Oh mighty Internet: is there a preferred solution for streaming VIDEO_TS directories? Boxee does it but support is rumored to be flaky. Plex maybe does it? I can handle more or less any platform although OS X or Linux are more desirable.
Author: Bryant
This is ridiculously awesome. Gollancz decided to bring a lot of classic SF/F back into print as ebooks. More of this stuff should be out of copyright by now, it’s all DRMed, and two-thirds of it can’t be bought in the United States, but despite all that I’m really happy. Cordwainer Smith, Pat Cadigan, Kuttner and Moore — lots of books that should be available, and now sort of are. It’s cultural history that matters to my tribe. There are books I’m keeping in physical form just because who knows when someone will digitize all the old Gardner Fox? But efforts like this one make me hopeful.
A bunch of random games I’d like to run that could be campaigns of whatever length, in no particular order.
- Bookhounds of London, in Arabesque style. This itches my GUMSHOE urges. Fortunately Night’s Black Agents won’t be out for a while so there’s little competition for that chunk of my brain.
- Ashen Stars is also tempting, but a bit less so. I’d probably rather play this than run it. A bit of space opera would be fun.
- Some kind of superheroes maybe. Also more something I’d like to play. Icons, DC Adventures, not Champions probably. I keep wanting to do an emergent superhero world.
- Barbarians of Lemuria for sword and sorcery. Simple system, looks fun. I don’t even have a world in mind — I think you could probably just ad lib one.
- Day After Ragnarok, speaking of sword and sorcery. It’d also be nice to give Savage Worlds a good workout.
- That old Warren Zevon Buffy game I always wanted to run but never did.
- Nostalgiapire, now that I have Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition. I can’t imagine that it’d take more than four or five sessions to get the nostalgia out.
- The further adventures of The Black Library, my Dark Heresy conceit in which the Inquisitor is the guy who holds onto all the dangerous books. Which is to say most books. In this story arc, he is trying to retake his library from the dangerous Chaos servants who were his last set of agents.
- My fairly politicized not yet written up D&D 4e setting. Sort of Eberron in flavor, but with universities as another power axis and not so much of the magitech goop.
- Smallville, probably without the DC Universe trappings. I just wanna try the relationship maps.
If I think of anything else I’ll add it. I’m sure there’s something I want to use Reign for.
Matthew Yglesias goes to England for an example of aggressive tax warfare. Good example, but come on, it’s a European Communist Party, so how applicable can it be to the US? I say we look at a program suggested by a United States Senator in the same era. Cap personal fortunes? Sure, why not? Mind you, the guy ran Louisiana as a dictator — but that’s what real class warfare looks like.
As always: thank you, world.
Not that I saw too much of the city. My business contacts took me to Pasta e Basta on Friday, but Saturday I was laid out with a nasty cold and it’s still bad enough so that I don’t feel like going into the city. Sad. The pasta was pretty good, though, and the singing waitresses were keen. They ranged from Mozart to Dolly Parton. Musically, I mean.
Now I’m faced with entertaining myself for 9 more hours in Schiphol. Sad again. Changing the flight would run upwards of $300 and it’s just not worth it. I wonder if Starbucks would let me sleep on their couches?
I was in Frankfurt less than 24 hours so I don’t have a lot to say about that. Le Meridian Park is conveniently close to the central train station and my corporate hosts took me to a very nice Italian restaurant.
Frankfurt Airport is a pit of hell. In retrospect I should have figured out how to get to Amsterdam by train. Perhaps other gate areas are better, but D is an endless corridor with no waiting areas or shops; these things have been replaced by glassed up smoking areas that smell, even from the outside, like stale ashtrays. Bleak as anything.
I am currently relaxing in the lobby of the Schiphol CitizenM. It’s like an upscale youth hostel with relentlessly cheery staff, a canteen, and several doses of hipster. I like it a lot. Also free movies which will come in handy if I feel too sick to bop around Amsterdam tomorrow.
Some people blog from planes, some people blog from trains. I feel awfully civilized.
Cologne was great. The Excelsior Hotel Ernst, not a great business hotel, although possessed of quality service — but the location was unbeatable. Great food. Very nice beer. GDC was also quite useful; lots of vendor meetings, a few really good talks, and so on.
Gamescom really is that enormous. To put it into the context of my tribe, take the Gencon dealers room and fill it up with computer game booths outfitted by companies with money to spend instead of printing debts. Keep the 30 foot ceiling; you need it to fit the booth displays. Yes, that is a 120″ HDTV. Now turn up really loud techno from every booth. With me so far? Make the room a bit bigger. Good.
OK. Now make three more copies of that room and put them across the hall from each other. Also add five or six slightly smaller halls with less egregious booths for B2B stuff. That’s Gamescom.
Yeah, it’s my first computer game trade show. I reserve the right to be staggered. And I didn’t even see it tomorrow, when it opens to the public.
It’s the sweet taste of jet lag! I had plans to sleep as soon as I got on the evening plane out of Dulles, but with a lean-all-the-way-back traveler in front of me, that became untenable. So I watched Thor instead, which wasn’t half as bad as I expected it to be. Not a super-bright movie, but man, it’s got science fantasy vision in spades.
Schiphol Airport was huge. This is not an original observation, I know. But it’s worse than O’Hare! So that was interesting and new, even though the half an hour walk between gates was lengthy. But if you gotta do it, might as well do it at 4 AM body time, right?
In a fit of thriftiness I took the S 13 from the Cologne/Bonn Airport to Cologne proper, since my hotel’s right off the Hauptbanhof. The cathedral bells were ringing as the train pulled in, and they’re ringing right now. It’s a tremendous chunk of architecture.
Now I’m kind of killing time till 1 or so, at which point I’m going to wander out to a touristy biergarden and get some sausages, and then go pick up my conference badge. Then I’m going to try and stay awake more. There’s a sauna in the hotel but that sounds like a really bad idea in my current state.
I’ve added my Dreamwidth account to the crosspost list, under the assumption that you never know what’s coming down the pike. Own your identity.