| Politics Oh My! |
[Sep. 10th, 2008|08:22 am] |
I generally avoid posting anything about Politics online, because someone is always offended, and someone I know (no one specific) always seems to be on the opposite side of whatever debate I'm commenting on, but you know, the more I see of Sara Palin the less I can hold in my disbelief!
It's not the fact that she is a science-illiterate creationist who would happily destroy the educational advances of the last century. It's not the fact that she is a gun-toting hunting-happy redneck (do you really think the gun + bikini picture is a fake?) who thinks posing with wild animals she's shot is *positive*. It's not the fact that she would ban abortion and turn women into subjugated baby-making machines enslaved to their strong male superiors. It's not even the fact that she is the worst sort of extremist maniac, more dedicated on overturning pretty much every step of social progress that modern civilization has achieved than your average terrorist!
No it's the fact that this bloodthirsty religious extremist hasn't consigned McCain to the dustbin of history, it's the fact she's fucking energized him! It's the fact that Americans love her! It's the fact that sane people (debatable perhaps) wold actually be encouraged to vote for her by her bigoted hate speeches! I just can't process that.
Needless to say I won't be voting for her, or any party she stands for! |
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| David Davis |
[Jun. 12th, 2008|06:41 pm] |
Okay, I never thought I would say this, but I have just found respect for a member of the Conservative party!
Here in Britain we have watched out Government engage in nothing less than the continual erosion of our civil liberties and freedoms in the name of saving society. Every week brings a new regulation, criminal offence, or destruction of a fundemental part of our legal and cultural heritage. Whether its detention without charge, conviction without trial, rendition, imprisonment for discussing a crime, ID cards, monitoring of phones letters and emails, or just the everyday intrusion of health and safety, criminal background checks, unnecessary insurance or what have you.
The 42 day detention without charge is bad enough on it's own, but as a symptom of everything else this Government stands for it is intolerable. Intolerable that they are set on dismantling our culture, and intolerable that there seems to be nothing that we, the people of Britain, can do about it. No one seems to want it, and yet on it comes.
I can't help but feel that David Davis feels that same frustration. That the mechanics of democracy in the UK have long since stopped working for the people and become a tool of those in power (no matter what party they are from). Will taking this stand help? Probably not ... but I am full of admiration that he has done it. Perhaps if a few more people took a similar stand we might be better off. |
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| Solipsist Pre-orders |
[Mar. 14th, 2008|11:28 pm] |
On the slim offchance that anyone reading this wants to buy a copy of Solipsist, may I point out that pre-order bundles (book and PDF for £10) are available on http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/ for one week more only. After that books + PDF will be $25, so get 'em now while you can!
Or come and buy on the stall at Conpulsion, Edinburgh, March 22nd |
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| Solipsist is in my hands! |
[Mar. 5th, 2008|03:05 pm] |
Apparently all I do here is post about Solipsist :)
The very first copies of Solipsist are in my hands and I am so excited! :) It is green, lean and ... well very very green!
These copies are from Lulu, rather than Fidlar Doubleday, due to Mongoose suddenly deluging Fidlar with urgent print runs. That means that the copies at Conpulsion will, in all likelyhood, also be from Lulu, but they are very very nice, so that's fine. The Lulu books are larger than the Fidlar ones will be, which makes the cover look ever so slightly odd if you look closely, but they are otherwise perfect.
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| Solipsist again |
[Feb. 14th, 2008|09:01 pm] |
Solipsist is nearing publication now. It is in it's final proof stage, ready for editing and proofreading, and should be off to the printer's next week. I'm getting most of it done through Fidlar Doubleday, but also about 30 (I think) from Lulu to guarantee that they will be here for Conpulsion.
It's scary, but exciting too. |
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| Solipsist Website |
[Jan. 14th, 2008|09:36 am] |
I have just realised that, despite trying my hardest to advertise the website for my upcoming RPG Solipsist to as many places as possible I have entirely omitted to do it here! Not sure why but here we go, so please have a look.
http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/ |
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| CAPTCHAS |
[Oct. 30th, 2007|02:56 pm] |
I read a story on the BBC today about spammers using an automated striptease program to bypass CAPTCHA images. Hapless internet fools are sent a game where they can undress a virtual stripper if they type in the text from CAPTCHA images that the program extracts from target sites which can then be accessed by automated account creators.
Like viruses this is both reprehensible and fantastic at the same time. Oh the ingenuity! Oh the humanity! |
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| Talk like a Pirate Day |
[Sep. 19th, 2007|03:36 pm] |
Arrrrrh, me problem is bein' I don't be 'avin anything interesting t' say, yet I be wantin' to say something fer talk like a pirate day! This be doing me head in it be! Damm and Blast it! I'll be forced te keelhaul me own brain!
Luckily there be plenty o' pirate things happening over on Grophland, which be exercisin' me piratical bones to the fullest!
Shiver me timbers and all that! |
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| Games again |
[Sep. 4th, 2007|12:55 pm] |
Despite my sudden intention of updating my journal I have little to say ... what a way to open a post.
Soon however I hope that I will have more news on the Solipsist RPG that I have been working on for some months. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) boxninja and time_for_tea kindly took copies of it to GenCon in the US and passed them out to a few people who will hopefully either look at them, playtest them, or both. We hope to have it published by the end of the Autumn this year ... and the excitement is nearly killing me!
In other RPG news I just discovered that there is a game based on the Starblazer comics coming out, how cool is that! Its called Starblazer Adventures and it will hopefully be out by Christmas ... if so I know what I want Santa to get me! I loved the Starblazer comics, I used to make a pilgrimage down to Waverly station newsagents in Edinburgh (the only place that seemed to have them) twice a month to get my copies and I still have almost all of them (though some of them sadly got water damaged). I wish they would publish a compendium of them like they have of Commando! |
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| Anubis Mural |
[Jun. 22nd, 2007|11:44 pm] |
Finally I have a page on my website where you can see all the details of my Anubis Mural (previously to be seen on jayed)! I've got lots of pictures and descriptions of exactly how I did it.
Due to the stupid and ancient frame-based nature of my website I can't give a direct link, but just go to http://www.teuton.org/~stranger/ and click on ART in the header to get to the right section.
Here's a preview though
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| Solipsist |
[Jun. 22nd, 2007|10:58 am] |
For those that don't know Solipsist is a short Narrativist RPG that I wrote for the 24 minute design contest at Conpulsion 06. After the convention I took the rough Solipsist draft and turned it into a more finished game, a game that, with the patient encouragement of boxninja I hope to turn into a finished and salable product.
In the meantime, though, I have placed a PDF of a half-complete version of Solipsit on my website to give people a taste of what may be on the way. I take full responsibility (and make no appologies) for typoes, mistakes and silly rules in this version, it is only a first draft, but feel free to take a look and if you like it (or hate it) tell me what you think.
You can find the PDF here in the games section (yes I know I know ... my website is ancient, I must change it! |
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| Strange co-incidence |
[Jun. 16th, 2007|10:23 pm] |
So there I was with tomato_frog (my wife Victoria) looking for a new car when we were struck by the oddest co-incidence.
First some background. We'd been out for well over an hour trying to meet up with a dealer to look at a car, a dealer who wouldn't tell us where he was, and who kept breaking his appointment times as well. Eventually we ended up waiting in a random Edinburgh street for someone to turn up with the car. We were supposed to be waiting about 5 minutes but instead it was more like half an hour, half an hour in which almost nobody at all entered or left that street.
Then finally the car turned up and at the exact moment that we got out of the car who should walk right in front of us but cairmen who used to be our flatmate years ago. The timing was astounding!
Someone I know would call this synchronicity. |
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| Dr Who in Utopia |
[Jun. 16th, 2007|09:21 pm] |
Well here we go again, another Russell T episode complete with running and shouting, he really does love his running and shouting doesn't he :)
Plus points : we get Jack (and he didn't kill anyone we like, or make love to the doctor's hand or anything awful and Torchwood), we get the Master (not sure about John Simm yet, but I can't complain about Derek Jacobi) and we get an alright alien binty as well.
Negatives : Awful pace, a pointless plot, meaningless bad guys, flashbacks (I mean really, we have been watching this series you know! I know Russell said that this might have been someone's first episode but then so might the second part of any two parter have been), and the worst music that I've heard on Dr Who! I mean really, it was more like an episode of Flash Gordon, especially during the regeneration.
If this was the X-Files I would call this a *plot* episode, just there to further the meta-story and really not up to much in its own right at all, because certainly the story of the end of the universe and Utopia was so incredibly weak that I am amazed it was there at all!
And what on earth was Russell T on when he said on confidential that no one would have seen the Master coming?? Did he not read the Sun in January, the one where they announced that John Simm AND Derek Jacobi were both going to be the Master?
I suppose someone must not have been expecting it .... |
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| Mass Deletions |
[May. 31st, 2007|03:00 pm] |
I am sure by now that you (that would be the mythical and non-existant reader of my underused LJ) will by now have read all about the mass-deletions here, and the apology posted by Berkowitz. All I can say is that while the original intent (removing some journals advocating illegal acts) may have been laudable, the actual result, and the way LJ then tried to cope with the flak, has been laughable and terrifying at the same time.
LJ has now made clear, as part of that very apology, that they can, and will, delete journals with no warning because they don't like their content, even if that content is legal. Indeed they may well delete your journal simply because you have expressed an interest in content that they don't like, even if you never posted about it! This is of course their right, but is it what most you want (and some of you are paying for) from your service provider? It certainly isn't what I would want! If I ever posted something worth being worried about losing then I would take my business elsewhere (but I don't, and am not paying them, so I think I'll stay to complain about it instead).
Even worse they did all this because some crazy right-wing, white-supremacist, anti-un, anti-freedom of speech group of american vigelantees told them too ... way to go LJ!
Here is the Metafilter story : http://www.metafilter.com/61636/livejournal-suspends-hundreds-of-accounts#1712054
Here is a good post by someone objecting to Warriiors of Innocence : http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/266024.html
Here is an investigation of WOI : http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/830650.html
Here is the cnet story : http://news.com.com/Mass+deletion+sparks+LiveJournal+revolt/2100-1025_3-6187619.html |
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| WHAT HAVE THEY DONE! |
[Apr. 21st, 2007|07:27 pm] |
Oh my God, I just watched the new Dr Who and what have they done to the Daleks!!??
Three years the new series has been going and this is the first ever episode that has actually dissapointed me (unlike, say, all of torchwood). That wasn't a cliffhanger, that was a pathetic letdown!
Daleks are supposed to be scary, and they are. Daleks terrify us all, because they are immortal, invulnerable, evil! Why would you swap that for a wannabe mind-flayer with a boston accent? What have they done???? Its actually enopugh to make me come to my journal, which I never use, and post on it!
ARGH! |
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| Use of LJ |
[May. 28th, 2006|08:21 pm] |
I was over talking to time_for_tea earlier and we had a coversation about the importance (or lack of) of Livejournal. Part of this touched on the question of how it was almost impossible to keep track of freinds (even ones that live close by) without using LJ. It got me wondering though, if you have friends who you can't keep up with in real life, and who don't have time time (or can't be bothered) to keep up with yours .... then why do you care about their lives, and why should they get to hear about yours?
Then again ... I could just be being callous or unsociable! :) |
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| Oh no! |
[May. 14th, 2006|10:14 pm] |
Oh no, I've been made to have a livejournal, what will I do!
Like as not I'll flee to cvarious communities and avoid posting here too much :) |
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