BtvS:RPG R.I.P.

News item from the RPG Blog...

Looks like the folks at Eden Studios have not been able to secure a renewal of their Buffy/Angel license with Fox. That sucks. The Buffy RPG was a very well done product and it is a shame that this is effectively the end of the line. Of course, it won't really effect our long-running BtVSRPG series, Slaying Solomon . I haven't bought a new Eden release since the excellent Magic Box. There just hasn't been a need. Since we are not constrained by licensing agreements, Slaying Solomon still has plenty of life left in it (at least a season or so more).

Get Out Your Tinfoil Hats

Ok, I have a confession to make. I haven't been all that worried about electronic voting so far. But my office-mate is convinced that the door has been left wide open for election fraud on a major scale. This article over at Ars Technica (found via Slashdot) has pretty much convinced me that he is right. My only hope is that we'll be safe this election because it is too soon for hackers to exploit the numerous security holes. But something will have to be done soon. Will it take the discovery of fraud to fix the system? 

Coolest... Whiteboard...Evar

Check out this MIT whiteboard demo over at Digital Journal. Seriously, I said whiteboard demo. It's so cool that it caused me to return from my blogging absence (forced by some major computer recovery and a nasty schedule) to tell you about it.

A Spaceship For The Rest Of us

There's a preview of Virgin Galactic's new commercial space program over at CNN.com. Besides showing off the cool aesthetic, the article reveals some really interesting tidbits:

• Test flights should begin late next year.
• Spaceship 2's passenger seats will rotate to provide the best angle for absorbing the high-G ride.
• The White Knight 2 mothership will have an identical cabin and will be used for passenger training flights (by that, I assume the mean "vomit comet" rides).
• Flights will feature 5 minutes of weightlessness.
• Virgin plans to offer lotteries and a reality TV show to provide access for those of us who can't afford the $200,000 price tag. (Woot!)
• Virgin eventually hopes to develop the technology for orbital flight and 1-hour London-Sydney flights.

And on the subject of X-Prize technology (Spaceship 1 won the X-Prize for commercial spaceflight last year), there's a new X-Prize for genetic research. The Archon X-Prize will pay out $10,000,000 to the team that is the first to decode 100 human genomes in 10 days. Furthermore, the X-Prize foundation plans to announce two new prizes per year starting in 2007.

I'm Still Here (Mostly)

I've been super busy as of late. My wife has been out of town most every day in the last few weeks, so I'm starting to feel like a single parent. As a result, I'm accumulating a back-log of things that I want to blog about. Of course, I don't even have time for a detailed post right now. Juggling getting Finley to daycare, marathon training, and getting to work on time in the morning has been difficult at best. To manage, I have to get to sleep by 9:45 or so.

Briefly, I did want to mention that I had an amazing weekend of gaming... not this past weekend but the weekend before that. Wow, I really am overdue for a post. Anyway... on Thursday the 21st, we finished our Risus Dragonspire game. It took three hours, but we did it. Boy, did it go out with a bang! Now if only I could find time to post the final update...

On Saturday the 23rd, we had one of our best Slaying Solomon episodes in a long time. Fortunately, I'm not on the hook for the writeup. But A Woman Scorned went so well that I definitely want to let everyone know when Jodi posts the episode summary.

Finally, we had a very good D20 Dragonspire game on Sunday the 24th. We were missing two of our players, which sucked, but we did manage to finish the first story arc. I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I reach story breaks in my games. Again, I hope to post updates before our next session (Oct 22?).

In other news, Christy and I finally saw Massive Attack! I've been waiting years to see them and the September 29th show at the 930 Club was fabulous. It's so rare that the two of us can get out now, especially with the cost of babysitters. I was almost starting to forget what it was like. To bad the smoking ban hasn't kicked in yet... maybe I'm getting old, but the fog of cigarette smoke was the only thing that made the night less-than-perfect.