Month: January 2017

Masaya Nakamura has passed.

He was 91.  For those who don’t know: Masaya Nakamura was the CEO of Namco, which is of course the company that gave us Pac-Man. It is not that video games would have never been created if Namco had stayed exclusively in the amusement park ride business; it is that the entire industry would be different today if Namco had. Arcade games shaped them from the start, and arcade games are the way that they are based on decisions made by Nakamura.  That’s a powerful influence to have on popular culture.

My condolences to his family and loved ones.

The Final ‘Beauty and the Beast’ trailer.

They might just pull this one off.

If so, go them. I’ll feel a lot better about the live-action Mulan WHICH THEY HAD BETTER NOT SCREW UP. In particular, this scene must be perfect. I have used this scene for decades as an illustration on how you use your Intelligence stat in a game: Continue reading The Final ‘Beauty and the Beast’ trailer.

Tech Level 9 Watch: Vanadium Dioxide.

Assuming that this story checks out, it’s pretty cool:

According to a new study led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and at the University of California, Berkeley, electrons in vanadium dioxide can conduct electricity without conducting heat.

[snip]

For most metals, the relationship between electrical and thermal conductivity is governed by the Wiedemann-Franz Law. Simply put, the law states that good conductors of electricity are also good conductors of heat. That is not the case for metallic vanadium dioxide, a material already noted for its unusual ability to switch from an insulator to a metal when it reaches a balmy 67 degrees Celsius, or 152 degrees Fahrenheit.

Don’t expect anything from this for twenty, thirty years. But if you’re wondering in 2046 just how the room you’re in is staying cool without air conditioning, well: it may be because of this. Also: the stuff’s apparently collected as a by-product of ores processing, which is why heavy industry should never throw anything away without checking around first. Somebody might want that useless gunk that was left over.

H/T Glenn Reynolds.

Item Seed: Spear of the Holy Tent-Peg of Saint Deborah.

The stuff you come up with, when looking for other stuff…

spear-of-the-holy-tent-peg-of-saint-deborah-google-docs

Spear of the Holy Tent-Peg of Saint Deborah

Well, strictly speaking it should be the Spear of the Holy Tent-Peg of Jael, but from the Roman Catholic Church’s point of view St. Deborah was the ranking Biblical figure. Quick summary: Deborah was a prophet and a Judge among the Israelites in the time of the Judges (obviously), she and her military adviser went out to smite the Canaanites, the Canannites were duly smote, and the fleeing general of the Canaanites (one Sisera) ended up getting a tent peg pounded into his head by, yes, Jael. The tent peg then effectively disappeared for a few thousand years, and only resurfaced in the 12th century AD as part of a steel spearhead that is reputed to be remarkably strong and rustproof.

Continue reading Item Seed: Spear of the Holy Tent-Peg of Saint Deborah.

So, my kid needed a new winter coat…

…because the zipper broke.  We hit three different stores after school, and struck out at each one of them.  I come home, go online, and found one online within thirty seconds. But this isn’t a post about how this shows why brick-and-mortar stores are dying.  It’s a post that asks a question: how do we keep those stores alive?

I mean, they do provide jobs for people and everything. And you gotta have people generating economic activity if you want to have an economy.  And, honestly, same-day delivery online isn’t a thing yet.  Which is one reason why I went to the stores in the first place. So how do we save these things from (apparently) themselves?

Dragon Age: Origins on mega-Steam sale.

Don’t bother with the $4.99 version, if you haven’t played Dragon Age: Origins before: just get the Ultimate Edition for $7.49.  It’s so absolutely worth it.  I may have told this story before, but: I bought it first, and then my wife watched me play it for a bit, and then she asked if she could have her own gamesave (which of course she could), and then she got her own copy, and then we upgraded her computer so that it could play it properly, and it turned out that naturally my machine needed upgrading… seriously, it was addictive. My wife compared it to ‘a mediocre tabletop RPG campaign,’ which is actually an amazing compliment.  Getting a computer to fake it that well is no easy task.

Check it out.

Via

Well, by God: it may be a BAD short story that I finished…

…out of respect for a man who has since passed on*; but it is no longer an UNFINISHED, bad short story**.  I’ve had the blessed thing stuck in the back of my head for two, three years: I was wondering if it would ever get completed.  Now I’m going to forget about it for a day or two, do the necessary pass-through, and send it on its way.

That’s it.  And, yes: I’m describing the literary equivalent of describing an itch that I’ve finally been able to scratch.  And at that I’m probably being kind to myself; there are so many other, less couth, metaphors that would work in this context…

Moe Lane

*Larry Latham: he was the fellow who did the amazingly good Lovecraft is Missing webcomic, and he was taken from us far too soon.

**That turn of phrase shamelessly stolen from Stephen King’s It.

Magic-Focused Talents for GURPS. [GURPS]

I’m sure that other people have come up with similar concepts before now, but these are mine.

magic-focused-talents-for-gurps-google-docs

Magic-Focused Talents for GURPS

These Talents are designed for campaigns where magic is both real and at least somewhat formalized. The Fortune-Telling skill in particular here assumes that divination works. Also: while there is no reason why the Witch and Wizard Talents cannot be bought by the same PC, in many worlds people look oddly at somebody who has affinities for both.

Continue reading Magic-Focused Talents for GURPS. [GURPS]