Farewell to the Boardroom

Saturday marked the last day of business for the Boardroom, a north side gaming store that has provided me with countless hours of diversion over the past 25 years.


A lot of people were there Saturday, not just to take advantage of the closing sale but to say good-bye to the store and its proprietor, Gerry Hunter. I felt kind of bad because my visits to the Boardroom had tapered off over the past couple of years. But between the 4e conversion (no point in buying the new 3.5 books that were released over the past year with 4e coming out) and the fact that I just don't get to Broad Ripple much, my once weekly visits had dwindled to once every few months.

I'll miss going in and browsing the huge diversity of game books and going through the used game sections for hidden treasures to add to my collection. Usually I'm an at-a-glance shopper, not spending a much time in a store and assessing quickly whether there was anything I wanted, but the Boardroom was an exception to that rule. If you have a FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store), be sure that you appreciate it.

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RIP XP

Microsoft officially ended production of the Windows XP operating system, leaving only what's left in the supply chain and limited manufacturer use for very low end machines. Check out the story on Switched.com.

So far my only personal experience with Vista was on my new gaming pc, so I didn't have to go through the pains that most folks "upgrading" to Vista suffer. However, I was quickly annoyed by the constant fights with it thinking it knew better than me what I should do or install on my pc. Fortunately I quickly found out how to turn that "feature" off.

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You want to see Wanted

Hmmm... weekend with no blockbuster based on a tv show, comic (that I had read) or previous movie. Seems like a rarity anymore. Since Wanted had gotten positive reviews and I was looking for an excuse to munch some popcorn, I decided to go see it.

You should too.


Wesley Gibson, the lead character is a nobody in a nowhere job with a crappy if uneventful life. In short, someone a lot of us feel like at some point or another, regardless of how good we really have it. While comparisons will be drawn to the Matrix and Neo, especially given kinetic actions sequences with occasional bullet-timesque shots, but that is about as far as the similarity goes.

This is a solid action movie with a few twists and is a lot of fun to watch. In fact, if you like the movie, you'll probably want to see it again to see all of the details you might have missed. And there are a lot of details to catch.

One of the central concepts of the movie is the Loom of Fate. It is not explained, it is just there, kind of like the loom of the Norns. The Fraternity is an organization of assassins founded by a clan of weavers about 1,000 years ago (this info is in the opening of the movie, so I'm not being spoilery). One of my few quibbles with the movie is that the name The Fraternity for a secret society of assassins in service to a mysterious Loom of Fate is... lame. Now if the organization had been called the Hand of Fate, that would have made sense.

This movie is on a par with the original Matrix (but hopefully won't get sullied by crappy sequels cranked out to cash in). While its action sequences stretch the credibility even given the premise behind the assassins' capabilities, it is set in the here and now, not some nebulous computer-generated future so the character is easier to relate to and cheer for. A couple of minor glitches I can't really go into without spoiling also registered, but weren't significant enough to derail the movie and I suspect will by saved from the editing floor* for the extended cut DVD.

Overall rating: 4 out of 5 bullet-bending train-riding flying monkeys

* Yes, I know almost all editing is done digitally now, hence there is no physical floor cluttered with strips of film containing lost scenes. :P

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Gotham City News

Minor spoiler after the jump...

I was disappointed. Towards the end I heard something beeping and expected a *boom*. But there wasn't... what could have been a subtle clue was just something on the set going off.

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Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

This trailer is for a movie(?) by Joss Whedon. It stars Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris. I also spotted Felicia Day, the red-headed girl from The Guild. It says coming to a computer soon... sadly that probably means exactly that, it's not a theatrical movie. :(

But it's by Whedon, has a cute red-head, and Nathan Fillion is getting work, so it's all good.

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Wolverine's Babes?

What's worse that writing a dork article like 13 Hottest Women Wolverine Has Slept With?. Writing it and getting it wrong!

Yes, I'm a Wolverine fan, though I finally gave up on the plethora of cross titles, one-shots, and mini-series, but I'm pretty sure the author of the above article has made several mistakes.


Number 8 (She-Hulk) - he turned her down with a remark along the lines of he didn't want Juggernaut's sloppy seconds.

Number 5 (Marilo Yashida) - even though they were engaged, I recall no indication they actually slept together. He was trying to be "civilized" about it, then she broke off the engagement. Even after it was revealed she was being influenced by Mastermind, she refused to get married until she had broken the criminal connections of her family.

Number 3 (Rogue) - wtf? No.

Number 2 (Jean Grey) - bzzzt! They never did it in mainstream continuity (Age of Apocalypse and Ultimate X-Men don't count, they are alternate realities).

And penalty points for using the wrong art for Number 10 (that is the wrong Black Widow) and Number 5 (that is the Mariko from Exiles who is not only from another reality but a lesbian).

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More Star Wars Dancing

Here is more of the video that Thriller Vader came from...

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PHB2 listed at Amazon

Amazon shows it coming out March 17, 2009. I don't think that I can wait that long for the Bard, Monk and Druid. The Monk will be the easiest of the three classes to fake, taking WotC's official suggestions plus what I've seen in the Monster Manual for githzerai. The other two classes will require some more "whole cloth" work. Or swiping adopting versions made by others.

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Aquaman?

But... that's Green Arrow. Despite a premise that allows for random hot chicks in bikinis every episode I'm predicting mid-season demise. Assuming it gets on the air.

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I can has Instinct

You'd think that as much as I like tech, I'd be an early adopter. I'm not. Even when I get something new, it's likely to wait a while before I get around to hooking it up. But not the new toy I got today... a Samsung Instinct.


At a meeting the managers were showing a new program that would tell if a customer was eligible for an upgrade cell phone. I volunteered my info and the system said that I had been eligible for an upgrade since...

2005.

Then I read about the Instinct and found out that the plan I already have would work on it. Combine that with the recent price drop to kick iPhone in the nuts and I got my new phone as soon as I clocked out. I'd probably have blogged it earlier, but I've been playing with it.

I don't know what I like better so far... the GPS including traffic updates or that fact that I can pull up the local weather radar on my phone. Yeah, I'm odd.

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Disturbing in the Force

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

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Make your own Ceiling Cat!

Go here to see how to make your very own Ceiling Cat!

Ceiling Cat and Flying Spaghetti Monster in '08.

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Things you can't do as a stormtrooper...

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Message from Hillary

My friend Melissa sent me this clip from SNL. I almost snorkled my beer.

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Hulk Smash!

This is turning out to be a good summer for movies, and I'm sure after this weekend there will be some celebrating in the Marvel offices. Forget Ang Lee's Hulk-like movie, go see this one. While not quite as good as Iron Man, it is still a good movie with lots of little touches for comic fans and fans of the old tv series.


This movie is not a sequel to Ang Lee's. But the "origin story", which they radically changed for those familiar with the comics, is distilled down to about 5 minutes and we get on with the story of the movie... Bruce Banner on the run while trying to find a cure.

Also, they give the Hulk a villain from his actual comic to fight, the Abomination,in a good old fashioned Hulk smash knockdown brawl. None of that trippy Nick-Nolte-elemental Ang Lee blah blah blah. Hulk smash.

Its directness is both a strength and a weakness. There were no surprises (especially thanks to the internet). It was all very predictable. Fortunately the acting was solid, the action was good, and the story was decent.

And Hulk smash.

My rating: 3.5 of 5 gamma-irradiated green flying monkeys

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MY code-fu is weak

So I've been messing with my lordoz.com site. I'm finally to the point where I can start writing content as opposed to messing with the bones of the site, partly because I'm tired of messing around with it.


I wasted a few hours messing with the banner graphic and getting it to line up with a background image for the contents column only to find out that the really cool effect only worked on monitors with the same resolution as my secondary monitor. I also spent a few hours dorking around with the general layout, because I always do the same three frames... banner on the top, contents on the left... zzzzz. But when I tried sticking contents under the banner across the top it hogged up to much vertical space. After trying contents on the right, which drove me bat-shit just looking at it, I relented for the same-old-same-old.

Still wanting to do something more than an eight-year-old with an HTML For Dummies book, I decided I wanted some cool mouse-over buttons. After fighting with flamingtext.com's mouse-over button maker, I decided to do it my self. That meant making two of each button in a fashion that looked right for the mouse-over effect, and finding the script. Flamingtext.com had a script generator, so I went through it, then spent another hour picking though things trying to find out why two of the buttons in the middle of the mess didn't work. Turns out the script generator got confused by apostrophes in the alternate text.

So now I'm finally ready to start putting together content. Which is good because my players would probably like to know the Oz-brew rules for 4e, not to mention stuff about the campaign world.

But it would be really cool if the mouse-over buttons made noise...

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Her eyes not down here...

more cat pictures

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Iron Man cameo in Hulk

A surprising stroke of marketing genius by Marvel.

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Viking test

Your Score: Skald

You scored 16% leadership, 61% spirituality, 7% violence and 38% intelligence!

FOLLOWER - SPIRITUAL - PEACEFUL - EDUCATED Skalds are the Norse equivalent to bards, or possibly minstrels. They are the ones responsible for over half of what we now know about Scandinavian culture, royalty and mythology today, for they passed down their lore by word of mouth and song from generation to generation until Snorri Sturlusson of Iceland wrote down the Eddas in the 13th century. Skalds were gifted poets with quick tongues who flattered kings with their art, and occasionally the kings themselves would be known as skalds (or else!). Skalds were highly respected for their wit and intelligence, and in some folklore, they were said to know of events happening in far off lands as they were happening.

Link: The Viking Age Persona Test written by fenrirgagootsi on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(fenrirgagootsi)

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Fail Cat

more cat pictures


I feel sorry for fail kitty. :(

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Cylons run XP?

Look here. See, even the Cylons are waiting to upgrade to Vista.

(spoilerish remark after the jump)

Or is that the real reason behind the Cylon Civil War?

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d20 UTH: you got your fluff in my crunch

No, the headline has nothing to do with d20 pr0n (but you know there's one out there). It has to do with my biggest gripe so far with 4e (D&D 4th Edition).

Wizards got too vested in making 4e "their own", as in their own Intellectual Property. And while the original D&D cribbed a lot from Tolkien and I could see a desire for WotC to divorce themselves of that, their desire to have their own fluff/IP led them to integrate it into the core rules of 4e.


Part of this is evident in the addition of the new classes, the Warlock (which I actually like and was added to 3.5 via a splat-book) and the Warlord, the latter made solely for 4e.

The new races and changes to races were also mixing new fluff with the crunch. Tiefling, which appeared in earlier incarnations' planar materials, was promoted to a core race, and despite their +2 Charisma bonus were given huge horns and a tail. And then there's the Dragon-born, the racial equivalent of the Warlord there to say "look what we made".

Then there's the gods and clerics. Previous additions always assumed that the DM would want to pick a pantheon(s) for his world, and gave guidelines for picking sets of powers (Domains) that aligned with those gods. In 4e, the new D&D pantheon is the default with no guidelines, rules, or even suggestions (as far as I've seen so far) for using other pantheons. I've cut and pasted Powers tied to the various 4e gods to gods in my campaign's new pantheon, but I could see it being a very frustrating experience, especially for a less experienced DM.

That's not to say 4e is bad. I am still converting my campaign (but I'm not deleting my 3.5 campaign info... if it goes badly "it was all a dream.") But I wish they had done like Hero and GURPS and seperated the rules from campaign world specific info.

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