paulgorman.org/blog

Basic D&D 1983 style!

paulgorman — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:09:38 +0000

Wil Wheaton has drawn my attention the the fact that one may legally purchase and download high quality PDF’s of all the original basic D&D rule books. The PDF’s are only four bucks each.

Awesome, creepy quadruped robo

paulgorman — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:54:15 +0000

Holy crap! Imagine hiking through the woods, then seeing that thing walking towards you. When it slips and tries to regain its footing: very uncanny valley.

M. Mouse in public domain?

paulgorman — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:13:26 +0000

It looks likely that Mickey is in the public domain, contrary to claims made by Disney:

Brown went searching for flawed formalities — and found one. It was on the title card at the beginning of a “Steamboat Willie” cartoon that had just been rereleased on a 1993 LaserDisc honoring Mickey’s 65th birthday. [. . .] The key was location of the word “copyright” in relation to the name “Walt Disney.” There were two other names listed in between — Cinephone and Disney’s top studio artist, Ub Iwerks. Arguably, any one of the three could have claimed ownership, thereby nullifying anyone’s claim under arcane rules of the Copyright Act of 1909.

Software corrects comment grammer

paulgorman — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:05:30 +0000

We observed that non-technical staff with Internet access are more likely to use their computers to view and collect pornography than to post spelling corrections.

Heh.

Alan Moore interview

paulgorman — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:27:25 +0000

Check-out this interview with Alan Moore, in which the Wizard of Northampton reveals some nuts-and-bolts details of his writing process.

Dr. Horrible last chance

paulgorman — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:07:08 +0000

All three acts of Dr. Horrible are available now, but they’re only free to watch until July 20th.

WoW WTF?

paulgorman — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:13:00 +0000

In the release notes for the latest World of Warcraft patch:

Haris Pilton has launched a new line of bags and jewelry. Check her out in the World’s End Tavern!

It’s a joke, right? Right?

Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible

paulgorman — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:52:15 +0000

I have only just discovered that Joss Whedon (of Buffy and Firefly fame) will be launching a web series called Dr. Horrible. Excellent. The trailer is available now, and the first episode premiers tomorrow.

Fire on teh interweb

paulgorman — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:25:39 +0000

This week’s big internet kerfuffle sparked by BoingBoing is already dying down, but I’ve been entertained enough by the MetaFilter thread (already at +1200 comments) to point it out.

The short version is that, at some point in the last year, one or more BoingBoing employees (possibly Xeni) deleted all posts even mentioning sex writer and internet personality Violet Blue [NSFW]. This week, someone noticed that VB had been excised. BoingBoing offered no explanation, apology, or even—initially—acknowledgment of their actions.

Seeing as BoingBoing has campaigned for corporate transparency and against censorship, charges of hypocrisy were leveled. BoingBoing moderator Teresa Nielsen Hayden (of Making Light) was taken to task for “disemvoweling” comments critical of BoingBoing.

No one outside of BoingBoing (including Violet Blue) has any idea what caused the “unpublishing”.

Daily writing plan

paulgorman — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:30:39 +0000

I have been trying to write every day. I created a folder on my computer called “Daily Writing”. I name my files like 2008-06-20.rtf. In this way, I can track my goal of writing something everyday. I usually begin by writing a short diary-like entry. Second, I do free/automatic writing for a few minutes (but often I skip this). Then I write a short summary of what I plan to write for the day, such as: “Write the begging of an interview between Walter and Mr. Brown, which acts as a frame story for the John Stillcrane tall tale.” Then I try to actually write that.

So far, I’ve written on fifteen of the last 30 days. It’s not enough, but it’s more than I was doing before I had a structured plan. Also, lately I’ve gotten more and more usable text out of each session–less writing exercise, more writing.