Archive for August, 2006
August 24th, 2006
Schools in fingerprinting row
Tens of thousands of children are being fingerprinted in school – often without the consent of their parents, a human rights group has complained. Prints are taken for a library lending system which the makers say makes lending more efficient and less vulnerable to abuse.
…
[Manufacturers MLS's technology director Stephen Phillips said:] “People who have nothing to hide – why would they worry?”
…
[The] government’s information commissioner does not believe the system is breaking any laws or conventions. Assistant to the commissioner, Phil Boyd said: “It is not in breach of the data protection act and it does not contravene the human rights act.”
So there you go, children being fingerprinted to protect library books and that wonderful quote of all quotes “You don’t have anything to worry about if you’ve nothing to hide” that still gets trotted out whenever anybody raises any concerns of any kind. How about this: If I’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got no business infringing my privacy.
tag:
privacy
August 14th, 2006
Well, the weekend was spent up in Milton Keynes. We stayed with Stu and Sam, who kindly fed, watered and housed us for the weekend. In between playing games, watching Serenity and generally hanging out, Penny and I went to
SnoZone in Xscape to brush up on our mad snowboarding skillz!
At first sight, the SnoZone is very impressive; imagine a big aircraft hangar with a decent slope and real snow. There’s a teaching slope and 1-2 regular slopes, as well as jumps, ramps and a very narrow set of moguls. There was a fair bite to the air as the entire slope area was kept at snow temperature. The whole experience was quite reasonably priced, considering that you didn’t have to pay for equipment hire, often one of the most expensive parts of a ski-trip apart from the lift pass.
The first day we went, we just did two hours of recreational boarding to familiarise ourselves with the slope, to get used to the idea of being strapped to a board once more and to find out what standard we were actually at. The second day we went for a three hour fast track lesson which refined our techniques quite a bit.
Overall it was quite exhilarating and reminded us why we loved snowboarding when we first went in March 2005. We’ll definitely be coming back to the SnoZone in Autumn before going on a snowbound holiday in winter.
August 14th, 2006
So,
Promethean got released at GenCon last week (no reviews yet and I’m not sure I’m tempted), and
White Wolf decide to take the opportunity to make the following
World of Darkness announcement:
—
White Wolf is proud to announce the “5th Game” for World of Darkness will be Changeling!
As envisioned by developer Ethan Skemp, fans can look forward to a complex setting where your character faces new challenges and dangers not seen before in the World of Darkness.
When asked to describe this latest addition to the White Wolf’s product line, Ethan said, “Changeling is a game of beauty and cruelty, of passion and loss, of dreams and madness. You have struggled your way back through the thorns only to find your life had been stolen from you. Now you make your way the best you can, attempting to piece together the fragments of your life or to forge a new one, chasing your ambition through the intrigues of the chageling courts and freeholds, and always looking over your shoulder lest the Others, the true Fae, return for you.”
As additional details are released in the next twelve months, information will be posted for fans and retailers to share at
www.white-wolf.com/changeling
—
There you have it,
Changeling will be back in Summer 2007. While it had potential I never really got on spectacularly well. I thought it had holes you could drive trucks through, concept-wise, and never really properly fitted in to the World of Darkness concept. And now we have five ’species’ of supernatural in the NWoD: Vampires, Mages, Werewolves, Prometheans and finally Changelings. And you just know the product for 2008 will be Wraith: The Relaunch. And then? Well, there’s still the Demon: The Fallen and Mummy range they launched and re-launched, respectively, just before canning the WoD. Does the world really need so much? Is it profitable for WW? One would hope that if they’re going to release so much product that they’re actually making some profit out of it.
Of all the products release recently the ones I liked most were actually generic or semi-generic products. Firstly there is
Second Sight, a WoD book dedicated to psychics and non-awakened mortal wielders of powers arcane. Quite well balanced and very easy for me to slot into
Lethe. The second one is a recent release, namely
Shadows of the UK. The ‘Shadows’ range is intended to be focussed on a region, with a weighting towards one supernatural group, but with lots of generic information and info about the activities about the other supernaturals. The title in question is, of course, dedicated to the UK and weighted towards the werewolf side of things. The little snippets of story ideas and info about the other supernaturals in here is very good and, highly unusually, good enough to at times lift it verbatim and only screw around with it a little bit. I think the next in the range will be Shadows of Mexico which will have a vampire weighting. Less use to my campaign, but probably worth a look anyway.
August 10th, 2006
August 3rd, 2006
BBC News:
French fries are back on the menu in the US House of Representatives, three years after the name was ditched in favour of “freedom fries”.
“Our relations are much more important than potatoes,” she said.
technorati tag:
freedom fries
August 2nd, 2006
There are some very good name generators out there, most notably
Seventh Sanctum, but generally I’ve found them useless for modern European names. These days the ethnic make-up of European metropoli are very diverse, but name generators are either Anglo-Saxon or French. They in no way reflect the cultural diversity of 21st century urbanites. The French name generator will spit forth no Algerian names and the British ones will generate no Pakistani names. Very frustrating when you’re at bas as coming up with names on the fly during roleplaying games as I am.
If anyone can prove me wrong and either point me towards such a program or even write one based on census data, I’ll be most thankful. In the meantime, I’ll just have to use ethnically cleansed names for NPCs.
August 1st, 2006
Fantasy hero Gemmell remembered
Author David Gemmell, who has died aged 57, was recognised as the best – and bestselling – writer of heroic fantasy.
Neil Gaimain wrote of him:
“I just heard and was shocked stupid. “That can’t be right,” I thought, when I saw the headline at Locus Online. “He can’t be dead. I know him.”
My favourite David Gemmel conversation was about 16 years ago, in a bar in London. We were talking about writing and the freedoms of writing. And I’d just said that one of the things I liked best about writing was the freedom to write whenever I wanted. “Can you imagine,” I said, “there are writers out there who start at nine every morning, take a lunch hour and then type until five. And who won’t write on weekends. Why would anyone want to do that?”
And David, who was buying me a drink at the time, said, mildly, “That’s my working day, actually. But I start at eight thirty.”
Which taught me one of those lesson things, really. Nice man.”
