It’s the 4th of July, and I'm celebrating by launching a new podcast with Rone Barton. Entitled Atomic Array, it's about the games we love to play. In the first episode, we speak with Richard Iorio of Rogue Games.

Visit the Atomic Array website: atomicarray.com

I had a great time speaking with Richard, and hope you enjoy the show. Feel free to leave a comment on the site, share Atomic Array with a friend, or contact us directly. In fact, we’d love to hear what you think about Colonial Gothic. Tell us what you like (or don’t), and what you’d like to see from Rogue Games in the future.

Atomic Array gets a nod from GeekDads on WIRED: John Baichtal was kind enough to pimp Atomic Array over at WIRED. Read the article, in which he lists a bunch of killer geekcasts.

Help Get the Word Out: If you have an account on del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, or any social bookmarking site... please give us a nod. Thanks in advance!

What: The french dip sandwich, crafted of shaved prime rib and swiss cheese on a baguette, served au jus:

Why: In celebration of our national birthday, I offer the most American of sandwiches.The french dip combines America's two greatest culinary weapons: bread and beef. Our overindulgence in both contributes to us being the most overweight, prideful nation on Earth. But this time, we've got major justification. The french dip liberates prime rib from snooty wedding-reception carving tables, shrouds it in cheese and a french roll, and plunges the concoction into a beef broth. That's right, beef goes into more beef. Unless you're the kind to abstain (which I admire to no end), you can't do better.

Impact: There are two restaurants in Los Angeles, Philippe's and Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet, that claim to have invented the french dip. (Only the former has a French chef, which gives their claim a touch more weight.) Regardless of which you favor, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the first dip. A century later, it remains unchanged on the menus of all the finest diners in America.

Personal Connection: I often claim I can order food in any city in the world. Part of that is knowing when not to order something. My most rigid rule is that I will not order a french dip in any establishment that claims to serve it "with au jus." I figure that if you don't take the time to learn when you've created a grammatical redundancy, you probably don't care enough to make it properly. This rule has held up time and again. (How do I know? Well, I violate this rule all the time. And each time I remember why it exists.)

Other Contenders: a falafel sandwich, with vegetables and tahini paste in pita; peanut butter and jelly on wheat; a lightly toasted grilled cheese sandwich; a thick bleu cheese burger; the only thing I will eat from McDonald's, the surprisingly unreproduceable Sausage McMuffin with Egg.

This...is.....awesome!

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

For various reasons the entire MonkeyGod catalog of products had been unavailable at RPGnow/DTRPG since the beginning of this year.

Not anymore!

All of the MonkeyGod products we were distributing are now back on sale at RPGnow/DTRPG, including such critically-acclaimed titles such as From Stone to Steel and Frost & Fur, and adventures like The Hero Snare (learn to fear kobolds), Hellstone Deep (venture to the lowest layers of hell) and ENnie-nominated Song of Storms.

And to celebrate, from July 4-7, the entire MonkeyGod Presents line is on sale at 50% off!

Enjoy.

I'm back in Seattle after Origins, a week-long game festival in Columbus, Ohio that represents the mid-way point of what I lovingly refer to as "convention season," which is another way of saying "the summer". By the time a dripping wet fall rears its sad face for the onset of Seattle's sunless, surreal autumnwinterspring, I always look back and wonder "where the hell did summer go? How did I miss the 4th of July? Where was I during the entire month of August?

In the sweltering, sweaty American Midwest is where, and Origins is just the tip of the iceburg this year. Coming up in rapid succession I've got a brief trip with the family and bbcaddict to Whistler, a trip to Denver for my first ever World Con (I'm on some panels!), then off to Gen Con Indy (the mothership of gaming cons) and THEN I'm going to Gen Con UK to be a featured guest. That's all by the end of next month, so while I get a nice little break here I feel like I've been through the ringer with only more ahead.

Don't get me wrong. I'm looking forward to all of that (especially the UK part!), but it is grueling.

I love Origins because it is not as frantic as Gen Con and I get a chance to actually _talk_ to some of the folks in the fairly tightly knit professional game publisher community. Green Ronin's art director and co-owner Hal Mangold is always good for some fun chats, and this year Ed Greenwood proved a true delight on numerous occasions.

Thanks for picking up several volumes of Planet Stories, Ed, and for being such a crazy, perverted lunatic.

I also had a chance to reconnect (even if briefly) with my old RPGA buddies Rick Brill and Joe Cirillo and company. I really miss gaming with those guys.

So Origins is great for catching up with old friends. Unfortunately, one reason it is so easy to do so is that business at Origins is really slow, and from our perspective it's been getting slower year by year.

I hear that some gaming companies did well at the show, particularly family style board game companies like Loony Labs and "built for Origins" quirky boardgame companies like Rio Grande. For us, the financial picture at the show is getting worse and worse, even while the retail and direct sales business for Paizo is getting better and better.

It's gotten to a point that all of the "big" gaming companies (Wizards of the Coast, Wiz Kids, Upper Deck, Fantasy Flight) have already given up on the show, and suddenly we're one of the "big guys" still there. It costs a huge ton of money to get the booth and product to the show, not to mention to staff the show with six full-time employees (covering their meals and hotel and flights, of course) for a whole week (during which almost none of those employees' duties back at the office get done), and the sales just art not there, and have not really been there for the last five or so years.

I can see why a lot of these other companies no longer attend the show, and despite my personal fondness for the convention (and the fact that I've attended 14 of the last 15 years) as a business matter I find it very difficult to justify as an expense.

To add insult to injury, daily sales at Paizo.com (travel, food, freight budget = 0) exceeded direct sales at the convention on both Saturday and Sunday.

The world changes beneath our feet.

I managed to polish off two novels on the trip, Robert E. Howard's SWORD WOMAN and the Centaur Time-Lost Series edition of Arthur D. Howden Smith's GREY MAIDEN. Sadly, this edition lacks at least five of the stories in a 1929 hardcover edition, which I have subsequently ordered.

Still listening to Megadeth. Still wish I had more time to read.

Patrick Stewart...is so awesome.



This just moved him up from "near Godlike" Status to "Godlike".

What: The California studio Blizzard Entertainment, producers of the Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft videogame lines:

Why: Blizzard is the Paul Masson of game companies: They will sell no videogame before its time. Over and over again, they have disappointed their many parent companies—CUC, Havas, now Vivendi, soon Activision—in their desires for a game that would guarantee massive executive Christmas bonuses. Instead, Blizzard believes that money spends as good in February as it does in December—that is, the February three years later. And money they get, as Blizzard has produced nothing but gorgeous, involving games. By not straying too far from their three core lines, they've expanded the types of games their fans will enjoy—real-time strategy, roleplaying, massively multiplayer, and so on. All those hours you've put into your WoW character are reflective of all those hours Blizzard put into its game development.

Impact: With World of Warcraft being the largest time sink in the history of games, it's not a stretch to say that Blizzard is the most powerful game company on Earth. Certainly Hasbro and Mattel can claim more of a legacy, and Nintendo and Sony can claim the platform dominance, but Blizzard sets the marching standards for the game industry. If you're going to be great, you have to try to be as good as they are. Good luck with that.

Personal Connection: I had the pleasure to be Wizards of the Coast's creative director in charge of all its Blizzard-licensed tabletop games. My favorite story from that time came from Paul Sams, the company's chief operating officer. Paul got a call from the South Korean ministry of culture and sports, which wanted him to cross the Pacific for a meeting. Stunned, he got on a plane, and was welcomed by the country's minister for culture. Paul had seen a spike in sales in South Korea, but didn't know why—until he toured some of the country's thousands of LAN parlors and discovered they were all playing Starcraft. And only Starcraft. It had become Korea's national sport. Now that's power.

Other contenders: Pixar, the CGI animation studio whose string of brilliance has redefined what a cartoon could be; the music repackager Rhino Records, which has kept the history of music alive better than any classic radio station; Days of Wonder, the smartest board game publisher around; HBO, producer of the best shows of the last decade.

So about two weeks ago, after all of the huge projects went to the printer, a few of us were sitting around the office joking that we should go to the zoo. Well, what started as a chuckle soon turned into a bonafide plan. Later that same week, we were off, heading to the Woodland Park Zoo, just north of downtown Seattle for an afternoon of mirth and mayhem.

The full story, with a bunch more pictures can be found after the jump.

From Left to Right, that is Me, James Jacobs, and Wes Schneider... taking the picture was Jeremy Gombieski, a mutual friend.
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Well, I am back from Origins, and an finally rested. It was a good show and I hope to do a lengthy post on it tomorrow. There might even be a Beta spoiler or two for those of you interested in those sort of things.

In the meanwhile, I am putting together the post on the Paizo Zoo Excursion from a about two weeks ago. I will post that up in a separate entry though, just to keep things nice and neat.

housematehorror
Horror stories from the world of shared living spaces. EEK!

Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.

“Seattle seduces,” my friend Patricia warned me on our very first day in the city. She was 100% right. I absolutely loved our time in Seattle and environs and to be honest, I’d rather be there than in Miami right now.

The pics have been uploaded to Flickr and once titles and tags have been added I’ll post the link here. I will also try to fill in the blog posts I was unable to do while traveling, and post an “index” as they will be backdated.

I’m going to sya this unequivocally: my wife and I have talked about this all week long, and we have made the decision to start doing our research to move to Seattle sooner rather than later. I will later go on more in depth on the reasons why, but the short version is that Seattle fits our moods and personalities quite well, and a change is needed for sure.

I find that I do not want to interact with Miami at the moment (except for the job interview I have tomorrow), sort of feel like, even though I’m here, I’m still in that travel limbo. I’m gonna use this week to catch up on my mail and other stuff and get back to work next Monday.

I went to a museum in Chiprovsky, Bulgaria. They had the coolest model of an old gold mine operation. Check out the images, below.

Images: Taken 26 June 2008 (click to enlarge)

"St. Ivan Rilsky"

In the western Stara Planina, on the banks of the Chiprovska Ogosta River, sits the Chiprovski monastery. Founded during the First Bulgarian Kingdom (10th century), it was one of the bases from which Christianity and Slavonic writing spread throughout ancient Bulgaria. Ever since, this compound has been a center for literary, educational and revolutionary activity.

Destroyed in 1837, the current form was created by hieromonks Dionysius and Gerasim from Berkovitsa. The tower-ossuary was built at this time, and holds the remains of Bulgarian revolutionaries who perished in the Chiprovsti rebellion.

The church is a one-nave three-concha building, with an octathedral cupola and places for singers. It houses many valuable items, one of which is a throne Gospel with silver repousse cover - a gift from the Russian emperor Paul I.

Some Bulgarians believe that the cloister has mysterious healing powers.

Images: Taken 26 June 2008 (click to enlarge)

dwseason4
A journal where the alternative fourth season of the TV show Doctor Who is being written.

lol_comics
Keep youself smiling at the little things with some funny comics.

bikes
A community for everyone who loves bicycles, motorbikes, and more.

"St. John the Precursor"

Lopushanski Monastery is located in Chiprovtsi, in Bulgaria's Stara Planina Mountains, 17 km from the town of Montana. Erected on the site of an earlier structure, from the time of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, the four-year reconstruction began in 1850. In 1989, the Holy place was reconstructed and two wood-carved verandas were added. Both projects were financed by the Vidin Holy Bishopric.

The monastery is dedicated to St. John the Precursor. A monumental five-dome building, it has a circular arcade narthex and a pair of side chapels - "Saints Kosmas and Damian" and "Saint John the Baptist." The facade and the gates are adorned with stone reliefs. The central iconostasis was created in 1863 by Stoycho Fandakov, from the Samokov wood-carving school. The focal icons - of Jesus and the Holy Virgin - were painted by Stanislav Dospevski in 1863, during the Bulgarian national revival. Stanislav's brother, Nicola, created the rest.

Ivan Vazov, Bulgaria's national poet, frequented Lopushanski.

Image: Taken 26 June 2008 (click to enlarge)

YouTube, blip.tv, Ustream… there are a bunch of services that cater to the video enthusiast. None of them, to my knowledge, have the functionality I’m looking for.

What do I want?

Most video recorders (from traditional units to digital cameras and smart phones) tag videos to the date and time they are recorded. This is a powerful piece of information. What if I’m recording a seminar at a convention while my wife is recording my daughter playing in the yard? What if there are multiple people recording the same event from different perspectives? It would be cool to be able to see those concurrent events or perspectives side-by-side. Timestamps would allow me to do this.

Most social media sites allow you to build a cloud of contacts (friends). Why not allow me to see which of my friends are streaming right now, and view each stream, sync’d in real time? Why not allow me to go back in history and see the same information?

Event tags can allow me to find video from multiple sources taken at the same event. I don’t know of any service that would allow me to view these videos in a meaningful timeline. What more, if I’m at an event and want to see which streams are live right now, I would like to be able to do so.

Geo-tracking would be similar to event tags, but allow me to see what is going on around me. Hey, look… someone is streaming from Market Street Brewery in Nashville – it looks fun, I better get down there!

I’m sure there are other things one could do with a service that allows robust tagging, time stamping, and filtering. What would you like to see?

Reposted from Wen-M's journal on DeviantArt. While he talks about drawing, it applies equally well to other creative fields.

( Read more... )

Deep, but certainly thought-provoking. Why do you do what you do, if you write or draw or paint or sculpt? What is your motivation?

The locations for the KQ and Open Design seminars have changed. Updated information:
( Freelancing for KQ, Open Design, Steampunk, and Print Publication seminars )

Hope to see you there!

I've been idly dreaming about a new car lately. Maybe a diesel VW, a hybrid Honda, or an all-electric like the Zap Xebra or the GM Volt.

But I may have found a new contender in a Steam Car With 360 HP. Oh yeah baby.

So, the word is out....I want to rule you all.

And I will, too. That old woman sees the writing on the...her....um....YES. I will make an example of her...FIRST.





My thanks to Ed Healy for this EXCELLENT propagan-....er, political spin.

Thanks to Chris Brogan for bringing this to my attention.