Small Golden Sceptre

Technology, Rambling and Dragons

Sherwood Forest Faire

Mar 11

Posted by dhenke in Autobiographical | 2 Comments

A new fair has sprung up in this great land of ours, and against all odds it shows every outward sign of being exceptionally good. Sherwood Forest Faire is running Saturday and Sunday through April 04 of this year. I attended the opening weekend (27, 28 Feb 2010), had a great time, and plan to go back at least one more weekend if schedule and weather permit went back on 20, 21 Mar 2010, and had an even better time despite cold weather.

More gushing praise, links and even a few pictures after the jump.

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Protected: Bounty of Sherwood

Mar 5

Posted by dhenke in Dragons | Enter your password to view comments.

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Why the Password-Protected Posts?

Mar 4

Posted by dhenke in Administrivia | No Comments

Things change, and change is bad.

One bad change you may have noticed is that a handful of the posts here are now password-protected. This isn’t something I’m especially happy about, since these posts are about things I think are cool, and which I want to share with everyone. But someone smart (and with a significant stake in the matter) made the case that these posts also leaked information which could put me and others at risk.

I’ve tried to adopt the most measured response that still fixes the problem: hide only the posts I have to, and put those behind a wall rather than destroy them entirely. While I hope this is the last time I’ll have to do this retroactively, we don’t always get what we want or expect.

If you see a password-protected article, and have reason to believe I know and trust you, then you can always send email and ask for the password. Unless that trust is already established, though, you’re wasting your time — if it were something I could show to just anybody, I’d already be doing that.

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Oxides of Nitrogen

Feb 15

Posted by dhenke in Dragons | No Comments

Kids these days and their hot-rod automobiles. What’s that? A dragon. Oh, well played sir. Well played.

From Wackii via Jalopnik.

Via Originally spotted on the incomparable That Will Buff Out.

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One Explanation for the Medieval Climatic Anomaly

Feb 15

Posted by dhenke in Dragons | No Comments

I present for your consideration what may well be the most inefficient possible method for getting rid of snow. However, it makes up in style what it lacks in practicality.

2.5MB AVI Video (locally hosted)

Via YouTube by way of Gizmodo.

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Why No Amazon Links?

Feb 10

Posted by dhenke in Literary | No Comments

Over on the philosophy page, I said I wouldn’t do political stuff here. And this is political — after a fashion — for which I apologize. I don’t intend to make it a habit. But on sober reflection, I’ve been doing something wrong, and it’s my responsibility to correct it, and to explain the reason for the change.

In brief, I’m removing all links to amazon.com from posts I’ve written here. Please read on after the jump if you’d care to know why.

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Protected: AggieCon 41 Art Show

Feb 9

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Duncan and Mallory

Feb 9

Posted by dhenke in Dragons, Literary | No Comments

As you know, Bob, Duncan & Mallory is a collaborative comic created by Mel White and Robert Lynn Asprin. Set in a not-quite-Earth fantasy setting of ambiguous place and time, it concerns the adventures of one Duncan (disgraced human warrior) and J. P. Mallory (small silver dragon temporarily between jobs). Released in 1986 by Starblaze, it never achieved the notoriety widespread recognition it (IMHO) deserves.

What you may not know (comma Bob comma) is that it is now being re-released, on the web, a bit at a time, for free. More details after the jump.

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Minor Site Outage 20100203

Feb 3

Posted by admin in Administrivia | No Comments

Tonight, 03 Wed 2010 from about 2000hrs to 2045hrs CST, we seem to have had an outage. Thanks to the staff at hostmonster for speedy detection and correction, and apologies to our two readers and forty-eight million spammers.

Additional information (if any) will be added to this post as it becomes available.

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Practice Random Acts of Disdainfulness

Jan 11

Posted by dhenke in Dragons | 4 Comments

Not this sort of text-based game.

Upstart start-up Choice of Games offers up a fine debut effort with the text-based (but tasty) Choice of the Dragon. Versions are available for the iPhone and Android, or you can play in your Javascript-enabled browser for free. The game owes some of its narrative structure to the old choose-your-own-adventure paperbacks, but adds some CRPG flexibility — mostly behind the scenes, so you need never worry about the mechanics.

In my opinion, more RPGs should track “disdain” as a stat. I certainly found this one worthy of repeated playthroughs. Via io9 by way of Gizmodo.

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