update 200203 I have since moved this server to an old Dell Optiplex 3020m (Intel i5-4590T 2.0GHz with 8GB Ram) under Ubuntu 18.04 LTS which runs 1.13.2 spigot without issue. The Raspberry Pi was sufficient for 1.12.2 (with occassional lag) but after upgrading to 1.13.2 it was essentially unplay...
Cheap digital video production and free (or very cheap) internet-based venues for them has resulted in a wave of niche-interest low budget web video series. Fan-made productions are certainly not new and someday I might catalog all of those fan films based in the Star Trek universe which I loved, b...
Almost three years ago when I first set up a Minecraft server for the kids (and never wrote more about it as I had originally intended to do), I imagined it becoming a frequent haunt for the kids and their friends and cousins to build stuff together. I didn't realize that the lure of real mi...
I was first introduced to D&D in 1979 by some friends in school and was soon addicted. I spent inumerable hours creating maps and dungeons for my buddies to explore, and rolling up characters to populate my own worlds or to play in another kid's campaign. I played straight through high school bu...
I was getting stuff together to visit family this holiday and last minute I received an email from my brother with a picture of a bunch of Lego minis arranged as shown entitled “My Army Awaits”. His kids are still very young, and since he’s running after them all the time I didn’t think he’d want...
Its been a long time since I've written about anything here! There are a couple reasons, not the least of which is that I hurt myself and developed some kind of tendinitis. This was probably because I ignored some early warning signs and kept mountain biking despite pain and weakness in my elbows....
The more I learn about Microsoft's new Xbox the more upset I become. An internet connected device sitting in my house pointed at my family armed with cameras and microphones which can't be shut off? And when you shut it off, it's actually in a power saving mode where the microphone is still on (...
I was looking into getting a minecraft account for the kids, and not knowing much about the game I started out on wikipedia just to see what the hype about the game was all about. I know what the game looks like of course and in my mind it was just virtual lego, but I wanted to learn a bit abou...
Installing Ubuntu on the MacBook recently, I knew there would be a bunch of OSX programs I would no longer be able to run but I was pretty confident that I'd be able to get some Windows programs going with wine. Having had good luck with Temple of Elemental Evil on the Elitebook last December,...
The weather was stunningly beautiful with highs of only 70, a cool breeze and clear skies. I started off with a morning ride at Glacier Ridge (PDF map) where I finally was able to get in the entire track (including all the black diamonds). I was pretty slow, it took me nearly two hours but I sto...
I was spending a lot more time playing D&D when this board game came out, but it was a big deal back then. All of the accounting for the game was handled by the tiny computer in the Dark Tower which was placed in the center of the board. The fact that the tower was actually a full up computer game...
OK kids, make sure you have python installed so you can fire photons in this python remix of the classic Fortran Super Star Trek classic terminal game from the mid 70s. I played this game (poorly) in High School and had gotten frustrated trying to run the original Fortran version some while ago. T...
These are just my notes on how to install Atari's official Dungeons and Dragons game Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE) using wine in Ubuntu 11.10. This old game has been on my shelf since 2004 and with the kids' recent interest in D&D I thought it was a good time to see if it would install on the...
I was rifling through my top desk drawer when I chanced to spy the CD case for an old copy of Quake II. My mind raced back to years ago when my brother and some friends would frag each other for hours in the dark on our makeshift home LAN yelling and laughing in Deathmatch games. GoodTimes! So,...
Roleplaying used to be a bigger part of my life and I really miss it. There are a bunch of excuses I regularly use to explain away why I don't play that much anymore, but the main reason is pretty much what I've heard from a lot of other people - the gaming group I used to play with don't live ne...
Had a great time playing a game of Wizwar with the girls tonight. Well, I had a great time - but that might be because I won ;) Every time I play it usually gets me thinking about making that most perfect DIY wizwar board (my current favorite is here) though I haven't gotten around to that as...
update 2024 Holy smokes this is an old post. Its likely that nothing in this post will help you today!
Backstory: The kids have been using an old and relatively slow (Celeron) IBM Thinkpad R60e running Ubuntu 10.04. update 130317: tested and working on 12.04 There have been a lot of conf...
It's been almost a year since Adam and Nate (not me) of Roll2d6.com got together with some high school buddies to attend KublaCon 2009 and they've finally gotten the editing done on the podcast from that Con (and just in time for the next one!). I was listening to these guys pretty regularly fo...
I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle (See my WFB Pics) lately and had a vague idea of adding in some roleplay aspects to the games (to flesh out the time between battles). The only roleplaying I've done recently has been some few D&D 3.5 games which have left me sort of flat and thinking ba...
Army Builder is a windows program that helps you build an army for use in playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle that conforms to the rules of the game. This simple program took all the pain out of building my little Dwarf army and got me playing much faster - I highly recommend it. As there is only...
Mostly on a recommendation by Wil Wheaton I got Dominion [buy at amazon.com] for Christmas this year. Luckily Ned was around and was into playing or I might not have opened it up right away! Dominion is a pretty good card game. I'm calling it a card game because the big box it comes in houses...
Earlier this year I decided to finally put together a Warhammer Fantasy Battle army, get it painted and otherwise fixed up with the aim of playing against some friends who may also have hoarded boxes of these tiny figures around their house years ago. I never played very much of Games Workshop'...
My daughter was playing Legacy today (one of the few games I've bought lately) and wanted to know how to save a game. I was across the room and I explained what to click on. She shot me a puzzled look when I told her to click on the save icon "...you know, the thing that looks like a floppy d...
Sundog: Frozen Legacy is by far one of my most favorite games from the 1980s. Originally written for the Apple II in 1984 by Wayne Holder and Bruce Webster and released by FTL games (founded by Wayne Holder in 1982), I didn't play it until version 3.0 was released as a port to the Atari ST...
Perhaps it's because I'm getting old, or because I stare at a computer screen all day but I just can't play modern computer games. At least not for a very long time at a stretch, and certainly not for long enough to learn how to play one of the several big multiplayer games that seem to have suck...
Do you remember those character based games where you were an "@" symbol and you adventured around in dungeons whose walls were lines of "###"s? Do you lust after slaying the evil "s" (skeleton) lurking on the other side of the "+" (door)? Well, get ready to adventure! These types of games are al...
