Camping in Bardstown

I got back from camping at a farm in Bardstown this morning. Several geocachers and I were cleaning the place up (cutting trees, clearing creak and burning stuff) in return for the owner letting us use the place in October for our annual gathering.

The day was fine, though tiring. The night was cold and sort of miserable for late April. My new tent didn't retain heat nearly as well as I'd hoped. It is also just barely big enough to hold me sleeping while laying corner to corner and then only if I don't use the air mattress. There was a lot of condensation on the inside walls this morning too.

Needless to say I didn't sleep too well. So I'm off to bed soon... zzzzzzz.....

Fuzzy Knight wiki

I recently created a free Fuzzy Knights wiki with the PBwiki people. It is growing slowly but steadily with two or three new entries per evening. I'm doing my best to find clear face shots of each character with little to no word balloons. The Fuzzy Knights strip creator, Mossfoot, is being very helpful so far with his explanations for Fuzzthropic Theory and remembering minor character names. There is a link box in the right side of this blog, but here it is again anyway.

http://fuzzyknights.pbwiki.com/

I've also created a wiki for my steampunk Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, Crystalis but I'm not quite ready to release the link yet.

Speaking of D&D, I found the sad news yesterday that Dragon magazine will cease publication in print form with the September issue. An online version just won't be the same. I'll miss seeing it on the rack with an occasional Larry Elmore cover and finding the useful bits and pieces to use in my game. It will make future 13 hour flights to Japan harder to deal with if I don't have a Dragon magazine to read from cover to cover.

Oh well... I hope the online version is much cheaper to subscribe to.

Toshiba Satellite

It has been one month since I got my cool new notebook computer. A Toshiba Satellite A135S4427. The computer is great but I don't see anything to get excited about with Windows Vista. It looks pretty much just like Windows XP except that the borders of the windows are slightly transparent and you can rotate through them.

The only real complaint I have is about the Toshiba Flash Cards. About once per week they will pop up with a message saying that they are "not responding" and that window will not close down unless I restart the computer. I've tried looking up the problem online but can't seem to find what causes it or even a clear and simple explanation of what the TFC do and if I can disable them permanently without ill effect.

I'm setting up the notebook for use at gaming conventions. Useful gadgets, mood music, rule PDFs and such. I'm even putting in some maps and aerial photos for when I'm hiking or geocaching.

The best thing about this notebook is that it has built in Wi-Fi so I can use it in hotels or coffee shops when I'm doing things with the Write Club (but we don't talk about Write Club).

More books

More books acquired in March and early April include:

• Going Postal - Terry Pratchett
• Maracot Deep - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Works of Jules Verne
• Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
• Angels & Demons - Dan Brown
• A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
• Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - T.S. Eliot

And a few old photo books of famous places in Britain (first half of the century) and The Way We Lived in the 20th Century (beginning to end including what we thought the late 20th and early 21st Century was going to look like).