I've been thinking for a while about a kind of role playing game that I'd like to play in. It has certain thematic elements and mechanics, with wide open opportunities for story and play. What I really wanted was something with a modern feel, but included fantasy elements. My world should easily allow stories to take place in a modern setting, but also a fantasy one, and support both magic and technology.

Of course, a game like this that immediately comes to mind for me is Shadowrun. Shadowrun has always struck me as the most interesting blend of the cyberpunk future and the arcane in a mainstream RPG. As much as I like the world of Shadowrun, I think it has a handful of limitations that I would not want for my own world. For one, the players are strongly encouraged to be shadowrunners. This means that most stories are going to fall in the domain of "a group of players working together to achieve some kind of anti/corporate goal, who get into trouble along the way". That's fine, but it leaves a lot on the table. Again, you could play something else, but the source material isn't really helpful for this.

In late July, Riley and I will be traveling to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico for two weeks of backcountry hiking with his Boy Scout troop. We'll be joining a trek with other scouts from his troop that will span 12 days of hiking, and is likely to hit 7 of the tallest mountains in the region.

Of course, I'm all about the gear.

I've completely rearranged the way I take notes over the last month, using Obsidian as my primary tool for note-taking.

I'm using a kind of modified PARA system (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives), where the top-level layers of my notes are organized into buckets based on their volatility. So things at the Projects layer change more quickly than the Areas, which change more quickly than Resources, etc. The names are, in my case anyway, just guidelines for how the documents in each section should be used.

I've been poking at writing a Discord bot in Golang for the last few weeks. It's actually weirdly easy to do with some of the libraries that are available out there.

I wanted to create something a bit more interesting in the long-term; something that lets you play certain kinds of dungeon exploring games. But I have been thinking to dip my toe into the bot-writing process by producing a bot that rolls dice. And here lies the rabbit hole that this post concerns.

Day three in San Diego was designated Zoo Day, where we would spendthe bulk of the day at the San Diego Zoo. We started the morning at the usual "roll out of bed early for a Californian" time, and had first breakfast at the hotel.

The say was set to be one of travel challenges. While the Uber/Lyft situation hadn't been terrible, the mass transit options were looking more and more appealing. We checked out the bus schedules, and found a route that got us close to our destination. At $2.50 per person, that was a steal! And the busses were clean, empty, and air conditioned -- very nice.