I want items to matter. The default way of looking at items comes from video games like Final Fantasy. You buy a bunch of potions, then glug them down after (or during!) a hard fight. You pick up ...
August Roundup
Below are things I’ve learned or found interesting in the past month: Late because I forgot the month rolled over! The standardization of political colors in the US (with democrats being b...
Pokemon Go (2024)
Like everyone else, I played Pokemon Go in 2026. And like many people, I put it down sometime in 2017 (a reasonable guess in March, when I took a trip to Chicago and spun pokestops around all the f...
The City of Five Smells
Cedar Rapids is the second-largest city in Iowa, after the capital. It’s a city that’s only relevant on leap years because Iowa is the first state to hold a caucus, the first step in the Byzantine ...
Soaking in Cyberrats
The primary defense in Cyberrats is soak. If you have soak 2, you reduce all incoming damage by 2. Someone hits you for 5, you take 3 damage. Easy. We considered about introducing a new keyword c...
Party Design
So you want to throw a party. Get some friends together to hang out, maybe a group that doesn’t all know each other. Great! How do you do it? I’m no expert on parties, but I’ve been to a bunch of ...
July Roundup
Below are things I’ve learned or found interesting in the past month: Uranus is the only planet named after a Greek (rather than Roman) god. The (English) discoverer wanted to name it afte...
Miro and Street Magic
Miro is an online whiteboard and collaboration tool. It was designed for office workers to scribble out ideas on virtual post-it notes and draw lines between them, like a mix of Visio and a conspir...
Things I Love
I considered this as an entry to my Digital Garden, but that is a place for organizing personal thoughts, and this is a place to share. These, I want to share. I may continue this series in the fut...
Cornhenge
Twelve years ago, my hometown spent 1.5 million dollars on corn. Not the kind you can eat, mind you, but big metal stalks in the middle of a roundabout. Not a roundabout people used, either. When t...