Bring along your friend – Pt. 1

I love playing games with friends. There is something about playing a game with someone next to you, or even accross the country, who you are both going towards a common goal (be it against you, or a cooporativly). Some of my most memorable experiences playing have others tightly involved with how my experience was shaped and how the memory was formed.

What does multi-player mean to me? Why should you even care? Continue reading “Bring along your friend – Pt. 1”

The Best Webcomics of 2004

With the comic book industry chugging along at it’s usually plodding pace, it’s been interesting over the last few years to see independant artists and writers take their comics to the web, and actually making some money from them. Scott McCloud was one of the first I read a few years ago. His My Obsession With Chess was an incredible read, and really took advantage of the web medium.

I just found a link to the top webcomics from 2004. There seems to be a great representation of styles and genres. I’m interested in looking at them all and seeing what they have to offer. I’ve read a few, like Copper and found them great so I look forward to reading the rest. Enjoy.

Umberto Eco’s – Foucault’s Pendulum

Foucault's PendulumI recently finished this tome of a book. Translated from Italian, and found in a local thrift shop, I’m not really sure why I picked it up. Maybe it was because the name, maybe it was the subconcious recognition of the name from somewhere in the past, or it just had an interesting sounding story on the bookjacket. My $1.29 was well spent.

I also read recently The Da Vinci Code and was sutably impressed with it. I can understand why it has been a bestseller for a while. It’s accessable, and very compelling, making you read just one more chapter before you go to bed. The fact that I read it completely within 24 hours of buying it says I couldn’t put it down. I think the movie adaptation will do it well.

Foucault’s Pendulum covers some of the same ground. We have a mysterious man who comes to this publishing agency with his book on the Templars and the secret that they hid from the world. The three editors laugh him out of the office, but the man ends up missing and that kicks off the whole story of secret societies and their ultimate secret that they are hiding. It’s not an easy story to sum up, and it’s filled with so much more history, and secrets, that reading Da Vinci Code after it, made Code seem light and fluffy.

It’s the kind of book that let’s you in on it’s intelligence, but at the same time you feel that if you only knew a little more about different subjects you’d get even more out of it. The three editors who are the focus of the story create a fictional secret “plan” that covers the history of all the secret socities from the Masons to the Templars and more. Umberto Eco draws you through their worlds and the connections they make and compels you to find out more about things. From reading the book I want to know more about the Templars.

Read it. Foucault’s Pendulum is rewarding, dry though it may be at parts. I’m looking forward to other books by Umberto Eco, once I make my pile of unread books drop down to below 10 books that I’m meaning to read.

Happy Holidays

It’s getting to be the Christmas season. Retailers may have started it back in October, but for me it starts on Thanksgiving and that’s when I’ll let the holidays in. Put on the Christmas music and start getting out the decorations and lights. Go to the shopping madness, and try and figure out what to get your wife, family and friends. (Though my wife is smart and we’ve got most all of our shopping done before the maddness.) I love to drive at night during December with the lights up on peoples homes, and trees in the windows.

So anyways have a great holiday season, and drop a comment to say hi. I’ve got a few things cooking in the background that I want to write about so you should see those eventually this month. (Topics? Probably a book or two, a game commentary and who knows what’ll happen in the news.)

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