefly, and it was good seeing you all.

I should have some pictures uploaded by the weekend.