I like taking pictures. How many pictures?

Well, you know, some.

$ find ~/pix/cam -type f | wc -l
10167
$ du -sh ~/pix/cam
47G     ~/pix/cam

That does not include pictures taken on my various mobile phones. And how many have I printed? Well, I think I have less than twenty framed. And I made two photobooks, and I’m not sure when I looked in them last. 😬

I try to finesse them down, weed out the crap (there’s a lot of bad pictures), crop, enhance, etc. And that’s hard and is a never-ending job and I’m just looking at them on my computer then, and my wife doesn’t see them at all.

So, let’s show ’em off. This is a solved problem right? Right?

Continuing from part one, this post summarises the next two sessions. The party decide they want to investigate the bandit camp (shown by the tower in the map below).

This of course is Just Great as I’d prepped the temple because they were very keen to go back last session. I had the map in FVTT though with some walls on it, so it was more-or-less ready to go. I just didn’t have NPCs, encounters etc ready.

Apologies for the delay on this writeup, it’s back from October. The Barrowmaze campaign continued on a little longer, but then fizzled out to be replaced by the Evils of Illmire one in December.

I realised I had too many small RPG groups. I know why this is, I like small groups of people in person - I’d much rather go out with three people than eight. The problem though is with a party of eight, it matters a lot less if someone can’t make it.

Treated myself last night to something out of my pile of 2020 Kickstarters, The Wretched, now in its second printing

The Wretched is a game about human resilience in the face of overwhelming odds and almost certain death. It is a game about isolation, fear, and perseverance.

You’re the last survivor on a spaceship, with a dead crew and a creature crawling around trying to get in and finish you off. What could go wrong? Everything.

I read a lot.

I used to just read my favourite books again and again, only buying new books by authors I like. However in an effort to get away from computer screens more, I bought a Kindle and tried buying only books on sale. Well, 200 books later I am reading so many different authors I forget who I’ve liked and who I’ve not finished the samples for. I realise GoodReads is just an advert for Amazon, but it’s reasonably useful for tracking this information. In an effort to own my own data though, I’m recording my new favourites here, so I remember what I like and why.

Unlike the best-of comics post, this one isn’t numbered.

In 2020 I read a lot of comics - it was a lockdown thing. Also a Humble Bundle thing, they’ve done some great packs from Image and Humanoids (as you’ll see). Due to this, the comics have mostly in eBook form on a tablet, although I did starting buying physical editions of the ones I liked. Here’s the comics I’ve read that I really liked, in order, starting with my favourite.

So, I’ve covered the prep, now, how did we get on?

:musical_notes: * swelling chords * :musical_notes:

My wife and I don’t binge-watch much. I just don’t quite have the patience and she’s not going to sit on her own and mainline TV for a day. But Lord of the Rings is special.

The films came out for a set of Christmases lets-not-discuss-how-long-ago, and we associate them forever with nice festive times. These days I try to actively avoid watching them as I don’t want to see them too much and spoil them for myself somehow.

But, we all know what 2020 has been like. And, despite being pretty well-avoided by the rigours of 2020, it still meant we couldn’t see family and friends, with plans getting cancelled pretty late. And earlier this year I discovered There and Snack Again from listening to the Desert Island Discworld podcast. And we normally watch LotR at this 🎄 time of year.

Well, now.

To be clear, the idea, in Nate’s words:

to watch all three Lord of the Rings films (extended editions, of course), while attempting to eat everything that got eaten on screen

This is clearly a noble goal, and considering there’s very few things we can do in Tier 4 right now, why not match this quest?

Never written up the few technical projects I’ve done on here, so here’s an old project, a clock to show the next sea tides. I got it on hackaday, which I’m very pleased with.

There’s a set of journal posts on the project page for it and source code.

Time to start The Evils of Illmire!

I got this via its kickstarter earlier this year as it looked nice, and more importantly, it was cheap for digital. It’s the sign of a good one that I wish I had it in print as well now! Handily, it also has a D&D 5th Edition conversion, that came a little later than the main booklet.

It is a sandbox set around the town of Illmire. As the title hints, shenanigans are afoot…