I was supposed to be in Cincinnati this week, attending a meeting. I had a personal thing come up that made it impossible for me to travel this week, but I still wanted to be part of the meeting. Even without a lot of preparation, this is a lot easier than it used to be.

My colleague Arden is at the meeting with his Mac, and I have an iChat video session open on the room. This gives me a fairly decent feel for the meeting. At the same time, we have the audio for that muted and I have a skype out call going to get onto a speaker phone in the room.

That's all going by wired networking here, and wifi in the meeting room itself. THis is all pretty cool. The only downside? If I get up to get coffee, it's just as noticeable as if I were there in person :)

You'll find a lot of people who look down on Gary Gygax, and the game system (D&D) he created - heck, back when I ran a game myself, I not only created a game world, I devised my own magic and combat systems, because I thought the D&D one "sucked". However - I wouldn't have been inspired to do that had D&D not been created first.

This article makes an even bigger point - Gygax was the progenitor of all modern video games:

In creating Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax and co-creator Dave Arneson didn't just build a blueprint for the digital RPGs to come; they built the progenitor of most contemporary video games, irrespective of genre.

because video games - unlike older games - have a story to tell:

Today most gamers take it for granted that games have stories, yet most traditional games -- chess and checkers, tag and hide-and-seek, baseball and basketball -- don't have any story.

We have Gygax to thank for a lot of that. Sure, his magic system had holes, as did his combat system. He was the pioneer though, who paved the roads that other people followed and improved. Anyone who likes the places those roads have taken us owes Gygax some thanks for that.

Technorati Tags: dungeons and dragons, rpg, video games

I understand the whole concept of language evolution, but exactly when did people start writing "Coo" instead of "Cool"? What's with the dropped L?

This is very cool. And Patriotic as well :)

At least the stupid machine isn't smoking this time - it's just not draining. Seriously though: are the dishwasher gods just out to get me, demanding that I learn to wash everything by hand for some reason?

I'm not sure what to think about this (via Engadget).

I have to do something I don't normally do today: drive to work. We have a customer just south of DC that I'm meeting with later this morning, so I have to brave the DC area traffic. It's been quite awhile since I've done that, and I suspect that things haven't improved since then...

We are about to get a change in the weather here (two good days - it's about to get colder again). Right at sunset, I took two photographs of the wild sky/cloud color: