I recently won a contest to receive a prototype Dungeonmorph Die from the kickstarter campaign that I backed a few months ago. I had written about Kickstarter before, so I'll focus solely on the die I received from the project.

The Dungeonmorph Dice are six-sided dice that display a small, square portion of a dungeon on each side. The sides are numbered, so they can be used as regular six-sided dice, but their primary purpose is to be used to create random dungeons. You simply roll a handful of these dice, assemble them together (all of the flat edges will join), and you have a random dungeon waiting to be explored.

What I received today was merely a sample of the dice from the set - a single d6 die. The thing that surprised me most about the die (and I'm not sure why it should have) is the size. Each die is about as big as a quarter. This is quite a different beast from the other custom dice (which are called "custom" but usually are only customized on one side) shown in other Kickstarter projects (like the d6 dice from the Eaten by Zombies and Carnival board games -- Sorry, these links might only work for existing backers). The weight is about what you would expect for a die of this size, certainly not light, but not disproportionately so. The detail on the die is very good, everything is nicely rendered and there are no missing or misprinted details.

On the downside, the dice sides are slightly visibly concave. You probably can't see it in the photos, but if you're familiar with dice, you know what I'm taking about. The sides are just a tad indented. This does not detract from the design on the dice, and doesn't seem to affect the die at all, really. I assume that this is one of the last things that the manufacturer is trying to work out before their production run. Even if they don't, it probably won't bother you at all. But this brought me to my next discovery...

I wasn't ever assured (because I didn't ask) that the die would do this, but I was curious so I tried it. I tried to make a rubbing of the die face with a pencil. Sadly, this didn't work. The detail of the die was too fine for the pencil to pick up. If I rubbed it just right, it might be able to do it, but it was already pretty difficult holding the paper in place. It was a long-shot anyway, and certainly not practical.

Beyond that, this die is as hard to roll as you would expect a die of this size to be to roll. You might consider using a dice tower, which (in spite of being a long-time gamer that will spend money on practically anything) is something I don't own, and will now be looking for. You can roll them by hand, it just feels like you just need a bigger angle on the surface to do so. The die has better edges than most dice, therefore doesn't "roll" - which is usually a good thing.

All that said, this die is great! It's exactly what I was expecting from the Kickstarter project, and the quality is pretty darn good. If all of the dice in the set turn out this well, I'll be quite happy.

The Fitbit, as far as I can tell, is a perfect device. What is a Fitbit? Fitbit is a device and a website that you can use to track your physical activity. Yes, at first glance, the Fitbit is essentially an electronic pedometer, but it is actually a lot more.

Firstly, let me say that the Fitbit packaging design rivals anything Apple produces -- it's pretty. The box is small and contains a lot. You get the Fitbit device itself, the charging/syncing stand, a belt clip, and a wrist strap. To start, you install some software on your PC and plug the stand into a USB port. Registering the Fitbit device to your computer is simple. You set the device on the stand, press the button, and type the code that appears into the software on the PC. This simplistic setup is very much appreciated in the age of complicated devices. The Fitbit just works.

The Fitbit device will then work essentially like a regular pedometer, recording how many steps you take continuously. Unlike your standard pedometer though, it uses accelerometers - like those used to detect motion in a Wii controller - to detect steps with surprising accuracy and no moving parts. From there, everything about this device is different.

In spite of the use of the sync stand, this device is completely wireless. While I write this post, seated in my desk chair in front of the PC, the Fitbit is sending my step data to its charging base wirelessly. There is no need to put the Fitbit on the stand to sync the data. Every so often, the Fitbit needs charged. To do so, I place it on the stand, where it uses the USB power to recharge its battery. That's it. How long does the battery last? To be honest, I can't say -- I forget how long it lasts between charges because it lasts so long. I would say a charge can last two weeks easily.

The Fitbit has only one button. During the day, you can press this button to see how many steps you've taken. The device uses a relatively bright, blue OLED screen to show you its data. You'll see the number of steps taken after the display of the word "Steps" with some little footprints. If you press the button again while the screen is on, the Fitbit will cycle through multiple readouts, including calories burned, miles traveled, and a graphic flower that grows based on your walking/running performance for the day. The values that are stored recycle each day at local midnight, so what you see on the screen is only today's scores.

If you are away from the base station for more than a day, that's ok. The Fitbit will store several days of information internally, then sync them when you come back in range of the base station. Note that the Fitbit does not store only the day's totals, but also your activity within at least 5-minute increments for all of the days that it hasn't yet sync'ed. This was great when I went on a business trip, used the Fitbit while I was exploring the host city, and was able to record my walking activities effortlessly over the air as I walked in my front door.

Another feature of the Fitbit device allows you to hold in its button to record the start of an activity. So if you start a run, you hold in the button until the screen flashes with the "Start" flag, and then you run. When you finish your run, you hold the button in again to end the activity. All activities marked this way are separated out when you sync the data to the Fitbit website.

When the data syncs, it is uploaded to the Fitbit website. There, you can see your daily activities, broken down by light, moderate, or heavy activity level. It'll show you your activity for the day as an aggregate over the last 30 days, and will show you detailed information about steps, calories burned, and distance down to 5-minute granularity.

The website allows you to view and categorize your marked activities, as well as enter custom activities into the log, such as weight training or other fitness activities. The log includes a significant number of useful additional data points, including food calorie tracking (with an easy-to-use food lookup database), heart rate log, glucose level log, blood pressure log, weight log, and sleep log.

The sleep log is interesting because the Fitbit device is designed to integrate with this in a unique way. Using the included wristband, you wear the Fitbit on your non-dominant wrist as you go to bed. If you press and hold the activity start button before you fall asleep, the Fitbit will track not only when you actually fall asleep (using a process known as actigraphy, but will track how well you sleep through the night. In the morning, hold the activity button to mark when you wake up, and the site log will automatically trim the ends off for when you actually fell asleep and woke up, and record this as your sleep time.

There are a ton of other great features with the website and the device. One of my favorites is the integration of the Withings scale, which is a scale that wirelessly tracks and logs your weight and BMI to their website. There is also a mobile version of the website that exposes most of the features of the main site, for when you want to track activities while on the go. Premium features on the web site (these cost about $50 per year, while everything else I've mentioned so far is free after buying the device) include in-depth analysis of your logs and recommendations for keeping fit.

As I said, the Fitbit is just about flawless. I put mine through the washer once (which is explicitly recommended against), and it survivied. The second time, it made it through the dryer too, and it seems the water and heat finally killed it. I immediately replaced it with a new one; it's that good of a gadget.

The only things I could think to improve the Fitbit would be if it was slightly more resistant to accidental laundering, and if there was more integration. The integration feature with the Withings scale is fantastic, but it only makes me crave more, like integration with GPS (like the Garmin Forerunner) or heart rate monitors/loggers, and iPhone apps and websites like RunKeeper or Digifit.

While I have little UI quibbles with their website, and I'd love to see expansion in their integration capabilities, for the price of the device ($89 from Amazon - $10 off - if you use my affiliate link) and what a great and successful job it already does, I can completely overlook these things.

I'd say that the Fitbit is one of the best gadget purchases I've ever made, and its utility in pointing out the utter inadequacy in my daily physical activity is invaluable for getting me on the right fitness track.

There's no shortage of tablet devices available today, and demand for them seems pretty high. Scanning through Engadget, it seems like we've got a good stock coming in the future, too. The problem, as I see it, is that the future tablets that everyone is so excited about are exciting (at least to media outlets like Engadget) for the wrong reasons.

Tablet onlookers seem enticed by the latest versions of operating systems, faster processors, and additional cell network capabilities. The latest versions of iOS and Android certainly are improvements over prior versions, but they don't add anything groundbreaking or genre-defining to the fundamental features of a tablet. Faster processors are nice of course, but they also tempt battery drain, which is an essential, oft-overlooked feature of a tablet. The latest LTE connections are certainly alluring as our dependence on the cloud and correlating bandwidth needs increase, though the dependence on cell networks and their high-cost plans are strange things to look forward to. I think there are other things that we should concentrate on for producing the "fundamental tablet".

What you see

There's no denying that the Amazon Kindle is one of the best eBook readers on the market, and in my opinion, the best. It does so many things right. The size is perfect. The battery life is great. The WiFi connectivity is convenient. And although the display technology is pretty good, it could be improved.

The black and white display of the Kindle is a high quality e-ink screen. The screen of high-contrast, high-density black and white pixels is able to retain its state with a low- or no-power charge, and it's visible in ambient light. The combination of high resolution with low power consumption is what makes it so attractive. Nonetheless, the problems with it are obvious: The refresh rate on the screen is too slow, and the device does not display color.

The technology I've been looking at to replace it has been available for a while, and there even have been rumors that Amazon is looking into using it for their next generation e-reader. The technology is produced by Qualcomm and is called Mirasol. Mirasol retains the e-ink properties of low power consumption, high resolution, and daylight visibility, but adds color and a high refresh rate. The screens look a little odd because they're not what we're used to - LCD screens with bright, energy-eating backlights projecting images on our eyes - but they're easy to grow accustomed to.

Consider the form factor of the Kindle, also. It's small and lightweight, yet still contains all of the basic functionality of most tablets, being the ability to display data and to connect wirelessly to the internet. While an iPad may have more functionality, it weighs significantly more and is larger, and is only separated in functionality by what the Kindle allows its users to do and the capability of its processor. This is why I'm kind of disappointed by the recent announcement of the Android-based, backlit Kindle, since it almost certainly uses LCD.

How it works

The world needs a real tablet operating system. That's really all there is to it. Even though iOS and Android are running the game, neither are really well suited to the task. iOS was built with the iPod and iPhone in mind, and is great at playing minigame apps. But iOS apps don't talk to each other in an integrated way that would make them so much more useful. Android suffers from a number of problems, the most significant of which is the uninspired - and similar to early Linux operating systems - user experience design, not to mention the citadel-like app stores depending on which stingy manufacturer you obtained your device from.

Perhaps the best suited of the available mobile OSes for tablet use is WebOS, whose only hope of being useful in the future is if HP opens it to the world. Otherwise, it's a death brought on too soon by complete and utter mismanagement. WebOS had done something very right in providing API access to pluggable cloud services for its application developers. This allowed the apps to work with each other and with services that were off the device, which would be essential to any underpowered handheld.

I can't say for sure what the perfect tablet OS looks like. It's certainly not TabCo's disaster of a UI. But I imagine that it would be more oriented toward connecting people to each other and their services than explicitly "running applications".

How it connects

This is one of the big hardware design changes that I'd propose for a new tablet. What is the biggest pain about connecting your devices to the cloud? Right, it's the price.

We can still have the internet, but let's do it differently. Instead of relying on existing cell infrastructure as our primary means of getting mobile devices online, let's build a mesh network of devices that connect to each other and relay information. If I want to send something to my friend across the country, the data routes from my tablet to my neighbor's tablet, to a tablet nearby, and on and on until it reaches the intended recipient. Between me and my friend, there are only tablet nodes on the mesh network. No cell towers, no cell payments.

Sure, in the short term tablets could hook into local WiFi access points and relay their messages through land lines. But the idea is that we cut out the huge payments to cell companies that don't really do anything more than what we could do with a couple of personally owned radios that are contained in every new tablet.

How it changes banking

I'm done with terrestrial banks, aren't you? And paper money. And the US Dollar, really.

Wouldn't it be something if you could store value in your tablet device? I'm not talking about tying your device to a bank account, which is certainly possible. I'm suggesting a different currency, born in the tablet network, backed by something other than the faith in the US government to pay its debts. Because, I mean, really?

Maybe Bitcoin isn't the way to go, but a simple, open, secure way of exchanging value would be a financial boon. Think about it: Being your own bank or using someone else as a banking service, making loans and accepting interest. Sure, there's piracy and money laundering to be wary of, but there are probably means by which you could augment something like Bitcoin to be more resilient to patently illegal uses.

When you combine a separate monetary system with independent network capability, you have something powerful. Something much more powerful than the next processor or the next touchscreen or something with a camera built-in which we're soon going to be taking for granted.

These are the kinds of revolutionary steps I'm talking about. And it's the same kind of thing going on, I suspect, as with the way cell phones seem to make very slow technical forward progress, always leaving out some simple to include yet vital feature that would make it the next Best Thing for a reason that is masked from consumers.

I write this after the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that hit central Virginia about an hour ago. I'm recalling the exact personal circumstances of the event, since all I'm hearing in the news is a bunch of people saying simply "I felt shaking".

I've been working at home all day, as usual, sitting at my desk. I was reading through some code for a project I'm working on, when I started to ask myself why I couldn't seem to focus on the text on the screen. I sat back a bit and looked at my monitors as a whole. They were shaking. The top one, which is wall-mounted, was swinging back and forth slightly on its arm. I looked over to the planter for the hops, where I have four long bamboo poles for the vines to climb on. All four of them were swaying like they were in a heavy wind.

I remember thinking that this was kind of strange. Having an irrational fear of death from WMD's, I started down a mental checklist of what to do to stay sane and find out what was going on. I assured myself that I didn't hear any explosions, then went into the family room to find the kids.

I found Abby and Nana in the family room, and told them to come to me ("Hey guys, come here."), under the load-bearing doorway in the center of our house, away from windows and light fixtures. Abby came over, and I stood her closest to the wall. Nana wasn't responding. "Where's Riley?" I asked calmly.

The two of them stuttered at me, not sure where he was exactly or why I was asking. I don't think they knew there was an earthquake going on. The plates in the kitchen cabinets were still rattling. "Come here!" I said, more strongly. I couldn't understand why Nana wasn't movng. She stayed sitting on the couch, oblivious. "Nana, come here!" I yelled, finally realizing she thought I was talking to the kids.

Riley finally showed up from upstairs, and I put him next to me and Abby. Nana finally came over too, and we waited.

As we stood, Abby and I felt the floor of the house moving under our feet. It's a hard sensation to describe. It's like standing on Jell-o, but you can tell the whole house is moving at once. The paintings on the wall were shaking, the plates in the cabinets were rattling, and I could feel it - the moving, and a sense of unease, almost vertigo. I think I'm particularly sensitive to inertial motion, so this was really eerie.

I looked over at the cats in their cat tree near the window, who were sitting with their heads perked up, but completely still and looking inward toward the house, rather than outside, like they usually do.

Abby started to realize what was going on, and get a little nervous. Riley became scared, shaking a little bit. At this point, we still didn't really know what was going on. I mean, earthquakes don't happen here. It had all of the signs of an earthquake as I had read in the past, but we had no confirmation. As soon as we couldn't feel motion anymore, I went to get that confirmation.

The first thing I did was post "Earthquake?" to Twitter, then did a quick reload. Others in my Twitter stream seemed to confirm our suspicions. Then we turned on CNN, to see if there was any news or emergency instructions.

All of this seems kind of overkill at this point, but really, what if there was less of an effect here than there was up the road at the Limerick nuclear power plant? We live in the evacuation zone, after all. And today I learned that Limerick was ranked as the nuclear plant third most at risk of damage form earthquakes so it's really no joke. They took the plant offline in response to the event, hopefully to find nothing wrong in their inspection.

I called Berta's cell phone several times right after the quake, but she didn't answer. She texted me soon after and said that she couldn't call out. It is disconcerting that our cell infrastructure is so fragile. If there was a real emergency, it seems clear that we could not count on the cell network to work as we expect it to day-to-day.

The kids have since calmed down, and I was able to reassure Riley by showing him about earthquakes on the internet. Abby found solace by discussing the event with her friend via Facetime. Nana was generally unfazed. And now we just sit around waiting for the aftershocks (there was already at least one 2.8 quake with the same origin, although it wasn't as obvious as the 5.9) to subside. Totally freaky event, though.

Next up, Hurricane Irene? Ugh.

I've been playing Heroica and Talisman with the kids lately, and combining that fun experience with prior desires to create a simple paper-based game, I've come up with a new idea that I think both I and the kids will like.

The game I'm thinking of consists of a single book that provides all of the background materials necessary to play in short sessions while waiting for dinner to come at a restaurant, using only a pencil and a blank placemat.

It's not precisely a role-playing game. It's more like a board game with a dynamic, drawn board, and a story. The players choose characters with specific abilities that they can use during the game to achieve success. The game has the additional primary characteristic of being aimed squarely at kids my kids' ages. As such, the actions are varied enough, but simple to remember. The consequences are finite -- unlike a true RPG, where you can do anything, this game is limited to a specific set of actions with specific potential results.

I've been doing some "market research" with the kids, asking them to look at the character classes in the D&D Players Handbook and tell me not just which classes they like, but what they like about them. The results are interesting. For example, they like that the Cleric is good, and that he can wear armor and use weapons. Basically, they see him as a good Fighter. But they didn't like the Fighter class at all. Also, they were in love with the Druid, especially the possibility of having an animal companion. These insights are very helpful for focusing the game on a limited number of potential classes that the kids will love, as opposed to leaving the game open to endless expansion.

I've been doing a little bit of work on the game each evening. It could be anything from doodling icons that might appear in the book, to sketching out mechanics for playing the game, to creating some background for the world the game takes place in. The game story will be pretty rich, or at least rich enough for the kids to enjoy playing, and possibly even enough for a light game that adults could play. Something like this game would have gone well as a "play anywhere" game in groups I've been a part of.

In addition to the game itself, I've also been looking at pricing for producing the game as a product. There aren't many good games for kids in this genre. The few I've found are so simple that they're not fun to play with the kids, or they're so dry that even the kids don't care to play. Seeing them light up while playing Heroica (this is a great Lego set, by the way) recently merely convinces me that the market is set up for a game that parents could introduce to their kids, then let them take it from there.

Producing a book is actually not too pricey. For about 120 pages, you can have a full-color on-demand book printed for under $10. Add a bit to that for the retail price and there's potential for at least a meager profit.

The problems I have right now with producing the game are time (obviously) and illustration. I really don't want to produce another "Word doc with clip art RPG for kids", the likes of which I've scoffed at myself many times. I originally thought that maybe I could get some color art in there, and have the book be full-color, but I think I might be able to handle line art drawings better. There might not be a custom illustration on every page, but I think there would be enough variety and decent layout that it wouldn't look like it came off of the dusty dot matrix printer in someone's basement.

For now, I'm taking many notes, and I've started a production notebook with some random supplies from Staples. I loaded an A5 notebook with graph paper and such, so that I can sketch out ideas for the various sections of the book. If I get a reasonable distance with the game bits (gameplay, background, testing), maybe I'll throw the project on Kickstarter, and get some initial funding for a real artist to supply art for the project. That would be pretty neat.