Always make friends with the one busybody in your apartment building who pokes their nose into everyone's business. They're good for keeping you abreast of things that could bite you in the ass at the worst possible time.
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It seems as if we're losing heroes (or at least, people perceived as heroic) left, right, and center these days. People that are put up on pedestals by people (or more often by marketing execs and television networks) are slowly and steadily being knocked from their lofty perches in the public eye and cratering when they hit, sometimes never to dig themselves out. About six years ago (probably a bit more, because I remember reading his book when I was still at IUP) a guy named Mike Warnke published what was ostensibly his autobiography, in which he described being the …
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Word is slowly seeping into the gaming community that Gary Gygax, the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, went beyond the veil early today. Reports are sketchy - the usual newswires don't have anything yet, but it's been said that he died quietly and was surrounded by family.
EDIT: Official news release here.
Mr. Gygax, thank you for everything. You've given thousands, if not millions of people over the years hours without number of fun and taught many how to imagine. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family and friends.
See you beyond the edge of Time, perhaps.
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On Friday the 15th I turned 30.
I know that I didn't make a big deal out of it, and that wasn't out of any shame or wanting to keep things low-key as it was I've been really busy lately and didn't have time to post about it anywhere. The company I work for has pulled me from fieldwork for at least the next couple of months after what happened in Tuscaloosa. I've been moved to another project much closer to home and I spent all day Friday in the field with my cow-orkers getting stuff set up and running …
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For years, HERF weapons (high energy radio frequency) have been the stuff of science fiction and urban legends of the hacker underground. The underlying premise is simple: Integrated circuitry is vulnerable to various forms of radio frequency emissions, and such interference can either disrupt the functioning of or outright destroy circuitry. In theory, these weapons are relatively easy to construct with a decent grasp of electronics and high voltage electrical engineering with readily available parts, but actual examples of such are rarely verified. Personally, I've heard some tales coming out of a certain hacker con in the west (which was …
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I made it to the LayerOne conference safe, sound, and on a shuttle bus that runs from the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California to the Hilton in Pasadena. Travel tip: If you can avoid it, don't catch a cab, they cost an arm and a leg. If you can charter a shuttlebus you'll pay much less for the trip. A cab ride would probably have cost me about $70us, while I paid all of $23us for a leisurely ride to the hotel, in air conditioning (not that we needed it) and comfort. Of course, I hadn't been there for …
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A couple of weeks ago Lyssa and I hooked up with House Eclipse to buy seats at a second table at Persephone's Ball 2007, the annual fundraising dinner held by the Open Hearth Foundation in their effort to set up a community center for the pagan community of the Washington, DC metropolitan area. They've been at this for almost ten years now; I've been keeping my eye on it for about five but this is the first time that I've ever participated in one of their functions. We weren't sure what our schedule was going to be like on Saturday …
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The past couple of nights have been busy ones, though not painfully so. Our weekly stitch-and-bitch had been moved up to Wednesday so that Elwing could join us after work, along with Hasufin, Hummingwolf, Orthaevelve, and Kyrin, who'd been effectively out of action for a couple of weeks since the new year started. As it turned out, I had to run to the Metro station to get Hummingwolf, drop her off at home, then head out to get Orthaevelve at her place, drop her off, and then set out for Micro Center to pick up something for work. Seeing as …
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Here's an article just in from the "In other news, fire is hot and water is wet" department: A study shows that studies funded by companies tend to frame the products of those companies in a better light. A three step study of 111 dietetic studies of soda milk, and water was performed in such a way that the groups of researchers were ignorant of the conclusions of the others (the protocol is outlined in the article, it's pretty neat) to determine if the findings of the studies would be helpful or harmful to the bottom line of the organisation …
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