Blackmoor Vituperative

Yesterday I stumbled across The Ur-Quan Masters, an open-source cross-platform port of one of the best computer games ever, Star Control 2. That’s pretty cool all by itself. Today I received this email from the UQM mailing list:

Hello everyone,

As you’ll probably know, The Ur-Quan Masters was originally a
commercial game, known as Star Control II.

A few days ago, Toys For Bob, the creators of Star Control 1 and 2 (but
not 3) made it known that they were in talks with the Powers That Be at
Activision about what their next game should be.

They decided that the stars are right for a new Star Control, and
they’re asking for our help in convincing Activision to let them
make one. If we can send them support, they can show that to
Activision as a powerful argument.

I’ve set up a petition page on our website where you can find
more information, as well as a form where you can send a mail directly
from your browser.
You can also find their postal address there; a snail-mail letter
is bound to carry more weight.
The URL is
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/petition/petition.php

Please spread the word.

Note that the petition page on the Pages of Now and Forever mentioned in
the original announcement on the Toys For Bob website is old and broken.
Use the form on the petition website, or mail alex@toysforbob.com directly.

Serge van den Boom
The Ur-Quan Masters core team

So if you’ve never played the game, check it out. If you have already played the game and liked it, please consider signing the petition.

A girl in my game group just sent me this link. If this doesn’t make you laugh out loud, then you aren’t me. 🙂

Firefox Flicks: Wheee!

Very, very funny.

I’m watching The Wraith, the Charlie Sheen/Sherilyn Fenn movie that (in my opinion) inspired the movie The Crow (much more so than the eponymous comicbook). It has some great lines.

Gutterboy: Skank!
Skank: Yeah.
Gutterboy: Who is that guy?
Skank: I don’t know. But whoever he was, he’s weird and pissed off.

Here’s another:

Skank: Man, I smell a cop. Do you smell a cop?
Gutterboy: I smell french fries, Skank, but that don’t make no sense, huh?

The Wraith is a classic 1980s supernatural revenge movie with a rockin’ soundtrack. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

As I’m writing this, the Wraith just took out his second victim, and I just noticed something: the big air intake turbocharger thing on the Firebird is a prop. Nothing on it moves. I never noticed that before.

Are you looking to simplify AJAX code? Bruce Perry has some help in “Prototype: Easing AJAX’s Pain,” which introduces the “Prototype” library. Prototype introduces a number of development-easing shortcuts for JavaScript authors. Further, “Prototype also wraps the functionality of XMLHttpRequest with its own Ajax.Request and related objects, so that you don’t have to bother with writing code for instantiating this object for various browsers.”

I like fairies. Not the little girl fairies (which I think of as “teacup fairies”, for some odd reason — perhaps because I associate them with little girls having tea parties?), the ones that look like grown up women, like Kylie Minogue in Moulin Rouge, or like the fairy in the new Dodge Caliber commercials. It’s not a fetish thing: I don’t fantasize about them or anything. I just think they’re cute and fun.

That isn’t strange, is it?

Science Fiction & Fantasy return to Richmond, VA with RavenCon 2006, a weekend celebrating the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. (And as we’re playing the Edgar Allan Poe angle, we’re Mystery friendly, too!) Join our guests for panel discussions and workshops that can only happen at RavenCon!

Find out more at http://www.ravencon.com/

In general, I despise advertisements on the web. We all do, don’t we? It’s why RPG Library and PBEM News are completely advertising-free, and always will be. So why, you may ask, is there a banner ad over there on the right for Profit? Because there is an exception for just about everything.

(Incidentally, I do not get any money from Anchor Bay for the advertisement.)

Bruce Harlick was kind enough to clue me in on how the other Hero Games “old guard” — the people who made Champions the great game it is — are doing.

George MacDonald is working as a consultant for various internet companies, game and non-game related. He’s still gaming. “I just had lunch with him yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

Steve Peterson works as a marketing consultant for various companies and is putting together his own ideas for a game. He’s still gaming. “His oldest kid is finishing his freshman year at UCLA, which makes me feel a little old, since I’ve known Steve since before he was married!”

Ray Geer is a massage therapist (his clients include a lot of the local computer game companies). “He still games, and is a player in my regular D&D 3.5 game.”

You know, I don’t know any of these guys from Adam, but it makes me glad to know that they are all still gaming and that they’re doing well. They didn’t create Champions for me, and I’m no one to them, but whether they know it or not, they have each contributed a huge amount to me and my friends over the past 20 years. Champions is what brought most of us together, back in the 1980s when I moved to Virginia from Califiornia. I do not think it would be an understatement to say that, if these guys had not written Champions, my life would have turned out a great deal differently, and not for the better.

OXFORD (Reuters) – Thousands of young girls auditioned on Tuesday for a chance to star in a new movie franchise that promises to be a dark rival to the “Harry Potter” films.

Philip Pullman’s bestseller “His Dark Materials” trilogy is being adapted for the screen by New Line Cinema, which also made the “Lord of the Rings” films.

The first installment, “The Golden Compass,” follows a young protagonist named Lyra Belacqua who travels to the Arctic Circle to save a friend with the help of a bear and a witch.

Producers are scouring England to find an actress aged 9 to 13 who can embody her “loyalty, bravery and mischievous nature.”

Pullman’s books have been a hit with critics, adults and children alike, although some groups objected to their strong criticism of organized religion.

(From Yahoo! News, UK girls vie for role in ‘Dark Materials’ films)

I have never even heard of these books. I guess I’ll have to add them to my ever-growing list of books I intend to read.

SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) – You’d think Steve Jobs would be the hero of the music industry, after a year in which online music sales almost tripled to $1.1 billion. But no. The record labels are again pressuring Apple (Research) to raise prices at the iTunes Music Store from 99 cents a song. Apple and the labels are renegotiating deals struck when its music store launched three years ago, and a key issue is variable pricing — the right to charge more for singles from a hot band, and less for music from lesser-known acts. But charging more could backfire, since pirated music is still widely available to consumers on file-sharing networks, Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf told the Associated Press: “[Customers] have an alternative — they can get it for free.”

(from CNN Money, iTunes faces music price hikes)