Sandeberg Rising

Glenn Feron – The Art of Retouching

Fascinating site. Basically choose a thumbnail to see a pretty fashion-style picture. Then hover the mouse over the picture to see what it looked like before it was retouched.

It turns out Photoshop, not make-up or diamonds, is a girl’s best friend…

BBC NEWS | Education | ‘Men cleverer than women’ claim

Proof at last!

Okay, the statistics mean absolutely nothing, especially when qualified by statements like there is evidence that at the same level of IQ, women are able to achieve more than men “possibly because they are more conscientious and better adapted to sustained periods of hard work”. But that doesn’t mean I can’t use the BBC News website to wind people up.

technorati tag: misogyny

BBC NEWS | Technology | Pupils learn through Myst game

I found this interesting. The game Myst being used in class to improve visual literacy skills for children. The results?

The national average attainment of Level Four literacy levels for that age group is 75%. At Chew Magna, the number attaining Level Four have shot up from 76.5% in 2000 to 93% in 2004.

What is more convincing is the level of achievement for boys. The national average for Level Four achievement has stayed at 70% between 2000 and 2004. At Tim’s school, the figure has gone from 66.7% to a full marks score of 100%.

technorati tag: education

It’s cheating somewhat, but I’m going to repost an article I originally wrote for Endless Games.

So far Wizards’ Eberron setting has been sadly neglected in the world of comuter games, despite a great deal of potential. Even the the extensive Neverwinter Nights module community has as yet not created a single Eberron module. This article examines the current situation of Eberron computer games.

We’ll begin by looking at the Neverwinter Nights situation. Although Eberron has been out for well over a year and the fact that the NWN module writing community is extensive, there have been no Eberron modules created so far. This is presumably down to several reasons. Firstly, the Eberron adds a three new races, which would be hard to impliment. In fact one of those races uses psionics, another feaure that core NWN does not have. Add in the extra prestige classes, spells feats and a new core character class, the Artificer, and you have quite a lot of hacking to do to create some of the components of Eberron that give it it’s unique flavour from a rules perspective. As for the flavour Eberron from an atmosphere perspective, while the setting has the opportunity for dungeon bashes, the setting really shines in urban, high-roleplaying scenarios. These are always harder to code using the Aurora toolset. Finally of course, Eberron is a D&D 3.5 setting. While this would not be critical, it is certainly a factor

It was hoped by some that Neverwinter Nights 2, due in 2006, might have an Eberron single player campaign, this was quickly quashed by Obsidian, pointing out that it was in fact Neverwinter Nights 2, and hence would continue to be set in the Forgotten Realms setting, in the environs of the city of Neverwinter. NWN2 will be based on the 3.5 Edition rules-set, which removes on potential obstacle for the writing of an Eberron module. Beyond that, it will be interesting to see if the new toolset makes the adding of Eberron specific content any easier.

Then we have the specific Eberron games. Foremost of those we have the much delayed Dragonshard. Dragonshard is a real-time strategy game, set in the world of Eberron. Reviews and previews have been excellent so far, but delays have been stacking up. It was originally due to be released in June 2005, but has now been delayed to September 23rd 2005. Here’s the official blurb about the game: As players direct troops over the land, they also plunge smaller, hero-led parties below ground to an RPG-modeled world of beasts, battles, and bounty. Experience and items gained in this underworld result in great powers and abilities above ground.

Using magic, weaponry, and skilled maneuvers, players command armies from varying races to control, protect–or destroy–the powerful Heart of Siberys. Obtaining this omnipotent artifact will unleash its full forces, good or evil, upon the entire world.

And finally we have perhaps the biggest announcement in Eberron computer games. Turbine Games is writing Dungeons & Dragons Online a D&D based MMORPG set in the world of Eberron. The release date for this mammoth project is provisionally set to the second half of 2005. Realistic estimates put the relase date at around christmas time and beyond. It will be interesting to see how this game fares, as it has stiff compeition from a great number of fantasy based MMORPGs, like Everquest, EQ2, Guildwars etc. Comparing the results of past MMROPGs, we look at DDO with some trepidation, as it would be a shame to see this project turn into another endless dungeon crawl, killing endless monsters for experience and ph4t l00t.

So there you go. It all looks a little pessimistic doesn’t it? Hopefully the next update on this topic will be a little more optimistic.

technorati tag: roleplaying

Carrie’s Random Musings – Anne Coulter

Anne Coulter, darling of right wing America and general whack job. You’ve got to love her. Okay you don’t, but I often find myself reading what she says so I’ll be there when she finally says “Surprise! It was all supposed to be ironic, you moronic simpletons! Nobody really believes drivvel like the crap I’ve made a fortune writing about!”

I may be waiting a long time. But I can wait…

technorati tag: anne coulter

Just thought I’d give you all an update on all the games we play, have heard of or that I’m involved in, in some way, especially for those people that don’t read my blog. (Although I will copy this there, just because I can)

Aberrant

• As you all know, we’re back to playing this on Saturday the 3rd of September.
• Although Penny has created a character, she won’t be joining us as the trip to Kev’s is an expensive one.
• It is now possible to register multiple characters on Endless Games using the same email address, so you can have one account per character in the various games. The forums are at your disposal.

Eberron

• This is on ice for now, as I want to get back into running Vampire. Sorry.

Vampire

• If all goes well, nobody has to rush off and people’s hangovers aren’t too bad, the next Vampire game is on Sunday the 4th of September
• As above, Penny won’t be there, her character will be NPCed until she’s ready to rejoin us.
• The EG statement above applies here too.
• There has been an update to the house rules that apply to my WoD games.

Symposium/En Garde PBEM

• Development is frozen for now due to something else I’m working on.
• However I still have all the materials, this project isn’t dead.

Lethe

• This is the other thing I’ve been working on.
• I’ve been converting Lethe to use Storyteller rules and putting all the background online.
• There’s still more to upload, edit and add to (but I am getting through it as I have nothing to do at work just now), but once it’s in an okay state I shall make an announcement on EG for those that are interested.
• That doesn’t mean it’ll be finished at that point. There will be plenty to refine and a lot of Lethe is still in my head and not documented.
• Having given things some thought, I’ve decided that Global Frequency fits quite neatly into both the WoD (with the odd modification) and Lethe (with virtually no modification). I will be adding some systems and background for this onto EG in parallel with the rest of the Lethe material.
• I’d like to get into running Lethe, but I don’t want to sacrifice my 6 weekly day of Vampire. Any suggestions as to what other day (even midweek) or location could be used?

technorati tag: roleplaying

On civil liberties, video violence and hanging offences | The Register

I didn’t want to draw attention to all the letters on this page, just the following:

I wonder how long it’s going to be before some grey hat hacker get’s it into his head to release a worm whose sole purpose is, upon infection, to install one of the various freeware firewalls. Wouldn’t it be ironic?

I must admit I like the idea.

Yar! A pirate based MMORPG ahoy! Pirates of the Burning Sea looks great! I’d better make as much of my time with Penny as I can in the next few months, because Pirates is due out in Winter…

technorati tag: pirates

Swedish library lends out gay Muslim gypsy | The Register

Words fail me. A Swedish library will lend out people for a 45 minute chat in the cafe in the hope of combatting people’s prejudices. Interesting, yet disturbing.

Endless Games is down again due to server issues. Dammit! Combined with the graphics library problem which is preventing uploads to the Gallery and the problem with sending email from the site, it’s like being hosted by Stu, except I’m paying for the priviledge!

Time for a strongly worded email methinks…

Update: We’re back up again. Though I’m still sending them a harsh email…