Discolor Online

Huge Success.

Well, I seem to have survived the last couple of days. There were only four girls at the sleepover party which turned out to be a perfectly manageable amount. There was a little friction at first because they couldn't decide on a movie that would make everyone happy. The girls were really showing their personalities: the idiosyncratic friend wanted Juno, the girliest girl wanted Sleepover, the non-conflict girl was okay with whatever the other girls decided, and my steeped-in-geek-culture girl wanted Hellboy. Hellboy was deemed "too scary" (as were Ladyhawke, Princess Bride, Goonies, and The Mummy) and anything with ghosts (no Poletergeist) or aliens (no Galaxy Quest, no Close Encounters) were off the menu for two girls. Ferris Bueller's Day Off was given a thumbs down after the trailer was deemed "BORING!" despite two girls vouching for it being fun. I finally hit on Josie and the Pussycats, Clue, and (*sigh*) Sleepover and they ended up watching Sleepover though Kate was fairly sulky about it at first.

Band frictions threatened to flair up when the girls played Rock Band but they soon settled in and by the end of the party the girl with the least experience who was the most frustrated early on was begging to play more. Chips and sodas were consumed all evening, supplemented with veggies and dip and fresh strawberries, then the girls made personal pizzas which they shaped and decorated for quite some time. They spent the night in the living room and after I went to bed Kate tried to get the girls into Angel by showing them the Smile Time episode. They stayed up late into the night, being girls, but I think the most poignant and sweet part of the whole night was when they were all changing into pajamas and getting sleeping bags set up in the living room and they started comparing and showing off their blankies. Each of these sweet almost-teen girls not only had their blankies but brought them to their sleepover and compared them.

I made bacon, sweet rolls, and more fresh fruit, with optional juice, milk, and soymilk for them for breakfast and then one by one the girls left. Kate and I took her bike down to the bike swap but the larger bikes were few and far between (and being hoarded by one particularly annoying girl... Kate didn't even touch a bike for the first 40-50 minutes of being there. We finally left with a bike but it was way less fun than I thought it was going to be.

Headed from there down to meet Pramas for a very late "lunch" and strolled Emerald City Comic Con for a couple hours and ran into a ton of people we knew, some of whom we hadn't seen for ages. Feeling peppy, we crossed the street and finally caught a showing of Iron Man, which is still playing to packed theaters in Seattle. How great is Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark? Really, really enjoyed his performance. I saw him in Less Than Zero over 20 years ago and have followed his career ups and downs since then. When the man is on, he's SO on. I hope he stays on because I'd love to see more from him.

Labels: Kate, movies

I just looked at my Friday and then at my Saturday. This is definitely not going to be a restful weekend!

Friday morning I have my first morning yoga class: 6:30am. Not all of the classes are going to be that early but Fridays are early. Then it's back to the house, where I have to help Kate transport her gigantic Brooklyn Bridge project to school. Lunch I believe I have a lunch date, though times haven't been confirmed. After school Kate is bringing home three friends for an overnight party, a make-up party since she never gets to have people over for her December birthday because of holiday conflicts. The girls will be staying until Saturday morning and I've promised Kate they can make their own personal pizzas, watch movies, and play Rock Band in the time they have.

Saturday after the girls leave for home I'd planned to take Kate to Bikeworks' 12th Annual Bike Swap to see if we can get rid of her small bike for a bigger bike that actually fits her. She's grown a ton since we got that old bike for her. Saturday is also Emerald City Comic Con.

Also confirmed today that I will be heading down to LA on the 29th for Book Expo. I guess I'm going to remain busy after all...

Labels: life

Wow, I've had so much going on that I can bring myself to Twitter a little, or take a break for some mindless Facebook game or other but I haven't had the time or energy to get back to blogging. Sorry about the sporadic content, I hope to get back in the swing of things soon!

What have I been doing in the meantime? Well, Pramas already posted a bit about a couple of failed culinary excursions. I've done a little cooking but not as much as I would like to be doing. Did make some fine goat riblets for game night dinner the other night but Chris and I were the only takers willing to try them. I may have to stick to things a little less adventurous for what remains of our game group. When I get back into the swing, I'll get back to posting more recipes and food photos.

Things are busy at work as always. I'm thinking of going back on my vow to stay home until June and try to fit in a trip to Book Expo at the end of the month. Still waiting to see if that's going to be necessary. This week continues to have me playing catch-up, with the weekend promising Emerald City Comic Con followed by the Ion Conference next week. Even where we're not actually involved in the shows there are people coming to town with whom we want to meet.

On the home front I'm trying to get caught up on chores, new and old. Last week I replaced both the squealing shower head in the master bathroom and our completely dead garbage disposal. I've also scoured the house for things to give to my regular charity (Community Services for the Blind") which is doing spring collections. I'm also trying to balance a couple of new medications that are not necessarily going to play nicely together. Fingers crossed on that one as I'm fully ready to stabilize on the prescriptions thing.

As if I'm not busy enough I'm also signing up for some yoga classes because I need to find a regular activity that gives me both some physical challenge and some scheduled "me" time where I can force myself to let go of a lot of the distractions, stress, and isolation that come with my job and my life in general. There's always something else to sign up for, some committee at Kate's school that needs something, some committee or crisis with the Neighborhood Association or the Homeowners' Association, some work that I "should" be attending. While I don't need to be quite as busy as I was in April, I do need to make time for social outings with friends and, more importantly, I need to take time for myself that doesn't involve me doing for others. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Mother Theresa, out in the world constantly doing deeds... but I too often let myself slip into Nik Does It All mode, taking care of friends and family and coworkers and customers before I take care of myself. That shit wears a person down.

Plowing forward, trying to get back to blogging a bit at least.

Labels: life

I started to post about something else entirely but life gets in the way and I will have to save it for later. However, I want to get back to the discipline of posting regularly so here's a little bit of this and that to fulfill that impulse.

1) The Gay Rights Meme: Like Ari, I tend to resent the memes that tell you if you don't perpetuate the meme you're to be judged X, but I will state outright that I'm all in favor of securing equal rights for all people. Equal treatment for men and women, equal treatment for gays and straights (and the permutations in between), equal treatment regardless of race, equality in religion, access to basic human necessities for life like food, water, shelter, health care. I'm in!

2) Origins Awards Nominations are out (at least I received some sort of official GAMA-generated e-mail about it...in typical GAMA form (sad to say) their Origins Nominees page is as yet not updated). Three products from Green Ronin's catalog have moved on to the next round: Hobby Games: the 100 Best, our systemless setting book The Pirate's Guide to Freeport, and the Green Ronin-published edition of Firefly Games' excellent roleplaying work Faery's Tale Deluxe. On to the final round!


3)The Books Meme. I was going to skip this but I thought you all might be somewhat amused to see exactly how many books I've started and failed to finish. I'm terrible about that. Bold for the ones I've finished, italics for the ones I've started but at some point gave up on (usually more than 1/3 but less than 2/3 through...if I didn't make it at least 1/3 of the way in, I've left it marked unread). Laugh it up!

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

Labels: meme

My month of crazy travel is finished, for real. Upon my triumphant return from GTS in Vegas I collapsed for half a day in bed and slept like I hadn't slept for a week (even though I was really good in Vegas and didn't stay out late or drink overly much). Yesterday was still too busy, though, as we were trying to squeeze in a few visits with industry people and (for me) a Jonathan Coulton show for which I've had tickets for ages. Lunch dates turned into dinner dates and dinner dates turned into post-concert get-togethers. Today was more eating out as I attempted to introduce Adam to the vegetarian glories of Cafe Flora before driving him back to the Everett suburbs from whence he came. By the time dinner rolled around tonight all I had energy for was some tofu sloppy joes and baked beans from a can.

I'm very much looking forward to getting some cooking in. I bought a few fresh vegetables today and making some homemade soup is on my list of things to do tomorrow. There is a frightening pile of work to catch up on: mail orders, distributor invoices, bill paying, household chores, and doctor appointments are on the schedule all week long. Still, it's great to be home, in my own kitchen, in my own bed, with my own things. No more travel until the American Library Show at the end of June if I can help it!

Labels: travel

it's over. GTS technically still runs seminars tomorrow but as far as I can tell, the show is done today. They tried a new format where Monday was set-up day for exhibitors while retailers had seminars, then exhibit hall hours were Tuesday and Wednesday, then more seminars on Thursday. On Tuesday and Wednesday there were free lunch and dinner buffets offered in a room all but adjoining the exhibit hall. GAMA really did everything they could to encourage attendees not to wander off from the show.

Tuesday we saw a lot of people and they were quite interested in everything we had to tell them. We talked with a ton of retailers about Song of Ice and Fire, Wild Cards, Free RPG Day, the four Origins Awards Semifinalist products from our catalog and more. We made new contacts in retail, foreign distribution, translation, licensing and printing. We packed a lot into a short time but I really feel like we walked out of here with a lot of valuable face time with actually interested parties. Very few people coming by just looking for free stuff and many people coming by to give us props and tell us how much they like what we're doing and how well it does in their stores. Nothing to complain about.

The biggest question that came up time and time again: What is Green Ronin doing about 4E? I gave my stock reply that we don't know what we're going to do until we see the final license and WotC issues it's actual terms and shows us the GSL and the SRD but it was an unsatisfactory answer for everyone concerned. We got lots of support from people anxious to see us continue with our OGL games and heard from a distressing number of people from the retail and distribution tiers who are feeling really uncertain about the upcoming edition of D&D. Even outside of the OGL/GSL issues, many retailers and some distributors kept repeating that they still really don't have a good feel for what 4E is going to be like and they feel frustrated that the message out of WotC seems to be "Well, it's D&D! That's enough!"

Poor Scott Rouse was clearly in a terribly position as people kept asking him for clarifications he doesn't have and assurances he is not in a position to give. He handled himself gracefully every time I saw him and I do believe he's been forthright about what the state of things is but there's no getting around the fact that his job has put him in a really hard position and his job hasn't been made any easier by the recent announcements about the GSL.

But enough about that! I'm meeting the rest of Team GR in a few minutes for dinner and then I'm going to make an effort to kick up my heels a bit and socialize with whoever still remains in town tonight. I've done precious little of that with anyone other than my Green Ronin homies so far. Viva Las Vegas!

Labels: GAMA, game industry, GTS, Las Vegas

Pramas and I spent the weekend in Las Vegas before the GAMA Trade Show officially kicked off. Gabe "Mondo" Vega is eve expanding his ConQuest gaming convention empire and this year he kicked off ConQuest Vegas. We came down to show our support. They had a lovely space up on the 26th floor of Bally's (rooms with a view!) where the GTS seminars have been held. In the future I hope to be a bit more involved than we were this year (the lead-up to Vegas coincided with having to get a lot of other things under control around GRHQ and Chez Ronin). We may even make an appearance down at the next ConQuest franchise: ConQuest Reno in November. We'll see.

Pramas and I were here early on Saturday and couldn't yet check into our room so we went over to enjoy brunch at the Las Vegas incarnation of Thomas Keller's Bouchon . Really good idea. Great food, relaxing atmosphere, and it killed just the right amount of time to allow us to go back to Bally's and check into our room. We've also enjoyed meals at Wing Lei at the Wynn (the only Michelin starred Chinese restaurant in America, where we enjoyed the Peking duck tasting menu) and Michael Mina's Seablue over at the MGM. We also made a trip over to the Stage Deli at Caesar's Palace before Pramas had to pack up and hit the airport. So, the eating's been alright so far. Ha.

Chris heads home tonight to rejoin Kate, who has had a grand little adventure of her own bouncing around to various friends and hitting going away parties and Passover dinners, among other excitements. We waited all day to see if there were going to be any further announcements of clarifications on the situation with the GSL but we didn't glean any further information. No one we've talked to seems eager to sign on for 4E support current conditions. It seems like WotC has cast somewhat of a pall over things as retailers and distributors (not just third party publishers) try to make sense of what's happening and try to predict what the gaming landscape is going to look like in six to nine months time. At least one RPG liquidator is already offering to buy up any and all d20 products publishers will be forbidden to sell after the end of the year. Meanwhile I've already seen an absolutely adorable book that I can't wait to snap up from Atlas Games. I look forward to seeing more stuff tomorrow when the exhibit halls are set up for real.

Will try to find time to get some of my food photos posted this week but it may all wait until I get home. Damned getting older. 9:30 in Vegas and I'm dead tired (and the exhibit hall hasn't even opened yet!). For now, this is all the news I can think to report.

Labels: food, GAMA, game industry, GTS, Las Vegas, restaurants

Super busy trying to catch up with things (and people) between trips. Got back from New York, Saturday we leave for Vegas and the GAMA Trade Show at oh-my-god-o'clock. I managed to make a decent vegetable curry the other night that gave us left overs for several days but tonight I craved something different. Something I had in Mexico. The Best Salsa in the World... oh how I crave it.

So I went out and got myself some ingredients and did my best this afternoon to make my best approximation of the salsa. I oven roasted some onions, garlic, tomatoes, tomatillos, and guessed at what to do about the peppers. I knew the pepper mixture had chipotle peppers in it but I didn't recognize (and can't remember) what our guy said the other two peppers were. I got a selection of dried and fresh peppers that I put together as an experiment, added the sesame seeds (that I ground with mortar and pestle) salt and cilantro. It was pretty good but not quite right. Too hot for starters... I need to adjust the peppers for sure. Also not "roasty" enough. I think I'll have to really be willing to blacken those veggies. In the photos I took, everything is just black but I wasn't confident enough to really get things blackened. Overall, though, I'm pretty pleased with my first attempt at recreating the salsa. Given a few more attempts, I'm pretty sure I can get pretty close.

This is probably the last cooking I will do before we head to Vegas. I haven't even had time to figure out where we're going to eat while we're there, which is stressing me out because I know my team is counting on me to get us some good eats while we're there. As official "Green Ronin Mom" I can't let my boys go hungry you know!

Well, it took me a couple of days and I still haven't labeled them but my photos of Mexico have been uploaded to my Flickr account. I've divided the whole thing into three parts: people and places, food and drink, and a whole whack of sunsets.

Today was a beautiful day in Seattle and I spent the day doing a lot of long-neglected chores like yard work and moving things around in the garage. Too tired to do any significant write-ups of my recent trips or anything else but I hope to be back in fighting form soon. At least I can bring some sort of end to the drought of content on the ol' blog.

Labels: Mexico

I was back home for two days. I'm leaving now for New York and hope to be able to post some recaps and photos when I get back.

Be good while I'm gone!

Labels: New York

Had a lovely, somewhat impromptu weekend away with Pramas last weekend. He picked the restaurants and we had a great time while Kate visited her dad. He's already blogged about the food and our brush with Mark Dacascos (aka Chairman on Iron Chef America). I have photos but haven't had time to get them up. I'm taking a trip next week and I have a gruesome list of things that need to be taken care of before then. When I get back I turn around again two days later and head to New York for Kate's class trip. Yow.

Last night we went to see Girls Rock! and Kate is now absolutely dying to go to one of these camps and learn to play the drums with other girls. No chance of going to the camp in Portland this year but there's supposedly a Seattle camp forming, though I can't find any information about it. The movie was great and I highly recommend it, especially if you have daughters but even if you don't. Funny, poignant, engaging, inspirational.

I expect that I won't have much time to blog for the next couple of weeks, what with the travel and so on. I don't know if I will be computer-enabled next week, but I doubt it. Possibly more likely to be on the web in New York but only marginally.

And with that, I'm back to work. Game night tonight and I'm cooking to boot.

Labels: life

The entire premise of Barack Obama's candidacy is built upon the opposite assumption -- that Americans are not only able, but eager, to participate in a more elevated and reasoned political discourse, one that moves beyond the boisterous, screeching, simple-minded, ugly, vapid attack-based distractions and patronizing manipulation -- the Drudgian Freak Show -- that has dominated our political debates for the last two decades at least.

Labels: politics

My friend's little nephew succumbed to leukemia earlier this year after quite a fight. More than once she broke the news to us that it didn't look good for little Heiko and we set about to praying or meditating or wishing well across the miles in the hope that things would turn out differently. We followed along when there was anything to report and cheered when Heiko went through two miraculous, if short-lived, recoveries. Las Friday Heiko's father's tribute to his son appeared in The Globe and Mail. I'm reposting it here because it's such a vivid and loving testament to their son.

HEIKO ALEXANDER EARNSHAW WILLMS
Son, brother, nephew, grandson, dragon-slayer, preschooler, beloved little friend. Born April 26, 2003, in Toronto. Died Jan. 3 in Toronto of acute myeloid leukemia, aged 4.

by DON WILLMS

March 14, 2008

We almost lost Heiko last May. Over the course of one weekend he went from being an ordinary four-year-old to a leukemia patient on life support.

Again in July we were told he might only have hours to live, ravaged by a brain infection brought on by chemotherapy. All we wanted was to see him conscious and aware of us.

Our prayers were answered; we were lavished with almost four more good months. Heiko regained most of his strength and spirit. We went for fall walks and bike rides, played at the wooden castle in High Park, and when snow came went tobogganing and skating. He learned to switch from his left hand to his right because of brain damage, and soon resumed his magical drawings and kindergarten letters.

He was a real boy, with a boyish love of pirates, spaceships, knights in shining armour and dragons. Yet he had a gentleness more characteristic of a younger child. For Halloween, friends donated Batman and Spider-Man costumes, but he insisted on being a bunny. "I don't want to be scary," he said.

Heiko loved details. When I read him stories written for older children and paraphrased the more complicated parts, he gently corrected me and filled in the missing words from memory.

He loved fairness. When someone won a bingo game, he would not allow us to stop playing until everyone had won and all the spaces were filled in.

When his strength returned, so did his pranks. Putting on his pyjamas always meant chases around the house confronting imaginary barriers for which we had to learn secret passwords. He loved hide-and-seek. Sometimes my car keys would turn up in his pockets. Or he might pull off my slippers and I would find them days later in a random drawer.

The only time sadness welled up for him was when he saw old friends. It pained him to see them run and play so effortlessly while he had to relearn how to hold a crayon, climb stairs and walk.

If Heiko struggled with his illness he never talked about it. Instead, we sometimes got the feeling he was more concerned about us; he would cover up his sores, tell jokes if we looked at him with concern, and as a last resort try to tickle us out of our seriousness.

There may have been moments of prescience. Once he told us, "You will have to get another Heiko." He knew we would miss him grievously and felt sad for us.

We will never have another Heiko. So soon after celebrating Christmas, a time of hope and new birth, we and his older brother Langton turned to grieving the death of our child, our star of wonder.

Even as a distant bystander to the family's ordeal, I was very sad to hear of Heiko's death. I've been reflecting on how very fortunate I have been: my family is intact, we have our health, we are reasonably secure, we live in a beautiful city, in a safe and healthy home, with food and clothes and belongings that would not be considered extravagant in American terms but are a wealth of riches and luxury when contrasted with much of the world. Yeah, I have my share of problems and stresses but I can only hope I'm fortunate enough to keep my own troubles and continue the relatively smooth sailing I've enjoyed up to now. I am afraid to face the depth of grief something like the death of a child or a spouse.

Labels: life, personal

The role Green Ronin Publishing will play in the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons landscape is still to be determined. It is the middle of March and it has been almost ten weeks since we and others were invited to participate in a conference call with Wizards of the Coast about the future of third party publishing and their plans for the new edition. The license under which third party publishers would be allowed to publish has not yet been made available and we have seen no more of the rules than have been released as previews or shown off in demos.

Green Ronin was an early and enthusiastic adopter of the original Open Game License and we were proud to have released support products for 3rd Edition D&D to such critical acclaim over the years. We certainly see our role in the 3E marketplace as that of a strategic partner to Wizards of the Coast. We are one of very few companies that can say Wizards thought highly enough of our designs to use our Open Game Content in their own books. As the environment in the market changed (more publishers entering the same territory, fewer options for books that hadn't been done already) we used the Open Game License to spin games out in different directions (emulation of romantic fantasy in Blue Rose, superheroes in Mutants & Masterminds) but not because we suddenly hated d20 or had it out for Wizards of the Coast or anything like that.

Recently Pramas got a look at 4th Edition in play and wrote up his impressions of the experience. This sparked quite a lot of discussion, both on his blog and on other boards where the story was picked up. One of the memes that sprang up around those discussions is this idea that Chris was being overly or unjustly negative in his comments (along with the gross oversimplification of his comments as "saying 4E is a CCG") and this was "obviously" because Green Ronin is a "competitor" and all commentary must be tainted by the fact that we have "a competing product", which is usually portrayed by the commenting party as an entry level game trying for WotC's market-share or as the game that was designed to be what we thought 3E should have been.

Frankly, I'm a little put out that people are so willing to jump on the idea that Green Ronin is a WotC competitor. We created products to fill niches we perceived in the marketplace, and yes, we've developed a couple of OGL-based systems that stand on their own and are doing pretty well. After 8 years of publishing, after releasing umpteen hundreds of titles that directly supported D&D, after following WotC through revisions and updates, and after signing up to be among the early adopters of 4E just as soon as Wizards actually gets us those documents they were promising 10 weeks ago, I think our credentials as third-party publishing partner are pretty well established. Considering the state of the roll out of the GSL and the 4E Design Kits, I think our abundance of caution is certainly justified. I don't consider our place as competition to WotC in any meaningful way and I certainly don't see us as adversarial. I really want to stomp on this idea before it grows out of hand.

I'm on my way out of town for the weekend and I really wanted to get this off my chest before going. Have a good weekend everyone!

Labels: game industry