Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Mac Moyer's LiveJournal:

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Friday, January 8th, 2010
10:15 am	The age-old question Bacon or beer can? (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
10:23 pm	On cranberry sauce I love discovering that the best way to cook something is the simplest. I contributed turkey and cranberry sauce to the Thanksgiving feast with my wife's family this year. I had some glitches with the turkey (I should make turkey a few times through the year to practice it), but my cranberry sauce was definitely successful. I used this recipe, and it was so quick, simple, and delicious that I don't know why anybody ever buys that canned cranberry jelly. I didn't add the optional pecans, though that sounds good. I added a dribble of vanilla extract and some ground cinnamon after the simmer, and it rounded it out nicely. A few years back I used Alton Brown's cranberry dipping sauce recipe. I enjoyed it, but it's more work and a lot more ingredients than the recipe above. It also makes a lot more sauce from the same twelve-ounce bag of fresh cranberries. A lot more. Way more than you could use on three turkeys. And it wasn't nearly as popular at dinner time, so I had a ton of leftover cranberry sauce. That's how I discovered that good cranberry sauce is really yummy on vanilla ice cream. Joellen, on the other hand, was in charge of pies this year. She made her late grandmother's crust recipe from scratch, and we disassembled, steamed, peeled, and pureed fresh pumpkin for filling. The hard way really does make a better pie. Cranberry sauce, though, wants to be simple. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
11:59 am	Small Worlds, Samarost I enjoyed Small Worlds. It's short, and I recommend leaving its music on for the duration. Samarost is like playing a game within a piece of art. Lovely, engaging, weird. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 26th, 2009
10:26 am	Wii games on my feet The Wii has some innovative controls, and one of the nice ones is the balance board. But I can't help thinking that game designers are really missing the boat. Nearly all of the Wii games that employ the balance board (as the primary or optional control) are sports or exercise themed. As a fat gamer, I'm really not that interested in sports and exercise. I mean, I know I need more exercise, but an exercise theme doesn't motivate me to play. Because I know I need exercise, I like that the balance board gets me on my feet and makes me move them around. But I don't like that it just makes me feel like I'm exercising. If I liked exercise, I'd be doing it already. I want a game that motivates me to exercise, but isn't about exercise. What I want is a strategy game that has an option for using the balance board as a basic control. Not as a dexterity, balance, or timing challenge, but just as left-and-right control buttons, that I have to use constantly through the game. Make a game that gets me on my feet and makes me step up and down on the balance board constantly. And is addictive to play. Do they still make good Nintendo strategy games? I remember playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms on my NES for hours on end. Or something like Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Those are the games I really want to play. But I want to play 'em on my feet. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
1:10 pm	DINO-TASTIC!!! Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar is the best video game ever. And it's the perfect length for my attention span. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
10:28 pm	I laugh every freakin' time (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
10:55 pm	Spotted at Wal*Mart, part II I saw this on the back of a pickup truck as we pulled into the parking lot, and I couldn't help following to take a picture... once the driver was out of sight. My thoughts, in order: You combined the jingoism of an anti-France statement with the class of a pissing Calvin sticker. Way to... go? I'm pretty sure France give that statue to the United States as a gift. Does Lady Liberty really pee that way? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
7:58 pm	My new love... ...is a Lanikai LU-21 soprano ukulele. I played guitar and bass (badly) in high school and college, in a couple of garage bands. But I stopped for several years. Lately I'd been thinking about picking it up again, especially since Riley arrived and started enjoying music. But even an entry-level guitar is a few hundred bucks, and it's a big piece of furniture to have in the house with a toddler around, and it was kinda one of those things I was never really gonna do. So one night I have this dream I'm singing in a nerd rock-cover band. My buddy Eli is playing guitar, and a bunch of (vague, unspecified) friends are behind me, and I'm playing ukulele and having a fantastic time. When I woke up, I said, "Yeah, that's it." So I picked up this little sweetheart, and I've been taking lessons from local musician Alison Losik (who also teaches piano, voice, and music theory), and I'm having a great time. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 17th, 2009
10:06 pm	Spotted at Wal*Mart, part I I'm glad that somebody out there whose job is to design crummy toys to be mass-produced in China and sold at the biggest of big box stores has a sense of humor. And a boss that okayed this. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
7:49 pm	Holiday breakup I made some peanut brittle with the Good Eats recipe this evening, and I declare that recipe to be full-scale awesome. Peanut brittle + cayenne pepper = world domination. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
11:37 am	When beavers attack! Our smallest apple tree was chewed down completely a couple of nights ago. As soon as I can, I need to get out and wrap some hardware cloth around all five four fruit trees on the property. The second-smallest apple tree has already been nibbled a bit. I hope my castorific friend lets it live until the weekend. I really like that tree. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
11:48 pm	Information imbalance at the heart of horror? I loves me some Trail of Cthulhu. I ran a one-shot for Halloween that I think was pretty successful. I'm thinkin' of writing up the scenario for some form of publication, I liked it so much. But that's not what this post is about. ( What is it about? Click to find out! ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
10:40 am	Arab, Muslim... fear, ignorance... tomayto, tomahto A troubling bit of video was in rotation at CNN and CNNHN last weekend, John McCain and a supporter named Gayle Quinnell at a rally. The exchange goes like this: Quinnell: I can't trust Obama. I— I have heard about him and he's not, he's not, he's a, um.... He's an Arab. He is not.... McCain: No, no. No, ma'am. No, ma'am. Quinnell: No? McCain: No. No, ma'am. No, ma'am. He's a, he's a, he's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on, on fundamental issues, and that's what this campaign is all about. He's not. Thank you. ( Now, there's a lot that troubles me about this, but I'll strip it down a layer at a time to get to what really bothers me.... ) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
2:44 pm	It's the sort of thing you'll like, if you like this sort of thing I really dig the Mountain Goats' album Heretic Pride. You should check it out. Yes, you. They have a song about Lovecraft. Or sort of about feeling like Lovecraft. When he lived in Brooklyn. It's called "Lovecraft in Brooklyn." It's a good name. And a good song. You can't go wrong with lyrics like: Woke up afraid of my own shadow I mean, like, genuinely afraid Headed to the pawnshop To buy myself a switchblade Someday something's coming From way out beyond the stars To kill us while we stand here And store our brains in mason jars (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
9:56 am	What does Indie Press Revolution bring to the table? EDIT: I've received some very helpful responses from folks who work at IPR in the comments. Some points: Publishers set prices at IPR, and IPR takes a 15% cut, which is smaller than a typical bookstore model. I've personally had very good experiences buying directly from indie RPG publishers, but that's not always the case. IPR is providing professional customer service so you don't have to take a risk working directly with the guy who wrote a beautiful little RPG, but can't seem to offer customer service worth a damn. They're out there. IPR's slightly-higher-than-usual S&H fees reflect more expensive packaging to better protect their books. I can vouch for this first-hand: they do use better packaging, and it does work. drivingblind points out ways to keep S&H-cost-per-book lower... see the comments for details. Even folks who work at IPR aren't 100% pleased with the e-commerce software they're using. The answers to my core question -- what does IPR do for me? -- has a lot of answers, and many of them are publisher-oriented. But the fact that I got so many thoughtful, rational responses from folks who work at IPR indirectly answers the question better than anything. It's clear these guys care about their business and want to serve consumers. They're making a quality effort in a challenging sector of a tough industry, and that deserves some support. I'm going to leave the post below as originally written, but be advised that my mind has changed. In my continuing fascination with indie RPGs, I've noted that in the last year or so most indie publishers are moving to Indie Press Revolution to handle their mail-order sales. I don't know a lot about their operating model or the economics of their unique product range, but I do know that as a consumer I don't care for a lot of things I'm seeing at IPR. First, their prices aren't good. Now, these are indie RPGs, and I accept that I'm paying a premium for buying from small presses. But it seems to me (my memory may be faulty) that I paid less than $22 for my copy of "Dogs in the Vineyard" when I bought it directly from the publisher's web site (which isn't an option anymore, now that the publisher only sells it online through IPR). And it seems to me that IPR is a middleman taking a cut of the money I'm paying... but what am I, as the consumer, getting for my extra dough? Second, their shipping fees are awful. Perhaps I'm too coddled by Amazon's free shipping deals, but I'll point out that independent sellers through Amazon charge only $3.99 for shipping a single book. IPR charges $5.79 for shipping a copy of "Dogs in the Vineyard," and even more for bigger books. Now, "Dogs" is a great game, but it's a tiny little book. Why so much for shipping? It's only a couple of bucks, but on top of their already high product prices it gets amplified. As a fan of indie RPGs, it's hard for me to feel good about selling my friends on a copy of "Dogs in the Vineyard" when I know it will cost them nearly $28 for a 160-page, digest-sized book. Worse yet, I already own and love "Dogs," but I'm reluctant to buy any games I'm less familiar with from IPR, because I don't feel comfortable with the value I'd be getting. Finally, the web site is hard to use. It's hard to find stuff, even with the search function when you know exactly what you're looking for. Do a search for "spirit of the century." The game "Spirit of the Century" is the ninth entry on the page! WTF? Making this worse is IPR's habit of posting a full entry for each available format for a product. There's an entry for the print edition, an entry for the PDF edition, and an entry for an option that includes both. All for the same book. It makes much more sense to me to put up just one entry per product, and show a column with the available buying formats and corresponding prices. It sure would be easier to browse the results of my search if there weren't three nearly identical entries for every project, producing a list so unnecessarily long that it extended over three pages. I know IPR is scraping out a niche for itself in a hard-to-sell area of an industry that isn't exactly the place to go for profitability to begin with. And they must be doing something for publishers, or so many indie publishers wouldn't be using them. But, as a consumer, I'm not seeing the benefit of using IPR. I never like to be a complainer, especially about a small-fry operation that's serving the gaming community, but IPR needs to do a better job of telling me why I should support them. So far I avoid it as much as I can, but if they continue to be the main outlet for small RPG presses it's going to be hard to follow indie RPGs without them. (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 23rd, 2008
9:22 am	So long, George, and thanks for all the F-bombs When I was in high school, Nick-at-Night started showing classic ('70s) SNL episodes edited down to half-hour best-of shows. (I bet NBC would have a hit on its hands if it did this with current SNL episodes... but I digress.) My favorite of all of these was George Carlin's appearance. Other comedians go for the laugh first, and a few good ones occasionally make you think. Carlin's comedy always went for the thinking first, and the laughter came as a result. I never looked at the world the same way after I first saw George Carlin's standup. We've lost a great American hero, a guy who fought hypocrisy and never ran out of enemies. And I can't help feeling we lost him just when we need him most. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
9:47 am	No Play NW! Last year, I wanted to go to Go Play NW, but we were on the verge of Riley, so I didn't. As Riley's first birthday approaches, I got to thinkin', "Hey, I bet Go Play NW is coming up soon." So I looked it up, and it was almost a month earlier than last year. It was May 31st through June 1st. Man, I need to get on some kinda mailing list for this thing. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
11:28 am	SCIENTIFICTION! I'm reading The Skylark of Space, and for some reason this passage struck me as especially iconic: For forty-eight hours the uncontrolled atomic motor dragged the masterless vessel with its four unconscious passengers through the illimitable reaches of empty space, with an awful and constantly increasing velocity. I don't know why that passage strikes me as so representative of pre-Golden-Age science fiction. The elaborately stumbling rhythm? The lengthy description without a drop of imagery? The awkward pairing of the emotional adjective "awful" with the factual "velocity," in a sentence already weighed down with numbers? Above all, I can't figure out how you would build a sentence like that without a word processor. It's like the Stonehenge of sentences. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
3:53 pm	Science fiction in academia A bit ago, I commented about science fiction not being part of the academic canon of literature. Today I stumbled across an exception, a collegiate course on science fiction, by Dr. Courtney Brown at Emory University. And it's a podcast. (Scroll down a bit, or track it down on iTunes.) It's called "Science Fiction and Politics," and it's a social science course, not a literature course, but... whatever. It's close enough. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
9:37 am	Trail of Cthulhu player's guide = smart Trail of Cthulhu is nifty and gorgeous. It's also a $40 core rulebook. And Cthulhu campaigns are notoriously short. So Pelgrane Press has done something I think is very smart. They're selling a player's guide for $11. Now, for most systems, a player's guide is extra material... an extra expense. But in this case the player's guide is a subset of the core rulebook. Just what the players need to play the game, but not something extra for the GM to buy. Pelgrane also offers PDFs of the ToC rulebook. I've seen from experience that, when a PDF is available for an RPG, especially a short campaign, the GM will often buy a copy of the core rulebook and spread the PDF around among the players... who never buy the book for themselves. With an inexpensive player's guide, I think Pelgrane is opening up a way for non-GM players to support the company and the product line, and they're not overcharging for it. In other words, I think many players who might otherwise be inclined to violate the copyright now have a very reasonable alternative. It's good for everybody, and it's smart. I would sure like to see this model catch on. Way to go, Pelgrane! (Comment on this)