100 Hours of Astronomy

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I don’t have a real specific interest in Astronomy, but I enjoy poking around on Worldwide Telescope and reading a few space blogs.  That's why I was excited to come across a very interesting web site today.  The 100 Hours of Astronomy is a effort to boost the worlds knowledge of and appreciation for the universe and everything in it.

The event is planned for April 2 – 5, and is made up of hundreds of events all over the globe.  If you cannot get out and join in one of the events you can watch coverage on uStream.

The whole event seems to be quite well planned and certainly is pretty large in scope.  It is planned as part of the International Year of Astronomy.

Those of you with kids, or who are educators, might be interested in a Google Group set up with details on getting young children involved.  You can also follow the project on Twitter.

Live streaming video by Ustream

Google Voice and Remember the Milk

Image via CrunchBase

I was just thinking that it would be very cool if I could assign an e-mail address to a call group in Google Voice so that I could leave myself a voicemail and have the converted message added as a task in Remember the Milk.

It would make Google Voice into a nice replacement for JOTT, and give me a bit more control over how tings work.  I have been happy with the few voicemail messages that Google Voice has translated for me have been quite good.

Anyone come up with a way to accomplish this with the current feature set?

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Ready for AT-43

I have pretty much completed all I plan to buy as part of the mega sale(s) that have been going on with the Rackham AT-43 game.  I first mentioned the sale back in November, and was happy to see the sale kick off again in 2009.  You can still take advantage of good pricing at the Warstore and a few other online retailers.

I originally planned to round out my UNA force, and buy some Karmens.  In the end though, I bought enough stuff to field a sizable for for each of the UNA, Therian, Karmen and Red Block factions.  They each have something quite interesting about them, and I am very glad to have picked them up.  I don’t imagine I will ever see a closeout opportunity like this for a game that is not really closing out again.  I am quite taken with the Red Block.  I originally had planned to skip them, but changed my mind.  I am glad I did.  The Therians are still my least favorite faction, and the faction I have invested the least money in.

I took some pictures today, thought I would share them.

This picture represents my entire collection of AT-43 miniatures.  They are spread out on a 3’ x3’ surface I use for playing AT-43.  Made very simply from some 1’x1’ floor tiles that are a rock/granite color and pattern.  Works nicely for a gaming surface and is very portable.  I used the sticky back of the tiles to adhere  some brown earth tone fabric.  Lets the tiles be used with either side up.

Here is the same set of stuff all collapsed down for storage.  The infantry fits in the nine plastic boxes, and the terrain goes in the big blue tub.  The two green boxes are from the container store and are a simple cloth box with a wireframe.  The are sturdy and light weight.  The infantry boxes go in, I add all of the AFV and striders and then top it off with four card boxes, my four AT-43 tins from GF9, and the indirect fire template.  Makes for easy storage.

Here is everything all put away nice and neat.  I can grab these four things and set up a game of AT-43 pretty much anywhere.  I would like to get a few more destroyed buildings and the like for extra cover, but I have enough to work with.  AT-43 plays well on a 3’ x3’ board with a load of cover, so this is really a nice set for the game.

If you live in the Houston (especially South Houston) area and are interested in AT-43 give me a shout.  I don’t get out much for gaming, but I would love to get some more AT-43 under my belt.  I have enough to easily field a single army from each faction, and I bet I cold make two UNA and two Karmen armies if needed.

Related Links:

Official AT-43 Home Page
AT-43 Comic
AT-43 Addict

Google Blog Search Tags: at-43

Miniatures Painting Space

I received my rulebook and a couple of starter armies for Uncharted Seas the other day.  These are the first miniatures I have purchased in over a year that actually required painting.  They look quite nice, and seem to be the type of miniatures that will be forgiving to someone like me who is not the best painter.

In order to actually paint these though, I needed to pull my painting supplies out of the attic.  I put everything away about a year and a half ago to free up some room in my office/game room.  However, I need somewhere to work with the new ships so out the table came.

I was not quite ready to paint the ships yet, but I did start working through some of my old Lizardmen and Vampire Counts miniatures, rebasing them for use in either Hordes of the Things or Song of Blades and Heroes.  I feel that I am way more likely to play either of these two other games than WFB.  It is going pretty well.  Everything that dos not get re-based is going to be sold on E-bay.   Not really the best stuff, but I will be selling it cheap.  If it does not sell on E-bay I guess I will donate it to Goodwill.

It’s fun getting into working with miniatures again that are not pre-painted plastic.  It has been a long time since I have had the nice coating of hobby glue on my fingers, sticking to everything I touch.

New Playlist Friday - A Touch of Goth

It’s Friday and I have put together a new playlist.  This week I picked 10 tracks that have at least a minor goth influence.  The play list was easier to put together than I thought, and I was up to 10 tracks in no time.

Enjoy!

A Touch of Goth

Future of D&D?

I have not been the biggest fan of D&D, and played my first games of D&D with 3.0 just a year before 3.5 came out. When 4th edition was announced I started reading about it and became quite excited. I am more of a miniatures gamer than a roleplayer traditionally and, the rules in fourth edition are very much to my liking.  I find the game is just a better fit for my style of gaming.

A post over on Stargazer’s World yesterday asks the question, “What is the future of D&D”?  I was going to post a comment there, but it turned out to be long winded so I decided to post it here.  The post was based on yesterday’s gamegrene article humorously announcing the 5th edition of D&D.

While I do see 4e as a big departure from 3.5, I don't think that it is any less a roleplaying game. I understand that they borrowed some concepts from online gaming, and video gaming in general, but I think it is people who make RPG's what they are not the system itself.  I think you could make an RPG as well from simply stating the setting (with no provided character gen) and just let people make things up as you could from the rules in Warhammer Fantasy Battles.  The stats are there,the setting is there, just need some imagination.

I think 5e will be a maintenance release like 3.5 was. It will make some updates to the 4e system based on real world play experience, but will otherwise be unchanged.  I don’t think we are quite to the point where D&D becomes just another board game with some RPGness tacked on.  That would kill D&D, and I bet Hasbro knows that.  I don’t know that they will go the CCG route either.  I have been waiting for the Dungeoneer card game/rpg hybrid for quite a while, and it has been slow in coming.  When it is released we will get to see what a card based RPG might look like.  I do think that miniatures will continue to play a big role.  Savage Worlds is also a game that makes good use of miniatures, so I don’t think that 4e is alone in focusing on the use of miniatures.

I for one an excited to see where D&D goes.  I am also excited to see so many people interested in playing other games, I think that is great for the industry and players.  I am still trying to get my new 4e game going, hopefully very soon.

Google Tags: roleplaying, dungeons & dragons, 4e

Feed your Kindle with Instapaper

I just noticed, thanks to an article on the Micro Persuasion blog, that Instapaper offers a direct to Kindle feature for your reading list.  This is a very cool idea as I am finding it much nicer to read articles on the Kindle.  I actually have subscribed to the Ars Technica blog on Kindle because it is nicer to read their articles there.

One of the problems I have is that I mark bunches of articles “to read” later, but I never get back to them.  I am going to give this a try though to see if it helps clear some of the back log.  The screenshot below shows the Kindle setup page on Instapaper.  You simply add your Kindle address and it will send you the articles on the schedule you have defined.  I am keeping the defaults of once a week with 5 or more articles.  As they are using the Kindle email function Amazon will charge .10 for each e-mail that they send.  I think I can handle a dime a week.

I am perhaps most interested in taking advantage of the highlight and annotation features on the Kindle while reading these articles.  I will report back in a couple of weeks.

Google Tags: kindle 2, instapaper

Fan the Flames

I have been reading through some of my Flames of War books recently, mostly due to the recent launch of the new Flames of War Command blog.  I am sure there are loads of great Flames of War blogs out there, but this blog is run by the same person who writes the AT-43 Addict blog which I like quite a lot.

Anyway, it got me thinking about FoW again, and possibly putting together a late war US Tank Company.  I have never played the game, but have always wanted to, so I did some asking around on the FoW forums and came up with an army that sounds pretty fun to me.

HQ   Army Cost 2 M4 Sherman 2 M4 (2 Hedgerow Cutters) 145       Combat Platoons     Tank Platoon Alpha 5 M4 Sherman (2 Hedgerow Cutters) 350 Tank Platoon Bravo 5 M4 Sherman 345 Tank Platoon Charlie 4 M4A1 (76mm) Sherman 355       Weapons Platoons     Armoured Mortar Platoon 3 Mortar Sections 105 Light Tank Platoon 4 M5A1 Stuart 190     1490

Pretty cool.  I would have 20 tanks in the army, along with 4 half tracks.   That is a lot of painting and assembling, but I am never too concerned about winning any painting awards.  The tanks are basically all one color so I think I could hammer them out pretty quick.

The army above would run me about $240.00 at the War Store.  That’s a lot of money for a game I will likely only play a few times.  Can’t decide what to do.

Photo Credit, GeekyBiker

Google Blog Search Tags: miniatures, flames of war, wwii

New Playlist Friday

I am going to start a new thing on this blog on Fridays where I post up a new music play list.  10 songs based on some theme that I will choose randomly.  The primary reason for doing this is so that I can get some new music circulating on my MP3 player, but I thought it would be fun to share.  I will be using the Lala widget below to embed the tracks, many of which you should be able to sample through the widget.

This weeks play list is entitled simply 10 A’s and is made up of 10 tracks from artists that begin with the letter A…enjoy.

10 A's

Google Tags: music, lala

Warhammer and D&D

Some good reading on the Warhammer world in general and more specifically on how it could relate to a game of D&D.  I especially like today's discussion on Chaos and it’s influence of the setting and the people that call the Warhammer world home.  I am not terribly knowledgeable on Stalinist Russia, but the article discusses the similarities.

The thing that always keeps me coming back to Warhammer is the idea of the “Enemy Within”.  The adventure series of the same name is often regarded as one of the best pre-published games for any RPG, and I do not disagree with that.  What I like about the series is that it does such a good job of setting up the corruption which is obviously rampant in the Empire.  The players (not the PC’s the actual players) should actually feel how bad things are before they finish the second adventure.  The player handout’s in my favorite module in the series, Death on the Reik, go a long way to setting the tone of corruption.  I would love to see these modules re-done for the second edition of WFRP.

Anyway, check out the Monsters & Manuals site for the Warhammer articles as well as other good RPG content.

Google Blog Search Tags: warhammer fantasy roleplay, d&d

Gamer bling addiction

I suffer from a very serious condition.  I am addicted to gamer bling.  For those who don’t know, gamer bling is all of the nicely produced extra bits that gamers can buy.  These bits are not required to play a game, but they make the experience a bunch better.  Hello, my name is Sean, and I am a gamer bling addict.

I blame Gale Force Nine for starting my addiction with gamer bling.   Gale Force Nine makes some very nice accessories for miniatures games.  They make everything from bases to dice to various status tokens.  My first experience with GF9 was way back when I played Warhammer Fantasy Battles.  GF9 made a great line of markers to help determine charges and to mark various in game status effects.  None of the items I bought were required to play the game, but each of them made the game a little bit cooler IMHO.

Recently, I purchased token, ruler and dice sets for the Karmens and UNA factions for AT-43.  What I have now is a nice tin that stores a set of custom dice, a color matched ruler designed for the game, and a full set of tokens for my factions.  I added an official Rackham tape measure (I have 5 I think) and 10 small plastic chips to track wounds and a resolution table.  Makes a very nice and compact set of bling for each of the factions I own.

Litko also makes some nice counters.  In fact, if you want a status marker for your games this the place to go.  They have markers for just about anything, and if they don’t have it you can likely custom order it.  They offer a number of sets of tokens for use in RPG’s which is different from GF9.  They have some D&D 4e sets, and at one point had a set for Savage Worlds (but I could not find it on the site this am).  Nice stuff, especially if you take a look at some of the terrain and other offerings.

I don’t think I have purchased a game just because of the extra stuff that could go along with it, but I will say that Alkemy  looks more attractive knowing that GF9 is going to be making accessories. 

Do you have a gamer bling addiction?  It is best to share, and get it off your chest.  Leave a comment.  :)

Google Blog Search Tags: at-32, gale force 9, litko, karmen, u.n.a, savage worlds, alkemy