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LFR Mods I played everything new for LFR at DDXP except the epic. Brief, non-spoilery thoughts: The BI had a slightly less interesting story, but I thought it was better structurally. They had one special mission per encounter slot, which only one table could take; when more than one table wanted a given mission, they let the rest of the BI decide who should get it based on a brief speech. The special missions were level-band limited. Also, at the end of the the BI, the Coronal of Myth Drannor awarded unique items to randomly selected players. One of my friends got a special banner, and one got a pumped up version of the Bowstring of Accuracy that allows him to use any bow as a divine or arcane implement. You can give these items away to other players, but you can’t ever get them back. ...

I started with this: 2 eggs (used Eggbeaters to avoid raw egg problems) 1 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 cups whipping cream 2 cups half-and-half 1/2 cup 1% milk 2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla (original) The original recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of whipping cream, but I wanted to make it a tad less rich and they sell whipping cream by the cup, so it was simplest to just put half a cup of milk in. I cooked everything but the vanilla over lowish-medium heat till it hit 160 degrees, then poured it into a bowl over ice to cool quickly. The custard texture wasn’t super-thick, but it coated a metal spoon nicely enough. ...

I just realized that I am completely without a personalized letterhead.

I took advantage of a Christmas Amazon gift certificate to fill a few holes in my old Hong Kong movie collection plus make a gesture towards catching up on more recent Hong Kong flicks. I know the Hong Kong movie scene is never going to be quite what it was back in the day, but it’s not like the last decade was a wasteland or anything (original). I’m behind! Thus Susan and I watched Sha Po Lang last night. (You’d find it on US video shelves as Kill Zone; despite Miramax’s reputation and the horrendous new title, it’s an unclipped unmangled version.) Simon Yam was the big draw for me, cause I’ve always thought he’s a great Hong Kong character actor, plus it’s got a great rep, plus of course Sammo Hung and Donnie Yen. ...

The CEO of Evernote posted a followup on their Mac App Store numbers. Convenient; I was wishing they would today. The rush of new Mac users tailed off quite a bit but it’s still a big percentage. He’s gone from thinking that mobile usage drives Evernote to believing that “the presence of a well-formed app store is the single most important factor for the viability of a platform for third party developers.” ...

Hulu has the full run of Coupling (original); the British version, not the really bad American remake. Steven Moffat of Doctor Who current fame was the show’s creator, plus you’ve got Jack Davenport and Gina Bellman in every episode. You’ve sort of got to like sitcoms about people who are not entirely angelic, but it’s kind of sweet too.

I don’t post every new Fiasco playset that pops up, cause I maintain that list over on Claw/Claw/Peck, but Liquidation is too good to miss. Particularly since I was talking about how Borders was close to going under the other week. Crossings is one of the biggest bookstore chains in the country. Due to a changing market and (according to some) mismanagement, the company has been in pretty bad shape for a while. Now the other shoe has finally dropped, and Crossings has declared bankruptcy. All of the stores are closing, just as soon as they can liquidate enough of their merchandise. In the midst of it all, you’re going to become some of the employees and regulars, out to get the best deals (or steals), settled grudges, or maybe just get your life in order before the inevitable end. ...

Google hates H.264! H.264 is used almost everywhere, not just for Web video; it’s also the Blu-Ray encoding standard. So this is very exciting. Despite my knee-jerk pro-Apple response, I believe that Google is correct in stating that WebM is the better political choice for Web standards. It is open in the sense that there’s no licensing fee and Google has no ability to institute one. It is not an open standard insofar as the standard does not belong to an impartial standards body, which is slightly problematic, but practically speaking it’s not a huge deal. H.264 does, FWIW, belong to such a body. But it’s not free to license, and that is again the more important issue. ...

Short shameful confession: I’m kind of enjoying the hell out of the Horus Heresy books. Of course this is only because Dan Abnett is quite a competent writer and so on, but excuses aside, big serious people in powered armor are marching across the galaxy and falling to corruption one by one! I have never taken pleasure out of a Warhammer 40K Space Marine book before. Nom nom nom.

So there you go. 120 games in 365 days, which maths out to a game every three and a half days. That seems about right. Something like 28 of them were at cons, not counting the game days we ran at our place, which still leaves me at a pace of one game every four days. This may not have been entirely wise, since I’m a bit burned out, but it was fun. I regret very few of those sessions. ...