Blog – Page 151 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 18, 2020

RPG (DOG EAR)

t’s probably a bad idea. I’m going to start role playing again (after 30 years or so). Role playing (if you live in a cave and don’t know) is where one person acts as an impartial (or so they say) referee, setting up everything from the nature of the world to the price of a beer. Players describe what they want to do, and the ref determines (using tables and rules as guides) the outcome. Back in the day, I hosted a very successful StarWars campaign (which ran pretty much weekly for fifteen years). I can figure that a lot […]

June 21, 2020

Treasure Island (Review)

y opening shot from the fo’c’sle: this is a great book! I’ve read it years back and loved it. Watched the pretty-close 1990’s version and loved that too. And now, after watching the show Black Sails (which serves as a prequel , but I’ve my own issues with it), I pulled this one out of the public library and had another go on it. Did I already tell you to get it and read it? So the story opens with young Jim Hawkins (who works in his parent’s inn) taking on a new boarder, an old salt of the sea […]

June 21, 2020

OpsLog – LM&O – 6/20/2020

went back and checked – my last operations entry was back in March 1st of this year, three and a half months ago. Yes, it’s been that long since I ran in an organized session. With the possible premature opening of the state under the danger of CORVID-19, and at our club (observing strict mask and sanitizer rules) the club as started to meet again. I was thinking towards a session but I didn’t want to pack a bunch of operators in for one (we’ve run up to thirty people before). Also, I didn’t want to have our just-reopened club […]

June 25, 2020

Blessed Creativity (DOG EAR)

howed up a little early for a dentist checkup the other morning. Was the only one in the waiting room and the TV was on mute (and I wasn’t going to disturb it). They were running a little late so I sat quietly for twenty/thirty minutes while they got to where they could see me. When the nurse came out, she said she hadn’t thought I was even there, I was so quiet. And on top of things, I’d forgotten my book. I was thinking. Unlike that kid the other day at the hair cutters (the one who stood and […]

June 28, 2020

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Review)

his strange little book came to be in my Astronomy Club – they had a “for a good home” cart of books and I scooped this one up. Oddly, it comes from quaint old 1989, so yes, a lot changes in thirty years. I’ll take my cheap shots early – the book is certainly dated. Mr. Ashpole (the author) is operating in the post-disco era. Several times he notes that no extra-solar planets have been detected (now there are hundreds). The Hubble is still a dream. All the technologies he discusses are outdated. Not his fault. That’s looking back from […]

July 2, 2020

Early Bird (DOG EAR)

se to be, back when I was a working man, that I’d need to wake up and be out the door in twenty minutes, riding the bike through hot and cold, watching for cars, figuring out my work. You can’t commute on a bike in Oburg while muzzy with sleep. So now that I’m retired, twenty years in the purple have left me altered. Now when the furry kids wake me up at 5am for their feeding, I can’t get back to sleep. I lie there, mind spinning up, unable to drop back into slumberland. So this morning I did […]

July 5, 2020

The Darkling Plain (Review)

nother from the Mortal Engines series, a thicker book that finds Tom Natsworthy and his daughter Wren (and, indirectly and via different paths, estranged wife Hester) returning to the place it all began, the ruined London, laying in its debris field after its attempt to fire its Medusa weapon backfired (literally) so massively in book one of the series. We have the orphaned Lost Boy Fishcake hauling along the remnants of Anna Fang, once freedom fighter for the Anti-tractionists and now a murderous puppet (in the form of a six-foot tall automation that lawn-mowers people with its finger-scythes). And we […]

July 5, 2020

BuildLog – TBL – 7/5/2020

o I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Yes, I do have my own layout. No, I don’t really run it much – it’s just not fun to run alone, not after I’ve done ops. And to run it, I need to clean it (not easy on a moderate-sized layout) and put in two removable sections. I’ve long considered Kato Unitrack to be a pretty bulletproof solution. It’s only real drawbacks are that you can’t do sweeping curves like flex track permits. Also, that plastic roadbed looks pretty punky. However, roadbed can be ballasted (it will take a […]

July 9, 2020

Juniors (DOG EAR)

hen I was working, we’d walk over to Juniors on Sunday mornings to have our omelets. And being readers, we’d settle into that crowded, muggy background and prop open our books and read. The waitress (who was used to this bookworm way of breakfast) would keep the ice-teas filled and bring us the check when we closed our books. Once I retired, we shifted to Thursday. Now seating was always available, the mood was slower and more casual. There wasn’t the Churchie rush at 11pm that packed the joint. We’d sit by the huge plate glass window, look out on […]

July 12, 2020

MS Found in a Bottle (Review)

o I’m wading through an old Afghan thriller and nowhere near done, and my review deadline is coming up. With that in mind, I pulled out a hardback from a collection my wife bought me years back, short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. Flipped through it and picked MS Found in a Bottle at random. The story starts out slow enough, a man of the world but not of it, sailing on a tramp freighter in the 1800’s sometime through the South China Sea. A massive storm (with plenty of foreshadowing) comes down on them at night with the crew […]