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Merry Christmas 2008

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 11:55:52 -0600

Merry Christmas everybody! Brace yourself for 2009!

Video Games That are Freely Available

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:47:47 -0600

I told my brother that I'd post an entry with some of the freely available video games I am playing. I listen to the Bytejacker netcast for the latest in free indie games. The host does a good job of covering everything from downloadable games for consoles to Flash games.

The adventure game genre has totally been snubbed by all of the mainstream game studios. Thankfully, several indie developers have stepped up to produce some great games. I enjoyed Spooks produced by Erin Robinson. While I did get stuck once or twice, I felt compelled to figure out the puzzles and finish the game.

Here are other adventure games on my list of titles I plan to check out: Cave Story, Dirty Split, Duty and Beyond, Kaptain Brawe, Life of D. Duke II, Loftus and the Sky Cap, Reactor 9, The Chef, The Guardian of Paradise and The Winter Rose.

A few weeks ago I went to over to my buddy Tom E.'s place to play some Duke Nukem 3D. The game was released by 3D Realms way back in 1996. Thanks to the efforts of the guys over at EDuke32 it is possible to play it on Windows Vista PCs. It was painful getting a networked game going. But we had fun once we worked it out.

Then we tried a game of the one of my favorite pointless games called Red Pixel. It is a multiplayer deathmatch in which you can destroy parts of the world. It was fun to blast away for a while. But soon it became tedious. With more players the game becomes mass chaos! Basically it has all of the fun of a modern first-person shooter without all of the eye candy.

I found this Java-based game I like called Breaking the Tower. It is the closest I have come to enjoying a strategy game since Dune II. No, I am not going to crab about the things that modern RTS games do wrong. Also, I have no schadenfreude when the folks who make those games fail. Hey guys, maybe you could make some nice adventure games instead!

There are scores of Flash-based games available. At best most of them are forgettable. I like 41st Reality for its catchy soundtrack and decent design.

Lastly, another genre that has been snubbed these days is the space simulation shooter. I recently installed Freespace 2 (FS2) thanks to the FreeSpace Open Installer. Now I am playing through the game again. It is amazing that its creator, Volition, managed to produce the game in under a year. It helped that they were able to leverage the work that they had done for the first Freespace game. FS2 features a deep story and awe inspiring effects such as beautiful nebula clouds that wreak havoc on your sensors and battles with massive capital ships that shoot impressive beam weapons. If there is a genre that is crying out for a revival, it is this one! Can you imagine a big battlefield filled with a great number of space ships each lovingly rendered with shader magic and high polygon count love? Be still my heart.

Host a LAN Party

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:27:28 -0600

When I was back home visiting relatives for Thanksgiving, my brother told me he was planning on a having a LAN party. For those who don't know LAN parties are events where people bring their computers, network them together and play multiplayer games. What follows is some sage advice I have gleaned from organizing several LAN parties.

First of all as the host you have to choose the location. Make sure there is plenty of power to supply everyone. The largest event I had involved 11 computers. I planned to spread the participants over two floors of my house. But everyone choose to set up in my basement. Thankfully, there were no power issues.

Here is a list of items the host should provide (or ask somebody to bring)

LAN PARTY HOST

Network Switch - Switches are good; hubs are an adequate alternative. These days most cheap switches made for home networks have 4-5 ports. Make sure you have enough ports and crossover cables to support the number of intended players. Ask somebody to bring a switch/hub if you don't have enough.
Wireless Router - It is common that laptops have wireless network cards built into them. A wireless router can handle the assigning of IP addresses (DHCP) to both wired PCs and wireless laptops.
List of Games - Do some research. Many multiplayer games have demos that are freely available. Try some of them out and see what you like. Provide a list of games to your guests so they can install them before the event. Oh yeah, pirating computer games is evil. I don't care how you justify it to yourself. Don't do it!
Food - Something that has worked for me is to ask for donations for pizza/soda. You can have a donation jar. If donations are low, carry the jar around to the guests. You do not get any points for subtlety.

Watching people play computer games is lame (kinda like watching televised poker *yawn*). If you show up to a LAN party, be prepared to participate. There are several things which guests should be expected to bring. The following is a list of those items.

LAN PARTY GUESTS

Functioning Computer - Hey, any of yose guys know how to install an operating system? Although there are usually a lot of technically saavy folks who can help, it is a bummer to spend your time working on your rig.
LCD Monitor - Limit yourself to a single monitor. Multi-monitor setups are pretty common these days, but aren't really necessary for LAN play. Also, LCD monitors are infinitely more portable than the old CRTs.
Network Cable - Wireless connections will never beat the performance of a wired connection. For that you need a network cable. Bring an extra if you have one.
Powerstrip - A powerstrip with a surge protector is invaluable. Daisy-chaining strips is not recommended. But if you find it necessary, limit the chaining.
Headphones - There is a lot of noise at a LAN party. If everyone brought speakers, it would be even louder. Headphones also have the benefit of allowing you sneak up on your friend in a game without announcing the approach over your speakers.

I should also mention that there are some nice party games for consoles these days. I have been to a few events now where the host has fired up a game of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. I am excited to play the Burnout Paradise Party Pack. But we will have to wait a couple more months before it is released.

Mines of Kevos

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:16:42 -0600

When my brother Kevin and I were in high school he wrote a simple game in Commodore BASIC he called Mines of Minos. In it a miner had to move around mines in order to escape a cave. This past week I wrote a version in Java using the Slick 2D library.

This is a gift for Kevin. You will need a recent version of Java to run it.

» Launch Mines of Kevos (Java Web Start)

Click on an image for a larger version.

For the Veterans

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:18:14 -0600

Today is Veteran's Day. We honor those who served in the military, its auxiliaries and the merchant marines. In my career I have had the privilege to work with many retired veterans. I am humbled by their commitment and inspired by their strength.

Last Tuesday after I cast my ballot I went the local McDonalds restaurant where I met a veteran of the Iraq War. We talked about the election and then about our military. I'll never forget him showing me the proper technique in "clearing a room" right there amongst the chairs. Friend, you made my day. Pity that you helped elect the wrong guy.

Deep and Wide

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:12:42 -0600

Congrads to Obama for winning the presidency of the greatest country in the world. I am not angry. I am disappointed. The Republicans decided to confront their competition with a mild tone and the promise of compromise. It brought them defeat.

McCain tried to tie Obama to the liberal Congress' massive mistakes but Obama with assistance from the press was able to spin free of it. "Nope, not me." he said. "Ok!" responded the adoring media who added, "Isn't McCain looking a little old?"

I get the feeling that we have been influenced by reality TV shows like American Idol. On them ambition is prized more than talent. Folks root for a contestant because he is an underdog and he wants it badly rather than considering whether or not he has the skills. Of course there is always a clash of personalities where the competitor is demonized.

Obama is already talking about how his plans will require a second term. Heh, Nobama! I wish this were some made-up game show where an announcer would come on and say, "Got ya! We've been fooling you this whole time. A liberal inexperienced pro-abortion tax raiser would be crazy for our country. The dude is too full of himself and believes his own inaccurate statements. Oh how we duped you!"

So far there have been no cries of red states v. blue states or a deeply divided country or post election trauma. I guess Republicans are better losers. Now in order to turn this country around we have a river to cross. I hope Republicans push the reset button on their leadership and return to conservative principles. The river is deep and wide, friends, but it can be crossed with faith and courage.

My brother sent me a message today that lightened my mood: "Lets move to the 57th state. It's called Husseinia!"

Heroic Adventures

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:23:17 -0600

For the first time in over a year I made it out to an Atomic Squash game night at Heroic Adventures. I had fun playing Gloom, Let's Kill (that game has issues), Patrician and Stone Age (my new fave). It was nice to meet new folks and see the regular crew.

I took some pictures. Unfortunately the ISO setting I selected on my digital camera washed out most of the images. Ah well, I uploaded copies of them to my Flickr account.

Click on a picture for a link to a larger version.

Glad That I Was Born

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:20:49 -0600

Thanks friends for the birthday wishes! For 38 years I have gained friends and influenced people. Now you're the group I have to show for my gravitas. If only you wouldn't cancel out my vote in a few weeks.

Next month will be the tenth year anniversary of this website. Once again I have changes planned for the site. I have been investigating switching it to Wordpress. Unfortunately, that would mean that the blog URLs would change. Any links to previous blog entries would be broken. I experimented with some workarounds on my Linux laptop, but didn't find any that I liked. I may just make the change and let a 410 Gone page display for old links.

Creative Limit

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:12:08 -0600

I was organizing my gaming stuff today. So far I have written three games: one Spycraft LARP and two Kobolds Ate My Baby LARPs. At Archon this year we discussed what the next Spycraft game will involve. I am going to join Jason and Ron, a talented writer who writes for the SLUGS Vampire LARP, in putting together a game set in the late 70s, arguably the golden age of spy movies. This gives us a lot of material from which to draw.

As I thought about what the next game might be like. I wondered if I would be onboard to write a third, a fourth or more. I recalled the conversation I had with David Collins at GenCon. He has written dozens of LARPs using his Courting Murder rules system. He told me that he usually writes five or six games in a setting before he moves on to another one. This made me realize that perhaps there is such a thing as a creative limit. This may explain why some of our favorite shows jump the shark in dramatic fashion. I loved the X-Files but, friends, the latter seasons were never as great as those that preceded them. I want to believe that I can realize this in my work before it happens.

Every game I write I like to challenge myself to introduce conflict in new and fresh ways. The conflict can take many forms: character vs character, character vs environment and even character vs herself. For "The Black Tie Affair" we used a dysfunctional family. All of the family members were at odds. The father was missing and probably dead. The mother put out a hit on her son. The son was a dope fiend with no love for his mother. For "Kobolds on a Plane" the clan leader was dead and two different Kobolds wanted to claim his spot. In "Tabriz School of Magick" there were two houses with many rivalries between them. Of course, sometimes the players take the conflicts and turn them on their ear. The player who played the mother in "The Black Tie Affair" decided to cancel the hit and reconcile with her son. I'm okay with that. After all the game is for the players and we should never make them a slave to the story.

Archon 32 Recap

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:18:58 -0600

This past weekend was Archon 32. I started Friday afternoon by making a trip to Office Depot to pick up name badges, folders and sheet protectors for the materials of the Kobolds Ate My Baby LARP. I arrived at Archon where I ran into a bunch of old friends and signed up for games with my buddy Jim.

We headed out to dinner at Applebees. There he filled me in on the latest goings-on in the world of politics. I must admit that I had been busy with convention prep and didn't spend enough time to understand the details of the recently signed $700 billion “emergency” financial market bailout bill. Jim told me that it felt like a stealth tax to subsidize mortgages for poor folks and to profit politicians. I agreed with him that some of the fundamental problems still exist even after the massive give-away.

After dinner I joined Jason's Circus Imperium game. We were joined by a group from Ohio. We teased two of the girls from Ohio by calling one of them the “nice” one and the other the “mean” one. Both played the game enthusiastically and were amusing.

Jason has a room party that night. His was the only party that night. Once he told folks that he wasn't giving away free alcohol, the foot traffic to the room died down. I played a little Rock Band and a dice game. I left around 1 AM to go home to print out all of the materials for the Saturday morning game.

The Kobolds LARP started at 10 AM Saturday morning. I was surprised that we sold out all of the slots for 15 players. I was even more surprised that all of them showed up. In 2006 we had a number of no-shows. I had writing help this year. Jason and Adam contributed a number of ideas I tried to incorporate into the game.

The LARP was set in a school of magic. The players were divided into two houses with three of the players having no house alignment at all. Each house had six players. During the writing process I drew influence from chess pieces. I realized that there are six different types of pieces: pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, kings and queens. So I spent some time thinking about high school archetypes and how they might correspond to chess pieces. For example I wrote a bureaucrat that corresponded to a pawn and a class president that corresponded to a queen.

Jim's two oldest boys joined the game. They are grade schoolers with little gaming experience. So I made with House Elfs. Their goal was to help their school house, much like a brownie or a billiken.

We ran three different contests for the House cup competition. The first was to write a drinking song. Since Adam decided to sleep in, we drafted one of the house elves to help judge. In a stroke of hilarity one of the players bribed him with a dollar bill to vote for his house.

The second contest was a competition called Snatch the Troll's Stash. We lifted ideas from the game Devil Bunny Needs a Ham. We laid out a grid on the floor using paper plates. We marked off a line using masking tape. The goal was to go from one end to the other on the plates. They draw cards for movements. If they drew a King or an Ace, then the Kobold that was furthest along was moved back to the beginning. Unless, of course, they were past the marked line in which case they drew against the Troll Cave Horrible Death Chart to determine their fate.

The last contest was Headditch. In our last brainstorming session Jason got the idea to set it up like fuss ball. We laid down six parallel strips of masking tape on the floor. Players had to stay on their strip of tape. We gave them sticks with nets on the end. We pulled the head off of a Kewpie doll and used that as the ball. The players moved the head to the end of the room to their goal to score a point. We did some improvisation, but it worked out.

Next I played a game of Living Greyhawk using Dungeon and Dragons 3.5 rules. The players were cool but the game was kind of a bummer. It ended by having us watch a village burn to the ground.

I headed to White Castle with Jim to pick up some carry-out. I wanted to make a 7:30 PM Arkham Horror game so we got the order to go. On the walk back to the convention hotel a mini-van pulled out of a parking lot. We thought the driver was slowing for us. Jim started crossing in front of him. But he lurched forward. Jim quickly ran out of his path. Then the van swerved toward me! I put a death grip on our sack of Slyders and spun around to deflect most of the force of the speeding van. Only then did the driver decide to stop. He opened his door and asked if we were okay. We were shocked but fine. The only damage was that the chicken rings that were sitting on the top of the sack were not strewn all over the ground. Ah well, another Archon, another White Castle adventure.

Will ran a game of Red Dragon Inn. It was a fun casual game and a nice change of pace from the inexplicably short Arkham Horror game.

Then, somebody started a game of Werewolves of Millers Hollow. This game requires eight players. So Archon is about the only place I get to play it. The game started with around 12 players. A couple of tables were added and the number of players expanded to somewhere around 30. I snapped some pictures with my cell phone camera and uploaded them to my Flickr account.

I didn't make it home until around 5 AM on Sunday. I was exhausted and slept most of the day. So, this year was another great Archon. I met some new friends and spent some time with old friends. We are already talking about plans for next year's Archon and discussing writing games for next year's Die Con.

Trip Back Home

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:12:36 -0600

I went home to Centralia last week. My mother was on vacation. My aunt Darlene and her hubby Jerry were up from Tulsa. It was nice to see them again. We went out with Uncle Paul and Aunt Beverly, even though she is on oxygen after battling health issues last year.

We went to the Centralia Historical Museum. There we saw images from businesses that resided in Centralia once upon a time. There was a section dedicated to the Mine No 5 disaster. There were also high school yearbooks from years past. I discovered that there were large senior classes in the 30s and 40s.

It was great to relax and have some laughs with my relatives. I am thankful I made the trip.

This past Sunday Jason came over to help with the Kobolds LARP. Our game is almost ready for Archon 32 which is this weekend! See you there. If you run into me there, be sure to stop and say hi.

You're Gonna Pi, Pi, Pi

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:43:06 -0600

In high school I bought a calculator to use in Physics class. Not just any calculator, but a Sharp EL-506A Scientific calculator. I fell in love with it. In fact I so much did not want to be without it that I bought two of them. I'd have a backup in case one of them broke.

I remember seeing the beauty and the purity of math and science. Math contained a few axioms but opened up a world of truth. With logic and deduction I could find the answers. What else, I pondered, is out there in our big beautiful world? All we needed, I presumed, are the right answers.

Sadly, I have misplaced the backup EL-506A. But I dug out the original the other night. After a quick trip to the local Walmart, I replaced the batteries and it worked like a champ.

Notice in the photo that my name is scratched into the back of the calculator. Oh my, it's showing pi to 10 digits!

Blues on Purpose

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:04:33 -0600

I spent some time today watching Rev Glen Kaiser's School of Blues Instructional DVDs. In the first volume he covered acoustic blues, showed some of his gear and discussed techniques for slide guitars and the dobro. In volume two he talked about electric guitars, what kind of amps to use and even how to mike a harmonica.

At one point he discusses why he chooses to play the blues. He rightly points out that the Psalms is the largest book in the Bible and that a full 57 of the 150 psalms are laments. Christians, like all people of faith, are subjected to indignities, temptations and sufferings. He asks, "Why aren't there more people of integrity writing, singing and playing real music that deals with real life as we all know it?" Amen, brother, amen.

Tabriz School of Magick

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:05:02 -0600

Archon is a few weeks away. I have been putting together a Kobolds Ate My Baby LARP for the Atomic Squash gaming group to run there. The game is called "Tabriz School of Magick". All of the players are Kobold freshmen trying to avoid death and destruction to win the school cup for their house.

We learned a few lessons from the last game and are using them to make this year's game better. First of all, I expected all of the players to act as individuals looking out for their own self-interest and survival. What happened was amazing. The players joined together in a group leaving the group occasionally to pursue their own goals. This year we are grouping players in two houses to give them a group of which to be a part.

I gave everyone in the last game a goal of escape and did not give anyone a clear way to accomplish it. This year we have the school cup that one group of players will win.

A player familiar with the tabletop game suggested that we include edges and bogies. This rules are indeed hilarious and work well. But I haven't thought of a way of including them in the LARP without disrupting game balance. In LARPs it is important that no single player is overly powerful. If there is a powerful vampire for example, it is important to have a powerful vampire hunter. Last game I gave players special abilities taking care to maintain balance. I think it worked well but am thinking about how to improve them.

We charge money for the game. We ask the players to pay one dollar. We aren't in this to make money. We do this because we limit the game to twelve players and want to insure that players who sign up actually show up to play the game. By the way the money are got last time we gave to a group who came from out of state to run games at Archon.

CptSquash and Pancake have already given me some great ideas that I need to write up in our private wiki. I'm trying to organize a brainstorming session with them for this weekend. I think our players are going to love the great material and improvements we have made this year.

Spycraft LARP Video

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:38:11 -0600

Spycraft LARP Video

Read a Book

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:57:32 -0600

Hey Nick, it was great seeing ya at DieCon. Congrats on fatherhood. Dis onez fo' you, know what I'm sayin!

WARNING: Bad language and biting social satire

The Great Divorce

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:43:40 -0600

During my trip I finally read C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Although he is better known for the Narnia series, it is considered one of his better books. He considers the fact that we know relatively little about the afterlife. In his fantasy world the afterlife is a strange and dangerous place where souls take a phantom shape. Residents of the strange world try to coax the phantoms into repenting and entering into Heaven. Interestingly he compares a soul's time on Earth to being in Hell. It is an existence of joyless, friendless unhappiness. Hell is represented by "grey town". an ever expanding metropolis that is grey and grim. In some ways it reminds me of playing some MMORPGs.

I am looking forward to the arrival of Prince Caspian in theaters. Although the critics have panned its overt Christian references, that is exactly what makes it interesting and, yes, refreshing.

JavaOne 2008 Report, Part 4: Friday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:52:05 -0600

I woke up Friday and decided to skip the final keynote address and remaining sessions. I had a raging headache and was anxious to get home. I did a little shopping for Mother's Day. Then I took the subway to the airport to see if I could catch an earlier flight. Unfortunately, I did not have luck and settled in for the four hour wait before my flight.

It was probably best that I did not good back to the convention center. I probably would have bought another book from the bookstore. Here is a list of books which I bought while at JavaOne:

Think Better by Tim Hurson
The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
Effective Java, 2nd Edition by Joshua Bloch
Prototype & Scriptaculous in Action by David Crane and Bear Bibeault with Tom Locke

Yesterday the headache returned. I spent most of the day taking it easy including a three hour nap. When I finally checked my email I saw this notice:

The JavaOne conference team has been notified by the San Francisco Department of Public Health about an identified outbreak of a virus in the San Francisco area. Testing is still underway to identify the specific virus in question, but they believe it to be the Norovirus, a common cause of the "stomach flu", which can cause temporary flu-like symptoms for up to 48 hours. Part of the San Francisco area impacted includes the Moscone Center, the site of the JavaOne conference which is being held this week. We are working with the appropriate San Francisco Department of Public Health and Moscone representatives to mitigate the impact this will have on the conference and steps are being taken overnight to disinfect the facility. We have not received any indication that the show should end early, so will have the full schedule of events on Friday as planned. We hope to see you then

I feel much better today. I am catching up on chores and preparing for my week. I am looking forward to discussing some of the interesting things I saw with coworkers and friends.

JavaOne 2008 Report, Part 3: Thursday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:58:00 -0600

Well folks, this is gonna be a short entry. Tomorrow is the last day of JavaOne. I need to pack up all of my stuff and swag in order to be check out tomorrow.

I dug the session on Nimbus. Vector-based UI components for a cross-platform look and feel just makes sense. The presenters showed off a nifty tool to design new vector-based components. Impressive stuff. I am anxious to download Java 6u10 and tinker with this. I am especially interested in reviving an old drum machine project I started writing in Gnome/GTK. I think I can utilize the customization available in Nimbus to make a custom, professional looking interface without the ugly hacks I had to use for GTK.

The Scala session made me want to puke. The presenter proudly proclaimed that the language is the next generation of Java and that it is everything that Java should be. I almost walked out when he said that they removed the "break/continue" mechanism in favor of "goto". WHAT?! I decided to stay for the rest of the session to give the presenter a chance to redeem my opinion of my language. No luck. I was not impressed. So friends, I flipped the bozo bit for Scala.

The Filthy Rich Client session was great. It really got me thinking. Last year I wrote an app that animates dots starting at the top of the screen and falling to the bottom. The problem is that I hit barrier where it would not run faster than 30 fps. At the beginning of the session they demonstrated bouncing balls app that ran at over 100 fps. They explained the issues with Swings timer thread. I am hopeful I can revisit the app and get it working at a respectable framerate.

The session on Unit Testing with Groovy gave me a bunch of ideas I plan to take back to work with me. I talked to some guys who commit to the Groovy project about how we can work about issues we have with testing singletons. They gave me an idea or two to try out.

The Java Posse guys gushed about Scala in their session. The session was fun but not great. It made me nearly regret my decision to skip Sun's After Dark party where the band Smash Mouth performed.

Overall it was the best day yet. I may not post the next blog entry until Saturday. I will be traveling tomorrow for over six hours and will be crossing two timezones. California was okay but will be happy to return to the familiarity of Illinois.

JavaOne 2008 Report, Part 2: Wednesday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:44:42 -0600

Ok, I just got back from the Sun Developer Network Party. I am going to make this short. My plan is to revisit these blog entries once Sun releases the videos and slides from the JavaOne sessions in the near future. Here's my brief recap of today's fun.

First of all, Scott Davis is a brilliant speaker. I highly recommend his Groovy: the Red Pill presentation. I missed this one at No Fluff, Just Stuff a few months ago. You will not look at the EXPANNNNNNNNDO-METACLASS the same way again.

The Struts 2 presentation flew over my head. I wasn't sure if it was my relative lack of experience with Struts 1 or the presenters lack of examples. When the speaker pronounced HTTP as "Haytch Tee Tee Pee" it pulled my mind out of any comprehension of any point that he attempted to be communicated. This session was a waste.

The OpenSocial Container presentation discussed a project named Shindig. One of the presenters started working on his Web 2.0 social network website in January and finished in April. Am I in the wrong business?

I cannot wait for the Compelling User Experience session to make it online. Nothing was sacred. The presenter threw stones at a lot of today's paradigms. I couldn't agree with him more!

The video games BOF introduced me to the javagaming.org forum.

The Groovy in a Cloud session got me to thinking about the benefit of deploying virtual servers much more quickly than it would take any corporation's purchasing department to acquire the equivalent hardware.

The GWT and Comet session introduced me to the Grizzly Comet project which uses continuations to push data asynchronously from the server to the client. Imagine an auction website where an auction's high bid is updated automatically on your web page without having to refresh the page. Who knew it was possible to suspend a browser's session?

The Groovy Builder session discussed making Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) with a part of the Groovy language with which I am not yet familiar.

Ok, friends, more later.. Off to do a bit of reading before turning in.

JavaOne 2008 Report, Part 1: Tuesday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:56:00 -0600

I made the trip out to San Francisco for JavaOne. The first day kicked off with a speech entitled Java + You. I came in late because, well, I had an issue finding the right conference center.. not Moscone West, not Moscone South, but Moscone NORTH, whew! I enjoyed the talk until they trotted out Neil Young, the ancient musician and liberal crackpot.

My first scheduled session was on Project Darkstar. The presenter covered Sun's massively-multiplayer system. In describing the server he mentioned the design goal on achieving low-latency using objects that sounded a lot like stateless session enterprise java beans (EJBs). In his demo he used assets from Bioware's Neverwinter Nights -- while that was cool it looked dated. I found it strange that the demo for a MMO was empty except for the player character.

The talk for Project Aura was better. This is an open source project that provides recommendations based on classifications. They pointed out the shortcomings of the traditional recommendation engines, specifically music recommendation systems. Their approach would improve on them by automatically classifying music using artificial intelligence. They also show why the recommendations are made. This would be an improvement over, say Amazon inexplicably recommending clean underwear when I look at a book on chaos theory.

Most sessions are a cattle call. Imagine a large nerd herd of hundreds of attendees congregated outside conference rooms waiting for the room to empty and the staff to let them in. Lunch was the worst crowd. Thankfully, the lunches were boxes and line moved quickly.

After lunch I attended a session on upcoming Java changes. There are interesting things coming. Here is what I managed to scribble down:

Multi-catch

try {
// stuff
}
catch (X1, X2 e) { foo(); }
catch (X3 e) { bar(); }

Safe Re-thow

try {

// stuff
}
catch (final Throwable e) {
logger.log(e);
throw e;
}

Switch on String

switch (value)
{
case "red":
foo();
break;
}

Modules

module org.netbeans.core;
package org.netbeans.core.utils;

Annotations (JSR 308)

Adds annotations on generics
List <@NonNull String> strings;

Adds annotations to casts
endRegex = (@NonNullPattern) endRegex;

I went to a session on Grails that was pretty similiar to the class I attended at No Fluff, Just Stuff a few months ago. Following that I went to a class on GWT where the only thing I picked up was that testing GWT classes in difficult. Then I ended the night with a session on writing plugins for Eclipse, NetBeans IDE and IDEA. The main takeaway from that session was that Eclipse uses plugins in SWT and everybody else uses Swing.

It has been a long day. I have classes tomorrow on Groovy, Struts 2, OpenSocial and Comet. So I'm off to bed to do a bit of reading before calling it a night.

Groovy Credit Card Number Validation

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:16:47 -0600

Back in March I attended a software conference hosted in St. Louis called No Fluff, Just Stuff. The lectures introduced me to some cool new technology. It was small and intimate. I had an opportunity to speak to the instructors and conference organizer.

The classes I took covered these technologies: Ajax, Hibernate, Spring, Terracotta, Grails, Groovy and GWT

During one of Jeff Brown's Grails talks I heard him say that there is built-in validation of credit card numbers, but it is limited to just checking the size. It is possible to validate the value of the number using the Luhn Algorithm. So, the following is my implementation of Luhn validation written in Groovy and suitable for use in Grails.

class LuhnValidator {

    def isValidCreditCardNumber(number) {
        def sum = 0
        def alternate = false
        number.reverse().each { value ->
            if (value =~ /\d/)
            {
                def n = value.toInteger()
                if (alternate) {
                    n *= 2
                    if (n > 9) {
                        n = n % 10 + 1
                    }
                }
                sum += n
                alternate = !alternate
            }
        }
        sum % 10 == 0
    }
}

Wish You Were Here

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:09:21 -0600

Carroll David Conder 1950-2006

Love Note

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:00:59 -0600

Do you like me?

[ ] Yes

[ ] No

Happy Valentine's Day, friends!

War Saves Lives

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:49:54 -0600

A man used the medic training he learned in America's Army -- a video game the Army gives away as a promotional item -- to save a life.

It is the same game that the Iraq Veterans Against the War protested last year at the Black Expo in St Louis. There they lined in formation and yelled "War is not a game!"

I am grateful for their service to our country, but in this case, War Saves Lives!

Improving Cell Phone Reception

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:15:47 -0600

I have Verizon. A coworker described how to improve cell phone reception.

The cell phone has a Preferred Roaming List (or PRL). This list tells your card which towers to look for when establishing connection. As new EVDO towers are installed, your PRL will become out of date because it won't know to hunt for these new towers.

From http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/howTo/prlHowTo.jsp

Updating Preferred Roaming List(PRL)

Verizon Wireless is constantly advancing its roaming technology to provide you with superior roaming capabilities. By updating your PRL every few weeks, you can be sure you have access to our enhancements. As a result you may experience:

* Longer battery life
* Fewer dropped or blocked calls
* Clear, crisp connections in more areas across the United States
* Ability to connect to the digital network in more parts of the country

Instructions for updating your PRL:

1. Power on your phone within any Verizon Wireless digital service area.
2. Dial *228 and then press SEND (this call is airtime free).
3. When prompted, press option 2 to update your phone's roaming capabilities
(the update may take up to 2 minutes).
4. Once completed, a confirmation message will appear to inform you that your phone has been re-programmed with the new PRL.

Here Another Year

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:03:30 -0600

Friends, thanks for your birthday wishes! Seeing as how we are twins, today is also Kevin's birthday. Happy Birthday, bro!

Cowgirl

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:07:15 -0600

For my favorite cowgirl..

everything.

I'm invisible.

an eraser of love. an eraser of love.

why don't you call me I feel like flying in two.

I'm invisible.

an eraser of love. an eraser of love.

why don't you call me I feel like flying in two.

an eraser of love. an eraser of love.
I don't dream. (ice cream.) I scream so much.

you know what I mean. this electric stream.

and my tears in league with the wires

and energy and my machine.

this is my beautiful dream.

I'm hurting no one. hurting no one.

I want to give you everything.

I want to give you energy.

I want to give a good thing.

I want to give you everything.

everything.

in one final scream of love who could

climb this high she looks beautiful

like a child I feel tears.

and I want to scream.

you know what I mean cause this is hurting no one.

an eraser of love.

hurt. the necessary feeling.

why don't you call me I feel like flying in two.

an eraser of love.
"Cowgirl" - Underworld

Gen Con 2007 Report, Part 5: Sunday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:40:18 -0600

Last month I attended a gaming convention known as Gen Con. The following is my recap what happened on Sunday, my last day there.

:: SUNDAY

After I settled the bill with the hotel I had breakfast with BYOV guys. I really appreciate the effort Jay put into letting us share the room with a BYOV game master. Everybody was tired. I was a little sad that it was over.

Squash and I headed back to the vendor hall for one last pass and to say our goodbyes. I talked to folks at Kayuda Maps. They are producing a advertisement-driven map editing web site for fantasy gamers. When they mentioned that they told me they planned to add icons to represent items on their maps, I asked them if they considered using icons that professionals working the logistics industry use. They had not considered it, but seemed open to the idea.

I watched a patron demo a MMORPG called Age of Conan. The game was gorgeous. But it is definitely for mature players. I wonder if this will limit the success of the game when it hits the market in late October.

I bought a copy of Kill Dr Lucky from the Paizo Publishing booth. I have not yet played this game but I look forward it.

Signgirl and I love to play Fluxx. I noted that Looney Labs plans to publish Zombie Fluxx in early October.

That wraps up my recap of Gen Con. Once again I had a good time. It was over too quickly. If you enjoy gaming, you and your family should consider attending next year's convention which will be held August 14-17, 2008. Watch the Gen Con website for information on how to register for games early next year. Or better yet, check out the Gen Con Community Forums.

Gen Con 2007 Report, Part 4: Saturday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:00:19 -0600

Gen Con Indy happens every year sometime in August. This is my recap of Saturday, my fourth day there and the last full day of this year's convention.

:: SATURDAY

I completed the Mayfair Games Ribbon Quest. It worked like this. For every Mayfair Game you demoed in the vendor hall or attended in one of the game halls they gave you a badge ribbon. The badge ribbons were different colors and read "Ore", "Wood", "Sheep", "Clay" and "Grain", one each of the resources found in the Settlers of Catan game. When you collected all five you received a Knight of Catan ribbon, a Catan-related goodie and a coupon good for 50% off of a Mayfair Game of your choice. I bought the Kids of Catan game to play with Signgirl and her son D, who loves the game.

While I was there I also picked up a copy of Patrician. It is a well-balanced game of tower building that I enjoyed playing with Squash, Brian and Mike.

I helped Squash with his ribbon quest by demoing another game. We played Shear Panic. It is a cute game that involved maneuvering sheep for the most points while preventing your neighbor from getting his points.

Cpt Squash and I went to our next event, the Amazons LARP. Once again I crossed gender lines to play a Amazon magic user. The character who really the actress Lucy Lawless in disguise and did not have any magical abilities. So my goal was to keep my disguise and not to draw attention to myself. A ceremony was planned at which my character was supposed to perform real magic. Fortunately events unfolded so that I was able to meet my goals.

My last game was Crafty Games' Ten Thousand Bullets LARP. I was a little apprehensive that a LARP set in a prison would not be very much fun. They did some interesting things with the game. To start with they put us in "cells" which were a series of chairs arranged in small groups. If you wanted to talk to a prisoner in another cell, you have to go to imaginative lengths to keep the conversation private. One player wrote messages on paper and threw it when the players playing the guards had their backs turned. My character had an escape plan that kept me engaged in the game until the very end. I enjoyed this game a lot more than I thought I would.

Squash and I met up with another gamer buddy and his female friend and went back to the RAM. We hung out at the RAM for a while talking about the past week. We discovered that our buddy's friend had her Masters in Mathematics. When I told her I had considered going back for a Master degree, she encouraged me to pursue it. It really made me consider my decision not to commit myself to getting an advanced degree.

I dropped by Mike B's room party. It was hot and cramped in there. I met a gamer who lives not more than twenty miles from the town in which I grew up. Small world! I didn't stay long and left to get some sleep.

Gen Con 2007 Report, Part 3: Friday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:52:10 -0600

Every year for the past six years I have attended Gen Con. What follows is my recap of Friday, my third day there.

:: FRIDAY

I had lunch with Jay of BYOV, Cpt Squash and other members of the Atomic Squash gaming club. We went to an Italian place named Buca Di Beppo. I recommend it highly. We got a laugh when Brian made a big deal about his serving of lasagna was smaller than his buddy's lasagna. So somebody mentioned it to the waitress who in turn summoned the manager. Brian was very embarrassed. Of course we gave him a hard time about it.

I found myself with time to kill before my next game. So I went to the convention center and checked out the Gen Con Auction. I bought an auction card and watched for a bit. They were auctioning off items from some obscure role playing systems and later cards from collectible card games. I walked over to an area they had set up with used games and related items at a fixed price. It can best be described as a garage sale for gamer stuff. I found and bought A Merry Kobold Christmas, a campaign I did not have for the Kobolds Ate My Baby roleplaying game.

Next I walked though the miniature painting area. I keep meaning to try the paint and take when I am there. Ah well, another time. I went to the vendor and demo some games at the Mayfair booth. First I tried Age of Discovery. The game had a lot of little pieces and took a long time. The worst part of the game was at the very end you could affect your score with a multiplier that was not easy to understand.

There was a giant-sized Kragmortha board game set up. I was pleased to see another Atomic Squash gamer and his family join the game. While the game was interesting, it quickly became boring. In a way it reminded me of the late Gregory Horror Show game.

I played a quick game of Elk Fest. Do not call it Elk Hunt. Shame on you. The game has a simple mechanic. Your elk must pass from one ice shelf to another by using stones that you flick into place on your turn. If you fall off the stones you must start back from the beginning. It plays quickly and can be entertaining, especially if somebody else is bumping the table.

The last game I demoed was Hey! That's My Fish!. In this game players are penguins was move around a grid of cards. The trick is that once you land on a card it is removed when you move off of it. In this way you can strand other players on their own ice floes. This is a type of game where you get to mess with the other players. The rules were easy to learn. I really enjoyed this game.

I spun by the Mongoose Games booth. I learned that they did not yet have the Spycraft World on Fire. That was disappointing. This is the system on which we based this years Spycraft LARP

I bought a copy of Kobolds Ate My Baby Deluxe Hard Cover for Signgirl. She promised to help me write a new Kobolds LARP. I am so excited to have her assistance! She had some great ideas that helped me spice up the characters for the aforementioned Spycraft LARP.

Lastly I picked up Gloom, a card game from Atlas Games. Squash tells me it is fun game. I cannot wait to play it.

I went to my scheduled game, the Harry Potter LARP. This year's game focused on the students of the Slytherin house. A player or two took this game too seriously. C'mon now; it is a game. Lighten up and have a good time. If you feel you did not get the character you wanted, you should not make all of us listen to you whine about it.

Tom J, the game master, talked me into playing the game again this year after my sour experience last year. Mission successful! I enjoyed the game.

This video features Slate's take on gamers. There are quite a few scenes from the Harry Potter LARP including an interview with Tom J the Snape-looking game master and Henwy playing the evangelist.

Gen Con 2007 Report, Part 2: Thursday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:44:01 -0600

During the third week of August I returned to Indianapolis for my sixth Gen Con. While not everything went off without a hitch, I am choosing not to dwell on those things. What follows is my recap the first full day at the convention.

:: THURSDAY

Thursday is the first full day of Gen Con and the official start. The vendor hall opens at 11 AM to the masses. I slept in this morning and had lunch so I missed the giant nerd herd of gamers who storm the vendors looking to be the first to get their hands on the shiny new games and demo this year's latest and greatest offerings.

The vendor hall was massive this year. There are thirty rows inside where in years past there were twenty two. Most noticeable for me are the companies that were absent. Chaosium was not at Gen Con this year.

The big news was the announcement by Wizards of the Coast of the long rumored Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. That was more exciting than their sad attempt at social networking called Gleemax. Is this is their way to reach out to the role playing community after booting non-Wizards games from the RPGA?

Signgirl and I have been playing Magic: The Gathering lately. So I stopped at the Dave and Adam's Card World booth and bought two boxes of Magic cards. Come to find out they were in Chinese! Fortunately they later let me exchange the one unopened, sealed box of cards for credit toward the English version. Signgirl is selling the opened box on eBay for me. Any takers for Chinese Magic cards?

My first game was the Torchwood LARP. Torchwood is a British sci-fi series that is best described as a combination of X-Files and Angel. In our game I played a military leader who was illegally running a black market operation out of the Cardiff base of operations. I had the best time with this group of players. Everybody was played their parts superbly. I reveled in my role of troublemaker as I set up distractions for anyone who got to close to my operations.

Next Cpt Squash and I played in a Fey LARP loosely based on the writings of Laurell K. Hamilton. Fey are fairy folk. Theirs is a world of acrimony that rivals the Vampire: The Masquerade or the writings of Anne Rice.

I played a female assassin who was a human monk. My role was to assassinate the visiting Pope. This was not my last trans-gender roleplaying at the convention. Fortunately, the female players were terribly offended by the way I choose to play my character. I did get an education on the sisterhood of shared governance which I mistakenly called a cabal.

Here is my only picture from the Fey LARP. Mar was showing off the pirate puppet he bought earlier that day. This picture makes me smile.

Gen Con 2007 Report, Part 1: Wednesday

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:00:00 -0600

This year was my sixth year attending Gen Con. It is a large annual gaming convention attracting over 25,000 attendees. What follows is my recap of the first of the five days at the convention.

:: WEDNESDAY

I met my buddy Captain Squash at his place. We loaded into his vehicle and headed out. On the way we listened to several podcasts. The first was Fear the Boot. We listened to their recap of this year's Archon including coverage of the R-rated Furry panel. They ask an interesting question: who invited the anthropomorphic fetishists into the gaming subculture?

Next we listened to an episode of Diggnation, a show where two guys that used to be on TechTV talk about the top stories posted on the digg.com social bookmarking news site. Basically these guys sit around drinking beer and riff on new articles. It is pointless really but they did use the words "poon palace" which made Squash and I laugh.

Lastly we listened to an episode of This Week in Tech hosted by Leo Laporte, another TechTV refugee. I quickly got bored with the endless prattle about Apple's iPhone. I wonder what Laporte thinks of Apple announcing that they will cut the price of the iPhone by $200 just two months after introducing it to the market. Suckers!

Thanks to Jay of BYOV we stayed at The Hilton this year. The room was nice. Even though the hotel is not one of the ones attached to the convention center by the skywalks, or hamster tubes as we like to call them, it is decent place to stay during Gen Con.

Cpt Squash ran off to watch a minor league baseball game. I wandered down to the RAM to see if I could get into a session of Wednesday Gaming there. The meeting room was packed wall-to-wall. While I was bummed that I couldn't find a game, I was pleased to see that Wednesday gaming was popular. I bought a mug from the RAM while I was there and left for the convention center to pick up a swag bag.

Later Cpt Squash and I made our way to the Fourth Annual Gen Con Forum Stink, a gathering of regulars who frequent the Gen Con online community forum. When we arrived they gave us a bag of swag -- free promotional items and other stuff.

They had a passport game as an icebreaker. They had several categories such as "Veteran Stinker", "Attended 10+ Gen Cons" and "Played True Dungeon". When you found a player that matched a category you could ask them to place a sticker in your book. I ran into a bunch of old friends and met some new ones.

After the Stink several of us wandered over to the RAM. Since it was packed, we decided to trek to Rock Bottom instead. I have to say it was just as fun as the RAM. They had specials on drinks. Squash and I tried a sampler of their beers. They were good. The consensus was that Rock Bottom may become the new Wednesday Post-Stink place in the future.

We left there to go to a place that had karaoke. After listening to somebody massacre Creed's "Arms Wide Open" I had a massive headache. I took some Tylenol and hung out until our buddy Otter took her turn at the mike. She blew everyone away and ended up taking home a cash prize for placing in their karaoke contest.

I Know What You Did Last Labor Day

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:36:26 -0600

Well, the word is out. I am leaving my current client, Lockheed Martin, for a position at Express Scripts. The past week or two has been a blur of phone calls and meetings.

My Linux box was being temperamental. It would not allow me access to my email. I have it set up to download the email from my gazpacho.net domain as well as yahoo.com and hotmail.com. Then all mail is filtered through a custom-configured SpamAssassin. I then use Mozilla Thunderbird to read it via imap. Well, somehow the imap database became corrupted. Also, one or more Berkeley DB binary files may have been corrupted/deleted. I took the opportunity to upgrade to Fedora Core 7. It was a painful process that took me most of the Labor Day weekend. I'm not going there.

I ordered a Dell laptop with Ubuntu Linux on it. My plan is to migrate my files off of the Fedora Linux box.. and be rid Fedora and its RPM madness for good!

I watched signgirl's dog while she went up to Chicago. Her dog was an angel. But she made me concerned because the silly thing would not eat her food.

Signgirl has been selling some of my junk things on eBay. It is amazing what people will buy. A sealed box of Lord of the Rings Risk went for more than I paid for it at retail. A bag filled with Gregory Horror Show miniatures went for approximately $30 to a lady in the United Kingdom. Somebody wanted the copy of "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" DVD I won as a prize at a LARP. Who knew?

The 100 Best Meme

tomc@gazpacho.net (Tom Conder) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:28:04 -0600

Since I have been back from Gen Con real life obligations have colluded to prevent me from posting the planned Gen Con recap blog entries. Or, maybe it was the mullet I borrowed from Kentucky Fried Gamers. My IQ dropped the moment I put it on and has not yet recovered.

Currently the internal network is down at work leaving me with a moment to crank out a quick entry.

One of the cool things I missed at this year's Gen Con was Green Ronin's Hobby Games: The 100 Best book. The following meme lists the hobby games found in the book and asks the blogger to indicate their level of personal experience.

Boldface if "I own this game."
Italics is "I have played this game."
Italic and Bold are "I both own and have played this game."

Bruce C. Shelley on Acquire
Nicole Lindroos on Amber Diceless
Ian Livingstone on Amun-Re
Stewart Wieck on Ars Magica
Thomas M. Reid on Axis & Allies
Tracy Hickman on Battle Cry
Philip Reed on BattleTech
Justin Achilli on Blood Bowl
Mike Selinker on Bohnanza
Tom Dalgliesh on Britannia
Greg Stolze on Button Men
Monte Cook on Call of Cthulhu
Steven E. Schend on Carcassonne
Jeff Tidball on Car Wars
Bill Bridges on Champions
Stan! on Circus Maximus
Tom Jolly on Citadels
Steven Savile on Civilization
Bruno Faidutti on Cosmic Encounter
Andrew Looney on Cosmic Wimpout
Skip Williams on Dawn Patrol
Alan R. Moon on Descent
Larry Harris on Diplomacy
Richard Garfield on Dungeons & Dragons
William W. Connors on Dynasty League Baseball
Christian T. Petersen on El Grande
Alessio Cavatore on Empires in Arms
Timothy Brown on Empires of the Middle Ages
Allen Varney on The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Phil Yates on Fire and Fury
William Jones on Flames of War
Rick Loomis on Fluxx
John Kovalic on Formula De
Anthony J. Gallela on The Fury of Dracula
Jesse Scoble on A Game of Thrones
Lou Zocchi on Gettysburg
James Wallis on Ghostbusters
James M. Ward on The Great Khan Game
Gav Thorpe on Hammer of the Scots
Uli Blennemann on Here I Stand
S. Craig Taylor, Jr. on A House Divided
Scott Haring on Illuminati
Dana Lombardy on Johnny Reb
Darren Watts on Junta
Greg Stafford on Kingmaker
Lester Smith on Kremlin
Wolfgang Baur on Legend of the Five Rings CCG
Marc W. Miller on Lensman
Ted S. Raicer on London's Burning
Teeuwynn Woodruff on Lord of the Rings (boardgame)
Mike Breault on Machiavelli
Jordan Weisman on Magic: The Gathering
Steve Kenson on Marvel Super Heroes (Jeff Grubb version)
Gary Gygax on Metamorphosis Alpha
Greg Costikyan on My Life with Master
John D. Rateliff on Mythos
Chris "Gerry" Klug on Napoleon's Last Battles
John Scott Tynes on Naval War
Erick Wujcik on Ogre
Marc Gascoigne on Once Upon a Time
Mike Bennighof on PanzerBlitz
Steve Jackson on Paranoia
Shannon Appelcline on Pendragon
JD Wiker on Pirate's Cove
Richard H. Berg on Plague!
Martin Wallace on Power Grid
Tom Wham on Puerto Rico
Joseph Miranda on Renaissance of Infantry
James Ernest on RoboRally
Paul Jaquays on RuneQuest
Richard Dansky on The Settlers of Catan
Ken St. Andre on Shadowfist
Steven S. Long on Shadowrun
Peter Corless on Shadows over Camelot
Dale Donovan on Silent Death: The Next Millennium
Matt Forbeck on Space Hulk
Ray Winninger on Squad Leader
Lewis Pulsipher on Stalingrad
Bruce Nesmith on Star Fleet Battles
Steve Winter on The Sword and the Flame
Jeff Grubb on Tales of the Arabian Nights
Shane Lacy Hensley on Talisman
Douglas Niles on Terrible Swift Sword
Ed Greenwood on Thurn and Taxis
Mike Fitzgerald on Ticket to Ride
Thomas Lehmann on Tigris & Euphrates
Warren Spector on Tikal
David "Zeb" Cook on Toon
Mike Pondsmith on Traveller
Zev Shlasinger on Twilight Struggle
Kenneth Hite on Unknown Armies
Sandy Petersen on Up Front
R. Hyrum Savage on Vampire: The Eternal Struggle
George Vasilakos on Vampire: The Masquerade
Kevin Wilson on Vinci
R.A. Salvatore on War and Peace
Jack Emmert on Warhammer 40,000
Chris Pramas on The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Steve Jackson on The Warlord
John Wick on Wiz-War

Clearly I have more gaming to do! I will attempt to post the recap entries later this week.