Categories
Comics

The Amazing Adventures of Lethem and Chabon

Patricia Storms has drawn a cute parody strip called The Amazing Adventures of Lethem and Chabon, about the Comics-obsessed literary saviours of the modern intellectual male.

Categories
Roleplaying

Lousy Players and Lousy GMs

Greg Stolze, who is currently promoting a tactical wargame of his design, to be released if enough people come up with the “ransom” for it, summarizes the results of two rpg.net forum threads which rated the various flaws od Lousy Players and Lousy GMs.

Well, at least I provide plenty of unchallenging sessions. And I give PCs lots of superpowers sometimes. Except I take them away. But I don’t railroad. Or prepare. And my Leadership sucks.

Strangely, although I’ve been characterized as “an asshole player”, I don’t see my flaws listed. Are they?

Categories
Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Wrong Line

Variety.com – Inside Move: Fanatics laying it on the line

Saturday, 46 days before “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” opens on May 19, the trilogy’s enthusiasts began their vigil outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

Problem is 20th Century Fox doesn’t plan to open the film at the Chinese, opting instead for the ArcLight a few blocks east.

When you read the story, of course, it gets more complicated.

[via Nick Mamatas]

Categories
Oddities short

PostSecret

PostSecret collects postcards with peoples’ “secrets”. Depressing and yet car-crash fascinating, like distilled droplets of LJ.

Categories
Software and Programming

Javascript and Paint

Edit in Place with JavaScript and CSS – this is cool. So is his Drag & Drop Sortable Lists.

Here’s a parody of Paul Graham that’s sort-of related to Javascript (few people have looked beneath their natural revulsion to find Javascript’s deeper flaw: curly braces). He’s also written a more serious rant about Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters essays, which contains some gems of snark:

The fatuousness of the parallel becomes obvious if you think for five seconds about what computer programmers and painters actually do.

  • Computer programmers cause a machine to perform a sequence of transformations on electronically stored data.
  • Painters apply colored goo to cloth using animal hairs tied to a stick.


Great paintings, for example, get you laid in a way that great computer programs never do. Even not-so-great paintings – in fact, any slapdash attempt at slapping paint onto a surface – will get you laid more than writing software, especially if you have the slightest hint of being a tortured, brooding soul about you. For evidence of this I would point to my college classmate Henning, who was a Swedish double art/theatre major and on most days could barely walk.

Also remark that in painting, many of the women whose pants you are trying to get into aren’t even wearing pants to begin with. Your job as a painter consists of staring at naked women, for as long as you wish, and this day in and day out through the course of a many-decades-long career. Not even rock musicians have been as successful in reducing the process to its fundamental, exhilirating essence.