Press "Enter" to skip to content

Month: March 2018

The NFL Is Not About To End

March 31, 2018
Leave a Comment

No, wrong, no.

Yes, the new NFL rule is going to change the game on the field. But that’s OK. The game on the field is too dangerous. It won’t fix the danger completely. Who cares? Concussions are literally ruining minds. Any steps to limit this are good. It’s ridiculously reckless to complain about safety measures on the basis that the game will change in a way you don’t like.

Freeman quotes a player who worries that application of the rule might “throw out a star player that impacts a game.” Have you not been paying attention to how brutal this game is? Did you not see Gronkowski get knocked out of a critical playoff game by a helmet hit?

Freeman doesn’t read like he’s obtuse otherwise, so I imagine this is clickbait designed to get people like me all worked up. Bleacher Report, man, it’s the sports Web site I suppose we deserve.

Solosocks

March 30, 2018
Leave a Comment

It’s a personal blog, so it must be time for some minutiae of my personal life! Gonna get all 2005 around here. I’m gonna tell you about my socks.

Last year I picked up a bunch of Solosocks by way of Kickstarter. The gimmick is that they come in packs of 7 socks, and each sock has a slightly different pattern in the same general theme and color scheme. When you lose a sock in the dryer, it doesn’t matter.

My review is this: they’re a bit lightweight. Three months in I’ve already ripped a hole in the heel of one sock out of the 14 I bought. Other than that I like them a lot. They’re warm enough for Seattle winters, and if I’m going someplace colder, well, I have other socks available.

The larger sizes are sized large enough for big 11″ wide feet like mine. This beats the hell out of most interesting socks you can buy. Go Denmark.

Dice and Clocks

March 27, 2018
Leave a Comment

Apocalypse World introduced the concept of clocks to tabletop gaming. They’re basically a countdown timer; you increment the clock by a bit every time someone gets closer to a goal. They’re also used as health bars. Not insanely novel but it’s useful to have a visual representation of impending doom or success, as the case may be.

In my Bookhounds of London game this weekend, I ad hoc used a six sided die as a clock. I hadn’t been planning on it, but a chase scene arose spontaneously and the 13th Age escalation die came to mind, so I plopped down a six-sider with 1 showing. Then I said “OK, the one goon just vanished around the corner while the other goon stands to hold the hallway against you,” and flipped the die to 2. My players needed no other explanation.

So that’s a cool trick.