A Windows hater buys a Windows machine

... or the origin of Jarvis. This is the follow-up post to the teaser I posted about three months ago. Why? Let's deal with the obvious question: I have a long-documented antipathy towards the Windows operating system. Why did I buy a Windows machine? If you've followed my blog posts, or looked at the tag cloud, or…

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Last Night’s Game – Friendly Fishing, Twinkle Twinkle, and Torchlit

In my attempts to be a good host, I clean off my gaming table before my guests arrive. According to Jiku and Shuba, any dirt the guests see on the table has nothing to do with them. It must be because Bill didn't clean well enough. Last night we managed to play three games in a single…

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BG3 – Virtual Photography – 4 of 4

This is part four of a four-part article that begins here. Observations In preparing this essay, I became aware of how much my process resembles that of making a movie: composing each shot; understanding the properties of the camera; consider what's in-frame; location scouting for the background in the images; organizing the cast (not all characters are…

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BG3 – Virtual Photography – 3 of 4

This is part three of a four-part article that begins here. Poses Let's deal with the obvious: Those four pictures are the same image with different captions. There's no operative difference between that and something like this: Ah, that's better. I picked the name "Tav" because I was trying to hide. The name "Tav" was so common,…

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BG3 – Virtual Photography – 2 of 4

This is part two of a four-part article that begins here. Position Remember when you learned about co-ordinate systems back in high school? BG3's Photo Mode lets you put that knowledge to good use. There are two coordinate systems to keep track of. Warning for the math-adverse: If your head starts spinning, just scroll to the Composition…

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Last Night’s Game – Soul Raiders, Chapter 2 – second attempt

John couldn't make it, so last night Maria, Andrew, and I made another attempt at Soul Raiders. As a reminder: Last August we played Chapter 1 and got through it successfully in a single night. In September we started on Chapter 2. It's a bigger and more complex story. We were only able to go part of…

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