This will not end well.
Session 9
3
Tag Archives: paper and pencil
Meet Tarkabbuk
For those keeping score, it is now
W -1, L – 0, D – 1
with wookiees beating the Sith Order.
How do we explain it, Mike?
And should we tell Devin that Gabriel now runs part of the galaxy?
House Rules: Star Wars Saga Edition – Force Grip
House rules for the Star Wars Saga Edition Role-playing game:
Force Grip (Force Power)
You use the Force to choke or crush your enemy. Time: Standard action. Target: One target within 6 squares or within line of sight.
Make a Use the Force check: The result of the check determines the effect when compared to the target’s Will Defense and Fortitude Defense, if any:
Below the target’s Will Defense: No effect.
At the target’s Will Defense or higher: The target takes 2d6 points of damage.
At or exceeds the target’s Fortitude Defense e: the target can take only a standard action.
Special: You may maintain your concentration on the targeted creature to continue damaging it from round to round. Maintaining the Force grip is a standard action, and you must make a new Use the Force check each round.
You can spend a Force Point to deal an additional 2d6 points of damage with your Force grip.
Would it count as A or B?
Recently there was an article by Clive Thompson in Wired about how elections are very much like a video game, with certain rules and even legitimizing the slandering-pandering. The part I really dug (because I’m not a fan of non-representative candidates trash talking) was addressing people’s concerns about the electoral college. If we take it out, it would be like changing the damage modifiers for Force Lightning. It might totally make the game unbalanced. (Although if we were in a Republic of Sean or Benevolent Dictatorship of Devinistan we could craft some sufficient house rules.)
Favorite quote? “Democracy needs a patch.”
But if Election ’08 really is a game, I want to trade mine in at Bookman’s for the next New Jedi Order book.
If you haven’t already, check out the celebrations of Gabe’s birthday around the world.
A quote, a picture, and an ethical question about Wookiees
I mean, what more do you need in a bloggh?
First, the quote
Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Yes, I’ve read it before. I’m re-reading it, and for a “I need to read the latest teen fiction” librarian that’s crazy because I can only think of three other times that has occurred: the multiple class readings of literature (16 times (3 block classes x 5 years + 1 on my own) worth of Diary of Anne Frank, The Outsiders, Watsons go to Birmingham, and multiple short stories)), stuff by C. S. Lewis, and To Kill a Mockingbird (okay, so through the big three of Shakespeare in, as well).
I guess it can be determined that I still read a lot. But Blue Like Jazz deserves coming back to.
Here’s a part of what I read today:
Loneliness is something that came with the fall. If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earth, we decide in which state we would like to live. Rick told me, a little later, I should be living in community. He said I should have people around bugging me and getting under my skin because without people I could not grow – I could not grow in God, and I could not grow as a human.
Pick up a copy. When I read the book, it feels like my soul is sitting in the perfect recliner eating a Hot Pocket*.
Thank you to the Star Wars guys, the sidewalk drivers, and my family. You are appreciated.
Next, the picture
Before I continue, you should know that I am feeding my youngest while snacking. I have to tell you that the new Batman fruit snacks are way cooler molding than the Spider-man and Transformers ones combined.
This one was sent in by Danjo today:
In our media-saturated world, polls and commentators and all that, have we matured much?
I, of bloggher persuasion, am the chief of sinners. Yet, one should know, I have hit information overload. I wonder how many of us in Generation Jaded (or whatever we are) are truly really excited and hopeful about the election results, either way.
And finally an ethical question
Wookiee Jedi (Force Warrior variant). (Yes, I know that’s not a question.)
Correct – this is a random picture from the Internet and not me.
Rage is a racial bonus. If my Wookiee is in the middle of combat and acts out of Rage, is he being tempted by the Dark Side? Is it in his nature as a Wookiee and he must fight it to hone his Force training or will he not gain any Dark Side points while adding +2 to damage and attack rolls?
No, I’m serious.
*Results may vary.
This one’s for Triggerman’s Daddy
Hard Core Nerdery
Currently making final preparations for giant, living room-spanning combat between Vong, Chiss, Jedi, Republic and Scoundrel forces.
Paper (and pencil) beats console.
Updates:
Sean injures a superior Vong. Round 1 goes to the heroes.
Jesse force-gripping giant beast.
Vong cannon obliterates Republic troops after they rig the ship to explode.
Kraka ready to deflect as other Jedi gripping.
Triggerman broadcats showing up.
A perfect setting for D20 Modern
I was browsing where people access my site from:
View Larger Map
Deception Bay, Oceania
Population: Cutthroats, cutpurses, and CutCo reps
Established: AD 44 when a Roman centurion betrayed a dingo colony and was branded with the Crimson Paw and left for dead at an Outback restaraunt
Chief Export:Death
Chief Import:Bananas
New PDF format
Adobe is making an update to Acrobat (which will mean an update to PDFs). Being a Mac user I love PDFs because people can’t complain about different formats and “I can’t open that Word document because you used a Mac.” (“No, it’s because you don’t know how to open e-mail attachments.”)
Check out the version 9 page. You can now add Flash.
Do you realize what this means?
- Keynote (PowerPoint, but smoother) presentations can be narrated and someone can open my PDF and have it talk them through my presentation, guaranteed (or close enough) to synchronize the way I want the presentation to flow. Keep in mind that Jobs designed Keynote so he could present in all of his black T-shirted glory. (I like how he said, “Zhoom” at this most recent MacWorld.)
- YouTube (you may have heard of it) uses Flash-encoding to distribute videos. Imagine what you can do with documents that have video encoded easily into them. “Here’s our Christmas letter…blah blah…take a look for yourself.”
- Flash applications in a PDF. Imagine if I put my capstone, with the Grammar Ninja, into a PDF resume. (Instead of, say, Brianland, my brother’s birthday game, or Booyortovich embedded. That would be silly. )
- Comics that are published (or RPG sourcebooks, for that matter) will have sweeter interfaces and searchability. (Imagine the Star Wars rulebook where you could actually run the algorithm for ship combat inside the PDF document to speed up the math.)(Or a Batman comic that made the OOF! ZOWEE! noises.)
Like any cool technology, somebody’s gonna mess it up. But there is a lot of potential. I just hope that PDFs don’t become Websense blocked.
“Because sometimes the connected world is too confident.”
Yeah thanks, Websense. Way to boost my feeling of confidence and security. The workplace is all warm and fuzzy because of you.
The Haiku
With video PDFs
there’s less imagination -
need librarians
I find your lack of Cheetos disturbing…
As depicted in Wired
So, I know that Wired is a geek’s dream magazine of sorts, but as geekdom a la Chuck becomes trendier, will it make geeks more socially acceptable? Truly?
Here’s the big challenge: What if geeks that looked like the majority of geeks were actually used as models? (Instead of people that I think look like they’re from American Idol. Is it just me, or does the Video Game Geek in figure 3 look a lot like David Cook from this season?)
Here is my quick litmus test of geekiness:
- Are they excited about Dr. Who streaming video, even more than Sarah Connor?
- Are they friends with a munchkin rules lawyer?
- Do they already know about Rogue Shadow being in LEGO form?
- Would they probably get run over by an electric car?
- And an addition: do they think it’s ridiculous that the government wants to intentionally make cars louder because of our gadget fixations?
My wife says that the big thing to check for in that Wired photo is to check for chiseled jaw or not.
The Haiku
Can they market us -
the antiestablishment -
with established looks?
I actually am not too horribly offended by trying to mainstream my people, but here’s the picture that I think they should have used (yes, still loving the Wacom):
By the way – have you seen the new video that Yahoo! Mail is using to explain chat and directions? Fun Lord of the Rings references. Here’s a screenshot.
New Writing Project
Having hung out with some great writers (another one coming up this Tuesday) I’ve been inspired to write more fiction.
One of Ally Carter’s biggest pet peeves is how people she meets say, “Oh! You’re an author? I have this book idea. It must be so easy and fun to write all day.” And yet…where’s their book? Not so easy, sucka! (Although Ally says it in a nicer tone of voice.)
I’ve been excited about the Haiku experiment. I’ve got some other Artsy stuff in the works, and I definitely dig Kraka’s Holocam (even if the stupid Chiss did short it out last adventure). I’m trying out Vanguard, a fun YA fiction (hopefully).
The Haiku
Maybe by blogging
I may be able to write
more than monster flicks
Kraka’s Holocam – Session 3
Film Footage Used with Permission from the Galactic Alliance
A grizzled human who, appropriately enough, looks like he’s survived a war stares at the camera, obviously now in a studio.
“I don’t know how much has already been said. We had a pretty limited perspective. At first we thought it was just a coincidence: the station crashing, the tidal wave, the rampant fires. We had set up our homestead only a few years previous. We were a limited commune, but we got by. Then The Day happened.
“On that day we thought we’d bought it. We hid in our homes praying to whatever guides the galaxy that the fires and earthquakes would pass over us. Then some fool fishhead – sorry, Mon Cal – comes busting open the door telling us to run to the landing platform. These privateers had landed to save us. We approached hesitantly. A Corellian was barking orders for people to cram into a retro-fitted cargo hold. This ship was unlike any I’d seen. [Galactic Alliance records indicate that the Scimitar had been a part of the rescue effort. It had last been in service by then-Senator Palpatine in tracking down Qui-Gon Jinn on Tatooine. Since then it has transferred ownership. Jedi scholars claim that "the presence" still remains.]
“That same Mon Cal came running in asking if his Kel Dor friend had made it back yet. He barked some orders, ran to the back of the ship, and jumped on an Old Republic speederbike heading straight into the fire.
“The Corellian, the pilot, and the man in the katarn armor all rushed us on board, which was a difficult task for those of us who just lost our livelihoods. When we were airborne, we could see the fire had shifted in the wind. For the longest time the ship just waited with no sign of their friends.
“Coming out of the fire was that Mon Cal holding a Kel Dor, the struggling Kel Dor holding an unconscious teenage girl. As the Kel Dor began to black out, the handlebars of the bike twisted and sent the entire mess into a flat spin.
“I never thought the adage about Corellians was true, but the co-pilot swung the back of the ship in time, eased it enough to slow the crash, and blasted out of the atmosphere with everyone alive.
“As we left we could see that the destruction planetside was nothing compared to the bloodshed above. Even the bright, shiny New Republic overkill rescue cruiser that had probably never seen action was ripped in two. That freaky Kel Dor coughed under his breath mask, ‘I told you, Admiral.’
“I still don’t know what happened to those guys, that crew that picked us up and risked their lives in the flames. After we got transferred to another ship at the rendezvous point, we hypered out of the area. I could have sworn as we left I saw some claw-shaped craft closing in on that Old Republic masterpiece.”
(Out of character – Nice Natural 20 (to co-pilot the Scimitar into picking us up), Gary! Yay living! I like my Kraka.)
Weedsbane
Usually this site tends towards the, shall we say, nerdy but I have the interesting position of being a nerd and a husband.
(If you are a fan of the site who plays significant amounts of time with World of Warcraft, you may not have this offline problem and may not need this info. In fact, you may not know what offline is.)
But for those of us who fight evil on all fronts, sometimes we don’t have time to trawl the lawncare forums.
Today I was motivated (by seeing my neighbor working) to tackle the huge weed problem in my yard. A pandemic of pollination had happened with the last rain and I had just used the weed eater/thrasher a week or so ago.
And I had already showered for the day. I mean, did I need to get sweaty again?
So I busted out the weed spray gun, complete with nozzle trigger as if I work in a salon. The plus side to those is that I practice my precision shooting, hitting specific nodes and stems even though I get a -4 on attack rolls.
But I started to notice that I was getting more spray on my hand than on the weeds.
My options were:
- Try something else.
- Pour the weedkiller on like gasoline in The Usual Suspects.
- Shake my hand at that which I want killed. (Like a Wii game.)
Then I remembered that Pharmacist Dan (Doctor Dan when he moonlights as a pro wrestler/disc jockey on his Tuesdays off) had put a weedsprayer in the White Elephant exchange this past Christmas.
A sprayer that had ended up in my car by the end of the night.
A sprayer that I busted out today and loved.
Imagine a mix between a proton pack and a Super Soaker.
I pressurized the thing pretty quickly and sprayed most of the two gallons on one side of my yard. A second pressurization got me the second side of my yard.
Four pressurizations and four gallons of weedkiller later my yard (front and back) was soaked. The really cool part was that it has three separate nozzles: straight line, wedge, and foam. (Who uses foam?)
Instead of a called shot I made area attacks. DC10 to hit the square, baby! And I felt so professional with the constant wedge stream, instituting a Weed Holocaust.
Hopefully the Men of the House find this helpful.
Oh, and I tried to play Ninjabread Man for the Wii with the kids I was babysitting today. It took forever to collect the 8 scroll-type things to unlock the first door (since you lose all progress upon death) but I made it, not using my sword once (since it seemingly was only made to take out training dummies and not actual enemies). I ran through the entire level flipping around while shooting some type of gumdrop projectile.
When I finished collecting the 8 scrolls to unlock the door, I was rewarded with 8 scrolls to collect to unlock another door. I turned off the Wii.
No, I did not buy the game; the kids already had it. They also have High School Musical: Sing It! My wife sang and did well. I wanted to check if it actually picked up on slightly out of tune singers so I tried. Singing as Cookie Monster I earned a grade of C performing with Sharpie (like the pen?) and her brother.
The Haiku
When people wonder
what I really do all day
it’s tough to describe.
Kraka’s Holocam – Session 1
The image begins in a leathery, maroon palm. As the camera elevates, you see a massacred droid surrounded by bodies of space station civilians. Some, still alive, have bite marks and swollen wounds throbbing. The camera rotates, rocking slightly on a mini repulsor lift. Shirtless, scarred warriors are strewn on the floor.
A Mon Calamari face comes into view. “The armor on this one repulsed my lightsaber attack.” He points to a soldier adorned in ornate armor. A snake is flailing spasmodically nearby. “The station’s inner workings have bite marks I have never seen before. The peacemakers are being targeted.”
The holocam continues its rotation. One whole corner of the room has been eaten away. The view now stares down the long throat and maw of a giant worm.
“Our orbit has been thrown off. Soon we will plummet in the planet’s gravity well. This is Kraka of the New Republic and we need help.”
My crazy weekend
The Haiku
Did you know that Pope
John Paul was on the Harlem
Globetrotters one year.
It’s interesting that I got schooled by Pope John Paul II and Henry Kissinger as being the first white Globetrotter. It’s not the first time that Henry Kissinger has schooled me.
Seeing the Globetrotters was Friday (I’m waiting on a cool picture that they’re supposed to send from the arena). On Saturday we tried out Star Wars: Saga Edition of the role-playing game. I find it interesting that of all the iterations this is my first straight-up Jedi. (I love what they’ve done with the Jedi character creation. When I have more time I will give more details. Right now I’m obsessively on someone else’s iMac at their house.)