Games, media, entertainment, photography, and other things I do for fun.
Mar 08
I owned a variety of film SLRs in my early days as a photographer; a Nikon N90 still lurks on a shelf somewhere in the house. Over time, my interest in photography as an art and craft wane, and I became that dreaded animal, the Snapshot Parent. As digital photography began to mature in the …
Mar 04
One of the regrets of my cycling life is letting go of the 25th anniversary Jamis Quest. I bought my Jamis Quest in 2013, looking for a capable bike suitable for commuting. I’d initially budgeted around $1,200, but fell in love with the $1,800 Quest after taking it out for a lengthy spin. The retailer …
Mar 01
PCs finally reached the stage where performance doesn’t matter much. Certainly mainstream PC systems deliver enough performance for most users, often at price points well under $1,000. Even serious PC gamers fell off the upgrade train. That’s likely one of the drivers explaining the doldrums in PC sales: once you have enough performance, why upgrade? …
Feb 26
Imagine a fictional world combining elements of Jane Austen in an alternate history where Queen Victoria gives England female emancipation in the 1850s with a few steampunk tropes, a little Holmesian detective work, a touch of urban fantasy, and over-the-top pulp novel action. Author P.N. Elrod imagined just that in her novel The Hanged Man. Combining …
Feb 19
The Giant OCR1 that got me back into serious cycling eventually became a chore to ride. The aluminum frame transmitted a lot of road chatter, which translated to sore muscles and stiff bones after long rides. I’m not, after all, getting younger. So I began looking for bicycles with more forgiving rides. Initially, I believed …
Feb 16
My daughter and I escaped to Dundracon 40 this past holiday weekend for several days of pure board game bliss. Dundracon 40 happens to be the longest-running tabletop gaming con on the west coast; it even sports its own Wikipedia entry. Despite its age, Dundracon remains a small, local convention. The con currently holds sway …
Feb 12
As a kid, and into young adulthood, I rode a variety of bicycles. I rode the ridiculous Stingray around the back roads of Lawton Oklahoma. As a teenager, I loved a Windsor bicycle made from Reynolds steel. I put a ton of miles on that bike in various parts of Washington state. I pretty much …
Feb 23
These Are My People, Not Characters
How attached do you get to your game characters? I’m speaking specifically about games which allow you to customize your characters, not about characters with predetermined names and histories (sorry, Lara Croft). That most often means RPGs, though I’ve recently become pretty attached to my XCOM2 team. I often don’t see game characters as somehow …
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