Amazon lately presented me with a listing for a book in a series titled Saxon Max, probably because I've read people like Eric Flint (and company), S.M. Stirling, and Michael Z. Williamson, and this seems to be another venture in the genre of people from the present landing in the past and having to make their way-the genre of A Connecticut Yankee ( Read more... )

In preparing for the latest session of Fronteira, I wrote up character sheets for all three of Guilherme Silva's married daughters, and did sketches of what their husbands were like. All three came from a family tree that Guilherme's player drew up, which also included three unmarried daughters, Toni and Iris (both player characters) and Bela (a ( Read more... )

This afternoon I ran a session of Fronteira, a GURPS campaign set on the future Mars of an alternative timeline. The genre is partly hard science fiction and partly telenovela-or soap opera, but the cultural background is a nearly anarchistic Brazil ( Read more... )

Yesterday we stopped in at Best Buy, returning the old printer for recycling (and a lot of empty ink cartridges), and buying new electronics. The new speakers are Logitech; we were told they were Bluetooth only, but it turned out they could be plugged into the headphone jack on my Mac Mini, and the right side speaker has its own jack that I can ( Read more... )

A writer I somewhat like, Sylvia Moreno Garcia, has a new novel out, The Seventh Veil of Salome, set in Hollywood in the 1950s, and featuring a rivalry between two actresses, one Mexican. It sounded interesting, so I took a look at the Amazon free sample. And there, on the first page, was the viewpoint character, a writer, reflecting that the ( Read more... )

I'm currently up to fourteen people for the new cycle of roleplaying games I plan to start in January. One other person hasn't responded to my inquiries. If I don't hear from her by the weekend, there are a couple of other people I might sound out.

The current pool is fairly balanced at six men and eight women.

I've been without computer speakers for a number of weeks now. I just did some shopping at Amazon and found something that looked right: two small speakers that would fit on my desktop, that plugged into the headphone jack and had their own jack for my headphones to plug into. So I ordered them, and they arrived today ( Read more... )

We went to the city library again for their monthly board/card games day, and two people we regularly see there were interested in giving Catan another try. A third person also was curious, so C chose to sit the session out and spend time drawing. This time we actually managed to get through a complete game in the two hours we were allowed! In fact ( Read more... )

I have a colonoscopy scheduled for tomorrow morning, and I'm going through the usual unpleasant day of prep. And of course I anticipate how trying it will be to spend six hours drinking Miralax solution. But I hadn't realized how much I would dislike eating Jello! It's like swallowing moist sweetened plastic. I can't believe that I used to think it ( Read more... )

I've sufficiently firmed up my ideas about possible campaigns for 2025-2026, and I'm planning to send out the prospectus in mid-September. I'm no longer going to try to have a separate Kansas-based group; my last such campaign met entirely over Zoom, which is how I met with out of state players, so I may as well just have one big pool of players ( Read more... )