Synchronus Moments of Unintended Beauty

Image by Hexadecimal Time via Flickr

SO today was a good day, didn't have to use my AK. I woke up, tired and confused recovering from last night's gaming and the world was one notch better than I'd hoped, just one, no more. I had expected a crashed juggalo on my couch, he was not there. I expected the reason for his absence was shirking the task he had been given (helping a friend get her life together) and it turns out that rather than shirking he had been up since 6am working, the job was already done and everything had worked out. My classes were light and pleasant. My tutorials took half the usual time and on my way home I found a new statue in the university gardens I hadn't noticed before. but this is not what you want to hear. Want poetry or empathy or something. Well on my way past the statue there was beauty.

one of the reasons I stay in this town is I can half fall in love every fifty feet if I just open my eyes and walk. the women are beautiful, unselfconscious and usually quite bright. As I walked there was a bit of perfect moment. I don't know the name of the ballet move but her hands came up in a circle and her head leaned back until her ponytail toched the ground and she spun. She really spun, I had always thought that only possible with special shoes on hardwood floors or on ice but apparently one can do it in converse all stars on the bricks of the university sidewalks. she skipped and moved and danced her way down the street, a black band around her arm containing an ipod. I waved she smiled and winked and kept dancing until she was out of sight. When I got to my destination I saw an old couple, couldn't have been younger than sixty, either of them. They were sitting and both looking variously into each others' eyes and at papers they had, they were both spooning from the same bowl of rice pudding with whipped cream on top. each careful to leave the other the bit of topping until they both took a big bite of half a piece the routine had the grace and beauty of the ballet, granted this grace by what I can only presume to be years of practice. My waitress came with a musical accent, sounding high pitched without being shrill, her voice had the quality of an early disney snow white or cinderella but with a turkish roundness to her tone. On their way out the older lady of the couple patted me on the shoulder and looked me in the eye and said. "Isn't this just the best." You know what. It is.

Next time strip club, I promise.

Adam Sheehan

Image via Wikipedia

Adam Sheehan

Listen here

Part 2 of out otakon 2009 series is adam Sheehan, the part where he talks about Shin-chan at the end is a little nsfw but all in all a good show.
I'm posting this because its easier than emailing it to everyone who asked for it.

I Like Swords

Image by "" En el Pais de los sueños "" by Marc_ via Flickr

They're pointy and shiny. Here's our first postable Otakon Interview its with Rob of Dragonsongforge.com This is part 1 of 3, hopefully the next one will have pictures and helpful diagrams and the one after that will have video of Justin decapitating tami mats.

Days Of Knights Part 2

Image by 0olong via Flickr

Initially, Corradin, an alum of the University of Delaware, had difficulty finding people who shared his passion for D&D. He met fellow gamer Dan Farrow and found a new group of players. However, their resources were limited.

“I met a few people who were playing,” Corradin said. “But the problem was, they didn’t know where to buy from.”

Eventually, they discovered Punching Judy, a store that mostly sold puppets on Main Street. The retailer carried dice and a couple games, but it was not enough to satisfy the gamers.

“The demand for the stuff was outgrowing their willingness to bring in more stuff,” Corradin said.

This lack of supplies helped give birth to The Days of Knights, which first opened almost 30 years ago in the mini-mall where the Delaware Book Exchange is now. His friend Lee McCormick, who was unemployed and raising a family, called Corradin and expressed an interest in opening a business. McCormick picked the name of the store and Corradin decided to invest in the store while continuing to be a teacher.

The Days of Knights, currently located on 173 E. Main St. in Newark, is unlike the bars and clothing retailers on Main Street. After passing through its brick, fortress-like exterior, visitors enter a different world where mystical beings exist and they can take on multiple fantasy personas. The store hosts numerous game tournaments, whether for D&D or Magic: The Gathering, a role-playing card game. The merchandise is not for the faint of heart — a level of seriousness is required for the games and a sign even reads, “Shoplifters will be executed” in big, bold red letters.

The Days of Knights is truly a gamer’s paradise with its abundance of figurines, games and collectables. Custom chess sets, fragile “The Lord of the Rings” figurines and several posters of dragons give the store its imaginative appeal. A room tucked away in back of the store sells used board games that resurrect childhood memories.

The Days of Knights, however, did not always have such a superfluous amount of merchandise and strong customer base.

“There weren’t enough customers,” Corradin said. “I had some long talks with Lee and it turned out the real problem was we just didn’t have enough merchandise.”

Due to its rocky start, Corradin decided to take a leave of absence from his occupation and focus on the store.

“I didn’t want to kiss it goodbye without a fighting effort,” he said.


In addition to Selling games Days of Knights provides a location to play and enjoy their products


Corradin was able to make a deal with a distributor, Alliance, so he could get a line of credit and offer a steady supply of games. He still does business with Alliance because it contributed to The Days of Knight’s success.

Corradin said the store gets its merchandise from multiple distributors both near and far within the adventure gaming industry. He also welcomes locals who wish to sell their items.

“I have dice towers that some guy in Newark built for me and sold them to me and now I sell them here,” Corradin said. “I try to support anybody who makes anything that’s cool and fits my store.”

He said that a new aspect of the industry is an intermediary, or fulfillment house, between the producers of a product and the distributors. This eliminates distributors’ stress of having many companies with which to interact.

Corradin is content with his decision to open The Days of Knights in Newark. He said that his customer base consists of both the local and campus community, which gives him a great cultural spectrum. Corradin is also involved with the town and he said he was named "Volunteer of the Year" at one time. He said the store's success is reliant on several factors, one of them being the attention it gives to its female clientele.

"One of the founding philosophies of the store and one of the reasons I attribute to why we're still here after all these years is that a lot of other gaming stores you go in, the mom, girlfriend or significant other can't wait to get out," Corradin said.



The Days of Knights carries crafts, jewelry and other products that he said interests women. Despite the constant flow of crazes within the industry, he said the store's role-playing-related sales have never waivered. And although The Days of Knights is different from other retailers in the area, its main competitors are online companies.

"But the difference I try to tell people about is that when you buy something online, there's different problems in terms of mailing and not getting it right away," Corradin said. "But also you don't know much about it."

He said that his experienced employees can give advice about the products that online retailers can not offer.

Corradin said what lies ahead for The Days of Knights are computer-based games, since that is the direction that the industry is heading. He remains hopeful about the company and its ability to satisfy gamers' needs.

"We're continuing to move into the future," Corradin said. "So there's no reason we can't be here for 25 more years."

Bye Bye Borders

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/24/espresso-book-machine-launches

I wonder how much one of these machines would cost. if its even within 10 times as much as a kindle I'd rather buy this

More News, Really I'm as surprised as you

Here's an article.
I just thought exploding squirrels were a neat idea.

picture provided by The Beaver County Militia, protecting us from Amish Terrorists since 2001

Because I am journalist, here's news

someone is going to get it for that masquerade breach

Politics

the best explanation of Somalia ever

FML

Spent last week in bathroom due to what will now be known as the ethiopian food incident. I recover with barely enough strength to go to my 2 midterms. somewhere in between those midterms someone steals my laptop. I miss my lappy.
T have spent the time between then and this recovering computer and spiritual capacities.
We apologize for the interruption in service.

New laptop arrives tomorrow.

Some People Have Asked

So I used to be a journalist. I started this blog as a journalism project, why aren't I doing any journalism? This picture is why.


Despite my recent foray into reporting on child porn I don't want to be that guy right now. At least not with the world watching. So until I get an archive of old show stuff up and running or it becomes very very relevant like the above story I'm not going to be doing stories about prostitutes, religion or murder. Unless it happens in a game, then its all good.

What He Said

This is the best poster ever.

Journalism homework, after trying daily for a week.

Here are my blog posts for journalism 367 for some reason the site won't let me post

I have not been able to past how is everyone else getting their posts up? why won't mine appear. I'm making one last attempt before class starts

All green to me:
I was not a big fan of the color scheme and I didn't understand why I was supposed to be interested in the material. I didn't like the double navigation bar. Perhaps its just that I'm so technically inept that I can't even post a blog entry but I couldn't navigate well.


CNN versus Mightygodking.com
Mightygodking went more deeply into what people think the law currently is and how they are mistaken. The CNN article assumed a great deal on the part of the reader. First assuming the audience knows the current law and then how the change would affect the reader. All in all I think reading both rounds out the story

Trying to Get a Sandwich, Finding Child Porn

So I went to Trabant in search of a meal. Normally I count this as a mistake due to overpricedness but today it was a mistake for a far different reason. I'm apparently engaging that part of my brain that cares about journalism again so I'm listening to all the conversations around me. Frat boys in ties for their frats in front of me talk about how the announcer for their hockey games has been arrested with six computers full of child porn, the girls behind me lament about how they forgot that chick-fil-a is closed sundays so what on earth should they eat. They then start talking about social events. The man making sandwiches talks about under staffing and changes in Trabant. A boy I walk past, looks to be in high school bumps me and looks out after his sister, clearly a freshman, she is showing him the campus and it turns out he's involved in some sort of skate something happening soon.
I choke back the urge to ask questions of any of them and all of them. Eventually I decide that even normal people would ask about the child porn so when most of the frat boys leave their friend on the sandwich line I ask, he tells me what he can. I find out he's wearing a tie for a chapter meeting, but there are a thousand threads of story that lead out from here.
I decide not to eat there and immediately go home to find out if the story has hit the papers yet. It turns out it (or something like it) has. I link to it in my blog. They didn't take the tactic I would've. I might have had a sentence about the Wilmington Man. At least I used to, I would have asked, where does he work? how is he known? did he make the films himself or were they sent. I do have an advantage over the reporters, I started hearing about the story as a piece of someone's life with a connection to the community. I know he announced at college hockey games. The person who wrote the piece probably only saw it on a police blotter.
Something interesting about the even shorter story here, it says there were 30 videos and 29 counts of child pornography. What's in the 30th video? What is the disconnect? Also why didn't they at least google the offender's name. one of the firts hits when I goolgled it, after the child porn thing is this.

Bill Panuski
Director of Broadcasting

Email: xxxxxxx (email and phone hidden by me as some sort of vague attempt at responsibility)
Phone: xxxxxxx(if the university takes the site down thoug I want to keep this copy of the bio here)

Bill Panuski is in his 6th year, as the Voice of the Fightin' Blue Hen Hockey Club. He is the Public Address Announcer, as well, as the Radio / Internet Play-by-Play Broadcaster. In addition, Bill became the ACHA Director of Broadcasting, for the Division I National Tournament. He is also, the Voice of the Blue Hens Volleyball Team and the Men's and Women's Lacrosse Team

This is a far more interesting story. The way I would have written it and its still short and only takes 30 more seconds.

Wilmington/Newark
Local Sports Announcer Charged With Child Pornography
Ben Walker March 6 2009

Delaware State Police have charged The Director of Broadcasting for the University of Delaware Hockey Team with more than two dozen counts of child pornography.
State Troopers carried out six computers out of thirty-eight-year-old William Panusik's home today. A forensic preview has so far found 30 videos depicting child sexual exploitation.
The source of the videos is as-yet unreleased.
The University so far has no comment.

Here is where you show the mugshot.

The whole thing would have been in 12 point courier new.

Then again what the hell do I know.

What is a Uniform?

So a bus driver slugged McGruff. A blog of which I am quite fond, Holy Prepuce. has the story

Brim was later charged with simple assault on McGruff's human occupant, D.C. Police Officer Tyrone Hardy. The decision to charge simple assault, rather than assault on a police officer, raises an interesting legal question: to commit "APO" in most jurisdictions, the defendant must know that the victim is a police officer. Does socking McGruff the Crime Dog count? The person inhabiting McGruff turned out to be a real-life police officer, but the role could as easily be played by a civilian. Except where the victim is a plainclothes officer, the knowledge element of APO is usually open-and-shut because of the police uniform. Would McGruff's oversize blues count? The government's restraint in charging Brim means we'll never know--at least not until the next McGruff beat-down.

Makes me wonder if Smokey the bear counts as an authority or at least a park ranger in various wilderness and camp settings. Also if Captain Morgan can perform weddings, at least in Vegas or something.

Music, Interview, and Radio Blogging

Now the Textbook we have recently downloaded for class, Journalism 2.0,says that in order to have sound podcasts on your blog you need some kind of ftp or other file hosting site. I ran this idea past the wonderful human being who A. thoughtfully archived my interviews from last year's Otakon and B. runs the servers in my house and he says such sites have at least one standard deviation more viruses and horrible spyware than any other net site. So I am at a quandary, if anyone out there has any good ideas how to host 2.2 gigs of sound without catching something nasty please do speak up. Since I had planned to upload one of my old interviews in my trademarked soothing baritone and am stymied by the lack of hosting, here's Steven Fry once again with a much better story.

If You're Thinking 'Bout My Blog

Does it matter if this is black or white? Apparently according to every study everywhere, yes all of them, Websites work best as black text on a white field, not white text on a black field. This is odd as I generally prefer sites that are white on black. Come to think of it almost everything I browse are white on black, its mostly webcomics and music but still. It makes the site hurt my eyes less. So now I have Dark text on a light field on a grey field. I wonder if the compromise is worth it.



comic from Edible Dirt by Matt Rosemier

Cage Match

I want to see Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh Settle the 2016 presidency with a steel cage match as they both have frenzied weasels stuck in their trousers. Click the names to realize why my fears are being made manifest.

We the media claim to have pretenses of objectivity, pundits are supposed to watch news not be news. The use of the fourth estate as a tool of self aggrandizement is deeply disturbing to me. Reagan was the camel's nose in the tent. I am abjectly terrified of the camels ass.