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I have to give a shoutout to Railscasts, a screencast series by Ryan Bates, which is made of Awesome. As might be guessed, the subject is Ruby On Rails programming. In each episode, he talks about one specific subject (be it a technique, plugin, gem, or whatever) and shows how things work. I typically at least try out most of the things he talks about, often adopting them permanently for my own use (sometimes not; I’m not wild about Cucumber for example).

Many of the episodes are also available as “asciicasts”, for those without required video codec etc, and/or for those who want easy cut+paste access to code.

Without exaggeration I can say that at least half of the advanced Rails techniques I’ve learned (and sometimes forgotten) over the past few years have been due to Ryan’s screencasts. So… thanks, man. Keep on rocking.

Spent a lazy weekend (those are nice now and then) and mostly just read some books and watched some TV shows. Oh, I did do some light “useful” stuff (mowed the lawn, cleaned kitty litter, washed some clothes, installed a crypto partition on netbook, organized some backup stuff)… but mostly, I took my cues from the cats. That is, eat and laze around.

Some quick notes on a few TV shows. First off, Dollhouse, Joss Whedon’s new series. It’s been getting so-so reviews, and after watching the first four episodes a month or so ago, I wasn’t totally thrilled either. I mean, it was ok, but it didn’t really grab me. Well, now I watched the rest of the series and I’m happy to say it improves, a lot. I’d say episode six (“Man on the Street”) is the turning point, that episode and the stuff after it puts things in gear. It’s still not in the “utterly fantastic” category, but it is very good. I’m looking forward to season two, this first season ends on a very interesting (and somewhat unexpected) note.

I think that the most interesting thing about this series is the intentional shades of gray it plays around with. Sure, what the Dollhouse does is prostitution. However, the “dolls” are (to some extent) volunteers, and they are compensated very well. The Dollhouse is presented as a very ambiguous entity… in some ways, it’s the antagonist here, and in others, well… it’s hard to say. There is also a lot of plot centered about the fact that we really don’t know who is on which side, or even what the “sides” are. To be honest, I suspect many of those issues are a bit too complex and uncomfortable for the large audience (“what? no simple good/evil? me no play!”), but the good thing is that after a very slow start, the series works fine as “just” an action/intrigue series.

Secondly, I have to just remark on how much I’m enjoying Burn Notice this season. The show seems to have found its tone and it’s just a huge amount of fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but neither does it give in to crazy-comedy. The subtitles that appear next to characters during freeze-frame moments are often hilarious… I’m still chuckling over “Michael’s worst nightmare” overlaid on top of a certain police officer.

Good lightweight spy action stuff. Just the thing for lazy summer weekends.

Up to around this book, most of the Heavy Gear game line has been quite planetbound. This is a deliberate design decision, and a good one imho. However, at this point in the storyline things are starting to heat up in space, too, with the Black Talon teams doing missions to Caprice and the CEF continuing to send spies and resources to Terra Nova via micro-Tannhauser gates. As a result, the game starts to need rules for space operations and combat… and that’s exactly what this book provides. Despite the title, Tactical Space Support isn’t a miniatures supplement (the word “tactical” usually means that in HG books), it’s a rules supplement for the roleplaying game.

Despite being a fairly thin book, it’s crammed full of info – like most Heavy Gear books. We’re given details on the most common ships in the Terra Novan fleet, some basic details on gate travel, and lots of nitty gritty about equiment, operational detail and training. Also included are additional rules on how to handle vacuum exposure, microgravity environments and such. As par for the course for Heavy Gear, it’s firmly in the “hard scifi” department and fairly realistic – well, assuming you allow for “physics cheats” like the Tannhauser Gates that make interstellar travel possible in this game. There is no artificial gravity, and space is utterly deadly to those without proper equiment and/or proper training.

This is a fairly straightforward book. Very useful if you want to send your PCs into orbital environments or even further out, and in the “interesting read” category even if you intend to stay planetbound.

The world is all around us
The days are flying past
And fear is so contagious
But I’m not afraid to laugh

I could go at anytime
There’s nothing safe about this life
I could go at anytime

– Neil Finn, “Anytime”

When I opened my browser today I got the same main headline from all the news sources: Michael Jackson Dead. I should not be surprised, the man has looked like a walking zombie for all too many years. Still, I sort of am; he wasn’t all that old, and it was… sudden.

I’m no Michael Jackson fan, but neither am I a hater. I remember when Thriller came out, way back when. I was (more or less) in the Finnish equivalent of high school, and I remember how cool the album was. I also remember the videos, which were extraordinary at the time. Haven’t followed his career musically much after that… but I haven’t been able to avoid reading about his troubled life now and then. He was just such a strange, sad figure; like Britney Spears, an object lesson of what too much money and fame coupled with limited mental stability can do to you. In the end, he looked more like a movie monster than a pop star, due to way too much (failed) plastic surgery and who knows what medication. About the other accusations… I don’t know. The thing with accusations of sexual molestation is that it doesn’t really matter whether the court finds you guilty or not, you’re branded guilty in the public eye anyway. Most of the “Michael Jackson jokes” going around have to do with child molestation. Is that deserved? Hell if I know. I guess I’ll just go with “speak no evil of the dead”. I always found the later Jackson to be a… sad figure.

Sudden death is jarring. I’ve lost one very dear person due to that, and it’s a shock I hope (perhaps in vain) to never repeat. You hope to die of extreme old age (with your mental faculties still more or less intact), surrounded by people you love, having outlived all your enemies (if any). That might happen, if you’re lucky. Or you might get run over by a car the next day, with no warning. Baji-naji.

Worrying about that is useless and counterproductive. Living a reasonably healthy life is smart, getting enough exercise is crucial… but other than those obvious points, you don’t have all that much control. Avoiding fun things just because they are a bit dangerous makes no sense to me, because doing that misses the point. At some point you will die, and there is no life after that (sorry, religious people, but that’s how it almost certainly works out). What matters is how you lived, what you did for other people, how the world remembers you.

Life is damn short and damn long at the same time. The world is wide.

Great SF Stories 11 is the last book I have in this series, the series itself being a one-book-per-year look at “classic SF”, as picked by Asimov & Greenberg. The quality of the stories has varied among the books, but I’ve usually found at least a few stories to really like in each. Sure, these are old stories, but many of these “later” (1950-ish) stories are actually ones that I’ve read before, in lots of other anthologies. In fact, I grew up reading a lot of these, so there’s quite a bit of nostalgia factor – and of course it’s interesting to read these now as an adult, I’m pretty sure I’m interpreting many of them differently now. Or at least I hope I am.

Anyway, this is one of the better books in this series (of the limited number I have and have read). Theodore Sturgeon, Lewis Padgett (i.e. Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore), James H. Schmitz’s classic romp “The Witches of Karres”, Clifford D. Simak… all the stories here are at least enjoyable, some are excellent. Asimov’s editorial “voice” is still as self-centered and annoying as ever, but Greenberg compensates for that.

For people interested in classic SF stories, this anthology series is a good bet. Not all of the stories are brilliant (the “SF” field was still developing and “pulpy” at the time) and the cultural mores of the times can lend bizarre extra weirdness at times… but that’s part of the charm. Out of print now, though, so used-book stores or eBay is the way to go.

…and so we have the new Legacy of Fire adventure path swinging into gear, with House of the Beast (by Tim Hitchcock) forming part two of six.

It’s a dungeon crawl… but it’s a fairly interesting one, partly because it’s not really a “dungeon” crawl, more of a “temple crawl”. Some thought has been put into making the temple at least somewhat realistic, so instead of random monsters forming encounter after another, you instead get a living society (which is not necessarily 100% hostile towards the PCs) with multiple factions. This, to my mind, adds considerably to the interest level. In a somewhat unusual move, a long period of downtime is specified to have happened before this installment. The idea is that the PCs have “liberated” a small town from the clutches of gnoll raiders, and now they have actually been given time to build on that – build reputations, perhaps help govern the place, make friends (or enemies). Another nice touch.

The story, this time, starts when a wandering priest enters town limits and warns of a new growing gnoll war horde gathering at a far-off temple, under the leadership of the self-styled Carrion King responsible for the earlier raids. The PCs could just wait for them to attack or they could take the fight to them. It’s assumed that PCs choose the latter option, which to be honest is quite likely; especially so since the priest has some additional information which makes attack a tempting option…

I mostly liked this. Even though it’s a “dungeon crawl” as noted, it’s a fairly interesting one and there are lots of opportunities to make the PCs’ overland voyage to the “House of the Beast” an interesting one. I actually have only one niggle here: the planned actual goal of the module (which isn’t what the PCs/players imagine it is). Without giving away spoilers: the plot assumes that the PCs find something at the temple, something that is of key importance to the rest of the adventure path. What if the PCs just do the usual “kill & loot” routing and don’t find/notice the critical thing? At that point, some creative GM juggling will be required. To its credit, the adventure does note that this is an issue, and that the GM needs to have some alternate plans ready.

So, with 2 installments accounted for, Legacy of Fire looks like a very fun “Arabian Nights” -style adventure so far.

…was fun. We didn’t really intend to hold a party as such, but that’s kinda sorta what happened. Lots of people came over, tons of food was grilled and eaten, and large quantities of alcohol were imbibed. The weather didn’t really cooperate, but sauna compensated pretty well.

The thing where you notice you’re getting a bit older is that it takes you longer and longer to recover from aforementioned large quantities of alcohol. Our whole household spent Saturday in lizard mode, and I didn’t see much vigorous activity on Sunday either. That’s not a complaint, it was very pleasant to just lie around in the sun and read; when it got too hot I went inside and watched some TV show episodes on the computer. At some point we were wondering if we needed to go buy groceries for Sunday… and then when we raided the fridge, we discovered we still have huge piles of leftover food there. So we cooked a meal of sausages plus steaks, along with a bacon-vegetable hash thingy. Oh, and some grilled corn. Yum. Life is good.

Managed to finish watching Dexter season two (good) and started watching Chuck season one (no-brains-required spy comedy, not-bad entertainment). Also noticed that Burn Notice season three has started, the first few episodes were very enjoyable. I was a bit so-so on this show during season one, but it really grew on me during the second season. It’s still not in the “fantastic!” category, but it is good fun and seems to have found its stride.

“You know spies. A bunch of bitchy little girls.”

Death Masks is the fifth installment in the generally excellent and entertaining Dresden Files series. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, this time around.

On the plus side, the “metaplot” (if you will) seems to be slipping into gear; a lot of hints from the earlier books are given flesh here, and the world is becoming more complex and interconnected. Events from the previous book come back to haunt our hero, particularly a certain vampiric war he semi-inadvertently started, together with his almost-vampire ex-girlfriend. The Red Court wants to settle things and gives Harry a choice: duel their representative (to the death), or see his loved ones murdered. In case that wasn’t complication enough, a priest approaches Harry for help in recovering a stolen artifact. Oh, and some major-class demons are loose, too. Not to mention a headless body, which isn’t “loose” as such but is unidentified and possibly connected.

So yeah, it’s a page-turner like the previous books and a fun read. However, there were some niggles here that dropped it to less than perfect in my view. First off, while these books (and this sort of genre) always contains a certain number of “lucky escapes” and fortunate timings that stop the hero from getting splattered all across the room, here I feel there were a bit too many “last minutes saves” to feel believable. Well, as “believable” as a tale about mages, vampires, werewolves, ghosts and what have you will ever be, of course. Second, the artifact relating to one of the central plots here is the actual Shroud of Turin. Which has been stolen, and now somehow appears in Chicago. Well, sure, anything is possible… but really… the Shroud of frigging Turin? In Chicago?

In any case, it’s a fun read despite some small faults and I like how the Susan storyline advanced – lots of future possibilities there.

Fun to read Exalted material that I wasn’t too familiar with before. Sure, 1st edition had the Fair Folk, but that’s one of the (few) 1st ed books I haven’t read – so while I cannot compare this new incarnation with the previous one, it was an interesting read with lots of new info (for me, that is).

So, Graceful Wicked Masques updates the “Fair Folk” (or Raksha, at they call themselves) to Exalted 2nd edition. First off, I love that they used the “Graceful Wicked Masques” title; as far as I understand, it was the working title for the 1st ed book but they decided to scrap it for the more mundane “Fair Folk” at some point. Fans objected, and now it’s the main title of the new book. This is a hardbound “exalt” book in the fashion of the previous books, so while the major use for this book will no doubt be in fleshing out NPCs, creating Fair Folk PCs is quite possible… if not exactly easy, due to the alien nature of the Fair Folk. The implications of this are discussed in the book.

To people coming from other games: the “fair folk” of Exalted are far from “elves”/”fae” in most other games. These are alien creatures who don’t really strictly exist as such; in “pure” form they are just matrices of Essence (energy) with one of more “feeding maws”… which can eat things like memories, feelings, and your will to live. In order to come over to Creation they need to create a physical “shell” for themselves, but that (often beautiful) apparition has nothing much to do with the real creature. Or it does, since most Raksha create shells which embody concepts which they are associated with – and concepts & drama is what the Raksha live on. In a way, they are imaginary, brain-sucking LARPers from hell. They wear their virtues as physical objects, and are absolute lords over their domain in the Wyld. In Creation… they are still dangerous, but more limited. As alien as they are to humanity, they are also alien to their original kin, the “unshaped” Raksha dwelling in the chaos of the Deep Wyld. The Unshaped, now, are again something different and bizarre. More intelligent “locations” (to use the word losely) than single creatures, with shattered multiple souls, they bear some similarity to the Yozis… without the malignant history found there.

Exalted “cosmology” is both surprisingly internally consistent (for a high fantasy game) and complicated. The Fair Folk form part of the more complicated section, simply due to what they are. In case your brain doesn’t start to overload from trying to understand the “base” Fair Folk and how they operate, we also have the Shinma. What they are… is anyone’s guess. Some of them form critical junction points “between” the Wyld and Creation, but other than that… hard to say. One Shinma is a gate through which a Raksha can recreate itself in a form suitable for Creation… but it’s not quite that simple. And it’s not a “gate” in a physical sense.

So, like I said, complicated. I’m not complaining, since the convoluted nature of Exalted metaphysics is one of many the reasons I like the game. I’m given to understand that this 2nd edition is easier to understand than the 1st edition, which is famous for RSB’s typical style of graceful but convoluted descriptive text. My brain is still complaining from trying to understand the Forest Witches from the 1st edition description…

This was an interesting book to read, and gave me lots of ideas on how to (better) use the Fair Folk in Exalted. I’ll have to re-read portions if I ever do anything more complicated with them, though, understanding things like Shaping Combat isn’t totally trivial. Or, to be more exact: I get the idea (I think), but would need serious think time to figure out how to run it in a game.

The reaction to this book has been pretty positive among people who have read the 1st edition version, so apparently this is another successful update book.

The Black Talon book is the second of DP9’s tie-in books with an Activision computer game; this time, it’s a tie-in for the game Heavy Gear 2. I never played that one (or the first one), and apparently it doesn’t run well in Windows XP or later… I’ll just have to hope GOG or some such makes it available at some point. Anyway, like the first tie-in book this provides rpg background for the computer game and also acts as a campaign setting for a tabletop rpg game. It’s a pretty nifty setup, since it works both for people wanting background on the computer game and for people who just want a new campaign starting point.

This time round, things revolve around the new “Black Talon” program, the ultra-secret special ops teams that are sent to infiltrate Caprice and meddle with CEF forces there. So unlike most earlier HG stuff, this setting is deep into high-tech, high-skill special ops territory, with a space-based and off-world angle – deep insertion into hostile territory far from support, small teams which need to be extremely versatile and improvise and they go… in other words, a pretty great setup for an rpg campaign. Assuming you want to run a game where all the PCs are high-skill professionals right from the start, that is.

As a book, it’s pretty solid. It describes the events that lead up to the formation of the Black Talons and describes their (ever-evolving) methods of operation, methods of recruiting, and staging areas. A bunch of example NPCs (and possible player characters) are given, and there is also the customary long list of possible plot seeds and complications to them. The book finishes off with a list of technical specs for some new high-tech gears ( the “Dark” series), vehicles and other equipment.

Not bad at all. With this and some of the Caprice setting books, you could probably run a nifty “special ops commandos” game set on Caprice. There is also the option of including some space warfare (something that HG hasn’t had much of as a game line, previously), in case you want to either include some complications in transit to Caprice or if you want to focus on Talon missions in the Terra Novan system.