Books
LMB for the Win
For the last few days I’ve been re-reading The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorite authors. It’s been almost ten years since I read this book for the first time and I’d forgotten just how good it is. The funny thing is that I’m only re-reading it because I recommended… »
Reading Group
I often wish that I could join a reading group that would be interested in reading the same kind of books that I enjoy. For example, I just finished reading Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget this morning and now I want to find out what other people, especially my tech-centric acquaintances think of… »
Sinfest
Sinfest is a webcomic by Tatsuya Ishida. I used to read it daily a few years ago but I lost track of it because I didn’t have an RSS aggregator at the time. A couple weeks ago, I found Sinfest Volume One at my public library, containing the first 600ish strips. I’ve been enjoying it… »
Oryx and Crake
Last week, I finished reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It’s a novel with a post-apocalyptic setting in which a man-made plague has ravaged our planet. At least one man has survived, the narrator, and we learn about his world and what led to its destruction. Margaret Atwood, though, does not write SF. She… »
Nook?
Barnes and Noble unveiled their branded ebook reading device today and it’s called the Nook. So, yeah, it has a silly name but what about the thing itself? Looking over the features, I think that the Nook is a worthy entry into the ebook reader market. It has some clever features like the touchscreen for… »
What I did with my day . . .
With part of my day today, I created a double sided quick-reference sheet for the FATE game that Peter is currently running for our group: http://www.jadettman.com/FATE_QuickReference.pdf . Unfortunately, FATE appears to be compact enough that I’ve got a bunch of extra room on one page. Now, I could put the minion and companion rules on… »
Reading List: the latest
As usual, I’ve been reading a few books lately. Here’s a little rundown: Snoop: I’ve been trying to read Snoop for a few weeks now but it’s been slow going. It just doesn’t hold together well. The book is nominally about the author’s research into what a person’s environment (the way they arrange things in… »
Work, then a trip to Madison
Yesterday, I spent the morning working on The Warbler which is the quarterly newsletter of the Friends of the Welty Environmental Center. The FWEC are a local group interested in maintaining and preserving the environment, conservation, and nature/environmental education. They also are the people in charge of fund-raising for the Welty Center. I do layout… »
Fun, with Indesign
I’m looking forward to playing in our post-apocalyptic Spirit of the Century game so, unsurprisingly, I created index-card sized character sheets and reference sheets for the game. So, as usual, I also share them with you: http://www.jadettman.com/ASotC_Jack.pdf http://www.jadettman.com/ASotC_Reference.pdf http://www.jadettman.com/ASotC_Reference2.pdf FYI, that’s my character, Jack, up there. Before the aliens destroyed our civilization he was an… »
Amber Influences
I’ve been thinking about Amber more lately due, I’m sure, in no small part to my work on Intro to Amber. What I’ve been thinking about today, specifically, is the non-Amber books that have influenced my thinking about the Amber setting: Jack of Shadows: a wacky, mythic precursor to Amber. You can see a lot… »