While I might not be the strongest believer in fate, I happily recognize and accept serendipity when it occurs. I had signed up for the lastest Dungeons & Dragons Worldwide Game Day — to get players familiar with the new Dark Sun Campaign Setting supplement — with my local gaming group. As it turns out,… Continue reading Dark Sun Worldwide Game Day Recap
Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel Ceiling
A view of the structure which supports the dome ceiling over the lobby of the hotel which once served as the train station for Chattanooga.
No More Watchmen
So Alan Moore says that he doesn’t even want the rights to Watchmen back after DC approaches him with a deal. So, no more Watchmen stories. Normally, I find myself always wanting more from a world so rich as that created by Moore and artist Dave Gibbons. However, for some reason, I cannot imagine wanting… Continue reading No More Watchmen
iPhone for the Deaf
deafmac.org on the WWDC keynote by Steve Jobs yesterday: The “one more thing†from Steve Jobs was something we all expected – video calling on the iPhone 4. What was not expected was how it put American Sign Language users in the spotlight, at the very end of the FaceTime video. Of everything in the (nearly… Continue reading iPhone for the Deaf
Steam on the Mac
While I think it’s great that Steam is finally available for mac users, I’ve still yet to benefit from it. I first bought Portal about two years ago and played it via Boot Camp on my iMac. It was just as wonderful as everyone said it was and I had a great time. Some time… Continue reading Steam on the Mac
Designing User-Focused Context Sensitive Help
This presentation by Matthew Ellison [Goog docs] given at last year’s Australasian Online Documentation and Content Conference (AODC 2009) has some excellent points on how to craft online help for context sensitive calls. This is something Bentley uses (a lot) and I’m trying to catch up on. There are really a lot of excellent points… Continue reading Designing User-Focused Context Sensitive Help
Tax and Spend Conservatives
USA Today’s Dennis Cauchon: Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden… Continue reading Tax and Spend Conservatives
Dairy Farm Tour
Generally speaking, there are two sides to how we get food in this country: how we think our food is produced and how it really is produced. These two seem to have drastically diverged somewhere in the 1950s. To a certain extent, this has allowed greater prosperity in the form of cheap food for the… Continue reading Dairy Farm Tour
Self Identification
This was the first year that I ever got to fill out a census as husband, father, homeowner, and all around adult. The last census, both Angela and I were living in a dormitories (in two different states, no less). It was such an small but satisfactory sense of self-worth. In the bigger picture, the… Continue reading Self Identification
Till the Chrome Wears Off
I spent all of the past week using only Google Chrome (build 5.0.307.11 beta for the mac) as my default browser. I wanted to post a few of my observations as a ardent FireFox user. Speed First of all, it is very nimble when launching and page loads are fast. To give an example, I use… Continue reading Till the Chrome Wears Off