I got the Black Adder series. All four seasons, plus a fifth DVD of supplemental material, are available in one box at our local public library. I’d seen a couple episodes before, and never understood what all the fuss was about. But it’s certainly popular in the geek crowd, so when my eye fell across […]
Dave loaned me his copy of Legends of Anglerre, the fantasy incarnation of the FATE RPG. Predictably, LoA varies from other FATE titles—not just by addition of rules specific to the setting, but in rules one might expect them to share. This variation is born of an open gaming license and a do-it-yourself attitude. There’s […]
PC Gamer magazine is trying something new. A few weeks ago, I got email announcing that my “online copy†of this month’s issue was available online. I was somewhat concerned: did this mean our copy was available in addition to, or instead of, the print copy our subscription had paid for? Were we still getting […]
In Hawaii, I succumbed to temptation and bought myself a Hawaiian shirt, callow and touristy though the decision may have been. Yesterday I tried it on, fresh out of the wash. And y’know? Having tried it on, I really like it. And, to Eileene’s horror, she likes it, too—on me, that is. Printed in a […]
I came to this rather circuitously. First a fellow math teacher tweeted a link to the YouTube video “Should Math be Taught in Our Schools?†It’s tongue-in-cheek—I say this because not everyone is sure it’s a joke—but it is disturbingly similar to the YouTube video it satirizes, reporting Miss USA contestents’ thoughts on whether evolution […]
Amazon may be bad news for traditional book stores. Unless the internet learns better to reproduce the process of browsing—the freedom to sample books where we like rather than a given selection, the ability to feel a book’s weight and construction as well as sample its content, the ability to browse an entire shelf at […]
Last night we watched the movie version of Whiteout. I didn’t expect much from it, since I vaguely remembered it getting panned, but we bought it used for $1 at Blockbuster, and figured we had nothing to lose. Just a second, let me check on that…yes, it got panned. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 7%, […]
Eileene wants to try poke (poh-KAY) when we go to Hawaii. We will, of course. Half the reason we travel anywhere is for the food. (Yes, even when we visit family. Mom’s cooking. Sampling new restaurants. Genuine Filipino food.) And I’ve got a code of honor concerning new food: I have to try at least […]
I’m using Edward Luttwak’s Coup d’Etat for RPG instruction. See, the campaign is titled “Bastards!†and we’re all to play bastards of one stripe or another: people denied inheritance of once kind or another and determined to win it back by any means necessary. I intend to play a conquering hero closed out of the […]
I came late to “The Green Room,†a cable show in which Paul Provenza hosts a panel of four other comedians in open discussions of the stand-up comedian’s life and profession, ideally without the comedians hiding themselves and the more somber truths of their craft too thoroughly behind their wit. I first heard of the […]