Microlite20 has a webcomic!

Over on the Microlite20 forums I’ve started Microlite20’s own webcomic. Check out Sin20: The Life and Death of Callen Oncedark, a dark tale of valiant battles, deception and honour wrapped up in a dungeon murder mystery.

The first eight pages are up, with three more waiting in the wings; they’re going up later today, then there’ll be a new page online each week complete with stats and notes for Microlite20 play.

Enjoy.

It’s all gone a bit retro

I have a confession. I love retro.

Give me 80’s music over today’s crappy over-produced R&B (which is neither rhythm, nor blues) where the lyrics mainly consist of “uhhh”, “yeh” and “c’mon”.

I love art deco and the styles from before the 1950s when people actually cared about these things and great design didn’t mean it had a touch screen and bluetooth.

Give me classic novels over the latest angst-driven femme book about sex and shopping, and I’d much rather watch re-runs of great TV series than Yet Another cheapass show with a premium rate phone vote and spurious pseudo-dramatic pauses. “And the winner is……….”. Ick. Just tell us already life’s too short, and those pauses are getting longer with every show.

There are exceptions to my retro love, of couse. The latest series of Doctor Who is the bestest ever, and Neil Gaiman ranks right up there as my favourite author. Incidentally, rumours about he’s going to be writing to the next series of the Doctor, which is bloody brilliant!

When it comes to computers, I’ve a serious fondness for older machines. Right now, my day-to-day machine is a Bondi Blue G3 iMac. This is something of an experiment, and this little blue box is working perfectly. Give me a web browser, ssh and a handful of Unix tools and I can do (mostly) what I need. Sure, I miss my Poser and ability to fiddle with 3D renders but I’m having fun fiddling with OS X instead, so it’s all good.

So here I am using a computer that’s 10 years old with a tenth the processing power I’m used to, running on a tenth the memory with a hard drive that’s a tenth the size. And it’s working just fine.

Which begs the question:

Do we really need all this new technology?

The Water Effect Thingy

Water Effect

Insert Frankenstein quote here…..

THE SITE IS LIVE! kinda…….

Yes folks, hop on over to http://microlite20.net to take a look at where your hard-earned pennies have been spent. The current theme is temporary but workable and it’s growing on me. There’s a few (minor) layout bugs in it, but nothing that can’t be fixed.

So far, the Core Rules are up, downloads work (but are still hosted over at greywulf.net) and I’m about a third of the way through importing the Macropedia. Blogs are in place, as is auto-generation of PDFs from content. Woot! Heh. Bet you didn’t know that was coming, eh?

I’ll be sending out login details to all donaters (if you want one too, donate!) this afternoon.

Still do do: the rest of the Macropedia and existing content, set up the forums (fora?), the store, yadda yadda yadda. So it’s very much in flux.

Hope ya like it so far

Thanks again,

YOU DID IT!

Folks, you (not I, you, you lovely people) have hit the $90 target and Microlite20 will shortly have a new home. And that home will be………

http://microlite20.net

We have the account. We have the domain. And I’m putting the site together as I type. I’m keeping it under wraps for a little while as things are under construction. Hopefully by late tomorrow (UK time) I’ll take the wrapper off. There’ll still be lots to do - I won’t even have finished migrating the old site by then - but I want to show you where your pennies have been spent.

Oh, and if you haven’t donated yet, I’m keeping the Donation box open for Microlite20, so make a donation! Donaters get premium access to the site including blogspace, the ability to post your own House Rules and Story Hours, and much more.

I expect the main site will take the best part of a week to put in place, and another week or so to have the forums and store up and running.

So if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a site to build………………..

THANK YOU!

So Geek It Made Me Weep

This has to be the coolest, geekiest thing I have ever seen.

In other news: The Microlite20 Fundraiser! is only $7 away (well, 6 dollars and 88 cents) away from hitting the target What’s more, MochaHost are offering a 5% discount on registrations before Sunday, so we’re that close to having a new Microlite20 site! Woot!

The End Of Radioactive Man

Or is it???!!!……….. (Poser, no postwork. By me)

Wow. Just…. wow.

We’ve almost hit the target for the Microlite20 Fundraiser! already, in less than 24 hours. That’s all going toward two years’ hosting and registration for the shiny new Microlite20 site (link to old site).  Just a few more dollars to go, and I get busybusy

Sure, it’s not a huge amount. But what it means, means a lot.

I’m amazed. I’m amazed that so many grok M20 in the first place, and I’m downright overwhelmed that folks are actually wanting to contribute and help build a Microlite20 site to be proud of. It kinda proves those Open Source ethics work after all, and that fills me with warm fuzzies.

Time for a confession. I didn’t expect this to work. I expected to post, and not get a raw bean to help M20, leaving me with the choice of either setting up the site myself (no biggie, but I really want this to be a community site from the ground up), or just leave it where it was - which isn’t a great option for anyone. It’s good to see folks pulling together, not just in donations, but pushing the message on their own blogs too.

That rocks!

Thanks, y’all

Microlite20 Fundraiser is a go!

Short and sweet: I’ve started a Fundraiser for Microlite20 to have the site moved to a more reliable host. If you’d like to help, make a donation and spread the word!

If Wizards Of The Coast Invented Chess

• There would be a new version of the rules every seven years. The idea that the rules could stay the same for thousands of years would be, frankly, laughable
• In the latest rules for chess, Pawns would be renamed Hellspawn Warblades. Similarly, the other pieces would be called Warknights, Warkings, Warqueens, etc
• There would be no rules for Castles. They existed in previous editions of the rules, but have been strangely absent in recent versions
• To be able to play chess, you need (at least) the three core Chess rulebooks - the White Player’s Handbook, the Black Player’s Handbook and the Boardmaster’s Guide. These are each 300+ pages, and cost at least $100 in total. In the latest edition, many pages have a single column of text beside a huge image covering the rest of a double spread. This is called good desgin, not spurious padding
• The number of chess pieces varies with each edition. Earliest versions of chess was intentionally vague as to the number of pieces per player; later editions set the number at four, then five. The idea of each player being able to handle 16 pieces at a time is viewed as impossible, and is not supported nor endorsed by the rules
• Wizards would release supplements titled “The Complete Bishop”, “The Complete Queen”, etc. Amazingly, people would buy these
• The board would be made of stiff cardboard. This would be viewed as a Good Thing
• The latest edition of the Chess Rules bears strong similarity to a game called World of Checkers. Wizards insists it isn’t, and even if it is, that’s a Good Thing too. This is despite the fact that World of Checkers is, basically, Chess for fucktards anyhow
• Pawns (sorry, Hellspawn Warblades) are just as powerful as all the other pieces on the board. In fact, all of the pieces are of exactly the same power level. This is called Balance. This is not a Good Thing
• In the newest rules, Chess pieces can move in any direction on the board
• Three words: Attacks of Opportunity
• The only way to get chess pieces is through purchasing random booster packs. Kings and Queens are rare, meaning being able to play a single game is all-but-impossible. Pieces soon appear on eBay for highly inflated prices
• Wizards will announce a Chess Initiative allowing people to play Chess (get this) online! This will require a paid monthly subscription to be able to participate. People will sign up and pay for this by the thousands

Hey, I’m only saying………

Time to move home

Both metaphorically, and physically.

For the last four or five years, all of my sites have been hosted in the same place, on the same server. While that goes against the adage of not putting all the eggs in one basket, it’s also made for a lot of convenience. With only one server to nurse I’ve grown used to it’s foibles; I know what works, and what doesn’t. I can set up a Drupal site in minutes on that server, and a WordPress blog in mere moments. I know how it thinks, how it behaves, and what makes it tick.

That was then. This is now.

Lately, the server has been less than reliable.  It’s down for hours or even days at a time without explanation. When it’s up, it’s fast and stable, but down is….. well, it’s just dead. As it’s a shared server we’ve sometimes suffered due to a haywire script, but I plead guilty to running a few of those myself too, and don’t mind taking the occasional performance hit once in a while. There’s a difference between going slow and not going at all though.

It’s time to jump ship and find another host, methinks.

At the same time, we’re looking to move house. We need more space, and a more central location to minimize travel times when we set up the studio. Thank you, Mr Bush, for wrecking the global economy.  But that’s a whole other set of blogposts for another time, eh?

This is where we’re at. I’ll keep this as my sole blog for now, so expect the usual mixture of role-playing, Poser renders, opinions and techstuff.

At least, until we find a new home, both online and off.

Till then!