BlogRolling

I've been making some long overdue repairs to my Blogroll, adding folks who link to me, and weeding out some feed of less interest or relevance. If you look on the sidebar you will actually see 4 blogrolls - I've built up so many that I needed to organize them a bit. There are loosely organized groups for Battletech, Related math, Friends and interesting stuff, and Game Design. If you want a link let me know, especially if you link to me already and I missed it (I'm sure there are a few).

The Grinder - Valentine's Day Edition

Links for the one you love, ground up and arranged in a nice bouquet.

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

From Norton Juster, and the Immortal Chuck Jones



[IO9] - Mathematicians figure out how to fend off gold-diggers – with game theory  ---  This should be probably be re-titled: Two male Mathematician's figure out yet another way not to get girls.

Spiked Math

Spiked Math has an experimental simplified viewing page, and a new Spiked Math app for the iPhone/iPad.


[The Fallacy Files] - The Puzzle of the Absent-Minded Professors

Because no one can ever have enough logic puzzles.

That's a Terrible Idea: Actually has some pretty good idea's, and I have added them to my blogroll under Game Design Blogs (somewhere down there, but hey, a link is a link). Here are two good samples:

1. Games from the Ground Up
2. The Role of Chance

Dancing Robots! The party really gets going about 3 minutes in.
[Found on Engadget, via Pharyngula]

Proof

More goodness from Proof: Snowhedron

[Dark Roasted Blend] If you like the artwork for Catalyst Games Labs new game Leviathans, check out The Great Eastern, a leviathan steamship on the Victorian era.

[Discoblog] Can video games make smarter spies? Oh come on guys, get Sirius!


That's all for this edition. Be sure to set aside the games you love for a little time with the one you love. Or better yet, get them to play a game with you!

Pink Panthers, and a few Dropships

I have a couple of Galactic Knights Carnivorian Panther Class Cruisers that I'm try to finish up and get off my workbench. I've been meaning to post some pictures for a while, and a recent post at Super Galactic Dreadnought prompted me to action.
While I had my camera out, I also snapped some pictures of some AeroTech Union and Overlord class dropships that I have been wanting to show off. With a little help from Picassa, you can see these pictures in the embedded slideshow below, or you can see the full size images in my miniatures gallery.





For the Panthers I employed a non-standard method for painting these. It went something like this:

1. Start with a black primer coat.
2. Drybrush a dark grey, then gradually work up to lighter shades.
3. Accidentally splatter with Pink Paint. Really dump it on.
4. Wash off most of the pink paint, and spread the rest around a bit.
5. Accent with magenta ink.
6. Highlight with Metallic Inks, as shown here.
7. Apply matte varnish.
8. Apply a flat black glaze to "deep" areas to further knock down shininess and bring up the contrast.
9. Add lettering in white ink for the ship names (in process).
10. (next) Mount on Ninja Magic flight adapters?

Since these are "Panther" cruisers, I decided to name them after cats I have known. The first is "Telstar" after a big black cat we had when I was very young. The second is "Boris" after an even bigger black* Maine Coon who has assisted in the development of Squadron Strike (Boris allows Ken to type, sometimes). 

* Boris informs me he is actually a mackeral tabby.

The AeroTech dropships were an experiment in how much I could do with metallic inks, and I am very pleased with the result. I started with a black primer, and applied a number of thin layers of silver ink until I got a solid tone. Some highlighting with copper ink, black ink on the doors and some black-lining the details finished them off nicely. These came out with a much better metallic look than I get from metallic paints.

Jane McGonigal on The Colbert Report

Jane McGonigal on the Colbert Report

McGonigal is plugging her new book, Reality is Broken. I just added that book to my wish list too.

More McGonigal!

UPDATE: Gamasutra has a short excerpt from McGonigal's new book.