DnD kitteh morns loss of Gary Gygax (1938 – 2008) without whom the world would never aspire to live in fantasy.
From Dork Tower:
From Penny Arcade:
From GU Comics:
Edit: Added one.
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Gary Gygax has passed away.
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/report-gary-gyg.html
He is, and will continue to be, known best as the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, three little books that became a whole new world of gaming. Like many fans, however, “I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else.”*
I don’t have many personal memories of Gary Gygax. I barely remember a time when I was very young and we stopped to see some friends during one of our summer convention roadtrips. It was late, dark already in fact, when we arrived. All I can remember is the meeting outside, and I’m not sure who was there, or even if he was there, but I seem to remember it was him and Tom Wham.
However, despite the one thing he’s remembered for, Gary did much more. In the ’60s he was involved in the International Federation of Wargamers, which my dad was also involved in. It’s during that time that a set of medieval miniatures rules took shape that my dad’s game company “Guidon Games” published as Chainmail, which sparked D&D. He also served as the miniatures editor for Panzerfaust magazine when my dad took it over from Don Greenwood (and possibly before then, I don’t know), as well as designing Alexander the Great which was reprinted by Avalon Hill, and several sets of miniatures rules, published by both my dad and Gary’s own company “Tactical Studies Rules” (TSR).
He of course kept active after D&D and TSR, but I’m not as aware of it, as it doesn’t impinge on my personal history and interests as much.
An old interview, republished: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/03/04/dungeons-dragons-cre.html
Q. Thanks for taking the time for the interview, not to mention for creating Dungeons & Dragons.
A. Welcome, and my pleasure to oblige.
Thank you very much, Gary. For everything.
*From GameSpy: http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538817p3.html
Shared files: SAGA FAIL
Sharing a file is supposed to let several people open, work on, and update/save a file at the same time. A tall order, but somehow it’s always worked in Excel 2003.
However, 2007 just breaks. Claims it’s locked when opening. Saying ‘notify me when it’s unlocked’ gets it into shared status after a couple minutes, when it notifies you it’s unlocked. However, trying to save at that point locks up Excel for a couple minutes (during which you can see the standard title bar peeking out from behind the new style they put over it), and then tells you the file is locked. If it’s shared it can’t be locked, that’s the entire point.
Feh.
(And yes, you can quote me on that.)
GMT recently put out a tentative schedule of what will be released over the next several months, going into next year. Of especial interest to me are Blackbeard, due out in April/May and Successors III (which I preordered) due in July. Also, Onward Christian Soldiers sold out a little while ago, but they’ve put a few copies up for sale in ziploc bags. (Mark, might be your last chance! ^_^)
MMP reports that they’re done shipping preorders of Valor of the Guards, Case Blue (darn, I was vaguely thinking of preordering), and The Devil’s Cauldron is currently shipping. On top of that, they’ve got four products at the printers, a reprint of ASL Starter Kit 2, South Mountain, Rock of the Marne, and Warriors of God.
ADB is has several products they’re working on right now. They just sent an order for counters to the printers. On the SFB end, this includes counters for X1R: More X-Ships and Y2: Early Years II (with the early ISC, as well as more of the other races), and Omega 5: Gunboats. After some outcry from the fans, a couple ships were pulled from Y2, and may end up in a ‘Middle Years’ module, which has been proposed by a few people on occasion, but not seriously considered until now. Since the early ISC features multiple races that only later unified (like the Federation), there’s several new ship designs, and ADB has a deal with ICE to use some miniatures from their Silent Death game. In addition, ICE is going to do a Silent Death supplement for the Star Fleet Universe. And Federation Commander: Distant Kingdoms, the next boxed set, (Lyrans and Hyrdans) is due out in the next month, they just shipped Briefing #1 (what can we do that won’t require counters), and Orion Pirates is due out later this year.
I typically don’t talk about work, here or elsewhere. One, it just isn’t a big part of my mental space, and two, it’s a very good way to stay out of trouble.
However, this needs pointing up:
http://www.notebookshopper.com/
(And click on the ‘blogs for students’ link…. ^_^)
It’s an effort to get around just how big and institutionalized things can get, and experiment with new ideas on a lighter, flexible website.
On another note at work, they’ve been busily upgrading everyone to Office 2007 around here.
General first reaction? Yuck.
To be fair, if I had gotten used to the new UI first, I think I’d be fine with it. There are some very nice things to go along with some not-so-bright choices.
Basically, they’ve gotten rid of both the top menus and the little customizable button bars, and replaced them with a ‘ribbon’. It’s a nice bit of UI overall, basically being a graphical version of the old menus, and does a good job of clearly presenting a lot of options that were buried before. One fun fact: When you hit ‘Alt’ on a Windows machine, it wants to go into the menus and is expecting shortcut inputs from there. On this version, not only is this true, but the actual letter shortcuts appear on the ribbon, so that you can actually figure out how to use it.
But it is new, and different, and a lot of things are not immediately obvious. Also, the old buttons were fully customizable, and the ribbon is set in stone. All you can define is an extra row of quick buttons along the top.
Also, there is a new default font for all portions of Office, Calibri. It’s designed to display well on LCD monitors. I kind of like it, but… 1) I have a CRT at work. 2) I do not care for the idea of a sanserif font being the default for Word.
So, ‘shows work, needs thought’ so far. I feel no need to upgrade from Office 2000 at home.