Thursday, April 28, 2011

Sickness and entertainment, the wandering mind

Being "under the weather" has done a couple of things. First, it has taken my computer away from me, it is really hard to use it and be in a half sitting, half laying position. Anyway, it has sent me to my entertainment to keep the mind distracted.

By now everyone, well, some people, know that Sue and I abandoned TV. Somehow paying for 720 hours of TV a day seemed rather extreme. Especially with us watching a few hours a week at most.

Now I rely on the Internet. I have a couple of archeology podcasts, legal, philosophy, sociology, psychology and grammar podcasts that I follow to keep up with my college degrees.

For technology I follow a number of the twit network podcasts, plus a couple of others. If the tech podcasts know less than I do, I do not stick with them, and there are a surprising number that are either dumb or paid pawns of someone.

On the news end I have a left wing, right wing, neocon, liberal, and a couple of extra wings as well. I must live in a quad plane society. My favorite is dan carlin's common sense.

I have a number of movies on my computer, usually I get them a few years after release for $3.00 at the dollar stores, but I have them, and I can watch those over the network on the iPad as I rest.

I also have a good number of audiobooks. They come from iTunes, audible and from cd's. These are also available across the network, well, the audible is not. They use irritating DRM. I can't listen to my own books over my own network. They have a work around, but why do I need it?
I have a number of open source audiobooks as well, reviewing Aristotle, Bacon and others is always good for the mind.

I have some TV shows that I have gotten into the computer as well. I go back and watch Babylon 5 on a regular basis. I have not gotten many of these, there really are not that many that I want to watch more than once.

Right now I have a radio episode of the Scarlet Pumpernickel playing in my ears. Beyond Midnight is up next.

The result is that I actually have more entertainment that I am interested in now than I did when we had TV's 720 plus hours a day.

I guess getting sick has made me realize just how good it is to live in a free society and be able to make my own choices rather than letting others choose for me.

Life is good.

-- Posted From My iPad

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Tuesday talk

Life has thrown me a curveball here over the past few days. The warm, wet weather has exploded my allergies. A good deal of swelling is going on. It is causing my arthritis to be rather painful, and even typing is causing pain. One of the side effects of having no insurance and relying on good food is that while I am doing very well on average, when there is a flare up, it is a pain.

We got set 401 in and I am slowly getting the pre-orders ready for shipping tomorrow. I will also get it moved over to the regular item order page in the morning.

Working with Flint laminators and doing ink research we are building a way to be able to sell special orders of individual cards. We are having to layout our storage and numbering system in a way to make it reasonable. We will be able to sell the cards in batches of nine cards. Those nine cards can be different cards. We will be able to do that for $9.00, or $1.00 per card. That will allow people to order just the cards they want for a character.

Sue is still having trouble reading her Dragon Storm cards. What we are going to have to do is to strip out the backgrounds and and make the cards Black and White with a color art square. I still have a couple of days work to be able to make that work. The result is that Sue can read the cards.

This weekend we will be at Penguicon. I know the hotel has a number of "things" in the air that set off my allergies. With my current allergy attack, I will have to be very careful, and find ways to support Sue. It can be done.

I need to spend a day creating the newsletter in here somewhere. I think I should schedule that for tomorrow. I can do it after we get the shipping done in the morning.

Tonight we have a game, it will be with lower CP characters. This groups main characters all have a chance to get Boons, so they are taking an adventure off to account for the time used. Gives them a chance to build up the secondary characters.

It is interesting to watch how Second Edition characters build. We have a lot more "big" cards coming down the pipe, including the HP cards, so characters have fewer cards. This leaves them more vulnerable to Fatigue. To counter that characters are taking more small role-playing cards to create a buffer against fatigue. It is also making them, on average, more capable in hamlets, villages and when meeting merchant caravans. Players are damned sharp people, they quickly adapt to change. Their choices are also giving me, as GM, more variety in what I can create for them to encounter.

Tonight they will be spending some time traveling with a Trader Tribe of Das Karr. Their are about 40 of them. A dozen other humanoids are traveling with them for security. They travel between hamlets, villages and towns trading what they buy, buying what they can trade and selling entertainment.

Ok, enough for now, fingers hurt.



-- Posted From My iPad