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Happy New Year and welcome back

Welcome to the revamped paulcutler.org.

I’m your host, Paul. With January upon us, the blog has officially turned 10(!). One of my New Years resolutions is to blog more – I only blogged twice last year, but I can’t tell you the number of ideas I had for blog posts that I saved in Evernote, Google Reader or Pocket / Instapaper. This year I hope to follow through on that a bit more.

With the blog’s ten year anniversary here, I went back and looked through some of the old blog posts – and quickly wished I hadn’t. Maybe that’s not fair, but I believe my writing style has improved since I first created the blog. The blog has gone through a number of iterations – first as a place to share whatever I wanted, including technology, digital rights, sports, or gaming. Later, as I became more involved with open source projects, the blog became a place to share news or thoughts about the projects I was involved with. As I became less involved, and with the rise of Twitter, the blog posts tapered off.

I plan to go back to the original premise and share my thoughts and interests on technology, digital rights, tabletop games and anything else that might come to mind. I’ll share interesting links from around the web – some you may already have seen and others may be new to you.

Lastly, I’ll be talking about music. I’ve always been an avid music fan, but a few years ago I bought my first turntable and got into vinyl in a big way. I started a music blog, which also has suffered from a lack of posts in the last year. I’ll be combining the blogs and only using the blog at paulcutler.org going forward, so this is also where I’ll be talking about music.

In preparation for 2013, I’ve spent some time re-designing the home page and the blog. But we’ll save that for another post. You have to have a reason to want to come back, right?

Burning Down the House

I saw this posted on Boing Boing last month and forgot how great it was until Amanda Palmer linked to it in her latest Kickstarter update.

I love how much fun Amanda Palmer and her band are having jamming with David Byrne – and it’s great to see him playing an old Talking Heads tune.

Enjoy.

[http://www.youtube.com/embed/sh5ZDv13_mM]

What I’m Listening to: New Music Releases 7/25

Welcome back!

July 25th is a big day for new music. If you’re not reading the Largeheartedboy blog for new music releases, including where you can stream the new releases for free before buying (which usually comes out on Wednesdays), you should be. The list of today’s releases can be found here.

Albums I’ve purchased this week include:

Passion Pit’s Gossamer: If you’re a fan of the first album, you’ll love their second album. Not a lot has changed since their breakthrough debut album Manners. The same upbeat tempo, falsetto – a great summer album.

[https://rd.io/i/QAAKPlkiMQ]

The next album I’ll be listening to is the latest from The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten. I haven’t given it a spin, but the first single, 45, released a while back shows the New Jersey rockers haven’t changed much from their last few releases. If you’re a fan of good old-fashioned rock and roll, give it a listen. The vinyl is available from Amazon for only $13.99!

[https://rd.io/i/QAAKPlksjw]

Stagnant Pools release their debut album on Polyvinyl today. One of the things I love about Polyvinyl is they often give you the digital release weeks before the physical albums come out. I’ve given this a few spins, and their artist page sums them up quite well:

Stagnant Pools are Bryan and Douglass Enas, two brothers (21 and 22) from Bloomington, Indiana. With just one guitar and a drum kit, they make music which the Chicago Reader describes as “drone-heavy, slate-gray art-rock that should appeal to fans of Disappears, Joy Division, and Sonic Youth records from back when they were still actually scary.”

Lastly, Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü and Sugar fame, has signed on with the ultimate indie label Merge for his upcoming solo release. Before that comes out, he has remastered and re-released the Sugar catalog today on Merge. Featuring the first album, Copper Blue, along with the Beaster EP as well as the follow-up File Under Listening, they are available from Merge with a bonus content featuring live songs and B-sides on MP3, CD or vinyl.

[https://rd.io/i/QAAKPloMjQ]

[https://rd.io/i/QAAKPloMjA]

I’ve ordered all of the above albums on vinyl and am looking forward to giving them a spin.

You can follow me on Rdio at http://www.rdio.com/people/prcutler

Thank You EFF

For the last 8 years I’ve donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of my favorite non-profit organizations.  The EFF continues to fight to protect our freedoms in the digital world – and for that I’m grateful.

Alan Moore & the Guy Fawkes Mask

Alan Moore talk to The Guardian about V for Vendetta and the use of the Guy Fawkes mask he created for V for Vendetta and its use by Occupy.

It is an irony noted with relish by critics of the protests – one also glumly acknowledged by many of the protesters – that the purchase of so many _Vendetta _masks has become a lucrative little side-earner for Time Warner, the media company that owns the rights to Moore’s creation. Efforts have been made to avoid feeding the conglomerate more cash, the Anonymous group reportedly starting to import masks direct from factories in China to circumvent corporate pockets; last year, demonstrators at a “Free Julian Assange” event in Madrid wore cardboard replicas, apparently self-made. But more than 100,000 of the £4-£7 masks sell every year, according to the manufacturers, with a cut always going to Time Warner. Does that irk Moore?

“I find it comical, watching Time Warner try to walk this precarious tightrope.” Through contacts in the comics industry, he explains, he has heard that boosted sales of the masks have become a troubling issue for the company. “It’s a bit embarrassing to be a corporation that seems to be profiting from an anti-corporate protest. It’s not really anything that they want to be associated with. And yet they really don’t like turning down money – it goes against all of their instincts.” Moore chuckles. “I find it more funny than irksome.”

Oh, poor Time Warner and your moral dilemmas.  If only that was the least of your troubles.

rpgKids

A co-worker introduced me to rpgKids last week.  After taking a look around the website, I plunked down the $5 and bought the game and the adventure pack and it was well worth the money.

rpgKids is a basic roleplaying game meant to introduce kids ages 4-7 to the wonderful world of using their imagination to roleplay.  The 24 page PDF includes the ruleset, an overview of the characters, hand drawn tokens for both heroes and monsters, a character sheet and a printable 1″ grid for mapping your adventures.  It also comes with with one adventure for you to run through with the kids, and the Adventure Pack (if you buy the $5 version) includes 4 more adventures.  The age recommendation was perfect, as Zoe is 7 and Jack is 5.

I packed up the kids Saturday morning and we headed out to our local game store.  While you don’t need to, we picked up a bunch of used miniatures for $2 bucks each for the game.  The tokens included in the PDF would have worked fine, but I wanted to give the kids that little extra experience.  We also picked up some dice – you’ll need a couple D12 and D6 dice for the game – I made sure to get each of the kids their own.

 

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The included adventure gives you the overview of the story, a script to follow (if you choose) and 4 encounters, including maps, where you’ll run into the “monsters” as you try to save the town of Springwell.

The kids choose their class (fighter, healer, wizard or archer) and you as the parent play the role of Dungeon Master, keeping the kids on path in the story and role playing the monsters in each encounter.  The kids had a blast as I roleplayed the monsters, especially the funny voices, and added to the script to make sure they were having a good time.

Zoe got it right away – she quickly named her character as they filled out their character sheets and chose a class, while Jack didn’t really get it until we were in the middle of the story and having our first encounter with the monsters.  Alex, who is 15, came and watched – as my wife later pointed out, you could tell that he thought he was too cool to play with the little kids, but deep down, he really wanted to.

Combat is simple – roll a die for initiative, then the monsters roll against the heroes to see if there is a “hit” – 2 hits and the character or monster is knocked out.  Depending on the class, you can attack from so many tiles away, adding a level of tactics and strategy to start the kids learning.  My Dungeon Master skills are a bit rusty, but thankfully the script kept the story going and I embellished and added to the story where appropriate.

They definitely enjoyed it and were asking to play again – this will definitely be a great way to get through the long Minnesota winter.  If you have a kids, I highly recommend rpgKids and it definitely lays the groundwork to introduce D&D when they get older.  Who needs video games anyway?!

Thanks Steve

The internet is buzzing with thank you’s, tributes and more about the passing of Steve Jobs yesterday.

I was 11 or 12 when we got our second computer – the brand new Apple //c.  A portable version of the Apple IIe, for the first time in the Apple II line it included a built in 5.25 disk drive and ports for a mouse / joystick, external disc drive, modem and more.

It was on this computer that my formative years were spent – learning BASIC, LOGO, messing with Apple Paint, and playing Choplifter, Bards Tale and Lode Runner (among others) for hours (and days) at time.  Lode Runner was the first game I played where I could create my own levels and I would spend days devising clever ways to trap that little guy.

Most importantly, this was the computer that got me online.  We had a 300 baud modem, and later purchased a 1200 and then 2400 baud modem which seemed liked the fastest thing ever.  I remember begging my dad to let me spend more time on CompuServe, back when it cost $6 / hour to be on the service, just so I could play text adventure games.

Later I would discover the wonderful world of BBSes, and play games online, download software and interact with online communities, all while tying up the one phone line we had in the house.

Almost 10 years ago I bought an Apple //c on Ebay, which has sat in my closet since.  Ironically, two weeks ago I decided to pull it out and hook it up, only to realize I didn’t buy any software.

SDC10798

 

It wouldn’t be until years later that I would buy an Apple product again.  This past January, frustrated with my PC for not playing MP3s out of the blue, I grabbed my wife in the middle of a snowstorm and we drove to the Apple store.  User her education discount, I bought an iMac and was blown away by the experience – both the shopping experience at an Apple store and OS X.  It just worked.  I can’t say I’m a fan of iTunes, but thankfully Banshee is available on OS X.  Using iMovie, I was able to quickly jump in and edit my home movie footage from Christmas.  I imported my photos into iPhoto and quickly and intuitively created a photo book for my wife for our 15th wedding anniversary.  Apple’s focus on making products easy to use is phenomenal.

In April, I bought an iPad, and over the summer bought the new MacBook Air.  Apple’s combination of software and amazing hardware is a combination that no one can match.  Having worked with Apple when the original iMac was first launched, their business practices can leave something to be desired – but they do everything for one reason – their focus on the customer experience trumps everything, and it shows in the products they bring to market.

And the focus started with Steve Jobs, and for that I’m thankful.

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