Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd's Friends

Chessington World of Adventure tomorrow

This is just a reminder that JD and I are going to Chessington World of Adventure tomorrow and everyone we know is welcome to come along too to help me celebrate my birthday.

My realy birthday is May 20 (Tuesday) and JDs birthday is a week later on May 28, but we will be in Scotland on holiday then.

Hope you can come!

love

Lucya

California Revolution
Hey West Coast folks -- just wanted to let you know that IPR's going to have a presence in some fashion at two conventions next weekend.

Up in the SF bay area there's Kublacon: http://www.kublacon.com/ -- EndGame will be there, and bringing a wide swath of titles from the IPR catalog for sale.

For the Southern Cali crowd, Gamex 2008 will be happening the same weekend: http://www.strategicon.net/ -- Joshua BishopRoby will be there with a spread of IPR games for sale as well.

Plenty of indie play happening at both conventions too, if I hear right. Check 'em out!

Imperial Age subscription for the remainder of 2008...
Ladies and Gentlemen:

As we've mentioned on our forums, the bonus-quarter extension of the 2007 Imperial Age subscription has now expired. The latest product, IMPERIAL AGE: FISTICUFFS & SWORDPLAY was not covered by the 2007 subscription.

However, due to popular demand, we are offering a subscription for the remaining months of 2008. We have products planned for every month from now until the end of the year, and if you'd like to receive the discounted subscriber rate, you can purchase the 2008 subscription here:

http://adamant.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?cPath=272_4158&products_id=23631&it=1

...which covers May through December.

Thank you so much for your continued patronage,

Gareth-Michael Skarka
Adamant Entertainment

DFRPG Perspective Part 2
So folks are probably wondering where we're at on the Dresden Files RPG development front, after the previous bit.

Chad U. is continuing his update of our setting components with material from Small Favor (and eventually the comic books and Backup). More about that, here: http://chadu.livejournal.com/tag/dresden

Lenny had semester finals up through Wednesday, and is now in the period of recovery. Starting next week, he goes full-tilt at the playtester feedback, doing revisioneering and expansion on spellcraft, conflict resolution, and supernatural abilities.

Other stuff is afoot too, but those are our two workhorses on the project, so that should give you a picture. As I've been saying, I'm hopeful we'll be able to kick off a second alpha round sometime in June.

Myspace and Facebook - the devil's work?
I'm sure that some of you have tried Myspace and/or Facebook and can help me out here.

I have recently had two e-mail invitations, one from Myspace and one from Facebook, both from the same person. Now normally I'd just ring them up and tell them not to be so silly, but I don't have any contact details for the person concerned.

See, Alan and I were good friends at school in the 70s. We lost touch when he joined the army at 17. I hadn't heard from him in 20 years or so until I got an email via Friends Reunited about five or six years ago. We e-mailed a few times and then we lost touch again. Now he has sent me two invitations to his sites, but the e-mail addy I have for him no longer works. But I don't have a lot of friends from that era in my life and the one school reunion I went to I didn't remember anybody at all.

But I don't have a Myspace or Facebook account and you seem to need one to log in to either of the invitations. God knows I don't post much on this LJ, never mind on some of these social things. Maybe I'm just not sociable.

I've heard rumours about Facebook and the one Myspace account I've seen looked like someone had been copiously sick after drinking creme de menthe and eating enough curry and pizza to overfeed an elephant...

So what are your experiences of Facebook and/or Myspace?

Dork Tower, Friday, May16
Today's Dork Tower is up! (About bloody time)

Click Here, there or anywhere to see it.

****

Ever wonder what it's like to watch someone hoist themselves by their own petard? And by "hoist" I mean "eviscerate." And by "petard" I mean "ignorance."

It'd be kind of enjoyable, if it wasn't so sickening.

Ganked from the ever-astute

robin_d_laws

****

30 Years Ago in Kovalic History (AKA "Diary of the Artist, Age 15 and a half.")

"AO History test essay on Napoleonic War went well. Julius Ceasar OK, but spoiled by other people who were watching. Found 50p."

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: "White City" - the Pogues

Perspective: Playtest Application Headcount
So I've kept the playtest application for the Dresden Files RPG open during the bleeding alpha period. During the playtest, we've taken in an additional 200+ applications. As of this time, the total number of playtest applications on file is over 850.

Think we have enough?

Anyway, I put this out there because I've gotten a few people saying "why haven't I heard back", and so on. We're looking at a TITANIC number of interested folks here, and we've only done one round of picks for playtesting so far -- maybe 30 applications at most. That still leaves over 800 folks who are *possible* for later-round picks.

But we can't send out 800 emails each time we do a round of picking to tell folks "sorry, you're still on pending status", not managably, and not without that eating into actual productivity.

BUT! Those of you who have applied and not heard back should know that at the least, we'll be contacting you once ALL playtesting is concluded and we're heading towards publication. We'll want to do right by everyone who took the time to apply -- we haven't quite figured out what form that will take, but it *is* our intention, and one I hope we can deliver on.

Telectroscope
Oooooh,

envoy just pointed out this wonderful contraption that's going to be open in London from the 22nd.
I'll be in London again in the 31st, who wants to come along?

ginasketch, this sounds like right up your street.

Current Mood: excited

Trailer for DOLLHOUSE
(Thanks for the spot,

berkie!)

Trailer for Joss Whedon's new series:

More info can be found here.

Nervous that he's going with FOX again, but maybe (and only just maybe) they won't fuck this up.

Friday Music
Part of having a teenager in the house is that we end up watching American Idol. It's usually worth some snark, but occasionally I end up discovering some musical tidbit. During this week's results show, they had a previous contestant perform, and damned if it wasn't a brilliant song. So, with absolutely zero apologies, here is a surprisingly excellent bit of neo-Funk: Fantasia - "Bore Me."

Invisible Conga People are a NYC-based electronic duo, who record on a small label. I discovered this track via its posting on a couple of mp3 blogs that I read, and I really like it. Invisible Conga People - "Cable Dazed."

Another new track from the sophomore album by Gnarls Barkley, The Odd Couple. It seems, from lack of radio play, that they're falling into the "one-hit wonder" category -- it doesn't look like the larger American public has a taste for them beyond their initial single, "Crazy." Too bad -- the new stuff is good: Gnarls Barkley - "Going On."

I always like playing this track to people who are only familiar with Men At Work from things like "Down Under" and "Who Can It Be Now." Just like The Police featured album tracks written and sung by Copeland and Summers, which often sounded nothing like the rest of the band's output, Men At Work had tracks written and sung by guitarist Ron Strykert -- which had more of a New Wave feel than the more recognizable sound of the singles. Here's one of my favorites, from the second album, Cargo: Men at Work - "I Like To."

Sometimes, you need a song so classy, so smooth....that it has gone beyond smooth and into schmoooove. This is one such song. Lou Rawls - "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine."

Lastly -- I think that this is one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded. I hope you'll agree. Badly Drawn Boy - "The Shining."

Munchkin Quest at print, lots of work still remains . . .
. . . like the MQ expansion. But, today is game day in the office. So around work and e-mail I'm going to play a few games.

For those of you who love (working with) words

the_elyan found this wonderful article.

Current Mood: amused

Good Morning, Sunshine
Yaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwnnnn
It's less morning than it was when I first cracked open my eyes but it's still technically the ante meridian moiety of my day. The boy chose this morning to awaken at a particularly choice 7a. If you check the timestamp on my last post, you'll note that this puts me at five hours of sleep. Stacked on top of the less than satisfactory amount I'm already on which I'm already operating and not only am I bitching on my LJ but I'm also running at bare minimum capacity.

Ah well. I shall endure. Also, I'll likely stay up late again to play BioShock. Maybe not as late...

Alright. I should get going about my day already.

(Trailer) Hellboy II: The Golden Army
God, this looks brilliant.

We watched the trailer to start with and the other guys didn't know what it was for and, quite understandably, initially thought it was a trailer for an Elric movie.

Rickrolling...
I'd never heard of Rickrolling until I saw John Kovalic's latest Dork Tower strip the other day. Even then I didn't have a clue what it was so just put it down to the characters last comment referring to me ("I'm too young to be too old for the internet!") - especially as I'm now a year older than I was :p

Anyway, Sean just started talking about Rickrolling at work and Dave also knew what he was talking about.

I have now been informed, been shown Youtube footage or it and have managed to pull myself back into tune with todays internet youth it seems.

The internet continues to amaze me with all the little social phenomena that arise from it.

I'm sure the forefathers of science invention and science fiction would never have thought about the many uses it has these days and the fads it throws into fame for 15 minutes...

A Day in the Life
Kate's substitute bus driver failed to pick her up for the second day in a row and I had to drive her to school this morning. We were significantly late because I had a conference call scheduled for exactly when she should have been arriving at school to be on time.

Pramas and I drove together so we could talk over the conference call. We stopped at the Columbia City Bakery for americanos and baked goods. We also made a stop at the bank before heading to Queen Anne.

I stopped at Arvey for shipping supplies, where the older gentleman who works there was keyed up about something and kept muttering "Oh no, don't do this to me, no no no," and calling me "precious" and "sweetheart" and thanking me profusely for waiting. He's a nice old guy and I love going in there and letting him check me out so it was no trouble at all to wait patiently while he sorted out his morning crisis. I hope his day went better.

The afternoon was filled with mail orders and invoicing. I put together over 40 invoices today, and a couple of bins of mail.

Tonight was, in theory, game night. Only Evan could join us but I cooked anyway. We had an improvised white bean and chicken soup in homemade fennel broth that I whipped up in the pressure cooker. Adding chicken to the fennel broth adds a bit too much chicken flavor (and takes away from the subtle-but-luscious fennel flavor of the unadulterated broth) but everyone seemed to like it okay anyway.

We even busted out with Thurn und Taxis and got a whole game in. I'd never played before but I won the night's game so I guess I picked it up successfully. A couple glasses of wine, a little chocolate, some fresh strawberries, and a new board game on a warm spring night! Pretty successful if you ask me.

Tomorrow we have doctor appointments to attend, plus I'm intending to get up for 6:30am yoga. I also have to drive Kate up to drop her off for the weekend with her dad. We have a busy weekend planned. Here's hoping I feel up to everything.

Current Mood: tired

Unnatural Biorhythm
Going to bed now but first
I've been up late the past four nights playing BioShock. I got it for Christmas last year and played a bit, enjoyed it, but put it down in favor of, I dunno, brownies or a DS game. Something took my attention away from it.

The other night, I was looking along my shelf for something to play and, having reached a stalemate, shrugged and went, "Alright, fuck it." I put BioShock in and, for the sake of my extremely exhausted self I'll be blunt, I made the hellafuckyes right choice. Four short-sleep nights are testament to that.

Anyway, having a blast. Most of the hyperbole you heard about this game is true. I'm generally not a fan of the first-person perspective in games (I'll talk about that some other time) but I don't think BioShock could've been conveyed with the same deft hand if the developers hadn't gone that way. In fact, it uses what are normally limitations to its advantage: hallways, darkness, source lighting, first-person--the trademarks of the Unreal Engine, really--and supports those decisions with context. And not stretchy-elastic context that's really trying. BioShock delivers its characters and story smoothly. Very well done so far. I have only a few chapters to go and then I'll be done. I reckon Saturday night, maybe Sunday.

Crap. I'm hungry and I already brushed my teeth.

Alright, bed now. I'm really tired.

That's How We Roll - Under the Hat #4 - The Mayor of Las Vegas, Part 2
[32min 44sec] This finishes up the conversation with Lenny from our chat at the GAMA Trade Show 2008 in April. In this episode, you'll hear more conversation about the Dresden Files RPG, as well as a discussion about differing perspectives on Vincent Baker's In a Wicked Age.

You can find the episode here:
http://thatshowweroll.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=339804

Don't Rest Your Head inspiration
I saw the 30 second version of this commercial a while back and -- well, honestly, I can't remember if I've shared it before. But! I don't think I've seen the 60 second version ever, and I just love the weird they crammed into a minute here:

Food for Don't Rest Your Head, I think.

Damn it!!
Just as we reach the climax of tonight's scenario, I have to rush to catch the train back into Birmingham.

Otherwise a successfull Call of Cthulhu scenario. Managed to find a Mythos expert who aided us in dismissing a beast all the whilst keeping what little knowledge we possessed from the loon that is our Mr. Warburgh, being played by a grandstander if ever these was one. Whilst I have as a player a tendency to horde items of interest, I was desperate here that they not fall into his hands and his misuse... Hopefully there will be SAN rewarded next week.

My stats
A decent number of posters, several of whom I don't know. Nice to see that the NM contigent is keeping their end up.
( Who comments the most on this journal? )

VICTORY FOR MARYLAND
So, there's a gamestore in Glen Burnie, Maryland -- Games and Stuff -- that just signed up for a retailer account at IPR: http://www.gamesandstuffonline.com/

This is IPR's first retailer in the entire DC area (all of Virginia and Maryland combined, in fact). Dream Wizards kept dropping the ball on talking to me, so on the recommendations of a few of you folks I reached out to G&S as a good second option for the Maryland side of things. G&S responded very quickly -- I sent the email, like, yesterday or so -- and what with HeroCon happening at their store in early November, I can definitely see building a partnership with them in the coming years. Plus, they're decently close to

rob_donoghue, so I'm pretty excited about that.

Anyway, Ed from Games & Stuff says he'll probably be placing an order in the next week or so, so if you've got any special orders let them know -- or drop on by in early June when I figure stuff will be on the shelves!

RIP John Phillip Law

John Phillip Law died today at 70. Among his famous roles were several of my favorites: Diabolik in Danger: Diabolik, the angel Pygar in Barbarella, Alexei in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and Sinbad in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad..

I had surgery today!
So, I had this sebaceous cyst in my upper left back that was basically a sweat gland with an attitude. It gave me the mutant power that allowed me to moonlight as Stink-Back, wreaking smelly justice on criminals everywhere. But with this power also came the curse... of occasionally getting assaulted by the stench of crimefighting power myself!

So I had my power taken away. I know it's a serious issue for a lot of mutants out there, but honestly, I can fight crime in other ways.

... In other words, I had an outpatient surgical procedure done today. Got to see the cyst after it was taken out and everything. Fascinating and gross!

The surgeon in question was Dr. Bobby David down in Takoma Park. If you're in the Maryland area and need some kind of outpatient surgery done, I cannot recommend this guy enough. He's been very understanding, very laid back, and very competent throughout. My appointment was at 1:30pm today. I was done -- back out the door, cyst removed, percocet prescription in hand -- by 2:10pm. Unheard of. And overall, given that it was SURGERY, a very pleasant experience.

Horror Business
Man, this year is just flying by. How can June be approaching already? How can Ropecon and GenCon be right around the corner? How is it was like 50 degrees a couple of days ago and it's supposed to be 90 tomorrow? The hell.

Without really being conscious of it, I've been on a bit of a horror kick lately. It started musically, as I've been frequently listening to Danish psychobilly stalwarts the Nekromantix and the Horror Pops. I finally realized what it is about the Nekromantix I find endearing. It's that their over the top, B-movie lyrics really remind of classic Misfits. I've kicked off almost every day at work for the past week with "Gargoyles Over Copenhagen." The Horror Pops, who share a member with the Nekromantix, also should not be underestimated. "Walk Like a Zombie" is awesome. Their non-conformist anthem "MissFit" is also great. It's got a ska flavor, which is only fitting when they break into the tune from "Our House" by Madness but sing instead, "My fist--in the middle of your face!"

I also just finished reading the first volume of Fall of Cthulhu, a comic by Boom Studios. It takes your basic Lovecraft storyline and updates it to the modern era. Not groundbreaking by any means (which I guess is par for the course with Lovecraftiana), but enjoyable and has a couple of good twists. I've got Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah on deck. This is a new title from Mike "Hellboy" Mignola that takes place in Victorian London and is said to be "reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, H.P. Lovecraft, and Captain Ahab." Sounds good to me.

Current Music: The Misfits "Horror Business"