Last week I wrote an entry in my Epiphanies blog (it’s a place for posting writers’ exercises and such for people to play with) that explored my grandfather’s history just a tiny bit. He’s one of those people who has a naturally story-inspiring life, and I happen to have very vivid memories of visiting him and my grandmother as a child.

I don’t tend to think of technology in connection with my family. Which is odd, because my mother has been a programmer, and became a programmer at a time when that wasn’t a common field for women to go into. My grandfather was a chemist. I guess it’s just that when I think of that side of the family mostly what I think of is visiting my grandparents at their old rural house in the seventies and eighties, strolling through the apple orchard and swimming in the pond. My grandfather was born in 1900 and died in 1994; he wasn’t exactly around for the height of the internet age. So it was with some amazement that I heard from relatives we’d fallen out of touch with after my grandfather’s funeral, thanks to their having found that post that I made. Emails and addresses were exchanged all over the place, all because of a spur-of-the-moment blog post.

That feels kind of surreal, but very cool.

This morning’s review is of Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo. Also, I’ve posted a new T-shirt design at Caffeinated Chicanery and another at Gamers’ Heaven. The monthly newsletters with their subscribers-only sales go out tonight barring a hiccup in Cafepress’s software, so if you aren’t subscribed already, this is a good time to do so (there’s a form at the bottom-left of the front page of the storefronts). Since I’ve been reading & reviewing so many mysteries lately it seemed appropriate to do a mystery addict shirt:

Mystery Addict
Where’s the body?

I also couldn’t help adding to our alignment series. Don’t worry, we have plenty of stored-up design ideas to present to you this year:

chaotic brilliant!

I found the new Massively MMO news rag via Plaguelands. It’s kind of like a news rag on too much coffee, but that’s okay. Drop by often, check out their news posts on your favorite games, and enter all the spiffy giveaways they’re launching with (okay, so if you haven’t been there yet you’ve already missed a bunch of them, but not all!). I still have my fingers crossed on the ones I’ve entered.

Today’s new book review is of Bill James’s Wolves of Memory, a fantastic Harpur & Iles mystery which I highly recommend. Also this week I’ll be reviewing a hot drinks cookbook (yum!), so stay tuned for that. This is the latest list of upcoming reviews, and I’ll post a new one soon so it won’t have so many crossed-off items on it. You might notice a sudden increase in the number of cookbooks we’re working with; this is, of course, due to Thanksgiving upcoming! Our usual guests can’t make it (a standard hazard when some work odd schedules and others are a number of states away), but that won’t stop us from cooking too much food!

We posted our first new “Adventurers’ Last Words” design in a while: “Awww, How Cute!” It seems particularly appropriate to baby clothing, don’t you think?! Somehow cute things always turn out to be so darn deadly in roleplaying games. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hey. It may seem somewhat odd that someone other than Heather is posting here. Take note — I’m not Heather — I’m me. Now that we’ve got that cleared up, I’ve got a question for you. I’ve been reading up on Ruby on Rails, and now I want to develop a web system just to play with it. I know I’m supposed to pick a nice safe, boring project like yet another photo gallery or guestbook, but I think I’m supposed to get a prescription for that strong a sedative. I always thought it would be cool to have those nifty meditative powers where I could slow my heart rate and breathing enough to survive being trapped in a downed submarine with only the oxygen in the compartment to survive on until help arrives. But working on some HelloWorld-ware would carry a big risk being declared dead. Which, of course, might be preferable if I were trapped in a downed submarine with a photo gallery and a guestbook script.

Oh so where was the question? Well, I have an idea I wanted to bounce off you: a collaborative RPG campaign world development system. If you have $.02 you’d like to throw in, or if you just want to pretend you’re a big shot Vice President of Product Development who hears pitches and shoots them down with biting sarcasm and a savvy understanding of the marketplace, read on…

(more…)