It’s Gone Now

Here’s a shot of one of the morning glory flowers in our garden. Since it’s a beauty, I uploaded at 1280×968 for possible use as a backdrop:

blue.jpg < Morning Glory And then, of course, there is this series of images, taken this past Saturday: Dsc08315.jpg Dsc08316.jpg Dsc08314.jpg Dsc08321.jpg

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One for each day of the week 🙂

Quiz’n’Dragons

Ok, so the title is the name of a real arcade game Capcom released some years ago. But I’m co-opting here because of something I found this past weekend.

Through a secret source, I came into possession of two old issues of Dragon magazine, one from 1992 and one from 1986. Each are fascinating reads, an absorbing glimpse into the history of RPGs, and one into an era in which MMORPG’s (such as World Of Warcraft) hadn’t killed the industry.

scan0002.jpg < Dragon 117, January 1986 For those that have followed AD&D over the years (such as myself) these magazines are also an interesting look at how the game once was. More of a roll-playing game than a role-playing game, each issue is full of all sorts of charts and tables that allowed the GM to basically randomize everything (such as the wind speed and temperature of a cyclone...). Diehards back in those days seemed to embrace such an approach, perhaps even celebrate it. Therefore the following quiz, taken from the pages of Dragon 117, may very possibly have seemed a little less absurd to the readers of the day then it does to us now? scan0003.jpg scan0004.jpg < Can you answer Q10? I also obtained, from the same source, the rulebook (all 14 pages...) of a 1980 TSR sci-fi RPG named Star Frontiers: scan0001.jpg < Is that Chewbacca on the right? Believe me when I say it's as awful as it looks :)

Watch Us Work It

There’s a new Dell advert on TV with a very, very catchy song. When I first saw it I was pretty sure it was Devo, and indeed it is. The song is called ‘Watch Us Work It’, was recorded for this ad, is now available on iTunes, and is damn good!

See the ad here, you non-American readers 🙂