Black Rock Yearbook 2011 is here…

… and the Black Rock Kwoon is honoured to grace one of its pages!  See us here!  Or grab the whole shebang here…

GGK’s Latest

Ahh, the glory of diving into a book again.  I just finished reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest tome, Under Heaven.  The last novels of his I read, the Sailing to Sarantium series, had me in an amusing place by the end:  loving the world he created and despising Every. Single. Character.  Which really does take some skill to invoke that kind of dislike, I would say, non?

Have a ‘Taurrific time

Ta-da!  My third D&D 4e supplement is up on RPGnow, bringing a bevy of ‘taur races to the game.  I’ve always loved ‘taurs – dunno why exactly but they certainly capture my imagination.  While I enjoy ‘taurs such as liontaurs more than the traditional Centaur it has always been easier to bring the traditional into a D&D campaign and so I’ve played many a centaur throughout my gaming days and throughout the various editions.  With 4e out I could not let ‘taurs escape being able to be a race option for players… and so here’s the supplement to do it!

As a bonus it gave me the opportunity to craft a series of races that allow for just about any ‘type of taur (allowing for a variety of base animals) but also to craft them in a way that fit well within the standard 4e race capabilities allowing ‘taurs to be played from 1^st level onward without any serious adventure or power curve modification.  So, woo!  I had fun writing it for sure, and I do hope it lets people have even more fun playing their fave characters out in the various game worlds.

Here’s the link!  Adventurer’s Option – ‘Tauric Races

(btw, minor, minor apologies for the pun…)

Planterific

First seeds in garden planted!  First transplant completed!  Woo!

(Though I think I may have over planted … only mid way through did I begin to get a sense of the scale of it, compounded worse by the fact for some of the plants I want to plant more in two weeks to have a continuous rotation of edibles.  Given what I’ve already planted I might be uber inundated with one type of produce all at once, and have limited space to plant more.  Ah well, live and learn!)

The Passport Escapades

A few weeks ago I got the application together, scoured for someone who would take pictures to the proper standard, eventually found one and got them taken, put it all together, and headed over to the UPS store (I was sending out another package with a prepaid label at the same time) and sent out my passport renewal.

Only to find out when I got home I had forgotten to include my current passport. D!oh

Called Passport Canada the next day, and they recommended I await the letter to reach their offices, and then once it got entered into the system I could send up my passport and all would be good.  A week later, when the letter was estimated to be delivered I called, and it had not yet been received.  Same story a few days later.  And again?

Two weeks after I mailed the letter I check UPS tracking.  The letter was last seen hardly 60 miles from my home.  Disappeared.  So I waited.  Waited another day.  Called UPS.  They put a trace on it.  Got a call back the next day.  “Sorry, because you shipped it through our store, the store has to put a trace on it, you cannot.”  WTF?  Three weeks later, package is lost to the ether.

Called Passport Canada today and was recommended I re-send the whole thing.  Went back to get pictures taken.  Went to ship… and then went back to get the pictures stamped and dated by the photographer.  Finally got it all in the envelope (including passport this time), at the FedEx store in the nifty envelope, and get it sent out with a shipping price nearly 3x of the first time (and that was their cheapest rate).

Let the tracking, begin!

Kicking it awesome

Wow.  As I see more and more projects being funded on Kickstarter (witness both Double Fine’s 24 hour amazingaganza, or OOTS’s 1000% funded whoopla, or the success of the Black Rock French Quarter’s drive last year…) the more and more excited I am getting.  While I’m reticent to call anything a “game changer” given how overused the term is these days I think Kickstarter has a potential to really shake things up in a most good way.

I’m excited for the possibilities I see opening up through this service to support creative endeavours, especially endeavours that might never have seen the light of day through the regular channels.  The “little guys/gals” type endeavours.  Projects for which, like Double Fine, funding would never be given because the powers-that-be don’t see it as being profitable, or more truthfully profitable enough.  Projects where you don’t know if there is interest and rather than have to take that chance and go into debt you can find out up front.  Grass roots (another overused term, I know) projects.  And supporting both big projects (whole games) and small projects (pieces of jewellery, or a nifty technogadget) alike.

I also love how it allows people to think “what is this worth to me?” rather than “how much is this thing on the shelf?”  I think that’s big from a philosophical perspective.  I like how it allows creators to share and give back with nifty things at different donation levels.  I think it also allows an added sense of security in that “if target not met no funding.”

This is just great.  While there’s still the issue of driving traffic to your Kickstarter I don’t doubt there’ll soon be some easy entry-ways into finding cool projects that might interest you (not counting Kickstarter’s own searches).  That this has the potential to allow people to do all sorts of projects, make all sorts of things, and do all sorts of things that they’ve always wanted (and dreamed!) to do, communicating directly with the public – I can see an explosion of crazy great creative things supported, community/environmental/etc projects supported, people fulfilled, excited and worth re-evaluated by us all.  And that’s all pretty sweet.

Unfortunate Licence Plate

Seen the other day:  5EXH081

(Sounds like a yahoo email address or something!)