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Showing posts from October, 2012

Top Ten Forgotten Realms Novels (Part 3)

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At long last, this is part three of my series on the Top Ten  Forgotten Realms  novels.  They are by far and away my favorite vice, literary or otherwise.  As I've said before, FR novels are like salty potato chips.  Even when they’re good, they’re not really good for you, but once you get started, they’re awfully hard to put down. Since it's been a few weeks since I published the earlier pieces of this list, let's take a minute to recap what's gone before.   In Part 1 of this series , we looked at numbers 10 through 7 .  There were: 10.   Streams of Silver  by R.A. Salvatore 9.   Swordmage  by Richard Baker 8.   Circle of Skulls  by James P. Davis 7.   Hand of the Hunter  by Mark Sehestedt In Part 2 of this series , we looked at numbers 6 through 4 .  They were: 6.   Daughter of the Drow  by Elaine Cunnigham 5.   Shadowbred  by Paul S. Kemp 4.   The Magehound  by Elaine Cunningham   And so today, at last, we look at the top three

The Sorcerer's Tale (Chapter 1, Part 1)

Chapter 1: Unexpected Visitors “Professor?” Something in the questioner’s voice raised the hairs on the back of my neck.  And then, too, there was something else.  A feeling.  A whisper.  Before I’d even registered the conscious need to react, my hand had fallen into my coat pocket, fingers closed around my wand.   You might think that sounds paranoid, but then, you didn’t know my father.  You don’t know what it’s like to be a Rasputin. I turned slowly.  Around me, my students were leaving in a tidal wave, ebbing from the learned shores of “Continental History: 1633 to 1815.”  It took me a moment to pick my questioner out from amongst the sea of bodies.  But then I saw him—them, I realized—standing like a rock against the flow of free-spirited adolescence.  The one in front—he must have been the speaker—was tall, proud, and in retrospect, given the voice, distinctly American.  He had broad shoulders, a blue Brooks Brothers suit, and black hair cropped so close that he could

Pictures from the Hurricane

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Sally and the girls and I just went down to Shakespeare Park to take a look at the hurricane.  We took some pics. Sally and Emma jumping into the wind. Sally with Shakespeare Theater in the background. It was high tide when we took these pics, but there wasn't yet much storm surge. Sally, Hannah, Emma, and Dixie down by the water. I took this one myself using my phone's rear-facing camera. Me and the girls.  And the storm. Me and my bride.  Emma took this pic. The infamous panoramic shot of the storm and the bay.

Joss Whedon on Mitt Romney

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Day Out at Sleeping Giant

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Sally 's birthday was Saturday, and for it, she wanted to go to Sleeping Giant State Park .  Needless to say, we had a good time, and I took a bunch of pictures. My beautiful bride, on her birthday. We posed at the trail head for a picture. Hannah and Emma set off! Hannah on the trail. Sally and Hannah Emmboo! Hannah and Emma at lookout point Hannah and the cliff. The tower at the top of the hill. The prisoner in the tower! Climbing the tower. Romeo!  Oh Romeo!  Wherefore art thou, Romeo! New Haven as seen from the top of Sleeping Giant tower. The view opposite New Haven from the top of the Tower.

It's My Fault

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It is.  It's my fault.  I haven't been watching much of the Tennessee Titans this season because, bottom line, they just haven't been very good.  But they've been better these past few weeks, and so I got suckered.  I let myself start to believe. Today I wore my Titans sweatshirt to my daughter's soccer game, and during the game, I listened to the radio feed on my phone while the girls were out there playing.  Then I put the game on the radio here when we got home, and against my better judgement, I actually let myself believe that the Titans were gonna win. Of course, they didn't.  They lost in the worst, most heartbreaking, most ignominious fashion.  Ugh. Final score: Colts 19, Titans 13 . Argh.

Sunday Comics: Bronx Angel--Politics By Another Method (Page 1)

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Bronx Angel: Politics By Another Method , Page 1. To view the page at full size, click here . I gave it some thought and finally decided to skip the Foreword for now.  Given the choice, I'd rather you read the story first and decide what you think about it on its own merits.  Then I'll print the Foreword, and the inevitable debate will begin. As I noted in some detail before, I was never able to get this book greyscaled.  I did, however, get the first five pages greyscaled, and eventually, we decided to use those as a (somewhat misleading) preview of the book. If you'd rather see this version at fill size, click here .

Best Goalie!

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We're late in the fourth, and the score's still tied nil-nil. I think we're missing Emma's friend Rowena today, but she's out with flu-like symptoms. Need a late game rally to push ahead.

Winter Ambush: A D&D Solo Adventure for 4th Edition

I track the stats on this site pretty closely, and one of the things I've noticed is that people come here A LOT looking for  D&D Solo Adventures .  Well, here's the deal.  I wrote one, called  " Winter Ambush "  for my old gaming group, the  Sellswords of Luskan , and then I started writing a second one but haven't gotten around to finishing it because, bottom line, writing those things takes a long damn time.  However, I want to give people what they want, and I want to make this site as user-friendly as possible. So here's what I've done--I've created a new tab on the top row of the blog for Winter Ambush, and I've re-formatted the adventure to make it a little easier to use on the site.  I think you will still want to download the Excel file to run the thing because of the embedded dice-roller and because the maps are a little easier to use that way, but ultimately, that's up to you. Now.  If folks want me to finish the other solo c

Friday Mad Science: The Fiscal Cliff and The Energy Industry

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Slate.com this week took a look at the Fiscal Cliff , and I  guess I’m gonna lead with that because it doesn't seem like there’s a whole lot more going on.  I didn't love Slate’s take, but they do at least point out that the issue came up in the last debate--as “sequestration”--and that it’s a real thing.  Obama’s answer--that it can’t and won’t happen--isn't much of one, but I’m not sure what Romney added to the conversation beyond that--and the fact that he brought it up in the first place. Having said that I don’t think much of the article, I’d still say that it’s still worth reading because a) it’s short, and b) there’s not much else that’s out there that covers this issue with anything like details and candidate positions.  Still, I don’t get the idea that the Fiscal Cliff is much of a policy issue for most voters, and more to the point, the only real policy difference that’s possible here is something along the lines of, “a vote for Romney is a vote for compromise bec

Friday Hair Metal: In The Air Tonight

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This song is doubly inappropriate.  Not only is it not Hair Metal, Phil Collins doesn't even have any hair!

10 Worst Avengers of All Time

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I'm kind of at a loss for what to write about today, so pretty much all I've got is a link to a Newsrama article that I thought was gonna be kind'a entertaining: The 10 WORST Avengers Members of All Time But then I start reading through the article, and who's the third person on their list?   Triathlon ! The cover for issue #8 of Kurt Busiek's totally awesome run on the Avengers. What kind of  bullshit is that?

Velma!

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Here's Hannah's contribution for the day--Velma from Scooby Doo!

New Trailer for Iron Man 3

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Odds are that if you're a comic fan, you've already seen this.  But on the off-chance that some of you are not complete and utter nerds, I'm posting it... because I thought it was awesome.   Yes.  This is the new trailer for Iron Man 3 . If you are a comic geek, then you already realize that there are almost certainly two very different villains in this movie, the Mandarin and the Iron Patriot .   The Mandarin, of course, is one of Tony Stark 's long time foes, a Chinese wizard possessed of not just one Ring of Power but actually ten .  Mandarin has been around for awhile, and if you ask me, he's kind of a logical villain given that we're now up to the third movie, and he's pretty much the only one of Iron Man's heavyweight villains we haven't seen yet.  That said, it'll be interesting to see how they play him.  Sometimes he's been a straight-up ancient Chinese mystic, sometimes a leader of the Chinese mafia with ancient my

The Sorcerer's Tale: Prologue

Outside Port Darwin, Falkland Islands. 17 May 1982, 6:43 pm. Andre Rasputin had always thought that if he ever got around to seeing South America, it would be on holiday. White sands, scorching sun, half-naked women in thong bikinis, these were the things that had always been associated in Andre's mind with that most mythical of places, the South American continent. And yet there he stood, less than thirty miles off the coast of Argentina wearing a cold weather parka in driving mist-like rain and freezing his balls off. This was not how Andre wanted to die. "You almost ready, Commander?" Andre turned. Colonel H. Jones was the commander of 2 Para--the second battalion of the famed Parachute Regiment of the Royal Army’s Third Commando Brigade. "Almost, sir. This won't take long." Almost without thinking, Andre looked down at the sword in his hand, scabbarded safely away in a sheath of polished brass and red lacquered wood. It was his finest work,