As part of my duties as High Priest of the Wicca, I've performed wedding ceremonies. My legal authority to do this derives from the Universal Life Church, which makes those marriages "as legal as church on Sunday." The most recent ceremony I performed (in 2013) was for a same-sex couple. Just as it was legal for me…
Somehow, even with all the WoW pet grinding, I managed to find the time to play this game on the PS4. I liked this game better than the previous entry in the series for PS4 (Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition). The previous game "folded" the terrain to make it harder to get from point A to point…
I was hanging out with a group of friends on Monday night. We started talking about gaming conventions, what we liked and didn't like about the cons we've been to, how we might do things differently. That got me thinking: Among my gaming friends and connections, we have enough expertise to potentially start a gaming convention of…
A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post on why I removed plastic items from Kickin' Wiccan, my jewelry shop on Shapeways. This post, like the last one, was inspired by the advice I received from the talented artist Vann Godfrey, and what I learned from putting his advice into practice. Shapeways offers 3D printing…
I was going to wait a bit before writing this, but I see that lots of folks are putting up posts about the total solar eclipse next year. So now is the time to bring this up. There will be a total eclipse of the sun visible over a portion of the US for the first time…
I interviewed Aidan Kelly yesterday. Check one more name off the list! <lj-cut>I'm still trying to schedule an interview with Orien Laplante. I've let slip my attempts to contact Carolyn Clark, and I haven't even tried to speak with Robin Goodfellow yet. I haven't had much luck on getting PDFs of back issues of Green Egg or…
The gaming magazines labeled this one of the best video games of 2014, and I can see why. It's got a good story, a nice advancement system, and an interesting new mechanic in the form of the nemesis system. The story takes place in the time between the events of the Hobbit and the Lord of the…
One of my favorite board games is Betrayal on House on the Hill. It’s a semi-cooperative board game. The game has two phases. In the first phase, the players work together in exploring an old house. After a random event occurs, the game shifts into its second phase: One players’ character is randomly chosen to be a traitor. The traitor works to kill off the other players’ characters, while the other players work together to escape that fate.
From today's <a href="http://writersalmanac.org/episodes/20160704/">Writer's Almanac</a>: <b>Preface to Leaves of Grass</b> by Walt Whitman This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have…
Today I finished editing the video for the hour-long talk I gave a month ago. It was on the history of the Nevis estate, and is the most recent of the <a href="http://www.nevis.columbia.edu/events/science-on-hudson.html">#ScienceOnHudson lecture series</a> at <a href="http://www.nevis.columbia.edu/">the lab</a> where I work. <lj-cut>I'm proud of this video. The main reason why is that I had to pull…