10:34 PM (0 comments)


....

I'm going to be stunned a second longer, if that's okay with you.

Ready?

Allan Weisbecker has a website.

Don't recognize the name? Okay. Lemme explain why I'm so stunned. Before tonight, I never knew his first name. I knew him as "A.C. Weisbecker", the author of Cosmic Banditos.

Banditos (along with "Surely You're Joking, Mister Feynman!") was the book that made me decide to study physics in college.

Banditos was the book I checked out my sophomore year in high school, and about once every three months thereafter, compelled to reread it.

Banditos was the book I checked out from the Hastings Public Library the night before it burned to the ground.

Banditos was the battered trade paperback that, when I returned it to the new library, was placed into a book sale to raise funds for a new building. Banditos is the book I immediately bought.

I have a lot of books. But there's only one shelf--one side of one shelf--reserved for books that shaped me toward the person I am today. Cosmic Banditos is on that shelf. I still reread it every now and again. I occasionally wondered why the author had never published another book (as with another novel and author on the shelf, Memoir of an Invisible Man's H.F. Saint.) Whatever the unknown story, I always hoped that the books I enjoyed so much had happy authors out there somewhere.

Today, in a Metafilter post, I suddenly had my answer. A.C. Weisbecker has a website. For all the Google searching I do, I'd never thought to punch his name in. If I had, I would have read about Weisbecker's past--like just how autobiographical Banditos truly is, and that he used his past to make a career for himself as a staff writer for Miami Vice. I would have seen he has another book that I've never read. And I would have discovered that he is quite happy indeed, living in somewhere that appears to be quite close to paradise. I rarely (read:never) give out my true email address for mailing lists. But I coughed up for Weisbecker's mailing list almost reflexively. Even before I've received the first installment, it's already worth it--his beautiful site has a 'members only' archive of his magazine writing that I'm enjoying tonight while I pass time here at work. His screenwriting article in particular is a lot of fun.

Sorry to prattle on. I'm just stunned. Stunned and excited.

When I get home tonight, there's a particular book waiting for me on a particular shelf...

8:23 PM (0 comments)
When our pop culture does try to portray ordinary people, it usually flattens things out, removing the social texture of their daily lives and reducing their dreams to purely personal matters of family, friends and love. There may be no purer expression of this than in David Byrne’s film True Stories, when citizens of a small Texas town sing a populist anthem designed to show what’s in their hearts. Titled “People Like Us,” the song builds to the lines:

We don’t want freedom
We don’t want justice
We just want someone to love.

If you suggested that Byrne felt this way about his own life, he’d probably smack you.

From "Fanfare for the Uncommon Man", an essay by John Powers in this week's LA Weekly, starting with the California recall election, wandering through pop culture while taking a few political swipes, and ending up with thoughts on Harvey Pekar and American Splendor.

Discuss.

11:48 AM (0 comments)
From Dr. Chris, a picture of the hebesphenomegacorona on board the International Space Station. Don't miss the history of the solid beneath the picture--it's a nice introduction to a concept I wrote a paper on back when I was a math and physics student--"Johnson solids"*. Here's a neat rendering of all the solids next to one another. Someone needs to convince Zocchi or Chessex to make a Johnson Solids Dice Set. I'd buy one.

* UPDATE: Just to clarify for Slow Joe in the Back Row of the Peanut Gallery**: I wrote a paper about Johnson solids, not the Paper On Johnson solids. You're thinking of Norman Johnson.

** Mixed Metaphor Week continues!

6:14 PM (0 comments)
I don't have the forty-five hundred bucks to buy one, but I can't help wondering how many pictures my digital camera could store on a six gigabyte Compact Flash card. Wow. (via Gizmodo)

4:00 PM (0 comments)
From: Ev
To: Blogger Pro Users

Hi there. Evan Williams here, co-founder of Pyra/Blogger.

We're no longer offering Blogger Pro as a separate product and we're folding most of the features into regular (free) Blogger.

The features of BloggerPro are now free to all Blogger users. Hopefully this means we'll see more BlogSpot users spellchecking their posts. Please let it mean that.

1:45 PM (0 comments)
And in a happy update to yesterday's post, J-Walk is back! Good for so many reasons, not least of which is the zebra's rear getting bumped down the page.

1:25 PM (0 comments)
Passed along by JP, a collection of game design terms used by Ion Storm Austin. If more designers read just this page and took everything on it to heart and mind I'd be broke--I'd be spending everything I made on more games.

4:36 PM (0 comments)
Movie Manners Courtesy Cards from the Glarkware store. Brilliant.

4:30 PM (0 comments)
J-Walk has called it quits. Sigh.

1:21 PM (0 comments)
This week in the RPG industry, there's been a lot of talk and jokes about White Wolf's lawsuit against Sony Pictures over the content of the upcoming movie Underworld (you can read the actual complaint here courtesy of Penny Arcade.)

However, the buzz among industry insiders over the last few days has been the alterations by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast to the d20 System Trademark License that allowed for the wealthspring of Dungeons & Dragons ruleset-compatible games and products that have been hitting the market for the last three years. The new "Quality Standards" section ("The nature of all material You use or distribute that incorporates the Licensed Articles must comply with all applicable laws and regulations, as well as community standards of decency, as further described in the d20 System Guide.") has been enough to get some in the fanbase readying their torches for anti-censorship rallies--particularly those who feel that the change is pointed at the soon-to-be-released Book of Erotic Fantasy. WotC has distanced themselves from the BoEF as much as possible since it was announced, and it does seem a strong argument that these alterations to the d20 STL are their attempt to go from disassociation with products they disapprove of to nonexistence of products they dislike. Glossing over, of course, WotC's publication of The Book of Vile Darkness with its "Nipple Clamps of Exquisite Hardness". Pot, kettle; kettle, pot.

But the real concern of many publishers is that the review and rejection process described in the changed STL seems to have no time limit either forward or backward--that books published one or two years ago may now retroactively have their license to use the d20 System terminated, and all copies of the product bearing the d20 logo forced to be pulped. Similarly, books that meet with WotC's approval today might arbitrarily be slapped down a year from now, with no hope of redress for the publisher. To mix several metaphors, the carrot of hitching your wagon to Dungeons & Dragons' star has just been knocked into the dustbin by a newer, larger stick.

So unless WotC and Hasbro realize that the changed license and their ability to review any d20 product opens them to legal action (by groups who will now expect them to review all d20 product) and retract the license, I expect that we'll see many publishers retreating to the safety of the Open Gaming License. The same sort of D&D compatible products will be able to be released thanks to the wording of the OGL allowing products to be released not only under the current version of the license but past versions* The only real difference will be that there won't be the unifying element of the d20 logo, cutting the consumer's mental ties between WotC product and the d20 products that have been supporting them and driving the sales of the d20 core books.

Everyone loses a bit. In their fear to avoid the wrath of those who think adult material doesn't belong in a game (ignoring constant violence while fearing any degree of sexual content, as per usual), WotC just doesn't realize it yet.

* From Version 1.0a of the OGL: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and distribute any Open Game Content originally distributed under any version of this License.

1:21 PM (0 comments)
To whomever hit me this morning with a Google search for tony hawk pro skater 4 "manual combo" doesn't work: I feel your pain, friend. Sadly, though, I think it's just us, as there are plenty of people having no trouble whatsoever.

2:55 PM (0 comments)
Today's interesting bit of history, from online research into B-17s during WWII, on which my grandfather served as a gunner. Reading up on the .50 caliber machine guns on B-17s, I found this page:

The machine gun fired at a rate of 550 rounds per minute - however - some enterprising gunners found a way to increase their fire power! The red fiber disks in the back plate were of the exact same size as an American quarter - a 25 cent piece - which became valuable in a machine gun. The fiber disks were replaced with American quarters. It required ten dollars worth of quarters to replace the fiber disks in the back platte of each gun. The hardness of the silver coins caused the recoil of the bolt to react quicker - increasing the machine gun fireing rate from 550 rounds to 650 rounds per minute. A gunner so altering the gun in this manner had to be very careful when in combat such that he could overheat his gins much faster than with the fiber disks ! But - the increase in fire power was worth it when enemy fighters made a pass at the formation - and the pass usually lasting on 15 to 30 seconds ! The silver quarters would compress from the beating of the rearward force of the steel bolt - thus the gunner had to always check the quarters for size and replace them when necessary. Necessary being estimated at about every ten combat missions.

As with many WWII topics, once you start looking there's an incredible wealth of fascinating material to read--from how to ditch from a B-17 in a water landing (and the Goldfish Club, with the matching Caterpillar Club for bailing out) to the fantastic array of names given to the aircraft.

10:45 AM (0 comments)
"I don't know how to make a living on electronic text, but one thing I'm 100 percent sure of is that I won't make a penny by treating my readers like crooks, or by stamping my foot and demanding that the Internet cease to exist, or by pretending that it's still the golden age of print publishing."

Cory Doctorow's short-story collection is out, and you can download and read most of it on the web. I know how I'll be spending my lunch hours this week. And if you have an evening or two to spare, Cory's novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is also available online and is a fantastic read.