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Showing posts from March, 2012

Pointless Video of the Day

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Friday Hair Metal: Vixen! Live!

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When I was a freshman in high school, my high school had a lip-synching contest.  A few of the popular girls got together, put on some super-short skirts, and lip-synched this song.  To that point, it was easily the most erotic thing I'd ever seen in my oh-so-innocent life. I've posted the live version of this song because my late-thirty-something ears think it needs a little gas in order to kick ass.

Friday Mad Science: Nothing but Tebow

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So, truth is that my prayers were answered when  Tim Tebow  signed with the  Jets .  I mean, I don’t root for the Jets or anything, and I haven’t since the  Herm Edwards/Chad Pennington  era, but I love a good media circus, and of course, the New York area tabloids are great for that.  Moreover, since he came to town, current Jets’ coach  Rex Ryan  has actively aided and abetted the media circus, to the point where he’s often more entertaining personally—in an unintentionally hilarious way—than the team is on the field.  Add in the fact that Tebow is himself a fully functional media circus all on his own, and what we have here is a recipe for an awesomely entertaining football season in New York—at least for  Giant  fans.  Hell, my favorite game of the entire year last year, at least during the regular season, was the Jets/Giants game, and that was  before Tebow parachuted into the picture.  Now?  I think most Giant fans are looking forward to entire season of  schadenfraude  on a here

Triathlon Week in Review: Getting Ready for the Boogie

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After three solid weeks of training, this week is a Rest Week, thank God.  I haven’t been putting in quite the same level of total aerobic training this year that I did last year, but it’s felt like more because I’m doing a lot less swimming this year, and that’s put a lot more stress on my legs and lower body.  As a result, I’ve had to rest more to recover.  But I feel like it’s paid off, and I’m settling into it, finally.  I’ve been through three complete four-week training cycles, and at some point during this last one, I finally  started feeling like myself again.  I’m riding better, running comfortably, and swimming at a level that I can live with, especially given that this season calls for a grand total of three hundred yards of swimming in competition. Brian’s Beachside Boogie  is this weekend, and as always, I’m looking forward to it.  I’ve run it twice, and every time I do, it ends up being one of my favorite races of the year.  The race is a duathlon—two-mile run, ten-mile

Comic Review. Avengers: The Initiative, Volume 1

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The cover for Avenger: The Initiative , Volume 1 Written by Dan Slott Art by Stefano Caselli Published by  Marvel As we’ve covered here before, I skip most comic Events.  First off, they always strike me as a money-grab, and on top of that, I find it endlessly annoying when they interrupt the storylines in my favorite books.  Plus, many big company comic Events are billed as “world-changing,” only to be undone by editorial at the end of the current story-arc, so that it’s often hard to see in retrospect what the point of the event was in the first place—besides driving sales.  With that in mind, I was more than a little dubious when I saw  Avengers: The Initiative  (Volume 1) at my local library over the weekend.  But as we discussed last week, I’m reading up a bit on  The Avengers  in anticipation of the movie this summer, and more to the point, now that  Marvel’s  big  Civil War  event is dead and buried, I find myself a little curious to see what, if anything, all the fuss was

Saturday Group Ride

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Had a better weekend this past weekend than I have had over the past few weeks.  Friday was kind of rough day, as you may have read, but Saturday was better.  I changed the tires on my road bike—not just the inner tubes but the actual tires themselves—and then went out for a group ride with my new triathlon club.  The ride was a blast, and the new tires were awesome.  They’re slightly smaller than my old ones, and they seemed to hold their pressure a little better over the course of the day.  Plus, maybe it was just me, but it seemed like they rode better, too. I rode from my house to the YMCA and met the group starting at about eight.  There were four of us on Saturday— me , Chris, Steve, and a new person named Kim.  Once we’d stretched and kind of hung out for a while, we headed out with Chris in the lead,  going around a few long, looping back roads to a pair of short climbs, all of which led to a long pedestrian bridge over the Housatonic River that runs next to the Merritt Parkwa

Monster of the Week: Calloch, the Vampire Dragon

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Like the man says, sometimes two great things go great together.  In that spirit, behold!   Calloch, the Vampire Dragon . Calloch, the Vampire Dragon.  Created using WotC's Adventure Tools program. Granted, there are already several cool and entirely serviceable dracolich builds, and there's at least one build for a zombie dragon as well.  But.  I like vampires.  Not fuzzy, Vampire Diaries vampires, but the real, conquer Wallachia and put half the population onto stakes kind.  I like that stuff. Truth is, I read a really cool comic adaptation of Dracula last week, and this idea's been brewing in my head ever since.  I loved the way the vampire of Stoker's story is a psychological monster.  The way he manipulates and controls his victims.  The way he's a capable combatant but more than that, he's a master manipulator.  And I thought, would't it be cool if we had that in a dragon? Voila! I considered making this a Paragon Tier monster, but all the co

Sunday Comics, Day 9. Bronx Angel: Born Leader (Page 8)

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Bronx Angel: Born Leader--Page 8. Click here to view page at full size . As a storyteller, one of the best ways to convey information to your audience is to allow the reader to overhear characters giving an opinion on something.  For example, want to get across the idea that some female character is promiscuous?  Have a couple of the jocks call her a slut while they're changing in the locker room after football practice. Here, I wanted to get the idea across that Angel's unit is taking heavy fire.  That's the purpose of this page.  In storytelling terms, it's Development.  Which is to say that this is the part where things get worse for the hero. As always, click the Sunday Comics tab below to read the story from the beginning.

Article on PTSD

A friend of mine posted an article out of the NYT today on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that I think is interesting.  The article makes the point that today's young Americans are a trophy generation, used to being placed into circumstances where nobody loses and nothing ever goes wrong, and then they get a trophy at the end just for participating.  And I suppose I see the point in that statement, but I also think it probably only applies in selected cases.  I mean, that's certainly true for most upper-middle class white kids.  But having walked and ridden through Harlem almost daily for the past two years, I can tell you that the city kids aren't getting an excess of either praise or trophies, and more to the point, they're the ones who're are FAR more likely to join the Army. Be that as it may, the point of the article is that being mentally and emotionally resilient is at some level a state of mind.  You have to learn to focus on the positive, not obse

Friday Mad Science: The "There Is No Tomorrow" Edition

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Whew!  It’s been some kind of day today.  I mean, I don’t talk about my work to much—that’s done on purpose—but I will say that some days are more exciting than others, and today way, for better or worse, one of the more exciting days. I hate it when that happens on a Friday. * * * Sorry for all the crazy videos today, especially the last one, the one with the bikini girls.  Frankly, I didn’t even watch that one save to see the one girl with her ass-cheeks hanging out.  I mean, I like ass-cheeks as much as the next guy—and maybe even a little more than most—but I’ll be honest: I have no idea what that contest was even supporting.  I turned the sound on it off and scrolled through it with this morning’s  Tesla  songs as my optional soundtrack. Good old Tesla.  I almost feel like I should apologize for putting up  Modern Day Cowboy , too.  Not my favorite Tesla song, that, but Tesla is far more known for their power ballads, and I didn’t want to start my day with one of those.  So… Co

Beer Geek Nation: Sierra Nevada's Summerfest

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My wife Sally really likes this beer.  And what with the warm weather we're having, it seemed like an appropriate review to run.

Friday Hair Metal: Twofer from Tesla

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Friday Mad Science is liable to be a little late today, so in the meantime, here's a couple of my favorites from Tesla (hair band extraordinaire).  Enjoy!  And check back later, because if I can find something else that's cool, I stick it up for a mid-day update.

Comics in Review: Moon Knight and Other Things

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It’s been a while since I’ve done either a book review or anything substantial on comics, so while we’ve got a day free from craziness, let me tell you a little about what I’ve reading lately.  I’ll preface this by saying that I was in the  Milford, CT , library last weekend when I discovered that they had a pretty well-stocked graphic novels shelf buried in the back of the  Young Adult  section.  They didn’t have a lot that was new, but they had a substantial selection of modern classics, and I grabbed big fistfuls of stuff I’d always meant to read but had never quite gotten around to.  Amongst those was  Avengers Forever ,  Crisis on Infinite Earths ,  Teen Titans: A Kids’ Game ,  Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 ,  Ultimate Fantastic Four Vol. 1 , and a digest-sized comic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s  Dracula . Avengers Forever I started with  Avengers Forever .  I’ve been on something of a  Kurt Busiek  kick since reading  Trinity Vol. 1  a couple of months ago, and more to the point

Wednesday Stray Voltage

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I got nothin' today.  Here're a few things that've caught my eye recently. 1.  An episode of TriCenter from late last summer: If you watched that, and you're now wondering what happened at the Las Vegas 70.3 World Champions, you're not alone.  I wondered that too.   The race write-up is right here, courtesy of SlowTwitch . 2.  The newest edition of MusicCityMiracles Radio , discussing the fall-out from Peyton Manning signing with the Broncos : 3.  Finally, the latest Critical Hits podcast , covering adventure design. And that's it!  Enjoy! Listen to internet radio with MCMJimmy on Blog Talk Radio

Hannah's Evil Wizard

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My daughter drew me this super-awesome EVIL WIZARD !  How  cool is that? This dude needs a name.  Any suggestions?

Monster of the Week: Icefire Penguin

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In honor of my daughter Emma's 7th birthday, this week's Monster of the Week is the Icefire Penguin . We celebrated Emma's birthday on Saturday with a penguin-themed party, and with all those 7-year-old girls running around here--all playing with stuffed penguins--of course, the only thing I could think about all party long was how cool it would be if have MY party got attacked by a pack of vicious primordial penguin monsters.  I mean, you don't typically think of penguins as horrifying dealers of death and destruction, but... The always terrifying Icefire Penguin ! Created using WotC's Adventure Tools . If you're curious, I'm planning to run the new Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl in my game, The Sellswords of Luskan   soon.  The story here is that the Sellswords are on their way to the frost giant enclave, where they will confront the leader of the giants who've pledged allegiance to the Spine of the World 's now infamous Cult of Fi

Sunday Comics, Day 8. Bronx Angel: Born Leader (Page 7)

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Bronx Angel: Born Leader--Page 7. Click here to see the page at Full Size . So here's the thing.  We talked a little on Friday about the costs of war, and that's basically what this story is about.  It's not so much about any specific war or conflict as it is about impacts that those conflicts have on the guys who serve in them.  The issue impacted my life mostly through my father, who was never able to come to grips with his demons.   Now maybe Dad could've made something of the rest of his life if he'd attempted to get some help and treated that help with enough sincerity to give it a chance of working.  But he came out of a school of thought that said that real men never admit to feeling crappy.  They never ask for help, never make excuses.  Instead, they put up a good front.  They answer the bell.  And he did that while he was still in uniform.  It wasn't until afterwards that things fell apart. Enough.  We'll see all of that play out here soon eno

Saturday Round Up

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We had Emma's birthday party this afternoon, and now I'm exhausted .  I started the day with a one-hour run with my triathlon team, which was great but a little tiring.  Came home and had shower and some leftover breakfast before heading out to grab Emma's balloons.  Sally'd ordered twenty-four, so needless to say, I needed the big car to get them all.  After that, I came home, and we finished decorating.  We've got some pictures, and I'll post a few once I get a chance to pull them off the camera. Little girls started showing up for the party around one.  The party had a Penguin theme, and frankly, I'm not sure I've ever before seen that many stuffed penguins in one place in my entire life.  Our first activity was Build-a-Bear stuffed penguins!  All of the girls got one, and we all sat there and put them together as a group project.  After that, Sally had set up a bunch of games, and we ran the girls through their paces for a couple of hours.  In the

Friday Mad Science

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I don’t want to get too much into the details of what looks like  a tragic incident in Afghanistan this week , but I will say that I feel bad for the guy involved.  He’s been in the Army for about ten years, and this is his fourth combat tour.  He’d been wounded twice, including once when it required partial amputation of one of his feet.  He didn’t want o go back, but they sent him back—again.  And that sucks.  All of that sucks. If you don’t know—and considering that less than one percent of Americans actually serve, you probably don’t—four combat tours in ten years is virtually unprecedented as a requirement for service in this country’s history.  By comparison, Generals  Norman Schwarzkopf  and  Colin Powell  each only did THREE combat tours in  Vietnam  when they were junior and field grade officers.  Hell, today’s soldiers are seeing more combat under worse conditions than practically any soldiers in American history, probably since the  Revolution .  I mean, yeah, the Revoluti