Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

I Love Roleplaying
September 30, 2002

Maybe it’s just the time of year that gets me thinking about it. Fall tends to have a particular smell that I associate with roleplaying. In years past, I have not usually been playing at this time of year, and suddenly get a craving for it. These days, I pay weekly, and I wish there was more time for it.

I've been thinking lately to develop a new format for Play By EMail so that players can respond in a one- or two-word command with the action that they would like their character to perform for that round. I just want a speedy response/resolution, because that tends to be my problem with the PBEM games. I don't get enough resoponses to continue, or by the time I do, I have lost interest. Maybe I have more problems that just speedy response... hmm.

Soon to the Circus
September 26, 2002

“On with the show!” Tonight is our trip to the circus. We’re going to see Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai in Philly at 9. Berta and I are going, of course, along with Dave and Stacy. I’m glad Stacy contacted me yesterday since I really wanted to get her to come with us.

Nothing new is going on with PageCat, really. The new TV schedule is going to prey on my free time this year, I can see. With 3 hours on Tuesday (Buffy was pretty good starting out this season) and 2 on Wednesday, along with school, it feels like I'll be watching TV forever. Maybe I should cut back. Thank goodness for the satellite dish, or I wouldn't be able to watch everything.

Sample Article
September 24, 2002

As of today, PageCat accepts new articles for posting. It won’t let me go back and edit them, yet, but it will soon. I also can’t edit in HTML, so any formatting that I want to include I have to code manually.

However, I have managed to make the text editors in the article editor pluggable, so I can define new field types for data later. This will presumable let me do crazy things like adding an image slideshow editor. On the article editing page, I would see the typical controls (title, article text, etc.), but also a thing that would let me add images. The images that I add would show up inside a slideshow window, as specified by the editor plug in. It will be very flexible.

The Kitchen Computer
March 31, 2001

The quest started, I guess, a couple of summers ago, when I got this notion in my head to replace the kitchen TV with a computer monitor. Of course, people balked at my radical new concept in kitchen technology. After all, how many people even have televisions in their kitchens?

But ours is a dine-in type kitchen, complete with a kitchen table. This is where we usually entertain guests that must have some table to use, for example, to play cards or role-playing games. It is a convenience to have a TV available for when everyone else is taking their turn at the game so that you can look up and watch whatever happens to be on. Plus, it’s a convenient location for a source of weather information during breakfast in the morning.

VCD Adventure
November 15, 2000

It started sometime last year. I was looking for a way to record Buffy the Vampire Slayer and keep the videos in a video archive. Of course, the traditional way to do this would be to use a VCR, record each show, and store the tape somewhere. But recording on VHS is a problem.

First, tapes are huge! In my already overcrowded media cabinets, I have no room for an entire season's worth of episodes on tape. Even if I managed to put four episodes on a tape (not likely) I'd still be stuffing a horde of Buffy tapes on my shelves.