Cast foam dungeon scenery material that you can cut and modify

Cast foam has been making its way into the game stores as a scenery material. I like it because it's lightweight but it takes details and paint well. It's usually too expensive for me, though, and I like to make my own stuff anyway.

Here's a product by a company called Thomarillion that provides a set of interlockable cast foam pieces, and takes advantage of the foam material's ability to be easily cut and modified, to create system that's a cross between Legos and a model kit.

Stories for kids, by kids, read by kids

Smories.

Homeland Security's active shooter pamphlet

This pamphlet was more gripping than many thrillers I've read. Seriously. This is about how to deal with a shooting in your workplace or wherever.

Lesser-known American civil wars

From Cracked.com, a funny list of real historical conflicts in the U.S. that you probably haven't heard of.

Sex and the City 2 review

I don't actually plan to see this movie, but this review made it all worthwhile.

One-handed keyboard

There was a time when I really wanted a pocket computer with some kind of chording/one-handed keyboard. Now someone has come up with a solution that doesn't require relearning how to type. When you hold down the space bar on this keyboard, you get the letters from the other side of the keyboard. For example, to generate an H with your left hand, you hold down space and hit the G key..which uses the pointer finger. Same finger, different hand. It's not that hard to do.


Has a great use for folks with a missing or injured hand...and they sell a half-keyboard version too. The interesting thing here is that the full keyboard can be used normally as well. You could also use it for carpal tunnel reasons....switching from two-hand to one-hand typing at any time.

Survey of the moral panic over D&D is like reading horror fiction

One of my hot-buttons is people linking D&D and other games to Satanism. I was completely caught up in this survey of the topic by Allen Varney, published on The Escapist....but I also found that reading this stuff depressed me as a review of people's stupidity. Still, I retain a morbid fascination with the topic, and Varney's a great writer. I was particularly taken with one item he mentions, The Pulling Report, a careful analysis of one mother who made herself into a game-Satanism expert for the courts, crusading against a problem that didn't exist, spreading lies as far as she could, apparently in an attempt to explain her own son's suicide, against all the available facts. That this woman was accepted by anyone as a credible expert is painful to read.

I don't remember that my Mom ever had any serious worries about D&D. Sometimes lurid pictures would bother her, perhaps. I can't see her ever taking any Satanist ideas seriously, and this from a seriously religious woman. Maybe she's always had too much faith in me to worry about such things. This is a nice thought actually. Good on you, Mom.

Traveller maps online

I feel I would be remiss in not mentioning this Traveller map web site, which displays maps of the Imperium and surrounding areas in any scale you like. It's enough to make me regret that I've never managed to actually play Traveller with any success.

My mother would not be interested in these maps, I know, but she'd appreciate how excited I got about them and make encouraging noises.

"Sundowning" by Joanne Merriam, a different sort of vampire story

"Sundowning" is about getting along in a tough world, so in that way it's universal. That the toughness comes from having to live in a postwar world where the vamps won the war makes it both terrifying and charming. Highly recommended. From Strange Horizons.

Man, if my mom knew how much I'd slacked off on blogging, she'd be upset. If she quite knew what a blog was. But I've been getting a lot of writing done. So there.